Japan at War, 1914–1952 is a synthetic and interpretive history that highlights the centrality of war to the modern Japanese experience.
The author argues that war was central to Japanese life in this period—the era when Japan rose and fell as a world power. The volume examines how World War I set off profound changes that led to the rise of a politicized military, aggressive imperial expansion, and the militarization of Japanese social, political, and economic life. War was extraordinarily popular, which helped confirm Japan’s aggressive imperialism in the 1930s and war across the Asia-Pacific in the 1940s. It took a defeat by 1945 and occupation through 1952 to undo war as a national concern and to remake Japan into a peaceful nation-state. In telling this story of Japan in war and peace, this book highlights the importance of Japan in the creation of the modern world.
This study of political power and its influences in domestic and foreign affairs will be of great value to nonspecialist readers who are interested in this period, undergraduate and postgraduate students in introductory classes, and scholars interested in Japanese history and political, military, and international history.
Japan at War, 1914–1952 is a synthetic and interpretive history that highlights the centrality of war to the modern Japanese experience.
Arvustused
Reading Japan at War in 2025 is most timely. The country has transformed into the kingdom of anime, the technological wonder, and the exemplar of pacifism that we know so well. This book, however, reminds us that such impressions are the result of seventy years of reconstruction Peace is not bestowed from above, but the result of a constant battling of institutions, self-reflection, and education.
The Economist (Chinese Edition), April 2025, translated by WU Ziming
1. Introduction
2. The Long World War I, 19141922
3. Japan and a World
Against War, 19211930
4. Between War and Peace, 19311937
5. Japans China
War, 19371941
6. The War for Greater East Asia, 19411945
7. From Empire to
Nation-State, 19451952
8. Aftermaths
Jeremy A. Yellen is a historian and an associate professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is the author of The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere: When Total Empire Met Total War (2019).
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