A political as well as military history

I have read a great many books concerning World War II involving both the European as well as Pacific theaters of war and was not very interested in reading another book centered on the Pacific theater. What drew me to the decision to buy this book is that it offered what was rare in the other books I read, the political background of the Japanese involvement in the war.

The Pacific Theater of the war is a sort of neglected step-child of the history books. While there are many very fine books concerning the war in the Pacific, the number is much smaller than those books on the European Theater and those books that do exist mostly concentrate on the battles and the difficulty in fighting a war on such a broad front. What has almost always been missing is the political background explaining how Japan found itself being inexorably drawn into a war with the US when many of its political and military leaders believed Japan could not win such a war, Yamamoto perhaps foremost among them.

I have always believed that the reason for the lack of extensive material covering the Japanese decisions leading to the war was the general lack of familiarity among most readers, myself included, concerning how the Japanese political system worked and the daunting task facing a writer in explaining the intricate and unfamiliar process to the general reader. However Mr Toland, who has written much about World War II, has successfully provided the political background very well in this book. This was not a new task as this book is quite old (first published in 1970) but nonetheless feels fresh and new. While some of the material may have been superseded by more recent scholarship this book is still very worthwhile for anyone interested not only in how the war progressed, but in why the Japanese government took the decisions it did.

The only problem I found with this book is that some of the Japanese names are very similar and it is easy in the Audible version of this book to mistake one for another. One example is mistaking Tojo for Togo and thus failing to grasp the competing war and peace factions in the government.

Tom Weiner does an excellent job in narrating this book and I found it to be both easy to listen to and well worth the time. I recommend this book for those interested in knowing the background of the war, but for those interested only in the tactical and strategic decisions and the battles, there are probably better books about the war in the Pacific.

69 persone l'hanno trovata utile

First rate history

Wow. You come away from this book feeling like you actually understand what would posses the Japanese to launch into a war they knew that they would lose if it went on very long and why they fought so hard right to the end. If all history books were this good why would you ever read fiction?

50 persone l'hanno trovata utile

The pacific war from inside the Japanese empire

Any additional comments?

Comprehensive and compelling history of the war in the pacific from the Japanese empire point of view. This is gripping military as well as political history which seeks to shed light on the motivations of Japanese society and the military clique which led Japan into and through its disastrous policies of aggressive expansionism. It is reminiscent of Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and I would say is a must read for those with an interest in WWII. Toland intersperses the narrative with many first person accounts as well as analysis. Pulls no punches while at the same time offers a nuanced take of events. My only criticism is that the primary focus here is the pacific war against the United States with far lesser detail given to the India, Burma, and China. Nevertheless, I found this a monumental work of history. The narration is very capable and keeps things moving along.

32 persone l'hanno trovata utile

As Exasperating As It Is Tragic

I'm a military history buff with a focus on Vietnam and World War II, so when I finished Nagasaki: Life After Nuclear War, I was horrified, conflicted, and drawn back to revisit books on Japan, the Pacific War, the major players of the Pacific theater. Naturally that led me back to The Rising Sun.
It's a work that's awesome in its scope, painstaking in military, political, even social detail. And as it went on, I became more and more, exasperated is a kind word for it.
It fully explains the Japanese rationale for entering the war, but after the good, there's the tragic. The endlessly tragic. There's the defeat after defeat, and that just made the Japanese entrench themselves more in their dogma and in their drive to take ten Americans for everyone one man sacrificed. Even after horrific and atrocious bombings of Japanese cities (which are a tad rationalized by the fact that Japanese industry wasn't centered around a military complex as in Germany but was instead centered in home-factories), even after the destruction and devastation of two, TWO! atomic bombs, what did they do? They had a failed coup to continue the war, they offered up Twenty Million Suicides to take out as many Americans on the way out as possible, and after surrender, they had the executions of many POWs.
It was so aggravating to re listen to, but if you're in the mood for a truly brilliantly researched work, dive right in. Just don't expect to come out smelling like a rose...

30 persone l'hanno trovata utile

Phenomenal account

Would you listen to The Rising Sun again? Why?

No. It was long, and detailed. Something that I'll remember, but not want to revisit.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

Surprisingly, I did. I was moved at the end of the book by the Emperor in the final days of the war.

Any additional comments?

This is a fantastic account of WWII Japan. Spanning the time period from, roughly, the Marco-Polo bridge incident to the occupation of Japan, the narrative is delivered from the Japanese perspective. The book gives accounts, biography and personal antidotes about the major players of Japan in this time period - the Emperor, the Prime Minister, Ambassadors, generals, etc - but is also does the same for common soldiers, civilians, seamen and pilots. The book explores the human, cultural, economic and religious cost of the war and does a good job of explaining thoughts, concepts and motivations that were and are wholly foreign to the western belligerents.

This book is a great read for anyone interested in the eastern pacific as the events relayed in this book cast a long shadow over the future of pacific Asia.

26 persone l'hanno trovata utile

Long, but never boring

If you could sum up The Rising Sun in three words, what would they be?

Compelling, informative, objective

What did you like best about this story?

It was told from the perspective of many individuals from many sides.

Any additional comments?

Had I been reading this book (rather than listening to it), no doubt I would have skimmed over much of the battle passages. As I listened, I never felt the urge to skip or fast forward, for the story as told from many different perspectives was so compelling and offered so much insight into the Japanese culture.
The narration, by John Weiner, was excellent. The book is 42 hours long and I never tired of his voice. He was so convincing that it felt as if he were the author.

23 persone l'hanno trovata utile

Too sympathetic to the Japanese Empire.

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

Yes, but with caveats. This book engages in commentary on the relative blame for war with the US while glossing over Japanese duplicity. The author seems astounded that the US would be skeptical of Japanese peace overtures prior to Pearl Harbor, regardless of the Japanese well-documented dishonorable record in world affairs. After the Japanese behavior with the Russians first, and then with the Chinese, prior to 1941, it seems like taking the Japanese at face value would be the extreme in naivete.

The author also focuses on the suffering of the Japanese people from fire bombing and later the atom bomb while glossing over events like the rape of Nanjing and the rape of Manila, or even more egregiously totally ignoring events like the response to the Doolittle Raid where they murdered 250,000 Chinese, the Bataan Death March and biological and chemical warfare experiments carried out on Chinese and allied prisoners in a way which people who know about Mengele would find familiar.

Would you recommend The Rising Sun to your friends? Why or why not?

The book was well-researched, regardless of my comments above, and very interesting to see a little-known Japanese perspective. The author swallows the "honorable Japanese" bait, hook, line, and sinker, while disregarding the clear, historical evidence to the contrary.

Any additional comments?

"Honor" to the Japanese did not mean honor in the western sense, but rather "face" in the Asiatic sense. "Face" has far more to do with the appearance and social standing of a person than it does with "doing the right thing" in the European, Judeo-Christian concept of honor. This is a point which I believe the author would do well to learn.

19 persone l'hanno trovata utile

Surprising History

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

Yes. This book gives a fascinating insight to the War in the Pacific from the Japanese perspective.

What other book might you compare The Rising Sun to and why?

Perhaps "Brothers, Rivals, Victors: Eisenhower, Patton, Bradley, and the Partnership That Drove the Allied Conquest in Europe".

Which character – as performed by Tom Weiner – was your favorite?

None.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

No this is a long detailed history and requires one to concentrate to get most out of it.

Any additional comments?

This is a great history because it does show just how divided Japan was over war in the Pacific. It also shows the nuances of the social changes that were driving Japan prior to 1939.

17 persone l'hanno trovata utile

AN AMAZING & COMPLETE ACCOUNT!

Great book for World War II fans. It is very complete and unbiased with lots of little known facts. Much of the book is from the points of view of the Japanese - military, civilians, even the Emperor. Hirohito comes off as less of a blundering idiot here than a royalist burdened with the weight of hundreds of years of history, honor, and "face". I see now how impotent he was at the hands of his Shogun military advisors who wanted to fight until death, to the detriment of innocent civilians. I better understand the concept of seppuku or hara-kiri - an act that made absolutely no sense to me before, but my people were robbed of the Asians intense sense of country and honor to one's family and heritage.

As a black American, I was a bit disappointed that the only mention of our military men was when some inconsequential Japanese woman who had never seen a black person before was horrified by the sight of the "monsters", fainted, and was told later that her life had been saved by those black G.I.'s. But since most of our heroic battles were fought in the German theater against the Nazis, I will give John Toland a pass this time and still rate this amazing account a full 5-stars. Narrator Tom Weiner does a masterful job with a book that gets a bit dry at some points with its blow-by-blow reading of boring documents and military communiqueés. Well worth 40 hours of your life!

17 persone l'hanno trovata utile

A Different Perspective, Not a Justification

I found this historical account truly fascinating. As I listened to the history I realized that I was as ignorant about the culture of Japan as any of the players in the West at that time. I have read extensively about WWII from a western and European perspective but I really hadn't spent much time considering the Japanese. Such people as Tojo and Yamamoto were mostly one dimensional for me. Toland does an excellent job of pulling back the curtain and giving us a view of what was happening in the Pacific. He also offered some new perspectives on such things as the Bataan Death March. He does not seek to justify what happened but I feel that I have a better understanding of why it happened the way that it did.

There are some omissions. Korea is barely mentioned and there is no discussion of the germ warfare experiments that took place in China. If History and WWII is an area if interest I'd definitely recommend this book. Much like Anthony Beevor, Toland does an excellent job moving from the macro to the micro so you have a real sense of what it was like to be in the trenches on the pacific Islands or flying a torpedo plane at Pearl Harbor.

11 persone l'hanno trovata utile