ABSTRACT
In Chapter 2 of this volume, David Evans limned for us the formative four decades of the Japanese navy, the years of its apprenticeship as a naval power. As he has explained it, Japan not only mastered the complexities of modern naval technology with foreign guidance and assistance during this period, but through its own astute policies and intelligent leadership developed the skills and facilities to design and build warships in Japanese yards that, by the end of this period, were equal and even superior to those being built by Western naval powers.1
