ERI HOTTA

Cuando Japón inició las hostilidades contra Estados Unidos en 1941, la mayor parte de sus líderes comprendieron que estaban entrando en una guerra que seguramente perderían. Basándose en documentos practicamente desconocidos hasta ahora, Eri Hotta plantea una pregunta esencial: ¿por que esos hombres pusieron innecesariamente en peligro a su pais y a sus ciudadanos? A traves de los personajes que llevaron al pais a la conflagracion, la autora nos muestra un Japon oculto que deseaba evitar la guerra, pero estaba plagado de tensiones con Occidente, cegado por un militarismo temerario que descansaba en nociones tradicionales de orgullo y honor, y tentado por el insensato sueño de una gran victoria, por improbable que fuera. Retrata una cupula de poder llena de ambicion territorial y arrogancia: muchos de los que trataron de evitar la guerra con Estados Unidos siguieron apoyando el expansionismo asiatico, esperando continuar, la ocupacion de China que comenzo en 1931, y sin querer aceptar la creciente repulsa de Washington respecto a sus incursiones continentales. A pesar de que los diplomaticos japoneses continuaron negociando con el Gobierno de Roosevelt, Matsuoka Yosuke -el egolatra ministro de Asuntos Exteriores que cortejo tanto a Stalin como a Hitler- y sus seguidores consolidaron el lugar de Japon en la alianz...

A groundbreaking history that considers the attack on Pearl Harbor from the Japanese perspective and is certain to revolutionize how we think of the war in the Pacific. When Japan launched hostilities against the United States in 1941, argues Eri Hotta, its leaders, in large part, understood they were entering a war they were almost certain to lose. Drawing on material little known to Western readers, and barely explored in depth in Japan itself, Hotta poses an essential question: Why did these menmilitary men, civilian politicians, diplomats, the emperorput their country and its citizens so unnecessarily in harms way? Introducing us to the doubters, schemers, and would-be patriots who led their nation into this conflagration, Hotta brilliantly shows us a Japan rarely glimpsedeager to avoid war but fraught with tensions with the West, blinded by reckless militarism couched in traditional notions of pride and honor, tempted by the gamblers dream of scoring the biggest win against impossible odds and nearly escaping disaster before it finally proved inevitable.In an intimate account of the increasingly heated debates and doomed diplomatic overtures preceding Pearl Harbor, Hotta reveals just how divided Japans leaders were, right up to (and, in fact, beyond) their eleventh-hour decision to attack. We see a ruling cadre rich in regional ambition and hubris: many of the same leaders seeking to avoid war with the United States continued to adamantly advocate Asian expansionism, hoping to advance, or at least maintain, the occupation of China that began in 1931, unable to end the second Sino-Japanese War and unwilling to acknowledge Washingtons hardening disapproval of their continental incursions. Even as Japanese diplomats continued to negotiate with the Roosevelt administration, Matsuoka Yosuke, the egomaniacal foreign minister who relished paying court to both Stalin and Hitler, and his facile supporters cemented Japans place in the fascist alliance with Germany and Italyunaware (or unconcerned) that in so doing they destroyed the nations bona fides with the West. We see a dysfunctional political system in which military leaders reported to both the civilian government and the emperor, creating a structure that facilitated intrigues and stoked a jingoistic rivalry between Japans army and navy. Roles are recast and blame reexamined as Hotta analyzes the actions and motivations of the hawks and skeptics among Japans elite. Emperor Hirohito and General Hideki Tojo are newly appraised as we discover how the two men fumbled for a way to avoid war before finally acceding to it. Hotta peels back seventy years of historical mythologizingboth Japanese and Westernto expose all-too-human Japanese leaders torn by doubt in the months preceding the attack, more concerned with saving face than saving lives, finally drawn into war as much by incompetence and lack of political will as by bellicosity. An essential book for any student of the Second World War, this compelling reassessment will forever change the way we remember those days of infamy.