Written by someone who spent twenty-three years as a journalist in Japan, this book describes the political and military aspirations of Japan at a tumultuous period of twentieth century history. The book examines the workings of the Japanese government and discusses the role of the military in shaping political ideals: ideals which were a compound of Marxism and National Socialism, transformed for Japanese uses and combined with fanatical racial, national and semi-religious obsessions.

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This is a new release of the original 1942 edition.

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Text extracted from opening pages of book: GOVERNMENT BY ASSASSINATION B V HUGH BYAS ALFRED A KNOW NKW YORK PREFACE . he rise of Japan has been one of the major events of our age. Without Japan the present war would wear a very differ ent aspect. With Japan's entry into it the Pacific has become the theatre of sea-air warfare on a scale of speed and space never before known. The lines of communication are global; the battlefields are countries and oceans. Even before Japan doubled the task of the United Nations her achievement had been remarkable. In 1868 the news papers of the West reported the overthrow of the Tycoon of Japan and the restoration of a hitherto unsuspected Em peror. Fifty-one years later, in 1919, they were announcing that Japan was one of the six powers included in the original Council of the League of Nations. In half a century, no more, an Asiatic feudal state, self-secluded and hardly known, had modernized itself with astonishing adaptiveness and taken its seat among the somewhat surprised great powers. On their introduction to the world, the Japanese subdued their martial proclivities and appeared in the role of student. Never has any government sent a nation to school, and ac companied it there, with greater efficiency. Foreign experts were imported by the hundred. They were in general well chosen with the assistance of the friendly governments of the United States and European countries. They were the tech nicians who created new Japan. Englishmen organized the navy. Americans created a modern educational system. A Frenchman codified Japanese law. Germans directed the whole of the higher medical education. An Englishman re formed the mint and gave Japan a uniformcurrency. Posts, telegraphs, the army, the land survey, sanitary reform, prison reform, cotton and paper mills, improved mining methods, Preface harbor works, modern shipping and navigation all were the creation of foreign advisers. The Japanese retained ex ecutive power in the hands of nominal Japanese chiefs, but they never disdained advice. For half a century they were the most successful learners in Asia. Emerging from their seclusion late in the humane nine teenth century, the Japanese escaped the rough edge of Eu rope's early expansion, but they were shrewd enough to rep resent their militarism as a response to Europe's imperialism. How often have I listened while American goodwill mis sions were told that Japan had built up a great army and fleet because only thus could she defend her independence against European rapacity! No European nation coveted a yard of Japanese territory; none asked anything of Japan ex cept facilities for trade. Foreign trade, foreign machinery, foreign industry were the making of modern Japan. In fifty years it had doubled its population and far more than doubled its wealth and power. The appearance of a new nation is certainly an event of importance. And what has the new nation made of itself? Twenty years after acquiring a seat on the League Council, Japan conceived herself strong enough to make war on the United States and the British Empire. The outcome of that challenge will change Japan's future in ways we cannot now foresee. It may be that the ironic time spirit is repeating on a fantastic scale the allegory of the frog who wanted to become a bull. It may be that the energy and teachableness that car ried Japan so far in so short a time willovercome the errors of her military rulers and enable her to attain by happier ways the high position to which her ambitious people aspire. The political history of ancient Japan is a record of clan strife as dreary as the battles of the kites and the crows. The history of modern Japan is still to be written. The histories that have hitherto appeared are records of adolescence. They were written while Japan faced the West with the respectful amiability of the eager student. Japan had not then displayed vi Preface her ambition to found by force a greater empire than h

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