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Japan's Imperial Army: Its Rise and Fall, 1853-1945. By Edward J. Drea. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2009. ISBN 978-0-7006-1663-3. Maps. Photographs. Tables. Appendixes. Notes. Selected bibliography. Index. Pp. ix, 332. $34.95.
After years of drought, 2009 proved to be unusually fertile for scholarship on Japan's imperial army. There was Naoko Shimazu, Japanese Society at War: Death, Memory and the Russo-Japanese War, notable especially for its use of conscript diaries; my own Provincial Life and the Military in Imperial Japan which employed local newspapers to explore civil society's relations with the army from the 1890s192Os; and, best of all, Edward Drea's magisterial inside history of the army. In this, he explains in language easily accessible to scholars, students or general readers, and always maintaining a sure balance between detail and analysis, the army's institutions, personalities, policies, strategy and tactics, its values in peace and its performance in battle, its relation to the emperor and the public, the education and training of its officers, as well as the conscription system and life in the barracks.
Within this complete history, Drea sets for himself, and certainly achieves, two...