Western studies of Japanese Intelligence in World War II have invariably concluded that this service was very poor. However, these studies have always concentrated on the later years of the war, when Japan was fighting a multi-front war against numerous opponents. In this groundbreaking new study, Japanese scholar Ken Kotani re-examines the Japanese Intelligence department, beginning with the early phase of the war. He points out that without the intelligence gathered by the Japanese Army and Navy they would have been unable to achieve their long string of victories against the forces of Russia, China, and Great Britain. Notable in these early campaigns were the successful strikes against both Singapore and Pearl Harbor.

Ken Kotani is Junior Research Fellow in Military History at the National Institute for Defense Studies, Tokyo. He received a BA from Ritsumeikan University, an MA from King’s College London and a Ph.D. from Kyoto University. He specialises in intelligence history and has been involved as a co-writer of Encyclopedia of World War II (California: ABC CLIO 2004), and has also written articles for a variety of journals.