Shattered Sword is indeed a fine book, the Japanese perspective and doctrine remain largely occluded and dark to western minds and readers and naval historians, for it represents a continuation of the clan based almost tribal nature of Japanese society that developed from the Feudal era. This continued in full force to the Second World War and remain in effect today to quite an extensive degree.
Back in the early days of the development of a modern navy, one strong family clan took over the Naval effort and another took over the army, both remained in strong control and hence the Navy and Army often were at odds with each other as strongly as they were at war with any foreign foe. This affected naval doctrine and also the insular view of Japan to the rest of the world, they had lived in the cultural shadow of China for thousands of years and over that time developed a them vs us mentality that also remain in effect....strongly reinforcing a national chauvinism that occluded common sense and rendered some of the amazing technical and developmental victories almost useless due to incredibly narrow minded tactical and strategic decisions by the IJN high command...esp in the almost total misuse of the fine submarine force....tho when I say "fine" it must be tempered with the comment that due to limitations of Japanese national technical production in the homeland, many of the submarine classes were hampered by poor drive train design that made the boats slow to surface and dive thus making them sitting ducks for sudden attack... but in air craft carrier doctrine they were second to none, the Japanese had a long standing love of air power, as it allowed them to escape from the narrow confines of the homeland both literally and figuratively and flight and air power remained a top priority of design and production...but there again they made radical decision that showed the at times rash and risk taking nature of Japanese thought...the Zero for instance had Zero armour protection....and other limitations that made it a death trap after allied plane design caught up.....the Japanese air force became largely target practice for the Allies, as did the IJN ships due to the allied advances in Radar controlled gunnery, the use of proximity AA shells, and a vastly superior industrial base and source of raw materials.
All and all, the war was doomed to be a defeat unless the special weapons programs had succeeded and the Army and Naval Clans had gotten along better. It was a close thing in the end for plans were underway to send the I 400 subs with planes to bomb the west coast cities with plague bombs and to destroy the locks of the Panama Canal, both of which would have extended the war and made the outcome much more costly...... so the doctrine and details of these fine sources and books is a great help to lifting the curtain of misunderstanding that obscures the Japanese experience of the war.
It was in the end a national tragedy, almost no family was untouched by death and loss both from the huge losses of the army and naval forces in the war and the terrible civilian casualties in the bombing of the cities of the homeland. It put the Japanese culture into a temporary frozen state of shock, from which they emerged to become a re invigorated national economy geared to service the US market and the growing world market with consumer goods and high technology but underneath the basic paradoxes of Japanese culture remain in force..they remain a fiercely proud and dignified people with a deep cultural tradition and sophistication on an individual level at all levels of society from the ordinary ramen stand owner to the Zimbatsu executives.....and they are survivors of proven strength and endurance...yet they have a deeply ingrained custom and habit of not wanting to speak out and break the surface of consensus....limiting their ability to respond to some crisis situations and challenges to the point that they become literally paralyzed and unable to act effectelyl. As the carriers at Midway were picked off one by one, the fleet was at times in such shock that they lost hundreds of their pilots that could have been saved by adapting to the sudden change of circumstances....ditto the same sort of handicap operated at the highest levels of command in the face of the terrible USN submarine devestation of the Japanese merchant marine....if they had responded in kind with the submarine forces they had even to the end of the war, they could have cut Hawaii off from the mainland USA and broken the chain of supply to the south pacific as well.
Toland's book is a fine piece of work..he is a good scholar and respected in the field.
