Battleship Yamato : of war, beauty and irony
Morris, Jan, 1926-2017
Books
Find it!
The battleship Yamato, of the Imperial Japanese Navy, was the most powerful warship of World War II and represented the climax, as it were, of the Japanese warrior traditions of the samurai - the ideals of honour, discipline, and self-sacrifice that had immemorially ennobled the Japanese national consciousness. Stoically poised for battle in the spring of1945 - when even Japan's last desperate technique of arms, the kamikaze, was running short - Yamato arose as the last magnificent arrow in the imperial quiver of Emperor Hirohito. Here, Jan Morris not only tells the dramatic story of the magnificent ship itself - from secret wartime launch to futile sacrifice at Okinawa - but, more fundamentally, interprets the ship as an allegorical figure of war itself, in its splendour and its squalor, its heroism and its waste. Drawing on rich naval history and rhapsodic metaphors from international music and art,
Main title:
Battleship Yamato : of war, beauty and irony / Jan Morris
Author:
Morris, Jan, 1926-, author
Imprint:
London : Pallas Athene Publishers, 2017
Collation:
111 pages : illustrations, maps ; 14 x 20 cm.
ISBN:
9781843681472 (hbk)
Dewey class:
940.545952940.54595
Local class:
940.545 M
Language:
English
BRN:
1849328
More Information: