Japan's First Strike

Manchuria and the Birth of Pacific Aggression

Sofia Nowak

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English

Vij Books
05 November 2025

20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000; Second World War; Diplomacy

Series: Echoes of War: The WWII

In a single night a railway blast barely bent the steel-and yet it opened an era. This book tells how a minor ""incident"" became a doctrine, how a puppet state became a model, and how the world learned to rationalise looking away. It follows the threads from Manchuria 1931 and the Mukden Incident through the invention of Manchukuo, the swagger of the Kwantung Army, and the committees that promised order while delivering delay-the League of Nations failure distilled. Along the way, it shows why doctrines like the Stimson Doctrine sounded firm but changed little, and how the slow march on the road to Pearl Harbor began with stories people wanted to believe.

This is for readers who suspect that headlines repeat because the playbook repeats. It will appeal to those interested in Japanese ultranationalism, diplomatic evasions, and the operational mechanics that turn slogans into sovereignty. You will come away with a clear framework to spot staged crises, deniability games, and the tactics that precede open war-insights drawn from the Lytton Commission papers to the shipping logs of the Asia Pacific war origins.

- What actually deters an aggressor-and what merely buys them time

- How economic shock, propaganda, and legal formalism combine to normalise conquest

- Why small, early actions beat grand, late gestures

If you want rigor without jargon-and a way to read the present with sharper eyes-this narrative equips you to recognise the next Manchuria before it hardens into fate.

By: Sofia Nowak
Imprint: Vij Books
Volume: 8
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 9mm
Weight: 227g
ISBN: 9789390349395
ISBN 10: 9390349397
Series: Echoes of War: The WWII
Pages: 162
Publication Date: 05 November 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Sofia Nowak writes about power, memory, and the moral bookkeeping of states. Drawn to the edges where maps lie, she follows the quiet decisions-cabinet clauses, railway charters, schoolroom texts-that turn discomfort into doctrine. Her work blends archival curiosity with a reporter's attention to voices often footnoted: teachers, stevedores, junior officers, the clerk who typed the order at dusk. Raised between Baltic borderlands and Pacific shorelines, she is attuned to how empires compose themselves-in metrics, in myths, in uniforms-and to what those compositions cost. This book continues her preoccupation with the moment a staged incident becomes a nation's story, and with the obligations of those who see it happening to say so plainly.