PRELUDE TO PEARL HARBOR: Ideology and Culture in US-Japan Relations, 1919–1941. By John Gripentrog.

Peering into the future is never easy, but if history follows certain patterns or trends, then it can be a useful tool for shedding light on what might await us. E. H. Carr once said that history was a dialogue between past and present. If this is true, it is then logical to assume that through such dialogue we can also discern, albeit imperfectly, the general direction international relations are headed. This is the precise reason John Gripentrog’s monograph is very much worth reading now, as it describes in detail the path taken by the previous challenger to American hegemony in East Asia: the Empire of Japan.

In December 1941, Japan made the fateful decision to challenge the Anglo-US status quo in order to create a new order in East Asia. It should not be overlooked that it was these very actions by Japan that ultimately brought US entry into World War II, a hitherto very unpopular war with Americans, and one in which many Americans wanted to avoid involvement, despite Nazi Germany’s ongoing military conquest of Europe. To be sure, there is an abundance of literature that deals with the path that ultimately led to Pearl Harbor. Gripentrog’s contribution is that he also examines the prelude to Pearl Harbor by tracing the path that Japan took from the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. Most studies on the topic follow the long and winding road with the Manchurian Incident of 1931 as point of departure, and follow it to the ultimate clash between the Pacific powers on December 7, 1941. In other words, most of the 1920s are simply overlooked despite their importance to understanding the unravling of the Washington Treaty System, and with it the the gradual erosion of coooperation between the major powers in East Asia. As such, the turbulent decade of the 1930s clearly had it roots in what transpired during the previous decade. As this book shows, the anti-Japanese movement was very powerful in the Western United States during the 1920s, culminating with the US Congress enacting the Immigration Act of 1924, better known in Japan as the Japanese Exclusion Act. Thus, observing the transition from the relatively stable 1920s to the tumultuous 1930s becomes indispensable in truly understanding not only Japan’s greivances, but also why it decided to go to war with an economically much larger nation—and one on which it was dependent for trade—across the Pacific.

Another important contribution of this book is that it emphasizes ideology and culture within the contenxt of US-Japan bilateral relations. Gripentrog examines the expanding ideology of Pan-Asianism as well as the racism encountered by the Japanese on the US West Coast, and how such discriminatory policies also negatively impacted Japan’s national prestige as it was essentially being treated on the same level as any other Asian nation. Since Japan felt that it was a member of the Big Five powers, this particularly stung. Encompassing these crucial topics not only helps widen the scope of the book, but also broadens its context from being much more than a conventional work on the diplomatic history of US-Japan relations. Moreover, what is also remarkable is how much ground the author covers in a mere 200-plus pages spanning seven chapters. Of course, the flip side of this is that the relatively short length of the book necessitates the use of mostly broad brushstrokes, and therefore many key events, institutions, and people are oftentimes given only cursory examination. Furthermore, since the book is also largely devoid of any an in-depth examination of the key decision-makers, the numerous Japanese names that appear throughout the text can be difficult to follow for those who have limited prior knowledge of prewar Japanese history.

Although reading a monograph about conventional diplomatic history can at times seem quite dull, Gripentrog mitigates this by adding some spice to his examination of US-Japan relations through the inclusion of ideology and cultural history. This not only allows for respite from the occationally dry examination of high politics, but also makes Prelude to Pearl Harbor an ideal go-to for undergraduates seeking to gain further insight into the dynamics of prewar US-Japan relations. Notwithstading, the book does have its flaws, the most concerning of which is that a vast majority of the sources accessed are in English. This is surprising, since it should be a sine qua non for any book dealing with bilateral relations to utilize primary and secondary sources of both countries being examined. Therefore, Gripentrog is not able to take advantage of the wealth of untranslated Japanese sources, which unfortunately for this book include many Japanese-language standard works that specifically deal with prewar US-Japan relations and/or its leaders.

Furthermore, scholarship on this subject has progressed immensely in Japan to a level that we now know much more about Japan’s prewar policy decisions and what affected those decisions. For example, it became known in the early 2000s that Japan had been able to read US diplomatic cable traffic through its SIGINT operations. Therefore, the Japanese leaders knew much more about the intent of their American counterparts than was once previously assumed. But this book neither incorporates nor even mentions any of these new facts or interpretations as it does not include the recent discoveries from the Japanese archival records, or even the latest secondary sources. Soley using English language resources in writing a book on bilateral relations would perhaps have been tolerated several decades ago, but international history has made huge strides since then. To see such a single-dimensional work of diplomatic history reminds one of a bygone era. This serious limitation also means that the book is not really appropriate for those pursuing advanced studies on this subject, or for a Japanese audience, as it is not able to provide any new insights.

Yet in the book’s defence, the author needs to be given credit for just writing about prewar US-Japan relations. This is because currently most of the glory (and limelight) is reserved for those pursuing the study of postwar US-Japan relations. If we are to accept that history has utility and that it does at times rhyme, then perhaps now is the opportune moment to reexamine the path that Japan took in challenging the existing global order as way to grasp both the similarities and differences in the trajectory of the preeminent economic and military power in East Asia today: the People’s Republic of China. In the end, time will surely tell if the Taiwan of today will become the Manchuria of 1931. But if we are to better understand the course of the future, we clearly cannot disregard the path that has already been trodden.

Tosh Minohara

Kobe University, Japan