J. Calvitt Clarke III, emeritus professor at Jacksonville University, has written an important study of Ethio-Japanese relations in the years leading up to the Second World War. It will be of interest not only to scholars of the history of those two countries, but to many others as well, not least because, as Professor Clarke so carefully shows, the Italo-Ethiopian War was important in helping to create the alliances that eventually fought in the Second World War. These alliances were not inevitable but instead were the result of diplomatic maneuvering, competition for international trade, struggles to maintain the balance of power in various parts of the world, and contingencies that might have turned out otherwise had a few variables been different. This is, as the author states in his preface (p. xii), ‘a complex story in its detailed narrative and intertwined explanations’. This story thus forms an important but often neglected part of the story of the origins of the Second World War. Without the diplomatic maneuvering around Japanese interest in Ethiopia, the Italian invasion in Ethiopia, and the parallel Japanese invasion of Manchuria, the Tripartite Axis might never have formed in the Second World War.

The story told here is also intrinsically important by itself. The Ethio-Japanese relationship was an unusual case of a direct relationship between non-Western societies in two of the world's most ancient and independent empires. This similarity made many people in both countries feel a natural affinity for each other and helped win support for an alliance between the two kingdoms. Their respective responses to the Great Depression and the resultant trade wars also drove the two empires together as Japan sought markets for her products as various other empires were gradually closed to them, and as Ethiopia sought alliances against increasing Italian pressure. Alas, a lasting alliance was not to be. Ethiopia did not offer enough of a market to a Japan desperately seeking to expand its exports for it to be worth an alliance, and Japan found more compelling reasons to ally with Italy and eventually Germany.

Among the many stories within the overall narrative of the Ethio-Japanese relationship at this time is the intriguing, even legendary, tale of a young Ethiopian nobleman and a young Japanese noblewoman who attempted marriage, a marriage often misinterpreted as an attempted dynastic marriage. The tale is well told here and several myths are debunked. It seems both individuals involved were responding as much to their own stereotypes and fantasies of the other country as to the realities they might actually face in any relationship, and their doomed love never was consummated.

There are some weaknesses in this account as well. While the author has mined an impressive array of primary and secondary sources in Japanese, Italian, English, and even Russian, there is no evidence of anything from the Ethiopian archives, nor any explanation of why they were not available or not examined. This is a surprising lacuna in an otherwise thoroughly documented and well researched work.

In addition to this unexplained absence of important primary sources, there is also one very surprising omission in secondary sources cited. The author does not appear to be aware of John Dower's excellent comparative study of Japanese and American racism in the Second World War, War without Mercy. Thus the interpretation of Japanese racial categories and attitudes is not as nuanced as it might be. The fact that there was, and to a certain extent still is, a Japanese category of yuusyokujin (colored people, or ‘people of color’ in the currently fashionable expression of the same concept) suggests that there is also a powerful sense of differentiation in Japanese thought, which includes complex and sometimes contradictory ideas of racial hierarchy. Ethiopia was, and still is, accorded in Japanese scholarship a history independent of and preceding European colonization because it is not considered a part of ‘black Africa’ in Japanese official thought. While the author mentions on page 1 the fact that Japanese officialdom saw Ethiopia more as an extension of Asian power into Africa than as an ancient black African kingdom, he nevertheless seems to lose sight of the fact that Ethiopia, like Egypt, was and is officially seen in Japan as being in Africa but not of it. Thus he begins Chapter Three, ‘Japanese views on Ethiopia’, with a section ‘Japanese attitudes toward the world's blacks’ despite its questionable relevance.