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This article examines the ideas that underpinned American psychological war (psywar) in the Pacific. While we cannot precisely measure its effects, we can trace its intellectual history with more confidence. US psywar was a combination of scientific method and myth-making. Assessments of the Imperial Japanese Army tended to be careful, discriminating, and increasingly sophisticated, if not uniformly accurate. At the level of the battle front, practitioners of the ‘mind war’ strove to overcome stereotypes and refine and complexify their view of the enemy.The further they moved from the battlefield towards assessments of Japanese military leadership, society, and high politics, the more they became myth-makers, projecting onto Japan a powerful set of preconceived ideas. These included notions of the superstitious and malleable Japanese mind, the suicidal military elite, and the innocent symbol emperor. In their analysis two models of culture evolved. Their approach to the IJA mostly presented culture as dynamic, layered, and conflicted, whereas their view of Japanese society was monolithic, bounded, and timeless. This contradictory pattern can be explained by different levels of exposure to the subject, the practice of filling ‘knowledge gaps’ with preconceptions, and by American policymaking interests. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the perspectives of British people on the war between Japan and Russia from 1904 to 1910. The author explores the reasons behind the defeat of Russia in the war which include the geostrategic advantages of Japan over the Russian forces. He adds that the views of British on Japanese strategic culture explains a wider history of military orientalism.