Imperial Japanese soldiers were notorious for blindly following orders, and their enemies in the Pacific War derided them as "cattle to the slaughter." But, in fact, the Japanese Army had a long history as one of the most disobedient armies in the world. Officers repeatedly staged coups d'etats, violent insurrections, and political assassinations; their associates defied orders given by both the government and the general staff, launched independent military operations against other countries, and in two notorious cases conspired to assassinate foreign leaders despite direct orders to the contrary.In Curse on This Country, Danny Orbach explains the culture of rebellion in the Japanese armed forces. It was a culture created by a series of seemingly innocent decisions, each reasonable in its own right, which led to a gradual weakening of Japanese government control over its army and navy. The consequences were dire, as the armed forces dragged the government into more and more of China across the 1930s-a culture of rebellion that made the Pacific War possible. Orbach argues that brazen defiance, rather than blind obedience, was the motive force of modern Japanese history.Curse on This Country follows a series of dramatic events: assassinations in the dark corners of Tokyo, the famous rebellion of Saigo Takamori, the "accidental" invasion of Taiwan, the Japanese ambassador's plot to murder the queen of Korea, and the military-political crisis in which the Japanese prime minister "changed colors." Finally, through the sinister plots of the clandestine Cherry Blossom Society, we follow the deterioration of Japan into chaos, fascism, and world war.

About the Author

Danny Orbach is Senior Lecturer in the Departments of Asian Studies and General History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is the author of The Plots against Hitler.

Reviews

[Orbach] ties together the many violent events from the 1870s through the 1930s that were often studied in isolation to argue that both a culture of insubordination in the army that originated among the pro-emperor zealots of the 1860s and ideological hopes for the country facilitated unsanctioned violence connected to the army. Summing Up: Recommended. All levels/libraries.

* CHOICE *

Draws on multi-lingual primary sources with an innovative re-interpretation through a 21st-century military and political lens that connects historical incidents, especially on the late Tokugawa shishi and their outsized influence on 20th-century Japan.

* The Japan Times *

Orbach's book pulls off the difficult trick of talking to two audiences at once. Those only casually familiar with Japanese history will appreciate how thoroughly Orbach demolishes the hoary orientalist trope that Japanese soldiers were insect-like drones, mindlessly obedient to state propaganda. Specialists will be more interested in Orbach's answer to what is still for many the great question of modern Japanese history: why did the country embark on a disastrous war of aggression in the mid-twentieth century?.... Orbach's book is not just an important contribution to the historiography of Japan; it adds a key piece to the puzzle of understanding state-military relations across the global nineteenth century.

* Pacific Affairs *

Orbach's is a bold book.... I appreciated Orbach's original interpretation, his extensive research, and the fervor of his prose. Curse on this Country makes an important contribution to both military history and the history of Japan.

* The Journal of Asian Studies *

Well-researched and enlightening.

* Asian Review of Books *

Masterful.... Well-crafted and lucidly explained, Curse on This Country takes us on a journey from the bakumatsu era through a series of acts of insubordination, unauthorized military actions abroad, civil-military clashes, and rebellion.... Most of these incidents are well known to a historian of modern Japan, but Orbach shines new light on each incident and the circumstances surrounding them. However, the book's greatest contribution is that-to the best of this reviewer's knowledge-for the first time it ties all these together in one historical narrative, and as aspects of an evolving, but nevertheless single, phenomenon of Japan's modern army: its 'culture of subordination.'... Curse on This Country is a rich and sophisticated history that deserves to be read widely by students of modern Japanese history and military history.

* Japan Review *

Danny Orbach has written a splendid book in which he complicates our understanding of the road to war by demonstrating how a tradition of insubordinate military actions from below led modern Japan from the Meiji Restoration in the 1860s to World War II in the late 1930s.... His book is a gripping read.

* Monumenta Nipponica *

An interesting and well-written book which will be useful to both specialists and students.

* The Journal of Japanese Studies *

Despite the oft-displayed blind obedience and discipline of its soldiers in combat, the Imperial Japanese Army was, in fact, " one of the most disobedient armed forces in modern history." This statement provides the intriguing starting point for Danny Orbach's highly readable book Curse on This Country.

* The Journal of Military History *



Book Information
ISBN 9781501705281
Author Danny Orbach
Format Hardback
Page Count 384
Imprint Cornell University Press
Publisher Cornell University Press
Weight(grams) 907g
Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 152mm * 32mm