A study of the military history of Japan from the days of the Samurai to the end of the 20th century. Its primary focus is World War II, and it features detailed orders of the battle of the land, air and naval forces involved in each campaign and hundreds of small side views of nearly all small arms, artillery, tanks, warplanes and warships employed, including little-known types. However, there are also large sections on the long war with China from 1937 to 1945, the (mostly naval) actions of World War I, the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5 and the Sino-Japanese War of 1894. The book is part of a series written as individual studies of the armed forces of each nation, not as comparisons of their operations to those of the United States or any other country. Thus, the viewpoint and terminology used are those of the nation described in each volume. As it is Japanese custom to write surnames before given names, the author has followed that practice in this book.