Kaigun
Subtitle: strategy, tactics, and technology in the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1887-1941
By: David C. Evans and Mark R. Peattie.
Contributors: Peattie, Mark R., 1930-
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
Published: 1997
Place of publication: Annapolis, Md
Language: eng
Number of pages: 661
Subjects: Japan. Kaigun -- History
Description: One of the great spectacles of modern naval history is the Imperial Japanese Navy's instrumental role in Japan's rise from an isolationist feudal kingdom to a potent military empire stridently confronting, in 1941, the world's most powerful nation. Years of painstaking research and analysis of previously untapped Japanese-language resources have produced this remarkable history of the navy's 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 navy's 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.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [611]-634) and index.