Tojo: The Rise and Fall of Japan’s Most Controversial World War II General

Hideki Tojo, the Japanese general and wartime prime minister, embodied the self-delusions that drove Japan to catastrophe in WWII, according to this probing biography. Historian Mauch (Sailor Diplomat) paints Tojo as a canny political operator who was able to balance the insubordinate aggressiveness prevalent in the prewar Imperial Japanese Army with a near-religious reverence for Emperor Hirohito’s rule. For instance, Tojo had opposed coup attempts by right-wing officers who wanted Japan to go to war with China, but then as a commander he disobeyed orders himself, launching an unsanctioned invasion of China that precipitated the war. Similarly, as a mastermind behind Pearl Harbor, Tojo seemed to understand that mobilizing industrial power was the key to victory in a long war of attrition, but at the same time downplayed the U.S.’s greater industrial resources in favor of fanciful notions that Japan’s superior martial spirit, inspired by devotion to the emperor, would wear down the Americans. There’s drama in Mauch’s narrative as Tojo plots strategy, navigates intrigues—after a subordinate was assassinated by a rival army faction, he dressed himself in the victim’s bloodstained uniform and “vowed revenge”—and ends up, at his war crimes trial, as an almost tragic case of misguided soldierly virtue, acknowledging his atrocities but still defending his cause. It’s an insightful study of malignant ideology leading to disaster. (Mar.)