Battleship Yamato: Of War, Beauty and Irony

In grand ironic elegy, Jan Morris tells the story of the Imperial Japanese Navy’s Yamato, most powerful warship of World War II and climax of the samurai tradition.

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 honor, discipline and self-sacrifice that had immemorially ennobled the Japanese national consciousness. Stoically poised for...