Sadao Asada (1936–2019)

The main topic of this book is strategic culture, as Asada examines how Alfred Thayer Mahan’s vision of the complementary nature of trade and strategic naval power influenced the Imperial Japanese Navy. The real meat of the book is period of managed naval armaments between the world wars, and the fissures this caused in the IJN. Asada’s biggest contribution is that he has ferreted out a fair amount of material on the personalities in conflict with each other, and turns the feuding show more members of the Japanese officer corps into personalities, as opposed to ciphers. show less