“Where have all the soldiers gone?” Many geographic fields of academic history have been asking this question for decades. Military history has long been popular with readers but has been largely marginalized within professional academic circles. This has been true too for the study of modern Japan. Despite war being a frequent occurrence and the military arguably the most important institution for the first half of the modern era since 1868, the historiographical attention they have attracted has not been proportional to their historical importance. Since 1945, Japan has avoided any direct participation in war and its Self-Defense Force (SDF), which insists on not being called a military despite being among the most powerful in the world, has had a much reduced political and social impact. Yet scholarship about the postwar military has not been commensurate to even that lesser role. These three recent books on military history mark a...

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