BOOK REVIEWS Imperial Eclipse: Japan’s Strategic Thinking about Continental Asia

As Yukiko Koshiro appropriately notes at the outset of her striking new study, the Asia-Pacific component of World War II comes with many labels, each associated with particular audiences. ‘Pacific War ’ is the pre-ferred term for most Americans, who focus on the fight between Japanese and American forces in the Pacific. ‘Fifteen Years ’ War ’ is used by Japanese Marxists to describe a much longer series of battles begun on the Asian continent in 1931 and expanding to wider destruction through 1945. ‘Greater East Asia War ’ is the label of choice of the Japanese right, which continues to imagine a battle for ‘liberation ’ of Asian peoples from Western imperialism. Koshiro’s proposed alternative, ‘Eurasian-Pacific War’, seems calculated to benefit American audiences in particular, whose focus on the ‘Pacific’, she perceptively notes, has been consciously promoted since 1945 to accen-tuate the US role in defeating Japan and guaranteeing peace. But even Japanese audiences, who rarely view the engagement as a mere US–Japan struggle, will benefit from the ‘Eurasian-Pacific ’ label. For Koshiro argues not merely that Japan’s war extended beyond the Pacific. Rather, sh