Curse on This Country: The Rebellious Army of Imperial Japan by Danny Orbach

A revisionist history of the Imperial Japanese Army that challenges the long-held assumption of Japanese soldiers as models of blind obedience. Orbach demonstrates that the Japanese military had one of the most disobedient command cultures in the modern world: officers repeatedly staged coups, political assassinations, and unauthorized military operations in defiance of both government and general staff orders. Tracing this culture of insubordination from the bakumatsu shishi warriors of the 1860s through the 1930s military-political crises, Orbach argues that defiance rather than obedience was the motive force of modern Japanese history — and that it was a culture created by a series of individually reasonable decisions that cumulatively eroded civilian control of the armed forces. An accessible and important contribution to the historiography of modern Japan.

• Title: Curse on This Country
• Subtitle: The Rebellious Army of Imperial Japan
• Author: Danny Orbach
• Publisher: Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY
• Publication Date: 2017
• Edition: First Edition
• Printing:
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 384
• Illustrations:
• ISBN-13: 978-1501705281
• Language: English
• Dimensions:
• Series:
• Condition: Very Good
• Notes: Danny Orbach is Senior Lecturer in the Departments of Asian Studies and General History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Cover features a detail from a Meiji-era nishiki-e battle print.
• Description: A revisionist history of the Imperial Japanese Army that challenges the long-held assumption of Japanese soldiers as models of blind obedience. Orbach demonstrates that the Japanese military had one of the most disobedient command cultures in the modern world: officers repeatedly staged coups, political assassinations, and unauthorized military operations in defiance of both government and general staff orders. Tracing this culture of insubordination from the bakumatsu shishi warriors of the 1860s through the 1930s military-political crises, Orbach argues that defiance rather than obedience was the motive force of modern Japanese history — and that it was a culture created by a series of individually reasonable decisions that cumulatively eroded civilian control of the armed forces. An accessible and important contribution to the historiography of modern Japan.