Nichibei Kaisen Beiki Tsuini Teito o Shugeki [If War Begins Between Japan and America, Can American Planes Attack Tokyo?]

Tokyo, 1933. Very good.. [4],28,546,[1]pp. Original half blue cloth and tan cloth boards, decoratively stamped in black and gilt. In publisher's illustrated cardstock slipcase. Noticeable surface abrasions to boards, minor edge wear. Foxing and toning to terminal leaves, but overall a clean text block. Some chipping to fore-edge of slipcase. Second printing (first published on August 25, 1933, and reprinted on October 4) of this prescient look at the prospect of war between the United States and Japan, published eight years before Pearl Harbor. The author, a fifteen-year veteran of the Japanese army, lays out remarkably accurate predictions of what a war between the U.S. and Japan would look like. He begins with the conclusion that "war between Japan and the US is now a reality in the immediate future" and that "the future of war will be fought in the air."

He suggests an attack on Hawaii ("picking up Hawaii will be a piece of cake") and gives scenarios for Japanese attacks on the Philippines, Alaska, Panama, and San Francisco. He addresses the potential involvement of European powers and Russia. He considers the use of fire-bombing against Japan, noting that most houses in Tokyo are made out of paper. That so many of his ideas came to pass or were at least considered indicates that the outline of the Second World War in the Pacific was pretty obvious to trained contemporary observers. The ominous figure of a gas-masked soldier on the front cover of the work, as well as wartime scenes printed on the slipcase echo the content of the work itself.

Interestingly, this book appears on a list of propaganda subject to confiscation during the U.S. occupation of Japan (see Official Gazette English Edition, Extra for December 10, 1947, p. 22, no. 438), perhaps accounting for its scarcity. The most substantial biographical discussion of Watanuki is found in Cartographers of Desire: Male-Male Sexuality in Japanese Discourse, 1600-1950 by Gregory Pflugfelder (UC Press, 2007, p. 300-301), where his writings about homosexual encounters are discussed. OCLC reports just a single copy of any edition of this work, at the National Diet Library in Japan.