Japans war in Asia and the Pacific from 1937 to 1945 continues to be a subject of great interest, yet the wartime Japanese army remains little understood outside Japan. Most published accounts rely on English-language works written in the 1950s and 1960s. The Japanese-language sources have remained relatively inaccessible to Western scholars in part because of the difficulty of the language, a difficulty that Edward J. Drea, who reads Japanese, surmounts.

In a series of searching examinations of the structure, ethos, and goals of the Japanese military establishment, Drea offers new material on its tactics, operations, doctrine, and leadership. Based on original military documents, official histories, court diaries, and Emperor Hirohitos own words, these twelve essays introduce Western readers to fifty years of Japanese scholarship about the war and Japans military institutions. In addition, Drea uses recently declassified Allied intelligence documents related to Japan to challenge existing views and conventional wisdom about the war.