Japan’s Military Power

Japan’s Military Power
Author: Robert D. Eldridge
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 239
Release: 2020-01-24
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1527546136

This book is an insider’s account of the problems facing the Self-Defense Forces (SDF), Japan’s postwar military, authored by the country’s leading submariner, Hideki Nakamura. Specializing in the submarine fleet, he became an ace commander, in addition to serving as an analyst and professor in security studies. During his career, he became increasingly troubled by the SDF’s ability to fight due to legal, political, and operational restrictions placed upon it. This book, a translation of his 2017 bestseller, is a must-read for those interested in Japan’s military and its ability to partner with other countries.

The Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force

The Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force
Author: Robert D. Eldridge
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 421
Release: 2017-01-21
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1137551941

Based on extensive Japanese-language materials, this book is the first to examine the development of Japan’s Ground Self-Defense Force. It addresses: how the GSDF was able to emerge as the post-war successor of the Imperial Japanese Army despite Japan’s anti-militarist constitution; how the GSDF, despite the public skepticism and even hostility that greeted its creation, built domestic and international legitimacy; and how the GSDF has responded to changes in international and domestic environments. This path-breaking study of the world’s third-largest-economic power’s ground army is timely for two reasons. First, the resurgence of tensions in Northeast Asia over territorial disputes, and the emphasis recent Japanese governments have placed on using the GSDF for defending Japan’s outlying islands is driving media coverage and specialist interest in the GSDF. Second, the March 11, 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami has focused global attention on the GSDF as Japan’s lead disaster relief organization. This highly informative and thoroughly researched book provides insight for policy makers and academics interested in Japanese foreign and defense policies.

Japanese Defence

Japanese Defence
Author: Syed Javed Maswood
Publisher: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies
Total Pages: 126
Release: 1990
Genre: Japan
ISBN: 9813035390

This book focuses on the defence policy of the Nakasone administration and attempts to provide an explanation for the policy measures which its administration implemented or initiated. It suggests that the widening disparity between economic interests and political power forced Japan to review the traditional bases for defence policy making and prompted the search for a balance that would allow the country a more active role in the international sphere. The book is organized around the central theme that Nakasone's defence policy can be understood as an attempt to rehabilitate Japan as a 'normal' state and end the state of affairs that had relegated it to a unique, and low, position.

The Japan Self-Defense Forces Law

The Japan Self-Defense Forces Law
Author: Robert D. Eldridge
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 404
Release: 2019-05-22
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 1527534944

This book is the first ever to examine the Japan Self-Defense Forces Law by providing an historical overview of its passage, changes, and function in Japanese defense policy since its passage in 1954. It is also the first to provide a full English translation of the Law, incorporating all of the more than 160 changes that have been adopted to it. This book will be of immense importance to students, scholars, practitioners, and officials working with or interested in Japan’s “military,” a term that is recognized internationally but remains sensitive domestically.

In Defense of Japan

In Defense of Japan
Author: Saadia Pekkanen
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 408
Release: 2010-08-12
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0804775001

In Defense of Japan provides the first complete, up-to-date, English-language account of the history, politics, and policy of Japan's strategic space development. The dual-use nature of space technologies, meaning that they cut across both market and military applications, has had two important consequences for Japan. First, Japan has developed space technologies for the market in its civilian space program that have yet to be commercially competitive. Second, faced with rising geopolitical uncertainties and in the interest of their own economics, the makers of such technologies have been critical players in the shift from the market to the military in Japan's space capabilities and policy. This book shows how the sum total of market-to-military moves across space launch vehicles, satellites and spacecraft, and emerging related technologies, already mark Japan as an advanced military space power.

The Politics of Japanese Defense

The Politics of Japanese Defense
Author: Joseph P. Keddell
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2016-09-16
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1315485753

The ruling Liberal Democratic Party of Japan uses incremental changes to manage conflicting pressures over defence.This work focuses on the establishment of defence policy constraints through 1992. It discusses the various implications of using defence policy as a means of conflict management.

Handbook on Japanese Military Forces

Handbook on Japanese Military Forces
Author: U.S. War Department
Publisher: LSU Press
Total Pages: 440
Release: 1995-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 0807164461

In 1944 the U.S. Army published this manual for its officers in the Pacific Theater an expanded version of the original 1942 manual of the same name—and ever since, it has been the best single reference source on the wartime Japanese military available in the English language. By 1944, the army had had time to assess its enemy closely and was coming to understand him, and its vast knowledge was distilled into the handbook. The handbook details the Japanese military system, field organization, tactics, and weapons and equipment, and the strengths and weaknesses that resulted from them. Extensively illustrated, it contains sections on the Japanese special forces, the military police, uniforms and insignia, and conventional signs and abbreviations. It covers, besides the army, the Japanese Air Service, with emphasis on its tactics and organization. Issued to officers for briefings and periodically updated, the handbook’s purpose was to assist in the winning of the war, and thus it strove to be absolutely reliable for its users in combat. It was compiled by a team of officers who integrated the research of others, and it contains information provided by the U.S. Marines and also by British and Australian intelligence. Packed with information, it is a major primary source that military historians and World War II buffs will find fascinating.

Japanese Military Strategy in the Pacific War

Japanese Military Strategy in the Pacific War
Author: James B. Wood
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 156
Release: 2007
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780742553408

In this provocative history, James B. Wood challenges the received wisdom that Japan's defeat in the Pacific was historically inevitable. He argues instead that it was only when the Japanese military abandoned their original strategic plan to secure resources and establish a viable defensible perimeter that the Allies were able to regain the initiative and lock Japanese forces into a war of attrition they were not prepared to fight. The book persuasively shows how the Japanese army and navy had both the opportunity and the capability to have fought a different and more successful war. If Japan had traveled that alternate military road the outcome of the Pacific War could have been far different from the ending we know so well-and perhaps a little too complacently accept.

The Hidden Army

The Hidden Army
Author: Tetsuo Maeda
Publisher: Edition Q
Total Pages: 384
Release: 1995
Genre: History
ISBN:

In The Hidden Army, Tetsuo Maeda traces the evolution of Japan's post-World War II military - from the vestigial minesweeping fleet that remained after WWII demilitarization to a full-fledged army, navy, and air force sustained by the world's second-largest defense budget. Keeping an eye on the conflict between the pacifism of Japan's antiwar constitution and the country's substantial armed forces, the author describes how General Douglas MacArthur ordered the re-creation of the Japanese military during the Korean War, how the military expanded throughout the high-growth decades of the 1960s and 1970s, and how it came into greater international presence when the 1973 Arab oil embargo slowed economic growth, leading the Japanese military into an intimate involvement in United States Pacific strategy. He also examines how the Japanese military posture is changing in the post-Soviet era and the possible new roles and directions for the world's third-ranking military.

Defense of Japan 1945

Defense of Japan 1945
Author: Steven J. Zaloga
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 97
Release: 2011-12-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 1780962193

In 1945, with her fleet destroyed and her armies beaten, the only thing that stood between Japan and an Allied invasion was the numerous coastal defence positions that surrounded the islands. This is the first book to take a detailed look at the Japanese home island fortifications that were constructed during 1941–45. Utilizing diagrams, specially commissioned artwork, and sources previously unavailable in English, Steven Zaloga examines these defences in the context of a possible Allied invasion, constructing various arguments for one of the greatest 'what if' scenarios of World War II, and helping to explain why the Americans decided to go ahead with a nuclear option.