The Rising Sun

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 While some of the material may have been superseded by more recent scholarship this book is still very worthwhile for anyone interested not only in how the war progressed, but in why the Japanese government took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.

27 of 28 people found this review helpful

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?

33 of 35 people found this review helpful

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.

26 of 28 people found this review helpful

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.

14 of 15 people found this review helpful

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...

13 of 14 people found this review helpful

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.

20 of 22 people found this review helpful

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.

22 of 25 people found this review helpful

Time well spent for history buffs!

WWII from inside Japan. I said the same thing for "Red Flag - A History of Communism" - the books fills in much detail and perspective otherwise omitted when we normally encounter this history.

6 of 7 people found this review helpful

Great comprehensive history of the Pacific War

This is the third big book on the Pacific War I have read recently. Ian Toll's first two books (of a planned trilogy), Pacific Crucible and The Conquering Tide, were a magnificent historical account of the war from both sides. So given that this book covers much the same ground, though it was written much earlier, I can't help comparing it with Toll's books, though I think Toland's book is equally good and you will not find it at all repetitive to read both authors.

As thick as this book is, it's only one volume, whereas Ian Toll is writing three whole volumes on the entire war in the Pacific. Thus, while Toll devotes a great deal of attention to the politics and individual political and military leaders on both sides of the conflict, The Rising Sun, as its title indicates, focuses mostly on Japan. Naturally the planning and personalities on the American and British (and later Chinese and Soviet) sides are mentioned, but mostly only inasmuch as they were pitted against their Japanese counterparts.

The bulk of the book covers the war itself, including all the familiar names like Guam, Guadalcanal, Wake Island, Corregidor, Saipan, Okinawa, Iwo Jima. Toland does not neglect the British defense of India, the tragic fate of Force Z, which blundered on ahead to its doom despite lack of air cover and thus heralded in the new reality that air power ruled above all, and the multi-sided war in China in which communists and nationalists were alternately fighting each other and the Japanese, with both sides being courted by the Allies. Any military history will cover the battles, but Toland describes them vividly, especially the first-hand accounts from the men in them - the misery and terror, and also the atrocities, like the Bataan Death March, and the miserable conditions of POWs taken back to Japan

Toland spends only a little time, in the last few chapters, talking about Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the decision leading up to the use of the atomic bomb on Japan. This is another very loaded historical question in which there are people with strong opinions on both sides. Some have argued that the US didn't need to use the bomb - Japan was already negotiating surrender - and that we did for reasons ranging from racism to a desire to demonstrate them as a deterrent to the Soviet Union. Others claim that Japan was fully willing to fight to the last spear-carrying civilian, and that the atomic bombs saved millions of lives on both sides by preventing the need for an invasion.

Entire books have been written about this subject, and Toland, as I said, does not try to dig into it too deeply, but he does represent much of what the Americans and Japanese were thinking and saying at the time. The case he presents would suggest that the truth, unsurprisingly, is somewhere in between.

If you want one volume that covers the entire span of the war against Japan, I think this monumental work by John Toland leaves very little out, and I highly recommend it to WWII historians. However, I also encourage interested readers to then seek out the more recent works by Ian Toll, who devotes more pages to the American commanders as well, and talks about some of the political issues among the Allies that Toland treats more briefly, as well as going into even more detail about individual battles.

5 of 6 people found this review helpful

A proven winner

John Toland tells the history of the Japanese rise and fall in amazing detail. I learned a lot. This is my 5th book about Pacific War. Best was Pacific Crucible. This was 2d best. The moment Hirohito met with MacArthur was hauntingly good. Rising Sun takes the time to also be funny! Very welcome.

5 of 6 people found this review helpful