ITŌ HIROBUMI – a simple rustic who served coarse meals, enjoyed tippling, and fetched his own food from the kitchen? Ōkuma Shigenobu – a ‘shallow, showy, and domineering type’ who more than anything else craved grandeur and praise? Saionji Kimmochi – the kind who would decide to make a trip to Belgium simply to dally with a notorious prostitute who had murdered a Japanese diplomat? These are but three of the portraits sketched by the University of Tokyo's venerable student of political history, Oka Yoshitake, in this chatty, human – and highly enlightening – account of five prewar prime ministers, originally published by Iwanami in 1979 under the title Kindai Nihon no Seijika.

Uninterested in producing a standard biography, Oka has instead given us five ‘case studies in political leadership’ (p. vii), attempting to show each man's character, as well as the way in which specific historical developments shaped and changed him. The result depicts Itō as a man who, while pleasure-loving and egoistical on the personal level, was impeccably honest and dedicated to the national good on the public level; Ōkuma as a lordly elitist whose reputation as a man of the people was without substance; Hara Takashi as a skillful and pragmatic realist ‘unencumbered by ideals or concern for the past or future’ (p. 109); Inukai Tsuyoshi as a highly cultured political strategist whose tactics usually failed, then unexpectedly catapulted him into the prime minister's chair six years after retirement, and Saionji as a genuine internationalist whose liberal leanings were undercut by his aristocratic tastes and diffident personal style.

The book has its weaknesses. Oka's recounting of institutional political developments sometimes is as dry as dust and terse beyond comprehension. The index, averaging just eighteen items for each individual, is so brief as to be barely useful. Discussions of each man's ‘human side’ totally omit references to family relationships. And, most important, Oka's failure to include overall analysis of ‘political leadership’ robs us of the kind of insights that only someone of his detailed knowledge and rich understanding could provide.

The problems, however, are relatively minor when contrasted to the book's contributions. The fresh light shed on important individuals should, for example, make anyone who reads Five Political Leaders a better interpreter of Japanese history.