The definitive biography of Tojo Hideki, the controversial general who redefined military leadership in Showa-era Japan before his downfall during World War II.

The military general who became Emperor Hirohito’s prime minister, Tojo Hideki is most often remembered as an iron-fisted leader who dragged Japan into World War II and—after spectacular losses—was eventually executed as a war criminal. Yet Tojo was far more than his ignominious end. In fact, as Peter Mauch argues, he was one of the twentieth century’s most accomplished military statesmen.

Over a career of some forty years, Tojo successfully launched himself into the highest echelons of political power. He was not only a tactical genius, Mauch shows, but also a savvy administrator, a fierce imperialist, and a deeply loyal advisor to the emperor. Tojo’s career took off with the notorious Kwantung Army in Manchuria, where he played a key role in escalating the Sino-Japanese War during the 1930s. As he rose through the ranks, becoming minister of war and then army chief of staff, he honed the efficiency of the Imperial Army and enhanced its influence within the emperor’s court. All the while, he deftly negotiated the fractious military rivalries that arose wherever he went. Brilliant, ambitious, and often ruthless, Tojo reached political heights that were perhaps matched only by his precipitous fall in the final months of World War II.

Layered and evocative, Tojo is at once a riveting military history of Showa-era Japan and a nuanced portrait of the relentless personality at its center.

"A deeply researched and unsparing portrait of Japan’s most infamous modern leader…Mauch shows how one man’s discipline and ideological rigidity helped steer a nation into a war it was unprepared to fight." - Wall Street Journal

"Superb…Mauch’s writing has the best virtues of military history: clarity, honesty and modesty." - The Telegraph

"Mauch gives us a revealing portrait of the Japanese wartime leader in his absorbing military biography of General Tojo Hideki…[who] has until now received too little attention in the Anglosphere. Peter Mauch’s engrossing book is an excellent biography for anyone interested in knowing more about this Japanese leader in the Second World War." - Asian Review of Books

"Pioneering…Mauch has reconstructed the story of Tojo’s long career in both the army and Japanese politics. Since he was at the centre of much of what happened, from the invasion of Manchuria in 1931 to the Tokyo postwar trials, this is also a history of Japan’s failed imperialism." - Literary Review

"Mauch’s deeply researched and persuasively argued biography, the first written in English for 65 years, provides a more nuanced portrait of the ‘complex figure’ who orchestrated Japan’s war effort from Pearl Harbor to mid-1944…an impressive work of scholarship that helps to explain, if not excuse, Japan’s disastrous wars of aggression in the 1930s and 1940s." - The Times

"Provides a very readable political history of the period…Mauch, of course, offers plenty of critical evaluation of Tojo, ensuring that the book doesn’t veer into hagiography." - Mekong Review

"Through Mauch’s meticulous and somewhat humane biography, Tojo’s legacy isn’t rehabilitated, but instead re-examined, seen in the context of a world that shaped him and the catastrophe he helped shape in return. I understood not just the judgment, but the history behind it. And that, for me, is the mark of an exceptional biography." - Engelsberg Ideas

"Insightful and authoritative…a delight considering the weight of biographies we have on military leadership of the period of a Western origin." - Naval Review

"An insightful study of malignant ideology leading to disaster." - Publishers Weekly

"A meticulous biography of a figure who has largely fallen into obscurity…a solid history." - Kirkus Reviews