Rotem Kowner's Tsushima presents a comprehensive account of the Battle of Tsushima Strait in 1905. It skilfully describes how and why it occurred and ended with a decisive and one-sided victory by the Imperial Japanese Navy. Among other things, this book is about the big battleships and guns. Well prepared and trained, the IJN made the best use of them against the Baltic Fleet and earned well-deserving glory and acclaim. However, the memory of decisive victory at Tsushima also planted in the minds of generations of IJN's leaders hubris, arrogance, and inflexibility to adjust and change IJN's naval doctrine until its last days in 1945. Kowner, as a true historian, re-enacts the days of the big battleships and guns, and beckons us all to return to the seas again.
Rotem Kowner is Professor of Japanese Studies and Naval History at the University of Haifa and a leading expert on the Russo-Japanese War. A founder and first chair of the Department of Asian Studies at the University of Haifa, his research interests include wartime behaviour in modern Japan, questions of race and racism in East Asia, and modern naval history. During the last two decades, Professor Kowner has written extensively and led joint research projects on the Russo-Japanese War, and in so doing played a major role in bringing this conflict and its global repercussions back into historical consideration.