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The Reluctant Admiral: Yamamoto and the Imperial Navy
This is a portrait both of an individual and of an organization. The individual is the Japanese admiral who, as architect of the Pearl Harbor raid and commander of the Combined Fleet throughout the first part of World War II, is one of the most widely known of Japanese wartime leaders. The organization is the Japanese Imperial Navy, whose "gentlemanly" traditions and outlook contrasted strongly with those of the Japanese army and whose failure to check the latter in its headstrong course makes one of the sadder episodes of recent history.
Here, for the first time, Yamamoto emerges as the complex, sympathetic, and in many ways contradictory character that he was. A realist who foresaw the future importance of the airplane for the navy long before his contemporaries and who believed that Japan would inevitably be defeated in any war with America and Britain, he was also an inveterate gambler with an odd streak of superstition. A tough leader, he had at the same time a vein of sentimentality that would allow him to burst into tears at the funeral of a young subordinate. In public the very epitome of the dignified national hero, in private he often showed a schoolboyish playfulness that was sometimes endearing and occasionally embarrassing. He was always ready to express his views with a frankness uncommon in his day, yet he revealed in the end the same readiness as most of his fellow countrymen to accept passively "the call of duty."
The author, refusing the temptation to indulge in speculation or "reconstruction," has gone straight to the original sources--accounts written by those who worked with Yamamoto; scores of interviews with men and women who knew him personally; above all, letters written by Yamamoto himself. The latter range from his more circumspect, semi-official communications to intimate letters addressed to his mistress or long-standing friends of both sexes, in which he bares his private doubts and pessimism. It is these personal documents and reminiscences that make the character so human and, ultimately, give such a moving quality to the account of his dramatic wartime death in the South Pacific.
An intimate portrait of the man who planned the attack on Pearl Harbor and died a dramatic death in the South Pacific.
Here, for the first time, Yamamoto emerges as the complex, sympathetic, and in many ways contradictory character that he was. A realist who foresaw the future importance of the airplane for the navy long before his contemporaries and who believed that Japan would inevitably be defeated in any war with America and Britain, he was also an inveterate gambler with an odd streak of superstition. A tough leader, he had at the same time a vein of sentimentality that would allow him to burst into tears at the funeral of a young subordinate. In public the very epitome of the dignified national hero, in private he often showed a schoolboyish playfulness that was sometimes endearing and occasionally embarrassing. He was always ready to express his views with a frankness uncommon in his day, yet he revealed in the end the same readiness as most of his fellow countrymen to accept passively "the call of duty."
The author, refusing the temptation to indulge in speculation or "reconstruction," has gone straight to the original sources--accounts written by those who worked with Yamamoto; scores of interviews with men and women who knew him personally; above all, letters written by Yamamoto himself. The latter range from his more circumspect, semi-official communications to intimate letters addressed to his mistress or long-standing friends of both sexes, in which he bares his private doubts and pessimism. It is these personal documents and reminiscences that make the character so human and, ultimately, give such a moving quality to the account of his dramatic wartime death in the South Pacific.
An intimate portrait of the man who planned the attack on Pearl Harbor and died a dramatic death in the South Pacific.
397 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1969
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295 people want to read
About the author
Hiroyuki Agawa
29 books5 followersHiroyuki Agawa (阿川 弘之 Agawa Hiroyuki?) is a Japanese author born on December 24, 1920, in Hiroshima, Japan. He is known for his fiction centered on World War II, as well as his biographies and essays.
As a high school student Agawa was influenced by the Japanese author Naoya Shiga. He entered the Tokyo Imperial University to study Japanese literature. Upon graduation in 1942, Agawa was conscripted to serve in the Imperial Japanese Navy, where he worked as an intelligence officer breaking Chinese military codes until the end of the war. He returned to Hiroshima, where his parents had experienced the atomic bomb, in March 1946.
After World War II Agawa wrote his first short story Nennen Saisai (Years upon Years, 1946), which was a classic I Novel, or autobiographical novel, recounting the reunion with his parents. It follows the style of Naoya Shiga, who is said to have praised the work. August 6 as Agawa notes in a postscript, combines the stories of friends and acquaintances who experienced the bombing into the testimony of one family. Occupation censorship at the time was strict, but the story passed because, the author later observed, "it made no reference to the problems of after-effect and continued no overt criticism of the U.S." Agawa came to popular and critical attention with his Citadel in Spring (春の城, 1952), which was awarded the Yomiuri Prize. (He later revisited the same theme of his experiences as a student soldier in Kurai hato (Dark waves, 1974)). Ma no isan (Devil's Heritage, 1953), a documentary novel, is an account of the bombing of Hirosima through the eyes of a young Tokyo reporter, handling, among other topics, the death of his Hiroshima nephew and survivors' reactions to the Atomic bomb Casualty Commission, the U.S. agency that conducted research on atomic victims.
Agawa's four major biographical novels are Yamamoto Isoroku (山本五十六, 1965), Yonai Mitsumasa (米内光政, 1978), Inoue Seibi (井上成美, 1986), and Shiga Naoya (志賀直哉, 1994). His other major works include Kumo no bohyo (Grave markers in the clouds, 1955), and Gunkan Nagato no shogai (The life of the warship Nagato, 1975).
Agawa was awarded the Order of Culture (Bunka Kunsho) in 1999.
(from Wikipedia)
As a high school student Agawa was influenced by the Japanese author Naoya Shiga. He entered the Tokyo Imperial University to study Japanese literature. Upon graduation in 1942, Agawa was conscripted to serve in the Imperial Japanese Navy, where he worked as an intelligence officer breaking Chinese military codes until the end of the war. He returned to Hiroshima, where his parents had experienced the atomic bomb, in March 1946.
After World War II Agawa wrote his first short story Nennen Saisai (Years upon Years, 1946), which was a classic I Novel, or autobiographical novel, recounting the reunion with his parents. It follows the style of Naoya Shiga, who is said to have praised the work. August 6 as Agawa notes in a postscript, combines the stories of friends and acquaintances who experienced the bombing into the testimony of one family. Occupation censorship at the time was strict, but the story passed because, the author later observed, "it made no reference to the problems of after-effect and continued no overt criticism of the U.S." Agawa came to popular and critical attention with his Citadel in Spring (春の城, 1952), which was awarded the Yomiuri Prize. (He later revisited the same theme of his experiences as a student soldier in Kurai hato (Dark waves, 1974)). Ma no isan (Devil's Heritage, 1953), a documentary novel, is an account of the bombing of Hirosima through the eyes of a young Tokyo reporter, handling, among other topics, the death of his Hiroshima nephew and survivors' reactions to the Atomic bomb Casualty Commission, the U.S. agency that conducted research on atomic victims.
Agawa's four major biographical novels are Yamamoto Isoroku (山本五十六, 1965), Yonai Mitsumasa (米内光政, 1978), Inoue Seibi (井上成美, 1986), and Shiga Naoya (志賀直哉, 1994). His other major works include Kumo no bohyo (Grave markers in the clouds, 1955), and Gunkan Nagato no shogai (The life of the warship Nagato, 1975).
Agawa was awarded the Order of Culture (Bunka Kunsho) in 1999.
(from Wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
July 23, 2014
This provides a refreshing perspective on Admiral Yamamoto, and is well translated. It portrays him as a very "human" man, with a lot of intelligence and foresight. The Yamamoto portrayed by this book is a man to be admired, who found himself faced with an impossible problem.
There are a few points in the book where the book departs from being a biography and turns into an expository essay meant to argue a point that must have been a contentious issue at the time. For example, the section on whether or not the United States knew about pearl harbour before the attack. As someone two generations away from the second world war who is neither American nor Japanese, that section made me feel like I was reading someone summarize an argument they had on a random internet forum. You can tell that sensitive topics such as these invoked a considerable amount of emotion.
The part of the book I liked the least (and the reason I gave it three stars instead of four) is that the author came across in numerous places to be a very superstitious person, who believes in omens and other such things.
There are a few points in the book where the book departs from being a biography and turns into an expository essay meant to argue a point that must have been a contentious issue at the time. For example, the section on whether or not the United States knew about pearl harbour before the attack. As someone two generations away from the second world war who is neither American nor Japanese, that section made me feel like I was reading someone summarize an argument they had on a random internet forum. You can tell that sensitive topics such as these invoked a considerable amount of emotion.
The part of the book I liked the least (and the reason I gave it three stars instead of four) is that the author came across in numerous places to be a very superstitious person, who believes in omens and other such things.
December 26, 2020
A most unusual biography, that jumps around in the timeline. It is not an examination of Yamamoto as a military commander, but ultimately as a man. What comes across is a deep melancholy that only grew after Pearl Harbor and was debilitating after Midway. His death comes across almost as a mercy kill.
May 22, 2019
I was originally perplexed but ultimately fascinated by Mr. Agawa's account of Adm. Yamamoto's life. I was perplexed because the book does not cover Adm. Yamamoto's life before the 1930's. The book begins with his appointment as Commander-in-Chief of the Imperial Japanese Navy ("IJN"), then flips back to the early 1930's, when he was a delegate to the London Naval Conferences, when England, the United States and Japan sought to reach agreement on the size of their navies to prevent an arms race. The story continues through the rest of Yamamoto's life through his death in 1943 but never tells us much about the time before 1930, which I found odd. Nevertheless, this is a fascinating read for several reasons. First of all, the author is Japanese (I read the book in translation) and he undoubtedly approaches and treats his subject in a way that is different from what a Western writer would do. The author seemed to have an easy understanding of the geisha culture, which Yamamoto clearly enjoyed. The author also interviewed or talked with people who knew and interacted with Yamamoto or were otherwise important to his story. I suspect these individuals were more comfortable talking about Adm. Yamamoto with a fellow countryman than they would have been in talking with someone who was not Japanese, although that is conjecture on my part.
A most interesting period in the book -- and one that is probably not that well known -- is when Adm. Yamamoto was Vice-Minister of the Navy in the late 1930's. In this position, he strongly opposed the view of the Japanese Army that Japan should draw closer to Germany in foreign affairs since he knew this would ultimately pit Japan against England and the United States. In fact, he was so outspoken and persistent in his views that many of his friends and colleagues feared he would be assassinated. It is believed that one reason Yamamoto was named Commander-in-Chief of the IJN was to get him out of Tokyo and harm's way.
Once it became clear to Yamamoto that the Army and its supporters in the government were intent on going to war against England and the U.S., Yamamoto devised the plan to attack the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor. Yamamoto has been reviled for this but the book makes clear that he was opposed to war (hence the title of "The Reluctant Admiral") and came up with the plan as the only way he could see to win a war with the U.S. Having lived in the U.S. twice, and having seen the factories in and around Detroit and the sprawling oil fields in Texas, Yamamoto realized that Japan could not possibly win a protracted war and had to land a knockout blow early on to have any hope of winning the war or at least obtaining a favorable negotiated peace.
It seems that, oddly, once war came, the IJN did not have a clear plan of what it would do after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The planning for what became the attack on Midway was not completed until April of 1942 and little time was set aside for the Japanese carrier force, the Kidō Butai, to rest and regroup after it had ranged far and wide in the Indian Ocean, where it sank some British warships at Sri Lanka.
Yamamoto's thinking and mindset after Midway became increasingly pessimistic, at least as revealed in letters to close friends, since he clearly knew that, the longer the war lasted, the weaker were Japan's chances of winning or achieving an acceptable negotiated peace.
To bolster morale in April of 1943, Yamamoto went to Rabaul, the main Japanese base for the campaigns on Guadalcanal and in the Solomon Islands, to visit units and talk with soldiers and sailors. The idea of getting yet closer to the front appears to have originated with Yamamoto himself and, when other naval officers learned he planned to fly closer to the combat zone, they urged him not to. He went ahead, of course, and his plane was intercepted and shot down over Bougainville. The portions of the book dealing with what became Yamamoto's last flight and the valiant efforts of soldiers and sailors to find the downed plane are poignant and sad. I would say they are also "well written" but writing throughout the book was good.
In the pages of this fine biography, Isoroku Yamamoto comes across as an interesting and extremely intelligent man who had few peers. He loved gambling and games and once said that, if he really wanted to help his country, he should move to Monaco and win a lot of money for Japan at games of chance. Yamamoto was also playful. One of my favorite stories in the book is about one night when he went out with a woman and while walking away from a restaurant, walked bowlegged for several hundred feet in an effort to imitate Charlie Chaplin. Some sailors saw him and could not believe they were looking (and laughing) at the great Isoroku Yamamoto, "the C-in-C," as they called him.
I was genuinely sad when Yamamoto met his demise and this fine book came to an end. He comes across as a likable man who viewed the IJN as a defensive force, not as a weapon to wage a war of aggression against a major industrial power he knew Japan was unlikely to defeat. Perhaps if there had been more men like Yamamoto in high places in the Japanese government in the late 1930's, the horror of World War II in the Pacific could have been avoided.
A most interesting period in the book -- and one that is probably not that well known -- is when Adm. Yamamoto was Vice-Minister of the Navy in the late 1930's. In this position, he strongly opposed the view of the Japanese Army that Japan should draw closer to Germany in foreign affairs since he knew this would ultimately pit Japan against England and the United States. In fact, he was so outspoken and persistent in his views that many of his friends and colleagues feared he would be assassinated. It is believed that one reason Yamamoto was named Commander-in-Chief of the IJN was to get him out of Tokyo and harm's way.
Once it became clear to Yamamoto that the Army and its supporters in the government were intent on going to war against England and the U.S., Yamamoto devised the plan to attack the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor. Yamamoto has been reviled for this but the book makes clear that he was opposed to war (hence the title of "The Reluctant Admiral") and came up with the plan as the only way he could see to win a war with the U.S. Having lived in the U.S. twice, and having seen the factories in and around Detroit and the sprawling oil fields in Texas, Yamamoto realized that Japan could not possibly win a protracted war and had to land a knockout blow early on to have any hope of winning the war or at least obtaining a favorable negotiated peace.
It seems that, oddly, once war came, the IJN did not have a clear plan of what it would do after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The planning for what became the attack on Midway was not completed until April of 1942 and little time was set aside for the Japanese carrier force, the Kidō Butai, to rest and regroup after it had ranged far and wide in the Indian Ocean, where it sank some British warships at Sri Lanka.
Yamamoto's thinking and mindset after Midway became increasingly pessimistic, at least as revealed in letters to close friends, since he clearly knew that, the longer the war lasted, the weaker were Japan's chances of winning or achieving an acceptable negotiated peace.
To bolster morale in April of 1943, Yamamoto went to Rabaul, the main Japanese base for the campaigns on Guadalcanal and in the Solomon Islands, to visit units and talk with soldiers and sailors. The idea of getting yet closer to the front appears to have originated with Yamamoto himself and, when other naval officers learned he planned to fly closer to the combat zone, they urged him not to. He went ahead, of course, and his plane was intercepted and shot down over Bougainville. The portions of the book dealing with what became Yamamoto's last flight and the valiant efforts of soldiers and sailors to find the downed plane are poignant and sad. I would say they are also "well written" but writing throughout the book was good.
In the pages of this fine biography, Isoroku Yamamoto comes across as an interesting and extremely intelligent man who had few peers. He loved gambling and games and once said that, if he really wanted to help his country, he should move to Monaco and win a lot of money for Japan at games of chance. Yamamoto was also playful. One of my favorite stories in the book is about one night when he went out with a woman and while walking away from a restaurant, walked bowlegged for several hundred feet in an effort to imitate Charlie Chaplin. Some sailors saw him and could not believe they were looking (and laughing) at the great Isoroku Yamamoto, "the C-in-C," as they called him.
I was genuinely sad when Yamamoto met his demise and this fine book came to an end. He comes across as a likable man who viewed the IJN as a defensive force, not as a weapon to wage a war of aggression against a major industrial power he knew Japan was unlikely to defeat. Perhaps if there had been more men like Yamamoto in high places in the Japanese government in the late 1930's, the horror of World War II in the Pacific could have been avoided.
May 24, 2015
I pretty much never read nonfiction, but after visiting the Pearl Harbor museum just outside my hometown of Honolulu, I grew interested in Admiral Yamamoto, the Japanese admiral who launched the attack on Pearl Harbor. The Reluctant Admiral is excellently translated. I really like the writer's voice -- clear, informed, and opinionated in a way that is compelling rather than overbearing. It is at its best as a character study of Isoroku Yamamoto and the various members of the Japanese Navy. Yamamoto is known for opposing the Tripartite Pact with Nazi Germany, his reluctance in going to war with America, and of course staging the "gamble" of the Pearl Harbor attacks. He is a fascinating and complex man, taciturn yet startlingly emotional, stoic yet mischevious, charismatic yet coarse, defined by both the gambler's crudeness and foresight.
There are a number of great little vignettes surrounding him. One of my favorites is when he hails a taxi cab with a gloved hand, signaling a generous 50 sen tip. But upon arriving at his destination, he pays 30 sen and reveals that his two left index fingers have been blown away during his time in the Japan-Russo War; how could he possibly hold up five fingers? There's another excellent episode in which, while serving as head of the Aeronautics department, he takes on an aide with incredible superstitious, prescient power in determining optimal pilots -- in one glance, this aide can size up whether a man is a pilot and how good of a pilot he is. The shock of the skeptical officers at his accuracy is hilarious. Yamamoto's superstition and intuition certainly form an intriguing part of his character, as though it in no way defines him -- he himself criticizes the cultural crutch of using the will of the gods as an ideological vehicle for the actions and desires of man -- he has moments of foresight that defy logic. Agawa himself is reasonable and logical in his analyses, but has his own small moments of suggestively supernatural or romantic belief. In any other work they might be frustrating, but here I found that they gave this highly incisive work even more flavor.
Though perhaps a womanizer, Yamamoto is emotionally defined by his relationships with three particular women. His most personal letters are often in correspondence with his mistress Chiyoko, and these really round him out, portraying his intimate self-doubts, whims, and desires. I enjoyed these interludes immensely.
When the spotlight began to move away from Yamamoto and focus on the catastrophe at Midway and the slow decline of Japan's wartime power, I began to lose interest, as I'm not really much of a military buff -- the nitty gritty of military movements was mostly lost on me. The navy and international politics are quite interesting, full of game theory which informs the various historical personalities who populate this biography.
Overall, what an interesting and well-written biography. I'd recommend it wholeheartedly to anyone who is interested.
There are a number of great little vignettes surrounding him. One of my favorites is when he hails a taxi cab with a gloved hand, signaling a generous 50 sen tip. But upon arriving at his destination, he pays 30 sen and reveals that his two left index fingers have been blown away during his time in the Japan-Russo War; how could he possibly hold up five fingers? There's another excellent episode in which, while serving as head of the Aeronautics department, he takes on an aide with incredible superstitious, prescient power in determining optimal pilots -- in one glance, this aide can size up whether a man is a pilot and how good of a pilot he is. The shock of the skeptical officers at his accuracy is hilarious. Yamamoto's superstition and intuition certainly form an intriguing part of his character, as though it in no way defines him -- he himself criticizes the cultural crutch of using the will of the gods as an ideological vehicle for the actions and desires of man -- he has moments of foresight that defy logic. Agawa himself is reasonable and logical in his analyses, but has his own small moments of suggestively supernatural or romantic belief. In any other work they might be frustrating, but here I found that they gave this highly incisive work even more flavor.
Though perhaps a womanizer, Yamamoto is emotionally defined by his relationships with three particular women. His most personal letters are often in correspondence with his mistress Chiyoko, and these really round him out, portraying his intimate self-doubts, whims, and desires. I enjoyed these interludes immensely.
When the spotlight began to move away from Yamamoto and focus on the catastrophe at Midway and the slow decline of Japan's wartime power, I began to lose interest, as I'm not really much of a military buff -- the nitty gritty of military movements was mostly lost on me. The navy and international politics are quite interesting, full of game theory which informs the various historical personalities who populate this biography.
Overall, what an interesting and well-written biography. I'd recommend it wholeheartedly to anyone who is interested.
May 22, 2022
An extraordinary book--not only as a thorough yet accessible and at times gripping biography of Admiral Yamamoto Isoruku (the commander in charge of Japan's navy during WWII, including the attack on Pearl Harbor)--but also as a window into Japan of that epoch, and of the dangers of a group thinking press and an organization, like the army, where the chauvinistic passions of the young are allowed to trump the greater experience and balance of the more mature adults in and around the tops of such organizations. This last point makes what could otherwise be seen solely as a well-research biography into something greater and more generally important.
The translator (John Bester) has done a remarkable job as well in retaining the clearly Japanese cultural and centric aspects of the language and perspective. For example, the translation makes clear frequent writings by Y that he "hopes to be of 'some service' to the Emperor," or that he may have "some skills" that could possibly be of use. A degree of humility and a consciousness of the greater forces outside the individual--as stated elsewhere in the book consistent with principles of zen Buddhism.
At the risk of oversimplifying the book, the young Turks of the Army working in tandem with a media always on the lookout for excitement and affirmation by its readership, worked in the 30's to "double down" a country's love of Emperor and its own remarkable achievement in converting a largely isolated and agricultural orientated society into a world power into a country that should take its "rightful" part in the world's affairs. The army being the army, that meant occupation by force. Despite efforts by Yamamoto and other more senior leaders who had experience in the UK and the US, the cancel culture of the Army working with the media led to Japan first signing a poorly thought through military alliance with Nazi Germany and Mussolini's Italy, and then -- after a horrible racist invasion and subjugation of Manchuria and other parts of China by the Japanese army led the US and its allies to cut off commodity exports to Japan including oil--to attack the US and its allies in a desperate bid to regain access to such oil and commodities.
While we know how that worked out, the beauty of this book is that it describes the ups and downs of Japan's slipping down this path. All it took was for a few good men to avoid controversy, avoid seeking to correct a strident and united press, and adopt an attitude of fatalism--the latter which expressed itself in the navy as commanders always choosing to go down with their ships rather than to save themselves to fight another day.
"There was an increasing trend in society at large to make forceful and exaggerated statements in front of others and to shun any effort to think over things calmly."
Among some memorable points:
Yamamoto tried to point out while the media was enthusiastically praising Japan's "invincible navy", of the 1588 defeat by England of Spain's then "invincible Armada."
Given the shortage of oil, Y pushed the view that destroying te enemies' ships was more important than building up one's own fleet--which without oil could not function anyway.
Yamamoto was not a Christian but was brought up in a missionary school, which Agawa speculates might have helped to keep him more open to western ideas and differences than his lock-step colleagues in government and armed forces. But Agawa also notes Y's passion for gambling--which one could guess may have been a big part of Y's ultimate drafting and execution of the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Agawa links what was happening in the 30's to his present day (the book was published in 1969 in Japan): "The atmosphere in Diet debates at the time was no pleasanter, it seems, than it is now. Even at the Navy Ministry, many of the more sensible members of the Naval Affairs Bureau asserted that Diet members were a pack of Jekyll and Hydes who behaved like gentlemen outside the House but were transformed, once they set foot inside it, into traders of downright nonsense and abuse."
Yamamoto was also quoted as warning against the constant tone of "emergency" and "crisis" perpetrated by the media and the army. Y noted that it was necessary for elastic to have some free play instead of being always stretched to its limit--otherwise that elastic loses its elasticity.
Speaking of the China Incident, "In a situation of this kind many people find it easier to act rather than to think. 'When a madman starts running...the sane run with him." While Yamamoto and a "few others" managed to do so then and hold back full war against China at that time, we read how the "bull" began to run more and more frequently--ultimately leading to a War Yamamoto was clear could at best result in a negotiated compromise and possible recognition of Japan's sphere of influence.
The Japanese government and military had some pretty bizarre influences--for example, it contracted a palm reader to determine the qualifications of and recruit 230,000 men. It also spent much money on experiments of a quack who claimed he could generate oil from ordinary water--obviously given Japan's shortage of fossil fuels helpful, but without any apparent scientific grounding.
Among the interesting facts revealed:
1) the Japanese "Zero"--a remarkably effective air fighter--was so named because it came into service in 1940, and Japan tended to name its fighters by the last digit of the year in which they were commissioned.
2) It seems fairly clear that the US superiority was not just in material terms, but also largely by its code cracking unit. Agawa discusses fairly convincingly that the US was aware of plans to attack Pearl Harbor and esp Midway due to code breakers. In fact, he suggests that the US could have been more aggressive in calling Japan back but that FDR was interested in backing the UK against Germany--and hence needed to draw Japan into showing it was the aggressor.
3) Nevertheless, given Japan's success in the first 6 months of the war, and especially with the fall of Singapore, Japan had an opportunity to negotiate a reasonable peace had it been prepared to do so and had the US been interested in doing so. In fact the Japanese government had not thought through how it could end a war it would ultimately be destined to lose. It was also not clear that the US was interested in "settling" with Japan.
In sum, Agawa describes how Yamamoto became part of a fatalistic acceptance of a War he knew Japan could not win; however, by living life a day at a time and concentrating only on his part of the whole tapestry, Y was not willing or effective in trying to avert the disaster which Japan faced (and of course all the suffering it took for the region and for the US as a whole to finally achieve victory.) For the reasons Agawa gives, however, it is not clear if anyone could have made a difference given the media hysteria, government unwillingness to allow facts to be known that were inconsistent with its narrative and the Emperor's willingness as head of state to let the Army use his authority with the Japanese people.
One hopes others will read this and like-minded books which expose the dangers of uniform thought and cancel culture. One suspects Putin and his advisors have not, and one hopes tat the current group think pushed by the young advisors to a senescent president and supported by an hysterical media in the US will not lead to greater damage to this country or to the world.
Y became increasingly fatalistic--ultimately being shot down in a scheduled and easily decoded plan to greet the troops seeking to hold Guadalcanal.
The translator (John Bester) has done a remarkable job as well in retaining the clearly Japanese cultural and centric aspects of the language and perspective. For example, the translation makes clear frequent writings by Y that he "hopes to be of 'some service' to the Emperor," or that he may have "some skills" that could possibly be of use. A degree of humility and a consciousness of the greater forces outside the individual--as stated elsewhere in the book consistent with principles of zen Buddhism.
At the risk of oversimplifying the book, the young Turks of the Army working in tandem with a media always on the lookout for excitement and affirmation by its readership, worked in the 30's to "double down" a country's love of Emperor and its own remarkable achievement in converting a largely isolated and agricultural orientated society into a world power into a country that should take its "rightful" part in the world's affairs. The army being the army, that meant occupation by force. Despite efforts by Yamamoto and other more senior leaders who had experience in the UK and the US, the cancel culture of the Army working with the media led to Japan first signing a poorly thought through military alliance with Nazi Germany and Mussolini's Italy, and then -- after a horrible racist invasion and subjugation of Manchuria and other parts of China by the Japanese army led the US and its allies to cut off commodity exports to Japan including oil--to attack the US and its allies in a desperate bid to regain access to such oil and commodities.
While we know how that worked out, the beauty of this book is that it describes the ups and downs of Japan's slipping down this path. All it took was for a few good men to avoid controversy, avoid seeking to correct a strident and united press, and adopt an attitude of fatalism--the latter which expressed itself in the navy as commanders always choosing to go down with their ships rather than to save themselves to fight another day.
"There was an increasing trend in society at large to make forceful and exaggerated statements in front of others and to shun any effort to think over things calmly."
Among some memorable points:
Yamamoto tried to point out while the media was enthusiastically praising Japan's "invincible navy", of the 1588 defeat by England of Spain's then "invincible Armada."
Given the shortage of oil, Y pushed the view that destroying te enemies' ships was more important than building up one's own fleet--which without oil could not function anyway.
Yamamoto was not a Christian but was brought up in a missionary school, which Agawa speculates might have helped to keep him more open to western ideas and differences than his lock-step colleagues in government and armed forces. But Agawa also notes Y's passion for gambling--which one could guess may have been a big part of Y's ultimate drafting and execution of the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Agawa links what was happening in the 30's to his present day (the book was published in 1969 in Japan): "The atmosphere in Diet debates at the time was no pleasanter, it seems, than it is now. Even at the Navy Ministry, many of the more sensible members of the Naval Affairs Bureau asserted that Diet members were a pack of Jekyll and Hydes who behaved like gentlemen outside the House but were transformed, once they set foot inside it, into traders of downright nonsense and abuse."
Yamamoto was also quoted as warning against the constant tone of "emergency" and "crisis" perpetrated by the media and the army. Y noted that it was necessary for elastic to have some free play instead of being always stretched to its limit--otherwise that elastic loses its elasticity.
Speaking of the China Incident, "In a situation of this kind many people find it easier to act rather than to think. 'When a madman starts running...the sane run with him." While Yamamoto and a "few others" managed to do so then and hold back full war against China at that time, we read how the "bull" began to run more and more frequently--ultimately leading to a War Yamamoto was clear could at best result in a negotiated compromise and possible recognition of Japan's sphere of influence.
The Japanese government and military had some pretty bizarre influences--for example, it contracted a palm reader to determine the qualifications of and recruit 230,000 men. It also spent much money on experiments of a quack who claimed he could generate oil from ordinary water--obviously given Japan's shortage of fossil fuels helpful, but without any apparent scientific grounding.
Among the interesting facts revealed:
1) the Japanese "Zero"--a remarkably effective air fighter--was so named because it came into service in 1940, and Japan tended to name its fighters by the last digit of the year in which they were commissioned.
2) It seems fairly clear that the US superiority was not just in material terms, but also largely by its code cracking unit. Agawa discusses fairly convincingly that the US was aware of plans to attack Pearl Harbor and esp Midway due to code breakers. In fact, he suggests that the US could have been more aggressive in calling Japan back but that FDR was interested in backing the UK against Germany--and hence needed to draw Japan into showing it was the aggressor.
3) Nevertheless, given Japan's success in the first 6 months of the war, and especially with the fall of Singapore, Japan had an opportunity to negotiate a reasonable peace had it been prepared to do so and had the US been interested in doing so. In fact the Japanese government had not thought through how it could end a war it would ultimately be destined to lose. It was also not clear that the US was interested in "settling" with Japan.
In sum, Agawa describes how Yamamoto became part of a fatalistic acceptance of a War he knew Japan could not win; however, by living life a day at a time and concentrating only on his part of the whole tapestry, Y was not willing or effective in trying to avert the disaster which Japan faced (and of course all the suffering it took for the region and for the US as a whole to finally achieve victory.) For the reasons Agawa gives, however, it is not clear if anyone could have made a difference given the media hysteria, government unwillingness to allow facts to be known that were inconsistent with its narrative and the Emperor's willingness as head of state to let the Army use his authority with the Japanese people.
One hopes others will read this and like-minded books which expose the dangers of uniform thought and cancel culture. One suspects Putin and his advisors have not, and one hopes tat the current group think pushed by the young advisors to a senescent president and supported by an hysterical media in the US will not lead to greater damage to this country or to the world.
Y became increasingly fatalistic--ultimately being shot down in a scheduled and easily decoded plan to greet the troops seeking to hold Guadalcanal.
February 28, 2016
Jan 2016. I read this a long time ago. On rereading Parshall and Tully on Midway, I discovered a copy of a letter I had written to the authors about Yamamoto. In Parshall and Tully's book, they had stated that "In he matter of lac of moral courage, Yamamoto, Nagumo, and Yamaguchi were all quie guilty as charged."
I wrote to them to ask if their conclusion might have been too simple, founded on the tactical or strategic issues, as I remember. I had read Agawa's book in which he quoted Yamamoto from a letter to Hori Teikichi on Oct. 11, ?: "3. I find my present position extremely odd-obliged to make up my mind to and pursue unswervingly a course that is precisely the opposite of my personal views. Perhaps this, too, is the will of Heaven."
On reading that, I thought to myself that Admiral Yamamoto was a deeply conflicted man. Indeed, Agawa's book seems to build such a picture throughout. So I asked Parshall and Tully, "Isn't it possible that the contradictions in Admiral Yamamoto's personality had some part in leading to contradictions in his choice of strategy? Basically, he was trying to avoid losing a war which he deeply believed Japan should not commence and could not win."
I wrote to them to ask if their conclusion might have been too simple, founded on the tactical or strategic issues, as I remember. I had read Agawa's book in which he quoted Yamamoto from a letter to Hori Teikichi on Oct. 11, ?: "3. I find my present position extremely odd-obliged to make up my mind to and pursue unswervingly a course that is precisely the opposite of my personal views. Perhaps this, too, is the will of Heaven."
On reading that, I thought to myself that Admiral Yamamoto was a deeply conflicted man. Indeed, Agawa's book seems to build such a picture throughout. So I asked Parshall and Tully, "Isn't it possible that the contradictions in Admiral Yamamoto's personality had some part in leading to contradictions in his choice of strategy? Basically, he was trying to avoid losing a war which he deeply believed Japan should not commence and could not win."
September 16, 2015
Fascinating look, not only at the life of Yamamoto, but at the Imperial Navy during the leadup and first phase of the war in the Pacific. The writing style is somewhat quaint, with liberal amounts of dialogue and surprising attention to passing details like palm readers and quack alchemists. However, that does not detract from the abundance of detail about Yamamoto's staunch anti-war positions, his mostly correct predictions as to the hopelessness of waging war against America, and his keen understanding of the shift to aerial warfare. One side point that is very interesting is that it seems that he believed that the war would last decades, with Japan slowly being sucked dry. Therefore, though he thought there was no hope of victory, he seems to have underestimated how determined the Americans would be to avenge Pearl Harbor or how quickly and successfully they would be able to harness their advantages in population size and industrial capacity for the war effort. Perhaps he believed that, if Japan proved difficult enough to conquer, some sort of negotiated solution could still take place.
February 25, 2017
I happened to catch a part of Tora! Tora! Tora! on TCM, and watching Sô Yamamura as Admiral Yamamoto got me interested in learning more about the architect of the attack on Pearl Harbor.
A quick research on the web showed that this book was considered the best biography of the man. I really enjoyed reading about him, and was surprised to discover that he was actually opposed to fighting America and Britain. It was also interesting to learn about the ideological differences between the Japanese Army and Navy. As an American, one thought of all Japan as singularly driven, solely focused on imperialism. Highly recommended.
A quick research on the web showed that this book was considered the best biography of the man. I really enjoyed reading about him, and was surprised to discover that he was actually opposed to fighting America and Britain. It was also interesting to learn about the ideological differences between the Japanese Army and Navy. As an American, one thought of all Japan as singularly driven, solely focused on imperialism. Highly recommended.
December 1, 2021
Solid work written relatively closer to the events and some of that shines through. Yamamoto is an often mis-understood figure and this books works to describe the man and the institutions that drove Japanese policy leading up to WWII. One element that was unknown to me was the political ideological differences between the Army and the Navy. The former being more bellicose and the latter being more measured in its enthusiasm for war. Even within the Navy, factions emerged around the treaty to restrain the size of the Japanese fleet in comparison with the British and the Americans. Yamamoto advocated for agreeing with the treaty's limitations based on operational analysis, and this enraged many in the military establishment. His willingness resulted in credible assassination threats which prompted the Navy to place him in a sea command to protect him. This command placed him at the helm of the attack on Pearl Harbor, but notably beyond the conventional time limits for command. Yamamoto was also prone to superstitions and had an outsized ability to manage chance and risk. He was an avid player of games of chance, and one snippet from the book foreshadows the attack on Pear Harbor by describing his tendency to go all-in on the initial attack to reduce his adversaries ability to continue the fight later in the game. Some of the book has interesting elements, that due to when it was written, describes the potential that the US knew about the attack on Pearl Harbor in advance but ultimately concludes it probably did not. He was described as a leader who cared about his sailors, and had a comparatively more informal relationship with his subordinates. There's also sub-stories woven through about his relationship with his family and geishas. Of which he was more dedicated to the latter than the former.
June 22, 2022
Originally written in Japanese, this translation of Yamamoto’s biography barely does justice to the man. Living in interesting times when Japan was coming of age as a belligerent military power, this presents a picture of the complexity of the man the Allies would, understandably, vilify after Pearl Harbor. Not only does this present a picture of Yamamoto rarely seen in the western world but also the inner workings of the Japanese bureaucracy and society during that period when they were trying to make their mark on the world. It showed the schism within Japan between those who were looking for a fight and those who sought to prevent it. But once the die was cast, they did their utmost to work towards an elusive victory.
October 19, 2024
If the reader seeks for additional information about the attack itself in this biography of the man who decided to attack Pearl Harbor, he will probably be disappointed. There is not much information in this book from the mid-1960s that we can not easily find on the internet in articles that are easier to read.
Almost two-thirds of the book provides information about what Yamamoto liked to eat for lunch, his favorite desserts, what kind of geisha he liked the most, and how good he was at playing cards. The positive point of this is that the author, Hiroyuki Agawa, manages to convey to the Western reader the habits and customs, political, military, economic and cultural world of modern Japan.
Almost two-thirds of the book provides information about what Yamamoto liked to eat for lunch, his favorite desserts, what kind of geisha he liked the most, and how good he was at playing cards. The positive point of this is that the author, Hiroyuki Agawa, manages to convey to the Western reader the habits and customs, political, military, economic and cultural world of modern Japan.
January 31, 2018
I had the opportunity to live for 3 years as a child in Niigata, Japan, not far from where Yamamoto was buried. I found the book very educational in describing the man who wished so much to prevent Japan joining the Tripartite pact with Germany and Italy; and to prevent the subsequent decision by Japan to enter the WWII. Some minor historical errors and perhaps a little bit of inaccuracy in reports of action. There was mention that during the battle of Midway the aircraft carrier Hiryu had been hit by 26 torpedos, plus 70 bombs, yet still had an operating flight deck. A bit of exaggeration there, but that happens in battle. Good read overall despite the book being now almost 50 years old.
November 12, 2024
I found this to be a mediocre book. I honestly believe to deserves 3.5 stars. I learned a few minor details about Yamamoto that I was not aware of. The book spent an inordinate number of pages on the American breaking of various Japanese codes. I thought there was too much coverage on his romantic interests. The book was uneven in the coverage of his life. Perhaps this is a function of the way Japanese authors write or perhaps it's the way the text was translated.
March 20, 2010
A fascinating, well-researched and quite gripping book. It is a portrait of a living person rather than an admiral, as interesting as life itself in those difficult days before and during WW2.
Sadly, the Polish language edition I have read is rather clumsily translated. I recommend getting the English original.
Sadly, the Polish language edition I have read is rather clumsily translated. I recommend getting the English original.
December 28, 2007
Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto is remembered as the mastermind behind the attack on Pearl Harbor. However, this wonderful biography reveals the fascinating complexity of the man and the issues of his time and place.
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December 26, 2016Book of the Year (1996)
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