One of the classic books on the topic of the Japanese war economy is Japan's Economy in War and Reconstruction by Jerome B. Cohen. Even though the book dates from 1949, Cohen was involved in the US strategic survey of Japan postwar and had access to a considerable amount of data and individuals. It is one of the more lucid books on Japan's war economy. Akira Hara's chapter "Japan: Guns before Rice," in Mark Harrison's anthology The Economics of World War II: Six Great Powers in International Comparison is another short introduction and the anthology allows one to place Japan's war effort in context. The anthology Japan's War Economy by Erich Pauer focuses on Japan (obviously) and incorporates and synthesizes a lot of post-1990s material on Japan's economy. Michael A. Barnhart's Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919–1941 is a bit more in the vein of Wages of Destruction, but without Tooze's tendency to be a doorstopper. Both Janis Mimura's Planning for Empire: Reform Bureaucrats and the Japanese Wartime State and Richard J. Samuels's "Rich Nation, Strong Army": National Security and the Technological Transformation of Japan examine the technocratic bureaucracy's role in imperial expansion and both authors wrestle with the problematic idea of Japanese fascism.