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Kaigun: Strategy, Tactics, and Technology in the Imperial Japanese Navy, 18871941. By DAVID C. EVANS and MARK R. PEATTIE. Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1997. xxv, 663 pp. $49.95 (cloth).
Those of us who resided in Japan in the 1980s and 1990s often encountered one or the other author of Kaigun scurrying about the country pursuing research bearing upon the old Japanese Navy. A decade has passed, Kaigun has appeared, and we now know the full thrust of the arduous study: an in-depth survey of the strategy, tactics, and technology that characterized the Imperial Japanese Navy. Though a bit of attention is devoted to the premodern period, the jumpoff point of 1887 is offered, with justification, as the year when a modern Japanese naval force first emerged. As for the cut-off point, the authors argue convincingly that by calamitous 1943 the central theme of the book had lost its relevance for the Japanese Navy, to be supplanted by merely "desperate improvisations." An incisive epilogue presents useful reflections on the Japanese Navy in triumph and defeat (pp. 487-517). One might have wished that the authors devoted their talents to a complete operational account of the Japanese Navy in the Pacific War, since the liveliest part of Kaigun treats the...