The 1930s proved to be an example of such an inward-looking period. The elected Japanese legislature could not summon similar confidence in democracy, in the hearts of the populace. Also, moderate Japanese politicians found it almost impossible to control the military within the framework of existing institutions. Finally, the invasion of China made use of initially effect techniques such as mass slaughter of civilians and rape as a means of control over a frightened population, techniques that would become part of the Japanese fighting machine over the entire course of the war. During World War II, as the military mindset began to increasingly penetrate the country, the treatment of the prisoners of the Japanese began to deteriorate. One of the most important parts of Rees' analysis, is that he does not seek to condemn the Japanese army as evil, as was tempting to do when its atrocities were first revealed to the world. Instead, he stresses how the...

These young men were encouraged to believe that by hurting others and by risking their own lives, even by committing suicidal acts, that they were saving the Japanese state and honor.
Rees' book is valuable because it reminds the reader that this totalitarian mentality was a mindset not unlike that of the Nazi's foot soldiers, and it is evident even in the minds of soldiers today that commit acts of genocide. He ends his book with the American attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki that brought closure to war and heralded in the new, nuclear age. The reader is filled with a sense of sadness, not simply that the war had to come to such an end, but that modern civilization has learned so little from how a society can so easily perpetrate a mentality that causes ordinary citizens to commit such acts of horror -- even today.