Download or read book The Reluctant Combatant written by Kitamura Minoru and published by University Press of America. This book was released on 2014-04-15 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Reluctant Combatant offers proof that Japanese political leaders were reluctant to engage China in a full-scale conflict during the Second Sino-Japanese War. This book identifies several key aspects of the political context surrounding the Second Sino-Japanese War, including the extreme fragility of the national united front against Japan, the view of Soviet Russia as Japan’s principal potential adversary, and the potential threat to Japanese national defense a protracted war with China would pose. This book reveals that the Communists, the National Government, local gentry, peasants, and bandits occasionally collaborated with the enemy—Japanese troops—to expand their spheres of influence.