Aircraft Carriers and Seaplane Carriers

“Aircraft Carriers and Seaplane Carriers is an impressive image repository and a most welcome addition to the English language historiography of the Imperial Japanese Navy. The rendered size and clarity of a majority of the images is impressive, with the earlier glass plate negative pictures offering incredibly sharp levels of detail. The inclusion of gunboats and dispatch vessels alongside the more well know carriers of the IJN further illustrates the variety of vessels built, seized, or converted by the Japanese Navy of 1868 to 1945, and the chronological nature of the layout gives a visual record of design changes and evolutions across both vessel types and some individual vessels as well. For those interested in carriers, gunboats, or dispatch vessels of the Imperial Japanese Navy, this is an excellent visual source for a variety of rare construction, operation, and final disposition images.” —The Northern Mariner / Le marin du nord “This book is remarkable in several respects…. The surviving photographs within are remarkable in that they come from an age where photography in Japan was prohibited near any military installation, shipbuilding facility, or naval port. The photographs in this large and heavy landscape book span full-page, sometimes over two… Highly recommended.” —Nautical Research Journal

Kazushige Todaka serves as Director of the Kure Maritime Museum. He is the coauthor of several books on the Japanese navy.

Robert D. Eldridge is the author of dozens of books in English and Japanese on U.S.-Japanese relations, Okinawa and Japanese politics. He received a Ph.D. in political science from Kobe University. He resides with his family in Japan.