Kôgun. History of the Japanese Army 1853–1948

Kôgun, the emperor's army. Such is the name the Japanese army adopted from the early 1930s onwards, asserting its mission to protect a sovereign increasingly venerated as a living deity. It is the history of this military force and of a central institution of the Japanese nation-state, from 1853 to 1948, that Franck Michelin traces in this unrivalled work. For the role of the Imperial Army was far from limited to purely military matters. A pillar of the state, an institution that shaped much of the elite, playing a central role in modernisation and deeply involved in the life of the country, it occupied an essential place in domestic politics. It also reflects the successes and failures, the hopes and disappointments, as well as the contradictions Japan faced right up to the defeat of 1945. 

While the operations of both the army and the navy — from the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895 to the offensives in South-East Asia and the Pacific in the 1940s, taking in the invasion of Manchuria and the Russo-Japanese War — naturally stand at the heart of this major study, the choices made by political and cultural actors, diplomats and industrialists are equally examined here. The author thus delivers an indispensable and compelling overview of the history of modern Japan through the prism of its men of war.