Kaigun: Strategy, Tactics, and Technology in the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1887-1941

Kaigun: Strategy, Tactics, and Technology in the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1887-1941 by Peattie, Mark R.. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780870211928.

One of the great spectacles of modern naval history is the Imperial Japanese Navys instrumental role in Japans rise from an isolationist feudal kingdom to a potent military empire stridently confronting, in 1941, the worlds most powerful nation. Years of painstaking research and analysis of previously untapped Japanese-language resources have produced this remarkable history of the navys dizzying development, tactical triumphs, and humiliating defeat. Unrivaled in its breadth of coverage and attention to detail, this important new study explores the foreign and indigenous influences on the navys thinking about naval warfare and how to plan for it. Focusing primarily on the much-neglected period between the world wars, David C. Evans and Mark R. Peattie, two widely esteemed historians, persuasively explain how the Japanese failed to prepare properly for the war in the Pacific despite an arguable advantage in capability.