Focusing on intelligence gathering by the modern Japanese state from 1895, the author's insights into pre-war "hubris and debilitating bureaucratic competition" and postwar reliance on the U.S. will attract fans of both geopolitical and military history.
~Japan Times
This engrossing history of Japanese intelligence demonstrates how such changes have made Japan a better security partner for the United States while preparing the country to stand on its own if the U.S. security guarantee loses its credibility.
~Foreign Affairs
A thorough, and thoroughly alarming, treatment of the subject matter, this book is a valuable contribution to the study of intelligence.
~Choice
Samuels takes on on the bumpy and at times wacky of journey of Japanese intelligence. [It} provides an excellent, exhaustive insight into that which has gone before, and poses some unsettling questions as to the way forward. It is, indeed, a timely book of great value to policy makers, scholars, and students.
~Journal of Military History
Special Duty is an excellent study, meticulously researched and well written. It fills a vital gap in current scholarship, as there is a dearth of reliable historical accounts of Japanese intelligence, especially of the postwar period. The work is essential reading for historians of modern Japan, scholars of intelligence, and any reader interested in the Japanese intelligence community.
~Monumenta Nipponica
Samuels has presented an ambitious study of Japanese intelligence. It is a history of expansion, accommodation, tinkering, reimaging, and reengineering. It is the story of the poor political leadership and lack of vision. The result is one of turmoil and change with minimal progress until very recently. Samuels' book is a study of the political process of creating a viable intelligence community – and the price of lacking political leadership. This is an important book that captures an important story of the eventual attempt to develop a Japanese intelligence community.
~Intelligence and National Security
Richard Samuels has produced an informative book about the evolution and current state of the Japanese intelligence community.
~Survival: Global politics and strategy
Richard Samuels, a professor at MIT and renowned Japanese expert, has written the definitive history of Japan's intelligence community —- or lack thereof.
~Global Asia
Special Duty provides, to date, the only comprehensive, single-volume study of the Japanese intelligence community available in English in decades. [It is] a superb volume that stands out for its seamless integration of a wide range of Japanese- and English-language sources into a book that will surely be seen as the defi nitive study of this topic—in any language—for years to come.
~The Journal of Japanese Studies
The first significant academic book in English, Samuel's magisterial work on Japan's postwar intelligence community will be the standard work on the subject for years to come.
~Pacific Affairs
