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From Mahan to Pearl Harbor: The Imperial Japanese Navy and the United States. By Sadao Asada. Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 2006. 372 pages.$36.95.
Sadao Asada is a former professor of history at Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan. Long ago his teacher at Yale University, the late distinguished historian Samuel Flagg Bemis, introduced him to a fine dissertation topic, "Japan and the United States, 1915-25," centering on the Washington Naval Conference. That dissertation was the beginning of Professor Asada's academic career and this book.
From Mahan to Pearl Harbor is a diplomatic history of United States and Japanese relations from 1890 until 7 December 1941. In preparing this book, Professor Asada enjoyed access to an unparalleled collection of interwar naval conference materials, and he exploits those materials to provide a detailed account of Japanese decision-making and the politics of the Imperial government and navy. While the book can be read alone, it really is a companion volume to War Plan Orange by Edward S. Miller and Kaigun by David C. Evans and Mark Peattie. From Mahan to Pearl Harbor covers the same period as those two works, but provides additional details about intraservice and intergovernmental politics, leaving assessments...