WITH the 60th anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbour, Laurence Rees, the award-winning producer of The Nazis -- a Warning from History, turns his gaze to the atrocities committed by Japanese soldiers in World War Two. In his incisive but accessible study, Laurence confronts one of the most dramatic and important historical questions of the 20th century -- why did Japanese soldiers behave as they did? The Japanese treatment of allied prisoners in the Second World War is infamous. Yet, during the First World War, they fought on the Allied side and treated captured German soldiers with civility. Horror in the East examines how this drastic change could have come about.

Japan first turned to the West in the early 20th century, appearing to adopt Western values. But, with a rapidly increasing population and inadequate resources, those values proved difficult to support. One solution, favoured by many in the Japanese army and navy, was to build an empire.

Horror in the East probes the Japanese belief in their own racial superiority and the mentality that led them to contemplate suicide when they failed.

The team's interviews with Japanese eye witnesses uncover shocking stories of cannibalism, vivisection, rape, prostitution, starvation and slaughter. From the son who murdered his mother in a suicide pact to the kamikaze pilot, Laurence investigates the reasoning behind their actions and looks at Japanese history to discover why the Japanese took on the militarily superior Americans and thought they would win.

Laurence Rees says: "The truth is that we should be concerned about what the Japanese did during the Second World War and the years that immediately preceded it, not because they are somehow utterly "alien", but because their history tells us how dangerous it is to be human and to long, at all costs, to conform."

Horror in the East is published by BBC Worldwide at £16.99.