The introduction opens with a brief overview of Japanese foreign policy in the early twentieth century and the balance between Japan’s determination to expand within the Asian mainland and its need to maintain a cooperative framework with the Western powers. It then proceeds to lay out the four goals of the book: providing an accurate portrayal of the life of Hirota Kōki by moving beyond the popular image of the “tragic prime minister” that is commonly held in Japan due to popular media accounts; placing Hirota’s life and career within the overall context of greater trends in Japanese foreign policy; examining the Japanese foreign policy of the 1930s; and discussing the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (the Tokyo Trials) and the reasons that Hirota was sentenced to death. The chapter closes with a discussion of some of the ways in which the study of Hirota’s life has modern significance. Namely, by providing a cautionary tale as to the pitfalls he experienced as he tried and failed to achieve a “Sino-Japanese partnership” and how Japan’s descent into populism in the 1930s underlines the need to maintain a separation between foreign policy and domestic political pressures.