Japanese Intelligence Saga: Richard J. Samuels:The Special Duty: A History of the Japanese Intelligence Community Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY and London, 2019, 384 p., $32.95.

While Samuels observes that "intelligence silos are a universal affliction" among national intelligence-gathering agencies everywhere and are by no means unique to Japan, he contends that "the Japanese intelligence community has always suffered from extreme stovepiping" and that the "Japanese practice has been extreme, never more harmfully so than during the Asia-Pacific War." 5 Long before the publication of I Special Duty i , Samuels had already established himself as a master craftsman of history, political science, intelligence studies, and as a leading national security specialist where Japan is concerned. Richard J. Samuels, Ford International Professor of Political Science and director of the Center for International Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has long been recognized as a leading scholar of modern Japan and national security studies. [Extracted from the article]