312
BOOK REVIEWS
to a halt and where the physical past remains frozen or fossilized by political currents.
ALAN BIRCH
Fujiwara Iwaichi, F. Kikan: Japanese Army Intelligence Operations in S.E. Asia, 1983. Heinemann's Asia.
Professor H. J. Benda, authority on the Japanese occupation of the Indonesian archipelago, once remarked "Japan's war-time aims were never as clearly defined as in South-east Asia”.
Recognizing this significance of Japanese plans and preparations for the war waged against the imperialism of the West, Heinemann's have published a number of studies illuminating in depth several aspects of this important programme, notably Joyce Lebra's Japanese trained Armies in South-east Asia. It is she who writes the introduction to this present volume Lt. General Fujiwara's account of the operations of F. Kikan in Malaya in this critical area of World War II in the Far East. (Actually, this is a translation by the noted Japanese scholar Professor Akashi Yoji, biographer of Loi Tak, the notorious and typical middleman figure in these entanglements of the contending forces of imperialism).
Lebra claims for the author of this war-time account of the activities of this Japanese propaganda intelligence group stood for Fujiwara, Freedom and Friendship that he developed a vision of Japan's military role in Asia at its most idealistic, Seeing himself as the Japanese 'Lawrence of Arabia' he took the war-time propaganda slogan ‘Asia for the Asians' most seriously.
Fujiwara's relatively short-term, but significant, role in furthering the formation of the Indian National Army, which, of course, was to attempt the removal of the colonial bondage of the British rule of India and further to demonstrate the self-proclaimed role of Japan as the instrument of liberation, is therefore of more than passing interest to historians of that critical period in the shifting of political power in the East.
Fujiwara's part in this crusade, and particularly his relations with the least ambiguous of Indian nationalists, Chandra Bose,
312
BOOK REVIEWS
to a halt and where the physical past remains frozen or fossilized by political currents.
ALAN BIRCH
Fujiwara Iwaichi, F. Kikan: Japanese Army Intelligence Operations in S.E. Asia, 1983. Ileinemanns Asia.
Professor H. J. Benda, authority on the Japanese occupation of the Indonesian archipelago, once remarked "Japan's war-time aims were never as clearly defined as in South-east Asia”.
Recognizing this significance of Japanese plans and prepara- tions for the war waged against the imperialism of the West, Heinemanns' have published a number of studies illuminating in depth several aspects of this important programme, notably Joyce Lebra's Japanese trained Armies in South-east Asia. It is she who writes the introduction to this present volume Lt. General Fujiwara's account of the operations of F. Kikan in Malaya in this critical area of World War II in the Far East. (Actually, this is a translation by the noted Japanese scholar Professor Akashi Yoji, biographer of Loi Tak, the notorious and typical middleman figure in these entanglements of the contending forces of imperialism).
F
Lebra claims for the author of this war-time account of the activitics of this Japanese propaganda intelligence group stood for Fujiwara, Freedom and Friendship that he developed a vision of Japan's military role in Asia at its most idealistic, Seeing himself as the Japanese Lawrence of Arabia' he took the war-time propaganda slogan ‘Asia for the Asians' most seriously.
Fujiwara's relatively short-term, but significant, role in furthering the formation of the Indian National Army, which, of course, was to attempt the removal of the colonial bondage of the British rule of India and further to demonstrate the self- proclaimed role of Japan as the instrument of liberation, is there- fore of more than passing interest to historians of that critical period in the shifting of political power in the East.
Fujiwara's part in this crusade, and particularly his relations with the least ambiguous of Indian nationalists, Chandra Bose,
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