“[Shigenori] Togo had just arrived at the Palace grounds. Stars shone brilliantly. It was going to be a fine day. The Foreign Minister was immediately ushered into the Emperor’s presence. It was almost at the exact moment that [Ambassador Kichisaburo] Nomura…[was] supposed to see [Secretary of State Cordell] Hull. Togo read [President] Roosevelt’s message and the proposed draft of the Emperor’s reply. The Emperor approved the reply, and his countenance, Togo thought, reflected a ‘noble feeling of brotherhood with all peoples…’ The spacious plaza outside the Sakashita Gate was deserted, and as Togo drove away, the sole noise in the city was the crunching of gravel under the car tires. His mind was far away: in a few minute one of the most momentous days in the history of the world would begin…”-John Toland, The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945 By my last count, there were one gazillion books on World War II, with more coming out every week. And it will never stop. World War II will continue to be refought between the covers – and on Kindles – long after human memory of the event is gone. It will be told for as long as there are people to tell stories. The question, then, is which of those books to read? You can spend your entire life reading World War II books and not even scratch the surface. Besides, there are other things to do in life. Like drinking or reading about the American Civil War or doing both at the same time. Thankfully, there are a few landmark books, the ones that everyone can name, the ones that are certified as classic, that stand out from the pack, like a guy wearing an Armani suit at a clown college (or a clown at an Armani store, if you prefer). In the European Theater of Operations, one of those classics is William Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Shirer was a journalist who spent time in prewar Nazi Germany, and even followed the Nazis into France. Concerned that the Gestapo was going to arrest him, Shirer fled Germany in 1940 and later wrote his seminal account, a history of the Second World War as seen through the eyes of Hitler and his henchmen. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich has its shortcomings (among them an archaic and heavily belabored homophobia), but there is no denying its place in the firmament. All books coming after had to deal with its shadow. John Toland’s The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire is a Pacific Theater counterpoint to Shirer’s masterwork. It tells the tale of the other side of World War II, and does so (mainly) from the point of view of the Japanese. Upon publication, it won the Pulitzer Prize, and can be found in the endnotes and bibliography of just about every subsequent book written about the Pacific War. More than anything, though, it is a book that finds that perfect balance between macro and micro, between general and private (and civilian). It always strives to hold the big picture clear, but never fails to remind you of the individuals who collectively made that big picture. As such, this is a rare history, one that is scholarly and massively researched, yet also shot-through with empathy, compassion, and humanism. It is one of the best books I’ve read on World War II. ***Toland begins in 1936, with young Japanese radicals bent on assassinating several of the Emperor’s advisers. These men were practicing gekokujo, or insubordination, a semi-legitimate form of rebellion. In this opening chapter, Toland briskly (sometimes too briskly) outlines the background that fomented gekokujo: the fall of monarchies after World War I; the competition between democracy, socialism, and Communism that came in its wake; the rapid westernization of Japan (and the resulting scandals and corruption); Japan’s population explosion; and the inevitable blowback by conservatives and nationalists. During Japan’s rise as a Pacific power, it invaded Manchuria – which it saw as a buffer against the Soviet Union (with whom they’d warred at the beginning of the century) and as a source of raw materials – and, in 1932, established the puppet state of Manchukuo. The creation of Manchukuo obviously heightened tensions between China and Japan. Those tensions came to a head in 1937 at the Marco Polo Bridge, in an “incident” that better marks the actual beginning of World War II (as opposed to the September 1, 1939 invasion of Poland by Hitler). The clash at the Marco Polo Bridge led to full scale war, including the infamous Nanking Massacre. ***The only real criticism I have with The Rising Sun is in Toland’s handling of the Second Sino-Japanese War. Part of the reason I bought this book was to learn more about this forgotten theater. Unfortunately, however, Toland deals with China in a cursory fashion. He does not take the time to develop the strategy of the war, or explain in great detail how it unfolded. The fall of Nanking merits barely a page. This stands in stark contrast to the space devoted to the American-Japanese conflict beginning in 1942. For instance, Toland devotes an entire (and yes, brilliant) chapter to the battle of Guadalcanal. In other words, despite the broad claims of its cover, The Rising Sun is mainly focused on the war between American and Japan. This means less attention (though it’s not entirely ignored) paid to China’s dual struggle (against Japan, and themselves), Britain’s collapse in Singapore, the Burma Campaign, and the massive battles of Kohima and Imphal in India.***Even though Toland decides to place his heaviest emphasis on familiar territory, it nevertheless manages to be revelatory. After the earlier chapters, which felt compressed, The Rising Sun hits its stride in the run-up to Pearl Harbor. You get to see the rationale behind Japan’s decisions, its attempts to negotiate with America (especially through Prince Konoye), and the different factions within the Japanese ministry. When we think of Japan in World War II, we think of Nanking and Pearl Harbor, of the Bataan Death March and kamikazes. Prime Minister Tojo has become a caricature of evil, divorced from any of the human traits that even Hitler has posthumously been granted. These conceptions do little to broaden our understanding of what actually happened. By taking us into the backrooms of Japanese policymaking, we get to see the world – and its perils – as they did. They faced many difficulties as a small, overcrowded island-nation, a net importer of just about everything. When President Roosevelt decided to turn of the oil spigot, it was as grave a threat to Japan as Khrushchev’s October missiles were to the United States in 1962.To be sure, Japan’s colonial impulses were brutal – encompassing some of the most infamous atrocities in history – but they were emulating a brutal western tradition, even if they tended to scale up the horrors. It is also interesting, as Toland notes, how Japan’s pan-Asian ambitions did not fall entirely on deaf ears. There were many people for whom an Asian power in the Pacific was preferable to the white powers that had dominated for a hundred years or more, using their human capital and removing their resources for exploitation elsewhere. After the war, of course, that pan-Asian spark was enough to incite anti-colonial movements all over Asia, including Indochina and India. ***The risk of writing from the perspective of Japan is in unintentionally soft-peddling their very real crimes, in much the same way that Euro or American-centric books might hand-wave area bombing. For the most part, I think Toland gets the balance right, providing Japanese rationalizations or explanations, but seldom forgetting the consequences of their actions. A good example of this is the Bataan Death March. Toland does not skimp on the horrors suffered by MacArthur’s captured troops, but does place it in a milieu divorced from contemporary propaganda. He shows how the overarching cause of the Death March was Japan’s poor planning and its utter surprise at America’s collapse in the Philippines. They were simply not prepared for the influx of tens of thousands of starving, disease-ridden soldiers. At the same time, there were certainly Japanese soldiers who had practiced cruelty for its own sake, a product of training methods that included being beaten by superiors, and being imbued with the belief that capture was dishonor, and that the way of the warrior was death. ***Toland was an author especially suited – as far as a white American could be – to tell this story, as he was married to a Japanese woman named Toshiko, who assisted as his interpreter. By giving an account of the Pacific War from Japanese eyes, he gave them a humanity denied by wartime hyperbole of unthinking, unfeeling, murderous fanatics. Toland quotes their letters and diaries, stands with them in their pillboxes, and is with them on the street the day a bomb exploded with “the light of a thousand suns.” ***My greatest surprise in reading The Rising Sun was its emotional impact. It begins as a straightforward, chronological history, marked by tremendous research, but structurally run-of-the mill. As the book progresses, though, you recognize the elegance of Toland’s construction, how he weaves the stories of heretofore unknown participants into the grander narrative. Part of the reason The Rising Sun is so effective, so powerful, is the way Toland threads the mini-arcs of participants into the larger story. During the Battle of Saipan, for instance, Toland follows the travails of a young Japanese nurse: In Garapan a young volunteer nurse by the name of Shizuko Miura – a tomboy with a round merry face – flinched as the first shells landed. She peered out the window of the first-air station into the dim light. The Americans were bombarding the town again. As the explosions moved closer she helped transfer those wounded in the earlier shelling to a dugout. With daylight came enemy planes and an even more violent barrage from the ships. It is June 14, Shizuko thought calmly. I have lived for eighteen years and my time to die has come. A shell shook the dugout like an earthquake and knocked her to the ground. She staggered outside. The first-aid station was obliterated. She saw a piece of red metal – it was shrapnel – and, curious, touched it with her finger. It burned her. Planes droned overhead but no one was firing at them. Garapan was aflame. The heat was so intense that she could hardly breathe. She started to make her way through the rubbled streets strewn with bodies…Toland was able to tell stories like this because of his diligent primary research. In the source section, you will find ten pages filled with names, noting all the people with whom he’d conducted interviews. The names include prime ministers, admirals, and also Shizuko Miura. For this reason alone, The Rising Sun is a touchstone of World War II writing. The firsthand information gathered from these participants, many of whom might have been forgotten, has proven invaluable to historians and writers who have followed in Toland’s footprints. But this is not the only reason to read The Rising Sun, or even the best. Rather, it is a testament to humanity in the midst of the most inhuman period of human existence. In Toland’s own words, it is a story that is “muddled, ennobling, disgraceful, frustrating, full of paradox.”