THE ELECTION IN December 2012 of a right-wing government headed by Prime Minister Abe Shinzō ushered in a new and highly controversial period in the politics of the world's third largest economic power, Japan. The Government's efforts have been directed towards recovery from a long period of suboptimal economic performance, through a programme popularly entitled ‘abenomics’, and also towards radical revision of the American-mediated political settlement following the Japanese defeat in 1945. This latter aim includes revision, whether by reinterpretation or formal change, of the 1947 Constitution with its well known Peace Clause, which has inhibited Japanese military force projection in various ways. The Abe Government has also taken a revisionist approach to behaviour by the Japanese Imperial Forces during the Asia-Pacific War, and is engaged in a territorial dispute with China over possession of some uninhabited islands in the East China Sea.

Relations between Japan and China under the Abe Government remain tense, as indeed they are between Japan and South Korea. Both cases are made worse by actions those countries regard as provocative, especially Japanese prime ministerial visits to the Yasukuni Shrine commemorating the dead of successive wars, where the souls of fourteen class A war criminals, so designated by the Tokyo war crimes trials after the war, are enshrined.

The Abe Government's mandate was renewed in the general elections of December 2014, held two years after a failed period in government (2009-2012) by the main opposition party, whose reputation and current performance remains poor. Even so, public opinion polls indicate limited enthusiasm for a formal revision of the Constitution.

Professor Banno is a leading historian writing on modern Japanese political history, while Professor Yamaguchi is a prominent political scientist researching the Japanese political system since the war. Both have been in various ways politically active during their careers and share a commitment to democratic politics, an economy that delivers both prosperity and fair distribution, as well as peaceful and enlightened foreign policies. Both are highly critical of many facets of Japanese politics, both before the war and in recent years, while retaining some optimism about the future.

Perhaps the most innovative aspect of this book is its careful juxtaposition of political development in the 1930s, with its awful dénouement in all-out war, and the recent policy trajectory, in which relations with Japan's immediate neighbours have seriously deteriorated.