Curse on This Country: The Rebellious Army of Imperial Japan

[Orbach] ties together the many violent events from the 1870s through the 1930s that were often studied in isolation to argue that both a culture of insubordination in the army that originated among the pro-emperor zealots of the 1860s and ideological hopes for the country facilitated unsanctioned violence connected to the army. Summing Up: Recommended. All levels/libraries.

Draws on multi-lingual primary sources with an innovative re-interpretation through a 21st-century military and political lens that connects historical incidents, especially on the late Tokugawa shishi and their outsized influence on 20th-century Japan.

Orbach's book pulls off the difficult trick of talking to two audiences at once. Those only casually familiar with Japanese history will appreciate how thoroughly Orbach demolishes the hoary orientalist trope that Japanese soldiers were insect-like drones, mindlessly obedient to state propaganda. Specialists will be more interested in Orbach's answer to what is still for many the great question of modern Japanese history: why did the country embark on a disastrous war of aggression in the mid-twentieth century?.... Orbach's book is not just an important contribution to the historiography of Japan; it adds a key piece to the puzzle of understanding state-military relations across the global nineteenth century.

Orbach's is a bold book.... I appreciated Orbach's original interpretation, his extensive research, and the fervor of his prose. Curse on this Country makes an important contribution to both military history and the history of Japan.

Featuring a long-term perspective and analyzing Japan's development over several decades from the 1870s to the 1930s, Curse on This Country is accessible and highly useful for experts in different fields. It is an indispensable addition to the body of literature on modern Japanese politics, addressing a broad audience within and outside the field of Japanese studies.

Curse on This Country fills an important gap in our understanding of Japan's military history leading up to the Pacific War. A particular strength of this book is Danny Orbach's extensive use of hitherto unexamined primary sources in five different languages.

The original and compelling Curse on This Country makes a significant contribution to both military history and the history of Japan. Danny Orbach offers a new interpretation of the relationship between the Japanese army and government that goes a long way to explaining how Japan ended up fighting World War II. Orbach has delved deeply into the archives that reveal how politicians, army officers, and ruffians felt about each other as individuals. He makes a convincing case for a culture of military insubordination in Japan that derived from historical precedent, structure flaws, and individual initiatives. By idealizing men who had been persecuted, if not executed, for crimes against the state, the Meiji government inadvertently promoted the culture of individual action that later officials found impossible to control.