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The Journal of Military History 67.2 (2003) 593-594



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British Intelligence and the Japanese Challenge in Asia, 1914-1941. By Antony Best. Basingstoke, U.K.: Macmillan, 2002. ISBN 0-333-94551-4. Maps. Tables. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xiii, 269. £45.00.

In this detailed and insightful book, Antony Best seeks to move away from the episodic treatment of Anglo-Japanese relations in which, he claims, the concerns of day-to-day diplomacy have overshadowed longer term developments. By focussing on the role of intelligence across the period 1914-41, he suggests, more convincing answers can be found to the overarching question of why Britain consistently underestimated Japanese military power. British attitudes towards Japan, he suggests, were marked by a "profound ambivalence": Japan was thought to be committed to a policy of regional hegemony but to lack the means to achieve it. At once aggressive and expansionist, it was regarded as incapable of matching Western power. This resulted in a British attitude that did not actively seek friendship with Japan but equally did not cast Japan in the role of an irreconcilable enemy. Mistrust, hostility toward Japanese behavior, and a sense of racial superiority led British policy makers to view Japan with suspicion but also with an understanding that on occasions Japanese power could be utilised in British interests. Best suggests—and gives ample supporting evidence—that the crude stereotyped racial animus of the policy makers was not necessarily shared by the intelligence community, whose study of intelligence sources led to a much more sophisticated understanding of the Japanese.

That Japan was seen in several, conflicting lights is well illustrated here. British policy makers could use a cooperative Japan to bolster British interests in the Far East against the perceived threat of Russia, and (an example not used in the book) could readily agree to the deployment of Japanese warships to escort Australian troop convoys across the Indian Ocean in 1914, yet when the Russian menace had apparently diminished, could view with disquiet the activities of the Japanese in China and elsewhere in Asia. By the early 1920s some observers had concluded that Japan was a weak rather than a strong power, and that it therefore posed less of a threat to British interests, whereas the Admiralty used its assessment of Japanese capabilities and potential to push the Singapore strategy that centered on the construction of the naval base at Singapore. That strategy rested on assumptions about Japanese capabilities that in turn derived from observation and study, first hand experience and the careful analysis of intelligence material. Throughout the period British intelligence was hampered by a lack of suitably qualified language specialists whose skills, Best rightly insists, were crucial in developing a British capacity to monitor and evaluate Japanese activities. One of the most interesting and original parts of the book deals with the question of language skills and the difficulties of establishing a sufficient pool of qualified linguists. (An example of the problem, not cited in the book, is the Royal Military College in Australia, where the Japanese language course was abolished in 1938 on the grounds that a knowledge of Japanese was not likely to be relevant to the needs of the Australian Army. [End Page 593] But then, as I have often been heard to say, relevance is in the eye of the beholder.)

A short review cannot do justice to the richness of this book. Within the limits of the available material (still, as the author says, severely restricted), it presents us with a much more finely delineated analysis of British attitudes towards Japan, and how different sections of the British government and its agencies developed and acted upon their respective understanding of the Japanese. This is a superb example of intelligence history.

 



Peter Dennis
Australian Defence Force Academy
Canberra, ACT, Australia

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