I would highly recommend the "history of japan" podcast on how the political structures of Japan operated and how the society that had been developing for hundr

I would highly recommend the "history of japan" podcast on how the political structures of Japan operated and how the society that had been developing for hundreds of years worked in the "poking" of an uninvolved country, I'm assuming here you mean the US and pearl harbor. Long story short there is a history and cultural understanding of militarism that doesn't exist in the "West" and is particularly different than how the US perceives war and cultural obligations. EDIT::ADD , I would specifically look into the fighting on Okinawa as an extremely poignant example of how this played out in real time only relatively recently. It displays some very telling cultural markers.