Periodically, the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force chooses to open up to the public via a given writer and for this generation Alessio Patalano is the chosen instrument. The basic thrust of this monograph is that Patalano examines how the post-1945 Japanese maritime leadership created a usable past out of the materials at hand, while at the same time critically examining that heritage, so as to create what is arguably Japan's senior military service. Greatly helping matters was that the Imperial Japanese Navy was seen as having conducted itself in a much more proper fashion, as compared to the army, and that there were noted journalists who helped to weave that usable past. The key difference was creating a service taught to serve the general public, and not just the imperial house, and with a keen appreciation that, in general, the Japanese military's grasp of high strategy prior to 1945 was, at best, rudimentary. ( )