xxv, 661 pages : 26 cm

One of the great spectacles of modern naval history is the Imperial Japanese Navy's instrumental role in Japan's rise from an isolationist feudal kingdom to a potent military empire stridently confronting, in 1941, the world's most powerful nation. Years of painstaking research and analysis of previously untapped Japanese-language resources have produced this remarkable study of the navy's dizzying development, tactical triumphs, and humiliating defeat. Unrivaled in its breadth of coverage and attention to detail, this important new history explores the foreign and indigenous influences on the navy's thinking about naval warfare and how to plan for it. Focusing primarily on the much-neglected period between the world wars, two widely esteemed historians persuasively explain how the Japanese failed to prepare properly for the war in the Pacific despite an arguable advantage in capability. Maintaining the highest literary standards and supplemented by a dazzling array of charts, diagrams, drawings, and photographs, this landmark work provides much important information not available in any other English-language source. Consciously avoiding the Eurocentric bias of conventional military scholarship, David Evans and Mark Peattie make a unique contribution to naval historiography that will be prized by serious historians and casual readers alike and that promises to spark debate within the academic community

Includes bibliographical references (pages 611-634) and index

Introduction -- Creating a modern navy : 1868-1894 -- First success : the evolution of Japanese naval tactics and the Sino-Japanese War, 1894-1895 -- Preparing for battle : Japanese naval technology and doctrine, 1895-1904 -- Travail and triumph : the Japanese navy and the Russo-Japanese War, 1904-1905 -- Statō Tetsutarō : the contradictions of Japanese naval strategy, 1908-1911 -- Toward an eight-eight fleet : the Japanese navy's plans for expansion, 1905-1922 -- "Using a few to conquer many" : the Japanese navy from the beginning of the treaty era to the first London Naval Conference, 1923-1930 -- "Outranging" the enemy : the Japanese navy from the first London Naval Conference to the end of the treaty era, 1930-1936 -- To strike from the sky : Japanese naval aviation, 1920-1941 -- The battle of the shipyards : Japanese naval construction, 1937-1941 -- Behind the fleet : collateral elements of the japanese navy, 1937-1941 -- Uneven weapons : submarine, antisubmarine, and amphibious warfare capabilities in the Japanese navy, 1937-1941 -- The great gamble : the Japanese navy plans for war, 1937-1941 -- Epilogue : reflections on the Japanese navy in triumph and defeat -- Appendix : biographies of prominent naval officers

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