Assembling more than 30 primary documents — including proposals, memoranda, decrypted messages, and imperial conferences — Iriye presents diplomatic exchanges from both American and Japanese perspectives to determine how and why the United States and Japan went to war in 1941. A detailed introduction provides background on Japanese aggression in China and Southeast Asia during the 1930s and economic unrest and isolationism in the United States. Readings add an interpretive dimension, placing Pearl Harbor in global context; essays from American, Japanese, Chinese, Soviet, German, British, and Indonesian perspectives explain how various countries applied pressure, offered assistance, exacerbated rifts, and significantly affected negotiations and Japan’s ultimate decision for war.

Akira Iriye is professor of history at Harvard University, where he was appointed the Charles Warren Professor of American History in 1991. He has also taught at the University of Chicago and served as president of the American Historical Association in 1988. He has published widely on American diplomatic history and American-Asian relations, inlcuding Cultural Internationalism adn World Order (1997) and Japan and the Wider World (1997).