Economic Concerns and Bureaucratic Politics in Japan’s Interwar Years
In Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941, Michael A.
Barnhart chronicles the history of Japan’s futile search for autarky in the years leading to the
Pacific War.1 In examining the vital linkage between economics and national security in this
period, Barnhart makes the argument that the perception of economic vulnerability as the main
security issue facing Japan, combined with bureaucratic politics in the form of army-navy inter-
service rivalries, led directly to both the impulse for empire in resource-rich mainland Asia and
the attack on Pearl Harbor. However, Barnhart’s history charts Japan’s search for economic
security without explaining its justification for and entitlement to seizing the resources and land
of others, often brutally so. As such, the sterility of Japan Prepares for Total War downplays
the role of racist attitudes and cultural myths in engendering the events described. Nonetheless,
with strong evidentiary support Barnhart makes a compelling case for the ascendancy of
economic considerations and bureaucratic politics as the causal factors in Japan’s attack of the
United States on December 7th, 1941. Barnhart posits that Japan’s interpretation of the lessons
of World War I drove its leaders to view autarky as the basis for grand strategic planning. After
all, Germany, possessor of a stronger military than its conquerors, had succumbed to defeat in
WWI because it lacked an industrial base able to mobilize to a degree freeing it from economic
dependence on other nations. Such dependence creates vulnerability because the dependent
nation is subject to the whims and economic pressure of those nations on which it depends.
Japan had defeated Western power Russia in the Sino-Soviet conflict 2 of 1904-1905, but its
status as a resource-poor nation caused a number of influential civilian elites and military
officers to become advocates of “total war,” or the national capacity to not only wage war with
strong military forces but with the economic capability to supply all needed war materiel. Two
essential elements were necessary for this plan to succeed in establishing autarky and thus
security: a peace of at least five years with the hegemonic United States, and natural resources
such as iron and oil. These material resources could be had on the Asian mainland, specifically
in Manchuria and subsequently in China proper. As Barnhart points out, the Japanese chose to
forcibly acquire these resources from its mainland neighbors, and this course of action brought
it into conflict with the free trade philosophy and Open Door policy of the United States.
Japan’s course to national mobilization and self-sufficiency included the creation of a puppet
state for the economic exploitation of Manchuria; Manchukuo was created in 1932 in concert
with Japan’s first long-term mobilization plan. After “rational mobilization” of the domestic
economy, Japan’s increasingly imperial interests turned to China while the military’s share of
the budget rose to 45 percent. In 1937 Japanese forces commenced what Barnhart concededly
calls the “China Incident,” in which China and its resources were claimed by Japan under the
guise of establishing a Japanese-run corporation for economic development of the region.
Barnhart adeptly points out the ironies in Japan’s fight to acquire the Chinese mainland as a
strategic resource. The original total war proponents understood the threat to security that
belligerence in China caused for Japan: the United States, in defending the Open Door policy
in China, might deny Japan the indispensable resources like 3 machine tools that it required to
achieve self-sufficiency. Additionally, Japan’s domestic economy and citizenry were greatly
strained in what Barnhart terms the “bitter mortgage” of funding the efforts of empire in China.
Barnhart therefore argues that Japan’s aggressive imperial activities on the Asian mainland
were counterproductive in its quest for autarky: they threatened the necessary peace with the
United States and came at extreme costs to the Japanese nation. Japan Prepares for Total War
also contends that bureaucratic politics, specifically the competing interests of Japan’s army
and navy, played a significant role in shaping policy and determining the sequence of events
leading to the Pacific War. In bureaucratic politics, the players in a government bargain and
compete according to their organizational interests, resulting in policy that is not the product
of a single rational decision but is instead an amalgam of the visions and choices of the players
involved.2 The army and navy in pre-WWII Japan were both strong players in compelling the
nation’s political leaders to allocate resources according to their perceived needs; Barnhart
offers a number of examples of how their economic demands for strategic resources like iron
and oil led to further pressures to expand the Japanese empire in order to acquire such goods.
Additionally, Barnhart takes the position that differing strategic conceptions of how to best
approach the Southward Advance to commandeer the Dutch and French colonies of Southeast
Asia fed a growing inter-service rivalry. This rivalry between the Imperial army and Imperial
navy overshadowed rational considerations of the diplomatic and economic ramifications of
the United States’ reaction to aggressive Japanese imperialism as a means of achieving autarky.
Barnhart documents that the navy in 4 particular instituted a practice of exchanging “more
vigorous foreign policies” for greater resource allocations of strategic materials, and he argues
that the military as a whole served as the “engine of real change” in Japanese policy with regard
to economic expansion as a means of achieving national security. The quest of each service to
outbid the other in acquisition of strategic materials therefore led to the diversion of goods and
funds from exports and the domestic economy to meet military demands. It also led to the
commercial pressures the United States somewhat ironically imposed to punish Japan for its
imperialist imposition and attempt to create a sphere of economic and political influence in
mainland Asia. Indeed, the economic measures that the United States adopted in Japan’s
interwar years to stem the flow of Japanese aggression exacerbated the international situation
because the Japanese elites in power at various points in the course to war were either unwilling
to abandon mobilization plans or unable to do so because of military pressures and demands.
The moral sanctions and embargoes on goods such as aluminum and aviation fuel became
progressively steeper as Japan sought more territory and strategic resources in Asia. Finally,
the United States decided to freeze Japanese assets, and that freeze quickly morphed into full
embargo. Barnhart makes the point that this decision reflected an unshakable belief on the part
of United States leaders that Japan could not be deterred in the Southward Advance but might
be slowed by even more drastic economic measures. He attributes the Japanese response, to
push on with the advance, to the two factors he assigns ultimate importance in determining the
outcome of the clash between the two powers: economic motivations and bureaucratic politics.
Japan’s grand strategic motivation was the pursuit of autarky, and Barnhart argues that the July
2nd decisions for how to best achieve that goal were an amalgam of the opposing viewpoints
of the army 5 and navy, resulting in decisions that were rational in that they were the only
politically possible decisions within the Japanese government of the time. Despite Barnhart’s
strengths in precisely documenting the changing economic condition of Japan in the interwar
years and how its internal political dynamics and strategy shaped its path to war, Japan Prepares
for Total War fails to address the cultural attitudes and myths that enabled its feelings of
entitlement in the region. For example, scholars such as John Dower have suggested that
cultural myths like that of Japanese descent from goddess Amaterasu Omikami were used as
the psychological motivation for mobilizing the Japanese people and justifying horrific actions
against other Asian peoples in the name of Japan’s economic interests.3 Such cultural myths
identified Japan and the Japanese people as holding a unique, predetermined status as the
chosen natural rulers of Asia by virtue of their special descent from the true gods. Barnhart
identifies the primary motivation of Japan in its imperialist pursuits as strategic resource
acquisition. While his application of economic theory has wide explanatory power in the
actions that the Japanese took in the pursuit of autarky, it does not explain why they felt entitled
to or justified in their abuse of the territorial and human rights of other Asians. Furthermore,
Barnhart is careful to avoid overt statement of the brutality of the Japanese military in
imperialist “incidents.” For example, in the attack against Nanking that many scholars have
characterized as rife with atrocities, Barnhart comments that it was an “unbounded military
success;” his only concession to its putative unusual brutality is that the State Department
condemned it as “contrary to the principles of law and humanity.” Although it is perhaps
common to dehumanize an enemy in war and thus Barnhart might choose to leave discussions
of Japanese brutality to other scholars 6 because it is common to dehumanize an enemy in war,
but he could strengthen his argument for economic motivations by discussing how a feeling of
racial, national or cultural superiority played a role in justifying Japanese entitlement to control
of the lands and resources of others. Moreover, justification for such Japanese positions as the
Amau Doctrine, which claimed the Japanese right to supervise economic development of China
and barred all other nations from that right, was clearly based on more than Japanese economic
need, as it claimed Japan had a special right to control China, indicating a feeling of either
extreme paternalism or inherent superiority to China. While racist cultural myths are largely
ignored by Barnhart, racism and misperception in international diplomacy are touched on as
factors in the myriad misunderstandings that occurred between Japan and the United States. In
Japan Prepares for Total War, both Japan and the United States are characterized as often
suspecting the other side of “cunning” and “crafty” behavior, and President Roosevelt is noted
as consistently holding an “anti-Japanese” attitude. These attitudes led to irrational fears; for
example, Barnhart notes that Roosevelt feared a Japanese attack on the West Coast to the extent
that he had crabbing operations checked for the possibility that the Japanese might use them as
bases for war. Japan, too, based a number of decisions on misperceptions of the stance of the
other side; for instance, it believed for a time that the Draft Understanding was a formal United
States policy position, and thus changed its estimate of the probability of war with the United
States, leading to confidence in more aggressive behavior. Barnhart demonstrates that racism
and misunderstandings thus contributed to the policies of the time period in question, but such
a nod to the role of racism and misperception in policy is curious when his argument neglects
to explain the 7 possible of role of racism as justification for forcible economic expansion of
Japan. In conclusion, Japan Prepares for Total War is an economic history, one that serves its
stated purpose of contributing to an understanding of how Japan’s economic concerns and
inter-service rivalries contributed to bringing about the Pacific War. Discussion of Japanese
paternalism or racism in the pursuit of autarky is largely avoided by Barnhart, and this
avoidance detracts to a small extent from the explanatory power of economic vulnerability and
internal political dynamics as the causal variables in Japanese imperialism and attack on the
United States. Perhaps Barnhart is merely trying to achieve objectivity and avoid a
condemnatory tone, but in failing to question the legitimacy of Japan’s special right to control
the rest of Asia, he misses the opportunity to explain the role of the values and attitudes that
supposedly lent justification to Japan’s right to cruelly exploit its Asian neighbors. Despite this
criticism, Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941 offers
a detailed and thought provoking account of the ironies of US-Japan relations and mistakes in
the years preceding the Pacific War.
In Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941, Michael A.
Barnhart chronicles the history of Japan’s futile search for autarky in the years leading to the
Pacific War.1 In examining the vital linkage between economics and national security in this
period, Barnhart makes the argument that the perception of economic vulnerability as the main
security issue facing Japan, combined with bureaucratic politics in the form of army-navy inter-
service rivalries, led directly to both the impulse for empire in resource-rich mainland Asia and
the attack on Pearl Harbor. However, Barnhart’s history charts Japan’s search for economic
security without explaining its justification for and entitlement to seizing the resources and land
of others, often brutally so. As such, the sterility of Japan Prepares for Total War downplays
the role of racist attitudes and cultural myths in engendering the events described. Nonetheless,
with strong evidentiary support Barnhart makes a compelling case for the ascendancy of
economic considerations and bureaucratic politics as the causal factors in Japan’s attack of the
United States on December 7th, 1941. Barnhart posits that Japan’s interpretation of the lessons
of World War I drove its leaders to view autarky as the basis for grand strategic planning. After
all, Germany, possessor of a stronger military than its conquerors, had succumbed to defeat in
WWI because it lacked an industrial base able to mobilize to a degree freeing it from economic
dependence on other nations. Such dependence creates vulnerability because the dependent
nation is subject to the whims and economic pressure of those nations on which it depends.
Japan had defeated Western power Russia in the Sino-Soviet conflict 2 of 1904-1905, but its
status as a resource-poor nation caused a number of influential civilian elites and military
officers to become advocates of “total war,” or the national capacity to not only wage war with
strong military forces but with the economic capability to supply all needed war materiel. Two
essential elements were necessary for this plan to succeed in establishing autarky and thus
security: a peace of at least five years with the hegemonic United States, and natural resources
such as iron and oil. These material resources could be had on the Asian mainland, specifically
in Manchuria and subsequently in China proper. As Barnhart points out, the Japanese chose to
forcibly acquire these resources from its mainland neighbors, and this course of action brought
it into conflict with the free trade philosophy and Open Door policy of the United States.
Japan’s course to national mobilization and self-sufficiency included the creation of a puppet
state for the economic exploitation of Manchuria; Manchukuo was created in 1932 in concert
with Japan’s first long-term mobilization plan. After “rational mobilization” of the domestic
economy, Japan’s increasingly imperial interests turned to China while the military’s share of
the budget rose to 45 percent. In 1937 Japanese forces commenced what Barnhart concededly
calls the “China Incident,” in which China and its resources were claimed by Japan under the
guise of establishing a Japanese-run corporation for economic development of the region.
Barnhart adeptly points out the ironies in Japan’s fight to acquire the Chinese mainland as a
strategic resource. The original total war proponents understood the threat to security that
belligerence in China caused for Japan: the United States, in defending the Open Door policy
in China, might deny Japan the indispensable resources like 3 machine tools that it required to
achieve self-sufficiency. Additionally, Japan’s domestic economy and citizenry were greatly
strained in what Barnhart terms the “bitter mortgage” of funding the efforts of empire in China.
Barnhart therefore argues that Japan’s aggressive imperial activities on the Asian mainland
were counterproductive in its quest for autarky: they threatened the necessary peace with the
United States and came at extreme costs to the Japanese nation. Japan Prepares for Total War
also contends that bureaucratic politics, specifically the competing interests of Japan’s army
and navy, played a significant role in shaping policy and determining the sequence of events
leading to the Pacific War. In bureaucratic politics, the players in a government bargain and
compete according to their organizational interests, resulting in policy that is not the product
of a single rational decision but is instead an amalgam of the visions and choices of the players
involved.2 The army and navy in pre-WWII Japan were both strong players in compelling the
nation’s political leaders to allocate resources according to their perceived needs; Barnhart
offers a number of examples of how their economic demands for strategic resources like iron
and oil led to further pressures to expand the Japanese empire in order to acquire such goods.
Additionally, Barnhart takes the position that differing strategic conceptions of how to best
approach the Southward Advance to commandeer the Dutch and French colonies of Southeast
Asia fed a growing inter-service rivalry. This rivalry between the Imperial army and Imperial
navy overshadowed rational considerations of the diplomatic and economic ramifications of
the United States’ reaction to aggressive Japanese imperialism as a means of achieving autarky.
Barnhart documents that the navy in 4 particular instituted a practice of exchanging “more
vigorous foreign policies” for greater resource allocations of strategic materials, and he argues
that the military as a whole served as the “engine of real change” in Japanese policy with regard
to economic expansion as a means of achieving national security. The quest of each service to
outbid the other in acquisition of strategic materials therefore led to the diversion of goods and
funds from exports and the domestic economy to meet military demands. It also led to the
commercial pressures the United States somewhat ironically imposed to punish Japan for its
imperialist imposition and attempt to create a sphere of economic and political influence in
mainland Asia. Indeed, the economic measures that the United States adopted in Japan’s
interwar years to stem the flow of Japanese aggression exacerbated the international situation
because the Japanese elites in power at various points in the course to war were either unwilling
to abandon mobilization plans or unable to do so because of military pressures and demands.
The moral sanctions and embargoes on goods such as aluminum and aviation fuel became
progressively steeper as Japan sought more territory and strategic resources in Asia. Finally,
the United States decided to freeze Japanese assets, and that freeze quickly morphed into full
embargo. Barnhart makes the point that this decision reflected an unshakable belief on the part
of United States leaders that Japan could not be deterred in the Southward Advance but might
be slowed by even more drastic economic measures. He attributes the Japanese response, to
push on with the advance, to the two factors he assigns ultimate importance in determining the
outcome of the clash between the two powers: economic motivations and bureaucratic politics.
Japan’s grand strategic motivation was the pursuit of autarky, and Barnhart argues that the July
2nd decisions for how to best achieve that goal were an amalgam of the opposing viewpoints
of the army 5 and navy, resulting in decisions that were rational in that they were the only
politically possible decisions within the Japanese government of the time. Despite Barnhart’s
strengths in precisely documenting the changing economic condition of Japan in the interwar
years and how its internal political dynamics and strategy shaped its path to war, Japan Prepares
for Total War fails to address the cultural attitudes and myths that enabled its feelings of
entitlement in the region. For example, scholars such as John Dower have suggested that
cultural myths like that of Japanese descent from goddess Amaterasu Omikami were used as
the psychological motivation for mobilizing the Japanese people and justifying horrific actions
against other Asian peoples in the name of Japan’s economic interests.3 Such cultural myths
identified Japan and the Japanese people as holding a unique, predetermined status as the
chosen natural rulers of Asia by virtue of their special descent from the true gods. Barnhart
identifies the primary motivation of Japan in its imperialist pursuits as strategic resource
acquisition. While his application of economic theory has wide explanatory power in the
actions that the Japanese took in the pursuit of autarky, it does not explain why they felt entitled
to or justified in their abuse of the territorial and human rights of other Asians. Furthermore,
Barnhart is careful to avoid overt statement of the brutality of the Japanese military in
imperialist “incidents.” For example, in the attack against Nanking that many scholars have
characterized as rife with atrocities, Barnhart comments that it was an “unbounded military
success;” his only concession to its putative unusual brutality is that the State Department
condemned it as “contrary to the principles of law and humanity.” Although it is perhaps
common to dehumanize an enemy in war and thus Barnhart might choose to leave discussions
of Japanese brutality to other scholars 6 because it is common to dehumanize an enemy in war,
but he could strengthen his argument for economic motivations by discussing how a feeling of
racial, national or cultural superiority played a role in justifying Japanese entitlement to control
of the lands and resources of others. Moreover, justification for such Japanese positions as the
Amau Doctrine, which claimed the Japanese right to supervise economic development of China
and barred all other nations from that right, was clearly based on more than Japanese economic
need, as it claimed Japan had a special right to control China, indicating a feeling of either
extreme paternalism or inherent superiority to China. While racist cultural myths are largely
ignored by Barnhart, racism and misperception in international diplomacy are touched on as
factors in the myriad misunderstandings that occurred between Japan and the United States. In
Japan Prepares for Total War, both Japan and the United States are characterized as often
suspecting the other side of “cunning” and “crafty” behavior, and President Roosevelt is noted
as consistently holding an “anti-Japanese” attitude. These attitudes led to irrational fears; for
example, Barnhart notes that Roosevelt feared a Japanese attack on the West Coast to the extent
that he had crabbing operations checked for the possibility that the Japanese might use them as
bases for war. Japan, too, based a number of decisions on misperceptions of the stance of the
other side; for instance, it believed for a time that the Draft Understanding was a formal United
States policy position, and thus changed its estimate of the probability of war with the United
States, leading to confidence in more aggressive behavior. Barnhart demonstrates that racism
and misunderstandings thus contributed to the policies of the time period in question, but such
a nod to the role of racism and misperception in policy is curious when his argument neglects
to explain the 7 possible of role of racism as justification for forcible economic expansion of
Japan. In conclusion, Japan Prepares for Total War is an economic history, one that serves its
stated purpose of contributing to an understanding of how Japan’s economic concerns and
inter-service rivalries contributed to bringing about the Pacific War. Discussion of Japanese
paternalism or racism in the pursuit of autarky is largely avoided by Barnhart, and this
avoidance detracts to a small extent from the explanatory power of economic vulnerability and
internal political dynamics as the causal variables in Japanese imperialism and attack on the
United States. Perhaps Barnhart is merely trying to achieve objectivity and avoid a
condemnatory tone, but in failing to question the legitimacy of Japan’s special right to control
the rest of Asia, he misses the opportunity to explain the role of the values and attitudes that
supposedly lent justification to Japan’s right to cruelly exploit its Asian neighbors. Despite this
criticism, Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941 offers
a detailed and thought provoking account of the ironies of US-Japan relations and mistakes in
the years preceding the Pacific War.
In Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941, Michael A.
Barnhart chronicles the history of Japan’s futile search for autarky in the years leading to the
Pacific War.1 In examining the vital linkage between economics and national security in this
period, Barnhart makes the argument that the perception of economic vulnerability as the main
security issue facing Japan, combined with bureaucratic politics in the form of army-navy inter-
service rivalries, led directly to both the impulse for empire in resource-rich mainland Asia and
the attack on Pearl Harbor. However, Barnhart’s history charts Japan’s search for economic
security without explaining its justification for and entitlement to seizing the resources and land
of others, often brutally so. As such, the sterility of Japan Prepares for Total War downplays
the role of racist attitudes and cultural myths in engendering the events described. Nonetheless,
with strong evidentiary support Barnhart makes a compelling case for the ascendancy of
economic considerations and bureaucratic politics as the causal factors in Japan’s attack of the
United States on December 7th, 1941. Barnhart posits that Japan’s interpretation of the lessons
of World War I drove its leaders to view autarky as the basis for grand strategic planning. After
all, Germany, possessor of a stronger military than its conquerors, had succumbed to defeat in
WWI because it lacked an industrial base able to mobilize to a degree freeing it from economic
dependence on other nations. Such dependence creates vulnerability because the dependent
nation is subject to the whims and economic pressure of those nations on which it depends.
Japan had defeated Western power Russia in the Sino-Soviet conflict 2 of 1904-1905, but its
status as a resource-poor nation caused a number of influential civilian elites and military
officers to become advocates of “total war,” or the national capacity to not only wage war with
strong military forces but with the economic capability to supply all needed war materiel. Two
essential elements were necessary for this plan to succeed in establishing autarky and thus
security: a peace of at least five years with the hegemonic United States, and natural resources
such as iron and oil. These material resources could be had on the Asian mainland, specifically
in Manchuria and subsequently in China proper. As Barnhart points out, the Japanese chose to
forcibly acquire these resources from its mainland neighbors, and this course of action brought
it into conflict with the free trade philosophy and Open Door policy of the United States.
Japan’s course to national mobilization and self-sufficiency included the creation of a puppet
state for the economic exploitation of Manchuria; Manchukuo was created in 1932 in concert
with Japan’s first long-term mobilization plan. After “rational mobilization” of the domestic
economy, Japan’s increasingly imperial interests turned to China while the military’s share of
the budget rose to 45 percent. In 1937 Japanese forces commenced what Barnhart concededly
calls the “China Incident,” in which China and its resources were claimed by Japan under the
guise of establishing a Japanese-run corporation for economic development of the region.
Barnhart adeptly points out the ironies in Japan’s fight to acquire the Chinese mainland as a
strategic resource. The original total war proponents understood the threat to security that
belligerence in China caused for Japan: the United States, in defending the Open Door policy
in China, might deny Japan the indispensable resources like 3 machine tools that it required to
achieve self-sufficiency. Additionally, Japan’s domestic economy and citizenry were greatly
strained in what Barnhart terms the “bitter mortgage” of funding the efforts of empire in China.
Barnhart therefore argues that Japan’s aggressive imperial activities on the Asian mainland
were counterproductive in its quest for autarky: they threatened the necessary peace with the
United States and came at extreme costs to the Japanese nation. Japan Prepares for Total War
also contends that bureaucratic politics, specifically the competing interests of Japan’s army
and navy, played a significant role in shaping policy and determining the sequence of events
leading to the Pacific War. In bureaucratic politics, the players in a government bargain and
compete according to their organizational interests, resulting in policy that is not the product
of a single rational decision but is instead an amalgam of the visions and choices of the players
involved.2 The army and navy in pre-WWII Japan were both strong players in compelling the
nation’s political leaders to allocate resources according to their perceived needs; Barnhart
offers a number of examples of how their economic demands for strategic resources like iron
and oil led to further pressures to expand the Japanese empire in order to acquire such goods.
Additionally, Barnhart takes the position that differing strategic conceptions of how to best
approach the Southward Advance to commandeer the Dutch and French colonies of Southeast
Asia fed a growing inter-service rivalry. This rivalry between the Imperial army and Imperial
navy overshadowed rational considerations of the diplomatic and economic ramifications of
the United States’ reaction to aggressive Japanese imperialism as a means of achieving autarky.
Barnhart documents that the navy in 4 particular instituted a practice of exchanging “more
vigorous foreign policies” for greater resource allocations of strategic materials, and he argues
that the military as a whole served as the “engine of real change” in Japanese policy with regard
to economic expansion as a means of achieving national security. The quest of each service to
outbid the other in acquisition of strategic materials therefore led to the diversion of goods and
funds from exports and the domestic economy to meet military demands. It also led to the
commercial pressures the United States somewhat ironically imposed to punish Japan for its
imperialist imposition and attempt to create a sphere of economic and political influence in
mainland Asia. Indeed, the economic measures that the United States adopted in Japan’s
interwar years to stem the flow of Japanese aggression exacerbated the international situation
because the Japanese elites in power at various points in the course to war were either unwilling
to abandon mobilization plans or unable to do so because of military pressures and demands.
The moral sanctions and embargoes on goods such as aluminum and aviation fuel became
progressively steeper as Japan sought more territory and strategic resources in Asia. Finally,
the United States decided to freeze Japanese assets, and that freeze quickly morphed into full
embargo. Barnhart makes the point that this decision reflected an unshakable belief on the part
of United States leaders that Japan could not be deterred in the Southward Advance but might
be slowed by even more drastic economic measures. He attributes the Japanese response, to
push on with the advance, to the two factors he assigns ultimate importance in determining the
outcome of the clash between the two powers: economic motivations and bureaucratic politics.
Japan’s grand strategic motivation was the pursuit of autarky, and Barnhart argues that the July
2nd decisions for how to best achieve that goal were an amalgam of the opposing viewpoints
of the army 5 and navy, resulting in decisions that were rational in that they were the only
politically possible decisions within the Japanese government of the time. Despite Barnhart’s
strengths in precisely documenting the changing economic condition of Japan in the interwar
years and how its internal political dynamics and strategy shaped its path to war, Japan Prepares
for Total War fails to address the cultural attitudes and myths that enabled its feelings of
entitlement in the region. For example, scholars such as John Dower have suggested that
cultural myths like that of Japanese descent from goddess Amaterasu Omikami were used as
the psychological motivation for mobilizing the Japanese people and justifying horrific actions
against other Asian peoples in the name of Japan’s economic interests.3 Such cultural myths
identified Japan and the Japanese people as holding a unique, predetermined status as the
chosen natural rulers of Asia by virtue of their special descent from the true gods. Barnhart
identifies the primary motivation of Japan in its imperialist pursuits as strategic resource
acquisition. While his application of economic theory has wide explanatory power in the
actions that the Japanese took in the pursuit of autarky, it does not explain why they felt entitled
to or justified in their abuse of the territorial and human rights of other Asians. Furthermore,
Barnhart is careful to avoid overt statement of the brutality of the Japanese military in
imperialist “incidents.” For example, in the attack against Nanking that many scholars have
characterized as rife with atrocities, Barnhart comments that it was an “unbounded military
success;” his only concession to its putative unusual brutality is that the State Department
condemned it as “contrary to the principles of law and humanity.” Although it is perhaps
common to dehumanize an enemy in war and thus Barnhart might choose to leave discussions
of Japanese brutality to other scholars 6 because it is common to dehumanize an enemy in war,
but he could strengthen his argument for economic motivations by discussing how a feeling of
racial, national or cultural superiority played a role in justifying Japanese entitlement to control
of the lands and resources of others. Moreover, justification for such Japanese positions as the
Amau Doctrine, which claimed the Japanese right to supervise economic development of China
and barred all other nations from that right, was clearly based on more than Japanese economic
need, as it claimed Japan had a special right to control China, indicating a feeling of either
extreme paternalism or inherent superiority to China. While racist cultural myths are largely
ignored by Barnhart, racism and misperception in international diplomacy are touched on as
factors in the myriad misunderstandings that occurred between Japan and the United States. In
Japan Prepares for Total War, both Japan and the United States are characterized as often
suspecting the other side of “cunning” and “crafty” behavior, and President Roosevelt is noted
as consistently holding an “anti-Japanese” attitude. These attitudes led to irrational fears; for
example, Barnhart notes that Roosevelt feared a Japanese attack on the West Coast to the extent
that he had crabbing operations checked for the possibility that the Japanese might use them as
bases for war. Japan, too, based a number of decisions on misperceptions of the stance of the
other side; for instance, it believed for a time that the Draft Understanding was a formal United
States policy position, and thus changed its estimate of the probability of war with the United
States, leading to confidence in more aggressive behavior. Barnhart demonstrates that racism
and misunderstandings thus contributed to the policies of the time period in question, but such
a nod to the role of racism and misperception in policy is curious when his argument neglects
to explain the 7 possible of role of racism as justification for forcible economic expansion of
Japan. In conclusion, Japan Prepares for Total War is an economic history, one that serves its
stated purpose of contributing to an understanding of how Japan’s economic concerns and
inter-service rivalries contributed to bringing about the Pacific War. Discussion of Japanese
paternalism or racism in the pursuit of autarky is largely avoided by Barnhart, and this
avoidance detracts to a small extent from the explanatory power of economic vulnerability and
internal political dynamics as the causal variables in Japanese imperialism and attack on the
United States. Perhaps Barnhart is merely trying to achieve objectivity and avoid a
condemnatory tone, but in failing to question the legitimacy of Japan’s special right to control
the rest of Asia, he misses the opportunity to explain the role of the values and attitudes that
supposedly lent justification to Japan’s right to cruelly exploit its Asian neighbors. Despite this
criticism, Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941 offers
a detailed and thought provoking account of the ironies of US-Japan relations and mistakes in
the years preceding the Pacific War.
In Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941, Michael A.
Barnhart chronicles the history of Japan’s futile search for autarky in the years leading to the
Pacific War.1 In examining the vital linkage between economics and national security in this
period, Barnhart makes the argument that the perception of economic vulnerability as the main
security issue facing Japan, combined with bureaucratic politics in the form of army-navy inter-
service rivalries, led directly to both the impulse for empire in resource-rich mainland Asia and
the attack on Pearl Harbor. However, Barnhart’s history charts Japan’s search for economic
security without explaining its justification for and entitlement to seizing the resources and land
of others, often brutally so. As such, the sterility of Japan Prepares for Total War downplays
the role of racist attitudes and cultural myths in engendering the events described. Nonetheless,
with strong evidentiary support Barnhart makes a compelling case for the ascendancy of
economic considerations and bureaucratic politics as the causal factors in Japan’s attack of the
United States on December 7th, 1941. Barnhart posits that Japan’s interpretation of the lessons
of World War I drove its leaders to view autarky as the basis for grand strategic planning. After
all, Germany, possessor of a stronger military than its conquerors, had succumbed to defeat in
WWI because it lacked an industrial base able to mobilize to a degree freeing it from economic
dependence on other nations. Such dependence creates vulnerability because the dependent
nation is subject to the whims and economic pressure of those nations on which it depends.
Japan had defeated Western power Russia in the Sino-Soviet conflict 2 of 1904-1905, but its
status as a resource-poor nation caused a number of influential civilian elites and military
officers to become advocates of “total war,” or the national capacity to not only wage war with
strong military forces but with the economic capability to supply all needed war materiel. Two
essential elements were necessary for this plan to succeed in establishing autarky and thus
security: a peace of at least five years with the hegemonic United States, and natural resources
such as iron and oil. These material resources could be had on the Asian mainland, specifically
in Manchuria and subsequently in China proper. As Barnhart points out, the Japanese chose to
forcibly acquire these resources from its mainland neighbors, and this course of action brought
it into conflict with the free trade philosophy and Open Door policy of the United States.
Japan’s course to national mobilization and self-sufficiency included the creation of a puppet
state for the economic exploitation of Manchuria; Manchukuo was created in 1932 in concert
with Japan’s first long-term mobilization plan. After “rational mobilization” of the domestic
economy, Japan’s increasingly imperial interests turned to China while the military’s share of
the budget rose to 45 percent. In 1937 Japanese forces commenced what Barnhart concededly
calls the “China Incident,” in which China and its resources were claimed by Japan under the
guise of establishing a Japanese-run corporation for economic development of the region.
Barnhart adeptly points out the ironies in Japan’s fight to acquire the Chinese mainland as a
strategic resource. The original total war proponents understood the threat to security that
belligerence in China caused for Japan: the United States, in defending the Open Door policy
in China, might deny Japan the indispensable resources like 3 machine tools that it required to
achieve self-sufficiency. Additionally, Japan’s domestic economy and citizenry were greatly
strained in what Barnhart terms the “bitter mortgage” of funding the efforts of empire in China.
Barnhart therefore argues that Japan’s aggressive imperial activities on the Asian mainland
were counterproductive in its quest for autarky: they threatened the necessary peace with the
United States and came at extreme costs to the Japanese nation. Japan Prepares for Total War
also contends that bureaucratic politics, specifically the competing interests of Japan’s army
and navy, played a significant role in shaping policy and determining the sequence of events
leading to the Pacific War. In bureaucratic politics, the players in a government bargain and
compete according to their organizational interests, resulting in policy that is not the product
of a single rational decision but is instead an amalgam of the visions and choices of the players
involved.2 The army and navy in pre-WWII Japan were both strong players in compelling the
nation’s political leaders to allocate resources according to their perceived needs; Barnhart
offers a number of examples of how their economic demands for strategic resources like iron
and oil led to further pressures to expand the Japanese empire in order to acquire such goods.
Additionally, Barnhart takes the position that differing strategic conceptions of how to best
approach the Southward Advance to commandeer the Dutch and French colonies of Southeast
Asia fed a growing inter-service rivalry. This rivalry between the Imperial army and Imperial
navy overshadowed rational considerations of the diplomatic and economic ramifications of
the United States’ reaction to aggressive Japanese imperialism as a means of achieving autarky.
Barnhart documents that the navy in 4 particular instituted a practice of exchanging “more
vigorous foreign policies” for greater resource allocations of strategic materials, and he argues
that the military as a whole served as the “engine of real change” in Japanese policy with regard
to economic expansion as a means of achieving national security. The quest of each service to
outbid the other in acquisition of strategic materials therefore led to the diversion of goods and
funds from exports and the domestic economy to meet military demands. It also led to the
commercial pressures the United States somewhat ironically imposed to punish Japan for its
imperialist imposition and attempt to create a sphere of economic and political influence in
mainland Asia. Indeed, the economic measures that the United States adopted in Japan’s
interwar years to stem the flow of Japanese aggression exacerbated the international situation
because the Japanese elites in power at various points in the course to war were either unwilling
to abandon mobilization plans or unable to do so because of military pressures and demands.
The moral sanctions and embargoes on goods such as aluminum and aviation fuel became
progressively steeper as Japan sought more territory and strategic resources in Asia. Finally,
the United States decided to freeze Japanese assets, and that freeze quickly morphed into full
embargo. Barnhart makes the point that this decision reflected an unshakable belief on the part
of United States leaders that Japan could not be deterred in the Southward Advance but might
be slowed by even more drastic economic measures. He attributes the Japanese response, to
push on with the advance, to the two factors he assigns ultimate importance in determining the
outcome of the clash between the two powers: economic motivations and bureaucratic politics.
Japan’s grand strategic motivation was the pursuit of autarky, and Barnhart argues that the July
2nd decisions for how to best achieve that goal were an amalgam of the opposing viewpoints
of the army 5 and navy, resulting in decisions that were rational in that they were the only
politically possible decisions within the Japanese government of the time. Despite Barnhart’s
strengths in precisely documenting the changing economic condition of Japan in the interwar
years and how its internal political dynamics and strategy shaped its path to war, Japan Prepares
for Total War fails to address the cultural attitudes and myths that enabled its feelings of
entitlement in the region. For example, scholars such as John Dower have suggested that
cultural myths like that of Japanese descent from goddess Amaterasu Omikami were used as
the psychological motivation for mobilizing the Japanese people and justifying horrific actions
against other Asian peoples in the name of Japan’s economic interests.3 Such cultural myths
identified Japan and the Japanese people as holding a unique, predetermined status as the
chosen natural rulers of Asia by virtue of their special descent from the true gods. Barnhart
identifies the primary motivation of Japan in its imperialist pursuits as strategic resource
acquisition. While his application of economic theory has wide explanatory power in the
actions that the Japanese took in the pursuit of autarky, it does not explain why they felt entitled
to or justified in their abuse of the territorial and human rights of other Asians. Furthermore,
Barnhart is careful to avoid overt statement of the brutality of the Japanese military in
imperialist “incidents.” For example, in the attack against Nanking that many scholars have
characterized as rife with atrocities, Barnhart comments that it was an “unbounded military
success;” his only concession to its putative unusual brutality is that the State Department
condemned it as “contrary to the principles of law and humanity.” Although it is perhaps
common to dehumanize an enemy in war and thus Barnhart might choose to leave discussions
of Japanese brutality to other scholars 6 because it is common to dehumanize an enemy in war,
but he could strengthen his argument for economic motivations by discussing how a feeling of
racial, national or cultural superiority played a role in justifying Japanese entitlement to control
of the lands and resources of others. Moreover, justification for such Japanese positions as the
Amau Doctrine, which claimed the Japanese right to supervise economic development of China
and barred all other nations from that right, was clearly based on more than Japanese economic
need, as it claimed Japan had a special right to control China, indicating a feeling of either
extreme paternalism or inherent superiority to China. While racist cultural myths are largely
ignored by Barnhart, racism and misperception in international diplomacy are touched on as
factors in the myriad misunderstandings that occurred between Japan and the United States. In
Japan Prepares for Total War, both Japan and the United States are characterized as often
suspecting the other side of “cunning” and “crafty” behavior, and President Roosevelt is noted
as consistently holding an “anti-Japanese” attitude. These attitudes led to irrational fears; for
example, Barnhart notes that Roosevelt feared a Japanese attack on the West Coast to the extent
that he had crabbing operations checked for the possibility that the Japanese might use them as
bases for war. Japan, too, based a number of decisions on misperceptions of the stance of the
other side; for instance, it believed for a time that the Draft Understanding was a formal United
States policy position, and thus changed its estimate of the probability of war with the United
States, leading to confidence in more aggressive behavior. Barnhart demonstrates that racism
and misunderstandings thus contributed to the policies of the time period in question, but such
a nod to the role of racism and misperception in policy is curious when his argument neglects
to explain the 7 possible of role of racism as justification for forcible economic expansion of
Japan. In conclusion, Japan Prepares for Total War is an economic history, one that serves its
stated purpose of contributing to an understanding of how Japan’s economic concerns and
inter-service rivalries contributed to bringing about the Pacific War. Discussion of Japanese
paternalism or racism in the pursuit of autarky is largely avoided by Barnhart, and this
avoidance detracts to a small extent from the explanatory power of economic vulnerability and
internal political dynamics as the causal variables in Japanese imperialism and attack on the
United States. Perhaps Barnhart is merely trying to achieve objectivity and avoid a
condemnatory tone, but in failing to question the legitimacy of Japan’s special right to control
the rest of Asia, he misses the opportunity to explain the role of the values and attitudes that
supposedly lent justification to Japan’s right to cruelly exploit its Asian neighbors. Despite this
criticism, Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941 offers
a detailed and thought provoking account of the ironies of US-Japan relations and mistakes in
the years preceding the Pacific War.
In Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941, Michael A.
Barnhart chronicles the history of Japan’s futile search for autarky in the years leading to the
Pacific War.1 In examining the vital linkage between economics and national security in this
period, Barnhart makes the argument that the perception of economic vulnerability as the main
security issue facing Japan, combined with bureaucratic politics in the form of army-navy inter-
service rivalries, led directly to both the impulse for empire in resource-rich mainland Asia and
the attack on Pearl Harbor. However, Barnhart’s history charts Japan’s search for economic
security without explaining its justification for and entitlement to seizing the resources and land
of others, often brutally so. As such, the sterility of Japan Prepares for Total War downplays
the role of racist attitudes and cultural myths in engendering the events described. Nonetheless,
with strong evidentiary support Barnhart makes a compelling case for the ascendancy of
economic considerations and bureaucratic politics as the causal factors in Japan’s attack of the
United States on December 7th, 1941. Barnhart posits that Japan’s interpretation of the lessons
of World War I drove its leaders to view autarky as the basis for grand strategic planning. After
all, Germany, possessor of a stronger military than its conquerors, had succumbed to defeat in
WWI because it lacked an industrial base able to mobilize to a degree freeing it from economic
dependence on other nations. Such dependence creates vulnerability because the dependent
nation is subject to the whims and economic pressure of those nations on which it depends.
Japan had defeated Western power Russia in the Sino-Soviet conflict 2 of 1904-1905, but its
status as a resource-poor nation caused a number of influential civilian elites and military
officers to become advocates of “total war,” or the national capacity to not only wage war with
strong military forces but with the economic capability to supply all needed war materiel. Two
essential elements were necessary for this plan to succeed in establishing autarky and thus
security: a peace of at least five years with the hegemonic United States, and natural resources
such as iron and oil. These material resources could be had on the Asian mainland, specifically
in Manchuria and subsequently in China proper. As Barnhart points out, the Japanese chose to
forcibly acquire these resources from its mainland neighbors, and this course of action brought
it into conflict with the free trade philosophy and Open Door policy of the United States.
Japan’s course to national mobilization and self-sufficiency included the creation of a puppet
state for the economic exploitation of Manchuria; Manchukuo was created in 1932 in concert
with Japan’s first long-term mobilization plan. After “rational mobilization” of the domestic
economy, Japan’s increasingly imperial interests turned to China while the military’s share of
the budget rose to 45 percent. In 1937 Japanese forces commenced what Barnhart concededly
calls the “China Incident,” in which China and its resources were claimed by Japan under the
guise of establishing a Japanese-run corporation for economic development of the region.
Barnhart adeptly points out the ironies in Japan’s fight to acquire the Chinese mainland as a
strategic resource. The original total war proponents understood the threat to security that
belligerence in China caused for Japan: the United States, in defending the Open Door policy
in China, might deny Japan the indispensable resources like 3 machine tools that it required to
achieve self-sufficiency. Additionally, Japan’s domestic economy and citizenry were greatly
strained in what Barnhart terms the “bitter mortgage” of funding the efforts of empire in China.
Barnhart therefore argues that Japan’s aggressive imperial activities on the Asian mainland
were counterproductive in its quest for autarky: they threatened the necessary peace with the
United States and came at extreme costs to the Japanese nation. Japan Prepares for Total War
also contends that bureaucratic politics, specifically the competing interests of Japan’s army
and navy, played a significant role in shaping policy and determining the sequence of events
leading to the Pacific War. In bureaucratic politics, the players in a government bargain and
compete according to their organizational interests, resulting in policy that is not the product
of a single rational decision but is instead an amalgam of the visions and choices of the players
involved.2 The army and navy in pre-WWII Japan were both strong players in compelling the
nation’s political leaders to allocate resources according to their perceived needs; Barnhart
offers a number of examples of how their economic demands for strategic resources like iron
and oil led to further pressures to expand the Japanese empire in order to acquire such goods.
Additionally, Barnhart takes the position that differing strategic conceptions of how to best
approach the Southward Advance to commandeer the Dutch and French colonies of Southeast
Asia fed a growing inter-service rivalry. This rivalry between the Imperial army and Imperial
navy overshadowed rational considerations of the diplomatic and economic ramifications of
the United States’ reaction to aggressive Japanese imperialism as a means of achieving autarky.
Barnhart documents that the navy in 4 particular instituted a practice of exchanging “more
vigorous foreign policies” for greater resource allocations of strategic materials, and he argues
that the military as a whole served as the “engine of real change” in Japanese policy with regard
to economic expansion as a means of achieving national security. The quest of each service to
outbid the other in acquisition of strategic materials therefore led to the diversion of goods and
funds from exports and the domestic economy to meet military demands. It also led to the
commercial pressures the United States somewhat ironically imposed to punish Japan for its
imperialist imposition and attempt to create a sphere of economic and political influence in
mainland Asia. Indeed, the economic measures that the United States adopted in Japan’s
interwar years to stem the flow of Japanese aggression exacerbated the international situation
because the Japanese elites in power at various points in the course to war were either unwilling
to abandon mobilization plans or unable to do so because of military pressures and demands.
The moral sanctions and embargoes on goods such as aluminum and aviation fuel became
progressively steeper as Japan sought more territory and strategic resources in Asia. Finally,
the United States decided to freeze Japanese assets, and that freeze quickly morphed into full
embargo. Barnhart makes the point that this decision reflected an unshakable belief on the part
of United States leaders that Japan could not be deterred in the Southward Advance but might
be slowed by even more drastic economic measures. He attributes the Japanese response, to
push on with the advance, to the two factors he assigns ultimate importance in determining the
outcome of the clash between the two powers: economic motivations and bureaucratic politics.
Japan’s grand strategic motivation was the pursuit of autarky, and Barnhart argues that the July
2nd decisions for how to best achieve that goal were an amalgam of the opposing viewpoints
of the army 5 and navy, resulting in decisions that were rational in that they were the only
politically possible decisions within the Japanese government of the time. Despite Barnhart’s
strengths in precisely documenting the changing economic condition of Japan in the interwar
years and how its internal political dynamics and strategy shaped its path to war, Japan Prepares
for Total War fails to address the cultural attitudes and myths that enabled its feelings of
entitlement in the region. For example, scholars such as John Dower have suggested that
cultural myths like that of Japanese descent from goddess Amaterasu Omikami were used as
the psychological motivation for mobilizing the Japanese people and justifying horrific actions
against other Asian peoples in the name of Japan’s economic interests.3 Such cultural myths
identified Japan and the Japanese people as holding a unique, predetermined status as the
chosen natural rulers of Asia by virtue of their special descent from the true gods. Barnhart
identifies the primary motivation of Japan in its imperialist pursuits as strategic resource
acquisition. While his application of economic theory has wide explanatory power in the
actions that the Japanese took in the pursuit of autarky, it does not explain why they felt entitled
to or justified in their abuse of the territorial and human rights of other Asians. Furthermore,
Barnhart is careful to avoid overt statement of the brutality of the Japanese military in
imperialist “incidents.” For example, in the attack against Nanking that many scholars have
characterized as rife with atrocities, Barnhart comments that it was an “unbounded military
success;” his only concession to its putative unusual brutality is that the State Department
condemned it as “contrary to the principles of law and humanity.” Although it is perhaps
common to dehumanize an enemy in war and thus Barnhart might choose to leave discussions
of Japanese brutality to other scholars 6 because it is common to dehumanize an enemy in war,
but he could strengthen his argument for economic motivations by discussing how a feeling of
racial, national or cultural superiority played a role in justifying Japanese entitlement to control
of the lands and resources of others. Moreover, justification for such Japanese positions as the
Amau Doctrine, which claimed the Japanese right to supervise economic development of China
and barred all other nations from that right, was clearly based on more than Japanese economic
need, as it claimed Japan had a special right to control China, indicating a feeling of either
extreme paternalism or inherent superiority to China. While racist cultural myths are largely
ignored by Barnhart, racism and misperception in international diplomacy are touched on as
factors in the myriad misunderstandings that occurred between Japan and the United States. In
Japan Prepares for Total War, both Japan and the United States are characterized as often
suspecting the other side of “cunning” and “crafty” behavior, and President Roosevelt is noted
as consistently holding an “anti-Japanese” attitude. These attitudes led to irrational fears; for
example, Barnhart notes that Roosevelt feared a Japanese attack on the West Coast to the extent
that he had crabbing operations checked for the possibility that the Japanese might use them as
bases for war. Japan, too, based a number of decisions on misperceptions of the stance of the
other side; for instance, it believed for a time that the Draft Understanding was a formal United
States policy position, and thus changed its estimate of the probability of war with the United
States, leading to confidence in more aggressive behavior. Barnhart demonstrates that racism
and misunderstandings thus contributed to the policies of the time period in question, but such
a nod to the role of racism and misperception in policy is curious when his argument neglects
to explain the 7 possible of role of racism as justification for forcible economic expansion of
Japan. In conclusion, Japan Prepares for Total War is an economic history, one that serves its
stated purpose of contributing to an understanding of how Japan’s economic concerns and
inter-service rivalries contributed to bringing about the Pacific War. Discussion of Japanese
paternalism or racism in the pursuit of autarky is largely avoided by Barnhart, and this
avoidance detracts to a small extent from the explanatory power of economic vulnerability and
internal political dynamics as the causal variables in Japanese imperialism and attack on the
United States. Perhaps Barnhart is merely trying to achieve objectivity and avoid a
condemnatory tone, but in failing to question the legitimacy of Japan’s special right to control
the rest of Asia, he misses the opportunity to explain the role of the values and attitudes that
supposedly lent justification to Japan’s right to cruelly exploit its Asian neighbors. Despite this
criticism, Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941 offers
a detailed and thought provoking account of the ironies of US-Japan relations and mistakes in
the years preceding the Pacific War.
In Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941, Michael A.
Barnhart chronicles the history of Japan’s futile search for autarky in the years leading to the
Pacific War.1 In examining the vital linkage between economics and national security in this
period, Barnhart makes the argument that the perception of economic vulnerability as the main
security issue facing Japan, combined with bureaucratic politics in the form of army-navy inter-
service rivalries, led directly to both the impulse for empire in resource-rich mainland Asia and
the attack on Pearl Harbor. However, Barnhart’s history charts Japan’s search for economic
security without explaining its justification for and entitlement to seizing the resources and land
of others, often brutally so. As such, the sterility of Japan Prepares for Total War downplays
the role of racist attitudes and cultural myths in engendering the events described. Nonetheless,
with strong evidentiary support Barnhart makes a compelling case for the ascendancy of
economic considerations and bureaucratic politics as the causal factors in Japan’s attack of the
United States on December 7th, 1941. Barnhart posits that Japan’s interpretation of the lessons
of World War I drove its leaders to view autarky as the basis for grand strategic planning. After
all, Germany, possessor of a stronger military than its conquerors, had succumbed to defeat in
WWI because it lacked an industrial base able to mobilize to a degree freeing it from economic
dependence on other nations. Such dependence creates vulnerability because the dependent
nation is subject to the whims and economic pressure of those nations on which it depends.
Japan had defeated Western power Russia in the Sino-Soviet conflict 2 of 1904-1905, but its
status as a resource-poor nation caused a number of influential civilian elites and military
officers to become advocates of “total war,” or the national capacity to not only wage war with
strong military forces but with the economic capability to supply all needed war materiel. Two
essential elements were necessary for this plan to succeed in establishing autarky and thus
security: a peace of at least five years with the hegemonic United States, and natural resources
such as iron and oil. These material resources could be had on the Asian mainland, specifically
in Manchuria and subsequently in China proper. As Barnhart points out, the Japanese chose to
forcibly acquire these resources from its mainland neighbors, and this course of action brought
it into conflict with the free trade philosophy and Open Door policy of the United States.
Japan’s course to national mobilization and self-sufficiency included the creation of a puppet
state for the economic exploitation of Manchuria; Manchukuo was created in 1932 in concert
with Japan’s first long-term mobilization plan. After “rational mobilization” of the domestic
economy, Japan’s increasingly imperial interests turned to China while the military’s share of
the budget rose to 45 percent. In 1937 Japanese forces commenced what Barnhart concededly
calls the “China Incident,” in which China and its resources were claimed by Japan under the
guise of establishing a Japanese-run corporation for economic development of the region.
Barnhart adeptly points out the ironies in Japan’s fight to acquire the Chinese mainland as a
strategic resource. The original total war proponents understood the threat to security that
belligerence in China caused for Japan: the United States, in defending the Open Door policy
in China, might deny Japan the indispensable resources like 3 machine tools that it required to
achieve self-sufficiency. Additionally, Japan’s domestic economy and citizenry were greatly
strained in what Barnhart terms the “bitter mortgage” of funding the efforts of empire in China.
Barnhart therefore argues that Japan’s aggressive imperial activities on the Asian mainland
were counterproductive in its quest for autarky: they threatened the necessary peace with the
United States and came at extreme costs to the Japanese nation. Japan Prepares for Total War
also contends that bureaucratic politics, specifically the competing interests of Japan’s army
and navy, played a significant role in shaping policy and determining the sequence of events
leading to the Pacific War. In bureaucratic politics, the players in a government bargain and
compete according to their organizational interests, resulting in policy that is not the product
of a single rational decision but is instead an amalgam of the visions and choices of the players
involved.2 The army and navy in pre-WWII Japan were both strong players in compelling the
nation’s political leaders to allocate resources according to their perceived needs; Barnhart
offers a number of examples of how their economic demands for strategic resources like iron
and oil led to further pressures to expand the Japanese empire in order to acquire such goods.
Additionally, Barnhart takes the position that differing strategic conceptions of how to best
approach the Southward Advance to commandeer the Dutch and French colonies of Southeast
Asia fed a growing inter-service rivalry. This rivalry between the Imperial army and Imperial
navy overshadowed rational considerations of the diplomatic and economic ramifications of
the United States’ reaction to aggressive Japanese imperialism as a means of achieving autarky.
Barnhart documents that the navy in 4 particular instituted a practice of exchanging “more
vigorous foreign policies” for greater resource allocations of strategic materials, and he argues
that the military as a whole served as the “engine of real change” in Japanese policy with regard
to economic expansion as a means of achieving national security. The quest of each service to
outbid the other in acquisition of strategic materials therefore led to the diversion of goods and
funds from exports and the domestic economy to meet military demands. It also led to the
commercial pressures the United States somewhat ironically imposed to punish Japan for its
imperialist imposition and attempt to create a sphere of economic and political influence in
mainland Asia. Indeed, the economic measures that the United States adopted in Japan’s
interwar years to stem the flow of Japanese aggression exacerbated the international situation
because the Japanese elites in power at various points in the course to war were either unwilling
to abandon mobilization plans or unable to do so because of military pressures and demands.
The moral sanctions and embargoes on goods such as aluminum and aviation fuel became
progressively steeper as Japan sought more territory and strategic resources in Asia. Finally,
the United States decided to freeze Japanese assets, and that freeze quickly morphed into full
embargo. Barnhart makes the point that this decision reflected an unshakable belief on the part
of United States leaders that Japan could not be deterred in the Southward Advance but might
be slowed by even more drastic economic measures. He attributes the Japanese response, to
push on with the advance, to the two factors he assigns ultimate importance in determining the
outcome of the clash between the two powers: economic motivations and bureaucratic politics.
Japan’s grand strategic motivation was the pursuit of autarky, and Barnhart argues that the July
2nd decisions for how to best achieve that goal were an amalgam of the opposing viewpoints
of the army 5 and navy, resulting in decisions that were rational in that they were the only
politically possible decisions within the Japanese government of the time. Despite Barnhart’s
strengths in precisely documenting the changing economic condition of Japan in the interwar
years and how its internal political dynamics and strategy shaped its path to war, Japan Prepares
for Total War fails to address the cultural attitudes and myths that enabled its feelings of
entitlement in the region. For example, scholars such as John Dower have suggested that
cultural myths like that of Japanese descent from goddess Amaterasu Omikami were used as
the psychological motivation for mobilizing the Japanese people and justifying horrific actions
against other Asian peoples in the name of Japan’s economic interests.3 Such cultural myths
identified Japan and the Japanese people as holding a unique, predetermined status as the
chosen natural rulers of Asia by virtue of their special descent from the true gods. Barnhart
identifies the primary motivation of Japan in its imperialist pursuits as strategic resource
acquisition. While his application of economic theory has wide explanatory power in the
actions that the Japanese took in the pursuit of autarky, it does not explain why they felt entitled
to or justified in their abuse of the territorial and human rights of other Asians. Furthermore,
Barnhart is careful to avoid overt statement of the brutality of the Japanese military in
imperialist “incidents.” For example, in the attack against Nanking that many scholars have
characterized as rife with atrocities, Barnhart comments that it was an “unbounded military
success;” his only concession to its putative unusual brutality is that the State Department
condemned it as “contrary to the principles of law and humanity.” Although it is perhaps
common to dehumanize an enemy in war and thus Barnhart might choose to leave discussions
of Japanese brutality to other scholars 6 because it is common to dehumanize an enemy in war,
but he could strengthen his argument for economic motivations by discussing how a feeling of
racial, national or cultural superiority played a role in justifying Japanese entitlement to control
of the lands and resources of others. Moreover, justification for such Japanese positions as the
Amau Doctrine, which claimed the Japanese right to supervise economic development of China
and barred all other nations from that right, was clearly based on more than Japanese economic
need, as it claimed Japan had a special right to control China, indicating a feeling of either
extreme paternalism or inherent superiority to China. While racist cultural myths are largely
ignored by Barnhart, racism and misperception in international diplomacy are touched on as
factors in the myriad misunderstandings that occurred between Japan and the United States. In
Japan Prepares for Total War, both Japan and the United States are characterized as often
suspecting the other side of “cunning” and “crafty” behavior, and President Roosevelt is noted
as consistently holding an “anti-Japanese” attitude. These attitudes led to irrational fears; for
example, Barnhart notes that Roosevelt feared a Japanese attack on the West Coast to the extent
that he had crabbing operations checked for the possibility that the Japanese might use them as
bases for war. Japan, too, based a number of decisions on misperceptions of the stance of the
other side; for instance, it believed for a time that the Draft Understanding was a formal United
States policy position, and thus changed its estimate of the probability of war with the United
States, leading to confidence in more aggressive behavior. Barnhart demonstrates that racism
and misunderstandings thus contributed to the policies of the time period in question, but such
a nod to the role of racism and misperception in policy is curious when his argument neglects
to explain the 7 possible of role of racism as justification for forcible economic expansion of
Japan. In conclusion, Japan Prepares for Total War is an economic history, one that serves its
stated purpose of contributing to an understanding of how Japan’s economic concerns and
inter-service rivalries contributed to bringing about the Pacific War. Discussion of Japanese
paternalism or racism in the pursuit of autarky is largely avoided by Barnhart, and this
avoidance detracts to a small extent from the explanatory power of economic vulnerability and
internal political dynamics as the causal variables in Japanese imperialism and attack on the
United States. Perhaps Barnhart is merely trying to achieve objectivity and avoid a
condemnatory tone, but in failing to question the legitimacy of Japan’s special right to control
the rest of Asia, he misses the opportunity to explain the role of the values and attitudes that
supposedly lent justification to Japan’s right to cruelly exploit its Asian neighbors. Despite this
criticism, Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941 offers
a detailed and thought provoking account of the ironies of US-Japan relations and mistakes in
the years preceding the Pacific War.
In Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941, Michael A.
Barnhart chronicles the history of Japan’s futile search for autarky in the years leading to the
Pacific War.1 In examining the vital linkage between economics and national security in this
period, Barnhart makes the argument that the perception of economic vulnerability as the main
security issue facing Japan, combined with bureaucratic politics in the form of army-navy inter-
service rivalries, led directly to both the impulse for empire in resource-rich mainland Asia and
the attack on Pearl Harbor. However, Barnhart’s history charts Japan’s search for economic
security without explaining its justification for and entitlement to seizing the resources and land
of others, often brutally so. As such, the sterility of Japan Prepares for Total War downplays
the role of racist attitudes and cultural myths in engendering the events described. Nonetheless,
with strong evidentiary support Barnhart makes a compelling case for the ascendancy of
economic considerations and bureaucratic politics as the causal factors in Japan’s attack of the
United States on December 7th, 1941. Barnhart posits that Japan’s interpretation of the lessons
of World War I drove its leaders to view autarky as the basis for grand strategic planning. After
all, Germany, possessor of a stronger military than its conquerors, had succumbed to defeat in
WWI because it lacked an industrial base able to mobilize to a degree freeing it from economic
dependence on other nations. Such dependence creates vulnerability because the dependent
nation is subject to the whims and economic pressure of those nations on which it depends.
Japan had defeated Western power Russia in the Sino-Soviet conflict 2 of 1904-1905, but its
status as a resource-poor nation caused a number of influential civilian elites and military
officers to become advocates of “total war,” or the national capacity to not only wage war with
strong military forces but with the economic capability to supply all needed war materiel. Two
essential elements were necessary for this plan to succeed in establishing autarky and thus
security: a peace of at least five years with the hegemonic United States, and natural resources
such as iron and oil. These material resources could be had on the Asian mainland, specifically
in Manchuria and subsequently in China proper. As Barnhart points out, the Japanese chose to
forcibly acquire these resources from its mainland neighbors, and this course of action brought
it into conflict with the free trade philosophy and Open Door policy of the United States.
Japan’s course to national mobilization and self-sufficiency included the creation of a puppet
state for the economic exploitation of Manchuria; Manchukuo was created in 1932 in concert
with Japan’s first long-term mobilization plan. After “rational mobilization” of the domestic
economy, Japan’s increasingly imperial interests turned to China while the military’s share of
the budget rose to 45 percent. In 1937 Japanese forces commenced what Barnhart concededly
calls the “China Incident,” in which China and its resources were claimed by Japan under the
guise of establishing a Japanese-run corporation for economic development of the region.
Barnhart adeptly points out the ironies in Japan’s fight to acquire the Chinese mainland as a
strategic resource. The original total war proponents understood the threat to security that
belligerence in China caused for Japan: the United States, in defending the Open Door policy
in China, might deny Japan the indispensable resources like 3 machine tools that it required to
achieve self-sufficiency. Additionally, Japan’s domestic economy and citizenry were greatly
strained in what Barnhart terms the “bitter mortgage” of funding the efforts of empire in China.
Barnhart therefore argues that Japan’s aggressive imperial activities on the Asian mainland
were counterproductive in its quest for autarky: they threatened the necessary peace with the
United States and came at extreme costs to the Japanese nation. Japan Prepares for Total War
also contends that bureaucratic politics, specifically the competing interests of Japan’s army
and navy, played a significant role in shaping policy and determining the sequence of events
leading to the Pacific War. In bureaucratic politics, the players in a government bargain and
compete according to their organizational interests, resulting in policy that is not the product
of a single rational decision but is instead an amalgam of the visions and choices of the players
involved.2 The army and navy in pre-WWII Japan were both strong players in compelling the
nation’s political leaders to allocate resources according to their perceived needs; Barnhart
offers a number of examples of how their economic demands for strategic resources like iron
and oil led to further pressures to expand the Japanese empire in order to acquire such goods.
Additionally, Barnhart takes the position that differing strategic conceptions of how to best
approach the Southward Advance to commandeer the Dutch and French colonies of Southeast
Asia fed a growing inter-service rivalry. This rivalry between the Imperial army and Imperial
navy overshadowed rational considerations of the diplomatic and economic ramifications of
the United States’ reaction to aggressive Japanese imperialism as a means of achieving autarky.
Barnhart documents that the navy in 4 particular instituted a practice of exchanging “more
vigorous foreign policies” for greater resource allocations of strategic materials, and he argues
that the military as a whole served as the “engine of real change” in Japanese policy with regard
to economic expansion as a means of achieving national security. The quest of each service to
outbid the other in acquisition of strategic materials therefore led to the diversion of goods and
funds from exports and the domestic economy to meet military demands. It also led to the
commercial pressures the United States somewhat ironically imposed to punish Japan for its
imperialist imposition and attempt to create a sphere of economic and political influence in
mainland Asia. Indeed, the economic measures that the United States adopted in Japan’s
interwar years to stem the flow of Japanese aggression exacerbated the international situation
because the Japanese elites in power at various points in the course to war were either unwilling
to abandon mobilization plans or unable to do so because of military pressures and demands.
The moral sanctions and embargoes on goods such as aluminum and aviation fuel became
progressively steeper as Japan sought more territory and strategic resources in Asia. Finally,
the United States decided to freeze Japanese assets, and that freeze quickly morphed into full
embargo. Barnhart makes the point that this decision reflected an unshakable belief on the part
of United States leaders that Japan could not be deterred in the Southward Advance but might
be slowed by even more drastic economic measures. He attributes the Japanese response, to
push on with the advance, to the two factors he assigns ultimate importance in determining the
outcome of the clash between the two powers: economic motivations and bureaucratic politics.
Japan’s grand strategic motivation was the pursuit of autarky, and Barnhart argues that the July
2nd decisions for how to best achieve that goal were an amalgam of the opposing viewpoints
of the army 5 and navy, resulting in decisions that were rational in that they were the only
politically possible decisions within the Japanese government of the time. Despite Barnhart’s
strengths in precisely documenting the changing economic condition of Japan in the interwar
years and how its internal political dynamics and strategy shaped its path to war, Japan Prepares
for Total War fails to address the cultural attitudes and myths that enabled its feelings of
entitlement in the region. For example, scholars such as John Dower have suggested that
cultural myths like that of Japanese descent from goddess Amaterasu Omikami were used as
the psychological motivation for mobilizing the Japanese people and justifying horrific actions
against other Asian peoples in the name of Japan’s economic interests.3 Such cultural myths
identified Japan and the Japanese people as holding a unique, predetermined status as the
chosen natural rulers of Asia by virtue of their special descent from the true gods. Barnhart
identifies the primary motivation of Japan in its imperialist pursuits as strategic resource
acquisition. While his application of economic theory has wide explanatory power in the
actions that the Japanese took in the pursuit of autarky, it does not explain why they felt entitled
to or justified in their abuse of the territorial and human rights of other Asians. Furthermore,
Barnhart is careful to avoid overt statement of the brutality of the Japanese military in
imperialist “incidents.” For example, in the attack against Nanking that many scholars have
characterized as rife with atrocities, Barnhart comments that it was an “unbounded military
success;” his only concession to its putative unusual brutality is that the State Department
condemned it as “contrary to the principles of law and humanity.” Although it is perhaps
common to dehumanize an enemy in war and thus Barnhart might choose to leave discussions
of Japanese brutality to other scholars 6 because it is common to dehumanize an enemy in war,
but he could strengthen his argument for economic motivations by discussing how a feeling of
racial, national or cultural superiority played a role in justifying Japanese entitlement to control
of the lands and resources of others. Moreover, justification for such Japanese positions as the
Amau Doctrine, which claimed the Japanese right to supervise economic development of China
and barred all other nations from that right, was clearly based on more than Japanese economic
need, as it claimed Japan had a special right to control China, indicating a feeling of either
extreme paternalism or inherent superiority to China. While racist cultural myths are largely
ignored by Barnhart, racism and misperception in international diplomacy are touched on as
factors in the myriad misunderstandings that occurred between Japan and the United States. In
Japan Prepares for Total War, both Japan and the United States are characterized as often
suspecting the other side of “cunning” and “crafty” behavior, and President Roosevelt is noted
as consistently holding an “anti-Japanese” attitude. These attitudes led to irrational fears; for
example, Barnhart notes that Roosevelt feared a Japanese attack on the West Coast to the extent
that he had crabbing operations checked for the possibility that the Japanese might use them as
bases for war. Japan, too, based a number of decisions on misperceptions of the stance of the
other side; for instance, it believed for a time that the Draft Understanding was a formal United
States policy position, and thus changed its estimate of the probability of war with the United
States, leading to confidence in more aggressive behavior. Barnhart demonstrates that racism
and misunderstandings thus contributed to the policies of the time period in question, but such
a nod to the role of racism and misperception in policy is curious when his argument neglects
to explain the 7 possible of role of racism as justification for forcible economic expansion of
Japan. In conclusion, Japan Prepares for Total War is an economic history, one that serves its
stated purpose of contributing to an understanding of how Japan’s economic concerns and
inter-service rivalries contributed to bringing about the Pacific War. Discussion of Japanese
paternalism or racism in the pursuit of autarky is largely avoided by Barnhart, and this
avoidance detracts to a small extent from the explanatory power of economic vulnerability and
internal political dynamics as the causal variables in Japanese imperialism and attack on the
United States. Perhaps Barnhart is merely trying to achieve objectivity and avoid a
condemnatory tone, but in failing to question the legitimacy of Japan’s special right to control
the rest of Asia, he misses the opportunity to explain the role of the values and attitudes that
supposedly lent justification to Japan’s right to cruelly exploit its Asian neighbors. Despite this
criticism, Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941 offers
a detailed and thought provoking account of the ironies of US-Japan relations and mistakes in
the years preceding the Pacific War.
In Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941, Michael A.
Barnhart chronicles the history of Japan’s futile search for autarky in the years leading to the
Pacific War.1 In examining the vital linkage between economics and national security in this
period, Barnhart makes the argument that the perception of economic vulnerability as the main
security issue facing Japan, combined with bureaucratic politics in the form of army-navy inter-
service rivalries, led directly to both the impulse for empire in resource-rich mainland Asia and
the attack on Pearl Harbor. However, Barnhart’s history charts Japan’s search for economic
security without explaining its justification for and entitlement to seizing the resources and land
of others, often brutally so. As such, the sterility of Japan Prepares for Total War downplays
the role of racist attitudes and cultural myths in engendering the events described. Nonetheless,
with strong evidentiary support Barnhart makes a compelling case for the ascendancy of
economic considerations and bureaucratic politics as the causal factors in Japan’s attack of the
United States on December 7th, 1941. Barnhart posits that Japan’s interpretation of the lessons
of World War I drove its leaders to view autarky as the basis for grand strategic planning. After
all, Germany, possessor of a stronger military than its conquerors, had succumbed to defeat in
WWI because it lacked an industrial base able to mobilize to a degree freeing it from economic
dependence on other nations. Such dependence creates vulnerability because the dependent
nation is subject to the whims and economic pressure of those nations on which it depends.
Japan had defeated Western power Russia in the Sino-Soviet conflict 2 of 1904-1905, but its
status as a resource-poor nation caused a number of influential civilian elites and military
officers to become advocates of “total war,” or the national capacity to not only wage war with
strong military forces but with the economic capability to supply all needed war materiel. Two
essential elements were necessary for this plan to succeed in establishing autarky and thus
security: a peace of at least five years with the hegemonic United States, and natural resources
such as iron and oil. These material resources could be had on the Asian mainland, specifically
in Manchuria and subsequently in China proper. As Barnhart points out, the Japanese chose to
forcibly acquire these resources from its mainland neighbors, and this course of action brought
it into conflict with the free trade philosophy and Open Door policy of the United States.
Japan’s course to national mobilization and self-sufficiency included the creation of a puppet
state for the economic exploitation of Manchuria; Manchukuo was created in 1932 in concert
with Japan’s first long-term mobilization plan. After “rational mobilization” of the domestic
economy, Japan’s increasingly imperial interests turned to China while the military’s share of
the budget rose to 45 percent. In 1937 Japanese forces commenced what Barnhart concededly
calls the “China Incident,” in which China and its resources were claimed by Japan under the
guise of establishing a Japanese-run corporation for economic development of the region.
Barnhart adeptly points out the ironies in Japan’s fight to acquire the Chinese mainland as a
strategic resource. The original total war proponents understood the threat to security that
belligerence in China caused for Japan: the United States, in defending the Open Door policy
in China, might deny Japan the indispensable resources like 3 machine tools that it required to
achieve self-sufficiency. Additionally, Japan’s domestic economy and citizenry were greatly
strained in what Barnhart terms the “bitter mortgage” of funding the efforts of empire in China.
Barnhart therefore argues that Japan’s aggressive imperial activities on the Asian mainland
were counterproductive in its quest for autarky: they threatened the necessary peace with the
United States and came at extreme costs to the Japanese nation. Japan Prepares for Total War
also contends that bureaucratic politics, specifically the competing interests of Japan’s army
and navy, played a significant role in shaping policy and determining the sequence of events
leading to the Pacific War. In bureaucratic politics, the players in a government bargain and
compete according to their organizational interests, resulting in policy that is not the product
of a single rational decision but is instead an amalgam of the visions and choices of the players
involved.2 The army and navy in pre-WWII Japan were both strong players in compelling the
nation’s political leaders to allocate resources according to their perceived needs; Barnhart
offers a number of examples of how their economic demands for strategic resources like iron
and oil led to further pressures to expand the Japanese empire in order to acquire such goods.
Additionally, Barnhart takes the position that differing strategic conceptions of how to best
approach the Southward Advance to commandeer the Dutch and French colonies of Southeast
Asia fed a growing inter-service rivalry. This rivalry between the Imperial army and Imperial
navy overshadowed rational considerations of the diplomatic and economic ramifications of
the United States’ reaction to aggressive Japanese imperialism as a means of achieving autarky.
Barnhart documents that the navy in 4 particular instituted a practice of exchanging “more
vigorous foreign policies” for greater resource allocations of strategic materials, and he argues
that the military as a whole served as the “engine of real change” in Japanese policy with regard
to economic expansion as a means of achieving national security. The quest of each service to
outbid the other in acquisition of strategic materials therefore led to the diversion of goods and
funds from exports and the domestic economy to meet military demands. It also led to the
commercial pressures the United States somewhat ironically imposed to punish Japan for its
imperialist imposition and attempt to create a sphere of economic and political influence in
mainland Asia. Indeed, the economic measures that the United States adopted in Japan’s
interwar years to stem the flow of Japanese aggression exacerbated the international situation
because the Japanese elites in power at various points in the course to war were either unwilling
to abandon mobilization plans or unable to do so because of military pressures and demands.
The moral sanctions and embargoes on goods such as aluminum and aviation fuel became
progressively steeper as Japan sought more territory and strategic resources in Asia. Finally,
the United States decided to freeze Japanese assets, and that freeze quickly morphed into full
embargo. Barnhart makes the point that this decision reflected an unshakable belief on the part
of United States leaders that Japan could not be deterred in the Southward Advance but might
be slowed by even more drastic economic measures. He attributes the Japanese response, to
push on with the advance, to the two factors he assigns ultimate importance in determining the
outcome of the clash between the two powers: economic motivations and bureaucratic politics.
Japan’s grand strategic motivation was the pursuit of autarky, and Barnhart argues that the July
2nd decisions for how to best achieve that goal were an amalgam of the opposing viewpoints
of the army 5 and navy, resulting in decisions that were rational in that they were the only
politically possible decisions within the Japanese government of the time. Despite Barnhart’s
strengths in precisely documenting the changing economic condition of Japan in the interwar
years and how its internal political dynamics and strategy shaped its path to war, Japan Prepares
for Total War fails to address the cultural attitudes and myths that enabled its feelings of
entitlement in the region. For example, scholars such as John Dower have suggested that
cultural myths like that of Japanese descent from goddess Amaterasu Omikami were used as
the psychological motivation for mobilizing the Japanese people and justifying horrific actions
against other Asian peoples in the name of Japan’s economic interests.3 Such cultural myths
identified Japan and the Japanese people as holding a unique, predetermined status as the
chosen natural rulers of Asia by virtue of their special descent from the true gods. Barnhart
identifies the primary motivation of Japan in its imperialist pursuits as strategic resource
acquisition. While his application of economic theory has wide explanatory power in the
actions that the Japanese took in the pursuit of autarky, it does not explain why they felt entitled
to or justified in their abuse of the territorial and human rights of other Asians. Furthermore,
Barnhart is careful to avoid overt statement of the brutality of the Japanese military in
imperialist “incidents.” For example, in the attack against Nanking that many scholars have
characterized as rife with atrocities, Barnhart comments that it was an “unbounded military
success;” his only concession to its putative unusual brutality is that the State Department
condemned it as “contrary to the principles of law and humanity.” Although it is perhaps
common to dehumanize an enemy in war and thus Barnhart might choose to leave discussions
of Japanese brutality to other scholars 6 because it is common to dehumanize an enemy in war,
but he could strengthen his argument for economic motivations by discussing how a feeling of
racial, national or cultural superiority played a role in justifying Japanese entitlement to control
of the lands and resources of others. Moreover, justification for such Japanese positions as the
Amau Doctrine, which claimed the Japanese right to supervise economic development of China
and barred all other nations from that right, was clearly based on more than Japanese economic
need, as it claimed Japan had a special right to control China, indicating a feeling of either
extreme paternalism or inherent superiority to China. While racist cultural myths are largely
ignored by Barnhart, racism and misperception in international diplomacy are touched on as
factors in the myriad misunderstandings that occurred between Japan and the United States. In
Japan Prepares for Total War, both Japan and the United States are characterized as often
suspecting the other side of “cunning” and “crafty” behavior, and President Roosevelt is noted
as consistently holding an “anti-Japanese” attitude. These attitudes led to irrational fears; for
example, Barnhart notes that Roosevelt feared a Japanese attack on the West Coast to the extent
that he had crabbing operations checked for the possibility that the Japanese might use them as
bases for war. Japan, too, based a number of decisions on misperceptions of the stance of the
other side; for instance, it believed for a time that the Draft Understanding was a formal United
States policy position, and thus changed its estimate of the probability of war with the United
States, leading to confidence in more aggressive behavior. Barnhart demonstrates that racism
and misunderstandings thus contributed to the policies of the time period in question, but such
a nod to the role of racism and misperception in policy is curious when his argument neglects
to explain the 7 possible of role of racism as justification for forcible economic expansion of
Japan. In conclusion, Japan Prepares for Total War is an economic history, one that serves its
stated purpose of contributing to an understanding of how Japan’s economic concerns and
inter-service rivalries contributed to bringing about the Pacific War. Discussion of Japanese
paternalism or racism in the pursuit of autarky is largely avoided by Barnhart, and this
avoidance detracts to a small extent from the explanatory power of economic vulnerability and
internal political dynamics as the causal variables in Japanese imperialism and attack on the
United States. Perhaps Barnhart is merely trying to achieve objectivity and avoid a
condemnatory tone, but in failing to question the legitimacy of Japan’s special right to control
the rest of Asia, he misses the opportunity to explain the role of the values and attitudes that
supposedly lent justification to Japan’s right to cruelly exploit its Asian neighbors. Despite this
criticism, Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941 offers
a detailed and thought provoking account of the ironies of US-Japan relations and mistakes in
the years preceding the Pacific War.
In Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941, Michael A.
Barnhart chronicles the history of Japan’s futile search for autarky in the years leading to the
Pacific War.1 In examining the vital linkage between economics and national security in this
period, Barnhart makes the argument that the perception of economic vulnerability as the main
security issue facing Japan, combined with bureaucratic politics in the form of army-navy inter-
service rivalries, led directly to both the impulse for empire in resource-rich mainland Asia and
the attack on Pearl Harbor. However, Barnhart’s history charts Japan’s search for economic
security without explaining its justification for and entitlement to seizing the resources and land
of others, often brutally so. As such, the sterility of Japan Prepares for Total War downplays
the role of racist attitudes and cultural myths in engendering the events described. Nonetheless,
with strong evidentiary support Barnhart makes a compelling case for the ascendancy of
economic considerations and bureaucratic politics as the causal factors in Japan’s attack of the
United States on December 7th, 1941. Barnhart posits that Japan’s interpretation of the lessons
of World War I drove its leaders to view autarky as the basis for grand strategic planning. After
all, Germany, possessor of a stronger military than its conquerors, had succumbed to defeat in
WWI because it lacked an industrial base able to mobilize to a degree freeing it from economic
dependence on other nations. Such dependence creates vulnerability because the dependent
nation is subject to the whims and economic pressure of those nations on which it depends.
Japan had defeated Western power Russia in the Sino-Soviet conflict 2 of 1904-1905, but its
status as a resource-poor nation caused a number of influential civilian elites and military
officers to become advocates of “total war,” or the national capacity to not only wage war with
strong military forces but with the economic capability to supply all needed war materiel. Two
essential elements were necessary for this plan to succeed in establishing autarky and thus
security: a peace of at least five years with the hegemonic United States, and natural resources
such as iron and oil. These material resources could be had on the Asian mainland, specifically
in Manchuria and subsequently in China proper. As Barnhart points out, the Japanese chose to
forcibly acquire these resources from its mainland neighbors, and this course of action brought
it into conflict with the free trade philosophy and Open Door policy of the United States.
Japan’s course to national mobilization and self-sufficiency included the creation of a puppet
state for the economic exploitation of Manchuria; Manchukuo was created in 1932 in concert
with Japan’s first long-term mobilization plan. After “rational mobilization” of the domestic
economy, Japan’s increasingly imperial interests turned to China while the military’s share of
the budget rose to 45 percent. In 1937 Japanese forces commenced what Barnhart concededly
calls the “China Incident,” in which China and its resources were claimed by Japan under the
guise of establishing a Japanese-run corporation for economic development of the region.
Barnhart adeptly points out the ironies in Japan’s fight to acquire the Chinese mainland as a
strategic resource. The original total war proponents understood the threat to security that
belligerence in China caused for Japan: the United States, in defending the Open Door policy
in China, might deny Japan the indispensable resources like 3 machine tools that it required to
achieve self-sufficiency. Additionally, Japan’s domestic economy and citizenry were greatly
strained in what Barnhart terms the “bitter mortgage” of funding the efforts of empire in China.
Barnhart therefore argues that Japan’s aggressive imperial activities on the Asian mainland
were counterproductive in its quest for autarky: they threatened the necessary peace with the
United States and came at extreme costs to the Japanese nation. Japan Prepares for Total War
also contends that bureaucratic politics, specifically the competing interests of Japan’s army
and navy, played a significant role in shaping policy and determining the sequence of events
leading to the Pacific War. In bureaucratic politics, the players in a government bargain and
compete according to their organizational interests, resulting in policy that is not the product
of a single rational decision but is instead an amalgam of the visions and choices of the players
involved.2 The army and navy in pre-WWII Japan were both strong players in compelling the
nation’s political leaders to allocate resources according to their perceived needs; Barnhart
offers a number of examples of how their economic demands for strategic resources like iron
and oil led to further pressures to expand the Japanese empire in order to acquire such goods.
Additionally, Barnhart takes the position that differing strategic conceptions of how to best
approach the Southward Advance to commandeer the Dutch and French colonies of Southeast
Asia fed a growing inter-service rivalry. This rivalry between the Imperial army and Imperial
navy overshadowed rational considerations of the diplomatic and economic ramifications of
the United States’ reaction to aggressive Japanese imperialism as a means of achieving autarky.
Barnhart documents that the navy in 4 particular instituted a practice of exchanging “more
vigorous foreign policies” for greater resource allocations of strategic materials, and he argues
that the military as a whole served as the “engine of real change” in Japanese policy with regard
to economic expansion as a means of achieving national security. The quest of each service to
outbid the other in acquisition of strategic materials therefore led to the diversion of goods and
funds from exports and the domestic economy to meet military demands. It also led to the
commercial pressures the United States somewhat ironically imposed to punish Japan for its
imperialist imposition and attempt to create a sphere of economic and political influence in
mainland Asia. Indeed, the economic measures that the United States adopted in Japan’s
interwar years to stem the flow of Japanese aggression exacerbated the international situation
because the Japanese elites in power at various points in the course to war were either unwilling
to abandon mobilization plans or unable to do so because of military pressures and demands.
The moral sanctions and embargoes on goods such as aluminum and aviation fuel became
progressively steeper as Japan sought more territory and strategic resources in Asia. Finally,
the United States decided to freeze Japanese assets, and that freeze quickly morphed into full
embargo. Barnhart makes the point that this decision reflected an unshakable belief on the part
of United States leaders that Japan could not be deterred in the Southward Advance but might
be slowed by even more drastic economic measures. He attributes the Japanese response, to
push on with the advance, to the two factors he assigns ultimate importance in determining the
outcome of the clash between the two powers: economic motivations and bureaucratic politics.
Japan’s grand strategic motivation was the pursuit of autarky, and Barnhart argues that the July
2nd decisions for how to best achieve that goal were an amalgam of the opposing viewpoints
of the army 5 and navy, resulting in decisions that were rational in that they were the only
politically possible decisions within the Japanese government of the time. Despite Barnhart’s
strengths in precisely documenting the changing economic condition of Japan in the interwar
years and how its internal political dynamics and strategy shaped its path to war, Japan Prepares
for Total War fails to address the cultural attitudes and myths that enabled its feelings of
entitlement in the region. For example, scholars such as John Dower have suggested that
cultural myths like that of Japanese descent from goddess Amaterasu Omikami were used as
the psychological motivation for mobilizing the Japanese people and justifying horrific actions
against other Asian peoples in the name of Japan’s economic interests.3 Such cultural myths
identified Japan and the Japanese people as holding a unique, predetermined status as the
chosen natural rulers of Asia by virtue of their special descent from the true gods. Barnhart
identifies the primary motivation of Japan in its imperialist pursuits as strategic resource
acquisition. While his application of economic theory has wide explanatory power in the
actions that the Japanese took in the pursuit of autarky, it does not explain why they felt entitled
to or justified in their abuse of the territorial and human rights of other Asians. Furthermore,
Barnhart is careful to avoid overt statement of the brutality of the Japanese military in
imperialist “incidents.” For example, in the attack against Nanking that many scholars have
characterized as rife with atrocities, Barnhart comments that it was an “unbounded military
success;” his only concession to its putative unusual brutality is that the State Department
condemned it as “contrary to the principles of law and humanity.” Although it is perhaps
common to dehumanize an enemy in war and thus Barnhart might choose to leave discussions
of Japanese brutality to other scholars 6 because it is common to dehumanize an enemy in war,
but he could strengthen his argument for economic motivations by discussing how a feeling of
racial, national or cultural superiority played a role in justifying Japanese entitlement to control
of the lands and resources of others. Moreover, justification for such Japanese positions as the
Amau Doctrine, which claimed the Japanese right to supervise economic development of China
and barred all other nations from that right, was clearly based on more than Japanese economic
need, as it claimed Japan had a special right to control China, indicating a feeling of either
extreme paternalism or inherent superiority to China. While racist cultural myths are largely
ignored by Barnhart, racism and misperception in international diplomacy are touched on as
factors in the myriad misunderstandings that occurred between Japan and the United States. In
Japan Prepares for Total War, both Japan and the United States are characterized as often
suspecting the other side of “cunning” and “crafty” behavior, and President Roosevelt is noted
as consistently holding an “anti-Japanese” attitude. These attitudes led to irrational fears; for
example, Barnhart notes that Roosevelt feared a Japanese attack on the West Coast to the extent
that he had crabbing operations checked for the possibility that the Japanese might use them as
bases for war. Japan, too, based a number of decisions on misperceptions of the stance of the
other side; for instance, it believed for a time that the Draft Understanding was a formal United
States policy position, and thus changed its estimate of the probability of war with the United
States, leading to confidence in more aggressive behavior. Barnhart demonstrates that racism
and misunderstandings thus contributed to the policies of the time period in question, but such
a nod to the role of racism and misperception in policy is curious when his argument neglects
to explain the 7 possible of role of racism as justification for forcible economic expansion of
Japan. In conclusion, Japan Prepares for Total War is an economic history, one that serves its
stated purpose of contributing to an understanding of how Japan’s economic concerns and
inter-service rivalries contributed to bringing about the Pacific War. Discussion of Japanese
paternalism or racism in the pursuit of autarky is largely avoided by Barnhart, and this
avoidance detracts to a small extent from the explanatory power of economic vulnerability and
internal political dynamics as the causal variables in Japanese imperialism and attack on the
United States. Perhaps Barnhart is merely trying to achieve objectivity and avoid a
condemnatory tone, but in failing to question the legitimacy of Japan’s special right to control
the rest of Asia, he misses the opportunity to explain the role of the values and attitudes that
supposedly lent justification to Japan’s right to cruelly exploit its Asian neighbors. Despite this
criticism, Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941 offers
a detailed and thought provoking account of the ironies of US-Japan relations and mistakes in
the years preceding the Pacific War.
In Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941, Michael A.
Barnhart chronicles the history of Japan’s futile search for autarky in the years leading to the
Pacific War.1 In examining the vital linkage between economics and national security in this
period, Barnhart makes the argument that the perception of economic vulnerability as the main
security issue facing Japan, combined with bureaucratic politics in the form of army-navy inter-
service rivalries, led directly to both the impulse for empire in resource-rich mainland Asia and
the attack on Pearl Harbor. However, Barnhart’s history charts Japan’s search for economic
security without explaining its justification for and entitlement to seizing the resources and land
of others, often brutally so. As such, the sterility of Japan Prepares for Total War downplays
the role of racist attitudes and cultural myths in engendering the events described. Nonetheless,
with strong evidentiary support Barnhart makes a compelling case for the ascendancy of
economic considerations and bureaucratic politics as the causal factors in Japan’s attack of the
United States on December 7th, 1941. Barnhart posits that Japan’s interpretation of the lessons
of World War I drove its leaders to view autarky as the basis for grand strategic planning. After
all, Germany, possessor of a stronger military than its conquerors, had succumbed to defeat in
WWI because it lacked an industrial base able to mobilize to a degree freeing it from economic
dependence on other nations. Such dependence creates vulnerability because the dependent
nation is subject to the whims and economic pressure of those nations on which it depends.
Japan had defeated Western power Russia in the Sino-Soviet conflict 2 of 1904-1905, but its
status as a resource-poor nation caused a number of influential civilian elites and military
officers to become advocates of “total war,” or the national capacity to not only wage war with
strong military forces but with the economic capability to supply all needed war materiel. Two
essential elements were necessary for this plan to succeed in establishing autarky and thus
security: a peace of at least five years with the hegemonic United States, and natural resources
such as iron and oil. These material resources could be had on the Asian mainland, specifically
in Manchuria and subsequently in China proper. As Barnhart points out, the Japanese chose to
forcibly acquire these resources from its mainland neighbors, and this course of action brought
it into conflict with the free trade philosophy and Open Door policy of the United States.
Japan’s course to national mobilization and self-sufficiency included the creation of a puppet
state for the economic exploitation of Manchuria; Manchukuo was created in 1932 in concert
with Japan’s first long-term mobilization plan. After “rational mobilization” of the domestic
economy, Japan’s increasingly imperial interests turned to China while the military’s share of
the budget rose to 45 percent. In 1937 Japanese forces commenced what Barnhart concededly
calls the “China Incident,” in which China and its resources were claimed by Japan under the
guise of establishing a Japanese-run corporation for economic development of the region.
Barnhart adeptly points out the ironies in Japan’s fight to acquire the Chinese mainland as a
strategic resource. The original total war proponents understood the threat to security that
belligerence in China caused for Japan: the United States, in defending the Open Door policy
in China, might deny Japan the indispensable resources like 3 machine tools that it required to
achieve self-sufficiency. Additionally, Japan’s domestic economy and citizenry were greatly
strained in what Barnhart terms the “bitter mortgage” of funding the efforts of empire in China.
Barnhart therefore argues that Japan’s aggressive imperial activities on the Asian mainland
were counterproductive in its quest for autarky: they threatened the necessary peace with the
United States and came at extreme costs to the Japanese nation. Japan Prepares for Total War
also contends that bureaucratic politics, specifically the competing interests of Japan’s army
and navy, played a significant role in shaping policy and determining the sequence of events
leading to the Pacific War. In bureaucratic politics, the players in a government bargain and
compete according to their organizational interests, resulting in policy that is not the product
of a single rational decision but is instead an amalgam of the visions and choices of the players
involved.2 The army and navy in pre-WWII Japan were both strong players in compelling the
nation’s political leaders to allocate resources according to their perceived needs; Barnhart
offers a number of examples of how their economic demands for strategic resources like iron
and oil led to further pressures to expand the Japanese empire in order to acquire such goods.
Additionally, Barnhart takes the position that differing strategic conceptions of how to best
approach the Southward Advance to commandeer the Dutch and French colonies of Southeast
Asia fed a growing inter-service rivalry. This rivalry between the Imperial army and Imperial
navy overshadowed rational considerations of the diplomatic and economic ramifications of
the United States’ reaction to aggressive Japanese imperialism as a means of achieving autarky.
Barnhart documents that the navy in 4 particular instituted a practice of exchanging “more
vigorous foreign policies” for greater resource allocations of strategic materials, and he argues
that the military as a whole served as the “engine of real change” in Japanese policy with regard
to economic expansion as a means of achieving national security. The quest of each service to
outbid the other in acquisition of strategic materials therefore led to the diversion of goods and
funds from exports and the domestic economy to meet military demands. It also led to the
commercial pressures the United States somewhat ironically imposed to punish Japan for its
imperialist imposition and attempt to create a sphere of economic and political influence in
mainland Asia. Indeed, the economic measures that the United States adopted in Japan’s
interwar years to stem the flow of Japanese aggression exacerbated the international situation
because the Japanese elites in power at various points in the course to war were either unwilling
to abandon mobilization plans or unable to do so because of military pressures and demands.
The moral sanctions and embargoes on goods such as aluminum and aviation fuel became
progressively steeper as Japan sought more territory and strategic resources in Asia. Finally,
the United States decided to freeze Japanese assets, and that freeze quickly morphed into full
embargo. Barnhart makes the point that this decision reflected an unshakable belief on the part
of United States leaders that Japan could not be deterred in the Southward Advance but might
be slowed by even more drastic economic measures. He attributes the Japanese response, to
push on with the advance, to the two factors he assigns ultimate importance in determining the
outcome of the clash between the two powers: economic motivations and bureaucratic politics.
Japan’s grand strategic motivation was the pursuit of autarky, and Barnhart argues that the July
2nd decisions for how to best achieve that goal were an amalgam of the opposing viewpoints
of the army 5 and navy, resulting in decisions that were rational in that they were the only
politically possible decisions within the Japanese government of the time. Despite Barnhart’s
strengths in precisely documenting the changing economic condition of Japan in the interwar
years and how its internal political dynamics and strategy shaped its path to war, Japan Prepares
for Total War fails to address the cultural attitudes and myths that enabled its feelings of
entitlement in the region. For example, scholars such as John Dower have suggested that
cultural myths like that of Japanese descent from goddess Amaterasu Omikami were used as
the psychological motivation for mobilizing the Japanese people and justifying horrific actions
against other Asian peoples in the name of Japan’s economic interests.3 Such cultural myths
identified Japan and the Japanese people as holding a unique, predetermined status as the
chosen natural rulers of Asia by virtue of their special descent from the true gods. Barnhart
identifies the primary motivation of Japan in its imperialist pursuits as strategic resource
acquisition. While his application of economic theory has wide explanatory power in the
actions that the Japanese took in the pursuit of autarky, it does not explain why they felt entitled
to or justified in their abuse of the territorial and human rights of other Asians. Furthermore,
Barnhart is careful to avoid overt statement of the brutality of the Japanese military in
imperialist “incidents.” For example, in the attack against Nanking that many scholars have
characterized as rife with atrocities, Barnhart comments that it was an “unbounded military
success;” his only concession to its putative unusual brutality is that the State Department
condemned it as “contrary to the principles of law and humanity.” Although it is perhaps
common to dehumanize an enemy in war and thus Barnhart might choose to leave discussions
of Japanese brutality to other scholars 6 because it is common to dehumanize an enemy in war,
but he could strengthen his argument for economic motivations by discussing how a feeling of
racial, national or cultural superiority played a role in justifying Japanese entitlement to control
of the lands and resources of others. Moreover, justification for such Japanese positions as the
Amau Doctrine, which claimed the Japanese right to supervise economic development of China
and barred all other nations from that right, was clearly based on more than Japanese economic
need, as it claimed Japan had a special right to control China, indicating a feeling of either
extreme paternalism or inherent superiority to China. While racist cultural myths are largely
ignored by Barnhart, racism and misperception in international diplomacy are touched on as
factors in the myriad misunderstandings that occurred between Japan and the United States. In
Japan Prepares for Total War, both Japan and the United States are characterized as often
suspecting the other side of “cunning” and “crafty” behavior, and President Roosevelt is noted
as consistently holding an “anti-Japanese” attitude. These attitudes led to irrational fears; for
example, Barnhart notes that Roosevelt feared a Japanese attack on the West Coast to the extent
that he had crabbing operations checked for the possibility that the Japanese might use them as
bases for war. Japan, too, based a number of decisions on misperceptions of the stance of the
other side; for instance, it believed for a time that the Draft Understanding was a formal United
States policy position, and thus changed its estimate of the probability of war with the United
States, leading to confidence in more aggressive behavior. Barnhart demonstrates that racism
and misunderstandings thus contributed to the policies of the time period in question, but such
a nod to the role of racism and misperception in policy is curious when his argument neglects
to explain the 7 possible of role of racism as justification for forcible economic expansion of
Japan. In conclusion, Japan Prepares for Total War is an economic history, one that serves its
stated purpose of contributing to an understanding of how Japan’s economic concerns and
inter-service rivalries contributed to bringing about the Pacific War. Discussion of Japanese
paternalism or racism in the pursuit of autarky is largely avoided by Barnhart, and this
avoidance detracts to a small extent from the explanatory power of economic vulnerability and
internal political dynamics as the causal variables in Japanese imperialism and attack on the
United States. Perhaps Barnhart is merely trying to achieve objectivity and avoid a
condemnatory tone, but in failing to question the legitimacy of Japan’s special right to control
the rest of Asia, he misses the opportunity to explain the role of the values and attitudes that
supposedly lent justification to Japan’s right to cruelly exploit its Asian neighbors. Despite this
criticism, Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941 offers
a detailed and thought provoking account of the ironies of US-Japan relations and mistakes in
the years preceding the Pacific War.
In Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941, Michael A.
Barnhart chronicles the history of Japan’s futile search for autarky in the years leading to the
Pacific War.1 In examining the vital linkage between economics and national security in this
period, Barnhart makes the argument that the perception of economic vulnerability as the main
security issue facing Japan, combined with bureaucratic politics in the form of army-navy inter-
service rivalries, led directly to both the impulse for empire in resource-rich mainland Asia and
the attack on Pearl Harbor. However, Barnhart’s history charts Japan’s search for economic
security without explaining its justification for and entitlement to seizing the resources and land
of others, often brutally so. As such, the sterility of Japan Prepares for Total War downplays
the role of racist attitudes and cultural myths in engendering the events described. Nonetheless,
with strong evidentiary support Barnhart makes a compelling case for the ascendancy of
economic considerations and bureaucratic politics as the causal factors in Japan’s attack of the
United States on December 7th, 1941. Barnhart posits that Japan’s interpretation of the lessons
of World War I drove its leaders to view autarky as the basis for grand strategic planning. After
all, Germany, possessor of a stronger military than its conquerors, had succumbed to defeat in
WWI because it lacked an industrial base able to mobilize to a degree freeing it from economic
dependence on other nations. Such dependence creates vulnerability because the dependent
nation is subject to the whims and economic pressure of those nations on which it depends.
Japan had defeated Western power Russia in the Sino-Soviet conflict 2 of 1904-1905, but its
status as a resource-poor nation caused a number of influential civilian elites and military
officers to become advocates of “total war,” or the national capacity to not only wage war with
strong military forces but with the economic capability to supply all needed war materiel. Two
essential elements were necessary for this plan to succeed in establishing autarky and thus
security: a peace of at least five years with the hegemonic United States, and natural resources
such as iron and oil. These material resources could be had on the Asian mainland, specifically
in Manchuria and subsequently in China proper. As Barnhart points out, the Japanese chose to
forcibly acquire these resources from its mainland neighbors, and this course of action brought
it into conflict with the free trade philosophy and Open Door policy of the United States.
Japan’s course to national mobilization and self-sufficiency included the creation of a puppet
state for the economic exploitation of Manchuria; Manchukuo was created in 1932 in concert
with Japan’s first long-term mobilization plan. After “rational mobilization” of the domestic
economy, Japan’s increasingly imperial interests turned to China while the military’s share of
the budget rose to 45 percent. In 1937 Japanese forces commenced what Barnhart concededly
calls the “China Incident,” in which China and its resources were claimed by Japan under the
guise of establishing a Japanese-run corporation for economic development of the region.
Barnhart adeptly points out the ironies in Japan’s fight to acquire the Chinese mainland as a
strategic resource. The original total war proponents understood the threat to security that
belligerence in China caused for Japan: the United States, in defending the Open Door policy
in China, might deny Japan the indispensable resources like 3 machine tools that it required to
achieve self-sufficiency. Additionally, Japan’s domestic economy and citizenry were greatly
strained in what Barnhart terms the “bitter mortgage” of funding the efforts of empire in China.
Barnhart therefore argues that Japan’s aggressive imperial activities on the Asian mainland
were counterproductive in its quest for autarky: they threatened the necessary peace with the
United States and came at extreme costs to the Japanese nation. Japan Prepares for Total War
also contends that bureaucratic politics, specifically the competing interests of Japan’s army
and navy, played a significant role in shaping policy and determining the sequence of events
leading to the Pacific War. In bureaucratic politics, the players in a government bargain and
compete according to their organizational interests, resulting in policy that is not the product
of a single rational decision but is instead an amalgam of the visions and choices of the players
involved.2 The army and navy in pre-WWII Japan were both strong players in compelling the
nation’s political leaders to allocate resources according to their perceived needs; Barnhart
offers a number of examples of how their economic demands for strategic resources like iron
and oil led to further pressures to expand the Japanese empire in order to acquire such goods.
Additionally, Barnhart takes the position that differing strategic conceptions of how to best
approach the Southward Advance to commandeer the Dutch and French colonies of Southeast
Asia fed a growing inter-service rivalry. This rivalry between the Imperial army and Imperial
navy overshadowed rational considerations of the diplomatic and economic ramifications of
the United States’ reaction to aggressive Japanese imperialism as a means of achieving autarky.
Barnhart documents that the navy in 4 particular instituted a practice of exchanging “more
vigorous foreign policies” for greater resource allocations of strategic materials, and he argues
that the military as a whole served as the “engine of real change” in Japanese policy with regard
to economic expansion as a means of achieving national security. The quest of each service to
outbid the other in acquisition of strategic materials therefore led to the diversion of goods and
funds from exports and the domestic economy to meet military demands. It also led to the
commercial pressures the United States somewhat ironically imposed to punish Japan for its
imperialist imposition and attempt to create a sphere of economic and political influence in
mainland Asia. Indeed, the economic measures that the United States adopted in Japan’s
interwar years to stem the flow of Japanese aggression exacerbated the international situation
because the Japanese elites in power at various points in the course to war were either unwilling
to abandon mobilization plans or unable to do so because of military pressures and demands.
The moral sanctions and embargoes on goods such as aluminum and aviation fuel became
progressively steeper as Japan sought more territory and strategic resources in Asia. Finally,
the United States decided to freeze Japanese assets, and that freeze quickly morphed into full
embargo. Barnhart makes the point that this decision reflected an unshakable belief on the part
of United States leaders that Japan could not be deterred in the Southward Advance but might
be slowed by even more drastic economic measures. He attributes the Japanese response, to
push on with the advance, to the two factors he assigns ultimate importance in determining the
outcome of the clash between the two powers: economic motivations and bureaucratic politics.
Japan’s grand strategic motivation was the pursuit of autarky, and Barnhart argues that the July
2nd decisions for how to best achieve that goal were an amalgam of the opposing viewpoints
of the army 5 and navy, resulting in decisions that were rational in that they were the only
politically possible decisions within the Japanese government of the time. Despite Barnhart’s
strengths in precisely documenting the changing economic condition of Japan in the interwar
years and how its internal political dynamics and strategy shaped its path to war, Japan Prepares
for Total War fails to address the cultural attitudes and myths that enabled its feelings of
entitlement in the region. For example, scholars such as John Dower have suggested that
cultural myths like that of Japanese descent from goddess Amaterasu Omikami were used as
the psychological motivation for mobilizing the Japanese people and justifying horrific actions
against other Asian peoples in the name of Japan’s economic interests.3 Such cultural myths
identified Japan and the Japanese people as holding a unique, predetermined status as the
chosen natural rulers of Asia by virtue of their special descent from the true gods. Barnhart
identifies the primary motivation of Japan in its imperialist pursuits as strategic resource
acquisition. While his application of economic theory has wide explanatory power in the
actions that the Japanese took in the pursuit of autarky, it does not explain why they felt entitled
to or justified in their abuse of the territorial and human rights of other Asians. Furthermore,
Barnhart is careful to avoid overt statement of the brutality of the Japanese military in
imperialist “incidents.” For example, in the attack against Nanking that many scholars have
characterized as rife with atrocities, Barnhart comments that it was an “unbounded military
success;” his only concession to its putative unusual brutality is that the State Department
condemned it as “contrary to the principles of law and humanity.” Although it is perhaps
common to dehumanize an enemy in war and thus Barnhart might choose to leave discussions
of Japanese brutality to other scholars 6 because it is common to dehumanize an enemy in war,
but he could strengthen his argument for economic motivations by discussing how a feeling of
racial, national or cultural superiority played a role in justifying Japanese entitlement to control
of the lands and resources of others. Moreover, justification for such Japanese positions as the
Amau Doctrine, which claimed the Japanese right to supervise economic development of China
and barred all other nations from that right, was clearly based on more than Japanese economic
need, as it claimed Japan had a special right to control China, indicating a feeling of either
extreme paternalism or inherent superiority to China. While racist cultural myths are largely
ignored by Barnhart, racism and misperception in international diplomacy are touched on as
factors in the myriad misunderstandings that occurred between Japan and the United States. In
Japan Prepares for Total War, both Japan and the United States are characterized as often
suspecting the other side of “cunning” and “crafty” behavior, and President Roosevelt is noted
as consistently holding an “anti-Japanese” attitude. These attitudes led to irrational fears; for
example, Barnhart notes that Roosevelt feared a Japanese attack on the West Coast to the extent
that he had crabbing operations checked for the possibility that the Japanese might use them as
bases for war. Japan, too, based a number of decisions on misperceptions of the stance of the
other side; for instance, it believed for a time that the Draft Understanding was a formal United
States policy position, and thus changed its estimate of the probability of war with the United
States, leading to confidence in more aggressive behavior. Barnhart demonstrates that racism
and misunderstandings thus contributed to the policies of the time period in question, but such
a nod to the role of racism and misperception in policy is curious when his argument neglects
to explain the 7 possible of role of racism as justification for forcible economic expansion of
Japan. In conclusion, Japan Prepares for Total War is an economic history, one that serves its
stated purpose of contributing to an understanding of how Japan’s economic concerns and
inter-service rivalries contributed to bringing about the Pacific War. Discussion of Japanese
paternalism or racism in the pursuit of autarky is largely avoided by Barnhart, and this
avoidance detracts to a small extent from the explanatory power of economic vulnerability and
internal political dynamics as the causal variables in Japanese imperialism and attack on the
United States. Perhaps Barnhart is merely trying to achieve objectivity and avoid a
condemnatory tone, but in failing to question the legitimacy of Japan’s special right to control
the rest of Asia, he misses the opportunity to explain the role of the values and attitudes that
supposedly lent justification to Japan’s right to cruelly exploit its Asian neighbors. Despite this
criticism, Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941 offers
a detailed and thought provoking account of the ironies of US-Japan relations and mistakes in
the years preceding the Pacific War.
In Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941, Michael A.
Barnhart chronicles the history of Japan’s futile search for autarky in the years leading to the
Pacific War.1 In examining the vital linkage between economics and national security in this
period, Barnhart makes the argument that the perception of economic vulnerability as the main
security issue facing Japan, combined with bureaucratic politics in the form of army-navy inter-
service rivalries, led directly to both the impulse for empire in resource-rich mainland Asia and
the attack on Pearl Harbor. However, Barnhart’s history charts Japan’s search for economic
security without explaining its justification for and entitlement to seizing the resources and land
of others, often brutally so. As such, the sterility of Japan Prepares for Total War downplays
the role of racist attitudes and cultural myths in engendering the events described. Nonetheless,
with strong evidentiary support Barnhart makes a compelling case for the ascendancy of
economic considerations and bureaucratic politics as the causal factors in Japan’s attack of the
United States on December 7th, 1941. Barnhart posits that Japan’s interpretation of the lessons
of World War I drove its leaders to view autarky as the basis for grand strategic planning. After
all, Germany, possessor of a stronger military than its conquerors, had succumbed to defeat in
WWI because it lacked an industrial base able to mobilize to a degree freeing it from economic
dependence on other nations. Such dependence creates vulnerability because the dependent
nation is subject to the whims and economic pressure of those nations on which it depends.
Japan had defeated Western power Russia in the Sino-Soviet conflict 2 of 1904-1905, but its
status as a resource-poor nation caused a number of influential civilian elites and military
officers to become advocates of “total war,” or the national capacity to not only wage war with
strong military forces but with the economic capability to supply all needed war materiel. Two
essential elements were necessary for this plan to succeed in establishing autarky and thus
security: a peace of at least five years with the hegemonic United States, and natural resources
such as iron and oil. These material resources could be had on the Asian mainland, specifically
in Manchuria and subsequently in China proper. As Barnhart points out, the Japanese chose to
forcibly acquire these resources from its mainland neighbors, and this course of action brought
it into conflict with the free trade philosophy and Open Door policy of the United States.
Japan’s course to national mobilization and self-sufficiency included the creation of a puppet
state for the economic exploitation of Manchuria; Manchukuo was created in 1932 in concert
with Japan’s first long-term mobilization plan. After “rational mobilization” of the domestic
economy, Japan’s increasingly imperial interests turned to China while the military’s share of
the budget rose to 45 percent. In 1937 Japanese forces commenced what Barnhart concededly
calls the “China Incident,” in which China and its resources were claimed by Japan under the
guise of establishing a Japanese-run corporation for economic development of the region.
Barnhart adeptly points out the ironies in Japan’s fight to acquire the Chinese mainland as a
strategic resource. The original total war proponents understood the threat to security that
belligerence in China caused for Japan: the United States, in defending the Open Door policy
in China, might deny Japan the indispensable resources like 3 machine tools that it required to
achieve self-sufficiency. Additionally, Japan’s domestic economy and citizenry were greatly
strained in what Barnhart terms the “bitter mortgage” of funding the efforts of empire in China.
Barnhart therefore argues that Japan’s aggressive imperial activities on the Asian mainland
were counterproductive in its quest for autarky: they threatened the necessary peace with the
United States and came at extreme costs to the Japanese nation. Japan Prepares for Total War
also contends that bureaucratic politics, specifically the competing interests of Japan’s army
and navy, played a significant role in shaping policy and determining the sequence of events
leading to the Pacific War. In bureaucratic politics, the players in a government bargain and
compete according to their organizational interests, resulting in policy that is not the product
of a single rational decision but is instead an amalgam of the visions and choices of the players
involved.2 The army and navy in pre-WWII Japan were both strong players in compelling the
nation’s political leaders to allocate resources according to their perceived needs; Barnhart
offers a number of examples of how their economic demands for strategic resources like iron
and oil led to further pressures to expand the Japanese empire in order to acquire such goods.
Additionally, Barnhart takes the position that differing strategic conceptions of how to best
approach the Southward Advance to commandeer the Dutch and French colonies of Southeast
Asia fed a growing inter-service rivalry. This rivalry between the Imperial army and Imperial
navy overshadowed rational considerations of the diplomatic and economic ramifications of
the United States’ reaction to aggressive Japanese imperialism as a means of achieving autarky.
Barnhart documents that the navy in 4 particular instituted a practice of exchanging “more
vigorous foreign policies” for greater resource allocations of strategic materials, and he argues
that the military as a whole served as the “engine of real change” in Japanese policy with regard
to economic expansion as a means of achieving national security. The quest of each service to
outbid the other in acquisition of strategic materials therefore led to the diversion of goods and
funds from exports and the domestic economy to meet military demands. It also led to the
commercial pressures the United States somewhat ironically imposed to punish Japan for its
imperialist imposition and attempt to create a sphere of economic and political influence in
mainland Asia. Indeed, the economic measures that the United States adopted in Japan’s
interwar years to stem the flow of Japanese aggression exacerbated the international situation
because the Japanese elites in power at various points in the course to war were either unwilling
to abandon mobilization plans or unable to do so because of military pressures and demands.
The moral sanctions and embargoes on goods such as aluminum and aviation fuel became
progressively steeper as Japan sought more territory and strategic resources in Asia. Finally,
the United States decided to freeze Japanese assets, and that freeze quickly morphed into full
embargo. Barnhart makes the point that this decision reflected an unshakable belief on the part
of United States leaders that Japan could not be deterred in the Southward Advance but might
be slowed by even more drastic economic measures. He attributes the Japanese response, to
push on with the advance, to the two factors he assigns ultimate importance in determining the
outcome of the clash between the two powers: economic motivations and bureaucratic politics.
Japan’s grand strategic motivation was the pursuit of autarky, and Barnhart argues that the July
2nd decisions for how to best achieve that goal were an amalgam of the opposing viewpoints
of the army 5 and navy, resulting in decisions that were rational in that they were the only
politically possible decisions within the Japanese government of the time. Despite Barnhart’s
strengths in precisely documenting the changing economic condition of Japan in the interwar
years and how its internal political dynamics and strategy shaped its path to war, Japan Prepares
for Total War fails to address the cultural attitudes and myths that enabled its feelings of
entitlement in the region. For example, scholars such as John Dower have suggested that
cultural myths like that of Japanese descent from goddess Amaterasu Omikami were used as
the psychological motivation for mobilizing the Japanese people and justifying horrific actions
against other Asian peoples in the name of Japan’s economic interests.3 Such cultural myths
identified Japan and the Japanese people as holding a unique, predetermined status as the
chosen natural rulers of Asia by virtue of their special descent from the true gods. Barnhart
identifies the primary motivation of Japan in its imperialist pursuits as strategic resource
acquisition. While his application of economic theory has wide explanatory power in the
actions that the Japanese took in the pursuit of autarky, it does not explain why they felt entitled
to or justified in their abuse of the territorial and human rights of other Asians. Furthermore,
Barnhart is careful to avoid overt statement of the brutality of the Japanese military in
imperialist “incidents.” For example, in the attack against Nanking that many scholars have
characterized as rife with atrocities, Barnhart comments that it was an “unbounded military
success;” his only concession to its putative unusual brutality is that the State Department
condemned it as “contrary to the principles of law and humanity.” Although it is perhaps
common to dehumanize an enemy in war and thus Barnhart might choose to leave discussions
of Japanese brutality to other scholars 6 because it is common to dehumanize an enemy in war,
but he could strengthen his argument for economic motivations by discussing how a feeling of
racial, national or cultural superiority played a role in justifying Japanese entitlement to control
of the lands and resources of others. Moreover, justification for such Japanese positions as the
Amau Doctrine, which claimed the Japanese right to supervise economic development of China
and barred all other nations from that right, was clearly based on more than Japanese economic
need, as it claimed Japan had a special right to control China, indicating a feeling of either
extreme paternalism or inherent superiority to China. While racist cultural myths are largely
ignored by Barnhart, racism and misperception in international diplomacy are touched on as
factors in the myriad misunderstandings that occurred between Japan and the United States. In
Japan Prepares for Total War, both Japan and the United States are characterized as often
suspecting the other side of “cunning” and “crafty” behavior, and President Roosevelt is noted
as consistently holding an “anti-Japanese” attitude. These attitudes led to irrational fears; for
example, Barnhart notes that Roosevelt feared a Japanese attack on the West Coast to the extent
that he had crabbing operations checked for the possibility that the Japanese might use them as
bases for war. Japan, too, based a number of decisions on misperceptions of the stance of the
other side; for instance, it believed for a time that the Draft Understanding was a formal United
States policy position, and thus changed its estimate of the probability of war with the United
States, leading to confidence in more aggressive behavior. Barnhart demonstrates that racism
and misunderstandings thus contributed to the policies of the time period in question, but such
a nod to the role of racism and misperception in policy is curious when his argument neglects
to explain the 7 possible of role of racism as justification for forcible economic expansion of
Japan. In conclusion, Japan Prepares for Total War is an economic history, one that serves its
stated purpose of contributing to an understanding of how Japan’s economic concerns and
inter-service rivalries contributed to bringing about the Pacific War. Discussion of Japanese
paternalism or racism in the pursuit of autarky is largely avoided by Barnhart, and this
avoidance detracts to a small extent from the explanatory power of economic vulnerability and
internal political dynamics as the causal variables in Japanese imperialism and attack on the
United States. Perhaps Barnhart is merely trying to achieve objectivity and avoid a
condemnatory tone, but in failing to question the legitimacy of Japan’s special right to control
the rest of Asia, he misses the opportunity to explain the role of the values and attitudes that
supposedly lent justification to Japan’s right to cruelly exploit its Asian neighbors. Despite this
criticism, Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941 offers
a detailed and thought provoking account of the ironies of US-Japan relations and mistakes in
the years preceding the Pacific War.
In Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941, Michael A.
Barnhart chronicles the history of Japan’s futile search for autarky in the years leading to the
Pacific War.1 In examining the vital linkage between economics and national security in this
period, Barnhart makes the argument that the perception of economic vulnerability as the main
security issue facing Japan, combined with bureaucratic politics in the form of army-navy inter-
service rivalries, led directly to both the impulse for empire in resource-rich mainland Asia and
the attack on Pearl Harbor. However, Barnhart’s history charts Japan’s search for economic
security without explaining its justification for and entitlement to seizing the resources and land
of others, often brutally so. As such, the sterility of Japan Prepares for Total War downplays
the role of racist attitudes and cultural myths in engendering the events described. Nonetheless,
with strong evidentiary support Barnhart makes a compelling case for the ascendancy of
economic considerations and bureaucratic politics as the causal factors in Japan’s attack of the
United States on December 7th, 1941. Barnhart posits that Japan’s interpretation of the lessons
of World War I drove its leaders to view autarky as the basis for grand strategic planning. After
all, Germany, possessor of a stronger military than its conquerors, had succumbed to defeat in
WWI because it lacked an industrial base able to mobilize to a degree freeing it from economic
dependence on other nations. Such dependence creates vulnerability because the dependent
nation is subject to the whims and economic pressure of those nations on which it depends.
Japan had defeated Western power Russia in the Sino-Soviet conflict 2 of 1904-1905, but its
status as a resource-poor nation caused a number of influential civilian elites and military
officers to become advocates of “total war,” or the national capacity to not only wage war with
strong military forces but with the economic capability to supply all needed war materiel. Two
essential elements were necessary for this plan to succeed in establishing autarky and thus
security: a peace of at least five years with the hegemonic United States, and natural resources
such as iron and oil. These material resources could be had on the Asian mainland, specifically
in Manchuria and subsequently in China proper. As Barnhart points out, the Japanese chose to
forcibly acquire these resources from its mainland neighbors, and this course of action brought
it into conflict with the free trade philosophy and Open Door policy of the United States.
Japan’s course to national mobilization and self-sufficiency included the creation of a puppet
state for the economic exploitation of Manchuria; Manchukuo was created in 1932 in concert
with Japan’s first long-term mobilization plan. After “rational mobilization” of the domestic
economy, Japan’s increasingly imperial interests turned to China while the military’s share of
the budget rose to 45 percent. In 1937 Japanese forces commenced what Barnhart concededly
calls the “China Incident,” in which China and its resources were claimed by Japan under the
guise of establishing a Japanese-run corporation for economic development of the region.
Barnhart adeptly points out the ironies in Japan’s fight to acquire the Chinese mainland as a
strategic resource. The original total war proponents understood the threat to security that
belligerence in China caused for Japan: the United States, in defending the Open Door policy
in China, might deny Japan the indispensable resources like 3 machine tools that it required to
achieve self-sufficiency. Additionally, Japan’s domestic economy and citizenry were greatly
strained in what Barnhart terms the “bitter mortgage” of funding the efforts of empire in China.
Barnhart therefore argues that Japan’s aggressive imperial activities on the Asian mainland
were counterproductive in its quest for autarky: they threatened the necessary peace with the
United States and came at extreme costs to the Japanese nation. Japan Prepares for Total War
also contends that bureaucratic politics, specifically the competing interests of Japan’s army
and navy, played a significant role in shaping policy and determining the sequence of events
leading to the Pacific War. In bureaucratic politics, the players in a government bargain and
compete according to their organizational interests, resulting in policy that is not the product
of a single rational decision but is instead an amalgam of the visions and choices of the players
involved.2 The army and navy in pre-WWII Japan were both strong players in compelling the
nation’s political leaders to allocate resources according to their perceived needs; Barnhart
offers a number of examples of how their economic demands for strategic resources like iron
and oil led to further pressures to expand the Japanese empire in order to acquire such goods.
Additionally, Barnhart takes the position that differing strategic conceptions of how to best
approach the Southward Advance to commandeer the Dutch and French colonies of Southeast
Asia fed a growing inter-service rivalry. This rivalry between the Imperial army and Imperial
navy overshadowed rational considerations of the diplomatic and economic ramifications of
the United States’ reaction to aggressive Japanese imperialism as a means of achieving autarky.
Barnhart documents that the navy in 4 particular instituted a practice of exchanging “more
vigorous foreign policies” for greater resource allocations of strategic materials, and he argues
that the military as a whole served as the “engine of real change” in Japanese policy with regard
to economic expansion as a means of achieving national security. The quest of each service to
outbid the other in acquisition of strategic materials therefore led to the diversion of goods and
funds from exports and the domestic economy to meet military demands. It also led to the
commercial pressures the United States somewhat ironically imposed to punish Japan for its
imperialist imposition and attempt to create a sphere of economic and political influence in
mainland Asia. Indeed, the economic measures that the United States adopted in Japan’s
interwar years to stem the flow of Japanese aggression exacerbated the international situation
because the Japanese elites in power at various points in the course to war were either unwilling
to abandon mobilization plans or unable to do so because of military pressures and demands.
The moral sanctions and embargoes on goods such as aluminum and aviation fuel became
progressively steeper as Japan sought more territory and strategic resources in Asia. Finally,
the United States decided to freeze Japanese assets, and that freeze quickly morphed into full
embargo. Barnhart makes the point that this decision reflected an unshakable belief on the part
of United States leaders that Japan could not be deterred in the Southward Advance but might
be slowed by even more drastic economic measures. He attributes the Japanese response, to
push on with the advance, to the two factors he assigns ultimate importance in determining the
outcome of the clash between the two powers: economic motivations and bureaucratic politics.
Japan’s grand strategic motivation was the pursuit of autarky, and Barnhart argues that the July
2nd decisions for how to best achieve that goal were an amalgam of the opposing viewpoints
of the army 5 and navy, resulting in decisions that were rational in that they were the only
politically possible decisions within the Japanese government of the time. Despite Barnhart’s
strengths in precisely documenting the changing economic condition of Japan in the interwar
years and how its internal political dynamics and strategy shaped its path to war, Japan Prepares
for Total War fails to address the cultural attitudes and myths that enabled its feelings of
entitlement in the region. For example, scholars such as John Dower have suggested that
cultural myths like that of Japanese descent from goddess Amaterasu Omikami were used as
the psychological motivation for mobilizing the Japanese people and justifying horrific actions
against other Asian peoples in the name of Japan’s economic interests.3 Such cultural myths
identified Japan and the Japanese people as holding a unique, predetermined status as the
chosen natural rulers of Asia by virtue of their special descent from the true gods. Barnhart
identifies the primary motivation of Japan in its imperialist pursuits as strategic resource
acquisition. While his application of economic theory has wide explanatory power in the
actions that the Japanese took in the pursuit of autarky, it does not explain why they felt entitled
to or justified in their abuse of the territorial and human rights of other Asians. Furthermore,
Barnhart is careful to avoid overt statement of the brutality of the Japanese military in
imperialist “incidents.” For example, in the attack against Nanking that many scholars have
characterized as rife with atrocities, Barnhart comments that it was an “unbounded military
success;” his only concession to its putative unusual brutality is that the State Department
condemned it as “contrary to the principles of law and humanity.” Although it is perhaps
common to dehumanize an enemy in war and thus Barnhart might choose to leave discussions
of Japanese brutality to other scholars 6 because it is common to dehumanize an enemy in war,
but he could strengthen his argument for economic motivations by discussing how a feeling of
racial, national or cultural superiority played a role in justifying Japanese entitlement to control
of the lands and resources of others. Moreover, justification for such Japanese positions as the
Amau Doctrine, which claimed the Japanese right to supervise economic development of China
and barred all other nations from that right, was clearly based on more than Japanese economic
need, as it claimed Japan had a special right to control China, indicating a feeling of either
extreme paternalism or inherent superiority to China. While racist cultural myths are largely
ignored by Barnhart, racism and misperception in international diplomacy are touched on as
factors in the myriad misunderstandings that occurred between Japan and the United States. In
Japan Prepares for Total War, both Japan and the United States are characterized as often
suspecting the other side of “cunning” and “crafty” behavior, and President Roosevelt is noted
as consistently holding an “anti-Japanese” attitude. These attitudes led to irrational fears; for
example, Barnhart notes that Roosevelt feared a Japanese attack on the West Coast to the extent
that he had crabbing operations checked for the possibility that the Japanese might use them as
bases for war. Japan, too, based a number of decisions on misperceptions of the stance of the
other side; for instance, it believed for a time that the Draft Understanding was a formal United
States policy position, and thus changed its estimate of the probability of war with the United
States, leading to confidence in more aggressive behavior. Barnhart demonstrates that racism
and misunderstandings thus contributed to the policies of the time period in question, but such
a nod to the role of racism and misperception in policy is curious when his argument neglects
to explain the 7 possible of role of racism as justification for forcible economic expansion of
Japan. In conclusion, Japan Prepares for Total War is an economic history, one that serves its
stated purpose of contributing to an understanding of how Japan’s economic concerns and
inter-service rivalries contributed to bringing about the Pacific War. Discussion of Japanese
paternalism or racism in the pursuit of autarky is largely avoided by Barnhart, and this
avoidance detracts to a small extent from the explanatory power of economic vulnerability and
internal political dynamics as the causal variables in Japanese imperialism and attack on the
United States. Perhaps Barnhart is merely trying to achieve objectivity and avoid a
condemnatory tone, but in failing to question the legitimacy of Japan’s special right to control
the rest of Asia, he misses the opportunity to explain the role of the values and attitudes that
supposedly lent justification to Japan’s right to cruelly exploit its Asian neighbors. Despite this
criticism, Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941 offers
a detailed and thought provoking account of the ironies of US-Japan relations and mistakes in
the years preceding the Pacific War.
In Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941, Michael A.
Barnhart chronicles the history of Japan’s futile search for autarky in the years leading to the
Pacific War.1 In examining the vital linkage between economics and national security in this
period, Barnhart makes the argument that the perception of economic vulnerability as the main
security issue facing Japan, combined with bureaucratic politics in the form of army-navy inter-
service rivalries, led directly to both the impulse for empire in resource-rich mainland Asia and
the attack on Pearl Harbor. However, Barnhart’s history charts Japan’s search for economic
security without explaining its justification for and entitlement to seizing the resources and land
of others, often brutally so. As such, the sterility of Japan Prepares for Total War downplays
the role of racist attitudes and cultural myths in engendering the events described. Nonetheless,
with strong evidentiary support Barnhart makes a compelling case for the ascendancy of
economic considerations and bureaucratic politics as the causal factors in Japan’s attack of the
United States on December 7th, 1941. Barnhart posits that Japan’s interpretation of the lessons
of World War I drove its leaders to view autarky as the basis for grand strategic planning. After
all, Germany, possessor of a stronger military than its conquerors, had succumbed to defeat in
WWI because it lacked an industrial base able to mobilize to a degree freeing it from economic
dependence on other nations. Such dependence creates vulnerability because the dependent
nation is subject to the whims and economic pressure of those nations on which it depends.
Japan had defeated Western power Russia in the Sino-Soviet conflict 2 of 1904-1905, but its
status as a resource-poor nation caused a number of influential civilian elites and military
officers to become advocates of “total war,” or the national capacity to not only wage war with
strong military forces but with the economic capability to supply all needed war materiel. Two
essential elements were necessary for this plan to succeed in establishing autarky and thus
security: a peace of at least five years with the hegemonic United States, and natural resources
such as iron and oil. These material resources could be had on the Asian mainland, specifically
in Manchuria and subsequently in China proper. As Barnhart points out, the Japanese chose to
forcibly acquire these resources from its mainland neighbors, and this course of action brought
it into conflict with the free trade philosophy and Open Door policy of the United States.
Japan’s course to national mobilization and self-sufficiency included the creation of a puppet
state for the economic exploitation of Manchuria; Manchukuo was created in 1932 in concert
with Japan’s first long-term mobilization plan. After “rational mobilization” of the domestic
economy, Japan’s increasingly imperial interests turned to China while the military’s share of
the budget rose to 45 percent. In 1937 Japanese forces commenced what Barnhart concededly
calls the “China Incident,” in which China and its resources were claimed by Japan under the
guise of establishing a Japanese-run corporation for economic development of the region.
Barnhart adeptly points out the ironies in Japan’s fight to acquire the Chinese mainland as a
strategic resource. The original total war proponents understood the threat to security that
belligerence in China caused for Japan: the United States, in defending the Open Door policy
in China, might deny Japan the indispensable resources like 3 machine tools that it required to
achieve self-sufficiency. Additionally, Japan’s domestic economy and citizenry were greatly
strained in what Barnhart terms the “bitter mortgage” of funding the efforts of empire in China.
Barnhart therefore argues that Japan’s aggressive imperial activities on the Asian mainland
were counterproductive in its quest for autarky: they threatened the necessary peace with the
United States and came at extreme costs to the Japanese nation. Japan Prepares for Total War
also contends that bureaucratic politics, specifically the competing interests of Japan’s army
and navy, played a significant role in shaping policy and determining the sequence of events
leading to the Pacific War. In bureaucratic politics, the players in a government bargain and
compete according to their organizational interests, resulting in policy that is not the product
of a single rational decision but is instead an amalgam of the visions and choices of the players
involved.2 The army and navy in pre-WWII Japan were both strong players in compelling the
nation’s political leaders to allocate resources according to their perceived needs; Barnhart
offers a number of examples of how their economic demands for strategic resources like iron
and oil led to further pressures to expand the Japanese empire in order to acquire such goods.
Additionally, Barnhart takes the position that differing strategic conceptions of how to best
approach the Southward Advance to commandeer the Dutch and French colonies of Southeast
Asia fed a growing inter-service rivalry. This rivalry between the Imperial army and Imperial
navy overshadowed rational considerations of the diplomatic and economic ramifications of
the United States’ reaction to aggressive Japanese imperialism as a means of achieving autarky.
Barnhart documents that the navy in 4 particular instituted a practice of exchanging “more
vigorous foreign policies” for greater resource allocations of strategic materials, and he argues
that the military as a whole served as the “engine of real change” in Japanese policy with regard
to economic expansion as a means of achieving national security. The quest of each service to
outbid the other in acquisition of strategic materials therefore led to the diversion of goods and
funds from exports and the domestic economy to meet military demands. It also led to the
commercial pressures the United States somewhat ironically imposed to punish Japan for its
imperialist imposition and attempt to create a sphere of economic and political influence in
mainland Asia. Indeed, the economic measures that the United States adopted in Japan’s
interwar years to stem the flow of Japanese aggression exacerbated the international situation
because the Japanese elites in power at various points in the course to war were either unwilling
to abandon mobilization plans or unable to do so because of military pressures and demands.
The moral sanctions and embargoes on goods such as aluminum and aviation fuel became
progressively steeper as Japan sought more territory and strategic resources in Asia. Finally,
the United States decided to freeze Japanese assets, and that freeze quickly morphed into full
embargo. Barnhart makes the point that this decision reflected an unshakable belief on the part
of United States leaders that Japan could not be deterred in the Southward Advance but might
be slowed by even more drastic economic measures. He attributes the Japanese response, to
push on with the advance, to the two factors he assigns ultimate importance in determining the
outcome of the clash between the two powers: economic motivations and bureaucratic politics.
Japan’s grand strategic motivation was the pursuit of autarky, and Barnhart argues that the July
2nd decisions for how to best achieve that goal were an amalgam of the opposing viewpoints
of the army 5 and navy, resulting in decisions that were rational in that they were the only
politically possible decisions within the Japanese government of the time. Despite Barnhart’s
strengths in precisely documenting the changing economic condition of Japan in the interwar
years and how its internal political dynamics and strategy shaped its path to war, Japan Prepares
for Total War fails to address the cultural attitudes and myths that enabled its feelings of
entitlement in the region. For example, scholars such as John Dower have suggested that
cultural myths like that of Japanese descent from goddess Amaterasu Omikami were used as
the psychological motivation for mobilizing the Japanese people and justifying horrific actions
against other Asian peoples in the name of Japan’s economic interests.3 Such cultural myths
identified Japan and the Japanese people as holding a unique, predetermined status as the
chosen natural rulers of Asia by virtue of their special descent from the true gods. Barnhart
identifies the primary motivation of Japan in its imperialist pursuits as strategic resource
acquisition. While his application of economic theory has wide explanatory power in the
actions that the Japanese took in the pursuit of autarky, it does not explain why they felt entitled
to or justified in their abuse of the territorial and human rights of other Asians. Furthermore,
Barnhart is careful to avoid overt statement of the brutality of the Japanese military in
imperialist “incidents.” For example, in the attack against Nanking that many scholars have
characterized as rife with atrocities, Barnhart comments that it was an “unbounded military
success;” his only concession to its putative unusual brutality is that the State Department
condemned it as “contrary to the principles of law and humanity.” Although it is perhaps
common to dehumanize an enemy in war and thus Barnhart might choose to leave discussions
of Japanese brutality to other scholars 6 because it is common to dehumanize an enemy in war,
but he could strengthen his argument for economic motivations by discussing how a feeling of
racial, national or cultural superiority played a role in justifying Japanese entitlement to control
of the lands and resources of others. Moreover, justification for such Japanese positions as the
Amau Doctrine, which claimed the Japanese right to supervise economic development of China
and barred all other nations from that right, was clearly based on more than Japanese economic
need, as it claimed Japan had a special right to control China, indicating a feeling of either
extreme paternalism or inherent superiority to China. While racist cultural myths are largely
ignored by Barnhart, racism and misperception in international diplomacy are touched on as
factors in the myriad misunderstandings that occurred between Japan and the United States. In
Japan Prepares for Total War, both Japan and the United States are characterized as often
suspecting the other side of “cunning” and “crafty” behavior, and President Roosevelt is noted
as consistently holding an “anti-Japanese” attitude. These attitudes led to irrational fears; for
example, Barnhart notes that Roosevelt feared a Japanese attack on the West Coast to the extent
that he had crabbing operations checked for the possibility that the Japanese might use them as
bases for war. Japan, too, based a number of decisions on misperceptions of the stance of the
other side; for instance, it believed for a time that the Draft Understanding was a formal United
States policy position, and thus changed its estimate of the probability of war with the United
States, leading to confidence in more aggressive behavior. Barnhart demonstrates that racism
and misunderstandings thus contributed to the policies of the time period in question, but such
a nod to the role of racism and misperception in policy is curious when his argument neglects
to explain the 7 possible of role of racism as justification for forcible economic expansion of
Japan. In conclusion, Japan Prepares for Total War is an economic history, one that serves its
stated purpose of contributing to an understanding of how Japan’s economic concerns and
inter-service rivalries contributed to bringing about the Pacific War. Discussion of Japanese
paternalism or racism in the pursuit of autarky is largely avoided by Barnhart, and this
avoidance detracts to a small extent from the explanatory power of economic vulnerability and
internal political dynamics as the causal variables in Japanese imperialism and attack on the
United States. Perhaps Barnhart is merely trying to achieve objectivity and avoid a
condemnatory tone, but in failing to question the legitimacy of Japan’s special right to control
the rest of Asia, he misses the opportunity to explain the role of the values and attitudes that
supposedly lent justification to Japan’s right to cruelly exploit its Asian neighbors. Despite this
criticism, Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941 offers
a detailed and thought provoking account of the ironies of US-Japan relations and mistakes in
the years preceding the Pacific War.
In Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941, Michael A.
Barnhart chronicles the history of Japan’s futile search for autarky in the years leading to the
Pacific War.1 In examining the vital linkage between economics and national security in this
period, Barnhart makes the argument that the perception of economic vulnerability as the main
security issue facing Japan, combined with bureaucratic politics in the form of army-navy inter-
service rivalries, led directly to both the impulse for empire in resource-rich mainland Asia and
the attack on Pearl Harbor. However, Barnhart’s history charts Japan’s search for economic
security without explaining its justification for and entitlement to seizing the resources and land
of others, often brutally so. As such, the sterility of Japan Prepares for Total War downplays
the role of racist attitudes and cultural myths in engendering the events described. Nonetheless,
with strong evidentiary support Barnhart makes a compelling case for the ascendancy of
economic considerations and bureaucratic politics as the causal factors in Japan’s attack of the
United States on December 7th, 1941. Barnhart posits that Japan’s interpretation of the lessons
of World War I drove its leaders to view autarky as the basis for grand strategic planning. After
all, Germany, possessor of a stronger military than its conquerors, had succumbed to defeat in
WWI because it lacked an industrial base able to mobilize to a degree freeing it from economic
dependence on other nations. Such dependence creates vulnerability because the dependent
nation is subject to the whims and economic pressure of those nations on which it depends.
Japan had defeated Western power Russia in the Sino-Soviet conflict 2 of 1904-1905, but its
status as a resource-poor nation caused a number of influential civilian elites and military
officers to become advocates of “total war,” or the national capacity to not only wage war with
strong military forces but with the economic capability to supply all needed war materiel. Two
essential elements were necessary for this plan to succeed in establishing autarky and thus
security: a peace of at least five years with the hegemonic United States, and natural resources
such as iron and oil. These material resources could be had on the Asian mainland, specifically
in Manchuria and subsequently in China proper. As Barnhart points out, the Japanese chose to
forcibly acquire these resources from its mainland neighbors, and this course of action brought
it into conflict with the free trade philosophy and Open Door policy of the United States.
Japan’s course to national mobilization and self-sufficiency included the creation of a puppet
state for the economic exploitation of Manchuria; Manchukuo was created in 1932 in concert
with Japan’s first long-term mobilization plan. After “rational mobilization” of the domestic
economy, Japan’s increasingly imperial interests turned to China while the military’s share of
the budget rose to 45 percent. In 1937 Japanese forces commenced what Barnhart concededly
calls the “China Incident,” in which China and its resources were claimed by Japan under the
guise of establishing a Japanese-run corporation for economic development of the region.
Barnhart adeptly points out the ironies in Japan’s fight to acquire the Chinese mainland as a
strategic resource. The original total war proponents understood the threat to security that
belligerence in China caused for Japan: the United States, in defending the Open Door policy
in China, might deny Japan the indispensable resources like 3 machine tools that it required to
achieve self-sufficiency. Additionally, Japan’s domestic economy and citizenry were greatly
strained in what Barnhart terms the “bitter mortgage” of funding the efforts of empire in China.
Barnhart therefore argues that Japan’s aggressive imperial activities on the Asian mainland
were counterproductive in its quest for autarky: they threatened the necessary peace with the
United States and came at extreme costs to the Japanese nation. Japan Prepares for Total War
also contends that bureaucratic politics, specifically the competing interests of Japan’s army
and navy, played a significant role in shaping policy and determining the sequence of events
leading to the Pacific War. In bureaucratic politics, the players in a government bargain and
compete according to their organizational interests, resulting in policy that is not the product
of a single rational decision but is instead an amalgam of the visions and choices of the players
involved.2 The army and navy in pre-WWII Japan were both strong players in compelling the
nation’s political leaders to allocate resources according to their perceived needs; Barnhart
offers a number of examples of how their economic demands for strategic resources like iron
and oil led to further pressures to expand the Japanese empire in order to acquire such goods.
Additionally, Barnhart takes the position that differing strategic conceptions of how to best
approach the Southward Advance to commandeer the Dutch and French colonies of Southeast
Asia fed a growing inter-service rivalry. This rivalry between the Imperial army and Imperial
navy overshadowed rational considerations of the diplomatic and economic ramifications of
the United States’ reaction to aggressive Japanese imperialism as a means of achieving autarky.
Barnhart documents that the navy in 4 particular instituted a practice of exchanging “more
vigorous foreign policies” for greater resource allocations of strategic materials, and he argues
that the military as a whole served as the “engine of real change” in Japanese policy with regard
to economic expansion as a means of achieving national security. The quest of each service to
outbid the other in acquisition of strategic materials therefore led to the diversion of goods and
funds from exports and the domestic economy to meet military demands. It also led to the
commercial pressures the United States somewhat ironically imposed to punish Japan for its
imperialist imposition and attempt to create a sphere of economic and political influence in
mainland Asia. Indeed, the economic measures that the United States adopted in Japan’s
interwar years to stem the flow of Japanese aggression exacerbated the international situation
because the Japanese elites in power at various points in the course to war were either unwilling
to abandon mobilization plans or unable to do so because of military pressures and demands.
The moral sanctions and embargoes on goods such as aluminum and aviation fuel became
progressively steeper as Japan sought more territory and strategic resources in Asia. Finally,
the United States decided to freeze Japanese assets, and that freeze quickly morphed into full
embargo. Barnhart makes the point that this decision reflected an unshakable belief on the part
of United States leaders that Japan could not be deterred in the Southward Advance but might
be slowed by even more drastic economic measures. He attributes the Japanese response, to
push on with the advance, to the two factors he assigns ultimate importance in determining the
outcome of the clash between the two powers: economic motivations and bureaucratic politics.
Japan’s grand strategic motivation was the pursuit of autarky, and Barnhart argues that the July
2nd decisions for how to best achieve that goal were an amalgam of the opposing viewpoints
of the army 5 and navy, resulting in decisions that were rational in that they were the only
politically possible decisions within the Japanese government of the time. Despite Barnhart’s
strengths in precisely documenting the changing economic condition of Japan in the interwar
years and how its internal political dynamics and strategy shaped its path to war, Japan Prepares
for Total War fails to address the cultural attitudes and myths that enabled its feelings of
entitlement in the region. For example, scholars such as John Dower have suggested that
cultural myths like that of Japanese descent from goddess Amaterasu Omikami were used as
the psychological motivation for mobilizing the Japanese people and justifying horrific actions
against other Asian peoples in the name of Japan’s economic interests.3 Such cultural myths
identified Japan and the Japanese people as holding a unique, predetermined status as the
chosen natural rulers of Asia by virtue of their special descent from the true gods. Barnhart
identifies the primary motivation of Japan in its imperialist pursuits as strategic resource
acquisition. While his application of economic theory has wide explanatory power in the
actions that the Japanese took in the pursuit of autarky, it does not explain why they felt entitled
to or justified in their abuse of the territorial and human rights of other Asians. Furthermore,
Barnhart is careful to avoid overt statement of the brutality of the Japanese military in
imperialist “incidents.” For example, in the attack against Nanking that many scholars have
characterized as rife with atrocities, Barnhart comments that it was an “unbounded military
success;” his only concession to its putative unusual brutality is that the State Department
condemned it as “contrary to the principles of law and humanity.” Although it is perhaps
common to dehumanize an enemy in war and thus Barnhart might choose to leave discussions
of Japanese brutality to other scholars 6 because it is common to dehumanize an enemy in war,
but he could strengthen his argument for economic motivations by discussing how a feeling of
racial, national or cultural superiority played a role in justifying Japanese entitlement to control
of the lands and resources of others. Moreover, justification for such Japanese positions as the
Amau Doctrine, which claimed the Japanese right to supervise economic development of China
and barred all other nations from that right, was clearly based on more than Japanese economic
need, as it claimed Japan had a special right to control China, indicating a feeling of either
extreme paternalism or inherent superiority to China. While racist cultural myths are largely
ignored by Barnhart, racism and misperception in international diplomacy are touched on as
factors in the myriad misunderstandings that occurred between Japan and the United States. In
Japan Prepares for Total War, both Japan and the United States are characterized as often
suspecting the other side of “cunning” and “crafty” behavior, and President Roosevelt is noted
as consistently holding an “anti-Japanese” attitude. These attitudes led to irrational fears; for
example, Barnhart notes that Roosevelt feared a Japanese attack on the West Coast to the extent
that he had crabbing operations checked for the possibility that the Japanese might use them as
bases for war. Japan, too, based a number of decisions on misperceptions of the stance of the
other side; for instance, it believed for a time that the Draft Understanding was a formal United
States policy position, and thus changed its estimate of the probability of war with the United
States, leading to confidence in more aggressive behavior. Barnhart demonstrates that racism
and misunderstandings thus contributed to the policies of the time period in question, but such
a nod to the role of racism and misperception in policy is curious when his argument neglects
to explain the 7 possible of role of racism as justification for forcible economic expansion of
Japan. In conclusion, Japan Prepares for Total War is an economic history, one that serves its
stated purpose of contributing to an understanding of how Japan’s economic concerns and
inter-service rivalries contributed to bringing about the Pacific War. Discussion of Japanese
paternalism or racism in the pursuit of autarky is largely avoided by Barnhart, and this
avoidance detracts to a small extent from the explanatory power of economic vulnerability and
internal political dynamics as the causal variables in Japanese imperialism and attack on the
United States. Perhaps Barnhart is merely trying to achieve objectivity and avoid a
condemnatory tone, but in failing to question the legitimacy of Japan’s special right to control
the rest of Asia, he misses the opportunity to explain the role of the values and attitudes that
supposedly lent justification to Japan’s right to cruelly exploit its Asian neighbors. Despite this
criticism, Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941 offers
a detailed and thought provoking account of the ironies of US-Japan relations and mistakes in
the years preceding the Pacific War.
In Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941, Michael A.
Barnhart chronicles the history of Japan’s futile search for autarky in the years leading to the
Pacific War.1 In examining the vital linkage between economics and national security in this
period, Barnhart makes the argument that the perception of economic vulnerability as the main
security issue facing Japan, combined with bureaucratic politics in the form of army-navy inter-
service rivalries, led directly to both the impulse for empire in resource-rich mainland Asia and
the attack on Pearl Harbor. However, Barnhart’s history charts Japan’s search for economic
security without explaining its justification for and entitlement to seizing the resources and land
of others, often brutally so. As such, the sterility of Japan Prepares for Total War downplays
the role of racist attitudes and cultural myths in engendering the events described. Nonetheless,
with strong evidentiary support Barnhart makes a compelling case for the ascendancy of
economic considerations and bureaucratic politics as the causal factors in Japan’s attack of the
United States on December 7th, 1941. Barnhart posits that Japan’s interpretation of the lessons
of World War I drove its leaders to view autarky as the basis for grand strategic planning. After
all, Germany, possessor of a stronger military than its conquerors, had succumbed to defeat in
WWI because it lacked an industrial base able to mobilize to a degree freeing it from economic
dependence on other nations. Such dependence creates vulnerability because the dependent
nation is subject to the whims and economic pressure of those nations on which it depends.
Japan had defeated Western power Russia in the Sino-Soviet conflict 2 of 1904-1905, but its
status as a resource-poor nation caused a number of influential civilian elites and military
officers to become advocates of “total war,” or the national capacity to not only wage war with
strong military forces but with the economic capability to supply all needed war materiel. Two
essential elements were necessary for this plan to succeed in establishing autarky and thus
security: a peace of at least five years with the hegemonic United States, and natural resources
such as iron and oil. These material resources could be had on the Asian mainland, specifically
in Manchuria and subsequently in China proper. As Barnhart points out, the Japanese chose to
forcibly acquire these resources from its mainland neighbors, and this course of action brought
it into conflict with the free trade philosophy and Open Door policy of the United States.
Japan’s course to national mobilization and self-sufficiency included the creation of a puppet
state for the economic exploitation of Manchuria; Manchukuo was created in 1932 in concert
with Japan’s first long-term mobilization plan. After “rational mobilization” of the domestic
economy, Japan’s increasingly imperial interests turned to China while the military’s share of
the budget rose to 45 percent. In 1937 Japanese forces commenced what Barnhart concededly
calls the “China Incident,” in which China and its resources were claimed by Japan under the
guise of establishing a Japanese-run corporation for economic development of the region.
Barnhart adeptly points out the ironies in Japan’s fight to acquire the Chinese mainland as a
strategic resource. The original total war proponents understood the threat to security that
belligerence in China caused for Japan: the United States, in defending the Open Door policy
in China, might deny Japan the indispensable resources like 3 machine tools that it required to
achieve self-sufficiency. Additionally, Japan’s domestic economy and citizenry were greatly
strained in what Barnhart terms the “bitter mortgage” of funding the efforts of empire in China.
Barnhart therefore argues that Japan’s aggressive imperial activities on the Asian mainland
were counterproductive in its quest for autarky: they threatened the necessary peace with the
United States and came at extreme costs to the Japanese nation. Japan Prepares for Total War
also contends that bureaucratic politics, specifically the competing interests of Japan’s army
and navy, played a significant role in shaping policy and determining the sequence of events
leading to the Pacific War. In bureaucratic politics, the players in a government bargain and
compete according to their organizational interests, resulting in policy that is not the product
of a single rational decision but is instead an amalgam of the visions and choices of the players
involved.2 The army and navy in pre-WWII Japan were both strong players in compelling the
nation’s political leaders to allocate resources according to their perceived needs; Barnhart
offers a number of examples of how their economic demands for strategic resources like iron
and oil led to further pressures to expand the Japanese empire in order to acquire such goods.
Additionally, Barnhart takes the position that differing strategic conceptions of how to best
approach the Southward Advance to commandeer the Dutch and French colonies of Southeast
Asia fed a growing inter-service rivalry. This rivalry between the Imperial army and Imperial
navy overshadowed rational considerations of the diplomatic and economic ramifications of
the United States’ reaction to aggressive Japanese imperialism as a means of achieving autarky.
Barnhart documents that the navy in 4 particular instituted a practice of exchanging “more
vigorous foreign policies” for greater resource allocations of strategic materials, and he argues
that the military as a whole served as the “engine of real change” in Japanese policy with regard
to economic expansion as a means of achieving national security. The quest of each service to
outbid the other in acquisition of strategic materials therefore led to the diversion of goods and
funds from exports and the domestic economy to meet military demands. It also led to the
commercial pressures the United States somewhat ironically imposed to punish Japan for its
imperialist imposition and attempt to create a sphere of economic and political influence in
mainland Asia. Indeed, the economic measures that the United States adopted in Japan’s
interwar years to stem the flow of Japanese aggression exacerbated the international situation
because the Japanese elites in power at various points in the course to war were either unwilling
to abandon mobilization plans or unable to do so because of military pressures and demands.
The moral sanctions and embargoes on goods such as aluminum and aviation fuel became
progressively steeper as Japan sought more territory and strategic resources in Asia. Finally,
the United States decided to freeze Japanese assets, and that freeze quickly morphed into full
embargo. Barnhart makes the point that this decision reflected an unshakable belief on the part
of United States leaders that Japan could not be deterred in the Southward Advance but might
be slowed by even more drastic economic measures. He attributes the Japanese response, to
push on with the advance, to the two factors he assigns ultimate importance in determining the
outcome of the clash between the two powers: economic motivations and bureaucratic politics.
Japan’s grand strategic motivation was the pursuit of autarky, and Barnhart argues that the July
2nd decisions for how to best achieve that goal were an amalgam of the opposing viewpoints
of the army 5 and navy, resulting in decisions that were rational in that they were the only
politically possible decisions within the Japanese government of the time. Despite Barnhart’s
strengths in precisely documenting the changing economic condition of Japan in the interwar
years and how its internal political dynamics and strategy shaped its path to war, Japan Prepares
for Total War fails to address the cultural attitudes and myths that enabled its feelings of
entitlement in the region. For example, scholars such as John Dower have suggested that
cultural myths like that of Japanese descent from goddess Amaterasu Omikami were used as
the psychological motivation for mobilizing the Japanese people and justifying horrific actions
against other Asian peoples in the name of Japan’s economic interests.3 Such cultural myths
identified Japan and the Japanese people as holding a unique, predetermined status as the
chosen natural rulers of Asia by virtue of their special descent from the true gods. Barnhart
identifies the primary motivation of Japan in its imperialist pursuits as strategic resource
acquisition. While his application of economic theory has wide explanatory power in the
actions that the Japanese took in the pursuit of autarky, it does not explain why they felt entitled
to or justified in their abuse of the territorial and human rights of other Asians. Furthermore,
Barnhart is careful to avoid overt statement of the brutality of the Japanese military in
imperialist “incidents.” For example, in the attack against Nanking that many scholars have
characterized as rife with atrocities, Barnhart comments that it was an “unbounded military
success;” his only concession to its putative unusual brutality is that the State Department
condemned it as “contrary to the principles of law and humanity.” Although it is perhaps
common to dehumanize an enemy in war and thus Barnhart might choose to leave discussions
of Japanese brutality to other scholars 6 because it is common to dehumanize an enemy in war,
but he could strengthen his argument for economic motivations by discussing how a feeling of
racial, national or cultural superiority played a role in justifying Japanese entitlement to control
of the lands and resources of others. Moreover, justification for such Japanese positions as the
Amau Doctrine, which claimed the Japanese right to supervise economic development of China
and barred all other nations from that right, was clearly based on more than Japanese economic
need, as it claimed Japan had a special right to control China, indicating a feeling of either
extreme paternalism or inherent superiority to China. While racist cultural myths are largely
ignored by Barnhart, racism and misperception in international diplomacy are touched on as
factors in the myriad misunderstandings that occurred between Japan and the United States. In
Japan Prepares for Total War, both Japan and the United States are characterized as often
suspecting the other side of “cunning” and “crafty” behavior, and President Roosevelt is noted
as consistently holding an “anti-Japanese” attitude. These attitudes led to irrational fears; for
example, Barnhart notes that Roosevelt feared a Japanese attack on the West Coast to the extent
that he had crabbing operations checked for the possibility that the Japanese might use them as
bases for war. Japan, too, based a number of decisions on misperceptions of the stance of the
other side; for instance, it believed for a time that the Draft Understanding was a formal United
States policy position, and thus changed its estimate of the probability of war with the United
States, leading to confidence in more aggressive behavior. Barnhart demonstrates that racism
and misunderstandings thus contributed to the policies of the time period in question, but such
a nod to the role of racism and misperception in policy is curious when his argument neglects
to explain the 7 possible of role of racism as justification for forcible economic expansion of
Japan. In conclusion, Japan Prepares for Total War is an economic history, one that serves its
stated purpose of contributing to an understanding of how Japan’s economic concerns and
inter-service rivalries contributed to bringing about the Pacific War. Discussion of Japanese
paternalism or racism in the pursuit of autarky is largely avoided by Barnhart, and this
avoidance detracts to a small extent from the explanatory power of economic vulnerability and
internal political dynamics as the causal variables in Japanese imperialism and attack on the
United States. Perhaps Barnhart is merely trying to achieve objectivity and avoid a
condemnatory tone, but in failing to question the legitimacy of Japan’s special right to control
the rest of Asia, he misses the opportunity to explain the role of the values and attitudes that
supposedly lent justification to Japan’s right to cruelly exploit its Asian neighbors. Despite this
criticism, Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941 offers
a detailed and thought provoking account of the ironies of US-Japan relations and mistakes in
the years preceding the Pacific War.
In Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941, Michael A.
Barnhart chronicles the history of Japan’s futile search for autarky in the years leading to the
Pacific War.1 In examining the vital linkage between economics and national security in this
period, Barnhart makes the argument that the perception of economic vulnerability as the main
security issue facing Japan, combined with bureaucratic politics in the form of army-navy inter-
service rivalries, led directly to both the impulse for empire in resource-rich mainland Asia and
the attack on Pearl Harbor. However, Barnhart’s history charts Japan’s search for economic
security without explaining its justification for and entitlement to seizing the resources and land
of others, often brutally so. As such, the sterility of Japan Prepares for Total War downplays
the role of racist attitudes and cultural myths in engendering the events described. Nonetheless,
with strong evidentiary support Barnhart makes a compelling case for the ascendancy of
economic considerations and bureaucratic politics as the causal factors in Japan’s attack of the
United States on December 7th, 1941. Barnhart posits that Japan’s interpretation of the lessons
of World War I drove its leaders to view autarky as the basis for grand strategic planning. After
all, Germany, possessor of a stronger military than its conquerors, had succumbed to defeat in
WWI because it lacked an industrial base able to mobilize to a degree freeing it from economic
dependence on other nations. Such dependence creates vulnerability because the dependent
nation is subject to the whims and economic pressure of those nations on which it depends.
Japan had defeated Western power Russia in the Sino-Soviet conflict 2 of 1904-1905, but its
status as a resource-poor nation caused a number of influential civilian elites and military
officers to become advocates of “total war,” or the national capacity to not only wage war with
strong military forces but with the economic capability to supply all needed war materiel. Two
essential elements were necessary for this plan to succeed in establishing autarky and thus
security: a peace of at least five years with the hegemonic United States, and natural resources
such as iron and oil. These material resources could be had on the Asian mainland, specifically
in Manchuria and subsequently in China proper. As Barnhart points out, the Japanese chose to
forcibly acquire these resources from its mainland neighbors, and this course of action brought
it into conflict with the free trade philosophy and Open Door policy of the United States.
Japan’s course to national mobilization and self-sufficiency included the creation of a puppet
state for the economic exploitation of Manchuria; Manchukuo was created in 1932 in concert
with Japan’s first long-term mobilization plan. After “rational mobilization” of the domestic
economy, Japan’s increasingly imperial interests turned to China while the military’s share of
the budget rose to 45 percent. In 1937 Japanese forces commenced what Barnhart concededly
calls the “China Incident,” in which China and its resources were claimed by Japan under the
guise of establishing a Japanese-run corporation for economic development of the region.
Barnhart adeptly points out the ironies in Japan’s fight to acquire the Chinese mainland as a
strategic resource. The original total war proponents understood the threat to security that
belligerence in China caused for Japan: the United States, in defending the Open Door policy
in China, might deny Japan the indispensable resources like 3 machine tools that it required to
achieve self-sufficiency. Additionally, Japan’s domestic economy and citizenry were greatly
strained in what Barnhart terms the “bitter mortgage” of funding the efforts of empire in China.
Barnhart therefore argues that Japan’s aggressive imperial activities on the Asian mainland
were counterproductive in its quest for autarky: they threatened the necessary peace with the
United States and came at extreme costs to the Japanese nation. Japan Prepares for Total War
also contends that bureaucratic politics, specifically the competing interests of Japan’s army
and navy, played a significant role in shaping policy and determining the sequence of events
leading to the Pacific War. In bureaucratic politics, the players in a government bargain and
compete according to their organizational interests, resulting in policy that is not the product
of a single rational decision but is instead an amalgam of the visions and choices of the players
involved.2 The army and navy in pre-WWII Japan were both strong players in compelling the
nation’s political leaders to allocate resources according to their perceived needs; Barnhart
offers a number of examples of how their economic demands for strategic resources like iron
and oil led to further pressures to expand the Japanese empire in order to acquire such goods.
Additionally, Barnhart takes the position that differing strategic conceptions of how to best
approach the Southward Advance to commandeer the Dutch and French colonies of Southeast
Asia fed a growing inter-service rivalry. This rivalry between the Imperial army and Imperial
navy overshadowed rational considerations of the diplomatic and economic ramifications of
the United States’ reaction to aggressive Japanese imperialism as a means of achieving autarky.
Barnhart documents that the navy in 4 particular instituted a practice of exchanging “more
vigorous foreign policies” for greater resource allocations of strategic materials, and he argues
that the military as a whole served as the “engine of real change” in Japanese policy with regard
to economic expansion as a means of achieving national security. The quest of each service to
outbid the other in acquisition of strategic materials therefore led to the diversion of goods and
funds from exports and the domestic economy to meet military demands. It also led to the
commercial pressures the United States somewhat ironically imposed to punish Japan for its
imperialist imposition and attempt to create a sphere of economic and political influence in
mainland Asia. Indeed, the economic measures that the United States adopted in Japan’s
interwar years to stem the flow of Japanese aggression exacerbated the international situation
because the Japanese elites in power at various points in the course to war were either unwilling
to abandon mobilization plans or unable to do so because of military pressures and demands.
The moral sanctions and embargoes on goods such as aluminum and aviation fuel became
progressively steeper as Japan sought more territory and strategic resources in Asia. Finally,
the United States decided to freeze Japanese assets, and that freeze quickly morphed into full
embargo. Barnhart makes the point that this decision reflected an unshakable belief on the part
of United States leaders that Japan could not be deterred in the Southward Advance but might
be slowed by even more drastic economic measures. He attributes the Japanese response, to
push on with the advance, to the two factors he assigns ultimate importance in determining the
outcome of the clash between the two powers: economic motivations and bureaucratic politics.
Japan’s grand strategic motivation was the pursuit of autarky, and Barnhart argues that the July
2nd decisions for how to best achieve that goal were an amalgam of the opposing viewpoints
of the army 5 and navy, resulting in decisions that were rational in that they were the only
politically possible decisions within the Japanese government of the time. Despite Barnhart’s
strengths in precisely documenting the changing economic condition of Japan in the interwar
years and how its internal political dynamics and strategy shaped its path to war, Japan Prepares
for Total War fails to address the cultural attitudes and myths that enabled its feelings of
entitlement in the region. For example, scholars such as John Dower have suggested that
cultural myths like that of Japanese descent from goddess Amaterasu Omikami were used as
the psychological motivation for mobilizing the Japanese people and justifying horrific actions
against other Asian peoples in the name of Japan’s economic interests.3 Such cultural myths
identified Japan and the Japanese people as holding a unique, predetermined status as the
chosen natural rulers of Asia by virtue of their special descent from the true gods. Barnhart
identifies the primary motivation of Japan in its imperialist pursuits as strategic resource
acquisition. While his application of economic theory has wide explanatory power in the
actions that the Japanese took in the pursuit of autarky, it does not explain why they felt entitled
to or justified in their abuse of the territorial and human rights of other Asians. Furthermore,
Barnhart is careful to avoid overt statement of the brutality of the Japanese military in
imperialist “incidents.” For example, in the attack against Nanking that many scholars have
characterized as rife with atrocities, Barnhart comments that it was an “unbounded military
success;” his only concession to its putative unusual brutality is that the State Department
condemned it as “contrary to the principles of law and humanity.” Although it is perhaps
common to dehumanize an enemy in war and thus Barnhart might choose to leave discussions
of Japanese brutality to other scholars 6 because it is common to dehumanize an enemy in war,
but he could strengthen his argument for economic motivations by discussing how a feeling of
racial, national or cultural superiority played a role in justifying Japanese entitlement to control
of the lands and resources of others. Moreover, justification for such Japanese positions as the
Amau Doctrine, which claimed the Japanese right to supervise economic development of China
and barred all other nations from that right, was clearly based on more than Japanese economic
need, as it claimed Japan had a special right to control China, indicating a feeling of either
extreme paternalism or inherent superiority to China. While racist cultural myths are largely
ignored by Barnhart, racism and misperception in international diplomacy are touched on as
factors in the myriad misunderstandings that occurred between Japan and the United States. In
Japan Prepares for Total War, both Japan and the United States are characterized as often
suspecting the other side of “cunning” and “crafty” behavior, and President Roosevelt is noted
as consistently holding an “anti-Japanese” attitude. These attitudes led to irrational fears; for
example, Barnhart notes that Roosevelt feared a Japanese attack on the West Coast to the extent
that he had crabbing operations checked for the possibility that the Japanese might use them as
bases for war. Japan, too, based a number of decisions on misperceptions of the stance of the
other side; for instance, it believed for a time that the Draft Understanding was a formal United
States policy position, and thus changed its estimate of the probability of war with the United
States, leading to confidence in more aggressive behavior. Barnhart demonstrates that racism
and misunderstandings thus contributed to the policies of the time period in question, but such
a nod to the role of racism and misperception in policy is curious when his argument neglects
to explain the 7 possible of role of racism as justification for forcible economic expansion of
Japan. In conclusion, Japan Prepares for Total War is an economic history, one that serves its
stated purpose of contributing to an understanding of how Japan’s economic concerns and
inter-service rivalries contributed to bringing about the Pacific War. Discussion of Japanese
paternalism or racism in the pursuit of autarky is largely avoided by Barnhart, and this
avoidance detracts to a small extent from the explanatory power of economic vulnerability and
internal political dynamics as the causal variables in Japanese imperialism and attack on the
United States. Perhaps Barnhart is merely trying to achieve objectivity and avoid a
condemnatory tone, but in failing to question the legitimacy of Japan’s special right to control
the rest of Asia, he misses the opportunity to explain the role of the values and attitudes that
supposedly lent justification to Japan’s right to cruelly exploit its Asian neighbors. Despite this
criticism, Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941 offers
a detailed and thought provoking account of the ironies of US-Japan relations and mistakes in
the years preceding the Pacific War.
In Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941, Michael A.
Barnhart chronicles the history of Japan’s futile search for autarky in the years leading to the
Pacific War.1 In examining the vital linkage between economics and national security in this
period, Barnhart makes the argument that the perception of economic vulnerability as the main
security issue facing Japan, combined with bureaucratic politics in the form of army-navy inter-
service rivalries, led directly to both the impulse for empire in resource-rich mainland Asia and
the attack on Pearl Harbor. However, Barnhart’s history charts Japan’s search for economic
security without explaining its justification for and entitlement to seizing the resources and land
of others, often brutally so. As such, the sterility of Japan Prepares for Total War downplays
the role of racist attitudes and cultural myths in engendering the events described. Nonetheless,
with strong evidentiary support Barnhart makes a compelling case for the ascendancy of
economic considerations and bureaucratic politics as the causal factors in Japan’s attack of the
United States on December 7th, 1941. Barnhart posits that Japan’s interpretation of the lessons
of World War I drove its leaders to view autarky as the basis for grand strategic planning. After
all, Germany, possessor of a stronger military than its conquerors, had succumbed to defeat in
WWI because it lacked an industrial base able to mobilize to a degree freeing it from economic
dependence on other nations. Such dependence creates vulnerability because the dependent
nation is subject to the whims and economic pressure of those nations on which it depends.
Japan had defeated Western power Russia in the Sino-Soviet conflict 2 of 1904-1905, but its
status as a resource-poor nation caused a number of influential civilian elites and military
officers to become advocates of “total war,” or the national capacity to not only wage war with
strong military forces but with the economic capability to supply all needed war materiel. Two
essential elements were necessary for this plan to succeed in establishing autarky and thus
security: a peace of at least five years with the hegemonic United States, and natural resources
such as iron and oil. These material resources could be had on the Asian mainland, specifically
in Manchuria and subsequently in China proper. As Barnhart points out, the Japanese chose to
forcibly acquire these resources from its mainland neighbors, and this course of action brought
it into conflict with the free trade philosophy and Open Door policy of the United States.
Japan’s course to national mobilization and self-sufficiency included the creation of a puppet
state for the economic exploitation of Manchuria; Manchukuo was created in 1932 in concert
with Japan’s first long-term mobilization plan. After “rational mobilization” of the domestic
economy, Japan’s increasingly imperial interests turned to China while the military’s share of
the budget rose to 45 percent. In 1937 Japanese forces commenced what Barnhart concededly
calls the “China Incident,” in which China and its resources were claimed by Japan under the
guise of establishing a Japanese-run corporation for economic development of the region.
Barnhart adeptly points out the ironies in Japan’s fight to acquire the Chinese mainland as a
strategic resource. The original total war proponents understood the threat to security that
belligerence in China caused for Japan: the United States, in defending the Open Door policy
in China, might deny Japan the indispensable resources like 3 machine tools that it required to
achieve self-sufficiency. Additionally, Japan’s domestic economy and citizenry were greatly
strained in what Barnhart terms the “bitter mortgage” of funding the efforts of empire in China.
Barnhart therefore argues that Japan’s aggressive imperial activities on the Asian mainland
were counterproductive in its quest for autarky: they threatened the necessary peace with the
United States and came at extreme costs to the Japanese nation. Japan Prepares for Total War
also contends that bureaucratic politics, specifically the competing interests of Japan’s army
and navy, played a significant role in shaping policy and determining the sequence of events
leading to the Pacific War. In bureaucratic politics, the players in a government bargain and
compete according to their organizational interests, resulting in policy that is not the product
of a single rational decision but is instead an amalgam of the visions and choices of the players
involved.2 The army and navy in pre-WWII Japan were both strong players in compelling the
nation’s political leaders to allocate resources according to their perceived needs; Barnhart
offers a number of examples of how their economic demands for strategic resources like iron
and oil led to further pressures to expand the Japanese empire in order to acquire such goods.
Additionally, Barnhart takes the position that differing strategic conceptions of how to best
approach the Southward Advance to commandeer the Dutch and French colonies of Southeast
Asia fed a growing inter-service rivalry. This rivalry between the Imperial army and Imperial
navy overshadowed rational considerations of the diplomatic and economic ramifications of
the United States’ reaction to aggressive Japanese imperialism as a means of achieving autarky.
Barnhart documents that the navy in 4 particular instituted a practice of exchanging “more
vigorous foreign policies” for greater resource allocations of strategic materials, and he argues
that the military as a whole served as the “engine of real change” in Japanese policy with regard
to economic expansion as a means of achieving national security. The quest of each service to
outbid the other in acquisition of strategic materials therefore led to the diversion of goods and
funds from exports and the domestic economy to meet military demands. It also led to the
commercial pressures the United States somewhat ironically imposed to punish Japan for its
imperialist imposition and attempt to create a sphere of economic and political influence in
mainland Asia. Indeed, the economic measures that the United States adopted in Japan’s
interwar years to stem the flow of Japanese aggression exacerbated the international situation
because the Japanese elites in power at various points in the course to war were either unwilling
to abandon mobilization plans or unable to do so because of military pressures and demands.
The moral sanctions and embargoes on goods such as aluminum and aviation fuel became
progressively steeper as Japan sought more territory and strategic resources in Asia. Finally,
the United States decided to freeze Japanese assets, and that freeze quickly morphed into full
embargo. Barnhart makes the point that this decision reflected an unshakable belief on the part
of United States leaders that Japan could not be deterred in the Southward Advance but might
be slowed by even more drastic economic measures. He attributes the Japanese response, to
push on with the advance, to the two factors he assigns ultimate importance in determining the
outcome of the clash between the two powers: economic motivations and bureaucratic politics.
Japan’s grand strategic motivation was the pursuit of autarky, and Barnhart argues that the July
2nd decisions for how to best achieve that goal were an amalgam of the opposing viewpoints
of the army 5 and navy, resulting in decisions that were rational in that they were the only
politically possible decisions within the Japanese government of the time. Despite Barnhart’s
strengths in precisely documenting the changing economic condition of Japan in the interwar
years and how its internal political dynamics and strategy shaped its path to war, Japan Prepares
for Total War fails to address the cultural attitudes and myths that enabled its feelings of
entitlement in the region. For example, scholars such as John Dower have suggested that
cultural myths like that of Japanese descent from goddess Amaterasu Omikami were used as
the psychological motivation for mobilizing the Japanese people and justifying horrific actions
against other Asian peoples in the name of Japan’s economic interests.3 Such cultural myths
identified Japan and the Japanese people as holding a unique, predetermined status as the
chosen natural rulers of Asia by virtue of their special descent from the true gods. Barnhart
identifies the primary motivation of Japan in its imperialist pursuits as strategic resource
acquisition. While his application of economic theory has wide explanatory power in the
actions that the Japanese took in the pursuit of autarky, it does not explain why they felt entitled
to or justified in their abuse of the territorial and human rights of other Asians. Furthermore,
Barnhart is careful to avoid overt statement of the brutality of the Japanese military in
imperialist “incidents.” For example, in the attack against Nanking that many scholars have
characterized as rife with atrocities, Barnhart comments that it was an “unbounded military
success;” his only concession to its putative unusual brutality is that the State Department
condemned it as “contrary to the principles of law and humanity.” Although it is perhaps
common to dehumanize an enemy in war and thus Barnhart might choose to leave discussions
of Japanese brutality to other scholars 6 because it is common to dehumanize an enemy in war,
but he could strengthen his argument for economic motivations by discussing how a feeling of
racial, national or cultural superiority played a role in justifying Japanese entitlement to control
of the lands and resources of others. Moreover, justification for such Japanese positions as the
Amau Doctrine, which claimed the Japanese right to supervise economic development of China
and barred all other nations from that right, was clearly based on more than Japanese economic
need, as it claimed Japan had a special right to control China, indicating a feeling of either
extreme paternalism or inherent superiority to China. While racist cultural myths are largely
ignored by Barnhart, racism and misperception in international diplomacy are touched on as
factors in the myriad misunderstandings that occurred between Japan and the United States. In
Japan Prepares for Total War, both Japan and the United States are characterized as often
suspecting the other side of “cunning” and “crafty” behavior, and President Roosevelt is noted
as consistently holding an “anti-Japanese” attitude. These attitudes led to irrational fears; for
example, Barnhart notes that Roosevelt feared a Japanese attack on the West Coast to the extent
that he had crabbing operations checked for the possibility that the Japanese might use them as
bases for war. Japan, too, based a number of decisions on misperceptions of the stance of the
other side; for instance, it believed for a time that the Draft Understanding was a formal United
States policy position, and thus changed its estimate of the probability of war with the United
States, leading to confidence in more aggressive behavior. Barnhart demonstrates that racism
and misunderstandings thus contributed to the policies of the time period in question, but such
a nod to the role of racism and misperception in policy is curious when his argument neglects
to explain the 7 possible of role of racism as justification for forcible economic expansion of
Japan. In conclusion, Japan Prepares for Total War is an economic history, one that serves its
stated purpose of contributing to an understanding of how Japan’s economic concerns and
inter-service rivalries contributed to bringing about the Pacific War. Discussion of Japanese
paternalism or racism in the pursuit of autarky is largely avoided by Barnhart, and this
avoidance detracts to a small extent from the explanatory power of economic vulnerability and
internal political dynamics as the causal variables in Japanese imperialism and attack on the
United States. Perhaps Barnhart is merely trying to achieve objectivity and avoid a
condemnatory tone, but in failing to question the legitimacy of Japan’s special right to control
the rest of Asia, he misses the opportunity to explain the role of the values and attitudes that
supposedly lent justification to Japan’s right to cruelly exploit its Asian neighbors. Despite this
criticism, Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941 offers
a detailed and thought provoking account of the ironies of US-Japan relations and mistakes in
the years preceding the Pacific War.
In Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941, Michael A.
Barnhart chronicles the history of Japan’s futile search for autarky in the years leading to the
Pacific War.1 In examining the vital linkage between economics and national security in this
period, Barnhart makes the argument that the perception of economic vulnerability as the main
security issue facing Japan, combined with bureaucratic politics in the form of army-navy inter-
service rivalries, led directly to both the impulse for empire in resource-rich mainland Asia and
the attack on Pearl Harbor. However, Barnhart’s history charts Japan’s search for economic
security without explaining its justification for and entitlement to seizing the resources and land
of others, often brutally so. As such, the sterility of Japan Prepares for Total War downplays
the role of racist attitudes and cultural myths in engendering the events described. Nonetheless,
with strong evidentiary support Barnhart makes a compelling case for the ascendancy of
economic considerations and bureaucratic politics as the causal factors in Japan’s attack of the
United States on December 7th, 1941. Barnhart posits that Japan’s interpretation of the lessons
of World War I drove its leaders to view autarky as the basis for grand strategic planning. After
all, Germany, possessor of a stronger military than its conquerors, had succumbed to defeat in
WWI because it lacked an industrial base able to mobilize to a degree freeing it from economic
dependence on other nations. Such dependence creates vulnerability because the dependent
nation is subject to the whims and economic pressure of those nations on which it depends.
Japan had defeated Western power Russia in the Sino-Soviet conflict 2 of 1904-1905, but its
status as a resource-poor nation caused a number of influential civilian elites and military
officers to become advocates of “total war,” or the national capacity to not only wage war with
strong military forces but with the economic capability to supply all needed war materiel. Two
essential elements were necessary for this plan to succeed in establishing autarky and thus
security: a peace of at least five years with the hegemonic United States, and natural resources
such as iron and oil. These material resources could be had on the Asian mainland, specifically
in Manchuria and subsequently in China proper. As Barnhart points out, the Japanese chose to
forcibly acquire these resources from its mainland neighbors, and this course of action brought
it into conflict with the free trade philosophy and Open Door policy of the United States.
Japan’s course to national mobilization and self-sufficiency included the creation of a puppet
state for the economic exploitation of Manchuria; Manchukuo was created in 1932 in concert
with Japan’s first long-term mobilization plan. After “rational mobilization” of the domestic
economy, Japan’s increasingly imperial interests turned to China while the military’s share of
the budget rose to 45 percent. In 1937 Japanese forces commenced what Barnhart concededly
calls the “China Incident,” in which China and its resources were claimed by Japan under the
guise of establishing a Japanese-run corporation for economic development of the region.
Barnhart adeptly points out the ironies in Japan’s fight to acquire the Chinese mainland as a
strategic resource. The original total war proponents understood the threat to security that
belligerence in China caused for Japan: the United States, in defending the Open Door policy
in China, might deny Japan the indispensable resources like 3 machine tools that it required to
achieve self-sufficiency. Additionally, Japan’s domestic economy and citizenry were greatly
strained in what Barnhart terms the “bitter mortgage” of funding the efforts of empire in China.
Barnhart therefore argues that Japan’s aggressive imperial activities on the Asian mainland
were counterproductive in its quest for autarky: they threatened the necessary peace with the
United States and came at extreme costs to the Japanese nation. Japan Prepares for Total War
also contends that bureaucratic politics, specifically the competing interests of Japan’s army
and navy, played a significant role in shaping policy and determining the sequence of events
leading to the Pacific War. In bureaucratic politics, the players in a government bargain and
compete according to their organizational interests, resulting in policy that is not the product
of a single rational decision but is instead an amalgam of the visions and choices of the players
involved.2 The army and navy in pre-WWII Japan were both strong players in compelling the
nation’s political leaders to allocate resources according to their perceived needs; Barnhart
offers a number of examples of how their economic demands for strategic resources like iron
and oil led to further pressures to expand the Japanese empire in order to acquire such goods.
Additionally, Barnhart takes the position that differing strategic conceptions of how to best
approach the Southward Advance to commandeer the Dutch and French colonies of Southeast
Asia fed a growing inter-service rivalry. This rivalry between the Imperial army and Imperial
navy overshadowed rational considerations of the diplomatic and economic ramifications of
the United States’ reaction to aggressive Japanese imperialism as a means of achieving autarky.
Barnhart documents that the navy in 4 particular instituted a practice of exchanging “more
vigorous foreign policies” for greater resource allocations of strategic materials, and he argues
that the military as a whole served as the “engine of real change” in Japanese policy with regard
to economic expansion as a means of achieving national security. The quest of each service to
outbid the other in acquisition of strategic materials therefore led to the diversion of goods and
funds from exports and the domestic economy to meet military demands. It also led to the
commercial pressures the United States somewhat ironically imposed to punish Japan for its
imperialist imposition and attempt to create a sphere of economic and political influence in
mainland Asia. Indeed, the economic measures that the United States adopted in Japan’s
interwar years to stem the flow of Japanese aggression exacerbated the international situation
because the Japanese elites in power at various points in the course to war were either unwilling
to abandon mobilization plans or unable to do so because of military pressures and demands.
The moral sanctions and embargoes on goods such as aluminum and aviation fuel became
progressively steeper as Japan sought more territory and strategic resources in Asia. Finally,
the United States decided to freeze Japanese assets, and that freeze quickly morphed into full
embargo. Barnhart makes the point that this decision reflected an unshakable belief on the part
of United States leaders that Japan could not be deterred in the Southward Advance but might
be slowed by even more drastic economic measures. He attributes the Japanese response, to
push on with the advance, to the two factors he assigns ultimate importance in determining the
outcome of the clash between the two powers: economic motivations and bureaucratic politics.
Japan’s grand strategic motivation was the pursuit of autarky, and Barnhart argues that the July
2nd decisions for how to best achieve that goal were an amalgam of the opposing viewpoints
of the army 5 and navy, resulting in decisions that were rational in that they were the only
politically possible decisions within the Japanese government of the time. Despite Barnhart’s
strengths in precisely documenting the changing economic condition of Japan in the interwar
years and how its internal political dynamics and strategy shaped its path to war, Japan Prepares
for Total War fails to address the cultural attitudes and myths that enabled its feelings of
entitlement in the region. For example, scholars such as John Dower have suggested that
cultural myths like that of Japanese descent from goddess Amaterasu Omikami were used as
the psychological motivation for mobilizing the Japanese people and justifying horrific actions
against other Asian peoples in the name of Japan’s economic interests.3 Such cultural myths
identified Japan and the Japanese people as holding a unique, predetermined status as the
chosen natural rulers of Asia by virtue of their special descent from the true gods. Barnhart
identifies the primary motivation of Japan in its imperialist pursuits as strategic resource
acquisition. While his application of economic theory has wide explanatory power in the
actions that the Japanese took in the pursuit of autarky, it does not explain why they felt entitled
to or justified in their abuse of the territorial and human rights of other Asians. Furthermore,
Barnhart is careful to avoid overt statement of the brutality of the Japanese military in
imperialist “incidents.” For example, in the attack against Nanking that many scholars have
characterized as rife with atrocities, Barnhart comments that it was an “unbounded military
success;” his only concession to its putative unusual brutality is that the State Department
condemned it as “contrary to the principles of law and humanity.” Although it is perhaps
common to dehumanize an enemy in war and thus Barnhart might choose to leave discussions
of Japanese brutality to other scholars 6 because it is common to dehumanize an enemy in war,
but he could strengthen his argument for economic motivations by discussing how a feeling of
racial, national or cultural superiority played a role in justifying Japanese entitlement to control
of the lands and resources of others. Moreover, justification for such Japanese positions as the
Amau Doctrine, which claimed the Japanese right to supervise economic development of China
and barred all other nations from that right, was clearly based on more than Japanese economic
need, as it claimed Japan had a special right to control China, indicating a feeling of either
extreme paternalism or inherent superiority to China. While racist cultural myths are largely
ignored by Barnhart, racism and misperception in international diplomacy are touched on as
factors in the myriad misunderstandings that occurred between Japan and the United States. In
Japan Prepares for Total War, both Japan and the United States are characterized as often
suspecting the other side of “cunning” and “crafty” behavior, and President Roosevelt is noted
as consistently holding an “anti-Japanese” attitude. These attitudes led to irrational fears; for
example, Barnhart notes that Roosevelt feared a Japanese attack on the West Coast to the extent
that he had crabbing operations checked for the possibility that the Japanese might use them as
bases for war. Japan, too, based a number of decisions on misperceptions of the stance of the
other side; for instance, it believed for a time that the Draft Understanding was a formal United
States policy position, and thus changed its estimate of the probability of war with the United
States, leading to confidence in more aggressive behavior. Barnhart demonstrates that racism
and misunderstandings thus contributed to the policies of the time period in question, but such
a nod to the role of racism and misperception in policy is curious when his argument neglects
to explain the 7 possible of role of racism as justification for forcible economic expansion of
Japan. In conclusion, Japan Prepares for Total War is an economic history, one that serves its
stated purpose of contributing to an understanding of how Japan’s economic concerns and
inter-service rivalries contributed to bringing about the Pacific War. Discussion of Japanese
paternalism or racism in the pursuit of autarky is largely avoided by Barnhart, and this
avoidance detracts to a small extent from the explanatory power of economic vulnerability and
internal political dynamics as the causal variables in Japanese imperialism and attack on the
United States. Perhaps Barnhart is merely trying to achieve objectivity and avoid a
condemnatory tone, but in failing to question the legitimacy of Japan’s special right to control
the rest of Asia, he misses the opportunity to explain the role of the values and attitudes that
supposedly lent justification to Japan’s right to cruelly exploit its Asian neighbors. Despite this
criticism, Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941 offers
a detailed and thought provoking account of the ironies of US-Japan relations and mistakes in
the years preceding the Pacific War.
In Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941, Michael A.
Barnhart chronicles the history of Japan’s futile search for autarky in the years leading to the
Pacific War.1 In examining the vital linkage between economics and national security in this
period, Barnhart makes the argument that the perception of economic vulnerability as the main
security issue facing Japan, combined with bureaucratic politics in the form of army-navy inter-
service rivalries, led directly to both the impulse for empire in resource-rich mainland Asia and
the attack on Pearl Harbor. However, Barnhart’s history charts Japan’s search for economic
security without explaining its justification for and entitlement to seizing the resources and land
of others, often brutally so. As such, the sterility of Japan Prepares for Total War downplays
the role of racist attitudes and cultural myths in engendering the events described. Nonetheless,
with strong evidentiary support Barnhart makes a compelling case for the ascendancy of
economic considerations and bureaucratic politics as the causal factors in Japan’s attack of the
United States on December 7th, 1941. Barnhart posits that Japan’s interpretation of the lessons
of World War I drove its leaders to view autarky as the basis for grand strategic planning. After
all, Germany, possessor of a stronger military than its conquerors, had succumbed to defeat in
WWI because it lacked an industrial base able to mobilize to a degree freeing it from economic
dependence on other nations. Such dependence creates vulnerability because the dependent
nation is subject to the whims and economic pressure of those nations on which it depends.
Japan had defeated Western power Russia in the Sino-Soviet conflict 2 of 1904-1905, but its
status as a resource-poor nation caused a number of influential civilian elites and military
officers to become advocates of “total war,” or the national capacity to not only wage war with
strong military forces but with the economic capability to supply all needed war materiel. Two
essential elements were necessary for this plan to succeed in establishing autarky and thus
security: a peace of at least five years with the hegemonic United States, and natural resources
such as iron and oil. These material resources could be had on the Asian mainland, specifically
in Manchuria and subsequently in China proper. As Barnhart points out, the Japanese chose to
forcibly acquire these resources from its mainland neighbors, and this course of action brought
it into conflict with the free trade philosophy and Open Door policy of the United States.
Japan’s course to national mobilization and self-sufficiency included the creation of a puppet
state for the economic exploitation of Manchuria; Manchukuo was created in 1932 in concert
with Japan’s first long-term mobilization plan. After “rational mobilization” of the domestic
economy, Japan’s increasingly imperial interests turned to China while the military’s share of
the budget rose to 45 percent. In 1937 Japanese forces commenced what Barnhart concededly
calls the “China Incident,” in which China and its resources were claimed by Japan under the
guise of establishing a Japanese-run corporation for economic development of the region.
Barnhart adeptly points out the ironies in Japan’s fight to acquire the Chinese mainland as a
strategic resource. The original total war proponents understood the threat to security that
belligerence in China caused for Japan: the United States, in defending the Open Door policy
in China, might deny Japan the indispensable resources like 3 machine tools that it required to
achieve self-sufficiency. Additionally, Japan’s domestic economy and citizenry were greatly
strained in what Barnhart terms the “bitter mortgage” of funding the efforts of empire in China.
Barnhart therefore argues that Japan’s aggressive imperial activities on the Asian mainland
were counterproductive in its quest for autarky: they threatened the necessary peace with the
United States and came at extreme costs to the Japanese nation. Japan Prepares for Total War
also contends that bureaucratic politics, specifically the competing interests of Japan’s army
and navy, played a significant role in shaping policy and determining the sequence of events
leading to the Pacific War. In bureaucratic politics, the players in a government bargain and
compete according to their organizational interests, resulting in policy that is not the product
of a single rational decision but is instead an amalgam of the visions and choices of the players
involved.2 The army and navy in pre-WWII Japan were both strong players in compelling the
nation’s political leaders to allocate resources according to their perceived needs; Barnhart
offers a number of examples of how their economic demands for strategic resources like iron
and oil led to further pressures to expand the Japanese empire in order to acquire such goods.
Additionally, Barnhart takes the position that differing strategic conceptions of how to best
approach the Southward Advance to commandeer the Dutch and French colonies of Southeast
Asia fed a growing inter-service rivalry. This rivalry between the Imperial army and Imperial
navy overshadowed rational considerations of the diplomatic and economic ramifications of
the United States’ reaction to aggressive Japanese imperialism as a means of achieving autarky.
Barnhart documents that the navy in 4 particular instituted a practice of exchanging “more
vigorous foreign policies” for greater resource allocations of strategic materials, and he argues
that the military as a whole served as the “engine of real change” in Japanese policy with regard
to economic expansion as a means of achieving national security. The quest of each service to
outbid the other in acquisition of strategic materials therefore led to the diversion of goods and
funds from exports and the domestic economy to meet military demands. It also led to the
commercial pressures the United States somewhat ironically imposed to punish Japan for its
imperialist imposition and attempt to create a sphere of economic and political influence in
mainland Asia. Indeed, the economic measures that the United States adopted in Japan’s
interwar years to stem the flow of Japanese aggression exacerbated the international situation
because the Japanese elites in power at various points in the course to war were either unwilling
to abandon mobilization plans or unable to do so because of military pressures and demands.
The moral sanctions and embargoes on goods such as aluminum and aviation fuel became
progressively steeper as Japan sought more territory and strategic resources in Asia. Finally,
the United States decided to freeze Japanese assets, and that freeze quickly morphed into full
embargo. Barnhart makes the point that this decision reflected an unshakable belief on the part
of United States leaders that Japan could not be deterred in the Southward Advance but might
be slowed by even more drastic economic measures. He attributes the Japanese response, to
push on with the advance, to the two factors he assigns ultimate importance in determining the
outcome of the clash between the two powers: economic motivations and bureaucratic politics.
Japan’s grand strategic motivation was the pursuit of autarky, and Barnhart argues that the July
2nd decisions for how to best achieve that goal were an amalgam of the opposing viewpoints
of the army 5 and navy, resulting in decisions that were rational in that they were the only
politically possible decisions within the Japanese government of the time. Despite Barnhart’s
strengths in precisely documenting the changing economic condition of Japan in the interwar
years and how its internal political dynamics and strategy shaped its path to war, Japan Prepares
for Total War fails to address the cultural attitudes and myths that enabled its feelings of
entitlement in the region. For example, scholars such as John Dower have suggested that
cultural myths like that of Japanese descent from goddess Amaterasu Omikami were used as
the psychological motivation for mobilizing the Japanese people and justifying horrific actions
against other Asian peoples in the name of Japan’s economic interests.3 Such cultural myths
identified Japan and the Japanese people as holding a unique, predetermined status as the
chosen natural rulers of Asia by virtue of their special descent from the true gods. Barnhart
identifies the primary motivation of Japan in its imperialist pursuits as strategic resource
acquisition. While his application of economic theory has wide explanatory power in the
actions that the Japanese took in the pursuit of autarky, it does not explain why they felt entitled
to or justified in their abuse of the territorial and human rights of other Asians. Furthermore,
Barnhart is careful to avoid overt statement of the brutality of the Japanese military in
imperialist “incidents.” For example, in the attack against Nanking that many scholars have
characterized as rife with atrocities, Barnhart comments that it was an “unbounded military
success;” his only concession to its putative unusual brutality is that the State Department
condemned it as “contrary to the principles of law and humanity.” Although it is perhaps
common to dehumanize an enemy in war and thus Barnhart might choose to leave discussions
of Japanese brutality to other scholars 6 because it is common to dehumanize an enemy in war,
but he could strengthen his argument for economic motivations by discussing how a feeling of
racial, national or cultural superiority played a role in justifying Japanese entitlement to control
of the lands and resources of others. Moreover, justification for such Japanese positions as the
Amau Doctrine, which claimed the Japanese right to supervise economic development of China
and barred all other nations from that right, was clearly based on more than Japanese economic
need, as it claimed Japan had a special right to control China, indicating a feeling of either
extreme paternalism or inherent superiority to China. While racist cultural myths are largely
ignored by Barnhart, racism and misperception in international diplomacy are touched on as
factors in the myriad misunderstandings that occurred between Japan and the United States. In
Japan Prepares for Total War, both Japan and the United States are characterized as often
suspecting the other side of “cunning” and “crafty” behavior, and President Roosevelt is noted
as consistently holding an “anti-Japanese” attitude. These attitudes led to irrational fears; for
example, Barnhart notes that Roosevelt feared a Japanese attack on the West Coast to the extent
that he had crabbing operations checked for the possibility that the Japanese might use them as
bases for war. Japan, too, based a number of decisions on misperceptions of the stance of the
other side; for instance, it believed for a time that the Draft Understanding was a formal United
States policy position, and thus changed its estimate of the probability of war with the United
States, leading to confidence in more aggressive behavior. Barnhart demonstrates that racism
and misunderstandings thus contributed to the policies of the time period in question, but such
a nod to the role of racism and misperception in policy is curious when his argument neglects
to explain the 7 possible of role of racism as justification for forcible economic expansion of
Japan. In conclusion, Japan Prepares for Total War is an economic history, one that serves its
stated purpose of contributing to an understanding of how Japan’s economic concerns and
inter-service rivalries contributed to bringing about the Pacific War. Discussion of Japanese
paternalism or racism in the pursuit of autarky is largely avoided by Barnhart, and this
avoidance detracts to a small extent from the explanatory power of economic vulnerability and
internal political dynamics as the causal variables in Japanese imperialism and attack on the
United States. Perhaps Barnhart is merely trying to achieve objectivity and avoid a
condemnatory tone, but in failing to question the legitimacy of Japan’s special right to control
the rest of Asia, he misses the opportunity to explain the role of the values and attitudes that
supposedly lent justification to Japan’s right to cruelly exploit its Asian neighbors. Despite this
criticism, Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941 offers
a detailed and thought provoking account of the ironies of US-Japan relations and mistakes in
the years preceding the Pacific War.
In Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941, Michael A.
Barnhart chronicles the history of Japan’s futile search for autarky in the years leading to the
Pacific War.1 In examining the vital linkage between economics and national security in this
period, Barnhart makes the argument that the perception of economic vulnerability as the main
security issue facing Japan, combined with bureaucratic politics in the form of army-navy inter-
service rivalries, led directly to both the impulse for empire in resource-rich mainland Asia and
the attack on Pearl Harbor. However, Barnhart’s history charts Japan’s search for economic
security without explaining its justification for and entitlement to seizing the resources and land
of others, often brutally so. As such, the sterility of Japan Prepares for Total War downplays
the role of racist attitudes and cultural myths in engendering the events described. Nonetheless,
with strong evidentiary support Barnhart makes a compelling case for the ascendancy of
economic considerations and bureaucratic politics as the causal factors in Japan’s attack of the
United States on December 7th, 1941. Barnhart posits that Japan’s interpretation of the lessons
of World War I drove its leaders to view autarky as the basis for grand strategic planning. After
all, Germany, possessor of a stronger military than its conquerors, had succumbed to defeat in
WWI because it lacked an industrial base able to mobilize to a degree freeing it from economic
dependence on other nations. Such dependence creates vulnerability because the dependent
nation is subject to the whims and economic pressure of those nations on which it depends.
Japan had defeated Western power Russia in the Sino-Soviet conflict 2 of 1904-1905, but its
status as a resource-poor nation caused a number of influential civilian elites and military
officers to become advocates of “total war,” or the national capacity to not only wage war with
strong military forces but with the economic capability to supply all needed war materiel. Two
essential elements were necessary for this plan to succeed in establishing autarky and thus
security: a peace of at least five years with the hegemonic United States, and natural resources
such as iron and oil. These material resources could be had on the Asian mainland, specifically
in Manchuria and subsequently in China proper. As Barnhart points out, the Japanese chose to
forcibly acquire these resources from its mainland neighbors, and this course of action brought
it into conflict with the free trade philosophy and Open Door policy of the United States.
Japan’s course to national mobilization and self-sufficiency included the creation of a puppet
state for the economic exploitation of Manchuria; Manchukuo was created in 1932 in concert
with Japan’s first long-term mobilization plan. After “rational mobilization” of the domestic
economy, Japan’s increasingly imperial interests turned to China while the military’s share of
the budget rose to 45 percent. In 1937 Japanese forces commenced what Barnhart concededly
calls the “China Incident,” in which China and its resources were claimed by Japan under the
guise of establishing a Japanese-run corporation for economic development of the region.
Barnhart adeptly points out the ironies in Japan’s fight to acquire the Chinese mainland as a
strategic resource. The original total war proponents understood the threat to security that
belligerence in China caused for Japan: the United States, in defending the Open Door policy
in China, might deny Japan the indispensable resources like 3 machine tools that it required to
achieve self-sufficiency. Additionally, Japan’s domestic economy and citizenry were greatly
strained in what Barnhart terms the “bitter mortgage” of funding the efforts of empire in China.
Barnhart therefore argues that Japan’s aggressive imperial activities on the Asian mainland
were counterproductive in its quest for autarky: they threatened the necessary peace with the
United States and came at extreme costs to the Japanese nation. Japan Prepares for Total War
also contends that bureaucratic politics, specifically the competing interests of Japan’s army
and navy, played a significant role in shaping policy and determining the sequence of events
leading to the Pacific War. In bureaucratic politics, the players in a government bargain and
compete according to their organizational interests, resulting in policy that is not the product
of a single rational decision but is instead an amalgam of the visions and choices of the players
involved.2 The army and navy in pre-WWII Japan were both strong players in compelling the
nation’s political leaders to allocate resources according to their perceived needs; Barnhart
offers a number of examples of how their economic demands for strategic resources like iron
and oil led to further pressures to expand the Japanese empire in order to acquire such goods.
Additionally, Barnhart takes the position that differing strategic conceptions of how to best
approach the Southward Advance to commandeer the Dutch and French colonies of Southeast
Asia fed a growing inter-service rivalry. This rivalry between the Imperial army and Imperial
navy overshadowed rational considerations of the diplomatic and economic ramifications of
the United States’ reaction to aggressive Japanese imperialism as a means of achieving autarky.
Barnhart documents that the navy in 4 particular instituted a practice of exchanging “more
vigorous foreign policies” for greater resource allocations of strategic materials, and he argues
that the military as a whole served as the “engine of real change” in Japanese policy with regard
to economic expansion as a means of achieving national security. The quest of each service to
outbid the other in acquisition of strategic materials therefore led to the diversion of goods and
funds from exports and the domestic economy to meet military demands. It also led to the
commercial pressures the United States somewhat ironically imposed to punish Japan for its
imperialist imposition and attempt to create a sphere of economic and political influence in
mainland Asia. Indeed, the economic measures that the United States adopted in Japan’s
interwar years to stem the flow of Japanese aggression exacerbated the international situation
because the Japanese elites in power at various points in the course to war were either unwilling
to abandon mobilization plans or unable to do so because of military pressures and demands.
The moral sanctions and embargoes on goods such as aluminum and aviation fuel became
progressively steeper as Japan sought more territory and strategic resources in Asia. Finally,
the United States decided to freeze Japanese assets, and that freeze quickly morphed into full
embargo. Barnhart makes the point that this decision reflected an unshakable belief on the part
of United States leaders that Japan could not be deterred in the Southward Advance but might
be slowed by even more drastic economic measures. He attributes the Japanese response, to
push on with the advance, to the two factors he assigns ultimate importance in determining the
outcome of the clash between the two powers: economic motivations and bureaucratic politics.
Japan’s grand strategic motivation was the pursuit of autarky, and Barnhart argues that the July
2nd decisions for how to best achieve that goal were an amalgam of the opposing viewpoints
of the army 5 and navy, resulting in decisions that were rational in that they were the only
politically possible decisions within the Japanese government of the time. Despite Barnhart’s
strengths in precisely documenting the changing economic condition of Japan in the interwar
years and how its internal political dynamics and strategy shaped its path to war, Japan Prepares
for Total War fails to address the cultural attitudes and myths that enabled its feelings of
entitlement in the region. For example, scholars such as John Dower have suggested that
cultural myths like that of Japanese descent from goddess Amaterasu Omikami were used as
the psychological motivation for mobilizing the Japanese people and justifying horrific actions
against other Asian peoples in the name of Japan’s economic interests.3 Such cultural myths
identified Japan and the Japanese people as holding a unique, predetermined status as the
chosen natural rulers of Asia by virtue of their special descent from the true gods. Barnhart
identifies the primary motivation of Japan in its imperialist pursuits as strategic resource
acquisition. While his application of economic theory has wide explanatory power in the
actions that the Japanese took in the pursuit of autarky, it does not explain why they felt entitled
to or justified in their abuse of the territorial and human rights of other Asians. Furthermore,
Barnhart is careful to avoid overt statement of the brutality of the Japanese military in
imperialist “incidents.” For example, in the attack against Nanking that many scholars have
characterized as rife with atrocities, Barnhart comments that it was an “unbounded military
success;” his only concession to its putative unusual brutality is that the State Department
condemned it as “contrary to the principles of law and humanity.” Although it is perhaps
common to dehumanize an enemy in war and thus Barnhart might choose to leave discussions
of Japanese brutality to other scholars 6 because it is common to dehumanize an enemy in war,
but he could strengthen his argument for economic motivations by discussing how a feeling of
racial, national or cultural superiority played a role in justifying Japanese entitlement to control
of the lands and resources of others. Moreover, justification for such Japanese positions as the
Amau Doctrine, which claimed the Japanese right to supervise economic development of China
and barred all other nations from that right, was clearly based on more than Japanese economic
need, as it claimed Japan had a special right to control China, indicating a feeling of either
extreme paternalism or inherent superiority to China. While racist cultural myths are largely
ignored by Barnhart, racism and misperception in international diplomacy are touched on as
factors in the myriad misunderstandings that occurred between Japan and the United States. In
Japan Prepares for Total War, both Japan and the United States are characterized as often
suspecting the other side of “cunning” and “crafty” behavior, and President Roosevelt is noted
as consistently holding an “anti-Japanese” attitude. These attitudes led to irrational fears; for
example, Barnhart notes that Roosevelt feared a Japanese attack on the West Coast to the extent
that he had crabbing operations checked for the possibility that the Japanese might use them as
bases for war. Japan, too, based a number of decisions on misperceptions of the stance of the
other side; for instance, it believed for a time that the Draft Understanding was a formal United
States policy position, and thus changed its estimate of the probability of war with the United
States, leading to confidence in more aggressive behavior. Barnhart demonstrates that racism
and misunderstandings thus contributed to the policies of the time period in question, but such
a nod to the role of racism and misperception in policy is curious when his argument neglects
to explain the 7 possible of role of racism as justification for forcible economic expansion of
Japan. In conclusion, Japan Prepares for Total War is an economic history, one that serves its
stated purpose of contributing to an understanding of how Japan’s economic concerns and
inter-service rivalries contributed to bringing about the Pacific War. Discussion of Japanese
paternalism or racism in the pursuit of autarky is largely avoided by Barnhart, and this
avoidance detracts to a small extent from the explanatory power of economic vulnerability and
internal political dynamics as the causal variables in Japanese imperialism and attack on the
United States. Perhaps Barnhart is merely trying to achieve objectivity and avoid a
condemnatory tone, but in failing to question the legitimacy of Japan’s special right to control
the rest of Asia, he misses the opportunity to explain the role of the values and attitudes that
supposedly lent justification to Japan’s right to cruelly exploit its Asian neighbors. Despite this
criticism, Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941 offers
a detailed and thought provoking account of the ironies of US-Japan relations and mistakes in
the years preceding the Pacific War.
In Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941, Michael A.
Barnhart chronicles the history of Japan’s futile search for autarky in the years leading to the
Pacific War.1 In examining the vital linkage between economics and national security in this
period, Barnhart makes the argument that the perception of economic vulnerability as the main
security issue facing Japan, combined with bureaucratic politics in the form of army-navy inter-
service rivalries, led directly to both the impulse for empire in resource-rich mainland Asia and
the attack on Pearl Harbor. However, Barnhart’s history charts Japan’s search for economic
security without explaining its justification for and entitlement to seizing the resources and land
of others, often brutally so. As such, the sterility of Japan Prepares for Total War downplays
the role of racist attitudes and cultural myths in engendering the events described. Nonetheless,
with strong evidentiary support Barnhart makes a compelling case for the ascendancy of
economic considerations and bureaucratic politics as the causal factors in Japan’s attack of the
United States on December 7th, 1941. Barnhart posits that Japan’s interpretation of the lessons
of World War I drove its leaders to view autarky as the basis for grand strategic planning. After
all, Germany, possessor of a stronger military than its conquerors, had succumbed to defeat in
WWI because it lacked an industrial base able to mobilize to a degree freeing it from economic
dependence on other nations. Such dependence creates vulnerability because the dependent
nation is subject to the whims and economic pressure of those nations on which it depends.
Japan had defeated Western power Russia in the Sino-Soviet conflict 2 of 1904-1905, but its
status as a resource-poor nation caused a number of influential civilian elites and military
officers to become advocates of “total war,” or the national capacity to not only wage war with
strong military forces but with the economic capability to supply all needed war materiel. Two
essential elements were necessary for this plan to succeed in establishing autarky and thus
security: a peace of at least five years with the hegemonic United States, and natural resources
such as iron and oil. These material resources could be had on the Asian mainland, specifically
in Manchuria and subsequently in China proper. As Barnhart points out, the Japanese chose to
forcibly acquire these resources from its mainland neighbors, and this course of action brought
it into conflict with the free trade philosophy and Open Door policy of the United States.
Japan’s course to national mobilization and self-sufficiency included the creation of a puppet
state for the economic exploitation of Manchuria; Manchukuo was created in 1932 in concert
with Japan’s first long-term mobilization plan. After “rational mobilization” of the domestic
economy, Japan’s increasingly imperial interests turned to China while the military’s share of
the budget rose to 45 percent. In 1937 Japanese forces commenced what Barnhart concededly
calls the “China Incident,” in which China and its resources were claimed by Japan under the
guise of establishing a Japanese-run corporation for economic development of the region.
Barnhart adeptly points out the ironies in Japan’s fight to acquire the Chinese mainland as a
strategic resource. The original total war proponents understood the threat to security that
belligerence in China caused for Japan: the United States, in defending the Open Door policy
in China, might deny Japan the indispensable resources like 3 machine tools that it required to
achieve self-sufficiency. Additionally, Japan’s domestic economy and citizenry were greatly
strained in what Barnhart terms the “bitter mortgage” of funding the efforts of empire in China.
Barnhart therefore argues that Japan’s aggressive imperial activities on the Asian mainland
were counterproductive in its quest for autarky: they threatened the necessary peace with the
United States and came at extreme costs to the Japanese nation. Japan Prepares for Total War
also contends that bureaucratic politics, specifically the competing interests of Japan’s army
and navy, played a significant role in shaping policy and determining the sequence of events
leading to the Pacific War. In bureaucratic politics, the players in a government bargain and
compete according to their organizational interests, resulting in policy that is not the product
of a single rational decision but is instead an amalgam of the visions and choices of the players
involved.2 The army and navy in pre-WWII Japan were both strong players in compelling the
nation’s political leaders to allocate resources according to their perceived needs; Barnhart
offers a number of examples of how their economic demands for strategic resources like iron
and oil led to further pressures to expand the Japanese empire in order to acquire such goods.
Additionally, Barnhart takes the position that differing strategic conceptions of how to best
approach the Southward Advance to commandeer the Dutch and French colonies of Southeast
Asia fed a growing inter-service rivalry. This rivalry between the Imperial army and Imperial
navy overshadowed rational considerations of the diplomatic and economic ramifications of
the United States’ reaction to aggressive Japanese imperialism as a means of achieving autarky.
Barnhart documents that the navy in 4 particular instituted a practice of exchanging “more
vigorous foreign policies” for greater resource allocations of strategic materials, and he argues
that the military as a whole served as the “engine of real change” in Japanese policy with regard
to economic expansion as a means of achieving national security. The quest of each service to
outbid the other in acquisition of strategic materials therefore led to the diversion of goods and
funds from exports and the domestic economy to meet military demands. It also led to the
commercial pressures the United States somewhat ironically imposed to punish Japan for its
imperialist imposition and attempt to create a sphere of economic and political influence in
mainland Asia. Indeed, the economic measures that the United States adopted in Japan’s
interwar years to stem the flow of Japanese aggression exacerbated the international situation
because the Japanese elites in power at various points in the course to war were either unwilling
to abandon mobilization plans or unable to do so because of military pressures and demands.
The moral sanctions and embargoes on goods such as aluminum and aviation fuel became
progressively steeper as Japan sought more territory and strategic resources in Asia. Finally,
the United States decided to freeze Japanese assets, and that freeze quickly morphed into full
embargo. Barnhart makes the point that this decision reflected an unshakable belief on the part
of United States leaders that Japan could not be deterred in the Southward Advance but might
be slowed by even more drastic economic measures. He attributes the Japanese response, to
push on with the advance, to the two factors he assigns ultimate importance in determining the
outcome of the clash between the two powers: economic motivations and bureaucratic politics.
Japan’s grand strategic motivation was the pursuit of autarky, and Barnhart argues that the July
2nd decisions for how to best achieve that goal were an amalgam of the opposing viewpoints
of the army 5 and navy, resulting in decisions that were rational in that they were the only
politically possible decisions within the Japanese government of the time. Despite Barnhart’s
strengths in precisely documenting the changing economic condition of Japan in the interwar
years and how its internal political dynamics and strategy shaped its path to war, Japan Prepares
for Total War fails to address the cultural attitudes and myths that enabled its feelings of
entitlement in the region. For example, scholars such as John Dower have suggested that
cultural myths like that of Japanese descent from goddess Amaterasu Omikami were used as
the psychological motivation for mobilizing the Japanese people and justifying horrific actions
against other Asian peoples in the name of Japan’s economic interests.3 Such cultural myths
identified Japan and the Japanese people as holding a unique, predetermined status as the
chosen natural rulers of Asia by virtue of their special descent from the true gods. Barnhart
identifies the primary motivation of Japan in its imperialist pursuits as strategic resource
acquisition. While his application of economic theory has wide explanatory power in the
actions that the Japanese took in the pursuit of autarky, it does not explain why they felt entitled
to or justified in their abuse of the territorial and human rights of other Asians. Furthermore,
Barnhart is careful to avoid overt statement of the brutality of the Japanese military in
imperialist “incidents.” For example, in the attack against Nanking that many scholars have
characterized as rife with atrocities, Barnhart comments that it was an “unbounded military
success;” his only concession to its putative unusual brutality is that the State Department
condemned it as “contrary to the principles of law and humanity.” Although it is perhaps
common to dehumanize an enemy in war and thus Barnhart might choose to leave discussions
of Japanese brutality to other scholars 6 because it is common to dehumanize an enemy in war,
but he could strengthen his argument for economic motivations by discussing how a feeling of
racial, national or cultural superiority played a role in justifying Japanese entitlement to control
of the lands and resources of others. Moreover, justification for such Japanese positions as the
Amau Doctrine, which claimed the Japanese right to supervise economic development of China
and barred all other nations from that right, was clearly based on more than Japanese economic
need, as it claimed Japan had a special right to control China, indicating a feeling of either
extreme paternalism or inherent superiority to China. While racist cultural myths are largely
ignored by Barnhart, racism and misperception in international diplomacy are touched on as
factors in the myriad misunderstandings that occurred between Japan and the United States. In
Japan Prepares for Total War, both Japan and the United States are characterized as often
suspecting the other side of “cunning” and “crafty” behavior, and President Roosevelt is noted
as consistently holding an “anti-Japanese” attitude. These attitudes led to irrational fears; for
example, Barnhart notes that Roosevelt feared a Japanese attack on the West Coast to the extent
that he had crabbing operations checked for the possibility that the Japanese might use them as
bases for war. Japan, too, based a number of decisions on misperceptions of the stance of the
other side; for instance, it believed for a time that the Draft Understanding was a formal United
States policy position, and thus changed its estimate of the probability of war with the United
States, leading to confidence in more aggressive behavior. Barnhart demonstrates that racism
and misunderstandings thus contributed to the policies of the time period in question, but such
a nod to the role of racism and misperception in policy is curious when his argument neglects
to explain the 7 possible of role of racism as justification for forcible economic expansion of
Japan. In conclusion, Japan Prepares for Total War is an economic history, one that serves its
stated purpose of contributing to an understanding of how Japan’s economic concerns and
inter-service rivalries contributed to bringing about the Pacific War. Discussion of Japanese
paternalism or racism in the pursuit of autarky is largely avoided by Barnhart, and this
avoidance detracts to a small extent from the explanatory power of economic vulnerability and
internal political dynamics as the causal variables in Japanese imperialism and attack on the
United States. Perhaps Barnhart is merely trying to achieve objectivity and avoid a
condemnatory tone, but in failing to question the legitimacy of Japan’s special right to control
the rest of Asia, he misses the opportunity to explain the role of the values and attitudes that
supposedly lent justification to Japan’s right to cruelly exploit its Asian neighbors. Despite this
criticism, Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941 offers
a detailed and thought provoking account of the ironies of US-Japan relations and mistakes in
the years preceding the Pacific War.
In Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941, Michael A.
Barnhart chronicles the history of Japan’s futile search for autarky in the years leading to the
Pacific War.1 In examining the vital linkage between economics and national security in this
period, Barnhart makes the argument that the perception of economic vulnerability as the main
security issue facing Japan, combined with bureaucratic politics in the form of army-navy inter-
service rivalries, led directly to both the impulse for empire in resource-rich mainland Asia and
the attack on Pearl Harbor. However, Barnhart’s history charts Japan’s search for economic
security without explaining its justification for and entitlement to seizing the resources and land
of others, often brutally so. As such, the sterility of Japan Prepares for Total War downplays
the role of racist attitudes and cultural myths in engendering the events described. Nonetheless,
with strong evidentiary support Barnhart makes a compelling case for the ascendancy of
economic considerations and bureaucratic politics as the causal factors in Japan’s attack of the
United States on December 7th, 1941. Barnhart posits that Japan’s interpretation of the lessons
of World War I drove its leaders to view autarky as the basis for grand strategic planning. After
all, Germany, possessor of a stronger military than its conquerors, had succumbed to defeat in
WWI because it lacked an industrial base able to mobilize to a degree freeing it from economic
dependence on other nations. Such dependence creates vulnerability because the dependent
nation is subject to the whims and economic pressure of those nations on which it depends.
Japan had defeated Western power Russia in the Sino-Soviet conflict 2 of 1904-1905, but its
status as a resource-poor nation caused a number of influential civilian elites and military
officers to become advocates of “total war,” or the national capacity to not only wage war with
strong military forces but with the economic capability to supply all needed war materiel. Two
essential elements were necessary for this plan to succeed in establishing autarky and thus
security: a peace of at least five years with the hegemonic United States, and natural resources
such as iron and oil. These material resources could be had on the Asian mainland, specifically
in Manchuria and subsequently in China proper. As Barnhart points out, the Japanese chose to
forcibly acquire these resources from its mainland neighbors, and this course of action brought
it into conflict with the free trade philosophy and Open Door policy of the United States.
Japan’s course to national mobilization and self-sufficiency included the creation of a puppet
state for the economic exploitation of Manchuria; Manchukuo was created in 1932 in concert
with Japan’s first long-term mobilization plan. After “rational mobilization” of the domestic
economy, Japan’s increasingly imperial interests turned to China while the military’s share of
the budget rose to 45 percent. In 1937 Japanese forces commenced what Barnhart concededly
calls the “China Incident,” in which China and its resources were claimed by Japan under the
guise of establishing a Japanese-run corporation for economic development of the region.
Barnhart adeptly points out the ironies in Japan’s fight to acquire the Chinese mainland as a
strategic resource. The original total war proponents understood the threat to security that
belligerence in China caused for Japan: the United States, in defending the Open Door policy
in China, might deny Japan the indispensable resources like 3 machine tools that it required to
achieve self-sufficiency. Additionally, Japan’s domestic economy and citizenry were greatly
strained in what Barnhart terms the “bitter mortgage” of funding the efforts of empire in China.
Barnhart therefore argues that Japan’s aggressive imperial activities on the Asian mainland
were counterproductive in its quest for autarky: they threatened the necessary peace with the
United States and came at extreme costs to the Japanese nation. Japan Prepares for Total War
also contends that bureaucratic politics, specifically the competing interests of Japan’s army
and navy, played a significant role in shaping policy and determining the sequence of events
leading to the Pacific War. In bureaucratic politics, the players in a government bargain and
compete according to their organizational interests, resulting in policy that is not the product
of a single rational decision but is instead an amalgam of the visions and choices of the players
involved.2 The army and navy in pre-WWII Japan were both strong players in compelling the
nation’s political leaders to allocate resources according to their perceived needs; Barnhart
offers a number of examples of how their economic demands for strategic resources like iron
and oil led to further pressures to expand the Japanese empire in order to acquire such goods.
Additionally, Barnhart takes the position that differing strategic conceptions of how to best
approach the Southward Advance to commandeer the Dutch and French colonies of Southeast
Asia fed a growing inter-service rivalry. This rivalry between the Imperial army and Imperial
navy overshadowed rational considerations of the diplomatic and economic ramifications of
the United States’ reaction to aggressive Japanese imperialism as a means of achieving autarky.
Barnhart documents that the navy in 4 particular instituted a practice of exchanging “more
vigorous foreign policies” for greater resource allocations of strategic materials, and he argues
that the military as a whole served as the “engine of real change” in Japanese policy with regard
to economic expansion as a means of achieving national security. The quest of each service to
outbid the other in acquisition of strategic materials therefore led to the diversion of goods and
funds from exports and the domestic economy to meet military demands. It also led to the
commercial pressures the United States somewhat ironically imposed to punish Japan for its
imperialist imposition and attempt to create a sphere of economic and political influence in
mainland Asia. Indeed, the economic measures that the United States adopted in Japan’s
interwar years to stem the flow of Japanese aggression exacerbated the international situation
because the Japanese elites in power at various points in the course to war were either unwilling
to abandon mobilization plans or unable to do so because of military pressures and demands.
The moral sanctions and embargoes on goods such as aluminum and aviation fuel became
progressively steeper as Japan sought more territory and strategic resources in Asia. Finally,
the United States decided to freeze Japanese assets, and that freeze quickly morphed into full
embargo. Barnhart makes the point that this decision reflected an unshakable belief on the part
of United States leaders that Japan could not be deterred in the Southward Advance but might
be slowed by even more drastic economic measures. He attributes the Japanese response, to
push on with the advance, to the two factors he assigns ultimate importance in determining the
outcome of the clash between the two powers: economic motivations and bureaucratic politics.
Japan’s grand strategic motivation was the pursuit of autarky, and Barnhart argues that the July
2nd decisions for how to best achieve that goal were an amalgam of the opposing viewpoints
of the army 5 and navy, resulting in decisions that were rational in that they were the only
politically possible decisions within the Japanese government of the time. Despite Barnhart’s
strengths in precisely documenting the changing economic condition of Japan in the interwar
years and how its internal political dynamics and strategy shaped its path to war, Japan Prepares
for Total War fails to address the cultural attitudes and myths that enabled its feelings of
entitlement in the region. For example, scholars such as John Dower have suggested that
cultural myths like that of Japanese descent from goddess Amaterasu Omikami were used as
the psychological motivation for mobilizing the Japanese people and justifying horrific actions
against other Asian peoples in the name of Japan’s economic interests.3 Such cultural myths
identified Japan and the Japanese people as holding a unique, predetermined status as the
chosen natural rulers of Asia by virtue of their special descent from the true gods. Barnhart
identifies the primary motivation of Japan in its imperialist pursuits as strategic resource
acquisition. While his application of economic theory has wide explanatory power in the
actions that the Japanese took in the pursuit of autarky, it does not explain why they felt entitled
to or justified in their abuse of the territorial and human rights of other Asians. Furthermore,
Barnhart is careful to avoid overt statement of the brutality of the Japanese military in
imperialist “incidents.” For example, in the attack against Nanking that many scholars have
characterized as rife with atrocities, Barnhart comments that it was an “unbounded military
success;” his only concession to its putative unusual brutality is that the State Department
condemned it as “contrary to the principles of law and humanity.” Although it is perhaps
common to dehumanize an enemy in war and thus Barnhart might choose to leave discussions
of Japanese brutality to other scholars 6 because it is common to dehumanize an enemy in war,
but he could strengthen his argument for economic motivations by discussing how a feeling of
racial, national or cultural superiority played a role in justifying Japanese entitlement to control
of the lands and resources of others. Moreover, justification for such Japanese positions as the
Amau Doctrine, which claimed the Japanese right to supervise economic development of China
and barred all other nations from that right, was clearly based on more than Japanese economic
need, as it claimed Japan had a special right to control China, indicating a feeling of either
extreme paternalism or inherent superiority to China. While racist cultural myths are largely
ignored by Barnhart, racism and misperception in international diplomacy are touched on as
factors in the myriad misunderstandings that occurred between Japan and the United States. In
Japan Prepares for Total War, both Japan and the United States are characterized as often
suspecting the other side of “cunning” and “crafty” behavior, and President Roosevelt is noted
as consistently holding an “anti-Japanese” attitude. These attitudes led to irrational fears; for
example, Barnhart notes that Roosevelt feared a Japanese attack on the West Coast to the extent
that he had crabbing operations checked for the possibility that the Japanese might use them as
bases for war. Japan, too, based a number of decisions on misperceptions of the stance of the
other side; for instance, it believed for a time that the Draft Understanding was a formal United
States policy position, and thus changed its estimate of the probability of war with the United
States, leading to confidence in more aggressive behavior. Barnhart demonstrates that racism
and misunderstandings thus contributed to the policies of the time period in question, but such
a nod to the role of racism and misperception in policy is curious when his argument neglects
to explain the 7 possible of role of racism as justification for forcible economic expansion of
Japan. In conclusion, Japan Prepares for Total War is an economic history, one that serves its
stated purpose of contributing to an understanding of how Japan’s economic concerns and
inter-service rivalries contributed to bringing about the Pacific War. Discussion of Japanese
paternalism or racism in the pursuit of autarky is largely avoided by Barnhart, and this
avoidance detracts to a small extent from the explanatory power of economic vulnerability and
internal political dynamics as the causal variables in Japanese imperialism and attack on the
United States. Perhaps Barnhart is merely trying to achieve objectivity and avoid a
condemnatory tone, but in failing to question the legitimacy of Japan’s special right to control
the rest of Asia, he misses the opportunity to explain the role of the values and attitudes that
supposedly lent justification to Japan’s right to cruelly exploit its Asian neighbors. Despite this
criticism, Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941 offers
a detailed and thought provoking account of the ironies of US-Japan relations and mistakes in
the years preceding the Pacific War.
In Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941, Michael A.
Barnhart chronicles the history of Japan’s futile search for autarky in the years leading to the
Pacific War.1 In examining the vital linkage between economics and national security in this
period, Barnhart makes the argument that the perception of economic vulnerability as the main
security issue facing Japan, combined with bureaucratic politics in the form of army-navy inter-
service rivalries, led directly to both the impulse for empire in resource-rich mainland Asia and
the attack on Pearl Harbor. However, Barnhart’s history charts Japan’s search for economic
security without explaining its justification for and entitlement to seizing the resources and land
of others, often brutally so. As such, the sterility of Japan Prepares for Total War downplays
the role of racist attitudes and cultural myths in engendering the events described. Nonetheless,
with strong evidentiary support Barnhart makes a compelling case for the ascendancy of
economic considerations and bureaucratic politics as the causal factors in Japan’s attack of the
United States on December 7th, 1941. Barnhart posits that Japan’s interpretation of the lessons
of World War I drove its leaders to view autarky as the basis for grand strategic planning. After
all, Germany, possessor of a stronger military than its conquerors, had succumbed to defeat in
WWI because it lacked an industrial base able to mobilize to a degree freeing it from economic
dependence on other nations. Such dependence creates vulnerability because the dependent
nation is subject to the whims and economic pressure of those nations on which it depends.
Japan had defeated Western power Russia in the Sino-Soviet conflict 2 of 1904-1905, but its
status as a resource-poor nation caused a number of influential civilian elites and military
officers to become advocates of “total war,” or the national capacity to not only wage war with
strong military forces but with the economic capability to supply all needed war materiel. Two
essential elements were necessary for this plan to succeed in establishing autarky and thus
security: a peace of at least five years with the hegemonic United States, and natural resources
such as iron and oil. These material resources could be had on the Asian mainland, specifically
in Manchuria and subsequently in China proper. As Barnhart points out, the Japanese chose to
forcibly acquire these resources from its mainland neighbors, and this course of action brought
it into conflict with the free trade philosophy and Open Door policy of the United States.
Japan’s course to national mobilization and self-sufficiency included the creation of a puppet
state for the economic exploitation of Manchuria; Manchukuo was created in 1932 in concert
with Japan’s first long-term mobilization plan. After “rational mobilization” of the domestic
economy, Japan’s increasingly imperial interests turned to China while the military’s share of
the budget rose to 45 percent. In 1937 Japanese forces commenced what Barnhart concededly
calls the “China Incident,” in which China and its resources were claimed by Japan under the
guise of establishing a Japanese-run corporation for economic development of the region.
Barnhart adeptly points out the ironies in Japan’s fight to acquire the Chinese mainland as a
strategic resource. The original total war proponents understood the threat to security that
belligerence in China caused for Japan: the United States, in defending the Open Door policy
in China, might deny Japan the indispensable resources like 3 machine tools that it required to
achieve self-sufficiency. Additionally, Japan’s domestic economy and citizenry were greatly
strained in what Barnhart terms the “bitter mortgage” of funding the efforts of empire in China.
Barnhart therefore argues that Japan’s aggressive imperial activities on the Asian mainland
were counterproductive in its quest for autarky: they threatened the necessary peace with the
United States and came at extreme costs to the Japanese nation. Japan Prepares for Total War
also contends that bureaucratic politics, specifically the competing interests of Japan’s army
and navy, played a significant role in shaping policy and determining the sequence of events
leading to the Pacific War. In bureaucratic politics, the players in a government bargain and
compete according to their organizational interests, resulting in policy that is not the product
of a single rational decision but is instead an amalgam of the visions and choices of the players
involved.2 The army and navy in pre-WWII Japan were both strong players in compelling the
nation’s political leaders to allocate resources according to their perceived needs; Barnhart
offers a number of examples of how their economic demands for strategic resources like iron
and oil led to further pressures to expand the Japanese empire in order to acquire such goods.
Additionally, Barnhart takes the position that differing strategic conceptions of how to best
approach the Southward Advance to commandeer the Dutch and French colonies of Southeast
Asia fed a growing inter-service rivalry. This rivalry between the Imperial army and Imperial
navy overshadowed rational considerations of the diplomatic and economic ramifications of
the United States’ reaction to aggressive Japanese imperialism as a means of achieving autarky.
Barnhart documents that the navy in 4 particular instituted a practice of exchanging “more
vigorous foreign policies” for greater resource allocations of strategic materials, and he argues
that the military as a whole served as the “engine of real change” in Japanese policy with regard
to economic expansion as a means of achieving national security. The quest of each service to
outbid the other in acquisition of strategic materials therefore led to the diversion of goods and
funds from exports and the domestic economy to meet military demands. It also led to the
commercial pressures the United States somewhat ironically imposed to punish Japan for its
imperialist imposition and attempt to create a sphere of economic and political influence in
mainland Asia. Indeed, the economic measures that the United States adopted in Japan’s
interwar years to stem the flow of Japanese aggression exacerbated the international situation
because the Japanese elites in power at various points in the course to war were either unwilling
to abandon mobilization plans or unable to do so because of military pressures and demands.
The moral sanctions and embargoes on goods such as aluminum and aviation fuel became
progressively steeper as Japan sought more territory and strategic resources in Asia. Finally,
the United States decided to freeze Japanese assets, and that freeze quickly morphed into full
embargo. Barnhart makes the point that this decision reflected an unshakable belief on the part
of United States leaders that Japan could not be deterred in the Southward Advance but might
be slowed by even more drastic economic measures. He attributes the Japanese response, to
push on with the advance, to the two factors he assigns ultimate importance in determining the
outcome of the clash between the two powers: economic motivations and bureaucratic politics.
Japan’s grand strategic motivation was the pursuit of autarky, and Barnhart argues that the July
2nd decisions for how to best achieve that goal were an amalgam of the opposing viewpoints
of the army 5 and navy, resulting in decisions that were rational in that they were the only
politically possible decisions within the Japanese government of the time. Despite Barnhart’s
strengths in precisely documenting the changing economic condition of Japan in the interwar
years and how its internal political dynamics and strategy shaped its path to war, Japan Prepares
for Total War fails to address the cultural attitudes and myths that enabled its feelings of
entitlement in the region. For example, scholars such as John Dower have suggested that
cultural myths like that of Japanese descent from goddess Amaterasu Omikami were used as
the psychological motivation for mobilizing the Japanese people and justifying horrific actions
against other Asian peoples in the name of Japan’s economic interests.3 Such cultural myths
identified Japan and the Japanese people as holding a unique, predetermined status as the
chosen natural rulers of Asia by virtue of their special descent from the true gods. Barnhart
identifies the primary motivation of Japan in its imperialist pursuits as strategic resource
acquisition. While his application of economic theory has wide explanatory power in the
actions that the Japanese took in the pursuit of autarky, it does not explain why they felt entitled
to or justified in their abuse of the territorial and human rights of other Asians. Furthermore,
Barnhart is careful to avoid overt statement of the brutality of the Japanese military in
imperialist “incidents.” For example, in the attack against Nanking that many scholars have
characterized as rife with atrocities, Barnhart comments that it was an “unbounded military
success;” his only concession to its putative unusual brutality is that the State Department
condemned it as “contrary to the principles of law and humanity.” Although it is perhaps
common to dehumanize an enemy in war and thus Barnhart might choose to leave discussions
of Japanese brutality to other scholars 6 because it is common to dehumanize an enemy in war,
but he could strengthen his argument for economic motivations by discussing how a feeling of
racial, national or cultural superiority played a role in justifying Japanese entitlement to control
of the lands and resources of others. Moreover, justification for such Japanese positions as the
Amau Doctrine, which claimed the Japanese right to supervise economic development of China
and barred all other nations from that right, was clearly based on more than Japanese economic
need, as it claimed Japan had a special right to control China, indicating a feeling of either
extreme paternalism or inherent superiority to China. While racist cultural myths are largely
ignored by Barnhart, racism and misperception in international diplomacy are touched on as
factors in the myriad misunderstandings that occurred between Japan and the United States. In
Japan Prepares for Total War, both Japan and the United States are characterized as often
suspecting the other side of “cunning” and “crafty” behavior, and President Roosevelt is noted
as consistently holding an “anti-Japanese” attitude. These attitudes led to irrational fears; for
example, Barnhart notes that Roosevelt feared a Japanese attack on the West Coast to the extent
that he had crabbing operations checked for the possibility that the Japanese might use them as
bases for war. Japan, too, based a number of decisions on misperceptions of the stance of the
other side; for instance, it believed for a time that the Draft Understanding was a formal United
States policy position, and thus changed its estimate of the probability of war with the United
States, leading to confidence in more aggressive behavior. Barnhart demonstrates that racism
and misunderstandings thus contributed to the policies of the time period in question, but such
a nod to the role of racism and misperception in policy is curious when his argument neglects
to explain the 7 possible of role of racism as justification for forcible economic expansion of
Japan. In conclusion, Japan Prepares for Total War is an economic history, one that serves its
stated purpose of contributing to an understanding of how Japan’s economic concerns and
inter-service rivalries contributed to bringing about the Pacific War. Discussion of Japanese
paternalism or racism in the pursuit of autarky is largely avoided by Barnhart, and this
avoidance detracts to a small extent from the explanatory power of economic vulnerability and
internal political dynamics as the causal variables in Japanese imperialism and attack on the
United States. Perhaps Barnhart is merely trying to achieve objectivity and avoid a
condemnatory tone, but in failing to question the legitimacy of Japan’s special right to control
the rest of Asia, he misses the opportunity to explain the role of the values and attitudes that
supposedly lent justification to Japan’s right to cruelly exploit its Asian neighbors. Despite this
criticism, Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941 offers
a detailed and thought provoking account of the ironies of US-Japan relations and mistakes in
the years preceding the Pacific War.
In Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941, Michael A.
Barnhart chronicles the history of Japan’s futile search for autarky in the years leading to the
Pacific War.1 In examining the vital linkage between economics and national security in this
period, Barnhart makes the argument that the perception of economic vulnerability as the main
security issue facing Japan, combined with bureaucratic politics in the form of army-navy inter-
service rivalries, led directly to both the impulse for empire in resource-rich mainland Asia and
the attack on Pearl Harbor. However, Barnhart’s history charts Japan’s search for economic
security without explaining its justification for and entitlement to seizing the resources and land
of others, often brutally so. As such, the sterility of Japan Prepares for Total War downplays
the role of racist attitudes and cultural myths in engendering the events described. Nonetheless,
with strong evidentiary support Barnhart makes a compelling case for the ascendancy of
economic considerations and bureaucratic politics as the causal factors in Japan’s attack of the
United States on December 7th, 1941. Barnhart posits that Japan’s interpretation of the lessons
of World War I drove its leaders to view autarky as the basis for grand strategic planning. After
all, Germany, possessor of a stronger military than its conquerors, had succumbed to defeat in
WWI because it lacked an industrial base able to mobilize to a degree freeing it from economic
dependence on other nations. Such dependence creates vulnerability because the dependent
nation is subject to the whims and economic pressure of those nations on which it depends.
Japan had defeated Western power Russia in the Sino-Soviet conflict 2 of 1904-1905, but its
status as a resource-poor nation caused a number of influential civilian elites and military
officers to become advocates of “total war,” or the national capacity to not only wage war with
strong military forces but with the economic capability to supply all needed war materiel. Two
essential elements were necessary for this plan to succeed in establishing autarky and thus
security: a peace of at least five years with the hegemonic United States, and natural resources
such as iron and oil. These material resources could be had on the Asian mainland, specifically
in Manchuria and subsequently in China proper. As Barnhart points out, the Japanese chose to
forcibly acquire these resources from its mainland neighbors, and this course of action brought
it into conflict with the free trade philosophy and Open Door policy of the United States.
Japan’s course to national mobilization and self-sufficiency included the creation of a puppet
state for the economic exploitation of Manchuria; Manchukuo was created in 1932 in concert
with Japan’s first long-term mobilization plan. After “rational mobilization” of the domestic
economy, Japan’s increasingly imperial interests turned to China while the military’s share of
the budget rose to 45 percent. In 1937 Japanese forces commenced what Barnhart concededly
calls the “China Incident,” in which China and its resources were claimed by Japan under the
guise of establishing a Japanese-run corporation for economic development of the region.
Barnhart adeptly points out the ironies in Japan’s fight to acquire the Chinese mainland as a
strategic resource. The original total war proponents understood the threat to security that
belligerence in China caused for Japan: the United States, in defending the Open Door policy
in China, might deny Japan the indispensable resources like 3 machine tools that it required to
achieve self-sufficiency. Additionally, Japan’s domestic economy and citizenry were greatly
strained in what Barnhart terms the “bitter mortgage” of funding the efforts of empire in China.
Barnhart therefore argues that Japan’s aggressive imperial activities on the Asian mainland
were counterproductive in its quest for autarky: they threatened the necessary peace with the
United States and came at extreme costs to the Japanese nation. Japan Prepares for Total War
also contends that bureaucratic politics, specifically the competing interests of Japan’s army
and navy, played a significant role in shaping policy and determining the sequence of events
leading to the Pacific War. In bureaucratic politics, the players in a government bargain and
compete according to their organizational interests, resulting in policy that is not the product
of a single rational decision but is instead an amalgam of the visions and choices of the players
involved.2 The army and navy in pre-WWII Japan were both strong players in compelling the
nation’s political leaders to allocate resources according to their perceived needs; Barnhart
offers a number of examples of how their economic demands for strategic resources like iron
and oil led to further pressures to expand the Japanese empire in order to acquire such goods.
Additionally, Barnhart takes the position that differing strategic conceptions of how to best
approach the Southward Advance to commandeer the Dutch and French colonies of Southeast
Asia fed a growing inter-service rivalry. This rivalry between the Imperial army and Imperial
navy overshadowed rational considerations of the diplomatic and economic ramifications of
the United States’ reaction to aggressive Japanese imperialism as a means of achieving autarky.
Barnhart documents that the navy in 4 particular instituted a practice of exchanging “more
vigorous foreign policies” for greater resource allocations of strategic materials, and he argues
that the military as a whole served as the “engine of real change” in Japanese policy with regard
to economic expansion as a means of achieving national security. The quest of each service to
outbid the other in acquisition of strategic materials therefore led to the diversion of goods and
funds from exports and the domestic economy to meet military demands. It also led to the
commercial pressures the United States somewhat ironically imposed to punish Japan for its
imperialist imposition and attempt to create a sphere of economic and political influence in
mainland Asia. Indeed, the economic measures that the United States adopted in Japan’s
interwar years to stem the flow of Japanese aggression exacerbated the international situation
because the Japanese elites in power at various points in the course to war were either unwilling
to abandon mobilization plans or unable to do so because of military pressures and demands.
The moral sanctions and embargoes on goods such as aluminum and aviation fuel became
progressively steeper as Japan sought more territory and strategic resources in Asia. Finally,
the United States decided to freeze Japanese assets, and that freeze quickly morphed into full
embargo. Barnhart makes the point that this decision reflected an unshakable belief on the part
of United States leaders that Japan could not be deterred in the Southward Advance but might
be slowed by even more drastic economic measures. He attributes the Japanese response, to
push on with the advance, to the two factors he assigns ultimate importance in determining the
outcome of the clash between the two powers: economic motivations and bureaucratic politics.
Japan’s grand strategic motivation was the pursuit of autarky, and Barnhart argues that the July
2nd decisions for how to best achieve that goal were an amalgam of the opposing viewpoints
of the army 5 and navy, resulting in decisions that were rational in that they were the only
politically possible decisions within the Japanese government of the time. Despite Barnhart’s
strengths in precisely documenting the changing economic condition of Japan in the interwar
years and how its internal political dynamics and strategy shaped its path to war, Japan Prepares
for Total War fails to address the cultural attitudes and myths that enabled its feelings of
entitlement in the region. For example, scholars such as John Dower have suggested that
cultural myths like that of Japanese descent from goddess Amaterasu Omikami were used as
the psychological motivation for mobilizing the Japanese people and justifying horrific actions
against other Asian peoples in the name of Japan’s economic interests.3 Such cultural myths
identified Japan and the Japanese people as holding a unique, predetermined status as the
chosen natural rulers of Asia by virtue of their special descent from the true gods. Barnhart
identifies the primary motivation of Japan in its imperialist pursuits as strategic resource
acquisition. While his application of economic theory has wide explanatory power in the
actions that the Japanese took in the pursuit of autarky, it does not explain why they felt entitled
to or justified in their abuse of the territorial and human rights of other Asians. Furthermore,
Barnhart is careful to avoid overt statement of the brutality of the Japanese military in
imperialist “incidents.” For example, in the attack against Nanking that many scholars have
characterized as rife with atrocities, Barnhart comments that it was an “unbounded military
success;” his only concession to its putative unusual brutality is that the State Department
condemned it as “contrary to the principles of law and humanity.” Although it is perhaps
common to dehumanize an enemy in war and thus Barnhart might choose to leave discussions
of Japanese brutality to other scholars 6 because it is common to dehumanize an enemy in war,
but he could strengthen his argument for economic motivations by discussing how a feeling of
racial, national or cultural superiority played a role in justifying Japanese entitlement to control
of the lands and resources of others. Moreover, justification for such Japanese positions as the
Amau Doctrine, which claimed the Japanese right to supervise economic development of China
and barred all other nations from that right, was clearly based on more than Japanese economic
need, as it claimed Japan had a special right to control China, indicating a feeling of either
extreme paternalism or inherent superiority to China. While racist cultural myths are largely
ignored by Barnhart, racism and misperception in international diplomacy are touched on as
factors in the myriad misunderstandings that occurred between Japan and the United States. In
Japan Prepares for Total War, both Japan and the United States are characterized as often
suspecting the other side of “cunning” and “crafty” behavior, and President Roosevelt is noted
as consistently holding an “anti-Japanese” attitude. These attitudes led to irrational fears; for
example, Barnhart notes that Roosevelt feared a Japanese attack on the West Coast to the extent
that he had crabbing operations checked for the possibility that the Japanese might use them as
bases for war. Japan, too, based a number of decisions on misperceptions of the stance of the
other side; for instance, it believed for a time that the Draft Understanding was a formal United
States policy position, and thus changed its estimate of the probability of war with the United
States, leading to confidence in more aggressive behavior. Barnhart demonstrates that racism
and misunderstandings thus contributed to the policies of the time period in question, but such
a nod to the role of racism and misperception in policy is curious when his argument neglects
to explain the 7 possible of role of racism as justification for forcible economic expansion of
Japan. In conclusion, Japan Prepares for Total War is an economic history, one that serves its
stated purpose of contributing to an understanding of how Japan’s economic concerns and
inter-service rivalries contributed to bringing about the Pacific War. Discussion of Japanese
paternalism or racism in the pursuit of autarky is largely avoided by Barnhart, and this
avoidance detracts to a small extent from the explanatory power of economic vulnerability and
internal political dynamics as the causal variables in Japanese imperialism and attack on the
United States. Perhaps Barnhart is merely trying to achieve objectivity and avoid a
condemnatory tone, but in failing to question the legitimacy of Japan’s special right to control
the rest of Asia, he misses the opportunity to explain the role of the values and attitudes that
supposedly lent justification to Japan’s right to cruelly exploit its Asian neighbors. Despite this
criticism, Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941 offers
a detailed and thought provoking account of the ironies of US-Japan relations and mistakes in
the years preceding the Pacific War.
In Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941, Michael A.
Barnhart chronicles the history of Japan’s futile search for autarky in the years leading to the
Pacific War.1 In examining the vital linkage between economics and national security in this
period, Barnhart makes the argument that the perception of economic vulnerability as the main
security issue facing Japan, combined with bureaucratic politics in the form of army-navy inter-
service rivalries, led directly to both the impulse for empire in resource-rich mainland Asia and
the attack on Pearl Harbor. However, Barnhart’s history charts Japan’s search for economic
security without explaining its justification for and entitlement to seizing the resources and land
of others, often brutally so. As such, the sterility of Japan Prepares for Total War downplays
the role of racist attitudes and cultural myths in engendering the events described. Nonetheless,
with strong evidentiary support Barnhart makes a compelling case for the ascendancy of
economic considerations and bureaucratic politics as the causal factors in Japan’s attack of the
United States on December 7th, 1941. Barnhart posits that Japan’s interpretation of the lessons
of World War I drove its leaders to view autarky as the basis for grand strategic planning. After
all, Germany, possessor of a stronger military than its conquerors, had succumbed to defeat in
WWI because it lacked an industrial base able to mobilize to a degree freeing it from economic
dependence on other nations. Such dependence creates vulnerability because the dependent
nation is subject to the whims and economic pressure of those nations on which it depends.
Japan had defeated Western power Russia in the Sino-Soviet conflict 2 of 1904-1905, but its
status as a resource-poor nation caused a number of influential civilian elites and military
officers to become advocates of “total war,” or the national capacity to not only wage war with
strong military forces but with the economic capability to supply all needed war materiel. Two
essential elements were necessary for this plan to succeed in establishing autarky and thus
security: a peace of at least five years with the hegemonic United States, and natural resources
such as iron and oil. These material resources could be had on the Asian mainland, specifically
in Manchuria and subsequently in China proper. As Barnhart points out, the Japanese chose to
forcibly acquire these resources from its mainland neighbors, and this course of action brought
it into conflict with the free trade philosophy and Open Door policy of the United States.
Japan’s course to national mobilization and self-sufficiency included the creation of a puppet
state for the economic exploitation of Manchuria; Manchukuo was created in 1932 in concert
with Japan’s first long-term mobilization plan. After “rational mobilization” of the domestic
economy, Japan’s increasingly imperial interests turned to China while the military’s share of
the budget rose to 45 percent. In 1937 Japanese forces commenced what Barnhart concededly
calls the “China Incident,” in which China and its resources were claimed by Japan under the
guise of establishing a Japanese-run corporation for economic development of the region.
Barnhart adeptly points out the ironies in Japan’s fight to acquire the Chinese mainland as a
strategic resource. The original total war proponents understood the threat to security that
belligerence in China caused for Japan: the United States, in defending the Open Door policy
in China, might deny Japan the indispensable resources like 3 machine tools that it required to
achieve self-sufficiency. Additionally, Japan’s domestic economy and citizenry were greatly
strained in what Barnhart terms the “bitter mortgage” of funding the efforts of empire in China.
Barnhart therefore argues that Japan’s aggressive imperial activities on the Asian mainland
were counterproductive in its quest for autarky: they threatened the necessary peace with the
United States and came at extreme costs to the Japanese nation. Japan Prepares for Total War
also contends that bureaucratic politics, specifically the competing interests of Japan’s army
and navy, played a significant role in shaping policy and determining the sequence of events
leading to the Pacific War. In bureaucratic politics, the players in a government bargain and
compete according to their organizational interests, resulting in policy that is not the product
of a single rational decision but is instead an amalgam of the visions and choices of the players
involved.2 The army and navy in pre-WWII Japan were both strong players in compelling the
nation’s political leaders to allocate resources according to their perceived needs; Barnhart
offers a number of examples of how their economic demands for strategic resources like iron
and oil led to further pressures to expand the Japanese empire in order to acquire such goods.
Additionally, Barnhart takes the position that differing strategic conceptions of how to best
approach the Southward Advance to commandeer the Dutch and French colonies of Southeast
Asia fed a growing inter-service rivalry. This rivalry between the Imperial army and Imperial
navy overshadowed rational considerations of the diplomatic and economic ramifications of
the United States’ reaction to aggressive Japanese imperialism as a means of achieving autarky.
Barnhart documents that the navy in 4 particular instituted a practice of exchanging “more
vigorous foreign policies” for greater resource allocations of strategic materials, and he argues
that the military as a whole served as the “engine of real change” in Japanese policy with regard
to economic expansion as a means of achieving national security. The quest of each service to
outbid the other in acquisition of strategic materials therefore led to the diversion of goods and
funds from exports and the domestic economy to meet military demands. It also led to the
commercial pressures the United States somewhat ironically imposed to punish Japan for its
imperialist imposition and attempt to create a sphere of economic and political influence in
mainland Asia. Indeed, the economic measures that the United States adopted in Japan’s
interwar years to stem the flow of Japanese aggression exacerbated the international situation
because the Japanese elites in power at various points in the course to war were either unwilling
to abandon mobilization plans or unable to do so because of military pressures and demands.
The moral sanctions and embargoes on goods such as aluminum and aviation fuel became
progressively steeper as Japan sought more territory and strategic resources in Asia. Finally,
the United States decided to freeze Japanese assets, and that freeze quickly morphed into full
embargo. Barnhart makes the point that this decision reflected an unshakable belief on the part
of United States leaders that Japan could not be deterred in the Southward Advance but might
be slowed by even more drastic economic measures. He attributes the Japanese response, to
push on with the advance, to the two factors he assigns ultimate importance in determining the
outcome of the clash between the two powers: economic motivations and bureaucratic politics.
Japan’s grand strategic motivation was the pursuit of autarky, and Barnhart argues that the July
2nd decisions for how to best achieve that goal were an amalgam of the opposing viewpoints
of the army 5 and navy, resulting in decisions that were rational in that they were the only
politically possible decisions within the Japanese government of the time. Despite Barnhart’s
strengths in precisely documenting the changing economic condition of Japan in the interwar
years and how its internal political dynamics and strategy shaped its path to war, Japan Prepares
for Total War fails to address the cultural attitudes and myths that enabled its feelings of
entitlement in the region. For example, scholars such as John Dower have suggested that
cultural myths like that of Japanese descent from goddess Amaterasu Omikami were used as
the psychological motivation for mobilizing the Japanese people and justifying horrific actions
against other Asian peoples in the name of Japan’s economic interests.3 Such cultural myths
identified Japan and the Japanese people as holding a unique, predetermined status as the
chosen natural rulers of Asia by virtue of their special descent from the true gods. Barnhart
identifies the primary motivation of Japan in its imperialist pursuits as strategic resource
acquisition. While his application of economic theory has wide explanatory power in the
actions that the Japanese took in the pursuit of autarky, it does not explain why they felt entitled
to or justified in their abuse of the territorial and human rights of other Asians. Furthermore,
Barnhart is careful to avoid overt statement of the brutality of the Japanese military in
imperialist “incidents.” For example, in the attack against Nanking that many scholars have
characterized as rife with atrocities, Barnhart comments that it was an “unbounded military
success;” his only concession to its putative unusual brutality is that the State Department
condemned it as “contrary to the principles of law and humanity.” Although it is perhaps
common to dehumanize an enemy in war and thus Barnhart might choose to leave discussions
of Japanese brutality to other scholars 6 because it is common to dehumanize an enemy in war,
but he could strengthen his argument for economic motivations by discussing how a feeling of
racial, national or cultural superiority played a role in justifying Japanese entitlement to control
of the lands and resources of others. Moreover, justification for such Japanese positions as the
Amau Doctrine, which claimed the Japanese right to supervise economic development of China
and barred all other nations from that right, was clearly based on more than Japanese economic
need, as it claimed Japan had a special right to control China, indicating a feeling of either
extreme paternalism or inherent superiority to China. While racist cultural myths are largely
ignored by Barnhart, racism and misperception in international diplomacy are touched on as
factors in the myriad misunderstandings that occurred between Japan and the United States. In
Japan Prepares for Total War, both Japan and the United States are characterized as often
suspecting the other side of “cunning” and “crafty” behavior, and President Roosevelt is noted
as consistently holding an “anti-Japanese” attitude. These attitudes led to irrational fears; for
example, Barnhart notes that Roosevelt feared a Japanese attack on the West Coast to the extent
that he had crabbing operations checked for the possibility that the Japanese might use them as
bases for war. Japan, too, based a number of decisions on misperceptions of the stance of the
other side; for instance, it believed for a time that the Draft Understanding was a formal United
States policy position, and thus changed its estimate of the probability of war with the United
States, leading to confidence in more aggressive behavior. Barnhart demonstrates that racism
and misunderstandings thus contributed to the policies of the time period in question, but such
a nod to the role of racism and misperception in policy is curious when his argument neglects
to explain the 7 possible of role of racism as justification for forcible economic expansion of
Japan. In conclusion, Japan Prepares for Total War is an economic history, one that serves its
stated purpose of contributing to an understanding of how Japan’s economic concerns and
inter-service rivalries contributed to bringing about the Pacific War. Discussion of Japanese
paternalism or racism in the pursuit of autarky is largely avoided by Barnhart, and this
avoidance detracts to a small extent from the explanatory power of economic vulnerability and
internal political dynamics as the causal variables in Japanese imperialism and attack on the
United States. Perhaps Barnhart is merely trying to achieve objectivity and avoid a
condemnatory tone, but in failing to question the legitimacy of Japan’s special right to control
the rest of Asia, he misses the opportunity to explain the role of the values and attitudes that
supposedly lent justification to Japan’s right to cruelly exploit its Asian neighbors. Despite this
criticism, Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941 offers
a detailed and thought provoking account of the ironies of US-Japan relations and mistakes in
the years preceding the Pacific War.
In Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941, Michael A.
Barnhart chronicles the history of Japan’s futile search for autarky in the years leading to the
Pacific War.1 In examining the vital linkage between economics and national security in this
period, Barnhart makes the argument that the perception of economic vulnerability as the main
security issue facing Japan, combined with bureaucratic politics in the form of army-navy inter-
service rivalries, led directly to both the impulse for empire in resource-rich mainland Asia and
the attack on Pearl Harbor. However, Barnhart’s history charts Japan’s search for economic
security without explaining its justification for and entitlement to seizing the resources and land
of others, often brutally so. As such, the sterility of Japan Prepares for Total War downplays
the role of racist attitudes and cultural myths in engendering the events described. Nonetheless,
with strong evidentiary support Barnhart makes a compelling case for the ascendancy of
economic considerations and bureaucratic politics as the causal factors in Japan’s attack of the
United States on December 7th, 1941. Barnhart posits that Japan’s interpretation of the lessons
of World War I drove its leaders to view autarky as the basis for grand strategic planning. After
all, Germany, possessor of a stronger military than its conquerors, had succumbed to defeat in
WWI because it lacked an industrial base able to mobilize to a degree freeing it from economic
dependence on other nations. Such dependence creates vulnerability because the dependent
nation is subject to the whims and economic pressure of those nations on which it depends.
Japan had defeated Western power Russia in the Sino-Soviet conflict 2 of 1904-1905, but its
status as a resource-poor nation caused a number of influential civilian elites and military
officers to become advocates of “total war,” or the national capacity to not only wage war with
strong military forces but with the economic capability to supply all needed war materiel. Two
essential elements were necessary for this plan to succeed in establishing autarky and thus
security: a peace of at least five years with the hegemonic United States, and natural resources
such as iron and oil. These material resources could be had on the Asian mainland, specifically
in Manchuria and subsequently in China proper. As Barnhart points out, the Japanese chose to
forcibly acquire these resources from its mainland neighbors, and this course of action brought
it into conflict with the free trade philosophy and Open Door policy of the United States.
Japan’s course to national mobilization and self-sufficiency included the creation of a puppet
state for the economic exploitation of Manchuria; Manchukuo was created in 1932 in concert
with Japan’s first long-term mobilization plan. After “rational mobilization” of the domestic
economy, Japan’s increasingly imperial interests turned to China while the military’s share of
the budget rose to 45 percent. In 1937 Japanese forces commenced what Barnhart concededly
calls the “China Incident,” in which China and its resources were claimed by Japan under the
guise of establishing a Japanese-run corporation for economic development of the region.
Barnhart adeptly points out the ironies in Japan’s fight to acquire the Chinese mainland as a
strategic resource. The original total war proponents understood the threat to security that
belligerence in China caused for Japan: the United States, in defending the Open Door policy
in China, might deny Japan the indispensable resources like 3 machine tools that it required to
achieve self-sufficiency. Additionally, Japan’s domestic economy and citizenry were greatly
strained in what Barnhart terms the “bitter mortgage” of funding the efforts of empire in China.
Barnhart therefore argues that Japan’s aggressive imperial activities on the Asian mainland
were counterproductive in its quest for autarky: they threatened the necessary peace with the
United States and came at extreme costs to the Japanese nation. Japan Prepares for Total War
also contends that bureaucratic politics, specifically the competing interests of Japan’s army
and navy, played a significant role in shaping policy and determining the sequence of events
leading to the Pacific War. In bureaucratic politics, the players in a government bargain and
compete according to their organizational interests, resulting in policy that is not the product
of a single rational decision but is instead an amalgam of the visions and choices of the players
involved.2 The army and navy in pre-WWII Japan were both strong players in compelling the
nation’s political leaders to allocate resources according to their perceived needs; Barnhart
offers a number of examples of how their economic demands for strategic resources like iron
and oil led to further pressures to expand the Japanese empire in order to acquire such goods.
Additionally, Barnhart takes the position that differing strategic conceptions of how to best
approach the Southward Advance to commandeer the Dutch and French colonies of Southeast
Asia fed a growing inter-service rivalry. This rivalry between the Imperial army and Imperial
navy overshadowed rational considerations of the diplomatic and economic ramifications of
the United States’ reaction to aggressive Japanese imperialism as a means of achieving autarky.
Barnhart documents that the navy in 4 particular instituted a practice of exchanging “more
vigorous foreign policies” for greater resource allocations of strategic materials, and he argues
that the military as a whole served as the “engine of real change” in Japanese policy with regard
to economic expansion as a means of achieving national security. The quest of each service to
outbid the other in acquisition of strategic materials therefore led to the diversion of goods and
funds from exports and the domestic economy to meet military demands. It also led to the
commercial pressures the United States somewhat ironically imposed to punish Japan for its
imperialist imposition and attempt to create a sphere of economic and political influence in
mainland Asia. Indeed, the economic measures that the United States adopted in Japan’s
interwar years to stem the flow of Japanese aggression exacerbated the international situation
because the Japanese elites in power at various points in the course to war were either unwilling
to abandon mobilization plans or unable to do so because of military pressures and demands.
The moral sanctions and embargoes on goods such as aluminum and aviation fuel became
progressively steeper as Japan sought more territory and strategic resources in Asia. Finally,
the United States decided to freeze Japanese assets, and that freeze quickly morphed into full
embargo. Barnhart makes the point that this decision reflected an unshakable belief on the part
of United States leaders that Japan could not be deterred in the Southward Advance but might
be slowed by even more drastic economic measures. He attributes the Japanese response, to
push on with the advance, to the two factors he assigns ultimate importance in determining the
outcome of the clash between the two powers: economic motivations and bureaucratic politics.
Japan’s grand strategic motivation was the pursuit of autarky, and Barnhart argues that the July
2nd decisions for how to best achieve that goal were an amalgam of the opposing viewpoints
of the army 5 and navy, resulting in decisions that were rational in that they were the only
politically possible decisions within the Japanese government of the time. Despite Barnhart’s
strengths in precisely documenting the changing economic condition of Japan in the interwar
years and how its internal political dynamics and strategy shaped its path to war, Japan Prepares
for Total War fails to address the cultural attitudes and myths that enabled its feelings of
entitlement in the region. For example, scholars such as John Dower have suggested that
cultural myths like that of Japanese descent from goddess Amaterasu Omikami were used as
the psychological motivation for mobilizing the Japanese people and justifying horrific actions
against other Asian peoples in the name of Japan’s economic interests.3 Such cultural myths
identified Japan and the Japanese people as holding a unique, predetermined status as the
chosen natural rulers of Asia by virtue of their special descent from the true gods. Barnhart
identifies the primary motivation of Japan in its imperialist pursuits as strategic resource
acquisition. While his application of economic theory has wide explanatory power in the
actions that the Japanese took in the pursuit of autarky, it does not explain why they felt entitled
to or justified in their abuse of the territorial and human rights of other Asians. Furthermore,
Barnhart is careful to avoid overt statement of the brutality of the Japanese military in
imperialist “incidents.” For example, in the attack against Nanking that many scholars have
characterized as rife with atrocities, Barnhart comments that it was an “unbounded military
success;” his only concession to its putative unusual brutality is that the State Department
condemned it as “contrary to the principles of law and humanity.” Although it is perhaps
common to dehumanize an enemy in war and thus Barnhart might choose to leave discussions
of Japanese brutality to other scholars 6 because it is common to dehumanize an enemy in war,
but he could strengthen his argument for economic motivations by discussing how a feeling of
racial, national or cultural superiority played a role in justifying Japanese entitlement to control
of the lands and resources of others. Moreover, justification for such Japanese positions as the
Amau Doctrine, which claimed the Japanese right to supervise economic development of China
and barred all other nations from that right, was clearly based on more than Japanese economic
need, as it claimed Japan had a special right to control China, indicating a feeling of either
extreme paternalism or inherent superiority to China. While racist cultural myths are largely
ignored by Barnhart, racism and misperception in international diplomacy are touched on as
factors in the myriad misunderstandings that occurred between Japan and the United States. In
Japan Prepares for Total War, both Japan and the United States are characterized as often
suspecting the other side of “cunning” and “crafty” behavior, and President Roosevelt is noted
as consistently holding an “anti-Japanese” attitude. These attitudes led to irrational fears; for
example, Barnhart notes that Roosevelt feared a Japanese attack on the West Coast to the extent
that he had crabbing operations checked for the possibility that the Japanese might use them as
bases for war. Japan, too, based a number of decisions on misperceptions of the stance of the
other side; for instance, it believed for a time that the Draft Understanding was a formal United
States policy position, and thus changed its estimate of the probability of war with the United
States, leading to confidence in more aggressive behavior. Barnhart demonstrates that racism
and misunderstandings thus contributed to the policies of the time period in question, but such
a nod to the role of racism and misperception in policy is curious when his argument neglects
to explain the 7 possible of role of racism as justification for forcible economic expansion of
Japan. In conclusion, Japan Prepares for Total War is an economic history, one that serves its
stated purpose of contributing to an understanding of how Japan’s economic concerns and
inter-service rivalries contributed to bringing about the Pacific War. Discussion of Japanese
paternalism or racism in the pursuit of autarky is largely avoided by Barnhart, and this
avoidance detracts to a small extent from the explanatory power of economic vulnerability and
internal political dynamics as the causal variables in Japanese imperialism and attack on the
United States. Perhaps Barnhart is merely trying to achieve objectivity and avoid a
condemnatory tone, but in failing to question the legitimacy of Japan’s special right to control
the rest of Asia, he misses the opportunity to explain the role of the values and attitudes that
supposedly lent justification to Japan’s right to cruelly exploit its Asian neighbors. Despite this
criticism, Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941 offers
a detailed and thought provoking account of the ironies of US-Japan relations and mistakes in
the years preceding the Pacific War.
In Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941, Michael A.
Barnhart chronicles the history of Japan’s futile search for autarky in the years leading to the
Pacific War.1 In examining the vital linkage between economics and national security in this
period, Barnhart makes the argument that the perception of economic vulnerability as the main
security issue facing Japan, combined with bureaucratic politics in the form of army-navy inter-
service rivalries, led directly to both the impulse for empire in resource-rich mainland Asia and
the attack on Pearl Harbor. However, Barnhart’s history charts Japan’s search for economic
security without explaining its justification for and entitlement to seizing the resources and land
of others, often brutally so. As such, the sterility of Japan Prepares for Total War downplays
the role of racist attitudes and cultural myths in engendering the events described. Nonetheless,
with strong evidentiary support Barnhart makes a compelling case for the ascendancy of
economic considerations and bureaucratic politics as the causal factors in Japan’s attack of the
United States on December 7th, 1941. Barnhart posits that Japan’s interpretation of the lessons
of World War I drove its leaders to view autarky as the basis for grand strategic planning. After
all, Germany, possessor of a stronger military than its conquerors, had succumbed to defeat in
WWI because it lacked an industrial base able to mobilize to a degree freeing it from economic
dependence on other nations. Such dependence creates vulnerability because the dependent
nation is subject to the whims and economic pressure of those nations on which it depends.
Japan had defeated Western power Russia in the Sino-Soviet conflict 2 of 1904-1905, but its
status as a resource-poor nation caused a number of influential civilian elites and military
officers to become advocates of “total war,” or the national capacity to not only wage war with
strong military forces but with the economic capability to supply all needed war materiel. Two
essential elements were necessary for this plan to succeed in establishing autarky and thus
security: a peace of at least five years with the hegemonic United States, and natural resources
such as iron and oil. These material resources could be had on the Asian mainland, specifically
in Manchuria and subsequently in China proper. As Barnhart points out, the Japanese chose to
forcibly acquire these resources from its mainland neighbors, and this course of action brought
it into conflict with the free trade philosophy and Open Door policy of the United States.
Japan’s course to national mobilization and self-sufficiency included the creation of a puppet
state for the economic exploitation of Manchuria; Manchukuo was created in 1932 in concert
with Japan’s first long-term mobilization plan. After “rational mobilization” of the domestic
economy, Japan’s increasingly imperial interests turned to China while the military’s share of
the budget rose to 45 percent. In 1937 Japanese forces commenced what Barnhart concededly
calls the “China Incident,” in which China and its resources were claimed by Japan under the
guise of establishing a Japanese-run corporation for economic development of the region.
Barnhart adeptly points out the ironies in Japan’s fight to acquire the Chinese mainland as a
strategic resource. The original total war proponents understood the threat to security that
belligerence in China caused for Japan: the United States, in defending the Open Door policy
in China, might deny Japan the indispensable resources like 3 machine tools that it required to
achieve self-sufficiency. Additionally, Japan’s domestic economy and citizenry were greatly
strained in what Barnhart terms the “bitter mortgage” of funding the efforts of empire in China.
Barnhart therefore argues that Japan’s aggressive imperial activities on the Asian mainland
were counterproductive in its quest for autarky: they threatened the necessary peace with the
United States and came at extreme costs to the Japanese nation. Japan Prepares for Total War
also contends that bureaucratic politics, specifically the competing interests of Japan’s army
and navy, played a significant role in shaping policy and determining the sequence of events
leading to the Pacific War. In bureaucratic politics, the players in a government bargain and
compete according to their organizational interests, resulting in policy that is not the product
of a single rational decision but is instead an amalgam of the visions and choices of the players
involved.2 The army and navy in pre-WWII Japan were both strong players in compelling the
nation’s political leaders to allocate resources according to their perceived needs; Barnhart
offers a number of examples of how their economic demands for strategic resources like iron
and oil led to further pressures to expand the Japanese empire in order to acquire such goods.
Additionally, Barnhart takes the position that differing strategic conceptions of how to best
approach the Southward Advance to commandeer the Dutch and French colonies of Southeast
Asia fed a growing inter-service rivalry. This rivalry between the Imperial army and Imperial
navy overshadowed rational considerations of the diplomatic and economic ramifications of
the United States’ reaction to aggressive Japanese imperialism as a means of achieving autarky.
Barnhart documents that the navy in 4 particular instituted a practice of exchanging “more
vigorous foreign policies” for greater resource allocations of strategic materials, and he argues
that the military as a whole served as the “engine of real change” in Japanese policy with regard
to economic expansion as a means of achieving national security. The quest of each service to
outbid the other in acquisition of strategic materials therefore led to the diversion of goods and
funds from exports and the domestic economy to meet military demands. It also led to the
commercial pressures the United States somewhat ironically imposed to punish Japan for its
imperialist imposition and attempt to create a sphere of economic and political influence in
mainland Asia. Indeed, the economic measures that the United States adopted in Japan’s
interwar years to stem the flow of Japanese aggression exacerbated the international situation
because the Japanese elites in power at various points in the course to war were either unwilling
to abandon mobilization plans or unable to do so because of military pressures and demands.
The moral sanctions and embargoes on goods such as aluminum and aviation fuel became
progressively steeper as Japan sought more territory and strategic resources in Asia. Finally,
the United States decided to freeze Japanese assets, and that freeze quickly morphed into full
embargo. Barnhart makes the point that this decision reflected an unshakable belief on the part
of United States leaders that Japan could not be deterred in the Southward Advance but might
be slowed by even more drastic economic measures. He attributes the Japanese response, to
push on with the advance, to the two factors he assigns ultimate importance in determining the
outcome of the clash between the two powers: economic motivations and bureaucratic politics.
Japan’s grand strategic motivation was the pursuit of autarky, and Barnhart argues that the July
2nd decisions for how to best achieve that goal were an amalgam of the opposing viewpoints
of the army 5 and navy, resulting in decisions that were rational in that they were the only
politically possible decisions within the Japanese government of the time. Despite Barnhart’s
strengths in precisely documenting the changing economic condition of Japan in the interwar
years and how its internal political dynamics and strategy shaped its path to war, Japan Prepares
for Total War fails to address the cultural attitudes and myths that enabled its feelings of
entitlement in the region. For example, scholars such as John Dower have suggested that
cultural myths like that of Japanese descent from goddess Amaterasu Omikami were used as
the psychological motivation for mobilizing the Japanese people and justifying horrific actions
against other Asian peoples in the name of Japan’s economic interests.3 Such cultural myths
identified Japan and the Japanese people as holding a unique, predetermined status as the
chosen natural rulers of Asia by virtue of their special descent from the true gods. Barnhart
identifies the primary motivation of Japan in its imperialist pursuits as strategic resource
acquisition. While his application of economic theory has wide explanatory power in the
actions that the Japanese took in the pursuit of autarky, it does not explain why they felt entitled
to or justified in their abuse of the territorial and human rights of other Asians. Furthermore,
Barnhart is careful to avoid overt statement of the brutality of the Japanese military in
imperialist “incidents.” For example, in the attack against Nanking that many scholars have
characterized as rife with atrocities, Barnhart comments that it was an “unbounded military
success;” his only concession to its putative unusual brutality is that the State Department
condemned it as “contrary to the principles of law and humanity.” Although it is perhaps
common to dehumanize an enemy in war and thus Barnhart might choose to leave discussions
of Japanese brutality to other scholars 6 because it is common to dehumanize an enemy in war,
but he could strengthen his argument for economic motivations by discussing how a feeling of
racial, national or cultural superiority played a role in justifying Japanese entitlement to control
of the lands and resources of others. Moreover, justification for such Japanese positions as the
Amau Doctrine, which claimed the Japanese right to supervise economic development of China
and barred all other nations from that right, was clearly based on more than Japanese economic
need, as it claimed Japan had a special right to control China, indicating a feeling of either
extreme paternalism or inherent superiority to China. While racist cultural myths are largely
ignored by Barnhart, racism and misperception in international diplomacy are touched on as
factors in the myriad misunderstandings that occurred between Japan and the United States. In
Japan Prepares for Total War, both Japan and the United States are characterized as often
suspecting the other side of “cunning” and “crafty” behavior, and President Roosevelt is noted
as consistently holding an “anti-Japanese” attitude. These attitudes led to irrational fears; for
example, Barnhart notes that Roosevelt feared a Japanese attack on the West Coast to the extent
that he had crabbing operations checked for the possibility that the Japanese might use them as
bases for war. Japan, too, based a number of decisions on misperceptions of the stance of the
other side; for instance, it believed for a time that the Draft Understanding was a formal United
States policy position, and thus changed its estimate of the probability of war with the United
States, leading to confidence in more aggressive behavior. Barnhart demonstrates that racism
and misunderstandings thus contributed to the policies of the time period in question, but such
a nod to the role of racism and misperception in policy is curious when his argument neglects
to explain the 7 possible of role of racism as justification for forcible economic expansion of
Japan. In conclusion, Japan Prepares for Total War is an economic history, one that serves its
stated purpose of contributing to an understanding of how Japan’s economic concerns and
inter-service rivalries contributed to bringing about the Pacific War. Discussion of Japanese
paternalism or racism in the pursuit of autarky is largely avoided by Barnhart, and this
avoidance detracts to a small extent from the explanatory power of economic vulnerability and
internal political dynamics as the causal variables in Japanese imperialism and attack on the
United States. Perhaps Barnhart is merely trying to achieve objectivity and avoid a
condemnatory tone, but in failing to question the legitimacy of Japan’s special right to control
the rest of Asia, he misses the opportunity to explain the role of the values and attitudes that
supposedly lent justification to Japan’s right to cruelly exploit its Asian neighbors. Despite this
criticism, Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941 offers
a detailed and thought provoking account of the ironies of US-Japan relations and mistakes in
the years preceding the Pacific War.
In Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941, Michael A.
Barnhart chronicles the history of Japan’s futile search for autarky in the years leading to the
Pacific War.1 In examining the vital linkage between economics and national security in this
period, Barnhart makes the argument that the perception of economic vulnerability as the main
security issue facing Japan, combined with bureaucratic politics in the form of army-navy inter-
service rivalries, led directly to both the impulse for empire in resource-rich mainland Asia and
the attack on Pearl Harbor. However, Barnhart’s history charts Japan’s search for economic
security without explaining its justification for and entitlement to seizing the resources and land
of others, often brutally so. As such, the sterility of Japan Prepares for Total War downplays
the role of racist attitudes and cultural myths in engendering the events described. Nonetheless,
with strong evidentiary support Barnhart makes a compelling case for the ascendancy of
economic considerations and bureaucratic politics as the causal factors in Japan’s attack of the
United States on December 7th, 1941. Barnhart posits that Japan’s interpretation of the lessons
of World War I drove its leaders to view autarky as the basis for grand strategic planning. After
all, Germany, possessor of a stronger military than its conquerors, had succumbed to defeat in
WWI because it lacked an industrial base able to mobilize to a degree freeing it from economic
dependence on other nations. Such dependence creates vulnerability because the dependent
nation is subject to the whims and economic pressure of those nations on which it depends.
Japan had defeated Western power Russia in the Sino-Soviet conflict 2 of 1904-1905, but its
status as a resource-poor nation caused a number of influential civilian elites and military
officers to become advocates of “total war,” or the national capacity to not only wage war with
strong military forces but with the economic capability to supply all needed war materiel. Two
essential elements were necessary for this plan to succeed in establishing autarky and thus
security: a peace of at least five years with the hegemonic United States, and natural resources
such as iron and oil. These material resources could be had on the Asian mainland, specifically
in Manchuria and subsequently in China proper. As Barnhart points out, the Japanese chose to
forcibly acquire these resources from its mainland neighbors, and this course of action brought
it into conflict with the free trade philosophy and Open Door policy of the United States.
Japan’s course to national mobilization and self-sufficiency included the creation of a puppet
state for the economic exploitation of Manchuria; Manchukuo was created in 1932 in concert
with Japan’s first long-term mobilization plan. After “rational mobilization” of the domestic
economy, Japan’s increasingly imperial interests turned to China while the military’s share of
the budget rose to 45 percent. In 1937 Japanese forces commenced what Barnhart concededly
calls the “China Incident,” in which China and its resources were claimed by Japan under the
guise of establishing a Japanese-run corporation for economic development of the region.
Barnhart adeptly points out the ironies in Japan’s fight to acquire the Chinese mainland as a
strategic resource. The original total war proponents understood the threat to security that
belligerence in China caused for Japan: the United States, in defending the Open Door policy
in China, might deny Japan the indispensable resources like 3 machine tools that it required to
achieve self-sufficiency. Additionally, Japan’s domestic economy and citizenry were greatly
strained in what Barnhart terms the “bitter mortgage” of funding the efforts of empire in China.
Barnhart therefore argues that Japan’s aggressive imperial activities on the Asian mainland
were counterproductive in its quest for autarky: they threatened the necessary peace with the
United States and came at extreme costs to the Japanese nation. Japan Prepares for Total War
also contends that bureaucratic politics, specifically the competing interests of Japan’s army
and navy, played a significant role in shaping policy and determining the sequence of events
leading to the Pacific War. In bureaucratic politics, the players in a government bargain and
compete according to their organizational interests, resulting in policy that is not the product
of a single rational decision but is instead an amalgam of the visions and choices of the players
involved.2 The army and navy in pre-WWII Japan were both strong players in compelling the
nation’s political leaders to allocate resources according to their perceived needs; Barnhart
offers a number of examples of how their economic demands for strategic resources like iron
and oil led to further pressures to expand the Japanese empire in order to acquire such goods.
Additionally, Barnhart takes the position that differing strategic conceptions of how to best
approach the Southward Advance to commandeer the Dutch and French colonies of Southeast
Asia fed a growing inter-service rivalry. This rivalry between the Imperial army and Imperial
navy overshadowed rational considerations of the diplomatic and economic ramifications of
the United States’ reaction to aggressive Japanese imperialism as a means of achieving autarky.
Barnhart documents that the navy in 4 particular instituted a practice of exchanging “more
vigorous foreign policies” for greater resource allocations of strategic materials, and he argues
that the military as a whole served as the “engine of real change” in Japanese policy with regard
to economic expansion as a means of achieving national security. The quest of each service to
outbid the other in acquisition of strategic materials therefore led to the diversion of goods and
funds from exports and the domestic economy to meet military demands. It also led to the
commercial pressures the United States somewhat ironically imposed to punish Japan for its
imperialist imposition and attempt to create a sphere of economic and political influence in
mainland Asia. Indeed, the economic measures that the United States adopted in Japan’s
interwar years to stem the flow of Japanese aggression exacerbated the international situation
because the Japanese elites in power at various points in the course to war were either unwilling
to abandon mobilization plans or unable to do so because of military pressures and demands.
The moral sanctions and embargoes on goods such as aluminum and aviation fuel became
progressively steeper as Japan sought more territory and strategic resources in Asia. Finally,
the United States decided to freeze Japanese assets, and that freeze quickly morphed into full
embargo. Barnhart makes the point that this decision reflected an unshakable belief on the part
of United States leaders that Japan could not be deterred in the Southward Advance but might
be slowed by even more drastic economic measures. He attributes the Japanese response, to
push on with the advance, to the two factors he assigns ultimate importance in determining the
outcome of the clash between the two powers: economic motivations and bureaucratic politics.
Japan’s grand strategic motivation was the pursuit of autarky, and Barnhart argues that the July
2nd decisions for how to best achieve that goal were an amalgam of the opposing viewpoints
of the army 5 and navy, resulting in decisions that were rational in that they were the only
politically possible decisions within the Japanese government of the time. Despite Barnhart’s
strengths in precisely documenting the changing economic condition of Japan in the interwar
years and how its internal political dynamics and strategy shaped its path to war, Japan Prepares
for Total War fails to address the cultural attitudes and myths that enabled its feelings of
entitlement in the region. For example, scholars such as John Dower have suggested that
cultural myths like that of Japanese descent from goddess Amaterasu Omikami were used as
the psychological motivation for mobilizing the Japanese people and justifying horrific actions
against other Asian peoples in the name of Japan’s economic interests.3 Such cultural myths
identified Japan and the Japanese people as holding a unique, predetermined status as the
chosen natural rulers of Asia by virtue of their special descent from the true gods. Barnhart
identifies the primary motivation of Japan in its imperialist pursuits as strategic resource
acquisition. While his application of economic theory has wide explanatory power in the
actions that the Japanese took in the pursuit of autarky, it does not explain why they felt entitled
to or justified in their abuse of the territorial and human rights of other Asians. Furthermore,
Barnhart is careful to avoid overt statement of the brutality of the Japanese military in
imperialist “incidents.” For example, in the attack against Nanking that many scholars have
characterized as rife with atrocities, Barnhart comments that it was an “unbounded military
success;” his only concession to its putative unusual brutality is that the State Department
condemned it as “contrary to the principles of law and humanity.” Although it is perhaps
common to dehumanize an enemy in war and thus Barnhart might choose to leave discussions
of Japanese brutality to other scholars 6 because it is common to dehumanize an enemy in war,
but he could strengthen his argument for economic motivations by discussing how a feeling of
racial, national or cultural superiority played a role in justifying Japanese entitlement to control
of the lands and resources of others. Moreover, justification for such Japanese positions as the
Amau Doctrine, which claimed the Japanese right to supervise economic development of China
and barred all other nations from that right, was clearly based on more than Japanese economic
need, as it claimed Japan had a special right to control China, indicating a feeling of either
extreme paternalism or inherent superiority to China. While racist cultural myths are largely
ignored by Barnhart, racism and misperception in international diplomacy are touched on as
factors in the myriad misunderstandings that occurred between Japan and the United States. In
Japan Prepares for Total War, both Japan and the United States are characterized as often
suspecting the other side of “cunning” and “crafty” behavior, and President Roosevelt is noted
as consistently holding an “anti-Japanese” attitude. These attitudes led to irrational fears; for
example, Barnhart notes that Roosevelt feared a Japanese attack on the West Coast to the extent
that he had crabbing operations checked for the possibility that the Japanese might use them as
bases for war. Japan, too, based a number of decisions on misperceptions of the stance of the
other side; for instance, it believed for a time that the Draft Understanding was a formal United
States policy position, and thus changed its estimate of the probability of war with the United
States, leading to confidence in more aggressive behavior. Barnhart demonstrates that racism
and misunderstandings thus contributed to the policies of the time period in question, but such
a nod to the role of racism and misperception in policy is curious when his argument neglects
to explain the 7 possible of role of racism as justification for forcible economic expansion of
Japan. In conclusion, Japan Prepares for Total War is an economic history, one that serves its
stated purpose of contributing to an understanding of how Japan’s economic concerns and
inter-service rivalries contributed to bringing about the Pacific War. Discussion of Japanese
paternalism or racism in the pursuit of autarky is largely avoided by Barnhart, and this
avoidance detracts to a small extent from the explanatory power of economic vulnerability and
internal political dynamics as the causal variables in Japanese imperialism and attack on the
United States. Perhaps Barnhart is merely trying to achieve objectivity and avoid a
condemnatory tone, but in failing to question the legitimacy of Japan’s special right to control
the rest of Asia, he misses the opportunity to explain the role of the values and attitudes that
supposedly lent justification to Japan’s right to cruelly exploit its Asian neighbors. Despite this
criticism, Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941 offers
a detailed and thought provoking account of the ironies of US-Japan relations and mistakes in
the years preceding the Pacific War.
In Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941, Michael A.
Barnhart chronicles the history of Japan’s futile search for autarky in the years leading to the
Pacific War.1 In examining the vital linkage between economics and national security in this
period, Barnhart makes the argument that the perception of economic vulnerability as the main
security issue facing Japan, combined with bureaucratic politics in the form of army-navy inter-
service rivalries, led directly to both the impulse for empire in resource-rich mainland Asia and
the attack on Pearl Harbor. However, Barnhart’s history charts Japan’s search for economic
security without explaining its justification for and entitlement to seizing the resources and land
of others, often brutally so. As such, the sterility of Japan Prepares for Total War downplays
the role of racist attitudes and cultural myths in engendering the events described. Nonetheless,
with strong evidentiary support Barnhart makes a compelling case for the ascendancy of
economic considerations and bureaucratic politics as the causal factors in Japan’s attack of the
United States on December 7th, 1941. Barnhart posits that Japan’s interpretation of the lessons
of World War I drove its leaders to view autarky as the basis for grand strategic planning. After
all, Germany, possessor of a stronger military than its conquerors, had succumbed to defeat in
WWI because it lacked an industrial base able to mobilize to a degree freeing it from economic
dependence on other nations. Such dependence creates vulnerability because the dependent
nation is subject to the whims and economic pressure of those nations on which it depends.
Japan had defeated Western power Russia in the Sino-Soviet conflict 2 of 1904-1905, but its
status as a resource-poor nation caused a number of influential civilian elites and military
officers to become advocates of “total war,” or the national capacity to not only wage war with
strong military forces but with the economic capability to supply all needed war materiel. Two
essential elements were necessary for this plan to succeed in establishing autarky and thus
security: a peace of at least five years with the hegemonic United States, and natural resources
such as iron and oil. These material resources could be had on the Asian mainland, specifically
in Manchuria and subsequently in China proper. As Barnhart points out, the Japanese chose to
forcibly acquire these resources from its mainland neighbors, and this course of action brought
it into conflict with the free trade philosophy and Open Door policy of the United States.
Japan’s course to national mobilization and self-sufficiency included the creation of a puppet
state for the economic exploitation of Manchuria; Manchukuo was created in 1932 in concert
with Japan’s first long-term mobilization plan. After “rational mobilization” of the domestic
economy, Japan’s increasingly imperial interests turned to China while the military’s share of
the budget rose to 45 percent. In 1937 Japanese forces commenced what Barnhart concededly
calls the “China Incident,” in which China and its resources were claimed by Japan under the
guise of establishing a Japanese-run corporation for economic development of the region.
Barnhart adeptly points out the ironies in Japan’s fight to acquire the Chinese mainland as a
strategic resource. The original total war proponents understood the threat to security that
belligerence in China caused for Japan: the United States, in defending the Open Door policy
in China, might deny Japan the indispensable resources like 3 machine tools that it required to
achieve self-sufficiency. Additionally, Japan’s domestic economy and citizenry were greatly
strained in what Barnhart terms the “bitter mortgage” of funding the efforts of empire in China.
Barnhart therefore argues that Japan’s aggressive imperial activities on the Asian mainland
were counterproductive in its quest for autarky: they threatened the necessary peace with the
United States and came at extreme costs to the Japanese nation. Japan Prepares for Total War
also contends that bureaucratic politics, specifically the competing interests of Japan’s army
and navy, played a significant role in shaping policy and determining the sequence of events
leading to the Pacific War. In bureaucratic politics, the players in a government bargain and
compete according to their organizational interests, resulting in policy that is not the product
of a single rational decision but is instead an amalgam of the visions and choices of the players
involved.2 The army and navy in pre-WWII Japan were both strong players in compelling the
nation’s political leaders to allocate resources according to their perceived needs; Barnhart
offers a number of examples of how their economic demands for strategic resources like iron
and oil led to further pressures to expand the Japanese empire in order to acquire such goods.
Additionally, Barnhart takes the position that differing strategic conceptions of how to best
approach the Southward Advance to commandeer the Dutch and French colonies of Southeast
Asia fed a growing inter-service rivalry. This rivalry between the Imperial army and Imperial
navy overshadowed rational considerations of the diplomatic and economic ramifications of
the United States’ reaction to aggressive Japanese imperialism as a means of achieving autarky.
Barnhart documents that the navy in 4 particular instituted a practice of exchanging “more
vigorous foreign policies” for greater resource allocations of strategic materials, and he argues
that the military as a whole served as the “engine of real change” in Japanese policy with regard
to economic expansion as a means of achieving national security. The quest of each service to
outbid the other in acquisition of strategic materials therefore led to the diversion of goods and
funds from exports and the domestic economy to meet military demands. It also led to the
commercial pressures the United States somewhat ironically imposed to punish Japan for its
imperialist imposition and attempt to create a sphere of economic and political influence in
mainland Asia. Indeed, the economic measures that the United States adopted in Japan’s
interwar years to stem the flow of Japanese aggression exacerbated the international situation
because the Japanese elites in power at various points in the course to war were either unwilling
to abandon mobilization plans or unable to do so because of military pressures and demands.
The moral sanctions and embargoes on goods such as aluminum and aviation fuel became
progressively steeper as Japan sought more territory and strategic resources in Asia. Finally,
the United States decided to freeze Japanese assets, and that freeze quickly morphed into full
embargo. Barnhart makes the point that this decision reflected an unshakable belief on the part
of United States leaders that Japan could not be deterred in the Southward Advance but might
be slowed by even more drastic economic measures. He attributes the Japanese response, to
push on with the advance, to the two factors he assigns ultimate importance in determining the
outcome of the clash between the two powers: economic motivations and bureaucratic politics.
Japan’s grand strategic motivation was the pursuit of autarky, and Barnhart argues that the July
2nd decisions for how to best achieve that goal were an amalgam of the opposing viewpoints
of the army 5 and navy, resulting in decisions that were rational in that they were the only
politically possible decisions within the Japanese government of the time. Despite Barnhart’s
strengths in precisely documenting the changing economic condition of Japan in the interwar
years and how its internal political dynamics and strategy shaped its path to war, Japan Prepares
for Total War fails to address the cultural attitudes and myths that enabled its feelings of
entitlement in the region. For example, scholars such as John Dower have suggested that
cultural myths like that of Japanese descent from goddess Amaterasu Omikami were used as
the psychological motivation for mobilizing the Japanese people and justifying horrific actions
against other Asian peoples in the name of Japan’s economic interests.3 Such cultural myths
identified Japan and the Japanese people as holding a unique, predetermined status as the
chosen natural rulers of Asia by virtue of their special descent from the true gods. Barnhart
identifies the primary motivation of Japan in its imperialist pursuits as strategic resource
acquisition. While his application of economic theory has wide explanatory power in the
actions that the Japanese took in the pursuit of autarky, it does not explain why they felt entitled
to or justified in their abuse of the territorial and human rights of other Asians. Furthermore,
Barnhart is careful to avoid overt statement of the brutality of the Japanese military in
imperialist “incidents.” For example, in the attack against Nanking that many scholars have
characterized as rife with atrocities, Barnhart comments that it was an “unbounded military
success;” his only concession to its putative unusual brutality is that the State Department
condemned it as “contrary to the principles of law and humanity.” Although it is perhaps
common to dehumanize an enemy in war and thus Barnhart might choose to leave discussions
of Japanese brutality to other scholars 6 because it is common to dehumanize an enemy in war,
but he could strengthen his argument for economic motivations by discussing how a feeling of
racial, national or cultural superiority played a role in justifying Japanese entitlement to control
of the lands and resources of others. Moreover, justification for such Japanese positions as the
Amau Doctrine, which claimed the Japanese right to supervise economic development of China
and barred all other nations from that right, was clearly based on more than Japanese economic
need, as it claimed Japan had a special right to control China, indicating a feeling of either
extreme paternalism or inherent superiority to China. While racist cultural myths are largely
ignored by Barnhart, racism and misperception in international diplomacy are touched on as
factors in the myriad misunderstandings that occurred between Japan and the United States. In
Japan Prepares for Total War, both Japan and the United States are characterized as often
suspecting the other side of “cunning” and “crafty” behavior, and President Roosevelt is noted
as consistently holding an “anti-Japanese” attitude. These attitudes led to irrational fears; for
example, Barnhart notes that Roosevelt feared a Japanese attack on the West Coast to the extent
that he had crabbing operations checked for the possibility that the Japanese might use them as
bases for war. Japan, too, based a number of decisions on misperceptions of the stance of the
other side; for instance, it believed for a time that the Draft Understanding was a formal United
States policy position, and thus changed its estimate of the probability of war with the United
States, leading to confidence in more aggressive behavior. Barnhart demonstrates that racism
and misunderstandings thus contributed to the policies of the time period in question, but such
a nod to the role of racism and misperception in policy is curious when his argument neglects
to explain the 7 possible of role of racism as justification for forcible economic expansion of
Japan. In conclusion, Japan Prepares for Total War is an economic history, one that serves its
stated purpose of contributing to an understanding of how Japan’s economic concerns and
inter-service rivalries contributed to bringing about the Pacific War. Discussion of Japanese
paternalism or racism in the pursuit of autarky is largely avoided by Barnhart, and this
avoidance detracts to a small extent from the explanatory power of economic vulnerability and
internal political dynamics as the causal variables in Japanese imperialism and attack on the
United States. Perhaps Barnhart is merely trying to achieve objectivity and avoid a
condemnatory tone, but in failing to question the legitimacy of Japan’s special right to control
the rest of Asia, he misses the opportunity to explain the role of the values and attitudes that
supposedly lent justification to Japan’s right to cruelly exploit its Asian neighbors. Despite this
criticism, Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941 offers
a detailed and thought provoking account of the ironies of US-Japan relations and mistakes in
the years preceding the Pacific War.
In Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941, Michael A.
Barnhart chronicles the history of Japan’s futile search for autarky in the years leading to the
Pacific War.1 In examining the vital linkage between economics and national security in this
period, Barnhart makes the argument that the perception of economic vulnerability as the main
security issue facing Japan, combined with bureaucratic politics in the form of army-navy inter-
service rivalries, led directly to both the impulse for empire in resource-rich mainland Asia and
the attack on Pearl Harbor. However, Barnhart’s history charts Japan’s search for economic
security without explaining its justification for and entitlement to seizing the resources and land
of others, often brutally so. As such, the sterility of Japan Prepares for Total War downplays
the role of racist attitudes and cultural myths in engendering the events described. Nonetheless,
with strong evidentiary support Barnhart makes a compelling case for the ascendancy of
economic considerations and bureaucratic politics as the causal factors in Japan’s attack of the
United States on December 7th, 1941. Barnhart posits that Japan’s interpretation of the lessons
of World War I drove its leaders to view autarky as the basis for grand strategic planning. After
all, Germany, possessor of a stronger military than its conquerors, had succumbed to defeat in
WWI because it lacked an industrial base able to mobilize to a degree freeing it from economic
dependence on other nations. Such dependence creates vulnerability because the dependent
nation is subject to the whims and economic pressure of those nations on which it depends.
Japan had defeated Western power Russia in the Sino-Soviet conflict 2 of 1904-1905, but its
status as a resource-poor nation caused a number of influential civilian elites and military
officers to become advocates of “total war,” or the national capacity to not only wage war with
strong military forces but with the economic capability to supply all needed war materiel. Two
essential elements were necessary for this plan to succeed in establishing autarky and thus
security: a peace of at least five years with the hegemonic United States, and natural resources
such as iron and oil. These material resources could be had on the Asian mainland, specifically
in Manchuria and subsequently in China proper. As Barnhart points out, the Japanese chose to
forcibly acquire these resources from its mainland neighbors, and this course of action brought
it into conflict with the free trade philosophy and Open Door policy of the United States.
Japan’s course to national mobilization and self-sufficiency included the creation of a puppet
state for the economic exploitation of Manchuria; Manchukuo was created in 1932 in concert
with Japan’s first long-term mobilization plan. After “rational mobilization” of the domestic
economy, Japan’s increasingly imperial interests turned to China while the military’s share of
the budget rose to 45 percent. In 1937 Japanese forces commenced what Barnhart concededly
calls the “China Incident,” in which China and its resources were claimed by Japan under the
guise of establishing a Japanese-run corporation for economic development of the region.
Barnhart adeptly points out the ironies in Japan’s fight to acquire the Chinese mainland as a
strategic resource. The original total war proponents understood the threat to security that
belligerence in China caused for Japan: the United States, in defending the Open Door policy
in China, might deny Japan the indispensable resources like 3 machine tools that it required to
achieve self-sufficiency. Additionally, Japan’s domestic economy and citizenry were greatly
strained in what Barnhart terms the “bitter mortgage” of funding the efforts of empire in China.
Barnhart therefore argues that Japan’s aggressive imperial activities on the Asian mainland
were counterproductive in its quest for autarky: they threatened the necessary peace with the
United States and came at extreme costs to the Japanese nation. Japan Prepares for Total War
also contends that bureaucratic politics, specifically the competing interests of Japan’s army
and navy, played a significant role in shaping policy and determining the sequence of events
leading to the Pacific War. In bureaucratic politics, the players in a government bargain and
compete according to their organizational interests, resulting in policy that is not the product
of a single rational decision but is instead an amalgam of the visions and choices of the players
involved.2 The army and navy in pre-WWII Japan were both strong players in compelling the
nation’s political leaders to allocate resources according to their perceived needs; Barnhart
offers a number of examples of how their economic demands for strategic resources like iron
and oil led to further pressures to expand the Japanese empire in order to acquire such goods.
Additionally, Barnhart takes the position that differing strategic conceptions of how to best
approach the Southward Advance to commandeer the Dutch and French colonies of Southeast
Asia fed a growing inter-service rivalry. This rivalry between the Imperial army and Imperial
navy overshadowed rational considerations of the diplomatic and economic ramifications of
the United States’ reaction to aggressive Japanese imperialism as a means of achieving autarky.
Barnhart documents that the navy in 4 particular instituted a practice of exchanging “more
vigorous foreign policies” for greater resource allocations of strategic materials, and he argues
that the military as a whole served as the “engine of real change” in Japanese policy with regard
to economic expansion as a means of achieving national security. The quest of each service to
outbid the other in acquisition of strategic materials therefore led to the diversion of goods and
funds from exports and the domestic economy to meet military demands. It also led to the
commercial pressures the United States somewhat ironically imposed to punish Japan for its
imperialist imposition and attempt to create a sphere of economic and political influence in
mainland Asia. Indeed, the economic measures that the United States adopted in Japan’s
interwar years to stem the flow of Japanese aggression exacerbated the international situation
because the Japanese elites in power at various points in the course to war were either unwilling
to abandon mobilization plans or unable to do so because of military pressures and demands.
The moral sanctions and embargoes on goods such as aluminum and aviation fuel became
progressively steeper as Japan sought more territory and strategic resources in Asia. Finally,
the United States decided to freeze Japanese assets, and that freeze quickly morphed into full
embargo. Barnhart makes the point that this decision reflected an unshakable belief on the part
of United States leaders that Japan could not be deterred in the Southward Advance but might
be slowed by even more drastic economic measures. He attributes the Japanese response, to
push on with the advance, to the two factors he assigns ultimate importance in determining the
outcome of the clash between the two powers: economic motivations and bureaucratic politics.
Japan’s grand strategic motivation was the pursuit of autarky, and Barnhart argues that the July
2nd decisions for how to best achieve that goal were an amalgam of the opposing viewpoints
of the army 5 and navy, resulting in decisions that were rational in that they were the only
politically possible decisions within the Japanese government of the time. Despite Barnhart’s
strengths in precisely documenting the changing economic condition of Japan in the interwar
years and how its internal political dynamics and strategy shaped its path to war, Japan Prepares
for Total War fails to address the cultural attitudes and myths that enabled its feelings of
entitlement in the region. For example, scholars such as John Dower have suggested that
cultural myths like that of Japanese descent from goddess Amaterasu Omikami were used as
the psychological motivation for mobilizing the Japanese people and justifying horrific actions
against other Asian peoples in the name of Japan’s economic interests.3 Such cultural myths
identified Japan and the Japanese people as holding a unique, predetermined status as the
chosen natural rulers of Asia by virtue of their special descent from the true gods. Barnhart
identifies the primary motivation of Japan in its imperialist pursuits as strategic resource
acquisition. While his application of economic theory has wide explanatory power in the
actions that the Japanese took in the pursuit of autarky, it does not explain why they felt entitled
to or justified in their abuse of the territorial and human rights of other Asians. Furthermore,
Barnhart is careful to avoid overt statement of the brutality of the Japanese military in
imperialist “incidents.” For example, in the attack against Nanking that many scholars have
characterized as rife with atrocities, Barnhart comments that it was an “unbounded military
success;” his only concession to its putative unusual brutality is that the State Department
condemned it as “contrary to the principles of law and humanity.” Although it is perhaps
common to dehumanize an enemy in war and thus Barnhart might choose to leave discussions
of Japanese brutality to other scholars 6 because it is common to dehumanize an enemy in war,
but he could strengthen his argument for economic motivations by discussing how a feeling of
racial, national or cultural superiority played a role in justifying Japanese entitlement to control
of the lands and resources of others. Moreover, justification for such Japanese positions as the
Amau Doctrine, which claimed the Japanese right to supervise economic development of China
and barred all other nations from that right, was clearly based on more than Japanese economic
need, as it claimed Japan had a special right to control China, indicating a feeling of either
extreme paternalism or inherent superiority to China. While racist cultural myths are largely
ignored by Barnhart, racism and misperception in international diplomacy are touched on as
factors in the myriad misunderstandings that occurred between Japan and the United States. In
Japan Prepares for Total War, both Japan and the United States are characterized as often
suspecting the other side of “cunning” and “crafty” behavior, and President Roosevelt is noted
as consistently holding an “anti-Japanese” attitude. These attitudes led to irrational fears; for
example, Barnhart notes that Roosevelt feared a Japanese attack on the West Coast to the extent
that he had crabbing operations checked for the possibility that the Japanese might use them as
bases for war. Japan, too, based a number of decisions on misperceptions of the stance of the
other side; for instance, it believed for a time that the Draft Understanding was a formal United
States policy position, and thus changed its estimate of the probability of war with the United
States, leading to confidence in more aggressive behavior. Barnhart demonstrates that racism
and misunderstandings thus contributed to the policies of the time period in question, but such
a nod to the role of racism and misperception in policy is curious when his argument neglects
to explain the 7 possible of role of racism as justification for forcible economic expansion of
Japan. In conclusion, Japan Prepares for Total War is an economic history, one that serves its
stated purpose of contributing to an understanding of how Japan’s economic concerns and
inter-service rivalries contributed to bringing about the Pacific War. Discussion of Japanese
paternalism or racism in the pursuit of autarky is largely avoided by Barnhart, and this
avoidance detracts to a small extent from the explanatory power of economic vulnerability and
internal political dynamics as the causal variables in Japanese imperialism and attack on the
United States. Perhaps Barnhart is merely trying to achieve objectivity and avoid a
condemnatory tone, but in failing to question the legitimacy of Japan’s special right to control
the rest of Asia, he misses the opportunity to explain the role of the values and attitudes that
supposedly lent justification to Japan’s right to cruelly exploit its Asian neighbors. Despite this
criticism, Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941 offers
a detailed and thought provoking account of the ironies of US-Japan relations and mistakes in
the years preceding the Pacific War.
In Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941, Michael A.
Barnhart chronicles the history of Japan’s futile search for autarky in the years leading to the
Pacific War.1 In examining the vital linkage between economics and national security in this
period, Barnhart makes the argument that the perception of economic vulnerability as the main
security issue facing Japan, combined with bureaucratic politics in the form of army-navy inter-
service rivalries, led directly to both the impulse for empire in resource-rich mainland Asia and
the attack on Pearl Harbor. However, Barnhart’s history charts Japan’s search for economic
security without explaining its justification for and entitlement to seizing the resources and land
of others, often brutally so. As such, the sterility of Japan Prepares for Total War downplays
the role of racist attitudes and cultural myths in engendering the events described. Nonetheless,
with strong evidentiary support Barnhart makes a compelling case for the ascendancy of
economic considerations and bureaucratic politics as the causal factors in Japan’s attack of the
United States on December 7th, 1941. Barnhart posits that Japan’s interpretation of the lessons
of World War I drove its leaders to view autarky as the basis for grand strategic planning. After
all, Germany, possessor of a stronger military than its conquerors, had succumbed to defeat in
WWI because it lacked an industrial base able to mobilize to a degree freeing it from economic
dependence on other nations. Such dependence creates vulnerability because the dependent
nation is subject to the whims and economic pressure of those nations on which it depends.
Japan had defeated Western power Russia in the Sino-Soviet conflict 2 of 1904-1905, but its
status as a resource-poor nation caused a number of influential civilian elites and military
officers to become advocates of “total war,” or the national capacity to not only wage war with
strong military forces but with the economic capability to supply all needed war materiel. Two
essential elements were necessary for this plan to succeed in establishing autarky and thus
security: a peace of at least five years with the hegemonic United States, and natural resources
such as iron and oil. These material resources could be had on the Asian mainland, specifically
in Manchuria and subsequently in China proper. As Barnhart points out, the Japanese chose to
forcibly acquire these resources from its mainland neighbors, and this course of action brought
it into conflict with the free trade philosophy and Open Door policy of the United States.
Japan’s course to national mobilization and self-sufficiency included the creation of a puppet
state for the economic exploitation of Manchuria; Manchukuo was created in 1932 in concert
with Japan’s first long-term mobilization plan. After “rational mobilization” of the domestic
economy, Japan’s increasingly imperial interests turned to China while the military’s share of
the budget rose to 45 percent. In 1937 Japanese forces commenced what Barnhart concededly
calls the “China Incident,” in which China and its resources were claimed by Japan under the
guise of establishing a Japanese-run corporation for economic development of the region.
Barnhart adeptly points out the ironies in Japan’s fight to acquire the Chinese mainland as a
strategic resource. The original total war proponents understood the threat to security that
belligerence in China caused for Japan: the United States, in defending the Open Door policy
in China, might deny Japan the indispensable resources like 3 machine tools that it required to
achieve self-sufficiency. Additionally, Japan’s domestic economy and citizenry were greatly
strained in what Barnhart terms the “bitter mortgage” of funding the efforts of empire in China.
Barnhart therefore argues that Japan’s aggressive imperial activities on the Asian mainland
were counterproductive in its quest for autarky: they threatened the necessary peace with the
United States and came at extreme costs to the Japanese nation. Japan Prepares for Total War
also contends that bureaucratic politics, specifically the competing interests of Japan’s army
and navy, played a significant role in shaping policy and determining the sequence of events
leading to the Pacific War. In bureaucratic politics, the players in a government bargain and
compete according to their organizational interests, resulting in policy that is not the product
of a single rational decision but is instead an amalgam of the visions and choices of the players
involved.2 The army and navy in pre-WWII Japan were both strong players in compelling the
nation’s political leaders to allocate resources according to their perceived needs; Barnhart
offers a number of examples of how their economic demands for strategic resources like iron
and oil led to further pressures to expand the Japanese empire in order to acquire such goods.
Additionally, Barnhart takes the position that differing strategic conceptions of how to best
approach the Southward Advance to commandeer the Dutch and French colonies of Southeast
Asia fed a growing inter-service rivalry. This rivalry between the Imperial army and Imperial
navy overshadowed rational considerations of the diplomatic and economic ramifications of
the United States’ reaction to aggressive Japanese imperialism as a means of achieving autarky.
Barnhart documents that the navy in 4 particular instituted a practice of exchanging “more
vigorous foreign policies” for greater resource allocations of strategic materials, and he argues
that the military as a whole served as the “engine of real change” in Japanese policy with regard
to economic expansion as a means of achieving national security. The quest of each service to
outbid the other in acquisition of strategic materials therefore led to the diversion of goods and
funds from exports and the domestic economy to meet military demands. It also led to the
commercial pressures the United States somewhat ironically imposed to punish Japan for its
imperialist imposition and attempt to create a sphere of economic and political influence in
mainland Asia. Indeed, the economic measures that the United States adopted in Japan’s
interwar years to stem the flow of Japanese aggression exacerbated the international situation
because the Japanese elites in power at various points in the course to war were either unwilling
to abandon mobilization plans or unable to do so because of military pressures and demands.
The moral sanctions and embargoes on goods such as aluminum and aviation fuel became
progressively steeper as Japan sought more territory and strategic resources in Asia. Finally,
the United States decided to freeze Japanese assets, and that freeze quickly morphed into full
embargo. Barnhart makes the point that this decision reflected an unshakable belief on the part
of United States leaders that Japan could not be deterred in the Southward Advance but might
be slowed by even more drastic economic measures. He attributes the Japanese response, to
push on with the advance, to the two factors he assigns ultimate importance in determining the
outcome of the clash between the two powers: economic motivations and bureaucratic politics.
Japan’s grand strategic motivation was the pursuit of autarky, and Barnhart argues that the July
2nd decisions for how to best achieve that goal were an amalgam of the opposing viewpoints
of the army 5 and navy, resulting in decisions that were rational in that they were the only
politically possible decisions within the Japanese government of the time. Despite Barnhart’s
strengths in precisely documenting the changing economic condition of Japan in the interwar
years and how its internal political dynamics and strategy shaped its path to war, Japan Prepares
for Total War fails to address the cultural attitudes and myths that enabled its feelings of
entitlement in the region. For example, scholars such as John Dower have suggested that
cultural myths like that of Japanese descent from goddess Amaterasu Omikami were used as
the psychological motivation for mobilizing the Japanese people and justifying horrific actions
against other Asian peoples in the name of Japan’s economic interests.3 Such cultural myths
identified Japan and the Japanese people as holding a unique, predetermined status as the
chosen natural rulers of Asia by virtue of their special descent from the true gods. Barnhart
identifies the primary motivation of Japan in its imperialist pursuits as strategic resource
acquisition. While his application of economic theory has wide explanatory power in the
actions that the Japanese took in the pursuit of autarky, it does not explain why they felt entitled
to or justified in their abuse of the territorial and human rights of other Asians. Furthermore,
Barnhart is careful to avoid overt statement of the brutality of the Japanese military in
imperialist “incidents.” For example, in the attack against Nanking that many scholars have
characterized as rife with atrocities, Barnhart comments that it was an “unbounded military
success;” his only concession to its putative unusual brutality is that the State Department
condemned it as “contrary to the principles of law and humanity.” Although it is perhaps
common to dehumanize an enemy in war and thus Barnhart might choose to leave discussions
of Japanese brutality to other scholars 6 because it is common to dehumanize an enemy in war,
but he could strengthen his argument for economic motivations by discussing how a feeling of
racial, national or cultural superiority played a role in justifying Japanese entitlement to control
of the lands and resources of others. Moreover, justification for such Japanese positions as the
Amau Doctrine, which claimed the Japanese right to supervise economic development of China
and barred all other nations from that right, was clearly based on more than Japanese economic
need, as it claimed Japan had a special right to control China, indicating a feeling of either
extreme paternalism or inherent superiority to China. While racist cultural myths are largely
ignored by Barnhart, racism and misperception in international diplomacy are touched on as
factors in the myriad misunderstandings that occurred between Japan and the United States. In
Japan Prepares for Total War, both Japan and the United States are characterized as often
suspecting the other side of “cunning” and “crafty” behavior, and President Roosevelt is noted
as consistently holding an “anti-Japanese” attitude. These attitudes led to irrational fears; for
example, Barnhart notes that Roosevelt feared a Japanese attack on the West Coast to the extent
that he had crabbing operations checked for the possibility that the Japanese might use them as
bases for war. Japan, too, based a number of decisions on misperceptions of the stance of the
other side; for instance, it believed for a time that the Draft Understanding was a formal United
States policy position, and thus changed its estimate of the probability of war with the United
States, leading to confidence in more aggressive behavior. Barnhart demonstrates that racism
and misunderstandings thus contributed to the policies of the time period in question, but such
a nod to the role of racism and misperception in policy is curious when his argument neglects
to explain the 7 possible of role of racism as justification for forcible economic expansion of
Japan. In conclusion, Japan Prepares for Total War is an economic history, one that serves its
stated purpose of contributing to an understanding of how Japan’s economic concerns and
inter-service rivalries contributed to bringing about the Pacific War. Discussion of Japanese
paternalism or racism in the pursuit of autarky is largely avoided by Barnhart, and this
avoidance detracts to a small extent from the explanatory power of economic vulnerability and
internal political dynamics as the causal variables in Japanese imperialism and attack on the
United States. Perhaps Barnhart is merely trying to achieve objectivity and avoid a
condemnatory tone, but in failing to question the legitimacy of Japan’s special right to control
the rest of Asia, he misses the opportunity to explain the role of the values and attitudes that
supposedly lent justification to Japan’s right to cruelly exploit its Asian neighbors. Despite this
criticism, Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941 offers
a detailed and thought provoking account of the ironies of US-Japan relations and mistakes in
the years preceding the Pacific War.
In Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941, Michael A.
Barnhart chronicles the history of Japan’s futile search for autarky in the years leading to the
Pacific War.1 In examining the vital linkage between economics and national security in this
period, Barnhart makes the argument that the perception of economic vulnerability as the main
security issue facing Japan, combined with bureaucratic politics in the form of army-navy inter-
service rivalries, led directly to both the impulse for empire in resource-rich mainland Asia and
the attack on Pearl Harbor. However, Barnhart’s history charts Japan’s search for economic
security without explaining its justification for and entitlement to seizing the resources and land
of others, often brutally so. As such, the sterility of Japan Prepares for Total War downplays
the role of racist attitudes and cultural myths in engendering the events described. Nonetheless,
with strong evidentiary support Barnhart makes a compelling case for the ascendancy of
economic considerations and bureaucratic politics as the causal factors in Japan’s attack of the
United States on December 7th, 1941. Barnhart posits that Japan’s interpretation of the lessons
of World War I drove its leaders to view autarky as the basis for grand strategic planning. After
all, Germany, possessor of a stronger military than its conquerors, had succumbed to defeat in
WWI because it lacked an industrial base able to mobilize to a degree freeing it from economic
dependence on other nations. Such dependence creates vulnerability because the dependent
nation is subject to the whims and economic pressure of those nations on which it depends.
Japan had defeated Western power Russia in the Sino-Soviet conflict 2 of 1904-1905, but its
status as a resource-poor nation caused a number of influential civilian elites and military
officers to become advocates of “total war,” or the national capacity to not only wage war with
strong military forces but with the economic capability to supply all needed war materiel. Two
essential elements were necessary for this plan to succeed in establishing autarky and thus
security: a peace of at least five years with the hegemonic United States, and natural resources
such as iron and oil. These material resources could be had on the Asian mainland, specifically
in Manchuria and subsequently in China proper. As Barnhart points out, the Japanese chose to
forcibly acquire these resources from its mainland neighbors, and this course of action brought
it into conflict with the free trade philosophy and Open Door policy of the United States.
Japan’s course to national mobilization and self-sufficiency included the creation of a puppet
state for the economic exploitation of Manchuria; Manchukuo was created in 1932 in concert
with Japan’s first long-term mobilization plan. After “rational mobilization” of the domestic
economy, Japan’s increasingly imperial interests turned to China while the military’s share of
the budget rose to 45 percent. In 1937 Japanese forces commenced what Barnhart concededly
calls the “China Incident,” in which China and its resources were claimed by Japan under the
guise of establishing a Japanese-run corporation for economic development of the region.
Barnhart adeptly points out the ironies in Japan’s fight to acquire the Chinese mainland as a
strategic resource. The original total war proponents understood the threat to security that
belligerence in China caused for Japan: the United States, in defending the Open Door policy
in China, might deny Japan the indispensable resources like 3 machine tools that it required to
achieve self-sufficiency. Additionally, Japan’s domestic economy and citizenry were greatly
strained in what Barnhart terms the “bitter mortgage” of funding the efforts of empire in China.
Barnhart therefore argues that Japan’s aggressive imperial activities on the Asian mainland
were counterproductive in its quest for autarky: they threatened the necessary peace with the
United States and came at extreme costs to the Japanese nation. Japan Prepares for Total War
also contends that bureaucratic politics, specifically the competing interests of Japan’s army
and navy, played a significant role in shaping policy and determining the sequence of events
leading to the Pacific War. In bureaucratic politics, the players in a government bargain and
compete according to their organizational interests, resulting in policy that is not the product
of a single rational decision but is instead an amalgam of the visions and choices of the players
involved.2 The army and navy in pre-WWII Japan were both strong players in compelling the
nation’s political leaders to allocate resources according to their perceived needs; Barnhart
offers a number of examples of how their economic demands for strategic resources like iron
and oil led to further pressures to expand the Japanese empire in order to acquire such goods.
Additionally, Barnhart takes the position that differing strategic conceptions of how to best
approach the Southward Advance to commandeer the Dutch and French colonies of Southeast
Asia fed a growing inter-service rivalry. This rivalry between the Imperial army and Imperial
navy overshadowed rational considerations of the diplomatic and economic ramifications of
the United States’ reaction to aggressive Japanese imperialism as a means of achieving autarky.
Barnhart documents that the navy in 4 particular instituted a practice of exchanging “more
vigorous foreign policies” for greater resource allocations of strategic materials, and he argues
that the military as a whole served as the “engine of real change” in Japanese policy with regard
to economic expansion as a means of achieving national security. The quest of each service to
outbid the other in acquisition of strategic materials therefore led to the diversion of goods and
funds from exports and the domestic economy to meet military demands. It also led to the
commercial pressures the United States somewhat ironically imposed to punish Japan for its
imperialist imposition and attempt to create a sphere of economic and political influence in
mainland Asia. Indeed, the economic measures that the United States adopted in Japan’s
interwar years to stem the flow of Japanese aggression exacerbated the international situation
because the Japanese elites in power at various points in the course to war were either unwilling
to abandon mobilization plans or unable to do so because of military pressures and demands.
The moral sanctions and embargoes on goods such as aluminum and aviation fuel became
progressively steeper as Japan sought more territory and strategic resources in Asia. Finally,
the United States decided to freeze Japanese assets, and that freeze quickly morphed into full
embargo. Barnhart makes the point that this decision reflected an unshakable belief on the part
of United States leaders that Japan could not be deterred in the Southward Advance but might
be slowed by even more drastic economic measures. He attributes the Japanese response, to
push on with the advance, to the two factors he assigns ultimate importance in determining the
outcome of the clash between the two powers: economic motivations and bureaucratic politics.
Japan’s grand strategic motivation was the pursuit of autarky, and Barnhart argues that the July
2nd decisions for how to best achieve that goal were an amalgam of the opposing viewpoints
of the army 5 and navy, resulting in decisions that were rational in that they were the only
politically possible decisions within the Japanese government of the time. Despite Barnhart’s
strengths in precisely documenting the changing economic condition of Japan in the interwar
years and how its internal political dynamics and strategy shaped its path to war, Japan Prepares
for Total War fails to address the cultural attitudes and myths that enabled its feelings of
entitlement in the region. For example, scholars such as John Dower have suggested that
cultural myths like that of Japanese descent from goddess Amaterasu Omikami were used as
the psychological motivation for mobilizing the Japanese people and justifying horrific actions
against other Asian peoples in the name of Japan’s economic interests.3 Such cultural myths
identified Japan and the Japanese people as holding a unique, predetermined status as the
chosen natural rulers of Asia by virtue of their special descent from the true gods. Barnhart
identifies the primary motivation of Japan in its imperialist pursuits as strategic resource
acquisition. While his application of economic theory has wide explanatory power in the
actions that the Japanese took in the pursuit of autarky, it does not explain why they felt entitled
to or justified in their abuse of the territorial and human rights of other Asians. Furthermore,
Barnhart is careful to avoid overt statement of the brutality of the Japanese military in
imperialist “incidents.” For example, in the attack against Nanking that many scholars have
characterized as rife with atrocities, Barnhart comments that it was an “unbounded military
success;” his only concession to its putative unusual brutality is that the State Department
condemned it as “contrary to the principles of law and humanity.” Although it is perhaps
common to dehumanize an enemy in war and thus Barnhart might choose to leave discussions
of Japanese brutality to other scholars 6 because it is common to dehumanize an enemy in war,
but he could strengthen his argument for economic motivations by discussing how a feeling of
racial, national or cultural superiority played a role in justifying Japanese entitlement to control
of the lands and resources of others. Moreover, justification for such Japanese positions as the
Amau Doctrine, which claimed the Japanese right to supervise economic development of China
and barred all other nations from that right, was clearly based on more than Japanese economic
need, as it claimed Japan had a special right to control China, indicating a feeling of either
extreme paternalism or inherent superiority to China. While racist cultural myths are largely
ignored by Barnhart, racism and misperception in international diplomacy are touched on as
factors in the myriad misunderstandings that occurred between Japan and the United States. In
Japan Prepares for Total War, both Japan and the United States are characterized as often
suspecting the other side of “cunning” and “crafty” behavior, and President Roosevelt is noted
as consistently holding an “anti-Japanese” attitude. These attitudes led to irrational fears; for
example, Barnhart notes that Roosevelt feared a Japanese attack on the West Coast to the extent
that he had crabbing operations checked for the possibility that the Japanese might use them as
bases for war. Japan, too, based a number of decisions on misperceptions of the stance of the
other side; for instance, it believed for a time that the Draft Understanding was a formal United
States policy position, and thus changed its estimate of the probability of war with the United
States, leading to confidence in more aggressive behavior. Barnhart demonstrates that racism
and misunderstandings thus contributed to the policies of the time period in question, but such
a nod to the role of racism and misperception in policy is curious when his argument neglects
to explain the 7 possible of role of racism as justification for forcible economic expansion of
Japan. In conclusion, Japan Prepares for Total War is an economic history, one that serves its
stated purpose of contributing to an understanding of how Japan’s economic concerns and
inter-service rivalries contributed to bringing about the Pacific War. Discussion of Japanese
paternalism or racism in the pursuit of autarky is largely avoided by Barnhart, and this
avoidance detracts to a small extent from the explanatory power of economic vulnerability and
internal political dynamics as the causal variables in Japanese imperialism and attack on the
United States. Perhaps Barnhart is merely trying to achieve objectivity and avoid a
condemnatory tone, but in failing to question the legitimacy of Japan’s special right to control
the rest of Asia, he misses the opportunity to explain the role of the values and attitudes that
supposedly lent justification to Japan’s right to cruelly exploit its Asian neighbors. Despite this
criticism, Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941 offers
a detailed and thought provoking account of the ironies of US-Japan relations and mistakes in
the years preceding the Pacific War.
In Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941, Michael A.
Barnhart chronicles the history of Japan’s futile search for autarky in the years leading to the
Pacific War.1 In examining the vital linkage between economics and national security in this
period, Barnhart makes the argument that the perception of economic vulnerability as the main
security issue facing Japan, combined with bureaucratic politics in the form of army-navy inter-
service rivalries, led directly to both the impulse for empire in resource-rich mainland Asia and
the attack on Pearl Harbor. However, Barnhart’s history charts Japan’s search for economic
security without explaining its justification for and entitlement to seizing the resources and land
of others, often brutally so. As such, the sterility of Japan Prepares for Total War downplays
the role of racist attitudes and cultural myths in engendering the events described. Nonetheless,
with strong evidentiary support Barnhart makes a compelling case for the ascendancy of
economic considerations and bureaucratic politics as the causal factors in Japan’s attack of the
United States on December 7th, 1941. Barnhart posits that Japan’s interpretation of the lessons
of World War I drove its leaders to view autarky as the basis for grand strategic planning. After
all, Germany, possessor of a stronger military than its conquerors, had succumbed to defeat in
WWI because it lacked an industrial base able to mobilize to a degree freeing it from economic
dependence on other nations. Such dependence creates vulnerability because the dependent
nation is subject to the whims and economic pressure of those nations on which it depends.
Japan had defeated Western power Russia in the Sino-Soviet conflict 2 of 1904-1905, but its
status as a resource-poor nation caused a number of influential civilian elites and military
officers to become advocates of “total war,” or the national capacity to not only wage war with
strong military forces but with the economic capability to supply all needed war materiel. Two
essential elements were necessary for this plan to succeed in establishing autarky and thus
security: a peace of at least five years with the hegemonic United States, and natural resources
such as iron and oil. These material resources could be had on the Asian mainland, specifically
in Manchuria and subsequently in China proper. As Barnhart points out, the Japanese chose to
forcibly acquire these resources from its mainland neighbors, and this course of action brought
it into conflict with the free trade philosophy and Open Door policy of the United States.
Japan’s course to national mobilization and self-sufficiency included the creation of a puppet
state for the economic exploitation of Manchuria; Manchukuo was created in 1932 in concert
with Japan’s first long-term mobilization plan. After “rational mobilization” of the domestic
economy, Japan’s increasingly imperial interests turned to China while the military’s share of
the budget rose to 45 percent. In 1937 Japanese forces commenced what Barnhart concededly
calls the “China Incident,” in which China and its resources were claimed by Japan under the
guise of establishing a Japanese-run corporation for economic development of the region.
Barnhart adeptly points out the ironies in Japan’s fight to acquire the Chinese mainland as a
strategic resource. The original total war proponents understood the threat to security that
belligerence in China caused for Japan: the United States, in defending the Open Door policy
in China, might deny Japan the indispensable resources like 3 machine tools that it required to
achieve self-sufficiency. Additionally, Japan’s domestic economy and citizenry were greatly
strained in what Barnhart terms the “bitter mortgage” of funding the efforts of empire in China.
Barnhart therefore argues that Japan’s aggressive imperial activities on the Asian mainland
were counterproductive in its quest for autarky: they threatened the necessary peace with the
United States and came at extreme costs to the Japanese nation. Japan Prepares for Total War
also contends that bureaucratic politics, specifically the competing interests of Japan’s army
and navy, played a significant role in shaping policy and determining the sequence of events
leading to the Pacific War. In bureaucratic politics, the players in a government bargain and
compete according to their organizational interests, resulting in policy that is not the product
of a single rational decision but is instead an amalgam of the visions and choices of the players
involved.2 The army and navy in pre-WWII Japan were both strong players in compelling the
nation’s political leaders to allocate resources according to their perceived needs; Barnhart
offers a number of examples of how their economic demands for strategic resources like iron
and oil led to further pressures to expand the Japanese empire in order to acquire such goods.
Additionally, Barnhart takes the position that differing strategic conceptions of how to best
approach the Southward Advance to commandeer the Dutch and French colonies of Southeast
Asia fed a growing inter-service rivalry. This rivalry between the Imperial army and Imperial
navy overshadowed rational considerations of the diplomatic and economic ramifications of
the United States’ reaction to aggressive Japanese imperialism as a means of achieving autarky.
Barnhart documents that the navy in 4 particular instituted a practice of exchanging “more
vigorous foreign policies” for greater resource allocations of strategic materials, and he argues
that the military as a whole served as the “engine of real change” in Japanese policy with regard
to economic expansion as a means of achieving national security. The quest of each service to
outbid the other in acquisition of strategic materials therefore led to the diversion of goods and
funds from exports and the domestic economy to meet military demands. It also led to the
commercial pressures the United States somewhat ironically imposed to punish Japan for its
imperialist imposition and attempt to create a sphere of economic and political influence in
mainland Asia. Indeed, the economic measures that the United States adopted in Japan’s
interwar years to stem the flow of Japanese aggression exacerbated the international situation
because the Japanese elites in power at various points in the course to war were either unwilling
to abandon mobilization plans or unable to do so because of military pressures and demands.
The moral sanctions and embargoes on goods such as aluminum and aviation fuel became
progressively steeper as Japan sought more territory and strategic resources in Asia. Finally,
the United States decided to freeze Japanese assets, and that freeze quickly morphed into full
embargo. Barnhart makes the point that this decision reflected an unshakable belief on the part
of United States leaders that Japan could not be deterred in the Southward Advance but might
be slowed by even more drastic economic measures. He attributes the Japanese response, to
push on with the advance, to the two factors he assigns ultimate importance in determining the
outcome of the clash between the two powers: economic motivations and bureaucratic politics.
Japan’s grand strategic motivation was the pursuit of autarky, and Barnhart argues that the July
2nd decisions for how to best achieve that goal were an amalgam of the opposing viewpoints
of the army 5 and navy, resulting in decisions that were rational in that they were the only
politically possible decisions within the Japanese government of the time. Despite Barnhart’s
strengths in precisely documenting the changing economic condition of Japan in the interwar
years and how its internal political dynamics and strategy shaped its path to war, Japan Prepares
for Total War fails to address the cultural attitudes and myths that enabled its feelings of
entitlement in the region. For example, scholars such as John Dower have suggested that
cultural myths like that of Japanese descent from goddess Amaterasu Omikami were used as
the psychological motivation for mobilizing the Japanese people and justifying horrific actions
against other Asian peoples in the name of Japan’s economic interests.3 Such cultural myths
identified Japan and the Japanese people as holding a unique, predetermined status as the
chosen natural rulers of Asia by virtue of their special descent from the true gods. Barnhart
identifies the primary motivation of Japan in its imperialist pursuits as strategic resource
acquisition. While his application of economic theory has wide explanatory power in the
actions that the Japanese took in the pursuit of autarky, it does not explain why they felt entitled
to or justified in their abuse of the territorial and human rights of other Asians. Furthermore,
Barnhart is careful to avoid overt statement of the brutality of the Japanese military in
imperialist “incidents.” For example, in the attack against Nanking that many scholars have
characterized as rife with atrocities, Barnhart comments that it was an “unbounded military
success;” his only concession to its putative unusual brutality is that the State Department
condemned it as “contrary to the principles of law and humanity.” Although it is perhaps
common to dehumanize an enemy in war and thus Barnhart might choose to leave discussions
of Japanese brutality to other scholars 6 because it is common to dehumanize an enemy in war,
but he could strengthen his argument for economic motivations by discussing how a feeling of
racial, national or cultural superiority played a role in justifying Japanese entitlement to control
of the lands and resources of others. Moreover, justification for such Japanese positions as the
Amau Doctrine, which claimed the Japanese right to supervise economic development of China
and barred all other nations from that right, was clearly based on more than Japanese economic
need, as it claimed Japan had a special right to control China, indicating a feeling of either
extreme paternalism or inherent superiority to China. While racist cultural myths are largely
ignored by Barnhart, racism and misperception in international diplomacy are touched on as
factors in the myriad misunderstandings that occurred between Japan and the United States. In
Japan Prepares for Total War, both Japan and the United States are characterized as often
suspecting the other side of “cunning” and “crafty” behavior, and President Roosevelt is noted
as consistently holding an “anti-Japanese” attitude. These attitudes led to irrational fears; for
example, Barnhart notes that Roosevelt feared a Japanese attack on the West Coast to the extent
that he had crabbing operations checked for the possibility that the Japanese might use them as
bases for war. Japan, too, based a number of decisions on misperceptions of the stance of the
other side; for instance, it believed for a time that the Draft Understanding was a formal United
States policy position, and thus changed its estimate of the probability of war with the United
States, leading to confidence in more aggressive behavior. Barnhart demonstrates that racism
and misunderstandings thus contributed to the policies of the time period in question, but such
a nod to the role of racism and misperception in policy is curious when his argument neglects
to explain the 7 possible of role of racism as justification for forcible economic expansion of
Japan. In conclusion, Japan Prepares for Total War is an economic history, one that serves its
stated purpose of contributing to an understanding of how Japan’s economic concerns and
inter-service rivalries contributed to bringing about the Pacific War. Discussion of Japanese
paternalism or racism in the pursuit of autarky is largely avoided by Barnhart, and this
avoidance detracts to a small extent from the explanatory power of economic vulnerability and
internal political dynamics as the causal variables in Japanese imperialism and attack on the
United States. Perhaps Barnhart is merely trying to achieve objectivity and avoid a
condemnatory tone, but in failing to question the legitimacy of Japan’s special right to control
the rest of Asia, he misses the opportunity to explain the role of the values and attitudes that
supposedly lent justification to Japan’s right to cruelly exploit its Asian neighbors. Despite this
criticism, Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941 offers
a detailed and thought provoking account of the ironies of US-Japan relations and mistakes in
the years preceding the Pacific War.
In Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941, Michael A.
Barnhart chronicles the history of Japan’s futile search for autarky in the years leading to the
Pacific War.1 In examining the vital linkage between economics and national security in this
period, Barnhart makes the argument that the perception of economic vulnerability as the main
security issue facing Japan, combined with bureaucratic politics in the form of army-navy inter-
service rivalries, led directly to both the impulse for empire in resource-rich mainland Asia and
the attack on Pearl Harbor. However, Barnhart’s history charts Japan’s search for economic
security without explaining its justification for and entitlement to seizing the resources and land
of others, often brutally so. As such, the sterility of Japan Prepares for Total War downplays
the role of racist attitudes and cultural myths in engendering the events described. Nonetheless,
with strong evidentiary support Barnhart makes a compelling case for the ascendancy of
economic considerations and bureaucratic politics as the causal factors in Japan’s attack of the
United States on December 7th, 1941. Barnhart posits that Japan’s interpretation of the lessons
of World War I drove its leaders to view autarky as the basis for grand strategic planning. After
all, Germany, possessor of a stronger military than its conquerors, had succumbed to defeat in
WWI because it lacked an industrial base able to mobilize to a degree freeing it from economic
dependence on other nations. Such dependence creates vulnerability because the dependent
nation is subject to the whims and economic pressure of those nations on which it depends.
Japan had defeated Western power Russia in the Sino-Soviet conflict 2 of 1904-1905, but its
status as a resource-poor nation caused a number of influential civilian elites and military
officers to become advocates of “total war,” or the national capacity to not only wage war with
strong military forces but with the economic capability to supply all needed war materiel. Two
essential elements were necessary for this plan to succeed in establishing autarky and thus
security: a peace of at least five years with the hegemonic United States, and natural resources
such as iron and oil. These material resources could be had on the Asian mainland, specifically
in Manchuria and subsequently in China proper. As Barnhart points out, the Japanese chose to
forcibly acquire these resources from its mainland neighbors, and this course of action brought
it into conflict with the free trade philosophy and Open Door policy of the United States.
Japan’s course to national mobilization and self-sufficiency included the creation of a puppet
state for the economic exploitation of Manchuria; Manchukuo was created in 1932 in concert
with Japan’s first long-term mobilization plan. After “rational mobilization” of the domestic
economy, Japan’s increasingly imperial interests turned to China while the military’s share of
the budget rose to 45 percent. In 1937 Japanese forces commenced what Barnhart concededly
calls the “China Incident,” in which China and its resources were claimed by Japan under the
guise of establishing a Japanese-run corporation for economic development of the region.
Barnhart adeptly points out the ironies in Japan’s fight to acquire the Chinese mainland as a
strategic resource. The original total war proponents understood the threat to security that
belligerence in China caused for Japan: the United States, in defending the Open Door policy
in China, might deny Japan the indispensable resources like 3 machine tools that it required to
achieve self-sufficiency. Additionally, Japan’s domestic economy and citizenry were greatly
strained in what Barnhart terms the “bitter mortgage” of funding the efforts of empire in China.
Barnhart therefore argues that Japan’s aggressive imperial activities on the Asian mainland
were counterproductive in its quest for autarky: they threatened the necessary peace with the
United States and came at extreme costs to the Japanese nation. Japan Prepares for Total War
also contends that bureaucratic politics, specifically the competing interests of Japan’s army
and navy, played a significant role in shaping policy and determining the sequence of events
leading to the Pacific War. In bureaucratic politics, the players in a government bargain and
compete according to their organizational interests, resulting in policy that is not the product
of a single rational decision but is instead an amalgam of the visions and choices of the players
involved.2 The army and navy in pre-WWII Japan were both strong players in compelling the
nation’s political leaders to allocate resources according to their perceived needs; Barnhart
offers a number of examples of how their economic demands for strategic resources like iron
and oil led to further pressures to expand the Japanese empire in order to acquire such goods.
Additionally, Barnhart takes the position that differing strategic conceptions of how to best
approach the Southward Advance to commandeer the Dutch and French colonies of Southeast
Asia fed a growing inter-service rivalry. This rivalry between the Imperial army and Imperial
navy overshadowed rational considerations of the diplomatic and economic ramifications of
the United States’ reaction to aggressive Japanese imperialism as a means of achieving autarky.
Barnhart documents that the navy in 4 particular instituted a practice of exchanging “more
vigorous foreign policies” for greater resource allocations of strategic materials, and he argues
that the military as a whole served as the “engine of real change” in Japanese policy with regard
to economic expansion as a means of achieving national security. The quest of each service to
outbid the other in acquisition of strategic materials therefore led to the diversion of goods and
funds from exports and the domestic economy to meet military demands. It also led to the
commercial pressures the United States somewhat ironically imposed to punish Japan for its
imperialist imposition and attempt to create a sphere of economic and political influence in
mainland Asia. Indeed, the economic measures that the United States adopted in Japan’s
interwar years to stem the flow of Japanese aggression exacerbated the international situation
because the Japanese elites in power at various points in the course to war were either unwilling
to abandon mobilization plans or unable to do so because of military pressures and demands.
The moral sanctions and embargoes on goods such as aluminum and aviation fuel became
progressively steeper as Japan sought more territory and strategic resources in Asia. Finally,
the United States decided to freeze Japanese assets, and that freeze quickly morphed into full
embargo. Barnhart makes the point that this decision reflected an unshakable belief on the part
of United States leaders that Japan could not be deterred in the Southward Advance but might
be slowed by even more drastic economic measures. He attributes the Japanese response, to
push on with the advance, to the two factors he assigns ultimate importance in determining the
outcome of the clash between the two powers: economic motivations and bureaucratic politics.
Japan’s grand strategic motivation was the pursuit of autarky, and Barnhart argues that the July
2nd decisions for how to best achieve that goal were an amalgam of the opposing viewpoints
of the army 5 and navy, resulting in decisions that were rational in that they were the only
politically possible decisions within the Japanese government of the time. Despite Barnhart’s
strengths in precisely documenting the changing economic condition of Japan in the interwar
years and how its internal political dynamics and strategy shaped its path to war, Japan Prepares
for Total War fails to address the cultural attitudes and myths that enabled its feelings of
entitlement in the region. For example, scholars such as John Dower have suggested that
cultural myths like that of Japanese descent from goddess Amaterasu Omikami were used as
the psychological motivation for mobilizing the Japanese people and justifying horrific actions
against other Asian peoples in the name of Japan’s economic interests.3 Such cultural myths
identified Japan and the Japanese people as holding a unique, predetermined status as the
chosen natural rulers of Asia by virtue of their special descent from the true gods. Barnhart
identifies the primary motivation of Japan in its imperialist pursuits as strategic resource
acquisition. While his application of economic theory has wide explanatory power in the
actions that the Japanese took in the pursuit of autarky, it does not explain why they felt entitled
to or justified in their abuse of the territorial and human rights of other Asians. Furthermore,
Barnhart is careful to avoid overt statement of the brutality of the Japanese military in
imperialist “incidents.” For example, in the attack against Nanking that many scholars have
characterized as rife with atrocities, Barnhart comments that it was an “unbounded military
success;” his only concession to its putative unusual brutality is that the State Department
condemned it as “contrary to the principles of law and humanity.” Although it is perhaps
common to dehumanize an enemy in war and thus Barnhart might choose to leave discussions
of Japanese brutality to other scholars 6 because it is common to dehumanize an enemy in war,
but he could strengthen his argument for economic motivations by discussing how a feeling of
racial, national or cultural superiority played a role in justifying Japanese entitlement to control
of the lands and resources of others. Moreover, justification for such Japanese positions as the
Amau Doctrine, which claimed the Japanese right to supervise economic development of China
and barred all other nations from that right, was clearly based on more than Japanese economic
need, as it claimed Japan had a special right to control China, indicating a feeling of either
extreme paternalism or inherent superiority to China. While racist cultural myths are largely
ignored by Barnhart, racism and misperception in international diplomacy are touched on as
factors in the myriad misunderstandings that occurred between Japan and the United States. In
Japan Prepares for Total War, both Japan and the United States are characterized as often
suspecting the other side of “cunning” and “crafty” behavior, and President Roosevelt is noted
as consistently holding an “anti-Japanese” attitude. These attitudes led to irrational fears; for
example, Barnhart notes that Roosevelt feared a Japanese attack on the West Coast to the extent
that he had crabbing operations checked for the possibility that the Japanese might use them as
bases for war. Japan, too, based a number of decisions on misperceptions of the stance of the
other side; for instance, it believed for a time that the Draft Understanding was a formal United
States policy position, and thus changed its estimate of the probability of war with the United
States, leading to confidence in more aggressive behavior. Barnhart demonstrates that racism
and misunderstandings thus contributed to the policies of the time period in question, but such
a nod to the role of racism and misperception in policy is curious when his argument neglects
to explain the 7 possible of role of racism as justification for forcible economic expansion of
Japan. In conclusion, Japan Prepares for Total War is an economic history, one that serves its
stated purpose of contributing to an understanding of how Japan’s economic concerns and
inter-service rivalries contributed to bringing about the Pacific War. Discussion of Japanese
paternalism or racism in the pursuit of autarky is largely avoided by Barnhart, and this
avoidance detracts to a small extent from the explanatory power of economic vulnerability and
internal political dynamics as the causal variables in Japanese imperialism and attack on the
United States. Perhaps Barnhart is merely trying to achieve objectivity and avoid a
condemnatory tone, but in failing to question the legitimacy of Japan’s special right to control
the rest of Asia, he misses the opportunity to explain the role of the values and attitudes that
supposedly lent justification to Japan’s right to cruelly exploit its Asian neighbors. Despite this
criticism, Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941 offers
a detailed and thought provoking account of the ironies of US-Japan relations and mistakes in
the years preceding the Pacific War.
In Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941, Michael A.
Barnhart chronicles the history of Japan’s futile search for autarky in the years leading to the
Pacific War.1 In examining the vital linkage between economics and national security in this
period, Barnhart makes the argument that the perception of economic vulnerability as the main
security issue facing Japan, combined with bureaucratic politics in the form of army-navy inter-
service rivalries, led directly to both the impulse for empire in resource-rich mainland Asia and
the attack on Pearl Harbor. However, Barnhart’s history charts Japan’s search for economic
security without explaining its justification for and entitlement to seizing the resources and land
of others, often brutally so. As such, the sterility of Japan Prepares for Total War downplays
the role of racist attitudes and cultural myths in engendering the events described. Nonetheless,
with strong evidentiary support Barnhart makes a compelling case for the ascendancy of
economic considerations and bureaucratic politics as the causal factors in Japan’s attack of the
United States on December 7th, 1941. Barnhart posits that Japan’s interpretation of the lessons
of World War I drove its leaders to view autarky as the basis for grand strategic planning. After
all, Germany, possessor of a stronger military than its conquerors, had succumbed to defeat in
WWI because it lacked an industrial base able to mobilize to a degree freeing it from economic
dependence on other nations. Such dependence creates vulnerability because the dependent
nation is subject to the whims and economic pressure of those nations on which it depends.
Japan had defeated Western power Russia in the Sino-Soviet conflict 2 of 1904-1905, but its
status as a resource-poor nation caused a number of influential civilian elites and military
officers to become advocates of “total war,” or the national capacity to not only wage war with
strong military forces but with the economic capability to supply all needed war materiel. Two
essential elements were necessary for this plan to succeed in establishing autarky and thus
security: a peace of at least five years with the hegemonic United States, and natural resources
such as iron and oil. These material resources could be had on the Asian mainland, specifically
in Manchuria and subsequently in China proper. As Barnhart points out, the Japanese chose to
forcibly acquire these resources from its mainland neighbors, and this course of action brought
it into conflict with the free trade philosophy and Open Door policy of the United States.
Japan’s course to national mobilization and self-sufficiency included the creation of a puppet
state for the economic exploitation of Manchuria; Manchukuo was created in 1932 in concert
with Japan’s first long-term mobilization plan. After “rational mobilization” of the domestic
economy, Japan’s increasingly imperial interests turned to China while the military’s share of
the budget rose to 45 percent. In 1937 Japanese forces commenced what Barnhart concededly
calls the “China Incident,” in which China and its resources were claimed by Japan under the
guise of establishing a Japanese-run corporation for economic development of the region.
Barnhart adeptly points out the ironies in Japan’s fight to acquire the Chinese mainland as a
strategic resource. The original total war proponents understood the threat to security that
belligerence in China caused for Japan: the United States, in defending the Open Door policy
in China, might deny Japan the indispensable resources like 3 machine tools that it required to
achieve self-sufficiency. Additionally, Japan’s domestic economy and citizenry were greatly
strained in what Barnhart terms the “bitter mortgage” of funding the efforts of empire in China.
Barnhart therefore argues that Japan’s aggressive imperial activities on the Asian mainland
were counterproductive in its quest for autarky: they threatened the necessary peace with the
United States and came at extreme costs to the Japanese nation. Japan Prepares for Total War
also contends that bureaucratic politics, specifically the competing interests of Japan’s army
and navy, played a significant role in shaping policy and determining the sequence of events
leading to the Pacific War. In bureaucratic politics, the players in a government bargain and
compete according to their organizational interests, resulting in policy that is not the product
of a single rational decision but is instead an amalgam of the visions and choices of the players
involved.2 The army and navy in pre-WWII Japan were both strong players in compelling the
nation’s political leaders to allocate resources according to their perceived needs; Barnhart
offers a number of examples of how their economic demands for strategic resources like iron
and oil led to further pressures to expand the Japanese empire in order to acquire such goods.
Additionally, Barnhart takes the position that differing strategic conceptions of how to best
approach the Southward Advance to commandeer the Dutch and French colonies of Southeast
Asia fed a growing inter-service rivalry. This rivalry between the Imperial army and Imperial
navy overshadowed rational considerations of the diplomatic and economic ramifications of
the United States’ reaction to aggressive Japanese imperialism as a means of achieving autarky.
Barnhart documents that the navy in 4 particular instituted a practice of exchanging “more
vigorous foreign policies” for greater resource allocations of strategic materials, and he argues
that the military as a whole served as the “engine of real change” in Japanese policy with regard
to economic expansion as a means of achieving national security. The quest of each service to
outbid the other in acquisition of strategic materials therefore led to the diversion of goods and
funds from exports and the domestic economy to meet military demands. It also led to the
commercial pressures the United States somewhat ironically imposed to punish Japan for its
imperialist imposition and attempt to create a sphere of economic and political influence in
mainland Asia. Indeed, the economic measures that the United States adopted in Japan’s
interwar years to stem the flow of Japanese aggression exacerbated the international situation
because the Japanese elites in power at various points in the course to war were either unwilling
to abandon mobilization plans or unable to do so because of military pressures and demands.
The moral sanctions and embargoes on goods such as aluminum and aviation fuel became
progressively steeper as Japan sought more territory and strategic resources in Asia. Finally,
the United States decided to freeze Japanese assets, and that freeze quickly morphed into full
embargo. Barnhart makes the point that this decision reflected an unshakable belief on the part
of United States leaders that Japan could not be deterred in the Southward Advance but might
be slowed by even more drastic economic measures. He attributes the Japanese response, to
push on with the advance, to the two factors he assigns ultimate importance in determining the
outcome of the clash between the two powers: economic motivations and bureaucratic politics.
Japan’s grand strategic motivation was the pursuit of autarky, and Barnhart argues that the July
2nd decisions for how to best achieve that goal were an amalgam of the opposing viewpoints
of the army 5 and navy, resulting in decisions that were rational in that they were the only
politically possible decisions within the Japanese government of the time. Despite Barnhart’s
strengths in precisely documenting the changing economic condition of Japan in the interwar
years and how its internal political dynamics and strategy shaped its path to war, Japan Prepares
for Total War fails to address the cultural attitudes and myths that enabled its feelings of
entitlement in the region. For example, scholars such as John Dower have suggested that
cultural myths like that of Japanese descent from goddess Amaterasu Omikami were used as
the psychological motivation for mobilizing the Japanese people and justifying horrific actions
against other Asian peoples in the name of Japan’s economic interests.3 Such cultural myths
identified Japan and the Japanese people as holding a unique, predetermined status as the
chosen natural rulers of Asia by virtue of their special descent from the true gods. Barnhart
identifies the primary motivation of Japan in its imperialist pursuits as strategic resource
acquisition. While his application of economic theory has wide explanatory power in the
actions that the Japanese took in the pursuit of autarky, it does not explain why they felt entitled
to or justified in their abuse of the territorial and human rights of other Asians. Furthermore,
Barnhart is careful to avoid overt statement of the brutality of the Japanese military in
imperialist “incidents.” For example, in the attack against Nanking that many scholars have
characterized as rife with atrocities, Barnhart comments that it was an “unbounded military
success;” his only concession to its putative unusual brutality is that the State Department
condemned it as “contrary to the principles of law and humanity.” Although it is perhaps
common to dehumanize an enemy in war and thus Barnhart might choose to leave discussions
of Japanese brutality to other scholars 6 because it is common to dehumanize an enemy in war,
but he could strengthen his argument for economic motivations by discussing how a feeling of
racial, national or cultural superiority played a role in justifying Japanese entitlement to control
of the lands and resources of others. Moreover, justification for such Japanese positions as the
Amau Doctrine, which claimed the Japanese right to supervise economic development of China
and barred all other nations from that right, was clearly based on more than Japanese economic
need, as it claimed Japan had a special right to control China, indicating a feeling of either
extreme paternalism or inherent superiority to China. While racist cultural myths are largely
ignored by Barnhart, racism and misperception in international diplomacy are touched on as
factors in the myriad misunderstandings that occurred between Japan and the United States. In
Japan Prepares for Total War, both Japan and the United States are characterized as often
suspecting the other side of “cunning” and “crafty” behavior, and President Roosevelt is noted
as consistently holding an “anti-Japanese” attitude. These attitudes led to irrational fears; for
example, Barnhart notes that Roosevelt feared a Japanese attack on the West Coast to the extent
that he had crabbing operations checked for the possibility that the Japanese might use them as
bases for war. Japan, too, based a number of decisions on misperceptions of the stance of the
other side; for instance, it believed for a time that the Draft Understanding was a formal United
States policy position, and thus changed its estimate of the probability of war with the United
States, leading to confidence in more aggressive behavior. Barnhart demonstrates that racism
and misunderstandings thus contributed to the policies of the time period in question, but such
a nod to the role of racism and misperception in policy is curious when his argument neglects
to explain the 7 possible of role of racism as justification for forcible economic expansion of
Japan. In conclusion, Japan Prepares for Total War is an economic history, one that serves its
stated purpose of contributing to an understanding of how Japan’s economic concerns and
inter-service rivalries contributed to bringing about the Pacific War. Discussion of Japanese
paternalism or racism in the pursuit of autarky is largely avoided by Barnhart, and this
avoidance detracts to a small extent from the explanatory power of economic vulnerability and
internal political dynamics as the causal variables in Japanese imperialism and attack on the
United States. Perhaps Barnhart is merely trying to achieve objectivity and avoid a
condemnatory tone, but in failing to question the legitimacy of Japan’s special right to control
the rest of Asia, he misses the opportunity to explain the role of the values and attitudes that
supposedly lent justification to Japan’s right to cruelly exploit its Asian neighbors. Despite this
criticism, Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941 offers
a detailed and thought provoking account of the ironies of US-Japan relations and mistakes in
the years preceding the Pacific War.
In Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941, Michael A.
Barnhart chronicles the history of Japan’s futile search for autarky in the years leading to the
Pacific War.1 In examining the vital linkage between economics and national security in this
period, Barnhart makes the argument that the perception of economic vulnerability as the main
security issue facing Japan, combined with bureaucratic politics in the form of army-navy inter-
service rivalries, led directly to both the impulse for empire in resource-rich mainland Asia and
the attack on Pearl Harbor. However, Barnhart’s history charts Japan’s search for economic
security without explaining its justification for and entitlement to seizing the resources and land
of others, often brutally so. As such, the sterility of Japan Prepares for Total War downplays
the role of racist attitudes and cultural myths in engendering the events described. Nonetheless,
with strong evidentiary support Barnhart makes a compelling case for the ascendancy of
economic considerations and bureaucratic politics as the causal factors in Japan’s attack of the
United States on December 7th, 1941. Barnhart posits that Japan’s interpretation of the lessons
of World War I drove its leaders to view autarky as the basis for grand strategic planning. After
all, Germany, possessor of a stronger military than its conquerors, had succumbed to defeat in
WWI because it lacked an industrial base able to mobilize to a degree freeing it from economic
dependence on other nations. Such dependence creates vulnerability because the dependent
nation is subject to the whims and economic pressure of those nations on which it depends.
Japan had defeated Western power Russia in the Sino-Soviet conflict 2 of 1904-1905, but its
status as a resource-poor nation caused a number of influential civilian elites and military
officers to become advocates of “total war,” or the national capacity to not only wage war with
strong military forces but with the economic capability to supply all needed war materiel. Two
essential elements were necessary for this plan to succeed in establishing autarky and thus
security: a peace of at least five years with the hegemonic United States, and natural resources
such as iron and oil. These material resources could be had on the Asian mainland, specifically
in Manchuria and subsequently in China proper. As Barnhart points out, the Japanese chose to
forcibly acquire these resources from its mainland neighbors, and this course of action brought
it into conflict with the free trade philosophy and Open Door policy of the United States.
Japan’s course to national mobilization and self-sufficiency included the creation of a puppet
state for the economic exploitation of Manchuria; Manchukuo was created in 1932 in concert
with Japan’s first long-term mobilization plan. After “rational mobilization” of the domestic
economy, Japan’s increasingly imperial interests turned to China while the military’s share of
the budget rose to 45 percent. In 1937 Japanese forces commenced what Barnhart concededly
calls the “China Incident,” in which China and its resources were claimed by Japan under the
guise of establishing a Japanese-run corporation for economic development of the region.
Barnhart adeptly points out the ironies in Japan’s fight to acquire the Chinese mainland as a
strategic resource. The original total war proponents understood the threat to security that
belligerence in China caused for Japan: the United States, in defending the Open Door policy
in China, might deny Japan the indispensable resources like 3 machine tools that it required to
achieve self-sufficiency. Additionally, Japan’s domestic economy and citizenry were greatly
strained in what Barnhart terms the “bitter mortgage” of funding the efforts of empire in China.
Barnhart therefore argues that Japan’s aggressive imperial activities on the Asian mainland
were counterproductive in its quest for autarky: they threatened the necessary peace with the
United States and came at extreme costs to the Japanese nation. Japan Prepares for Total War
also contends that bureaucratic politics, specifically the competing interests of Japan’s army
and navy, played a significant role in shaping policy and determining the sequence of events
leading to the Pacific War. In bureaucratic politics, the players in a government bargain and
compete according to their organizational interests, resulting in policy that is not the product
of a single rational decision but is instead an amalgam of the visions and choices of the players
involved.2 The army and navy in pre-WWII Japan were both strong players in compelling the
nation’s political leaders to allocate resources according to their perceived needs; Barnhart
offers a number of examples of how their economic demands for strategic resources like iron
and oil led to further pressures to expand the Japanese empire in order to acquire such goods.
Additionally, Barnhart takes the position that differing strategic conceptions of how to best
approach the Southward Advance to commandeer the Dutch and French colonies of Southeast
Asia fed a growing inter-service rivalry. This rivalry between the Imperial army and Imperial
navy overshadowed rational considerations of the diplomatic and economic ramifications of
the United States’ reaction to aggressive Japanese imperialism as a means of achieving autarky.
Barnhart documents that the navy in 4 particular instituted a practice of exchanging “more
vigorous foreign policies” for greater resource allocations of strategic materials, and he argues
that the military as a whole served as the “engine of real change” in Japanese policy with regard
to economic expansion as a means of achieving national security. The quest of each service to
outbid the other in acquisition of strategic materials therefore led to the diversion of goods and
funds from exports and the domestic economy to meet military demands. It also led to the
commercial pressures the United States somewhat ironically imposed to punish Japan for its
imperialist imposition and attempt to create a sphere of economic and political influence in
mainland Asia. Indeed, the economic measures that the United States adopted in Japan’s
interwar years to stem the flow of Japanese aggression exacerbated the international situation
because the Japanese elites in power at various points in the course to war were either unwilling
to abandon mobilization plans or unable to do so because of military pressures and demands.
The moral sanctions and embargoes on goods such as aluminum and aviation fuel became
progressively steeper as Japan sought more territory and strategic resources in Asia. Finally,
the United States decided to freeze Japanese assets, and that freeze quickly morphed into full
embargo. Barnhart makes the point that this decision reflected an unshakable belief on the part
of United States leaders that Japan could not be deterred in the Southward Advance but might
be slowed by even more drastic economic measures. He attributes the Japanese response, to
push on with the advance, to the two factors he assigns ultimate importance in determining the
outcome of the clash between the two powers: economic motivations and bureaucratic politics.
Japan’s grand strategic motivation was the pursuit of autarky, and Barnhart argues that the July
2nd decisions for how to best achieve that goal were an amalgam of the opposing viewpoints
of the army 5 and navy, resulting in decisions that were rational in that they were the only
politically possible decisions within the Japanese government of the time. Despite Barnhart’s
strengths in precisely documenting the changing economic condition of Japan in the interwar
years and how its internal political dynamics and strategy shaped its path to war, Japan Prepares
for Total War fails to address the cultural attitudes and myths that enabled its feelings of
entitlement in the region. For example, scholars such as John Dower have suggested that
cultural myths like that of Japanese descent from goddess Amaterasu Omikami were used as
the psychological motivation for mobilizing the Japanese people and justifying horrific actions
against other Asian peoples in the name of Japan’s economic interests.3 Such cultural myths
identified Japan and the Japanese people as holding a unique, predetermined status as the
chosen natural rulers of Asia by virtue of their special descent from the true gods. Barnhart
identifies the primary motivation of Japan in its imperialist pursuits as strategic resource
acquisition. While his application of economic theory has wide explanatory power in the
actions that the Japanese took in the pursuit of autarky, it does not explain why they felt entitled
to or justified in their abuse of the territorial and human rights of other Asians. Furthermore,
Barnhart is careful to avoid overt statement of the brutality of the Japanese military in
imperialist “incidents.” For example, in the attack against Nanking that many scholars have
characterized as rife with atrocities, Barnhart comments that it was an “unbounded military
success;” his only concession to its putative unusual brutality is that the State Department
condemned it as “contrary to the principles of law and humanity.” Although it is perhaps
common to dehumanize an enemy in war and thus Barnhart might choose to leave discussions
of Japanese brutality to other scholars 6 because it is common to dehumanize an enemy in war,
but he could strengthen his argument for economic motivations by discussing how a feeling of
racial, national or cultural superiority played a role in justifying Japanese entitlement to control
of the lands and resources of others. Moreover, justification for such Japanese positions as the
Amau Doctrine, which claimed the Japanese right to supervise economic development of China
and barred all other nations from that right, was clearly based on more than Japanese economic
need, as it claimed Japan had a special right to control China, indicating a feeling of either
extreme paternalism or inherent superiority to China. While racist cultural myths are largely
ignored by Barnhart, racism and misperception in international diplomacy are touched on as
factors in the myriad misunderstandings that occurred between Japan and the United States. In
Japan Prepares for Total War, both Japan and the United States are characterized as often
suspecting the other side of “cunning” and “crafty” behavior, and President Roosevelt is noted
as consistently holding an “anti-Japanese” attitude. These attitudes led to irrational fears; for
example, Barnhart notes that Roosevelt feared a Japanese attack on the West Coast to the extent
that he had crabbing operations checked for the possibility that the Japanese might use them as
bases for war. Japan, too, based a number of decisions on misperceptions of the stance of the
other side; for instance, it believed for a time that the Draft Understanding was a formal United
States policy position, and thus changed its estimate of the probability of war with the United
States, leading to confidence in more aggressive behavior. Barnhart demonstrates that racism
and misunderstandings thus contributed to the policies of the time period in question, but such
a nod to the role of racism and misperception in policy is curious when his argument neglects
to explain the 7 possible of role of racism as justification for forcible economic expansion of
Japan. In conclusion, Japan Prepares for Total War is an economic history, one that serves its
stated purpose of contributing to an understanding of how Japan’s economic concerns and
inter-service rivalries contributed to bringing about the Pacific War. Discussion of Japanese
paternalism or racism in the pursuit of autarky is largely avoided by Barnhart, and this
avoidance detracts to a small extent from the explanatory power of economic vulnerability and
internal political dynamics as the causal variables in Japanese imperialism and attack on the
United States. Perhaps Barnhart is merely trying to achieve objectivity and avoid a
condemnatory tone, but in failing to question the legitimacy of Japan’s special right to control
the rest of Asia, he misses the opportunity to explain the role of the values and attitudes that
supposedly lent justification to Japan’s right to cruelly exploit its Asian neighbors. Despite this
criticism, Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941 offers
a detailed and thought provoking account of the ironies of US-Japan relations and mistakes in
the years preceding the Pacific War.
In Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941, Michael A.
Barnhart chronicles the history of Japan’s futile search for autarky in the years leading to the
Pacific War.1 In examining the vital linkage between economics and national security in this
period, Barnhart makes the argument that the perception of economic vulnerability as the main
security issue facing Japan, combined with bureaucratic politics in the form of army-navy inter-
service rivalries, led directly to both the impulse for empire in resource-rich mainland Asia and
the attack on Pearl Harbor. However, Barnhart’s history charts Japan’s search for economic
security without explaining its justification for and entitlement to seizing the resources and land
of others, often brutally so. As such, the sterility of Japan Prepares for Total War downplays
the role of racist attitudes and cultural myths in engendering the events described. Nonetheless,
with strong evidentiary support Barnhart makes a compelling case for the ascendancy of
economic considerations and bureaucratic politics as the causal factors in Japan’s attack of the
United States on December 7th, 1941. Barnhart posits that Japan’s interpretation of the lessons
of World War I drove its leaders to view autarky as the basis for grand strategic planning. After
all, Germany, possessor of a stronger military than its conquerors, had succumbed to defeat in
WWI because it lacked an industrial base able to mobilize to a degree freeing it from economic
dependence on other nations. Such dependence creates vulnerability because the dependent
nation is subject to the whims and economic pressure of those nations on which it depends.
Japan had defeated Western power Russia in the Sino-Soviet conflict 2 of 1904-1905, but its
status as a resource-poor nation caused a number of influential civilian elites and military
officers to become advocates of “total war,” or the national capacity to not only wage war with
strong military forces but with the economic capability to supply all needed war materiel. Two
essential elements were necessary for this plan to succeed in establishing autarky and thus
security: a peace of at least five years with the hegemonic United States, and natural resources
such as iron and oil. These material resources could be had on the Asian mainland, specifically
in Manchuria and subsequently in China proper. As Barnhart points out, the Japanese chose to
forcibly acquire these resources from its mainland neighbors, and this course of action brought
it into conflict with the free trade philosophy and Open Door policy of the United States.
Japan’s course to national mobilization and self-sufficiency included the creation of a puppet
state for the economic exploitation of Manchuria; Manchukuo was created in 1932 in concert
with Japan’s first long-term mobilization plan. After “rational mobilization” of the domestic
economy, Japan’s increasingly imperial interests turned to China while the military’s share of
the budget rose to 45 percent. In 1937 Japanese forces commenced what Barnhart concededly
calls the “China Incident,” in which China and its resources were claimed by Japan under the
guise of establishing a Japanese-run corporation for economic development of the region.
Barnhart adeptly points out the ironies in Japan’s fight to acquire the Chinese mainland as a
strategic resource. The original total war proponents understood the threat to security that
belligerence in China caused for Japan: the United States, in defending the Open Door policy
in China, might deny Japan the indispensable resources like 3 machine tools that it required to
achieve self-sufficiency. Additionally, Japan’s domestic economy and citizenry were greatly
strained in what Barnhart terms the “bitter mortgage” of funding the efforts of empire in China.
Barnhart therefore argues that Japan’s aggressive imperial activities on the Asian mainland
were counterproductive in its quest for autarky: they threatened the necessary peace with the
United States and came at extreme costs to the Japanese nation. Japan Prepares for Total War
also contends that bureaucratic politics, specifically the competing interests of Japan’s army
and navy, played a significant role in shaping policy and determining the sequence of events
leading to the Pacific War. In bureaucratic politics, the players in a government bargain and
compete according to their organizational interests, resulting in policy that is not the product
of a single rational decision but is instead an amalgam of the visions and choices of the players
involved.2 The army and navy in pre-WWII Japan were both strong players in compelling the
nation’s political leaders to allocate resources according to their perceived needs; Barnhart
offers a number of examples of how their economic demands for strategic resources like iron
and oil led to further pressures to expand the Japanese empire in order to acquire such goods.
Additionally, Barnhart takes the position that differing strategic conceptions of how to best
approach the Southward Advance to commandeer the Dutch and French colonies of Southeast
Asia fed a growing inter-service rivalry. This rivalry between the Imperial army and Imperial
navy overshadowed rational considerations of the diplomatic and economic ramifications of
the United States’ reaction to aggressive Japanese imperialism as a means of achieving autarky.
Barnhart documents that the navy in 4 particular instituted a practice of exchanging “more
vigorous foreign policies” for greater resource allocations of strategic materials, and he argues
that the military as a whole served as the “engine of real change” in Japanese policy with regard
to economic expansion as a means of achieving national security. The quest of each service to
outbid the other in acquisition of strategic materials therefore led to the diversion of goods and
funds from exports and the domestic economy to meet military demands. It also led to the
commercial pressures the United States somewhat ironically imposed to punish Japan for its
imperialist imposition and attempt to create a sphere of economic and political influence in
mainland Asia. Indeed, the economic measures that the United States adopted in Japan’s
interwar years to stem the flow of Japanese aggression exacerbated the international situation
because the Japanese elites in power at various points in the course to war were either unwilling
to abandon mobilization plans or unable to do so because of military pressures and demands.
The moral sanctions and embargoes on goods such as aluminum and aviation fuel became
progressively steeper as Japan sought more territory and strategic resources in Asia. Finally,
the United States decided to freeze Japanese assets, and that freeze quickly morphed into full
embargo. Barnhart makes the point that this decision reflected an unshakable belief on the part
of United States leaders that Japan could not be deterred in the Southward Advance but might
be slowed by even more drastic economic measures. He attributes the Japanese response, to
push on with the advance, to the two factors he assigns ultimate importance in determining the
outcome of the clash between the two powers: economic motivations and bureaucratic politics.
Japan’s grand strategic motivation was the pursuit of autarky, and Barnhart argues that the July
2nd decisions for how to best achieve that goal were an amalgam of the opposing viewpoints
of the army 5 and navy, resulting in decisions that were rational in that they were the only
politically possible decisions within the Japanese government of the time. Despite Barnhart’s
strengths in precisely documenting the changing economic condition of Japan in the interwar
years and how its internal political dynamics and strategy shaped its path to war, Japan Prepares
for Total War fails to address the cultural attitudes and myths that enabled its feelings of
entitlement in the region. For example, scholars such as John Dower have suggested that
cultural myths like that of Japanese descent from goddess Amaterasu Omikami were used as
the psychological motivation for mobilizing the Japanese people and justifying horrific actions
against other Asian peoples in the name of Japan’s economic interests.3 Such cultural myths
identified Japan and the Japanese people as holding a unique, predetermined status as the
chosen natural rulers of Asia by virtue of their special descent from the true gods. Barnhart
identifies the primary motivation of Japan in its imperialist pursuits as strategic resource
acquisition. While his application of economic theory has wide explanatory power in the
actions that the Japanese took in the pursuit of autarky, it does not explain why they felt entitled
to or justified in their abuse of the territorial and human rights of other Asians. Furthermore,
Barnhart is careful to avoid overt statement of the brutality of the Japanese military in
imperialist “incidents.” For example, in the attack against Nanking that many scholars have
characterized as rife with atrocities, Barnhart comments that it was an “unbounded military
success;” his only concession to its putative unusual brutality is that the State Department
condemned it as “contrary to the principles of law and humanity.” Although it is perhaps
common to dehumanize an enemy in war and thus Barnhart might choose to leave discussions
of Japanese brutality to other scholars 6 because it is common to dehumanize an enemy in war,
but he could strengthen his argument for economic motivations by discussing how a feeling of
racial, national or cultural superiority played a role in justifying Japanese entitlement to control
of the lands and resources of others. Moreover, justification for such Japanese positions as the
Amau Doctrine, which claimed the Japanese right to supervise economic development of China
and barred all other nations from that right, was clearly based on more than Japanese economic
need, as it claimed Japan had a special right to control China, indicating a feeling of either
extreme paternalism or inherent superiority to China. While racist cultural myths are largely
ignored by Barnhart, racism and misperception in international diplomacy are touched on as
factors in the myriad misunderstandings that occurred between Japan and the United States. In
Japan Prepares for Total War, both Japan and the United States are characterized as often
suspecting the other side of “cunning” and “crafty” behavior, and President Roosevelt is noted
as consistently holding an “anti-Japanese” attitude. These attitudes led to irrational fears; for
example, Barnhart notes that Roosevelt feared a Japanese attack on the West Coast to the extent
that he had crabbing operations checked for the possibility that the Japanese might use them as
bases for war. Japan, too, based a number of decisions on misperceptions of the stance of the
other side; for instance, it believed for a time that the Draft Understanding was a formal United
States policy position, and thus changed its estimate of the probability of war with the United
States, leading to confidence in more aggressive behavior. Barnhart demonstrates that racism
and misunderstandings thus contributed to the policies of the time period in question, but such
a nod to the role of racism and misperception in policy is curious when his argument neglects
to explain the 7 possible of role of racism as justification for forcible economic expansion of
Japan. In conclusion, Japan Prepares for Total War is an economic history, one that serves its
stated purpose of contributing to an understanding of how Japan’s economic concerns and
inter-service rivalries contributed to bringing about the Pacific War. Discussion of Japanese
paternalism or racism in the pursuit of autarky is largely avoided by Barnhart, and this
avoidance detracts to a small extent from the explanatory power of economic vulnerability and
internal political dynamics as the causal variables in Japanese imperialism and attack on the
United States. Perhaps Barnhart is merely trying to achieve objectivity and avoid a
condemnatory tone, but in failing to question the legitimacy of Japan’s special right to control
the rest of Asia, he misses the opportunity to explain the role of the values and attitudes that
supposedly lent justification to Japan’s right to cruelly exploit its Asian neighbors. Despite this
criticism, Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941 offers
a detailed and thought provoking account of the ironies of US-Japan relations and mistakes in
the years preceding the Pacific War.
In Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941, Michael A.
Barnhart chronicles the history of Japan’s futile search for autarky in the years leading to the
Pacific War.1 In examining the vital linkage between economics and national security in this
period, Barnhart makes the argument that the perception of economic vulnerability as the main
security issue facing Japan, combined with bureaucratic politics in the form of army-navy inter-
service rivalries, led directly to both the impulse for empire in resource-rich mainland Asia and
the attack on Pearl Harbor. However, Barnhart’s history charts Japan’s search for economic
security without explaining its justification for and entitlement to seizing the resources and land
of others, often brutally so. As such, the sterility of Japan Prepares for Total War downplays
the role of racist attitudes and cultural myths in engendering the events described. Nonetheless,
with strong evidentiary support Barnhart makes a compelling case for the ascendancy of
economic considerations and bureaucratic politics as the causal factors in Japan’s attack of the
United States on December 7th, 1941. Barnhart posits that Japan’s interpretation of the lessons
of World War I drove its leaders to view autarky as the basis for grand strategic planning. After
all, Germany, possessor of a stronger military than its conquerors, had succumbed to defeat in
WWI because it lacked an industrial base able to mobilize to a degree freeing it from economic
dependence on other nations. Such dependence creates vulnerability because the dependent
nation is subject to the whims and economic pressure of those nations on which it depends.
Japan had defeated Western power Russia in the Sino-Soviet conflict 2 of 1904-1905, but its
status as a resource-poor nation caused a number of influential civilian elites and military
officers to become advocates of “total war,” or the national capacity to not only wage war with
strong military forces but with the economic capability to supply all needed war materiel. Two
essential elements were necessary for this plan to succeed in establishing autarky and thus
security: a peace of at least five years with the hegemonic United States, and natural resources
such as iron and oil. These material resources could be had on the Asian mainland, specifically
in Manchuria and subsequently in China proper. As Barnhart points out, the Japanese chose to
forcibly acquire these resources from its mainland neighbors, and this course of action brought
it into conflict with the free trade philosophy and Open Door policy of the United States.
Japan’s course to national mobilization and self-sufficiency included the creation of a puppet
state for the economic exploitation of Manchuria; Manchukuo was created in 1932 in concert
with Japan’s first long-term mobilization plan. After “rational mobilization” of the domestic
economy, Japan’s increasingly imperial interests turned to China while the military’s share of
the budget rose to 45 percent. In 1937 Japanese forces commenced what Barnhart concededly
calls the “China Incident,” in which China and its resources were claimed by Japan under the
guise of establishing a Japanese-run corporation for economic development of the region.
Barnhart adeptly points out the ironies in Japan’s fight to acquire the Chinese mainland as a
strategic resource. The original total war proponents understood the threat to security that
belligerence in China caused for Japan: the United States, in defending the Open Door policy
in China, might deny Japan the indispensable resources like 3 machine tools that it required to
achieve self-sufficiency. Additionally, Japan’s domestic economy and citizenry were greatly
strained in what Barnhart terms the “bitter mortgage” of funding the efforts of empire in China.
Barnhart therefore argues that Japan’s aggressive imperial activities on the Asian mainland
were counterproductive in its quest for autarky: they threatened the necessary peace with the
United States and came at extreme costs to the Japanese nation. Japan Prepares for Total War
also contends that bureaucratic politics, specifically the competing interests of Japan’s army
and navy, played a significant role in shaping policy and determining the sequence of events
leading to the Pacific War. In bureaucratic politics, the players in a government bargain and
compete according to their organizational interests, resulting in policy that is not the product
of a single rational decision but is instead an amalgam of the visions and choices of the players
involved.2 The army and navy in pre-WWII Japan were both strong players in compelling the
nation’s political leaders to allocate resources according to their perceived needs; Barnhart
offers a number of examples of how their economic demands for strategic resources like iron
and oil led to further pressures to expand the Japanese empire in order to acquire such goods.
Additionally, Barnhart takes the position that differing strategic conceptions of how to best
approach the Southward Advance to commandeer the Dutch and French colonies of Southeast
Asia fed a growing inter-service rivalry. This rivalry between the Imperial army and Imperial
navy overshadowed rational considerations of the diplomatic and economic ramifications of
the United States’ reaction to aggressive Japanese imperialism as a means of achieving autarky.
Barnhart documents that the navy in 4 particular instituted a practice of exchanging “more
vigorous foreign policies” for greater resource allocations of strategic materials, and he argues
that the military as a whole served as the “engine of real change” in Japanese policy with regard
to economic expansion as a means of achieving national security. The quest of each service to
outbid the other in acquisition of strategic materials therefore led to the diversion of goods and
funds from exports and the domestic economy to meet military demands. It also led to the
commercial pressures the United States somewhat ironically imposed to punish Japan for its
imperialist imposition and attempt to create a sphere of economic and political influence in
mainland Asia. Indeed, the economic measures that the United States adopted in Japan’s
interwar years to stem the flow of Japanese aggression exacerbated the international situation
because the Japanese elites in power at various points in the course to war were either unwilling
to abandon mobilization plans or unable to do so because of military pressures and demands.
The moral sanctions and embargoes on goods such as aluminum and aviation fuel became
progressively steeper as Japan sought more territory and strategic resources in Asia. Finally,
the United States decided to freeze Japanese assets, and that freeze quickly morphed into full
embargo. Barnhart makes the point that this decision reflected an unshakable belief on the part
of United States leaders that Japan could not be deterred in the Southward Advance but might
be slowed by even more drastic economic measures. He attributes the Japanese response, to
push on with the advance, to the two factors he assigns ultimate importance in determining the
outcome of the clash between the two powers: economic motivations and bureaucratic politics.
Japan’s grand strategic motivation was the pursuit of autarky, and Barnhart argues that the July
2nd decisions for how to best achieve that goal were an amalgam of the opposing viewpoints
of the army 5 and navy, resulting in decisions that were rational in that they were the only
politically possible decisions within the Japanese government of the time. Despite Barnhart’s
strengths in precisely documenting the changing economic condition of Japan in the interwar
years and how its internal political dynamics and strategy shaped its path to war, Japan Prepares
for Total War fails to address the cultural attitudes and myths that enabled its feelings of
entitlement in the region. For example, scholars such as John Dower have suggested that
cultural myths like that of Japanese descent from goddess Amaterasu Omikami were used as
the psychological motivation for mobilizing the Japanese people and justifying horrific actions
against other Asian peoples in the name of Japan’s economic interests.3 Such cultural myths
identified Japan and the Japanese people as holding a unique, predetermined status as the
chosen natural rulers of Asia by virtue of their special descent from the true gods. Barnhart
identifies the primary motivation of Japan in its imperialist pursuits as strategic resource
acquisition. While his application of economic theory has wide explanatory power in the
actions that the Japanese took in the pursuit of autarky, it does not explain why they felt entitled
to or justified in their abuse of the territorial and human rights of other Asians. Furthermore,
Barnhart is careful to avoid overt statement of the brutality of the Japanese military in
imperialist “incidents.” For example, in the attack against Nanking that many scholars have
characterized as rife with atrocities, Barnhart comments that it was an “unbounded military
success;” his only concession to its putative unusual brutality is that the State Department
condemned it as “contrary to the principles of law and humanity.” Although it is perhaps
common to dehumanize an enemy in war and thus Barnhart might choose to leave discussions
of Japanese brutality to other scholars 6 because it is common to dehumanize an enemy in war,
but he could strengthen his argument for economic motivations by discussing how a feeling of
racial, national or cultural superiority played a role in justifying Japanese entitlement to control
of the lands and resources of others. Moreover, justification for such Japanese positions as the
Amau Doctrine, which claimed the Japanese right to supervise economic development of China
and barred all other nations from that right, was clearly based on more than Japanese economic
need, as it claimed Japan had a special right to control China, indicating a feeling of either
extreme paternalism or inherent superiority to China. While racist cultural myths are largely
ignored by Barnhart, racism and misperception in international diplomacy are touched on as
factors in the myriad misunderstandings that occurred between Japan and the United States. In
Japan Prepares for Total War, both Japan and the United States are characterized as often
suspecting the other side of “cunning” and “crafty” behavior, and President Roosevelt is noted
as consistently holding an “anti-Japanese” attitude. These attitudes led to irrational fears; for
example, Barnhart notes that Roosevelt feared a Japanese attack on the West Coast to the extent
that he had crabbing operations checked for the possibility that the Japanese might use them as
bases for war. Japan, too, based a number of decisions on misperceptions of the stance of the
other side; for instance, it believed for a time that the Draft Understanding was a formal United
States policy position, and thus changed its estimate of the probability of war with the United
States, leading to confidence in more aggressive behavior. Barnhart demonstrates that racism
and misunderstandings thus contributed to the policies of the time period in question, but such
a nod to the role of racism and misperception in policy is curious when his argument neglects
to explain the 7 possible of role of racism as justification for forcible economic expansion of
Japan. In conclusion, Japan Prepares for Total War is an economic history, one that serves its
stated purpose of contributing to an understanding of how Japan’s economic concerns and
inter-service rivalries contributed to bringing about the Pacific War. Discussion of Japanese
paternalism or racism in the pursuit of autarky is largely avoided by Barnhart, and this
avoidance detracts to a small extent from the explanatory power of economic vulnerability and
internal political dynamics as the causal variables in Japanese imperialism and attack on the
United States. Perhaps Barnhart is merely trying to achieve objectivity and avoid a
condemnatory tone, but in failing to question the legitimacy of Japan’s special right to control
the rest of Asia, he misses the opportunity to explain the role of the values and attitudes that
supposedly lent justification to Japan’s right to cruelly exploit its Asian neighbors. Despite this
criticism, Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941 offers
a detailed and thought provoking account of the ironies of US-Japan relations and mistakes in
the years preceding the Pacific War.
In Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941, Michael A.
Barnhart chronicles the history of Japan’s futile search for autarky in the years leading to the
Pacific War.1 In examining the vital linkage between economics and national security in this
period, Barnhart makes the argument that the perception of economic vulnerability as the main
security issue facing Japan, combined with bureaucratic politics in the form of army-navy inter-
service rivalries, led directly to both the impulse for empire in resource-rich mainland Asia and
the attack on Pearl Harbor. However, Barnhart’s history charts Japan’s search for economic
security without explaining its justification for and entitlement to seizing the resources and land
of others, often brutally so. As such, the sterility of Japan Prepares for Total War downplays
the role of racist attitudes and cultural myths in engendering the events described. Nonetheless,
with strong evidentiary support Barnhart makes a compelling case for the ascendancy of
economic considerations and bureaucratic politics as the causal factors in Japan’s attack of the
United States on December 7th, 1941. Barnhart posits that Japan’s interpretation of the lessons
of World War I drove its leaders to view autarky as the basis for grand strategic planning. After
all, Germany, possessor of a stronger military than its conquerors, had succumbed to defeat in
WWI because it lacked an industrial base able to mobilize to a degree freeing it from economic
dependence on other nations. Such dependence creates vulnerability because the dependent
nation is subject to the whims and economic pressure of those nations on which it depends.
Japan had defeated Western power Russia in the Sino-Soviet conflict 2 of 1904-1905, but its
status as a resource-poor nation caused a number of influential civilian elites and military
officers to become advocates of “total war,” or the national capacity to not only wage war with
strong military forces but with the economic capability to supply all needed war materiel. Two
essential elements were necessary for this plan to succeed in establishing autarky and thus
security: a peace of at least five years with the hegemonic United States, and natural resources
such as iron and oil. These material resources could be had on the Asian mainland, specifically
in Manchuria and subsequently in China proper. As Barnhart points out, the Japanese chose to
forcibly acquire these resources from its mainland neighbors, and this course of action brought
it into conflict with the free trade philosophy and Open Door policy of the United States.
Japan’s course to national mobilization and self-sufficiency included the creation of a puppet
state for the economic exploitation of Manchuria; Manchukuo was created in 1932 in concert
with Japan’s first long-term mobilization plan. After “rational mobilization” of the domestic
economy, Japan’s increasingly imperial interests turned to China while the military’s share of
the budget rose to 45 percent. In 1937 Japanese forces commenced what Barnhart concededly
calls the “China Incident,” in which China and its resources were claimed by Japan under the
guise of establishing a Japanese-run corporation for economic development of the region.
Barnhart adeptly points out the ironies in Japan’s fight to acquire the Chinese mainland as a
strategic resource. The original total war proponents understood the threat to security that
belligerence in China caused for Japan: the United States, in defending the Open Door policy
in China, might deny Japan the indispensable resources like 3 machine tools that it required to
achieve self-sufficiency. Additionally, Japan’s domestic economy and citizenry were greatly
strained in what Barnhart terms the “bitter mortgage” of funding the efforts of empire in China.
Barnhart therefore argues that Japan’s aggressive imperial activities on the Asian mainland
were counterproductive in its quest for autarky: they threatened the necessary peace with the
United States and came at extreme costs to the Japanese nation. Japan Prepares for Total War
also contends that bureaucratic politics, specifically the competing interests of Japan’s army
and navy, played a significant role in shaping policy and determining the sequence of events
leading to the Pacific War. In bureaucratic politics, the players in a government bargain and
compete according to their organizational interests, resulting in policy that is not the product
of a single rational decision but is instead an amalgam of the visions and choices of the players
involved.2 The army and navy in pre-WWII Japan were both strong players in compelling the
nation’s political leaders to allocate resources according to their perceived needs; Barnhart
offers a number of examples of how their economic demands for strategic resources like iron
and oil led to further pressures to expand the Japanese empire in order to acquire such goods.
Additionally, Barnhart takes the position that differing strategic conceptions of how to best
approach the Southward Advance to commandeer the Dutch and French colonies of Southeast
Asia fed a growing inter-service rivalry. This rivalry between the Imperial army and Imperial
navy overshadowed rational considerations of the diplomatic and economic ramifications of
the United States’ reaction to aggressive Japanese imperialism as a means of achieving autarky.
Barnhart documents that the navy in 4 particular instituted a practice of exchanging “more
vigorous foreign policies” for greater resource allocations of strategic materials, and he argues
that the military as a whole served as the “engine of real change” in Japanese policy with regard
to economic expansion as a means of achieving national security. The quest of each service to
outbid the other in acquisition of strategic materials therefore led to the diversion of goods and
funds from exports and the domestic economy to meet military demands. It also led to the
commercial pressures the United States somewhat ironically imposed to punish Japan for its
imperialist imposition and attempt to create a sphere of economic and political influence in
mainland Asia. Indeed, the economic measures that the United States adopted in Japan’s
interwar years to stem the flow of Japanese aggression exacerbated the international situation
because the Japanese elites in power at various points in the course to war were either unwilling
to abandon mobilization plans or unable to do so because of military pressures and demands.
The moral sanctions and embargoes on goods such as aluminum and aviation fuel became
progressively steeper as Japan sought more territory and strategic resources in Asia. Finally,
the United States decided to freeze Japanese assets, and that freeze quickly morphed into full
embargo. Barnhart makes the point that this decision reflected an unshakable belief on the part
of United States leaders that Japan could not be deterred in the Southward Advance but might
be slowed by even more drastic economic measures. He attributes the Japanese response, to
push on with the advance, to the two factors he assigns ultimate importance in determining the
outcome of the clash between the two powers: economic motivations and bureaucratic politics.
Japan’s grand strategic motivation was the pursuit of autarky, and Barnhart argues that the July
2nd decisions for how to best achieve that goal were an amalgam of the opposing viewpoints
of the army 5 and navy, resulting in decisions that were rational in that they were the only
politically possible decisions within the Japanese government of the time. Despite Barnhart’s
strengths in precisely documenting the changing economic condition of Japan in the interwar
years and how its internal political dynamics and strategy shaped its path to war, Japan Prepares
for Total War fails to address the cultural attitudes and myths that enabled its feelings of
entitlement in the region. For example, scholars such as John Dower have suggested that
cultural myths like that of Japanese descent from goddess Amaterasu Omikami were used as
the psychological motivation for mobilizing the Japanese people and justifying horrific actions
against other Asian peoples in the name of Japan’s economic interests.3 Such cultural myths
identified Japan and the Japanese people as holding a unique, predetermined status as the
chosen natural rulers of Asia by virtue of their special descent from the true gods. Barnhart
identifies the primary motivation of Japan in its imperialist pursuits as strategic resource
acquisition. While his application of economic theory has wide explanatory power in the
actions that the Japanese took in the pursuit of autarky, it does not explain why they felt entitled
to or justified in their abuse of the territorial and human rights of other Asians. Furthermore,
Barnhart is careful to avoid overt statement of the brutality of the Japanese military in
imperialist “incidents.” For example, in the attack against Nanking that many scholars have
characterized as rife with atrocities, Barnhart comments that it was an “unbounded military
success;” his only concession to its putative unusual brutality is that the State Department
condemned it as “contrary to the principles of law and humanity.” Although it is perhaps
common to dehumanize an enemy in war and thus Barnhart might choose to leave discussions
of Japanese brutality to other scholars 6 because it is common to dehumanize an enemy in war,
but he could strengthen his argument for economic motivations by discussing how a feeling of
racial, national or cultural superiority played a role in justifying Japanese entitlement to control
of the lands and resources of others. Moreover, justification for such Japanese positions as the
Amau Doctrine, which claimed the Japanese right to supervise economic development of China
and barred all other nations from that right, was clearly based on more than Japanese economic
need, as it claimed Japan had a special right to control China, indicating a feeling of either
extreme paternalism or inherent superiority to China. While racist cultural myths are largely
ignored by Barnhart, racism and misperception in international diplomacy are touched on as
factors in the myriad misunderstandings that occurred between Japan and the United States. In
Japan Prepares for Total War, both Japan and the United States are characterized as often
suspecting the other side of “cunning” and “crafty” behavior, and President Roosevelt is noted
as consistently holding an “anti-Japanese” attitude. These attitudes led to irrational fears; for
example, Barnhart notes that Roosevelt feared a Japanese attack on the West Coast to the extent
that he had crabbing operations checked for the possibility that the Japanese might use them as
bases for war. Japan, too, based a number of decisions on misperceptions of the stance of the
other side; for instance, it believed for a time that the Draft Understanding was a formal United
States policy position, and thus changed its estimate of the probability of war with the United
States, leading to confidence in more aggressive behavior. Barnhart demonstrates that racism
and misunderstandings thus contributed to the policies of the time period in question, but such
a nod to the role of racism and misperception in policy is curious when his argument neglects
to explain the 7 possible of role of racism as justification for forcible economic expansion of
Japan. In conclusion, Japan Prepares for Total War is an economic history, one that serves its
stated purpose of contributing to an understanding of how Japan’s economic concerns and
inter-service rivalries contributed to bringing about the Pacific War. Discussion of Japanese
paternalism or racism in the pursuit of autarky is largely avoided by Barnhart, and this
avoidance detracts to a small extent from the explanatory power of economic vulnerability and
internal political dynamics as the causal variables in Japanese imperialism and attack on the
United States. Perhaps Barnhart is merely trying to achieve objectivity and avoid a
condemnatory tone, but in failing to question the legitimacy of Japan’s special right to control
the rest of Asia, he misses the opportunity to explain the role of the values and attitudes that
supposedly lent justification to Japan’s right to cruelly exploit its Asian neighbors. Despite this
criticism, Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941 offers
a detailed and thought provoking account of the ironies of US-Japan relations and mistakes in
the years preceding the Pacific War.
In Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941, Michael A.
Barnhart chronicles the history of Japan’s futile search for autarky in the years leading to the
Pacific War.1 In examining the vital linkage between economics and national security in this
period, Barnhart makes the argument that the perception of economic vulnerability as the main
security issue facing Japan, combined with bureaucratic politics in the form of army-navy inter-
service rivalries, led directly to both the impulse for empire in resource-rich mainland Asia and
the attack on Pearl Harbor. However, Barnhart’s history charts Japan’s search for economic
security without explaining its justification for and entitlement to seizing the resources and land
of others, often brutally so. As such, the sterility of Japan Prepares for Total War downplays
the role of racist attitudes and cultural myths in engendering the events described. Nonetheless,
with strong evidentiary support Barnhart makes a compelling case for the ascendancy of
economic considerations and bureaucratic politics as the causal factors in Japan’s attack of the
United States on December 7th, 1941. Barnhart posits that Japan’s interpretation of the lessons
of World War I drove its leaders to view autarky as the basis for grand strategic planning. After
all, Germany, possessor of a stronger military than its conquerors, had succumbed to defeat in
WWI because it lacked an industrial base able to mobilize to a degree freeing it from economic
dependence on other nations. Such dependence creates vulnerability because the dependent
nation is subject to the whims and economic pressure of those nations on which it depends.
Japan had defeated Western power Russia in the Sino-Soviet conflict 2 of 1904-1905, but its
status as a resource-poor nation caused a number of influential civilian elites and military
officers to become advocates of “total war,” or the national capacity to not only wage war with
strong military forces but with the economic capability to supply all needed war materiel. Two
essential elements were necessary for this plan to succeed in establishing autarky and thus
security: a peace of at least five years with the hegemonic United States, and natural resources
such as iron and oil. These material resources could be had on the Asian mainland, specifically
in Manchuria and subsequently in China proper. As Barnhart points out, the Japanese chose to
forcibly acquire these resources from its mainland neighbors, and this course of action brought
it into conflict with the free trade philosophy and Open Door policy of the United States.
Japan’s course to national mobilization and self-sufficiency included the creation of a puppet
state for the economic exploitation of Manchuria; Manchukuo was created in 1932 in concert
with Japan’s first long-term mobilization plan. After “rational mobilization” of the domestic
economy, Japan’s increasingly imperial interests turned to China while the military’s share of
the budget rose to 45 percent. In 1937 Japanese forces commenced what Barnhart concededly
calls the “China Incident,” in which China and its resources were claimed by Japan under the
guise of establishing a Japanese-run corporation for economic development of the region.
Barnhart adeptly points out the ironies in Japan’s fight to acquire the Chinese mainland as a
strategic resource. The original total war proponents understood the threat to security that
belligerence in China caused for Japan: the United States, in defending the Open Door policy
in China, might deny Japan the indispensable resources like 3 machine tools that it required to
achieve self-sufficiency. Additionally, Japan’s domestic economy and citizenry were greatly
strained in what Barnhart terms the “bitter mortgage” of funding the efforts of empire in China.
Barnhart therefore argues that Japan’s aggressive imperial activities on the Asian mainland
were counterproductive in its quest for autarky: they threatened the necessary peace with the
United States and came at extreme costs to the Japanese nation. Japan Prepares for Total War
also contends that bureaucratic politics, specifically the competing interests of Japan’s army
and navy, played a significant role in shaping policy and determining the sequence of events
leading to the Pacific War. In bureaucratic politics, the players in a government bargain and
compete according to their organizational interests, resulting in policy that is not the product
of a single rational decision but is instead an amalgam of the visions and choices of the players
involved.2 The army and navy in pre-WWII Japan were both strong players in compelling the
nation’s political leaders to allocate resources according to their perceived needs; Barnhart
offers a number of examples of how their economic demands for strategic resources like iron
and oil led to further pressures to expand the Japanese empire in order to acquire such goods.
Additionally, Barnhart takes the position that differing strategic conceptions of how to best
approach the Southward Advance to commandeer the Dutch and French colonies of Southeast
Asia fed a growing inter-service rivalry. This rivalry between the Imperial army and Imperial
navy overshadowed rational considerations of the diplomatic and economic ramifications of
the United States’ reaction to aggressive Japanese imperialism as a means of achieving autarky.
Barnhart documents that the navy in 4 particular instituted a practice of exchanging “more
vigorous foreign policies” for greater resource allocations of strategic materials, and he argues
that the military as a whole served as the “engine of real change” in Japanese policy with regard
to economic expansion as a means of achieving national security. The quest of each service to
outbid the other in acquisition of strategic materials therefore led to the diversion of goods and
funds from exports and the domestic economy to meet military demands. It also led to the
commercial pressures the United States somewhat ironically imposed to punish Japan for its
imperialist imposition and attempt to create a sphere of economic and political influence in
mainland Asia. Indeed, the economic measures that the United States adopted in Japan’s
interwar years to stem the flow of Japanese aggression exacerbated the international situation
because the Japanese elites in power at various points in the course to war were either unwilling
to abandon mobilization plans or unable to do so because of military pressures and demands.
The moral sanctions and embargoes on goods such as aluminum and aviation fuel became
progressively steeper as Japan sought more territory and strategic resources in Asia. Finally,
the United States decided to freeze Japanese assets, and that freeze quickly morphed into full
embargo. Barnhart makes the point that this decision reflected an unshakable belief on the part
of United States leaders that Japan could not be deterred in the Southward Advance but might
be slowed by even more drastic economic measures. He attributes the Japanese response, to
push on with the advance, to the two factors he assigns ultimate importance in determining the
outcome of the clash between the two powers: economic motivations and bureaucratic politics.
Japan’s grand strategic motivation was the pursuit of autarky, and Barnhart argues that the July
2nd decisions for how to best achieve that goal were an amalgam of the opposing viewpoints
of the army 5 and navy, resulting in decisions that were rational in that they were the only
politically possible decisions within the Japanese government of the time. Despite Barnhart’s
strengths in precisely documenting the changing economic condition of Japan in the interwar
years and how its internal political dynamics and strategy shaped its path to war, Japan Prepares
for Total War fails to address the cultural attitudes and myths that enabled its feelings of
entitlement in the region. For example, scholars such as John Dower have suggested that
cultural myths like that of Japanese descent from goddess Amaterasu Omikami were used as
the psychological motivation for mobilizing the Japanese people and justifying horrific actions
against other Asian peoples in the name of Japan’s economic interests.3 Such cultural myths
identified Japan and the Japanese people as holding a unique, predetermined status as the
chosen natural rulers of Asia by virtue of their special descent from the true gods. Barnhart
identifies the primary motivation of Japan in its imperialist pursuits as strategic resource
acquisition. While his application of economic theory has wide explanatory power in the
actions that the Japanese took in the pursuit of autarky, it does not explain why they felt entitled
to or justified in their abuse of the territorial and human rights of other Asians. Furthermore,
Barnhart is careful to avoid overt statement of the brutality of the Japanese military in
imperialist “incidents.” For example, in the attack against Nanking that many scholars have
characterized as rife with atrocities, Barnhart comments that it was an “unbounded military
success;” his only concession to its putative unusual brutality is that the State Department
condemned it as “contrary to the principles of law and humanity.” Although it is perhaps
common to dehumanize an enemy in war and thus Barnhart might choose to leave discussions
of Japanese brutality to other scholars 6 because it is common to dehumanize an enemy in war,
but he could strengthen his argument for economic motivations by discussing how a feeling of
racial, national or cultural superiority played a role in justifying Japanese entitlement to control
of the lands and resources of others. Moreover, justification for such Japanese positions as the
Amau Doctrine, which claimed the Japanese right to supervise economic development of China
and barred all other nations from that right, was clearly based on more than Japanese economic
need, as it claimed Japan had a special right to control China, indicating a feeling of either
extreme paternalism or inherent superiority to China. While racist cultural myths are largely
ignored by Barnhart, racism and misperception in international diplomacy are touched on as
factors in the myriad misunderstandings that occurred between Japan and the United States. In
Japan Prepares for Total War, both Japan and the United States are characterized as often
suspecting the other side of “cunning” and “crafty” behavior, and President Roosevelt is noted
as consistently holding an “anti-Japanese” attitude. These attitudes led to irrational fears; for
example, Barnhart notes that Roosevelt feared a Japanese attack on the West Coast to the extent
that he had crabbing operations checked for the possibility that the Japanese might use them as
bases for war. Japan, too, based a number of decisions on misperceptions of the stance of the
other side; for instance, it believed for a time that the Draft Understanding was a formal United
States policy position, and thus changed its estimate of the probability of war with the United
States, leading to confidence in more aggressive behavior. Barnhart demonstrates that racism
and misunderstandings thus contributed to the policies of the time period in question, but such
a nod to the role of racism and misperception in policy is curious when his argument neglects
to explain the 7 possible of role of racism as justification for forcible economic expansion of
Japan. In conclusion, Japan Prepares for Total War is an economic history, one that serves its
stated purpose of contributing to an understanding of how Japan’s economic concerns and
inter-service rivalries contributed to bringing about the Pacific War. Discussion of Japanese
paternalism or racism in the pursuit of autarky is largely avoided by Barnhart, and this
avoidance detracts to a small extent from the explanatory power of economic vulnerability and
internal political dynamics as the causal variables in Japanese imperialism and attack on the
United States. Perhaps Barnhart is merely trying to achieve objectivity and avoid a
condemnatory tone, but in failing to question the legitimacy of Japan’s special right to control
the rest of Asia, he misses the opportunity to explain the role of the values and attitudes that
supposedly lent justification to Japan’s right to cruelly exploit its Asian neighbors. Despite this
criticism, Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941 offers
a detailed and thought provoking account of the ironies of US-Japan relations and mistakes in
the years preceding the Pacific War.
In Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941, Michael A.
Barnhart chronicles the history of Japan’s futile search for autarky in the years leading to the
Pacific War.1 In examining the vital linkage between economics and national security in this
period, Barnhart makes the argument that the perception of economic vulnerability as the main
security issue facing Japan, combined with bureaucratic politics in the form of army-navy inter-
service rivalries, led directly to both the impulse for empire in resource-rich mainland Asia and
the attack on Pearl Harbor. However, Barnhart’s history charts Japan’s search for economic
security without explaining its justification for and entitlement to seizing the resources and land
of others, often brutally so. As such, the sterility of Japan Prepares for Total War downplays
the role of racist attitudes and cultural myths in engendering the events described. Nonetheless,
with strong evidentiary support Barnhart makes a compelling case for the ascendancy of
economic considerations and bureaucratic politics as the causal factors in Japan’s attack of the
United States on December 7th, 1941. Barnhart posits that Japan’s interpretation of the lessons
of World War I drove its leaders to view autarky as the basis for grand strategic planning. After
all, Germany, possessor of a stronger military than its conquerors, had succumbed to defeat in
WWI because it lacked an industrial base able to mobilize to a degree freeing it from economic
dependence on other nations. Such dependence creates vulnerability because the dependent
nation is subject to the whims and economic pressure of those nations on which it depends.
Japan had defeated Western power Russia in the Sino-Soviet conflict 2 of 1904-1905, but its
status as a resource-poor nation caused a number of influential civilian elites and military
officers to become advocates of “total war,” or the national capacity to not only wage war with
strong military forces but with the economic capability to supply all needed war materiel. Two
essential elements were necessary for this plan to succeed in establishing autarky and thus
security: a peace of at least five years with the hegemonic United States, and natural resources
such as iron and oil. These material resources could be had on the Asian mainland, specifically
in Manchuria and subsequently in China proper. As Barnhart points out, the Japanese chose to
forcibly acquire these resources from its mainland neighbors, and this course of action brought
it into conflict with the free trade philosophy and Open Door policy of the United States.
Japan’s course to national mobilization and self-sufficiency included the creation of a puppet
state for the economic exploitation of Manchuria; Manchukuo was created in 1932 in concert
with Japan’s first long-term mobilization plan. After “rational mobilization” of the domestic
economy, Japan’s increasingly imperial interests turned to China while the military’s share of
the budget rose to 45 percent. In 1937 Japanese forces commenced what Barnhart concededly
calls the “China Incident,” in which China and its resources were claimed by Japan under the
guise of establishing a Japanese-run corporation for economic development of the region.
Barnhart adeptly points out the ironies in Japan’s fight to acquire the Chinese mainland as a
strategic resource. The original total war proponents understood the threat to security that
belligerence in China caused for Japan: the United States, in defending the Open Door policy
in China, might deny Japan the indispensable resources like 3 machine tools that it required to
achieve self-sufficiency. Additionally, Japan’s domestic economy and citizenry were greatly
strained in what Barnhart terms the “bitter mortgage” of funding the efforts of empire in China.
Barnhart therefore argues that Japan’s aggressive imperial activities on the Asian mainland
were counterproductive in its quest for autarky: they threatened the necessary peace with the
United States and came at extreme costs to the Japanese nation. Japan Prepares for Total War
also contends that bureaucratic politics, specifically the competing interests of Japan’s army
and navy, played a significant role in shaping policy and determining the sequence of events
leading to the Pacific War. In bureaucratic politics, the players in a government bargain and
compete according to their organizational interests, resulting in policy that is not the product
of a single rational decision but is instead an amalgam of the visions and choices of the players
involved.2 The army and navy in pre-WWII Japan were both strong players in compelling the
nation’s political leaders to allocate resources according to their perceived needs; Barnhart
offers a number of examples of how their economic demands for strategic resources like iron
and oil led to further pressures to expand the Japanese empire in order to acquire such goods.
Additionally, Barnhart takes the position that differing strategic conceptions of how to best
approach the Southward Advance to commandeer the Dutch and French colonies of Southeast
Asia fed a growing inter-service rivalry. This rivalry between the Imperial army and Imperial
navy overshadowed rational considerations of the diplomatic and economic ramifications of
the United States’ reaction to aggressive Japanese imperialism as a means of achieving autarky.
Barnhart documents that the navy in 4 particular instituted a practice of exchanging “more
vigorous foreign policies” for greater resource allocations of strategic materials, and he argues
that the military as a whole served as the “engine of real change” in Japanese policy with regard
to economic expansion as a means of achieving national security. The quest of each service to
outbid the other in acquisition of strategic materials therefore led to the diversion of goods and
funds from exports and the domestic economy to meet military demands. It also led to the
commercial pressures the United States somewhat ironically imposed to punish Japan for its
imperialist imposition and attempt to create a sphere of economic and political influence in
mainland Asia. Indeed, the economic measures that the United States adopted in Japan’s
interwar years to stem the flow of Japanese aggression exacerbated the international situation
because the Japanese elites in power at various points in the course to war were either unwilling
to abandon mobilization plans or unable to do so because of military pressures and demands.
The moral sanctions and embargoes on goods such as aluminum and aviation fuel became
progressively steeper as Japan sought more territory and strategic resources in Asia. Finally,
the United States decided to freeze Japanese assets, and that freeze quickly morphed into full
embargo. Barnhart makes the point that this decision reflected an unshakable belief on the part
of United States leaders that Japan could not be deterred in the Southward Advance but might
be slowed by even more drastic economic measures. He attributes the Japanese response, to
push on with the advance, to the two factors he assigns ultimate importance in determining the
outcome of the clash between the two powers: economic motivations and bureaucratic politics.
Japan’s grand strategic motivation was the pursuit of autarky, and Barnhart argues that the July
2nd decisions for how to best achieve that goal were an amalgam of the opposing viewpoints
of the army 5 and navy, resulting in decisions that were rational in that they were the only
politically possible decisions within the Japanese government of the time. Despite Barnhart’s
strengths in precisely documenting the changing economic condition of Japan in the interwar
years and how its internal political dynamics and strategy shaped its path to war, Japan Prepares
for Total War fails to address the cultural attitudes and myths that enabled its feelings of
entitlement in the region. For example, scholars such as John Dower have suggested that
cultural myths like that of Japanese descent from goddess Amaterasu Omikami were used as
the psychological motivation for mobilizing the Japanese people and justifying horrific actions
against other Asian peoples in the name of Japan’s economic interests.3 Such cultural myths
identified Japan and the Japanese people as holding a unique, predetermined status as the
chosen natural rulers of Asia by virtue of their special descent from the true gods. Barnhart
identifies the primary motivation of Japan in its imperialist pursuits as strategic resource
acquisition. While his application of economic theory has wide explanatory power in the
actions that the Japanese took in the pursuit of autarky, it does not explain why they felt entitled
to or justified in their abuse of the territorial and human rights of other Asians. Furthermore,
Barnhart is careful to avoid overt statement of the brutality of the Japanese military in
imperialist “incidents.” For example, in the attack against Nanking that many scholars have
characterized as rife with atrocities, Barnhart comments that it was an “unbounded military
success;” his only concession to its putative unusual brutality is that the State Department
condemned it as “contrary to the principles of law and humanity.” Although it is perhaps
common to dehumanize an enemy in war and thus Barnhart might choose to leave discussions
of Japanese brutality to other scholars 6 because it is common to dehumanize an enemy in war,
but he could strengthen his argument for economic motivations by discussing how a feeling of
racial, national or cultural superiority played a role in justifying Japanese entitlement to control
of the lands and resources of others. Moreover, justification for such Japanese positions as the
Amau Doctrine, which claimed the Japanese right to supervise economic development of China
and barred all other nations from that right, was clearly based on more than Japanese economic
need, as it claimed Japan had a special right to control China, indicating a feeling of either
extreme paternalism or inherent superiority to China. While racist cultural myths are largely
ignored by Barnhart, racism and misperception in international diplomacy are touched on as
factors in the myriad misunderstandings that occurred between Japan and the United States. In
Japan Prepares for Total War, both Japan and the United States are characterized as often
suspecting the other side of “cunning” and “crafty” behavior, and President Roosevelt is noted
as consistently holding an “anti-Japanese” attitude. These attitudes led to irrational fears; for
example, Barnhart notes that Roosevelt feared a Japanese attack on the West Coast to the extent
that he had crabbing operations checked for the possibility that the Japanese might use them as
bases for war. Japan, too, based a number of decisions on misperceptions of the stance of the
other side; for instance, it believed for a time that the Draft Understanding was a formal United
States policy position, and thus changed its estimate of the probability of war with the United
States, leading to confidence in more aggressive behavior. Barnhart demonstrates that racism
and misunderstandings thus contributed to the policies of the time period in question, but such
a nod to the role of racism and misperception in policy is curious when his argument neglects
to explain the 7 possible of role of racism as justification for forcible economic expansion of
Japan. In conclusion, Japan Prepares for Total War is an economic history, one that serves its
stated purpose of contributing to an understanding of how Japan’s economic concerns and
inter-service rivalries contributed to bringing about the Pacific War. Discussion of Japanese
paternalism or racism in the pursuit of autarky is largely avoided by Barnhart, and this
avoidance detracts to a small extent from the explanatory power of economic vulnerability and
internal political dynamics as the causal variables in Japanese imperialism and attack on the
United States. Perhaps Barnhart is merely trying to achieve objectivity and avoid a
condemnatory tone, but in failing to question the legitimacy of Japan’s special right to control
the rest of Asia, he misses the opportunity to explain the role of the values and attitudes that
supposedly lent justification to Japan’s right to cruelly exploit its Asian neighbors. Despite this
criticism, Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941 offers
a detailed and thought provoking account of the ironies of US-Japan relations and mistakes in
the years preceding the Pacific War.
In Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941, Michael A.
Barnhart chronicles the history of Japan’s futile search for autarky in the years leading to the
Pacific War.1 In examining the vital linkage between economics and national security in this
period, Barnhart makes the argument that the perception of economic vulnerability as the main
security issue facing Japan, combined with bureaucratic politics in the form of army-navy inter-
service rivalries, led directly to both the impulse for empire in resource-rich mainland Asia and
the attack on Pearl Harbor. However, Barnhart’s history charts Japan’s search for economic
security without explaining its justification for and entitlement to seizing the resources and land
of others, often brutally so. As such, the sterility of Japan Prepares for Total War downplays
the role of racist attitudes and cultural myths in engendering the events described. Nonetheless,
with strong evidentiary support Barnhart makes a compelling case for the ascendancy of
economic considerations and bureaucratic politics as the causal factors in Japan’s attack of the
United States on December 7th, 1941. Barnhart posits that Japan’s interpretation of the lessons
of World War I drove its leaders to view autarky as the basis for grand strategic planning. After
all, Germany, possessor of a stronger military than its conquerors, had succumbed to defeat in
WWI because it lacked an industrial base able to mobilize to a degree freeing it from economic
dependence on other nations. Such dependence creates vulnerability because the dependent
nation is subject to the whims and economic pressure of those nations on which it depends.
Japan had defeated Western power Russia in the Sino-Soviet conflict 2 of 1904-1905, but its
status as a resource-poor nation caused a number of influential civilian elites and military
officers to become advocates of “total war,” or the national capacity to not only wage war with
strong military forces but with the economic capability to supply all needed war materiel. Two
essential elements were necessary for this plan to succeed in establishing autarky and thus
security: a peace of at least five years with the hegemonic United States, and natural resources
such as iron and oil. These material resources could be had on the Asian mainland, specifically
in Manchuria and subsequently in China proper. As Barnhart points out, the Japanese chose to
forcibly acquire these resources from its mainland neighbors, and this course of action brought
it into conflict with the free trade philosophy and Open Door policy of the United States.
Japan’s course to national mobilization and self-sufficiency included the creation of a puppet
state for the economic exploitation of Manchuria; Manchukuo was created in 1932 in concert
with Japan’s first long-term mobilization plan. After “rational mobilization” of the domestic
economy, Japan’s increasingly imperial interests turned to China while the military’s share of
the budget rose to 45 percent. In 1937 Japanese forces commenced what Barnhart concededly
calls the “China Incident,” in which China and its resources were claimed by Japan under the
guise of establishing a Japanese-run corporation for economic development of the region.
Barnhart adeptly points out the ironies in Japan’s fight to acquire the Chinese mainland as a
strategic resource. The original total war proponents understood the threat to security that
belligerence in China caused for Japan: the United States, in defending the Open Door policy
in China, might deny Japan the indispensable resources like 3 machine tools that it required to
achieve self-sufficiency. Additionally, Japan’s domestic economy and citizenry were greatly
strained in what Barnhart terms the “bitter mortgage” of funding the efforts of empire in China.
Barnhart therefore argues that Japan’s aggressive imperial activities on the Asian mainland
were counterproductive in its quest for autarky: they threatened the necessary peace with the
United States and came at extreme costs to the Japanese nation. Japan Prepares for Total War
also contends that bureaucratic politics, specifically the competing interests of Japan’s army
and navy, played a significant role in shaping policy and determining the sequence of events
leading to the Pacific War. In bureaucratic politics, the players in a government bargain and
compete according to their organizational interests, resulting in policy that is not the product
of a single rational decision but is instead an amalgam of the visions and choices of the players
involved.2 The army and navy in pre-WWII Japan were both strong players in compelling the
nation’s political leaders to allocate resources according to their perceived needs; Barnhart
offers a number of examples of how their economic demands for strategic resources like iron
and oil led to further pressures to expand the Japanese empire in order to acquire such goods.
Additionally, Barnhart takes the position that differing strategic conceptions of how to best
approach the Southward Advance to commandeer the Dutch and French colonies of Southeast
Asia fed a growing inter-service rivalry. This rivalry between the Imperial army and Imperial
navy overshadowed rational considerations of the diplomatic and economic ramifications of
the United States’ reaction to aggressive Japanese imperialism as a means of achieving autarky.
Barnhart documents that the navy in 4 particular instituted a practice of exchanging “more
vigorous foreign policies” for greater resource allocations of strategic materials, and he argues
that the military as a whole served as the “engine of real change” in Japanese policy with regard
to economic expansion as a means of achieving national security. The quest of each service to
outbid the other in acquisition of strategic materials therefore led to the diversion of goods and
funds from exports and the domestic economy to meet military demands. It also led to the
commercial pressures the United States somewhat ironically imposed to punish Japan for its
imperialist imposition and attempt to create a sphere of economic and political influence in
mainland Asia. Indeed, the economic measures that the United States adopted in Japan’s
interwar years to stem the flow of Japanese aggression exacerbated the international situation
because the Japanese elites in power at various points in the course to war were either unwilling
to abandon mobilization plans or unable to do so because of military pressures and demands.
The moral sanctions and embargoes on goods such as aluminum and aviation fuel became
progressively steeper as Japan sought more territory and strategic resources in Asia. Finally,
the United States decided to freeze Japanese assets, and that freeze quickly morphed into full
embargo. Barnhart makes the point that this decision reflected an unshakable belief on the part
of United States leaders that Japan could not be deterred in the Southward Advance but might
be slowed by even more drastic economic measures. He attributes the Japanese response, to
push on with the advance, to the two factors he assigns ultimate importance in determining the
outcome of the clash between the two powers: economic motivations and bureaucratic politics.
Japan’s grand strategic motivation was the pursuit of autarky, and Barnhart argues that the July
2nd decisions for how to best achieve that goal were an amalgam of the opposing viewpoints
of the army 5 and navy, resulting in decisions that were rational in that they were the only
politically possible decisions within the Japanese government of the time. Despite Barnhart’s
strengths in precisely documenting the changing economic condition of Japan in the interwar
years and how its internal political dynamics and strategy shaped its path to war, Japan Prepares
for Total War fails to address the cultural attitudes and myths that enabled its feelings of
entitlement in the region. For example, scholars such as John Dower have suggested that
cultural myths like that of Japanese descent from goddess Amaterasu Omikami were used as
the psychological motivation for mobilizing the Japanese people and justifying horrific actions
against other Asian peoples in the name of Japan’s economic interests.3 Such cultural myths
identified Japan and the Japanese people as holding a unique, predetermined status as the
chosen natural rulers of Asia by virtue of their special descent from the true gods. Barnhart
identifies the primary motivation of Japan in its imperialist pursuits as strategic resource
acquisition. While his application of economic theory has wide explanatory power in the
actions that the Japanese took in the pursuit of autarky, it does not explain why they felt entitled
to or justified in their abuse of the territorial and human rights of other Asians. Furthermore,
Barnhart is careful to avoid overt statement of the brutality of the Japanese military in
imperialist “incidents.” For example, in the attack against Nanking that many scholars have
characterized as rife with atrocities, Barnhart comments that it was an “unbounded military
success;” his only concession to its putative unusual brutality is that the State Department
condemned it as “contrary to the principles of law and humanity.” Although it is perhaps
common to dehumanize an enemy in war and thus Barnhart might choose to leave discussions
of Japanese brutality to other scholars 6 because it is common to dehumanize an enemy in war,
but he could strengthen his argument for economic motivations by discussing how a feeling of
racial, national or cultural superiority played a role in justifying Japanese entitlement to control
of the lands and resources of others. Moreover, justification for such Japanese positions as the
Amau Doctrine, which claimed the Japanese right to supervise economic development of China
and barred all other nations from that right, was clearly based on more than Japanese economic
need, as it claimed Japan had a special right to control China, indicating a feeling of either
extreme paternalism or inherent superiority to China. While racist cultural myths are largely
ignored by Barnhart, racism and misperception in international diplomacy are touched on as
factors in the myriad misunderstandings that occurred between Japan and the United States. In
Japan Prepares for Total War, both Japan and the United States are characterized as often
suspecting the other side of “cunning” and “crafty” behavior, and President Roosevelt is noted
as consistently holding an “anti-Japanese” attitude. These attitudes led to irrational fears; for
example, Barnhart notes that Roosevelt feared a Japanese attack on the West Coast to the extent
that he had crabbing operations checked for the possibility that the Japanese might use them as
bases for war. Japan, too, based a number of decisions on misperceptions of the stance of the
other side; for instance, it believed for a time that the Draft Understanding was a formal United
States policy position, and thus changed its estimate of the probability of war with the United
States, leading to confidence in more aggressive behavior. Barnhart demonstrates that racism
and misunderstandings thus contributed to the policies of the time period in question, but such
a nod to the role of racism and misperception in policy is curious when his argument neglects
to explain the 7 possible of role of racism as justification for forcible economic expansion of
Japan. In conclusion, Japan Prepares for Total War is an economic history, one that serves its
stated purpose of contributing to an understanding of how Japan’s economic concerns and
inter-service rivalries contributed to bringing about the Pacific War. Discussion of Japanese
paternalism or racism in the pursuit of autarky is largely avoided by Barnhart, and this
avoidance detracts to a small extent from the explanatory power of economic vulnerability and
internal political dynamics as the causal variables in Japanese imperialism and attack on the
United States. Perhaps Barnhart is merely trying to achieve objectivity and avoid a
condemnatory tone, but in failing to question the legitimacy of Japan’s special right to control
the rest of Asia, he misses the opportunity to explain the role of the values and attitudes that
supposedly lent justification to Japan’s right to cruelly exploit its Asian neighbors. Despite this
criticism, Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941 offers
a detailed and thought provoking account of the ironies of US-Japan relations and mistakes in
the years preceding the Pacific War.
In Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941, Michael A.
Barnhart chronicles the history of Japan’s futile search for autarky in the years leading to the
Pacific War.1 In examining the vital linkage between economics and national security in this
period, Barnhart makes the argument that the perception of economic vulnerability as the main
security issue facing Japan, combined with bureaucratic politics in the form of army-navy inter-
service rivalries, led directly to both the impulse for empire in resource-rich mainland Asia and
the attack on Pearl Harbor. However, Barnhart’s history charts Japan’s search for economic
security without explaining its justification for and entitlement to seizing the resources and land
of others, often brutally so. As such, the sterility of Japan Prepares for Total War downplays
the role of racist attitudes and cultural myths in engendering the events described. Nonetheless,
with strong evidentiary support Barnhart makes a compelling case for the ascendancy of
economic considerations and bureaucratic politics as the causal factors in Japan’s attack of the
United States on December 7th, 1941. Barnhart posits that Japan’s interpretation of the lessons
of World War I drove its leaders to view autarky as the basis for grand strategic planning. After
all, Germany, possessor of a stronger military than its conquerors, had succumbed to defeat in
WWI because it lacked an industrial base able to mobilize to a degree freeing it from economic
dependence on other nations. Such dependence creates vulnerability because the dependent
nation is subject to the whims and economic pressure of those nations on which it depends.
Japan had defeated Western power Russia in the Sino-Soviet conflict 2 of 1904-1905, but its
status as a resource-poor nation caused a number of influential civilian elites and military
officers to become advocates of “total war,” or the national capacity to not only wage war with
strong military forces but with the economic capability to supply all needed war materiel. Two
essential elements were necessary for this plan to succeed in establishing autarky and thus
security: a peace of at least five years with the hegemonic United States, and natural resources
such as iron and oil. These material resources could be had on the Asian mainland, specifically
in Manchuria and subsequently in China proper. As Barnhart points out, the Japanese chose to
forcibly acquire these resources from its mainland neighbors, and this course of action brought
it into conflict with the free trade philosophy and Open Door policy of the United States.
Japan’s course to national mobilization and self-sufficiency included the creation of a puppet
state for the economic exploitation of Manchuria; Manchukuo was created in 1932 in concert
with Japan’s first long-term mobilization plan. After “rational mobilization” of the domestic
economy, Japan’s increasingly imperial interests turned to China while the military’s share of
the budget rose to 45 percent. In 1937 Japanese forces commenced what Barnhart concededly
calls the “China Incident,” in which China and its resources were claimed by Japan under the
guise of establishing a Japanese-run corporation for economic development of the region.
Barnhart adeptly points out the ironies in Japan’s fight to acquire the Chinese mainland as a
strategic resource. The original total war proponents understood the threat to security that
belligerence in China caused for Japan: the United States, in defending the Open Door policy
in China, might deny Japan the indispensable resources like 3 machine tools that it required to
achieve self-sufficiency. Additionally, Japan’s domestic economy and citizenry were greatly
strained in what Barnhart terms the “bitter mortgage” of funding the efforts of empire in China.
Barnhart therefore argues that Japan’s aggressive imperial activities on the Asian mainland
were counterproductive in its quest for autarky: they threatened the necessary peace with the
United States and came at extreme costs to the Japanese nation. Japan Prepares for Total War
also contends that bureaucratic politics, specifically the competing interests of Japan’s army
and navy, played a significant role in shaping policy and determining the sequence of events
leading to the Pacific War. In bureaucratic politics, the players in a government bargain and
compete according to their organizational interests, resulting in policy that is not the product
of a single rational decision but is instead an amalgam of the visions and choices of the players
involved.2 The army and navy in pre-WWII Japan were both strong players in compelling the
nation’s political leaders to allocate resources according to their perceived needs; Barnhart
offers a number of examples of how their economic demands for strategic resources like iron
and oil led to further pressures to expand the Japanese empire in order to acquire such goods.
Additionally, Barnhart takes the position that differing strategic conceptions of how to best
approach the Southward Advance to commandeer the Dutch and French colonies of Southeast
Asia fed a growing inter-service rivalry. This rivalry between the Imperial army and Imperial
navy overshadowed rational considerations of the diplomatic and economic ramifications of
the United States’ reaction to aggressive Japanese imperialism as a means of achieving autarky.
Barnhart documents that the navy in 4 particular instituted a practice of exchanging “more
vigorous foreign policies” for greater resource allocations of strategic materials, and he argues
that the military as a whole served as the “engine of real change” in Japanese policy with regard
to economic expansion as a means of achieving national security. The quest of each service to
outbid the other in acquisition of strategic materials therefore led to the diversion of goods and
funds from exports and the domestic economy to meet military demands. It also led to the
commercial pressures the United States somewhat ironically imposed to punish Japan for its
imperialist imposition and attempt to create a sphere of economic and political influence in
mainland Asia. Indeed, the economic measures that the United States adopted in Japan’s
interwar years to stem the flow of Japanese aggression exacerbated the international situation
because the Japanese elites in power at various points in the course to war were either unwilling
to abandon mobilization plans or unable to do so because of military pressures and demands.
The moral sanctions and embargoes on goods such as aluminum and aviation fuel became
progressively steeper as Japan sought more territory and strategic resources in Asia. Finally,
the United States decided to freeze Japanese assets, and that freeze quickly morphed into full
embargo. Barnhart makes the point that this decision reflected an unshakable belief on the part
of United States leaders that Japan could not be deterred in the Southward Advance but might
be slowed by even more drastic economic measures. He attributes the Japanese response, to
push on with the advance, to the two factors he assigns ultimate importance in determining the
outcome of the clash between the two powers: economic motivations and bureaucratic politics.
Japan’s grand strategic motivation was the pursuit of autarky, and Barnhart argues that the July
2nd decisions for how to best achieve that goal were an amalgam of the opposing viewpoints
of the army 5 and navy, resulting in decisions that were rational in that they were the only
politically possible decisions within the Japanese government of the time. Despite Barnhart’s
strengths in precisely documenting the changing economic condition of Japan in the interwar
years and how its internal political dynamics and strategy shaped its path to war, Japan Prepares
for Total War fails to address the cultural attitudes and myths that enabled its feelings of
entitlement in the region. For example, scholars such as John Dower have suggested that
cultural myths like that of Japanese descent from goddess Amaterasu Omikami were used as
the psychological motivation for mobilizing the Japanese people and justifying horrific actions
against other Asian peoples in the name of Japan’s economic interests.3 Such cultural myths
identified Japan and the Japanese people as holding a unique, predetermined status as the
chosen natural rulers of Asia by virtue of their special descent from the true gods. Barnhart
identifies the primary motivation of Japan in its imperialist pursuits as strategic resource
acquisition. While his application of economic theory has wide explanatory power in the
actions that the Japanese took in the pursuit of autarky, it does not explain why they felt entitled
to or justified in their abuse of the territorial and human rights of other Asians. Furthermore,
Barnhart is careful to avoid overt statement of the brutality of the Japanese military in
imperialist “incidents.” For example, in the attack against Nanking that many scholars have
characterized as rife with atrocities, Barnhart comments that it was an “unbounded military
success;” his only concession to its putative unusual brutality is that the State Department
condemned it as “contrary to the principles of law and humanity.” Although it is perhaps
common to dehumanize an enemy in war and thus Barnhart might choose to leave discussions
of Japanese brutality to other scholars 6 because it is common to dehumanize an enemy in war,
but he could strengthen his argument for economic motivations by discussing how a feeling of
racial, national or cultural superiority played a role in justifying Japanese entitlement to control
of the lands and resources of others. Moreover, justification for such Japanese positions as the
Amau Doctrine, which claimed the Japanese right to supervise economic development of China
and barred all other nations from that right, was clearly based on more than Japanese economic
need, as it claimed Japan had a special right to control China, indicating a feeling of either
extreme paternalism or inherent superiority to China. While racist cultural myths are largely
ignored by Barnhart, racism and misperception in international diplomacy are touched on as
factors in the myriad misunderstandings that occurred between Japan and the United States. In
Japan Prepares for Total War, both Japan and the United States are characterized as often
suspecting the other side of “cunning” and “crafty” behavior, and President Roosevelt is noted
as consistently holding an “anti-Japanese” attitude. These attitudes led to irrational fears; for
example, Barnhart notes that Roosevelt feared a Japanese attack on the West Coast to the extent
that he had crabbing operations checked for the possibility that the Japanese might use them as
bases for war. Japan, too, based a number of decisions on misperceptions of the stance of the
other side; for instance, it believed for a time that the Draft Understanding was a formal United
States policy position, and thus changed its estimate of the probability of war with the United
States, leading to confidence in more aggressive behavior. Barnhart demonstrates that racism
and misunderstandings thus contributed to the policies of the time period in question, but such
a nod to the role of racism and misperception in policy is curious when his argument neglects
to explain the 7 possible of role of racism as justification for forcible economic expansion of
Japan. In conclusion, Japan Prepares for Total War is an economic history, one that serves its
stated purpose of contributing to an understanding of how Japan’s economic concerns and
inter-service rivalries contributed to bringing about the Pacific War. Discussion of Japanese
paternalism or racism in the pursuit of autarky is largely avoided by Barnhart, and this
avoidance detracts to a small extent from the explanatory power of economic vulnerability and
internal political dynamics as the causal variables in Japanese imperialism and attack on the
United States. Perhaps Barnhart is merely trying to achieve objectivity and avoid a
condemnatory tone, but in failing to question the legitimacy of Japan’s special right to control
the rest of Asia, he misses the opportunity to explain the role of the values and attitudes that
supposedly lent justification to Japan’s right to cruelly exploit its Asian neighbors. Despite this
criticism, Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941 offers
a detailed and thought provoking account of the ironies of US-Japan relations and mistakes in
the years preceding the Pacific War.
In Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941, Michael A.
Barnhart chronicles the history of Japan’s futile search for autarky in the years leading to the
Pacific War.1 In examining the vital linkage between economics and national security in this
period, Barnhart makes the argument that the perception of economic vulnerability as the main
security issue facing Japan, combined with bureaucratic politics in the form of army-navy inter-
service rivalries, led directly to both the impulse for empire in resource-rich mainland Asia and
the attack on Pearl Harbor. However, Barnhart’s history charts Japan’s search for economic
security without explaining its justification for and entitlement to seizing the resources and land
of others, often brutally so. As such, the sterility of Japan Prepares for Total War downplays
the role of racist attitudes and cultural myths in engendering the events described. Nonetheless,
with strong evidentiary support Barnhart makes a compelling case for the ascendancy of
economic considerations and bureaucratic politics as the causal factors in Japan’s attack of the
United States on December 7th, 1941. Barnhart posits that Japan’s interpretation of the lessons
of World War I drove its leaders to view autarky as the basis for grand strategic planning. After
all, Germany, possessor of a stronger military than its conquerors, had succumbed to defeat in
WWI because it lacked an industrial base able to mobilize to a degree freeing it from economic
dependence on other nations. Such dependence creates vulnerability because the dependent
nation is subject to the whims and economic pressure of those nations on which it depends.
Japan had defeated Western power Russia in the Sino-Soviet conflict 2 of 1904-1905, but its
status as a resource-poor nation caused a number of influential civilian elites and military
officers to become advocates of “total war,” or the national capacity to not only wage war with
strong military forces but with the economic capability to supply all needed war materiel. Two
essential elements were necessary for this plan to succeed in establishing autarky and thus
security: a peace of at least five years with the hegemonic United States, and natural resources
such as iron and oil. These material resources could be had on the Asian mainland, specifically
in Manchuria and subsequently in China proper. As Barnhart points out, the Japanese chose to
forcibly acquire these resources from its mainland neighbors, and this course of action brought
it into conflict with the free trade philosophy and Open Door policy of the United States.
Japan’s course to national mobilization and self-sufficiency included the creation of a puppet
state for the economic exploitation of Manchuria; Manchukuo was created in 1932 in concert
with Japan’s first long-term mobilization plan. After “rational mobilization” of the domestic
economy, Japan’s increasingly imperial interests turned to China while the military’s share of
the budget rose to 45 percent. In 1937 Japanese forces commenced what Barnhart concededly
calls the “China Incident,” in which China and its resources were claimed by Japan under the
guise of establishing a Japanese-run corporation for economic development of the region.
Barnhart adeptly points out the ironies in Japan’s fight to acquire the Chinese mainland as a
strategic resource. The original total war proponents understood the threat to security that
belligerence in China caused for Japan: the United States, in defending the Open Door policy
in China, might deny Japan the indispensable resources like 3 machine tools that it required to
achieve self-sufficiency. Additionally, Japan’s domestic economy and citizenry were greatly
strained in what Barnhart terms the “bitter mortgage” of funding the efforts of empire in China.
Barnhart therefore argues that Japan’s aggressive imperial activities on the Asian mainland
were counterproductive in its quest for autarky: they threatened the necessary peace with the
United States and came at extreme costs to the Japanese nation. Japan Prepares for Total War
also contends that bureaucratic politics, specifically the competing interests of Japan’s army
and navy, played a significant role in shaping policy and determining the sequence of events
leading to the Pacific War. In bureaucratic politics, the players in a government bargain and
compete according to their organizational interests, resulting in policy that is not the product
of a single rational decision but is instead an amalgam of the visions and choices of the players
involved.2 The army and navy in pre-WWII Japan were both strong players in compelling the
nation’s political leaders to allocate resources according to their perceived needs; Barnhart
offers a number of examples of how their economic demands for strategic resources like iron
and oil led to further pressures to expand the Japanese empire in order to acquire such goods.
Additionally, Barnhart takes the position that differing strategic conceptions of how to best
approach the Southward Advance to commandeer the Dutch and French colonies of Southeast
Asia fed a growing inter-service rivalry. This rivalry between the Imperial army and Imperial
navy overshadowed rational considerations of the diplomatic and economic ramifications of
the United States’ reaction to aggressive Japanese imperialism as a means of achieving autarky.
Barnhart documents that the navy in 4 particular instituted a practice of exchanging “more
vigorous foreign policies” for greater resource allocations of strategic materials, and he argues
that the military as a whole served as the “engine of real change” in Japanese policy with regard
to economic expansion as a means of achieving national security. The quest of each service to
outbid the other in acquisition of strategic materials therefore led to the diversion of goods and
funds from exports and the domestic economy to meet military demands. It also led to the
commercial pressures the United States somewhat ironically imposed to punish Japan for its
imperialist imposition and attempt to create a sphere of economic and political influence in
mainland Asia. Indeed, the economic measures that the United States adopted in Japan’s
interwar years to stem the flow of Japanese aggression exacerbated the international situation
because the Japanese elites in power at various points in the course to war were either unwilling
to abandon mobilization plans or unable to do so because of military pressures and demands.
The moral sanctions and embargoes on goods such as aluminum and aviation fuel became
progressively steeper as Japan sought more territory and strategic resources in Asia. Finally,
the United States decided to freeze Japanese assets, and that freeze quickly morphed into full
embargo. Barnhart makes the point that this decision reflected an unshakable belief on the part
of United States leaders that Japan could not be deterred in the Southward Advance but might
be slowed by even more drastic economic measures. He attributes the Japanese response, to
push on with the advance, to the two factors he assigns ultimate importance in determining the
outcome of the clash between the two powers: economic motivations and bureaucratic politics.
Japan’s grand strategic motivation was the pursuit of autarky, and Barnhart argues that the July
2nd decisions for how to best achieve that goal were an amalgam of the opposing viewpoints
of the army 5 and navy, resulting in decisions that were rational in that they were the only
politically possible decisions within the Japanese government of the time. Despite Barnhart’s
strengths in precisely documenting the changing economic condition of Japan in the interwar
years and how its internal political dynamics and strategy shaped its path to war, Japan Prepares
for Total War fails to address the cultural attitudes and myths that enabled its feelings of
entitlement in the region. For example, scholars such as John Dower have suggested that
cultural myths like that of Japanese descent from goddess Amaterasu Omikami were used as
the psychological motivation for mobilizing the Japanese people and justifying horrific actions
against other Asian peoples in the name of Japan’s economic interests.3 Such cultural myths
identified Japan and the Japanese people as holding a unique, predetermined status as the
chosen natural rulers of Asia by virtue of their special descent from the true gods. Barnhart
identifies the primary motivation of Japan in its imperialist pursuits as strategic resource
acquisition. While his application of economic theory has wide explanatory power in the
actions that the Japanese took in the pursuit of autarky, it does not explain why they felt entitled
to or justified in their abuse of the territorial and human rights of other Asians. Furthermore,
Barnhart is careful to avoid overt statement of the brutality of the Japanese military in
imperialist “incidents.” For example, in the attack against Nanking that many scholars have
characterized as rife with atrocities, Barnhart comments that it was an “unbounded military
success;” his only concession to its putative unusual brutality is that the State Department
condemned it as “contrary to the principles of law and humanity.” Although it is perhaps
common to dehumanize an enemy in war and thus Barnhart might choose to leave discussions
of Japanese brutality to other scholars 6 because it is common to dehumanize an enemy in war,
but he could strengthen his argument for economic motivations by discussing how a feeling of
racial, national or cultural superiority played a role in justifying Japanese entitlement to control
of the lands and resources of others. Moreover, justification for such Japanese positions as the
Amau Doctrine, which claimed the Japanese right to supervise economic development of China
and barred all other nations from that right, was clearly based on more than Japanese economic
need, as it claimed Japan had a special right to control China, indicating a feeling of either
extreme paternalism or inherent superiority to China. While racist cultural myths are largely
ignored by Barnhart, racism and misperception in international diplomacy are touched on as
factors in the myriad misunderstandings that occurred between Japan and the United States. In
Japan Prepares for Total War, both Japan and the United States are characterized as often
suspecting the other side of “cunning” and “crafty” behavior, and President Roosevelt is noted
as consistently holding an “anti-Japanese” attitude. These attitudes led to irrational fears; for
example, Barnhart notes that Roosevelt feared a Japanese attack on the West Coast to the extent
that he had crabbing operations checked for the possibility that the Japanese might use them as
bases for war. Japan, too, based a number of decisions on misperceptions of the stance of the
other side; for instance, it believed for a time that the Draft Understanding was a formal United
States policy position, and thus changed its estimate of the probability of war with the United
States, leading to confidence in more aggressive behavior. Barnhart demonstrates that racism
and misunderstandings thus contributed to the policies of the time period in question, but such
a nod to the role of racism and misperception in policy is curious when his argument neglects
to explain the 7 possible of role of racism as justification for forcible economic expansion of
Japan. In conclusion, Japan Prepares for Total War is an economic history, one that serves its
stated purpose of contributing to an understanding of how Japan’s economic concerns and
inter-service rivalries contributed to bringing about the Pacific War. Discussion of Japanese
paternalism or racism in the pursuit of autarky is largely avoided by Barnhart, and this
avoidance detracts to a small extent from the explanatory power of economic vulnerability and
internal political dynamics as the causal variables in Japanese imperialism and attack on the
United States. Perhaps Barnhart is merely trying to achieve objectivity and avoid a
condemnatory tone, but in failing to question the legitimacy of Japan’s special right to control
the rest of Asia, he misses the opportunity to explain the role of the values and attitudes that
supposedly lent justification to Japan’s right to cruelly exploit its Asian neighbors. Despite this
criticism, Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941 offers
a detailed and thought provoking account of the ironies of US-Japan relations and mistakes in
the years preceding the Pacific War.
In Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941, Michael A.
Barnhart chronicles the history of Japan’s futile search for autarky in the years leading to the
Pacific War.1 In examining the vital linkage between economics and national security in this
period, Barnhart makes the argument that the perception of economic vulnerability as the main
security issue facing Japan, combined with bureaucratic politics in the form of army-navy inter-
service rivalries, led directly to both the impulse for empire in resource-rich mainland Asia and
the attack on Pearl Harbor. However, Barnhart’s history charts Japan’s search for economic
security without explaining its justification for and entitlement to seizing the resources and land
of others, often brutally so. As such, the sterility of Japan Prepares for Total War downplays
the role of racist attitudes and cultural myths in engendering the events described. Nonetheless,
with strong evidentiary support Barnhart makes a compelling case for the ascendancy of
economic considerations and bureaucratic politics as the causal factors in Japan’s attack of the
United States on December 7th, 1941. Barnhart posits that Japan’s interpretation of the lessons
of World War I drove its leaders to view autarky as the basis for grand strategic planning. After
all, Germany, possessor of a stronger military than its conquerors, had succumbed to defeat in
WWI because it lacked an industrial base able to mobilize to a degree freeing it from economic
dependence on other nations. Such dependence creates vulnerability because the dependent
nation is subject to the whims and economic pressure of those nations on which it depends.
Japan had defeated Western power Russia in the Sino-Soviet conflict 2 of 1904-1905, but its
status as a resource-poor nation caused a number of influential civilian elites and military
officers to become advocates of “total war,” or the national capacity to not only wage war with
strong military forces but with the economic capability to supply all needed war materiel. Two
essential elements were necessary for this plan to succeed in establishing autarky and thus
security: a peace of at least five years with the hegemonic United States, and natural resources
such as iron and oil. These material resources could be had on the Asian mainland, specifically
in Manchuria and subsequently in China proper. As Barnhart points out, the Japanese chose to
forcibly acquire these resources from its mainland neighbors, and this course of action brought
it into conflict with the free trade philosophy and Open Door policy of the United States.
Japan’s course to national mobilization and self-sufficiency included the creation of a puppet
state for the economic exploitation of Manchuria; Manchukuo was created in 1932 in concert
with Japan’s first long-term mobilization plan. After “rational mobilization” of the domestic
economy, Japan’s increasingly imperial interests turned to China while the military’s share of
the budget rose to 45 percent. In 1937 Japanese forces commenced what Barnhart concededly
calls the “China Incident,” in which China and its resources were claimed by Japan under the
guise of establishing a Japanese-run corporation for economic development of the region.
Barnhart adeptly points out the ironies in Japan’s fight to acquire the Chinese mainland as a
strategic resource. The original total war proponents understood the threat to security that
belligerence in China caused for Japan: the United States, in defending the Open Door policy
in China, might deny Japan the indispensable resources like 3 machine tools that it required to
achieve self-sufficiency. Additionally, Japan’s domestic economy and citizenry were greatly
strained in what Barnhart terms the “bitter mortgage” of funding the efforts of empire in China.
Barnhart therefore argues that Japan’s aggressive imperial activities on the Asian mainland
were counterproductive in its quest for autarky: they threatened the necessary peace with the
United States and came at extreme costs to the Japanese nation. Japan Prepares for Total War
also contends that bureaucratic politics, specifically the competing interests of Japan’s army
and navy, played a significant role in shaping policy and determining the sequence of events
leading to the Pacific War. In bureaucratic politics, the players in a government bargain and
compete according to their organizational interests, resulting in policy that is not the product
of a single rational decision but is instead an amalgam of the visions and choices of the players
involved.2 The army and navy in pre-WWII Japan were both strong players in compelling the
nation’s political leaders to allocate resources according to their perceived needs; Barnhart
offers a number of examples of how their economic demands for strategic resources like iron
and oil led to further pressures to expand the Japanese empire in order to acquire such goods.
Additionally, Barnhart takes the position that differing strategic conceptions of how to best
approach the Southward Advance to commandeer the Dutch and French colonies of Southeast
Asia fed a growing inter-service rivalry. This rivalry between the Imperial army and Imperial
navy overshadowed rational considerations of the diplomatic and economic ramifications of
the United States’ reaction to aggressive Japanese imperialism as a means of achieving autarky.
Barnhart documents that the navy in 4 particular instituted a practice of exchanging “more
vigorous foreign policies” for greater resource allocations of strategic materials, and he argues
that the military as a whole served as the “engine of real change” in Japanese policy with regard
to economic expansion as a means of achieving national security. The quest of each service to
outbid the other in acquisition of strategic materials therefore led to the diversion of goods and
funds from exports and the domestic economy to meet military demands. It also led to the
commercial pressures the United States somewhat ironically imposed to punish Japan for its
imperialist imposition and attempt to create a sphere of economic and political influence in
mainland Asia. Indeed, the economic measures that the United States adopted in Japan’s
interwar years to stem the flow of Japanese aggression exacerbated the international situation
because the Japanese elites in power at various points in the course to war were either unwilling
to abandon mobilization plans or unable to do so because of military pressures and demands.
The moral sanctions and embargoes on goods such as aluminum and aviation fuel became
progressively steeper as Japan sought more territory and strategic resources in Asia. Finally,
the United States decided to freeze Japanese assets, and that freeze quickly morphed into full
embargo. Barnhart makes the point that this decision reflected an unshakable belief on the part
of United States leaders that Japan could not be deterred in the Southward Advance but might
be slowed by even more drastic economic measures. He attributes the Japanese response, to
push on with the advance, to the two factors he assigns ultimate importance in determining the
outcome of the clash between the two powers: economic motivations and bureaucratic politics.
Japan’s grand strategic motivation was the pursuit of autarky, and Barnhart argues that the July
2nd decisions for how to best achieve that goal were an amalgam of the opposing viewpoints
of the army 5 and navy, resulting in decisions that were rational in that they were the only
politically possible decisions within the Japanese government of the time. Despite Barnhart’s
strengths in precisely documenting the changing economic condition of Japan in the interwar
years and how its internal political dynamics and strategy shaped its path to war, Japan Prepares
for Total War fails to address the cultural attitudes and myths that enabled its feelings of
entitlement in the region. For example, scholars such as John Dower have suggested that
cultural myths like that of Japanese descent from goddess Amaterasu Omikami were used as
the psychological motivation for mobilizing the Japanese people and justifying horrific actions
against other Asian peoples in the name of Japan’s economic interests.3 Such cultural myths
identified Japan and the Japanese people as holding a unique, predetermined status as the
chosen natural rulers of Asia by virtue of their special descent from the true gods. Barnhart
identifies the primary motivation of Japan in its imperialist pursuits as strategic resource
acquisition. While his application of economic theory has wide explanatory power in the
actions that the Japanese took in the pursuit of autarky, it does not explain why they felt entitled
to or justified in their abuse of the territorial and human rights of other Asians. Furthermore,
Barnhart is careful to avoid overt statement of the brutality of the Japanese military in
imperialist “incidents.” For example, in the attack against Nanking that many scholars have
characterized as rife with atrocities, Barnhart comments that it was an “unbounded military
success;” his only concession to its putative unusual brutality is that the State Department
condemned it as “contrary to the principles of law and humanity.” Although it is perhaps
common to dehumanize an enemy in war and thus Barnhart might choose to leave discussions
of Japanese brutality to other scholars 6 because it is common to dehumanize an enemy in war,
but he could strengthen his argument for economic motivations by discussing how a feeling of
racial, national or cultural superiority played a role in justifying Japanese entitlement to control
of the lands and resources of others. Moreover, justification for such Japanese positions as the
Amau Doctrine, which claimed the Japanese right to supervise economic development of China
and barred all other nations from that right, was clearly based on more than Japanese economic
need, as it claimed Japan had a special right to control China, indicating a feeling of either
extreme paternalism or inherent superiority to China. While racist cultural myths are largely
ignored by Barnhart, racism and misperception in international diplomacy are touched on as
factors in the myriad misunderstandings that occurred between Japan and the United States. In
Japan Prepares for Total War, both Japan and the United States are characterized as often
suspecting the other side of “cunning” and “crafty” behavior, and President Roosevelt is noted
as consistently holding an “anti-Japanese” attitude. These attitudes led to irrational fears; for
example, Barnhart notes that Roosevelt feared a Japanese attack on the West Coast to the extent
that he had crabbing operations checked for the possibility that the Japanese might use them as
bases for war. Japan, too, based a number of decisions on misperceptions of the stance of the
other side; for instance, it believed for a time that the Draft Understanding was a formal United
States policy position, and thus changed its estimate of the probability of war with the United
States, leading to confidence in more aggressive behavior. Barnhart demonstrates that racism
and misunderstandings thus contributed to the policies of the time period in question, but such
a nod to the role of racism and misperception in policy is curious when his argument neglects
to explain the 7 possible of role of racism as justification for forcible economic expansion of
Japan. In conclusion, Japan Prepares for Total War is an economic history, one that serves its
stated purpose of contributing to an understanding of how Japan’s economic concerns and
inter-service rivalries contributed to bringing about the Pacific War. Discussion of Japanese
paternalism or racism in the pursuit of autarky is largely avoided by Barnhart, and this
avoidance detracts to a small extent from the explanatory power of economic vulnerability and
internal political dynamics as the causal variables in Japanese imperialism and attack on the
United States. Perhaps Barnhart is merely trying to achieve objectivity and avoid a
condemnatory tone, but in failing to question the legitimacy of Japan’s special right to control
the rest of Asia, he misses the opportunity to explain the role of the values and attitudes that
supposedly lent justification to Japan’s right to cruelly exploit its Asian neighbors. Despite this
criticism, Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941 offers
a detailed and thought provoking account of the ironies of US-Japan relations and mistakes in
the years preceding the Pacific War.
In Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941, Michael A.
Barnhart chronicles the history of Japan’s futile search for autarky in the years leading to the
Pacific War.1 In examining the vital linkage between economics and national security in this
period, Barnhart makes the argument that the perception of economic vulnerability as the main
security issue facing Japan, combined with bureaucratic politics in the form of army-navy inter-
service rivalries, led directly to both the impulse for empire in resource-rich mainland Asia and
the attack on Pearl Harbor. However, Barnhart’s history charts Japan’s search for economic
security without explaining its justification for and entitlement to seizing the resources and land
of others, often brutally so. As such, the sterility of Japan Prepares for Total War downplays
the role of racist attitudes and cultural myths in engendering the events described. Nonetheless,
with strong evidentiary support Barnhart makes a compelling case for the ascendancy of
economic considerations and bureaucratic politics as the causal factors in Japan’s attack of the
United States on December 7th, 1941. Barnhart posits that Japan’s interpretation of the lessons
of World War I drove its leaders to view autarky as the basis for grand strategic planning. After
all, Germany, possessor of a stronger military than its conquerors, had succumbed to defeat in
WWI because it lacked an industrial base able to mobilize to a degree freeing it from economic
dependence on other nations. Such dependence creates vulnerability because the dependent
nation is subject to the whims and economic pressure of those nations on which it depends.
Japan had defeated Western power Russia in the Sino-Soviet conflict 2 of 1904-1905, but its
status as a resource-poor nation caused a number of influential civilian elites and military
officers to become advocates of “total war,” or the national capacity to not only wage war with
strong military forces but with the economic capability to supply all needed war materiel. Two
essential elements were necessary for this plan to succeed in establishing autarky and thus
security: a peace of at least five years with the hegemonic United States, and natural resources
such as iron and oil. These material resources could be had on the Asian mainland, specifically
in Manchuria and subsequently in China proper. As Barnhart points out, the Japanese chose to
forcibly acquire these resources from its mainland neighbors, and this course of action brought
it into conflict with the free trade philosophy and Open Door policy of the United States.
Japan’s course to national mobilization and self-sufficiency included the creation of a puppet
state for the economic exploitation of Manchuria; Manchukuo was created in 1932 in concert
with Japan’s first long-term mobilization plan. After “rational mobilization” of the domestic
economy, Japan’s increasingly imperial interests turned to China while the military’s share of
the budget rose to 45 percent. In 1937 Japanese forces commenced what Barnhart concededly
calls the “China Incident,” in which China and its resources were claimed by Japan under the
guise of establishing a Japanese-run corporation for economic development of the region.
Barnhart adeptly points out the ironies in Japan’s fight to acquire the Chinese mainland as a
strategic resource. The original total war proponents understood the threat to security that
belligerence in China caused for Japan: the United States, in defending the Open Door policy
in China, might deny Japan the indispensable resources like 3 machine tools that it required to
achieve self-sufficiency. Additionally, Japan’s domestic economy and citizenry were greatly
strained in what Barnhart terms the “bitter mortgage” of funding the efforts of empire in China.
Barnhart therefore argues that Japan’s aggressive imperial activities on the Asian mainland
were counterproductive in its quest for autarky: they threatened the necessary peace with the
United States and came at extreme costs to the Japanese nation. Japan Prepares for Total War
also contends that bureaucratic politics, specifically the competing interests of Japan’s army
and navy, played a significant role in shaping policy and determining the sequence of events
leading to the Pacific War. In bureaucratic politics, the players in a government bargain and
compete according to their organizational interests, resulting in policy that is not the product
of a single rational decision but is instead an amalgam of the visions and choices of the players
involved.2 The army and navy in pre-WWII Japan were both strong players in compelling the
nation’s political leaders to allocate resources according to their perceived needs; Barnhart
offers a number of examples of how their economic demands for strategic resources like iron
and oil led to further pressures to expand the Japanese empire in order to acquire such goods.
Additionally, Barnhart takes the position that differing strategic conceptions of how to best
approach the Southward Advance to commandeer the Dutch and French colonies of Southeast
Asia fed a growing inter-service rivalry. This rivalry between the Imperial army and Imperial
navy overshadowed rational considerations of the diplomatic and economic ramifications of
the United States’ reaction to aggressive Japanese imperialism as a means of achieving autarky.
Barnhart documents that the navy in 4 particular instituted a practice of exchanging “more
vigorous foreign policies” for greater resource allocations of strategic materials, and he argues
that the military as a whole served as the “engine of real change” in Japanese policy with regard
to economic expansion as a means of achieving national security. The quest of each service to
outbid the other in acquisition of strategic materials therefore led to the diversion of goods and
funds from exports and the domestic economy to meet military demands. It also led to the
commercial pressures the United States somewhat ironically imposed to punish Japan for its
imperialist imposition and attempt to create a sphere of economic and political influence in
mainland Asia. Indeed, the economic measures that the United States adopted in Japan’s
interwar years to stem the flow of Japanese aggression exacerbated the international situation
because the Japanese elites in power at various points in the course to war were either unwilling
to abandon mobilization plans or unable to do so because of military pressures and demands.
The moral sanctions and embargoes on goods such as aluminum and aviation fuel became
progressively steeper as Japan sought more territory and strategic resources in Asia. Finally,
the United States decided to freeze Japanese assets, and that freeze quickly morphed into full
embargo. Barnhart makes the point that this decision reflected an unshakable belief on the part
of United States leaders that Japan could not be deterred in the Southward Advance but might
be slowed by even more drastic economic measures. He attributes the Japanese response, to
push on with the advance, to the two factors he assigns ultimate importance in determining the
outcome of the clash between the two powers: economic motivations and bureaucratic politics.
Japan’s grand strategic motivation was the pursuit of autarky, and Barnhart argues that the July
2nd decisions for how to best achieve that goal were an amalgam of the opposing viewpoints
of the army 5 and navy, resulting in decisions that were rational in that they were the only
politically possible decisions within the Japanese government of the time. Despite Barnhart’s
strengths in precisely documenting the changing economic condition of Japan in the interwar
years and how its internal political dynamics and strategy shaped its path to war, Japan Prepares
for Total War fails to address the cultural attitudes and myths that enabled its feelings of
entitlement in the region. For example, scholars such as John Dower have suggested that
cultural myths like that of Japanese descent from goddess Amaterasu Omikami were used as
the psychological motivation for mobilizing the Japanese people and justifying horrific actions
against other Asian peoples in the name of Japan’s economic interests.3 Such cultural myths
identified Japan and the Japanese people as holding a unique, predetermined status as the
chosen natural rulers of Asia by virtue of their special descent from the true gods. Barnhart
identifies the primary motivation of Japan in its imperialist pursuits as strategic resource
acquisition. While his application of economic theory has wide explanatory power in the
actions that the Japanese took in the pursuit of autarky, it does not explain why they felt entitled
to or justified in their abuse of the territorial and human rights of other Asians. Furthermore,
Barnhart is careful to avoid overt statement of the brutality of the Japanese military in
imperialist “incidents.” For example, in the attack against Nanking that many scholars have
characterized as rife with atrocities, Barnhart comments that it was an “unbounded military
success;” his only concession to its putative unusual brutality is that the State Department
condemned it as “contrary to the principles of law and humanity.” Although it is perhaps
common to dehumanize an enemy in war and thus Barnhart might choose to leave discussions
of Japanese brutality to other scholars 6 because it is common to dehumanize an enemy in war,
but he could strengthen his argument for economic motivations by discussing how a feeling of
racial, national or cultural superiority played a role in justifying Japanese entitlement to control
of the lands and resources of others. Moreover, justification for such Japanese positions as the
Amau Doctrine, which claimed the Japanese right to supervise economic development of China
and barred all other nations from that right, was clearly based on more than Japanese economic
need, as it claimed Japan had a special right to control China, indicating a feeling of either
extreme paternalism or inherent superiority to China. While racist cultural myths are largely
ignored by Barnhart, racism and misperception in international diplomacy are touched on as
factors in the myriad misunderstandings that occurred between Japan and the United States. In
Japan Prepares for Total War, both Japan and the United States are characterized as often
suspecting the other side of “cunning” and “crafty” behavior, and President Roosevelt is noted
as consistently holding an “anti-Japanese” attitude. These attitudes led to irrational fears; for
example, Barnhart notes that Roosevelt feared a Japanese attack on the West Coast to the extent
that he had crabbing operations checked for the possibility that the Japanese might use them as
bases for war. Japan, too, based a number of decisions on misperceptions of the stance of the
other side; for instance, it believed for a time that the Draft Understanding was a formal United
States policy position, and thus changed its estimate of the probability of war with the United
States, leading to confidence in more aggressive behavior. Barnhart demonstrates that racism
and misunderstandings thus contributed to the policies of the time period in question, but such
a nod to the role of racism and misperception in policy is curious when his argument neglects
to explain the 7 possible of role of racism as justification for forcible economic expansion of
Japan. In conclusion, Japan Prepares for Total War is an economic history, one that serves its
stated purpose of contributing to an understanding of how Japan’s economic concerns and
inter-service rivalries contributed to bringing about the Pacific War. Discussion of Japanese
paternalism or racism in the pursuit of autarky is largely avoided by Barnhart, and this
avoidance detracts to a small extent from the explanatory power of economic vulnerability and
internal political dynamics as the causal variables in Japanese imperialism and attack on the
United States. Perhaps Barnhart is merely trying to achieve objectivity and avoid a
condemnatory tone, but in failing to question the legitimacy of Japan’s special right to control
the rest of Asia, he misses the opportunity to explain the role of the values and attitudes that
supposedly lent justification to Japan’s right to cruelly exploit its Asian neighbors. Despite this
criticism, Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941 offers
a detailed and thought provoking account of the ironies of US-Japan relations and mistakes in
the years preceding the Pacific War.
In Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941, Michael A.
Barnhart chronicles the history of Japan’s futile search for autarky in the years leading to the
Pacific War.1 In examining the vital linkage between economics and national security in this
period, Barnhart makes the argument that the perception of economic vulnerability as the main
security issue facing Japan, combined with bureaucratic politics in the form of army-navy inter-
service rivalries, led directly to both the impulse for empire in resource-rich mainland Asia and
the attack on Pearl Harbor. However, Barnhart’s history charts Japan’s search for economic
security without explaining its justification for and entitlement to seizing the resources and land
of others, often brutally so. As such, the sterility of Japan Prepares for Total War downplays
the role of racist attitudes and cultural myths in engendering the events described. Nonetheless,
with strong evidentiary support Barnhart makes a compelling case for the ascendancy of
economic considerations and bureaucratic politics as the causal factors in Japan’s attack of the
United States on December 7th, 1941. Barnhart posits that Japan’s interpretation of the lessons
of World War I drove its leaders to view autarky as the basis for grand strategic planning. After
all, Germany, possessor of a stronger military than its conquerors, had succumbed to defeat in
WWI because it lacked an industrial base able to mobilize to a degree freeing it from economic
dependence on other nations. Such dependence creates vulnerability because the dependent
nation is subject to the whims and economic pressure of those nations on which it depends.
Japan had defeated Western power Russia in the Sino-Soviet conflict 2 of 1904-1905, but its
status as a resource-poor nation caused a number of influential civilian elites and military
officers to become advocates of “total war,” or the national capacity to not only wage war with
strong military forces but with the economic capability to supply all needed war materiel. Two
essential elements were necessary for this plan to succeed in establishing autarky and thus
security: a peace of at least five years with the hegemonic United States, and natural resources
such as iron and oil. These material resources could be had on the Asian mainland, specifically
in Manchuria and subsequently in China proper. As Barnhart points out, the Japanese chose to
forcibly acquire these resources from its mainland neighbors, and this course of action brought
it into conflict with the free trade philosophy and Open Door policy of the United States.
Japan’s course to national mobilization and self-sufficiency included the creation of a puppet
state for the economic exploitation of Manchuria; Manchukuo was created in 1932 in concert
with Japan’s first long-term mobilization plan. After “rational mobilization” of the domestic
economy, Japan’s increasingly imperial interests turned to China while the military’s share of
the budget rose to 45 percent. In 1937 Japanese forces commenced what Barnhart concededly
calls the “China Incident,” in which China and its resources were claimed by Japan under the
guise of establishing a Japanese-run corporation for economic development of the region.
Barnhart adeptly points out the ironies in Japan’s fight to acquire the Chinese mainland as a
strategic resource. The original total war proponents understood the threat to security that
belligerence in China caused for Japan: the United States, in defending the Open Door policy
in China, might deny Japan the indispensable resources like 3 machine tools that it required to
achieve self-sufficiency. Additionally, Japan’s domestic economy and citizenry were greatly
strained in what Barnhart terms the “bitter mortgage” of funding the efforts of empire in China.
Barnhart therefore argues that Japan’s aggressive imperial activities on the Asian mainland
were counterproductive in its quest for autarky: they threatened the necessary peace with the
United States and came at extreme costs to the Japanese nation. Japan Prepares for Total War
also contends that bureaucratic politics, specifically the competing interests of Japan’s army
and navy, played a significant role in shaping policy and determining the sequence of events
leading to the Pacific War. In bureaucratic politics, the players in a government bargain and
compete according to their organizational interests, resulting in policy that is not the product
of a single rational decision but is instead an amalgam of the visions and choices of the players
involved.2 The army and navy in pre-WWII Japan were both strong players in compelling the
nation’s political leaders to allocate resources according to their perceived needs; Barnhart
offers a number of examples of how their economic demands for strategic resources like iron
and oil led to further pressures to expand the Japanese empire in order to acquire such goods.
Additionally, Barnhart takes the position that differing strategic conceptions of how to best
approach the Southward Advance to commandeer the Dutch and French colonies of Southeast
Asia fed a growing inter-service rivalry. This rivalry between the Imperial army and Imperial
navy overshadowed rational considerations of the diplomatic and economic ramifications of
the United States’ reaction to aggressive Japanese imperialism as a means of achieving autarky.
Barnhart documents that the navy in 4 particular instituted a practice of exchanging “more
vigorous foreign policies” for greater resource allocations of strategic materials, and he argues
that the military as a whole served as the “engine of real change” in Japanese policy with regard
to economic expansion as a means of achieving national security. The quest of each service to
outbid the other in acquisition of strategic materials therefore led to the diversion of goods and
funds from exports and the domestic economy to meet military demands. It also led to the
commercial pressures the United States somewhat ironically imposed to punish Japan for its
imperialist imposition and attempt to create a sphere of economic and political influence in
mainland Asia. Indeed, the economic measures that the United States adopted in Japan’s
interwar years to stem the flow of Japanese aggression exacerbated the international situation
because the Japanese elites in power at various points in the course to war were either unwilling
to abandon mobilization plans or unable to do so because of military pressures and demands.
The moral sanctions and embargoes on goods such as aluminum and aviation fuel became
progressively steeper as Japan sought more territory and strategic resources in Asia. Finally,
the United States decided to freeze Japanese assets, and that freeze quickly morphed into full
embargo. Barnhart makes the point that this decision reflected an unshakable belief on the part
of United States leaders that Japan could not be deterred in the Southward Advance but might
be slowed by even more drastic economic measures. He attributes the Japanese response, to
push on with the advance, to the two factors he assigns ultimate importance in determining the
outcome of the clash between the two powers: economic motivations and bureaucratic politics.
Japan’s grand strategic motivation was the pursuit of autarky, and Barnhart argues that the July
2nd decisions for how to best achieve that goal were an amalgam of the opposing viewpoints
of the army 5 and navy, resulting in decisions that were rational in that they were the only
politically possible decisions within the Japanese government of the time. Despite Barnhart’s
strengths in precisely documenting the changing economic condition of Japan in the interwar
years and how its internal political dynamics and strategy shaped its path to war, Japan Prepares
for Total War fails to address the cultural attitudes and myths that enabled its feelings of
entitlement in the region. For example, scholars such as John Dower have suggested that
cultural myths like that of Japanese descent from goddess Amaterasu Omikami were used as
the psychological motivation for mobilizing the Japanese people and justifying horrific actions
against other Asian peoples in the name of Japan’s economic interests.3 Such cultural myths
identified Japan and the Japanese people as holding a unique, predetermined status as the
chosen natural rulers of Asia by virtue of their special descent from the true gods. Barnhart
identifies the primary motivation of Japan in its imperialist pursuits as strategic resource
acquisition. While his application of economic theory has wide explanatory power in the
actions that the Japanese took in the pursuit of autarky, it does not explain why they felt entitled
to or justified in their abuse of the territorial and human rights of other Asians. Furthermore,
Barnhart is careful to avoid overt statement of the brutality of the Japanese military in
imperialist “incidents.” For example, in the attack against Nanking that many scholars have
characterized as rife with atrocities, Barnhart comments that it was an “unbounded military
success;” his only concession to its putative unusual brutality is that the State Department
condemned it as “contrary to the principles of law and humanity.” Although it is perhaps
common to dehumanize an enemy in war and thus Barnhart might choose to leave discussions
of Japanese brutality to other scholars 6 because it is common to dehumanize an enemy in war,
but he could strengthen his argument for economic motivations by discussing how a feeling of
racial, national or cultural superiority played a role in justifying Japanese entitlement to control
of the lands and resources of others. Moreover, justification for such Japanese positions as the
Amau Doctrine, which claimed the Japanese right to supervise economic development of China
and barred all other nations from that right, was clearly based on more than Japanese economic
need, as it claimed Japan had a special right to control China, indicating a feeling of either
extreme paternalism or inherent superiority to China. While racist cultural myths are largely
ignored by Barnhart, racism and misperception in international diplomacy are touched on as
factors in the myriad misunderstandings that occurred between Japan and the United States. In
Japan Prepares for Total War, both Japan and the United States are characterized as often
suspecting the other side of “cunning” and “crafty” behavior, and President Roosevelt is noted
as consistently holding an “anti-Japanese” attitude. These attitudes led to irrational fears; for
example, Barnhart notes that Roosevelt feared a Japanese attack on the West Coast to the extent
that he had crabbing operations checked for the possibility that the Japanese might use them as
bases for war. Japan, too, based a number of decisions on misperceptions of the stance of the
other side; for instance, it believed for a time that the Draft Understanding was a formal United
States policy position, and thus changed its estimate of the probability of war with the United
States, leading to confidence in more aggressive behavior. Barnhart demonstrates that racism
and misunderstandings thus contributed to the policies of the time period in question, but such
a nod to the role of racism and misperception in policy is curious when his argument neglects
to explain the 7 possible of role of racism as justification for forcible economic expansion of
Japan. In conclusion, Japan Prepares for Total War is an economic history, one that serves its
stated purpose of contributing to an understanding of how Japan’s economic concerns and
inter-service rivalries contributed to bringing about the Pacific War. Discussion of Japanese
paternalism or racism in the pursuit of autarky is largely avoided by Barnhart, and this
avoidance detracts to a small extent from the explanatory power of economic vulnerability and
internal political dynamics as the causal variables in Japanese imperialism and attack on the
United States. Perhaps Barnhart is merely trying to achieve objectivity and avoid a
condemnatory tone, but in failing to question the legitimacy of Japan’s special right to control
the rest of Asia, he misses the opportunity to explain the role of the values and attitudes that
supposedly lent justification to Japan’s right to cruelly exploit its Asian neighbors. Despite this
criticism, Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941 offers
a detailed and thought provoking account of the ironies of US-Japan relations and mistakes in
the years preceding the Pacific War.
In Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941, Michael A.
Barnhart chronicles the history of Japan’s futile search for autarky in the years leading to the
Pacific War.1 In examining the vital linkage between economics and national security in this
period, Barnhart makes the argument that the perception of economic vulnerability as the main
security issue facing Japan, combined with bureaucratic politics in the form of army-navy inter-
service rivalries, led directly to both the impulse for empire in resource-rich mainland Asia and
the attack on Pearl Harbor. However, Barnhart’s history charts Japan’s search for economic
security without explaining its justification for and entitlement to seizing the resources and land
of others, often brutally so. As such, the sterility of Japan Prepares for Total War downplays
the role of racist attitudes and cultural myths in engendering the events described. Nonetheless,
with strong evidentiary support Barnhart makes a compelling case for the ascendancy of
economic considerations and bureaucratic politics as the causal factors in Japan’s attack of the
United States on December 7th, 1941. Barnhart posits that Japan’s interpretation of the lessons
of World War I drove its leaders to view autarky as the basis for grand strategic planning. After
all, Germany, possessor of a stronger military than its conquerors, had succumbed to defeat in
WWI because it lacked an industrial base able to mobilize to a degree freeing it from economic
dependence on other nations. Such dependence creates vulnerability because the dependent
nation is subject to the whims and economic pressure of those nations on which it depends.
Japan had defeated Western power Russia in the Sino-Soviet conflict 2 of 1904-1905, but its
status as a resource-poor nation caused a number of influential civilian elites and military
officers to become advocates of “total war,” or the national capacity to not only wage war with
strong military forces but with the economic capability to supply all needed war materiel. Two
essential elements were necessary for this plan to succeed in establishing autarky and thus
security: a peace of at least five years with the hegemonic United States, and natural resources
such as iron and oil. These material resources could be had on the Asian mainland, specifically
in Manchuria and subsequently in China proper. As Barnhart points out, the Japanese chose to
forcibly acquire these resources from its mainland neighbors, and this course of action brought
it into conflict with the free trade philosophy and Open Door policy of the United States.
Japan’s course to national mobilization and self-sufficiency included the creation of a puppet
state for the economic exploitation of Manchuria; Manchukuo was created in 1932 in concert
with Japan’s first long-term mobilization plan. After “rational mobilization” of the domestic
economy, Japan’s increasingly imperial interests turned to China while the military’s share of
the budget rose to 45 percent. In 1937 Japanese forces commenced what Barnhart concededly
calls the “China Incident,” in which China and its resources were claimed by Japan under the
guise of establishing a Japanese-run corporation for economic development of the region.
Barnhart adeptly points out the ironies in Japan’s fight to acquire the Chinese mainland as a
strategic resource. The original total war proponents understood the threat to security that
belligerence in China caused for Japan: the United States, in defending the Open Door policy
in China, might deny Japan the indispensable resources like 3 machine tools that it required to
achieve self-sufficiency. Additionally, Japan’s domestic economy and citizenry were greatly
strained in what Barnhart terms the “bitter mortgage” of funding the efforts of empire in China.
Barnhart therefore argues that Japan’s aggressive imperial activities on the Asian mainland
were counterproductive in its quest for autarky: they threatened the necessary peace with the
United States and came at extreme costs to the Japanese nation. Japan Prepares for Total War
also contends that bureaucratic politics, specifically the competing interests of Japan’s army
and navy, played a significant role in shaping policy and determining the sequence of events
leading to the Pacific War. In bureaucratic politics, the players in a government bargain and
compete according to their organizational interests, resulting in policy that is not the product
of a single rational decision but is instead an amalgam of the visions and choices of the players
involved.2 The army and navy in pre-WWII Japan were both strong players in compelling the
nation’s political leaders to allocate resources according to their perceived needs; Barnhart
offers a number of examples of how their economic demands for strategic resources like iron
and oil led to further pressures to expand the Japanese empire in order to acquire such goods.
Additionally, Barnhart takes the position that differing strategic conceptions of how to best
approach the Southward Advance to commandeer the Dutch and French colonies of Southeast
Asia fed a growing inter-service rivalry. This rivalry between the Imperial army and Imperial
navy overshadowed rational considerations of the diplomatic and economic ramifications of
the United States’ reaction to aggressive Japanese imperialism as a means of achieving autarky.
Barnhart documents that the navy in 4 particular instituted a practice of exchanging “more
vigorous foreign policies” for greater resource allocations of strategic materials, and he argues
that the military as a whole served as the “engine of real change” in Japanese policy with regard
to economic expansion as a means of achieving national security. The quest of each service to
outbid the other in acquisition of strategic materials therefore led to the diversion of goods and
funds from exports and the domestic economy to meet military demands. It also led to the
commercial pressures the United States somewhat ironically imposed to punish Japan for its
imperialist imposition and attempt to create a sphere of economic and political influence in
mainland Asia. Indeed, the economic measures that the United States adopted in Japan’s
interwar years to stem the flow of Japanese aggression exacerbated the international situation
because the Japanese elites in power at various points in the course to war were either unwilling
to abandon mobilization plans or unable to do so because of military pressures and demands.
The moral sanctions and embargoes on goods such as aluminum and aviation fuel became
progressively steeper as Japan sought more territory and strategic resources in Asia. Finally,
the United States decided to freeze Japanese assets, and that freeze quickly morphed into full
embargo. Barnhart makes the point that this decision reflected an unshakable belief on the part
of United States leaders that Japan could not be deterred in the Southward Advance but might
be slowed by even more drastic economic measures. He attributes the Japanese response, to
push on with the advance, to the two factors he assigns ultimate importance in determining the
outcome of the clash between the two powers: economic motivations and bureaucratic politics.
Japan’s grand strategic motivation was the pursuit of autarky, and Barnhart argues that the July
2nd decisions for how to best achieve that goal were an amalgam of the opposing viewpoints
of the army 5 and navy, resulting in decisions that were rational in that they were the only
politically possible decisions within the Japanese government of the time. Despite Barnhart’s
strengths in precisely documenting the changing economic condition of Japan in the interwar
years and how its internal political dynamics and strategy shaped its path to war, Japan Prepares
for Total War fails to address the cultural attitudes and myths that enabled its feelings of
entitlement in the region. For example, scholars such as John Dower have suggested that
cultural myths like that of Japanese descent from goddess Amaterasu Omikami were used as
the psychological motivation for mobilizing the Japanese people and justifying horrific actions
against other Asian peoples in the name of Japan’s economic interests.3 Such cultural myths
identified Japan and the Japanese people as holding a unique, predetermined status as the
chosen natural rulers of Asia by virtue of their special descent from the true gods. Barnhart
identifies the primary motivation of Japan in its imperialist pursuits as strategic resource
acquisition. While his application of economic theory has wide explanatory power in the
actions that the Japanese took in the pursuit of autarky, it does not explain why they felt entitled
to or justified in their abuse of the territorial and human rights of other Asians. Furthermore,
Barnhart is careful to avoid overt statement of the brutality of the Japanese military in
imperialist “incidents.” For example, in the attack against Nanking that many scholars have
characterized as rife with atrocities, Barnhart comments that it was an “unbounded military
success;” his only concession to its putative unusual brutality is that the State Department
condemned it as “contrary to the principles of law and humanity.” Although it is perhaps
common to dehumanize an enemy in war and thus Barnhart might choose to leave discussions
of Japanese brutality to other scholars 6 because it is common to dehumanize an enemy in war,
but he could strengthen his argument for economic motivations by discussing how a feeling of
racial, national or cultural superiority played a role in justifying Japanese entitlement to control
of the lands and resources of others. Moreover, justification for such Japanese positions as the
Amau Doctrine, which claimed the Japanese right to supervise economic development of China
and barred all other nations from that right, was clearly based on more than Japanese economic
need, as it claimed Japan had a special right to control China, indicating a feeling of either
extreme paternalism or inherent superiority to China. While racist cultural myths are largely
ignored by Barnhart, racism and misperception in international diplomacy are touched on as
factors in the myriad misunderstandings that occurred between Japan and the United States. In
Japan Prepares for Total War, both Japan and the United States are characterized as often
suspecting the other side of “cunning” and “crafty” behavior, and President Roosevelt is noted
as consistently holding an “anti-Japanese” attitude. These attitudes led to irrational fears; for
example, Barnhart notes that Roosevelt feared a Japanese attack on the West Coast to the extent
that he had crabbing operations checked for the possibility that the Japanese might use them as
bases for war. Japan, too, based a number of decisions on misperceptions of the stance of the
other side; for instance, it believed for a time that the Draft Understanding was a formal United
States policy position, and thus changed its estimate of the probability of war with the United
States, leading to confidence in more aggressive behavior. Barnhart demonstrates that racism
and misunderstandings thus contributed to the policies of the time period in question, but such
a nod to the role of racism and misperception in policy is curious when his argument neglects
to explain the 7 possible of role of racism as justification for forcible economic expansion of
Japan. In conclusion, Japan Prepares for Total War is an economic history, one that serves its
stated purpose of contributing to an understanding of how Japan’s economic concerns and
inter-service rivalries contributed to bringing about the Pacific War. Discussion of Japanese
paternalism or racism in the pursuit of autarky is largely avoided by Barnhart, and this
avoidance detracts to a small extent from the explanatory power of economic vulnerability and
internal political dynamics as the causal variables in Japanese imperialism and attack on the
United States. Perhaps Barnhart is merely trying to achieve objectivity and avoid a
condemnatory tone, but in failing to question the legitimacy of Japan’s special right to control
the rest of Asia, he misses the opportunity to explain the role of the values and attitudes that
supposedly lent justification to Japan’s right to cruelly exploit its Asian neighbors. Despite this
criticism, Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941 offers
a detailed and thought provoking account of the ironies of US-Japan relations and mistakes in
the years preceding the Pacific War.
In Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941, Michael A.
Barnhart chronicles the history of Japan’s futile search for autarky in the years leading to the
Pacific War.1 In examining the vital linkage between economics and national security in this
period, Barnhart makes the argument that the perception of economic vulnerability as the main
security issue facing Japan, combined with bureaucratic politics in the form of army-navy inter-
service rivalries, led directly to both the impulse for empire in resource-rich mainland Asia and
the attack on Pearl Harbor. However, Barnhart’s history charts Japan’s search for economic
security without explaining its justification for and entitlement to seizing the resources and land
of others, often brutally so. As such, the sterility of Japan Prepares for Total War downplays
the role of racist attitudes and cultural myths in engendering the events described. Nonetheless,
with strong evidentiary support Barnhart makes a compelling case for the ascendancy of
economic considerations and bureaucratic politics as the causal factors in Japan’s attack of the
United States on December 7th, 1941. Barnhart posits that Japan’s interpretation of the lessons
of World War I drove its leaders to view autarky as the basis for grand strategic planning. After
all, Germany, possessor of a stronger military than its conquerors, had succumbed to defeat in
WWI because it lacked an industrial base able to mobilize to a degree freeing it from economic
dependence on other nations. Such dependence creates vulnerability because the dependent
nation is subject to the whims and economic pressure of those nations on which it depends.
Japan had defeated Western power Russia in the Sino-Soviet conflict 2 of 1904-1905, but its
status as a resource-poor nation caused a number of influential civilian elites and military
officers to become advocates of “total war,” or the national capacity to not only wage war with
strong military forces but with the economic capability to supply all needed war materiel. Two
essential elements were necessary for this plan to succeed in establishing autarky and thus
security: a peace of at least five years with the hegemonic United States, and natural resources
such as iron and oil. These material resources could be had on the Asian mainland, specifically
in Manchuria and subsequently in China proper. As Barnhart points out, the Japanese chose to
forcibly acquire these resources from its mainland neighbors, and this course of action brought
it into conflict with the free trade philosophy and Open Door policy of the United States.
Japan’s course to national mobilization and self-sufficiency included the creation of a puppet
state for the economic exploitation of Manchuria; Manchukuo was created in 1932 in concert
with Japan’s first long-term mobilization plan. After “rational mobilization” of the domestic
economy, Japan’s increasingly imperial interests turned to China while the military’s share of
the budget rose to 45 percent. In 1937 Japanese forces commenced what Barnhart concededly
calls the “China Incident,” in which China and its resources were claimed by Japan under the
guise of establishing a Japanese-run corporation for economic development of the region.
Barnhart adeptly points out the ironies in Japan’s fight to acquire the Chinese mainland as a
strategic resource. The original total war proponents understood the threat to security that
belligerence in China caused for Japan: the United States, in defending the Open Door policy
in China, might deny Japan the indispensable resources like 3 machine tools that it required to
achieve self-sufficiency. Additionally, Japan’s domestic economy and citizenry were greatly
strained in what Barnhart terms the “bitter mortgage” of funding the efforts of empire in China.
Barnhart therefore argues that Japan’s aggressive imperial activities on the Asian mainland
were counterproductive in its quest for autarky: they threatened the necessary peace with the
United States and came at extreme costs to the Japanese nation. Japan Prepares for Total War
also contends that bureaucratic politics, specifically the competing interests of Japan’s army
and navy, played a significant role in shaping policy and determining the sequence of events
leading to the Pacific War. In bureaucratic politics, the players in a government bargain and
compete according to their organizational interests, resulting in policy that is not the product
of a single rational decision but is instead an amalgam of the visions and choices of the players
involved.2 The army and navy in pre-WWII Japan were both strong players in compelling the
nation’s political leaders to allocate resources according to their perceived needs; Barnhart
offers a number of examples of how their economic demands for strategic resources like iron
and oil led to further pressures to expand the Japanese empire in order to acquire such goods.
Additionally, Barnhart takes the position that differing strategic conceptions of how to best
approach the Southward Advance to commandeer the Dutch and French colonies of Southeast
Asia fed a growing inter-service rivalry. This rivalry between the Imperial army and Imperial
navy overshadowed rational considerations of the diplomatic and economic ramifications of
the United States’ reaction to aggressive Japanese imperialism as a means of achieving autarky.
Barnhart documents that the navy in 4 particular instituted a practice of exchanging “more
vigorous foreign policies” for greater resource allocations of strategic materials, and he argues
that the military as a whole served as the “engine of real change” in Japanese policy with regard
to economic expansion as a means of achieving national security. The quest of each service to
outbid the other in acquisition of strategic materials therefore led to the diversion of goods and
funds from exports and the domestic economy to meet military demands. It also led to the
commercial pressures the United States somewhat ironically imposed to punish Japan for its
imperialist imposition and attempt to create a sphere of economic and political influence in
mainland Asia. Indeed, the economic measures that the United States adopted in Japan’s
interwar years to stem the flow of Japanese aggression exacerbated the international situation
because the Japanese elites in power at various points in the course to war were either unwilling
to abandon mobilization plans or unable to do so because of military pressures and demands.
The moral sanctions and embargoes on goods such as aluminum and aviation fuel became
progressively steeper as Japan sought more territory and strategic resources in Asia. Finally,
the United States decided to freeze Japanese assets, and that freeze quickly morphed into full
embargo. Barnhart makes the point that this decision reflected an unshakable belief on the part
of United States leaders that Japan could not be deterred in the Southward Advance but might
be slowed by even more drastic economic measures. He attributes the Japanese response, to
push on with the advance, to the two factors he assigns ultimate importance in determining the
outcome of the clash between the two powers: economic motivations and bureaucratic politics.
Japan’s grand strategic motivation was the pursuit of autarky, and Barnhart argues that the July
2nd decisions for how to best achieve that goal were an amalgam of the opposing viewpoints
of the army 5 and navy, resulting in decisions that were rational in that they were the only
politically possible decisions within the Japanese government of the time. Despite Barnhart’s
strengths in precisely documenting the changing economic condition of Japan in the interwar
years and how its internal political dynamics and strategy shaped its path to war, Japan Prepares
for Total War fails to address the cultural attitudes and myths that enabled its feelings of
entitlement in the region. For example, scholars such as John Dower have suggested that
cultural myths like that of Japanese descent from goddess Amaterasu Omikami were used as
the psychological motivation for mobilizing the Japanese people and justifying horrific actions
against other Asian peoples in the name of Japan’s economic interests.3 Such cultural myths
identified Japan and the Japanese people as holding a unique, predetermined status as the
chosen natural rulers of Asia by virtue of their special descent from the true gods. Barnhart
identifies the primary motivation of Japan in its imperialist pursuits as strategic resource
acquisition. While his application of economic theory has wide explanatory power in the
actions that the Japanese took in the pursuit of autarky, it does not explain why they felt entitled
to or justified in their abuse of the territorial and human rights of other Asians. Furthermore,
Barnhart is careful to avoid overt statement of the brutality of the Japanese military in
imperialist “incidents.” For example, in the attack against Nanking that many scholars have
characterized as rife with atrocities, Barnhart comments that it was an “unbounded military
success;” his only concession to its putative unusual brutality is that the State Department
condemned it as “contrary to the principles of law and humanity.” Although it is perhaps
common to dehumanize an enemy in war and thus Barnhart might choose to leave discussions
of Japanese brutality to other scholars 6 because it is common to dehumanize an enemy in war,
but he could strengthen his argument for economic motivations by discussing how a feeling of
racial, national or cultural superiority played a role in justifying Japanese entitlement to control
of the lands and resources of others. Moreover, justification for such Japanese positions as the
Amau Doctrine, which claimed the Japanese right to supervise economic development of China
and barred all other nations from that right, was clearly based on more than Japanese economic
need, as it claimed Japan had a special right to control China, indicating a feeling of either
extreme paternalism or inherent superiority to China. While racist cultural myths are largely
ignored by Barnhart, racism and misperception in international diplomacy are touched on as
factors in the myriad misunderstandings that occurred between Japan and the United States. In
Japan Prepares for Total War, both Japan and the United States are characterized as often
suspecting the other side of “cunning” and “crafty” behavior, and President Roosevelt is noted
as consistently holding an “anti-Japanese” attitude. These attitudes led to irrational fears; for
example, Barnhart notes that Roosevelt feared a Japanese attack on the West Coast to the extent
that he had crabbing operations checked for the possibility that the Japanese might use them as
bases for war. Japan, too, based a number of decisions on misperceptions of the stance of the
other side; for instance, it believed for a time that the Draft Understanding was a formal United
States policy position, and thus changed its estimate of the probability of war with the United
States, leading to confidence in more aggressive behavior. Barnhart demonstrates that racism
and misunderstandings thus contributed to the policies of the time period in question, but such
a nod to the role of racism and misperception in policy is curious when his argument neglects
to explain the 7 possible of role of racism as justification for forcible economic expansion of
Japan. In conclusion, Japan Prepares for Total War is an economic history, one that serves its
stated purpose of contributing to an understanding of how Japan’s economic concerns and
inter-service rivalries contributed to bringing about the Pacific War. Discussion of Japanese
paternalism or racism in the pursuit of autarky is largely avoided by Barnhart, and this
avoidance detracts to a small extent from the explanatory power of economic vulnerability and
internal political dynamics as the causal variables in Japanese imperialism and attack on the
United States. Perhaps Barnhart is merely trying to achieve objectivity and avoid a
condemnatory tone, but in failing to question the legitimacy of Japan’s special right to control
the rest of Asia, he misses the opportunity to explain the role of the values and attitudes that
supposedly lent justification to Japan’s right to cruelly exploit its Asian neighbors. Despite this
criticism, Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941 offers
a detailed and thought provoking account of the ironies of US-Japan relations and mistakes in
the years preceding the Pacific War.
In Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941, Michael A.
Barnhart chronicles the history of Japan’s futile search for autarky in the years leading to the
Pacific War.1 In examining the vital linkage between economics and national security in this
period, Barnhart makes the argument that the perception of economic vulnerability as the main
security issue facing Japan, combined with bureaucratic politics in the form of army-navy inter-
service rivalries, led directly to both the impulse for empire in resource-rich mainland Asia and
the attack on Pearl Harbor. However, Barnhart’s history charts Japan’s search for economic
security without explaining its justification for and entitlement to seizing the resources and land
of others, often brutally so. As such, the sterility of Japan Prepares for Total War downplays
the role of racist attitudes and cultural myths in engendering the events described. Nonetheless,
with strong evidentiary support Barnhart makes a compelling case for the ascendancy of
economic considerations and bureaucratic politics as the causal factors in Japan’s attack of the
United States on December 7th, 1941. Barnhart posits that Japan’s interpretation of the lessons
of World War I drove its leaders to view autarky as the basis for grand strategic planning. After
all, Germany, possessor of a stronger military than its conquerors, had succumbed to defeat in
WWI because it lacked an industrial base able to mobilize to a degree freeing it from economic
dependence on other nations. Such dependence creates vulnerability because the dependent
nation is subject to the whims and economic pressure of those nations on which it depends.
Japan had defeated Western power Russia in the Sino-Soviet conflict 2 of 1904-1905, but its
status as a resource-poor nation caused a number of influential civilian elites and military
officers to become advocates of “total war,” or the national capacity to not only wage war with
strong military forces but with the economic capability to supply all needed war materiel. Two
essential elements were necessary for this plan to succeed in establishing autarky and thus
security: a peace of at least five years with the hegemonic United States, and natural resources
such as iron and oil. These material resources could be had on the Asian mainland, specifically
in Manchuria and subsequently in China proper. As Barnhart points out, the Japanese chose to
forcibly acquire these resources from its mainland neighbors, and this course of action brought
it into conflict with the free trade philosophy and Open Door policy of the United States.
Japan’s course to national mobilization and self-sufficiency included the creation of a puppet
state for the economic exploitation of Manchuria; Manchukuo was created in 1932 in concert
with Japan’s first long-term mobilization plan. After “rational mobilization” of the domestic
economy, Japan’s increasingly imperial interests turned to China while the military’s share of
the budget rose to 45 percent. In 1937 Japanese forces commenced what Barnhart concededly
calls the “China Incident,” in which China and its resources were claimed by Japan under the
guise of establishing a Japanese-run corporation for economic development of the region.
Barnhart adeptly points out the ironies in Japan’s fight to acquire the Chinese mainland as a
strategic resource. The original total war proponents understood the threat to security that
belligerence in China caused for Japan: the United States, in defending the Open Door policy
in China, might deny Japan the indispensable resources like 3 machine tools that it required to
achieve self-sufficiency. Additionally, Japan’s domestic economy and citizenry were greatly
strained in what Barnhart terms the “bitter mortgage” of funding the efforts of empire in China.
Barnhart therefore argues that Japan’s aggressive imperial activities on the Asian mainland
were counterproductive in its quest for autarky: they threatened the necessary peace with the
United States and came at extreme costs to the Japanese nation. Japan Prepares for Total War
also contends that bureaucratic politics, specifically the competing interests of Japan’s army
and navy, played a significant role in shaping policy and determining the sequence of events
leading to the Pacific War. In bureaucratic politics, the players in a government bargain and
compete according to their organizational interests, resulting in policy that is not the product
of a single rational decision but is instead an amalgam of the visions and choices of the players
involved.2 The army and navy in pre-WWII Japan were both strong players in compelling the
nation’s political leaders to allocate resources according to their perceived needs; Barnhart
offers a number of examples of how their economic demands for strategic resources like iron
and oil led to further pressures to expand the Japanese empire in order to acquire such goods.
Additionally, Barnhart takes the position that differing strategic conceptions of how to best
approach the Southward Advance to commandeer the Dutch and French colonies of Southeast
Asia fed a growing inter-service rivalry. This rivalry between the Imperial army and Imperial
navy overshadowed rational considerations of the diplomatic and economic ramifications of
the United States’ reaction to aggressive Japanese imperialism as a means of achieving autarky.
Barnhart documents that the navy in 4 particular instituted a practice of exchanging “more
vigorous foreign policies” for greater resource allocations of strategic materials, and he argues
that the military as a whole served as the “engine of real change” in Japanese policy with regard
to economic expansion as a means of achieving national security. The quest of each service to
outbid the other in acquisition of strategic materials therefore led to the diversion of goods and
funds from exports and the domestic economy to meet military demands. It also led to the
commercial pressures the United States somewhat ironically imposed to punish Japan for its
imperialist imposition and attempt to create a sphere of economic and political influence in
mainland Asia. Indeed, the economic measures that the United States adopted in Japan’s
interwar years to stem the flow of Japanese aggression exacerbated the international situation
because the Japanese elites in power at various points in the course to war were either unwilling
to abandon mobilization plans or unable to do so because of military pressures and demands.
The moral sanctions and embargoes on goods such as aluminum and aviation fuel became
progressively steeper as Japan sought more territory and strategic resources in Asia. Finally,
the United States decided to freeze Japanese assets, and that freeze quickly morphed into full
embargo. Barnhart makes the point that this decision reflected an unshakable belief on the part
of United States leaders that Japan could not be deterred in the Southward Advance but might
be slowed by even more drastic economic measures. He attributes the Japanese response, to
push on with the advance, to the two factors he assigns ultimate importance in determining the
outcome of the clash between the two powers: economic motivations and bureaucratic politics.
Japan’s grand strategic motivation was the pursuit of autarky, and Barnhart argues that the July
2nd decisions for how to best achieve that goal were an amalgam of the opposing viewpoints
of the army 5 and navy, resulting in decisions that were rational in that they were the only
politically possible decisions within the Japanese government of the time. Despite Barnhart’s
strengths in precisely documenting the changing economic condition of Japan in the interwar
years and how its internal political dynamics and strategy shaped its path to war, Japan Prepares
for Total War fails to address the cultural attitudes and myths that enabled its feelings of
entitlement in the region. For example, scholars such as John Dower have suggested that
cultural myths like that of Japanese descent from goddess Amaterasu Omikami were used as
the psychological motivation for mobilizing the Japanese people and justifying horrific actions
against other Asian peoples in the name of Japan’s economic interests.3 Such cultural myths
identified Japan and the Japanese people as holding a unique, predetermined status as the
chosen natural rulers of Asia by virtue of their special descent from the true gods. Barnhart
identifies the primary motivation of Japan in its imperialist pursuits as strategic resource
acquisition. While his application of economic theory has wide explanatory power in the
actions that the Japanese took in the pursuit of autarky, it does not explain why they felt entitled
to or justified in their abuse of the territorial and human rights of other Asians. Furthermore,
Barnhart is careful to avoid overt statement of the brutality of the Japanese military in
imperialist “incidents.” For example, in the attack against Nanking that many scholars have
characterized as rife with atrocities, Barnhart comments that it was an “unbounded military
success;” his only concession to its putative unusual brutality is that the State Department
condemned it as “contrary to the principles of law and humanity.” Although it is perhaps
common to dehumanize an enemy in war and thus Barnhart might choose to leave discussions
of Japanese brutality to other scholars 6 because it is common to dehumanize an enemy in war,
but he could strengthen his argument for economic motivations by discussing how a feeling of
racial, national or cultural superiority played a role in justifying Japanese entitlement to control
of the lands and resources of others. Moreover, justification for such Japanese positions as the
Amau Doctrine, which claimed the Japanese right to supervise economic development of China
and barred all other nations from that right, was clearly based on more than Japanese economic
need, as it claimed Japan had a special right to control China, indicating a feeling of either
extreme paternalism or inherent superiority to China. While racist cultural myths are largely
ignored by Barnhart, racism and misperception in international diplomacy are touched on as
factors in the myriad misunderstandings that occurred between Japan and the United States. In
Japan Prepares for Total War, both Japan and the United States are characterized as often
suspecting the other side of “cunning” and “crafty” behavior, and President Roosevelt is noted
as consistently holding an “anti-Japanese” attitude. These attitudes led to irrational fears; for
example, Barnhart notes that Roosevelt feared a Japanese attack on the West Coast to the extent
that he had crabbing operations checked for the possibility that the Japanese might use them as
bases for war. Japan, too, based a number of decisions on misperceptions of the stance of the
other side; for instance, it believed for a time that the Draft Understanding was a formal United
States policy position, and thus changed its estimate of the probability of war with the United
States, leading to confidence in more aggressive behavior. Barnhart demonstrates that racism
and misunderstandings thus contributed to the policies of the time period in question, but such
a nod to the role of racism and misperception in policy is curious when his argument neglects
to explain the 7 possible of role of racism as justification for forcible economic expansion of
Japan. In conclusion, Japan Prepares for Total War is an economic history, one that serves its
stated purpose of contributing to an understanding of how Japan’s economic concerns and
inter-service rivalries contributed to bringing about the Pacific War. Discussion of Japanese
paternalism or racism in the pursuit of autarky is largely avoided by Barnhart, and this
avoidance detracts to a small extent from the explanatory power of economic vulnerability and
internal political dynamics as the causal variables in Japanese imperialism and attack on the
United States. Perhaps Barnhart is merely trying to achieve objectivity and avoid a
condemnatory tone, but in failing to question the legitimacy of Japan’s special right to control
the rest of Asia, he misses the opportunity to explain the role of the values and attitudes that
supposedly lent justification to Japan’s right to cruelly exploit its Asian neighbors. Despite this
criticism, Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941 offers
a detailed and thought provoking account of the ironies of US-Japan relations and mistakes in
the years preceding the Pacific War.
In Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941, Michael A.
Barnhart chronicles the history of Japan’s futile search for autarky in the years leading to the
Pacific War.1 In examining the vital linkage between economics and national security in this
period, Barnhart makes the argument that the perception of economic vulnerability as the main
security issue facing Japan, combined with bureaucratic politics in the form of army-navy inter-
service rivalries, led directly to both the impulse for empire in resource-rich mainland Asia and
the attack on Pearl Harbor. However, Barnhart’s history charts Japan’s search for economic
security without explaining its justification for and entitlement to seizing the resources and land
of others, often brutally so. As such, the sterility of Japan Prepares for Total War downplays
the role of racist attitudes and cultural myths in engendering the events described. Nonetheless,
with strong evidentiary support Barnhart makes a compelling case for the ascendancy of
economic considerations and bureaucratic politics as the causal factors in Japan’s attack of the
United States on December 7th, 1941. Barnhart posits that Japan’s interpretation of the lessons
of World War I drove its leaders to view autarky as the basis for grand strategic planning. After
all, Germany, possessor of a stronger military than its conquerors, had succumbed to defeat in
WWI because it lacked an industrial base able to mobilize to a degree freeing it from economic
dependence on other nations. Such dependence creates vulnerability because the dependent
nation is subject to the whims and economic pressure of those nations on which it depends.
Japan had defeated Western power Russia in the Sino-Soviet conflict 2 of 1904-1905, but its
status as a resource-poor nation caused a number of influential civilian elites and military
officers to become advocates of “total war,” or the national capacity to not only wage war with
strong military forces but with the economic capability to supply all needed war materiel. Two
essential elements were necessary for this plan to succeed in establishing autarky and thus
security: a peace of at least five years with the hegemonic United States, and natural resources
such as iron and oil. These material resources could be had on the Asian mainland, specifically
in Manchuria and subsequently in China proper. As Barnhart points out, the Japanese chose to
forcibly acquire these resources from its mainland neighbors, and this course of action brought
it into conflict with the free trade philosophy and Open Door policy of the United States.
Japan’s course to national mobilization and self-sufficiency included the creation of a puppet
state for the economic exploitation of Manchuria; Manchukuo was created in 1932 in concert
with Japan’s first long-term mobilization plan. After “rational mobilization” of the domestic
economy, Japan’s increasingly imperial interests turned to China while the military’s share of
the budget rose to 45 percent. In 1937 Japanese forces commenced what Barnhart concededly
calls the “China Incident,” in which China and its resources were claimed by Japan under the
guise of establishing a Japanese-run corporation for economic development of the region.
Barnhart adeptly points out the ironies in Japan’s fight to acquire the Chinese mainland as a
strategic resource. The original total war proponents understood the threat to security that
belligerence in China caused for Japan: the United States, in defending the Open Door policy
in China, might deny Japan the indispensable resources like 3 machine tools that it required to
achieve self-sufficiency. Additionally, Japan’s domestic economy and citizenry were greatly
strained in what Barnhart terms the “bitter mortgage” of funding the efforts of empire in China.
Barnhart therefore argues that Japan’s aggressive imperial activities on the Asian mainland
were counterproductive in its quest for autarky: they threatened the necessary peace with the
United States and came at extreme costs to the Japanese nation. Japan Prepares for Total War
also contends that bureaucratic politics, specifically the competing interests of Japan’s army
and navy, played a significant role in shaping policy and determining the sequence of events
leading to the Pacific War. In bureaucratic politics, the players in a government bargain and
compete according to their organizational interests, resulting in policy that is not the product
of a single rational decision but is instead an amalgam of the visions and choices of the players
involved.2 The army and navy in pre-WWII Japan were both strong players in compelling the
nation’s political leaders to allocate resources according to their perceived needs; Barnhart
offers a number of examples of how their economic demands for strategic resources like iron
and oil led to further pressures to expand the Japanese empire in order to acquire such goods.
Additionally, Barnhart takes the position that differing strategic conceptions of how to best
approach the Southward Advance to commandeer the Dutch and French colonies of Southeast
Asia fed a growing inter-service rivalry. This rivalry between the Imperial army and Imperial
navy overshadowed rational considerations of the diplomatic and economic ramifications of
the United States’ reaction to aggressive Japanese imperialism as a means of achieving autarky.
Barnhart documents that the navy in 4 particular instituted a practice of exchanging “more
vigorous foreign policies” for greater resource allocations of strategic materials, and he argues
that the military as a whole served as the “engine of real change” in Japanese policy with regard
to economic expansion as a means of achieving national security. The quest of each service to
outbid the other in acquisition of strategic materials therefore led to the diversion of goods and
funds from exports and the domestic economy to meet military demands. It also led to the
commercial pressures the United States somewhat ironically imposed to punish Japan for its
imperialist imposition and attempt to create a sphere of economic and political influence in
mainland Asia. Indeed, the economic measures that the United States adopted in Japan’s
interwar years to stem the flow of Japanese aggression exacerbated the international situation
because the Japanese elites in power at various points in the course to war were either unwilling
to abandon mobilization plans or unable to do so because of military pressures and demands.
The moral sanctions and embargoes on goods such as aluminum and aviation fuel became
progressively steeper as Japan sought more territory and strategic resources in Asia. Finally,
the United States decided to freeze Japanese assets, and that freeze quickly morphed into full
embargo. Barnhart makes the point that this decision reflected an unshakable belief on the part
of United States leaders that Japan could not be deterred in the Southward Advance but might
be slowed by even more drastic economic measures. He attributes the Japanese response, to
push on with the advance, to the two factors he assigns ultimate importance in determining the
outcome of the clash between the two powers: economic motivations and bureaucratic politics.
Japan’s grand strategic motivation was the pursuit of autarky, and Barnhart argues that the July
2nd decisions for how to best achieve that goal were an amalgam of the opposing viewpoints
of the army 5 and navy, resulting in decisions that were rational in that they were the only
politically possible decisions within the Japanese government of the time. Despite Barnhart’s
strengths in precisely documenting the changing economic condition of Japan in the interwar
years and how its internal political dynamics and strategy shaped its path to war, Japan Prepares
for Total War fails to address the cultural attitudes and myths that enabled its feelings of
entitlement in the region. For example, scholars such as John Dower have suggested that
cultural myths like that of Japanese descent from goddess Amaterasu Omikami were used as
the psychological motivation for mobilizing the Japanese people and justifying horrific actions
against other Asian peoples in the name of Japan’s economic interests.3 Such cultural myths
identified Japan and the Japanese people as holding a unique, predetermined status as the
chosen natural rulers of Asia by virtue of their special descent from the true gods. Barnhart
identifies the primary motivation of Japan in its imperialist pursuits as strategic resource
acquisition. While his application of economic theory has wide explanatory power in the
actions that the Japanese took in the pursuit of autarky, it does not explain why they felt entitled
to or justified in their abuse of the territorial and human rights of other Asians. Furthermore,
Barnhart is careful to avoid overt statement of the brutality of the Japanese military in
imperialist “incidents.” For example, in the attack against Nanking that many scholars have
characterized as rife with atrocities, Barnhart comments that it was an “unbounded military
success;” his only concession to its putative unusual brutality is that the State Department
condemned it as “contrary to the principles of law and humanity.” Although it is perhaps
common to dehumanize an enemy in war and thus Barnhart might choose to leave discussions
of Japanese brutality to other scholars 6 because it is common to dehumanize an enemy in war,
but he could strengthen his argument for economic motivations by discussing how a feeling of
racial, national or cultural superiority played a role in justifying Japanese entitlement to control
of the lands and resources of others. Moreover, justification for such Japanese positions as the
Amau Doctrine, which claimed the Japanese right to supervise economic development of China
and barred all other nations from that right, was clearly based on more than Japanese economic
need, as it claimed Japan had a special right to control China, indicating a feeling of either
extreme paternalism or inherent superiority to China. While racist cultural myths are largely
ignored by Barnhart, racism and misperception in international diplomacy are touched on as
factors in the myriad misunderstandings that occurred between Japan and the United States. In
Japan Prepares for Total War, both Japan and the United States are characterized as often
suspecting the other side of “cunning” and “crafty” behavior, and President Roosevelt is noted
as consistently holding an “anti-Japanese” attitude. These attitudes led to irrational fears; for
example, Barnhart notes that Roosevelt feared a Japanese attack on the West Coast to the extent
that he had crabbing operations checked for the possibility that the Japanese might use them as
bases for war. Japan, too, based a number of decisions on misperceptions of the stance of the
other side; for instance, it believed for a time that the Draft Understanding was a formal United
States policy position, and thus changed its estimate of the probability of war with the United
States, leading to confidence in more aggressive behavior. Barnhart demonstrates that racism
and misunderstandings thus contributed to the policies of the time period in question, but such
a nod to the role of racism and misperception in policy is curious when his argument neglects
to explain the 7 possible of role of racism as justification for forcible economic expansion of
Japan. In conclusion, Japan Prepares for Total War is an economic history, one that serves its
stated purpose of contributing to an understanding of how Japan’s economic concerns and
inter-service rivalries contributed to bringing about the Pacific War. Discussion of Japanese
paternalism or racism in the pursuit of autarky is largely avoided by Barnhart, and this
avoidance detracts to a small extent from the explanatory power of economic vulnerability and
internal political dynamics as the causal variables in Japanese imperialism and attack on the
United States. Perhaps Barnhart is merely trying to achieve objectivity and avoid a
condemnatory tone, but in failing to question the legitimacy of Japan’s special right to control
the rest of Asia, he misses the opportunity to explain the role of the values and attitudes that
supposedly lent justification to Japan’s right to cruelly exploit its Asian neighbors. Despite this
criticism, Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941 offers
a detailed and thought provoking account of the ironies of US-Japan relations and mistakes in
the years preceding the Pacific War.
In Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941, Michael A.
Barnhart chronicles the history of Japan’s futile search for autarky in the years leading to the
Pacific War.1 In examining the vital linkage between economics and national security in this
period, Barnhart makes the argument that the perception of economic vulnerability as the main
security issue facing Japan, combined with bureaucratic politics in the form of army-navy inter-
service rivalries, led directly to both the impulse for empire in resource-rich mainland Asia and
the attack on Pearl Harbor. However, Barnhart’s history charts Japan’s search for economic
security without explaining its justification for and entitlement to seizing the resources and land
of others, often brutally so. As such, the sterility of Japan Prepares for Total War downplays
the role of racist attitudes and cultural myths in engendering the events described. Nonetheless,
with strong evidentiary support Barnhart makes a compelling case for the ascendancy of
economic considerations and bureaucratic politics as the causal factors in Japan’s attack of the
United States on December 7th, 1941. Barnhart posits that Japan’s interpretation of the lessons
of World War I drove its leaders to view autarky as the basis for grand strategic planning. After
all, Germany, possessor of a stronger military than its conquerors, had succumbed to defeat in
WWI because it lacked an industrial base able to mobilize to a degree freeing it from economic
dependence on other nations. Such dependence creates vulnerability because the dependent
nation is subject to the whims and economic pressure of those nations on which it depends.
Japan had defeated Western power Russia in the Sino-Soviet conflict 2 of 1904-1905, but its
status as a resource-poor nation caused a number of influential civilian elites and military
officers to become advocates of “total war,” or the national capacity to not only wage war with
strong military forces but with the economic capability to supply all needed war materiel. Two
essential elements were necessary for this plan to succeed in establishing autarky and thus
security: a peace of at least five years with the hegemonic United States, and natural resources
such as iron and oil. These material resources could be had on the Asian mainland, specifically
in Manchuria and subsequently in China proper. As Barnhart points out, the Japanese chose to
forcibly acquire these resources from its mainland neighbors, and this course of action brought
it into conflict with the free trade philosophy and Open Door policy of the United States.
Japan’s course to national mobilization and self-sufficiency included the creation of a puppet
state for the economic exploitation of Manchuria; Manchukuo was created in 1932 in concert
with Japan’s first long-term mobilization plan. After “rational mobilization” of the domestic
economy, Japan’s increasingly imperial interests turned to China while the military’s share of
the budget rose to 45 percent. In 1937 Japanese forces commenced what Barnhart concededly
calls the “China Incident,” in which China and its resources were claimed by Japan under the
guise of establishing a Japanese-run corporation for economic development of the region.
Barnhart adeptly points out the ironies in Japan’s fight to acquire the Chinese mainland as a
strategic resource. The original total war proponents understood the threat to security that
belligerence in China caused for Japan: the United States, in defending the Open Door policy
in China, might deny Japan the indispensable resources like 3 machine tools that it required to
achieve self-sufficiency. Additionally, Japan’s domestic economy and citizenry were greatly
strained in what Barnhart terms the “bitter mortgage” of funding the efforts of empire in China.
Barnhart therefore argues that Japan’s aggressive imperial activities on the Asian mainland
were counterproductive in its quest for autarky: they threatened the necessary peace with the
United States and came at extreme costs to the Japanese nation. Japan Prepares for Total War
also contends that bureaucratic politics, specifically the competing interests of Japan’s army
and navy, played a significant role in shaping policy and determining the sequence of events
leading to the Pacific War. In bureaucratic politics, the players in a government bargain and
compete according to their organizational interests, resulting in policy that is not the product
of a single rational decision but is instead an amalgam of the visions and choices of the players
involved.2 The army and navy in pre-WWII Japan were both strong players in compelling the
nation’s political leaders to allocate resources according to their perceived needs; Barnhart
offers a number of examples of how their economic demands for strategic resources like iron
and oil led to further pressures to expand the Japanese empire in order to acquire such goods.
Additionally, Barnhart takes the position that differing strategic conceptions of how to best
approach the Southward Advance to commandeer the Dutch and French colonies of Southeast
Asia fed a growing inter-service rivalry. This rivalry between the Imperial army and Imperial
navy overshadowed rational considerations of the diplomatic and economic ramifications of
the United States’ reaction to aggressive Japanese imperialism as a means of achieving autarky.
Barnhart documents that the navy in 4 particular instituted a practice of exchanging “more
vigorous foreign policies” for greater resource allocations of strategic materials, and he argues
that the military as a whole served as the “engine of real change” in Japanese policy with regard
to economic expansion as a means of achieving national security. The quest of each service to
outbid the other in acquisition of strategic materials therefore led to the diversion of goods and
funds from exports and the domestic economy to meet military demands. It also led to the
commercial pressures the United States somewhat ironically imposed to punish Japan for its
imperialist imposition and attempt to create a sphere of economic and political influence in
mainland Asia. Indeed, the economic measures that the United States adopted in Japan’s
interwar years to stem the flow of Japanese aggression exacerbated the international situation
because the Japanese elites in power at various points in the course to war were either unwilling
to abandon mobilization plans or unable to do so because of military pressures and demands.
The moral sanctions and embargoes on goods such as aluminum and aviation fuel became
progressively steeper as Japan sought more territory and strategic resources in Asia. Finally,
the United States decided to freeze Japanese assets, and that freeze quickly morphed into full
embargo. Barnhart makes the point that this decision reflected an unshakable belief on the part
of United States leaders that Japan could not be deterred in the Southward Advance but might
be slowed by even more drastic economic measures. He attributes the Japanese response, to
push on with the advance, to the two factors he assigns ultimate importance in determining the
outcome of the clash between the two powers: economic motivations and bureaucratic politics.
Japan’s grand strategic motivation was the pursuit of autarky, and Barnhart argues that the July
2nd decisions for how to best achieve that goal were an amalgam of the opposing viewpoints
of the army 5 and navy, resulting in decisions that were rational in that they were the only
politically possible decisions within the Japanese government of the time. Despite Barnhart’s
strengths in precisely documenting the changing economic condition of Japan in the interwar
years and how its internal political dynamics and strategy shaped its path to war, Japan Prepares
for Total War fails to address the cultural attitudes and myths that enabled its feelings of
entitlement in the region. For example, scholars such as John Dower have suggested that
cultural myths like that of Japanese descent from goddess Amaterasu Omikami were used as
the psychological motivation for mobilizing the Japanese people and justifying horrific actions
against other Asian peoples in the name of Japan’s economic interests.3 Such cultural myths
identified Japan and the Japanese people as holding a unique, predetermined status as the
chosen natural rulers of Asia by virtue of their special descent from the true gods. Barnhart
identifies the primary motivation of Japan in its imperialist pursuits as strategic resource
acquisition. While his application of economic theory has wide explanatory power in the
actions that the Japanese took in the pursuit of autarky, it does not explain why they felt entitled
to or justified in their abuse of the territorial and human rights of other Asians. Furthermore,
Barnhart is careful to avoid overt statement of the brutality of the Japanese military in
imperialist “incidents.” For example, in the attack against Nanking that many scholars have
characterized as rife with atrocities, Barnhart comments that it was an “unbounded military
success;” his only concession to its putative unusual brutality is that the State Department
condemned it as “contrary to the principles of law and humanity.” Although it is perhaps
common to dehumanize an enemy in war and thus Barnhart might choose to leave discussions
of Japanese brutality to other scholars 6 because it is common to dehumanize an enemy in war,
but he could strengthen his argument for economic motivations by discussing how a feeling of
racial, national or cultural superiority played a role in justifying Japanese entitlement to control
of the lands and resources of others. Moreover, justification for such Japanese positions as the
Amau Doctrine, which claimed the Japanese right to supervise economic development of China
and barred all other nations from that right, was clearly based on more than Japanese economic
need, as it claimed Japan had a special right to control China, indicating a feeling of either
extreme paternalism or inherent superiority to China. While racist cultural myths are largely
ignored by Barnhart, racism and misperception in international diplomacy are touched on as
factors in the myriad misunderstandings that occurred between Japan and the United States. In
Japan Prepares for Total War, both Japan and the United States are characterized as often
suspecting the other side of “cunning” and “crafty” behavior, and President Roosevelt is noted
as consistently holding an “anti-Japanese” attitude. These attitudes led to irrational fears; for
example, Barnhart notes that Roosevelt feared a Japanese attack on the West Coast to the extent
that he had crabbing operations checked for the possibility that the Japanese might use them as
bases for war. Japan, too, based a number of decisions on misperceptions of the stance of the
other side; for instance, it believed for a time that the Draft Understanding was a formal United
States policy position, and thus changed its estimate of the probability of war with the United
States, leading to confidence in more aggressive behavior. Barnhart demonstrates that racism
and misunderstandings thus contributed to the policies of the time period in question, but such
a nod to the role of racism and misperception in policy is curious when his argument neglects
to explain the 7 possible of role of racism as justification for forcible economic expansion of
Japan. In conclusion, Japan Prepares for Total War is an economic history, one that serves its
stated purpose of contributing to an understanding of how Japan’s economic concerns and
inter-service rivalries contributed to bringing about the Pacific War. Discussion of Japanese
paternalism or racism in the pursuit of autarky is largely avoided by Barnhart, and this
avoidance detracts to a small extent from the explanatory power of economic vulnerability and
internal political dynamics as the causal variables in Japanese imperialism and attack on the
United States. Perhaps Barnhart is merely trying to achieve objectivity and avoid a
condemnatory tone, but in failing to question the legitimacy of Japan’s special right to control
the rest of Asia, he misses the opportunity to explain the role of the values and attitudes that
supposedly lent justification to Japan’s right to cruelly exploit its Asian neighbors. Despite this
criticism, Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941 offers
a detailed and thought provoking account of the ironies of US-Japan relations and mistakes in
the years preceding the Pacific War.
In Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941, Michael A.
Barnhart chronicles the history of Japan’s futile search for autarky in the years leading to the
Pacific War.1 In examining the vital linkage between economics and national security in this
period, Barnhart makes the argument that the perception of economic vulnerability as the main
security issue facing Japan, combined with bureaucratic politics in the form of army-navy inter-
service rivalries, led directly to both the impulse for empire in resource-rich mainland Asia and
the attack on Pearl Harbor. However, Barnhart’s history charts Japan’s search for economic
security without explaining its justification for and entitlement to seizing the resources and land
of others, often brutally so. As such, the sterility of Japan Prepares for Total War downplays
the role of racist attitudes and cultural myths in engendering the events described. Nonetheless,
with strong evidentiary support Barnhart makes a compelling case for the ascendancy of
economic considerations and bureaucratic politics as the causal factors in Japan’s attack of the
United States on December 7th, 1941. Barnhart posits that Japan’s interpretation of the lessons
of World War I drove its leaders to view autarky as the basis for grand strategic planning. After
all, Germany, possessor of a stronger military than its conquerors, had succumbed to defeat in
WWI because it lacked an industrial base able to mobilize to a degree freeing it from economic
dependence on other nations. Such dependence creates vulnerability because the dependent
nation is subject to the whims and economic pressure of those nations on which it depends.
Japan had defeated Western power Russia in the Sino-Soviet conflict 2 of 1904-1905, but its
status as a resource-poor nation caused a number of influential civilian elites and military
officers to become advocates of “total war,” or the national capacity to not only wage war with
strong military forces but with the economic capability to supply all needed war materiel. Two
essential elements were necessary for this plan to succeed in establishing autarky and thus
security: a peace of at least five years with the hegemonic United States, and natural resources
such as iron and oil. These material resources could be had on the Asian mainland, specifically
in Manchuria and subsequently in China proper. As Barnhart points out, the Japanese chose to
forcibly acquire these resources from its mainland neighbors, and this course of action brought
it into conflict with the free trade philosophy and Open Door policy of the United States.
Japan’s course to national mobilization and self-sufficiency included the creation of a puppet
state for the economic exploitation of Manchuria; Manchukuo was created in 1932 in concert
with Japan’s first long-term mobilization plan. After “rational mobilization” of the domestic
economy, Japan’s increasingly imperial interests turned to China while the military’s share of
the budget rose to 45 percent. In 1937 Japanese forces commenced what Barnhart concededly
calls the “China Incident,” in which China and its resources were claimed by Japan under the
guise of establishing a Japanese-run corporation for economic development of the region.
Barnhart adeptly points out the ironies in Japan’s fight to acquire the Chinese mainland as a
strategic resource. The original total war proponents understood the threat to security that
belligerence in China caused for Japan: the United States, in defending the Open Door policy
in China, might deny Japan the indispensable resources like 3 machine tools that it required to
achieve self-sufficiency. Additionally, Japan’s domestic economy and citizenry were greatly
strained in what Barnhart terms the “bitter mortgage” of funding the efforts of empire in China.
Barnhart therefore argues that Japan’s aggressive imperial activities on the Asian mainland
were counterproductive in its quest for autarky: they threatened the necessary peace with the
United States and came at extreme costs to the Japanese nation. Japan Prepares for Total War
also contends that bureaucratic politics, specifically the competing interests of Japan’s army
and navy, played a significant role in shaping policy and determining the sequence of events
leading to the Pacific War. In bureaucratic politics, the players in a government bargain and
compete according to their organizational interests, resulting in policy that is not the product
of a single rational decision but is instead an amalgam of the visions and choices of the players
involved.2 The army and navy in pre-WWII Japan were both strong players in compelling the
nation’s political leaders to allocate resources according to their perceived needs; Barnhart
offers a number of examples of how their economic demands for strategic resources like iron
and oil led to further pressures to expand the Japanese empire in order to acquire such goods.
Additionally, Barnhart takes the position that differing strategic conceptions of how to best
approach the Southward Advance to commandeer the Dutch and French colonies of Southeast
Asia fed a growing inter-service rivalry. This rivalry between the Imperial army and Imperial
navy overshadowed rational considerations of the diplomatic and economic ramifications of
the United States’ reaction to aggressive Japanese imperialism as a means of achieving autarky.
Barnhart documents that the navy in 4 particular instituted a practice of exchanging “more
vigorous foreign policies” for greater resource allocations of strategic materials, and he argues
that the military as a whole served as the “engine of real change” in Japanese policy with regard
to economic expansion as a means of achieving national security. The quest of each service to
outbid the other in acquisition of strategic materials therefore led to the diversion of goods and
funds from exports and the domestic economy to meet military demands. It also led to the
commercial pressures the United States somewhat ironically imposed to punish Japan for its
imperialist imposition and attempt to create a sphere of economic and political influence in
mainland Asia. Indeed, the economic measures that the United States adopted in Japan’s
interwar years to stem the flow of Japanese aggression exacerbated the international situation
because the Japanese elites in power at various points in the course to war were either unwilling
to abandon mobilization plans or unable to do so because of military pressures and demands.
The moral sanctions and embargoes on goods such as aluminum and aviation fuel became
progressively steeper as Japan sought more territory and strategic resources in Asia. Finally,
the United States decided to freeze Japanese assets, and that freeze quickly morphed into full
embargo. Barnhart makes the point that this decision reflected an unshakable belief on the part
of United States leaders that Japan could not be deterred in the Southward Advance but might
be slowed by even more drastic economic measures. He attributes the Japanese response, to
push on with the advance, to the two factors he assigns ultimate importance in determining the
outcome of the clash between the two powers: economic motivations and bureaucratic politics.
Japan’s grand strategic motivation was the pursuit of autarky, and Barnhart argues that the July
2nd decisions for how to best achieve that goal were an amalgam of the opposing viewpoints
of the army 5 and navy, resulting in decisions that were rational in that they were the only
politically possible decisions within the Japanese government of the time. Despite Barnhart’s
strengths in precisely documenting the changing economic condition of Japan in the interwar
years and how its internal political dynamics and strategy shaped its path to war, Japan Prepares
for Total War fails to address the cultural attitudes and myths that enabled its feelings of
entitlement in the region. For example, scholars such as John Dower have suggested that
cultural myths like that of Japanese descent from goddess Amaterasu Omikami were used as
the psychological motivation for mobilizing the Japanese people and justifying horrific actions
against other Asian peoples in the name of Japan’s economic interests.3 Such cultural myths
identified Japan and the Japanese people as holding a unique, predetermined status as the
chosen natural rulers of Asia by virtue of their special descent from the true gods. Barnhart
identifies the primary motivation of Japan in its imperialist pursuits as strategic resource
acquisition. While his application of economic theory has wide explanatory power in the
actions that the Japanese took in the pursuit of autarky, it does not explain why they felt entitled
to or justified in their abuse of the territorial and human rights of other Asians. Furthermore,
Barnhart is careful to avoid overt statement of the brutality of the Japanese military in
imperialist “incidents.” For example, in the attack against Nanking that many scholars have
characterized as rife with atrocities, Barnhart comments that it was an “unbounded military
success;” his only concession to its putative unusual brutality is that the State Department
condemned it as “contrary to the principles of law and humanity.” Although it is perhaps
common to dehumanize an enemy in war and thus Barnhart might choose to leave discussions
of Japanese brutality to other scholars 6 because it is common to dehumanize an enemy in war,
but he could strengthen his argument for economic motivations by discussing how a feeling of
racial, national or cultural superiority played a role in justifying Japanese entitlement to control
of the lands and resources of others. Moreover, justification for such Japanese positions as the
Amau Doctrine, which claimed the Japanese right to supervise economic development of China
and barred all other nations from that right, was clearly based on more than Japanese economic
need, as it claimed Japan had a special right to control China, indicating a feeling of either
extreme paternalism or inherent superiority to China. While racist cultural myths are largely
ignored by Barnhart, racism and misperception in international diplomacy are touched on as
factors in the myriad misunderstandings that occurred between Japan and the United States. In
Japan Prepares for Total War, both Japan and the United States are characterized as often
suspecting the other side of “cunning” and “crafty” behavior, and President Roosevelt is noted
as consistently holding an “anti-Japanese” attitude. These attitudes led to irrational fears; for
example, Barnhart notes that Roosevelt feared a Japanese attack on the West Coast to the extent
that he had crabbing operations checked for the possibility that the Japanese might use them as
bases for war. Japan, too, based a number of decisions on misperceptions of the stance of the
other side; for instance, it believed for a time that the Draft Understanding was a formal United
States policy position, and thus changed its estimate of the probability of war with the United
States, leading to confidence in more aggressive behavior. Barnhart demonstrates that racism
and misunderstandings thus contributed to the policies of the time period in question, but such
a nod to the role of racism and misperception in policy is curious when his argument neglects
to explain the 7 possible of role of racism as justification for forcible economic expansion of
Japan. In conclusion, Japan Prepares for Total War is an economic history, one that serves its
stated purpose of contributing to an understanding of how Japan’s economic concerns and
inter-service rivalries contributed to bringing about the Pacific War. Discussion of Japanese
paternalism or racism in the pursuit of autarky is largely avoided by Barnhart, and this
avoidance detracts to a small extent from the explanatory power of economic vulnerability and
internal political dynamics as the causal variables in Japanese imperialism and attack on the
United States. Perhaps Barnhart is merely trying to achieve objectivity and avoid a
condemnatory tone, but in failing to question the legitimacy of Japan’s special right to control
the rest of Asia, he misses the opportunity to explain the role of the values and attitudes that
supposedly lent justification to Japan’s right to cruelly exploit its Asian neighbors. Despite this
criticism, Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941 offers
a detailed and thought provoking account of the ironies of US-Japan relations and mistakes in
the years preceding the Pacific War.
In Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941, Michael A.
Barnhart chronicles the history of Japan’s futile search for autarky in the years leading to the
Pacific War.1 In examining the vital linkage between economics and national security in this
period, Barnhart makes the argument that the perception of economic vulnerability as the main
security issue facing Japan, combined with bureaucratic politics in the form of army-navy inter-
service rivalries, led directly to both the impulse for empire in resource-rich mainland Asia and
the attack on Pearl Harbor. However, Barnhart’s history charts Japan’s search for economic
security without explaining its justification for and entitlement to seizing the resources and land
of others, often brutally so. As such, the sterility of Japan Prepares for Total War downplays
the role of racist attitudes and cultural myths in engendering the events described. Nonetheless,
with strong evidentiary support Barnhart makes a compelling case for the ascendancy of
economic considerations and bureaucratic politics as the causal factors in Japan’s attack of the
United States on December 7th, 1941. Barnhart posits that Japan’s interpretation of the lessons
of World War I drove its leaders to view autarky as the basis for grand strategic planning. After
all, Germany, possessor of a stronger military than its conquerors, had succumbed to defeat in
WWI because it lacked an industrial base able to mobilize to a degree freeing it from economic
dependence on other nations. Such dependence creates vulnerability because the dependent
nation is subject to the whims and economic pressure of those nations on which it depends.
Japan had defeated Western power Russia in the Sino-Soviet conflict 2 of 1904-1905, but its
status as a resource-poor nation caused a number of influential civilian elites and military
officers to become advocates of “total war,” or the national capacity to not only wage war with
strong military forces but with the economic capability to supply all needed war materiel. Two
essential elements were necessary for this plan to succeed in establishing autarky and thus
security: a peace of at least five years with the hegemonic United States, and natural resources
such as iron and oil. These material resources could be had on the Asian mainland, specifically
in Manchuria and subsequently in China proper. As Barnhart points out, the Japanese chose to
forcibly acquire these resources from its mainland neighbors, and this course of action brought
it into conflict with the free trade philosophy and Open Door policy of the United States.
Japan’s course to national mobilization and self-sufficiency included the creation of a puppet
state for the economic exploitation of Manchuria; Manchukuo was created in 1932 in concert
with Japan’s first long-term mobilization plan. After “rational mobilization” of the domestic
economy, Japan’s increasingly imperial interests turned to China while the military’s share of
the budget rose to 45 percent. In 1937 Japanese forces commenced what Barnhart concededly
calls the “China Incident,” in which China and its resources were claimed by Japan under the
guise of establishing a Japanese-run corporation for economic development of the region.
Barnhart adeptly points out the ironies in Japan’s fight to acquire the Chinese mainland as a
strategic resource. The original total war proponents understood the threat to security that
belligerence in China caused for Japan: the United States, in defending the Open Door policy
in China, might deny Japan the indispensable resources like 3 machine tools that it required to
achieve self-sufficiency. Additionally, Japan’s domestic economy and citizenry were greatly
strained in what Barnhart terms the “bitter mortgage” of funding the efforts of empire in China.
Barnhart therefore argues that Japan’s aggressive imperial activities on the Asian mainland
were counterproductive in its quest for autarky: they threatened the necessary peace with the
United States and came at extreme costs to the Japanese nation. Japan Prepares for Total War
also contends that bureaucratic politics, specifically the competing interests of Japan’s army
and navy, played a significant role in shaping policy and determining the sequence of events
leading to the Pacific War. In bureaucratic politics, the players in a government bargain and
compete according to their organizational interests, resulting in policy that is not the product
of a single rational decision but is instead an amalgam of the visions and choices of the players
involved.2 The army and navy in pre-WWII Japan were both strong players in compelling the
nation’s political leaders to allocate resources according to their perceived needs; Barnhart
offers a number of examples of how their economic demands for strategic resources like iron
and oil led to further pressures to expand the Japanese empire in order to acquire such goods.
Additionally, Barnhart takes the position that differing strategic conceptions of how to best
approach the Southward Advance to commandeer the Dutch and French colonies of Southeast
Asia fed a growing inter-service rivalry. This rivalry between the Imperial army and Imperial
navy overshadowed rational considerations of the diplomatic and economic ramifications of
the United States’ reaction to aggressive Japanese imperialism as a means of achieving autarky.
Barnhart documents that the navy in 4 particular instituted a practice of exchanging “more
vigorous foreign policies” for greater resource allocations of strategic materials, and he argues
that the military as a whole served as the “engine of real change” in Japanese policy with regard
to economic expansion as a means of achieving national security. The quest of each service to
outbid the other in acquisition of strategic materials therefore led to the diversion of goods and
funds from exports and the domestic economy to meet military demands. It also led to the
commercial pressures the United States somewhat ironically imposed to punish Japan for its
imperialist imposition and attempt to create a sphere of economic and political influence in
mainland Asia. Indeed, the economic measures that the United States adopted in Japan’s
interwar years to stem the flow of Japanese aggression exacerbated the international situation
because the Japanese elites in power at various points in the course to war were either unwilling
to abandon mobilization plans or unable to do so because of military pressures and demands.
The moral sanctions and embargoes on goods such as aluminum and aviation fuel became
progressively steeper as Japan sought more territory and strategic resources in Asia. Finally,
the United States decided to freeze Japanese assets, and that freeze quickly morphed into full
embargo. Barnhart makes the point that this decision reflected an unshakable belief on the part
of United States leaders that Japan could not be deterred in the Southward Advance but might
be slowed by even more drastic economic measures. He attributes the Japanese response, to
push on with the advance, to the two factors he assigns ultimate importance in determining the
outcome of the clash between the two powers: economic motivations and bureaucratic politics.
Japan’s grand strategic motivation was the pursuit of autarky, and Barnhart argues that the July
2nd decisions for how to best achieve that goal were an amalgam of the opposing viewpoints
of the army 5 and navy, resulting in decisions that were rational in that they were the only
politically possible decisions within the Japanese government of the time. Despite Barnhart’s
strengths in precisely documenting the changing economic condition of Japan in the interwar
years and how its internal political dynamics and strategy shaped its path to war, Japan Prepares
for Total War fails to address the cultural attitudes and myths that enabled its feelings of
entitlement in the region. For example, scholars such as John Dower have suggested that
cultural myths like that of Japanese descent from goddess Amaterasu Omikami were used as
the psychological motivation for mobilizing the Japanese people and justifying horrific actions
against other Asian peoples in the name of Japan’s economic interests.3 Such cultural myths
identified Japan and the Japanese people as holding a unique, predetermined status as the
chosen natural rulers of Asia by virtue of their special descent from the true gods. Barnhart
identifies the primary motivation of Japan in its imperialist pursuits as strategic resource
acquisition. While his application of economic theory has wide explanatory power in the
actions that the Japanese took in the pursuit of autarky, it does not explain why they felt entitled
to or justified in their abuse of the territorial and human rights of other Asians. Furthermore,
Barnhart is careful to avoid overt statement of the brutality of the Japanese military in
imperialist “incidents.” For example, in the attack against Nanking that many scholars have
characterized as rife with atrocities, Barnhart comments that it was an “unbounded military
success;” his only concession to its putative unusual brutality is that the State Department
condemned it as “contrary to the principles of law and humanity.” Although it is perhaps
common to dehumanize an enemy in war and thus Barnhart might choose to leave discussions
of Japanese brutality to other scholars 6 because it is common to dehumanize an enemy in war,
but he could strengthen his argument for economic motivations by discussing how a feeling of
racial, national or cultural superiority played a role in justifying Japanese entitlement to control
of the lands and resources of others. Moreover, justification for such Japanese positions as the
Amau Doctrine, which claimed the Japanese right to supervise economic development of China
and barred all other nations from that right, was clearly based on more than Japanese economic
need, as it claimed Japan had a special right to control China, indicating a feeling of either
extreme paternalism or inherent superiority to China. While racist cultural myths are largely
ignored by Barnhart, racism and misperception in international diplomacy are touched on as
factors in the myriad misunderstandings that occurred between Japan and the United States. In
Japan Prepares for Total War, both Japan and the United States are characterized as often
suspecting the other side of “cunning” and “crafty” behavior, and President Roosevelt is noted
as consistently holding an “anti-Japanese” attitude. These attitudes led to irrational fears; for
example, Barnhart notes that Roosevelt feared a Japanese attack on the West Coast to the extent
that he had crabbing operations checked for the possibility that the Japanese might use them as
bases for war. Japan, too, based a number of decisions on misperceptions of the stance of the
other side; for instance, it believed for a time that the Draft Understanding was a formal United
States policy position, and thus changed its estimate of the probability of war with the United
States, leading to confidence in more aggressive behavior. Barnhart demonstrates that racism
and misunderstandings thus contributed to the policies of the time period in question, but such
a nod to the role of racism and misperception in policy is curious when his argument neglects
to explain the 7 possible of role of racism as justification for forcible economic expansion of
Japan. In conclusion, Japan Prepares for Total War is an economic history, one that serves its
stated purpose of contributing to an understanding of how Japan’s economic concerns and
inter-service rivalries contributed to bringing about the Pacific War. Discussion of Japanese
paternalism or racism in the pursuit of autarky is largely avoided by Barnhart, and this
avoidance detracts to a small extent from the explanatory power of economic vulnerability and
internal political dynamics as the causal variables in Japanese imperialism and attack on the
United States. Perhaps Barnhart is merely trying to achieve objectivity and avoid a
condemnatory tone, but in failing to question the legitimacy of Japan’s special right to control
the rest of Asia, he misses the opportunity to explain the role of the values and attitudes that
supposedly lent justification to Japan’s right to cruelly exploit its Asian neighbors. Despite this
criticism, Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941 offers
a detailed and thought provoking account of the ironies of US-Japan relations and mistakes in
the years preceding the Pacific War.
In Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941, Michael A.
Barnhart chronicles the history of Japan’s futile search for autarky in the years leading to the
Pacific War.1 In examining the vital linkage between economics and national security in this
period, Barnhart makes the argument that the perception of economic vulnerability as the main
security issue facing Japan, combined with bureaucratic politics in the form of army-navy inter-
service rivalries, led directly to both the impulse for empire in resource-rich mainland Asia and
the attack on Pearl Harbor. However, Barnhart’s history charts Japan’s search for economic
security without explaining its justification for and entitlement to seizing the resources and land
of others, often brutally so. As such, the sterility of Japan Prepares for Total War downplays
the role of racist attitudes and cultural myths in engendering the events described. Nonetheless,
with strong evidentiary support Barnhart makes a compelling case for the ascendancy of
economic considerations and bureaucratic politics as the causal factors in Japan’s attack of the
United States on December 7th, 1941. Barnhart posits that Japan’s interpretation of the lessons
of World War I drove its leaders to view autarky as the basis for grand strategic planning. After
all, Germany, possessor of a stronger military than its conquerors, had succumbed to defeat in
WWI because it lacked an industrial base able to mobilize to a degree freeing it from economic
dependence on other nations. Such dependence creates vulnerability because the dependent
nation is subject to the whims and economic pressure of those nations on which it depends.
Japan had defeated Western power Russia in the Sino-Soviet conflict 2 of 1904-1905, but its
status as a resource-poor nation caused a number of influential civilian elites and military
officers to become advocates of “total war,” or the national capacity to not only wage war with
strong military forces but with the economic capability to supply all needed war materiel. Two
essential elements were necessary for this plan to succeed in establishing autarky and thus
security: a peace of at least five years with the hegemonic United States, and natural resources
such as iron and oil. These material resources could be had on the Asian mainland, specifically
in Manchuria and subsequently in China proper. As Barnhart points out, the Japanese chose to
forcibly acquire these resources from its mainland neighbors, and this course of action brought
it into conflict with the free trade philosophy and Open Door policy of the United States.
Japan’s course to national mobilization and self-sufficiency included the creation of a puppet
state for the economic exploitation of Manchuria; Manchukuo was created in 1932 in concert
with Japan’s first long-term mobilization plan. After “rational mobilization” of the domestic
economy, Japan’s increasingly imperial interests turned to China while the military’s share of
the budget rose to 45 percent. In 1937 Japanese forces commenced what Barnhart concededly
calls the “China Incident,” in which China and its resources were claimed by Japan under the
guise of establishing a Japanese-run corporation for economic development of the region.
Barnhart adeptly points out the ironies in Japan’s fight to acquire the Chinese mainland as a
strategic resource. The original total war proponents understood the threat to security that
belligerence in China caused for Japan: the United States, in defending the Open Door policy
in China, might deny Japan the indispensable resources like 3 machine tools that it required to
achieve self-sufficiency. Additionally, Japan’s domestic economy and citizenry were greatly
strained in what Barnhart terms the “bitter mortgage” of funding the efforts of empire in China.
Barnhart therefore argues that Japan’s aggressive imperial activities on the Asian mainland
were counterproductive in its quest for autarky: they threatened the necessary peace with the
United States and came at extreme costs to the Japanese nation. Japan Prepares for Total War
also contends that bureaucratic politics, specifically the competing interests of Japan’s army
and navy, played a significant role in shaping policy and determining the sequence of events
leading to the Pacific War. In bureaucratic politics, the players in a government bargain and
compete according to their organizational interests, resulting in policy that is not the product
of a single rational decision but is instead an amalgam of the visions and choices of the players
involved.2 The army and navy in pre-WWII Japan were both strong players in compelling the
nation’s political leaders to allocate resources according to their perceived needs; Barnhart
offers a number of examples of how their economic demands for strategic resources like iron
and oil led to further pressures to expand the Japanese empire in order to acquire such goods.
Additionally, Barnhart takes the position that differing strategic conceptions of how to best
approach the Southward Advance to commandeer the Dutch and French colonies of Southeast
Asia fed a growing inter-service rivalry. This rivalry between the Imperial army and Imperial
navy overshadowed rational considerations of the diplomatic and economic ramifications of
the United States’ reaction to aggressive Japanese imperialism as a means of achieving autarky.
Barnhart documents that the navy in 4 particular instituted a practice of exchanging “more
vigorous foreign policies” for greater resource allocations of strategic materials, and he argues
that the military as a whole served as the “engine of real change” in Japanese policy with regard
to economic expansion as a means of achieving national security. The quest of each service to
outbid the other in acquisition of strategic materials therefore led to the diversion of goods and
funds from exports and the domestic economy to meet military demands. It also led to the
commercial pressures the United States somewhat ironically imposed to punish Japan for its
imperialist imposition and attempt to create a sphere of economic and political influence in
mainland Asia. Indeed, the economic measures that the United States adopted in Japan’s
interwar years to stem the flow of Japanese aggression exacerbated the international situation
because the Japanese elites in power at various points in the course to war were either unwilling
to abandon mobilization plans or unable to do so because of military pressures and demands.
The moral sanctions and embargoes on goods such as aluminum and aviation fuel became
progressively steeper as Japan sought more territory and strategic resources in Asia. Finally,
the United States decided to freeze Japanese assets, and that freeze quickly morphed into full
embargo. Barnhart makes the point that this decision reflected an unshakable belief on the part
of United States leaders that Japan could not be deterred in the Southward Advance but might
be slowed by even more drastic economic measures. He attributes the Japanese response, to
push on with the advance, to the two factors he assigns ultimate importance in determining the
outcome of the clash between the two powers: economic motivations and bureaucratic politics.
Japan’s grand strategic motivation was the pursuit of autarky, and Barnhart argues that the July
2nd decisions for how to best achieve that goal were an amalgam of the opposing viewpoints
of the army 5 and navy, resulting in decisions that were rational in that they were the only
politically possible decisions within the Japanese government of the time. Despite Barnhart’s
strengths in precisely documenting the changing economic condition of Japan in the interwar
years and how its internal political dynamics and strategy shaped its path to war, Japan Prepares
for Total War fails to address the cultural attitudes and myths that enabled its feelings of
entitlement in the region. For example, scholars such as John Dower have suggested that
cultural myths like that of Japanese descent from goddess Amaterasu Omikami were used as
the psychological motivation for mobilizing the Japanese people and justifying horrific actions
against other Asian peoples in the name of Japan’s economic interests.3 Such cultural myths
identified Japan and the Japanese people as holding a unique, predetermined status as the
chosen natural rulers of Asia by virtue of their special descent from the true gods. Barnhart
identifies the primary motivation of Japan in its imperialist pursuits as strategic resource
acquisition. While his application of economic theory has wide explanatory power in the
actions that the Japanese took in the pursuit of autarky, it does not explain why they felt entitled
to or justified in their abuse of the territorial and human rights of other Asians. Furthermore,
Barnhart is careful to avoid overt statement of the brutality of the Japanese military in
imperialist “incidents.” For example, in the attack against Nanking that many scholars have
characterized as rife with atrocities, Barnhart comments that it was an “unbounded military
success;” his only concession to its putative unusual brutality is that the State Department
condemned it as “contrary to the principles of law and humanity.” Although it is perhaps
common to dehumanize an enemy in war and thus Barnhart might choose to leave discussions
of Japanese brutality to other scholars 6 because it is common to dehumanize an enemy in war,
but he could strengthen his argument for economic motivations by discussing how a feeling of
racial, national or cultural superiority played a role in justifying Japanese entitlement to control
of the lands and resources of others. Moreover, justification for such Japanese positions as the
Amau Doctrine, which claimed the Japanese right to supervise economic development of China
and barred all other nations from that right, was clearly based on more than Japanese economic
need, as it claimed Japan had a special right to control China, indicating a feeling of either
extreme paternalism or inherent superiority to China. While racist cultural myths are largely
ignored by Barnhart, racism and misperception in international diplomacy are touched on as
factors in the myriad misunderstandings that occurred between Japan and the United States. In
Japan Prepares for Total War, both Japan and the United States are characterized as often
suspecting the other side of “cunning” and “crafty” behavior, and President Roosevelt is noted
as consistently holding an “anti-Japanese” attitude. These attitudes led to irrational fears; for
example, Barnhart notes that Roosevelt feared a Japanese attack on the West Coast to the extent
that he had crabbing operations checked for the possibility that the Japanese might use them as
bases for war. Japan, too, based a number of decisions on misperceptions of the stance of the
other side; for instance, it believed for a time that the Draft Understanding was a formal United
States policy position, and thus changed its estimate of the probability of war with the United
States, leading to confidence in more aggressive behavior. Barnhart demonstrates that racism
and misunderstandings thus contributed to the policies of the time period in question, but such
a nod to the role of racism and misperception in policy is curious when his argument neglects
to explain the 7 possible of role of racism as justification for forcible economic expansion of
Japan. In conclusion, Japan Prepares for Total War is an economic history, one that serves its
stated purpose of contributing to an understanding of how Japan’s economic concerns and
inter-service rivalries contributed to bringing about the Pacific War. Discussion of Japanese
paternalism or racism in the pursuit of autarky is largely avoided by Barnhart, and this
avoidance detracts to a small extent from the explanatory power of economic vulnerability and
internal political dynamics as the causal variables in Japanese imperialism and attack on the
United States. Perhaps Barnhart is merely trying to achieve objectivity and avoid a
condemnatory tone, but in failing to question the legitimacy of Japan’s special right to control
the rest of Asia, he misses the opportunity to explain the role of the values and attitudes that
supposedly lent justification to Japan’s right to cruelly exploit its Asian neighbors. Despite this
criticism, Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941 offers
a detailed and thought provoking account of the ironies of US-Japan relations and mistakes in
the years preceding the Pacific War.
