Roughly a third of the way through Japan's Imperial Army, Edward J. Drea steps back from his account of the Russo-Japanese War to offer the reader “An Assessment.” He writes, “Despite its extensive planning, modern weaponry, and expanded force structure, the 1904 army was still an amateurish one, characterized by regional cliques, favoritism, incompetence, and nepotism” (p. 110). Lieutenant General Nogi Maresuke, for example, “was stumped when looking at a topographic map of the Port Arthur defenses” (p. 110). Nogi's chief of staff in the Third Army was “incompetent, opinionated, but cautious” (p. 111); the commander of the Fourth Army had a “difficult personality [that] made it all but impossible for anyone but his own son-in-law to work with him” (p. 111); the commander of the First Army “cultivated a rude and simple lifestyle,” while his chief of staff was “ignorant of the working of a headquarters staff” (p....

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