ABSTRACT
In the Prologue we noted how some writers before and after the attack on Pearl Harbor had attributed Japan’s expansionist policies and actions to ‘overpopulation,’ the search for raw materials and markets, the expansion of profits, and other economic factors, whereas others had ‘debunked’ these ideas – in part, seemingly, as a reaction to Marxist-Leninist ‘materialism.’ Among the ‘debunkers’ the tendency had been to explain Japanese expansionism, territorial conquests, and colonialism by any one or two of a wide range of factors, from ‘nationalistic sentiment and pride’ or identification of themselves as a ‘chosen’ (and hence privileged) people to out-and-out power politics – the pursuit of dominance for its own sake, or to Japanese ‘fascism.’ For years these fundamental differences in perspective have remained unresolved, but recently a number of scholars have called for a reopening of the issue and, in view of Japan’s spectacular successes since World War II, a reexamination of the ‘pathological’ as well as the ‘healthy’ aspects of Japanese economic growth and modernization strategies.
