How Japan fell to the noose

BY MAX HASTINGS

HarperCollins, 674pp, 25

THIS IS THE 20TH BOOK EITHER written or edited by this writer. Not only is Hastings prolific, he has over the years mastered a simple style which makes him a delight to read, and Nemesis is no exception. Now that the written word seems to be reverting to its status in the Dark Ages, when literary skill was the preserve of a few clerkly specialists, it is safe to say that Hastings's career can never be repeated. What has his new book got to tell those of us who still like to read?

At first sight Nemesis looks very like an Asian counterpart to his Armageddon: The Battle for Germany 1945, reminding us that the wars of the last century and the early part of this one were interconnected, that is, global. This makes Hastings's work all the more valuable, enabling us to get our heads around complex events by tracing a coherent story through them.

His new book addresses a number of baffling conundrums. Why did Japan, among all the countries invaded and occupied during either world war, produce no resistance movement? Why did Japan soon become, and remain to this day, a staunch if sometimes baulky ally of its conqueror, and even a guarded ally of its conqueror's friends, most recently Australia? And why does Japan not own up to its brutal past, when Germany has done so and compensated its victims, if somewhat selectively?

Nemesis is nothing if not exhaustive, at 674 pages long. Its originality lies not so much in theses - none of these questions are raised here for the first time, in one of the best-ploughed fields in historical writing - but in the meticulousness of the author's research, the amazing witnesses he has found, including Japanese whose feeble defences and flimsy tanks were crushed by the Red Army in Manchuria in a few hectic days, some after Emperor Hirohito's surrender broadcast.

One astonishing find was Lieutenant Haruki Iki, the pilot whose single torpedo sank the thin-skinned, unescorted HMS Repulse off Malaya in 1941, as a prelude to the landings by a (comparatively small) Japanese attacking force, and the subsequent surrender of Singapore by British and Australian defenders. But Iki was only a pilot, not the author of the strategy.

Hastings's viewpoint is resolutely British (and Australian), to a lesser extent American, and more or less hostile to everyone else.

Understandable, but a fault. His story of the noose tightening around Japan is an absorbing read, and he is right to be indignant about the way in which British and Australians were sidelined into costly mopping-up operations in Borneo and even into the heroic reconquest of Burma, so that only Americans - and in particular the publicity addict Douglas Macarthur - could accept the now inevitable Japanese surrender.

No nation, except perhaps Monaco and Liechtenstein, is without blood on its hands , if you look back far enough. Hastings cannot start his story in 1944 without his reader getting lost in lists of ships and planes and submarines. He chooses "18 September 1931, Japan begins occupation of Manchuria" to open his chronology, but what was the Japanese Kwantung Army doing on the Manchurian border in 1931?

Authentic turning points in history are rare, and often not recognised at the time, and 1931 was not East Asia's Fall of Rome or Taking of the Bastille.

Japan's fork in the road was surely 1902, when it became an ally of Great Britain, the first the reclusive islanders had ever had. A direct consequence was the destruction of the Russian Baltic fleet in 1905. The Japanese flagship Mikasa was built in Barrow, England. Admiral Heihachiro Togo trained at the Royal Naval College. A British officer stood by him to "advise". Hastings's chronology should have started there.

Today's ally, tomorrow's enemy and vice versa is history as it really happens. But a meta-message has forced its way into this book, of great contemporary relevance. There is no such thing as permanent war or peace. Life is perpetual struggle, as the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus said. Much depends on where you start: there is no end. Nemesis is engrossing, but there can never be a last word on any historical subject.