Paine S.C.M. The Japanese Empire: Grand Strategy from the Meiji Restoration to the Pacific

Cambridge University Press, 2017. — 223 p. — ISBN: 9781107676169.The Japanese experience of war from the late-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century presents a stunning example of the meteoric rise and shattering fall of a great power. As Japan modernized and became the one non-European great power, its leaders concluded that an empire on the Asian mainland required the containment of Russia. Japan won the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-5) and the Russo-Japanese War (1904-5) but became overextended in the Second Sino-Japanese War (1931-45), which escalated, with profound consequences, into World War II. A combination of incomplete institution building, an increasingly lethal international environment, a skewed balance between civil and military authority, and a misunderstanding of geopolitics explains these divergent outcomes.The Meiji Generation.
The First Sino- Japanese War (1894– 1895).
The Russo- Japanese War (1904– 1905).
The Transition from a Maritime to a Continental Security Paradigm.
The Second Sino- Japanese War (1931– 1941).
The General Asian War (1941– 1945).
Japan betwixt Maritime and Continental World Orders.