Hata has been described by numerous historians as an important scholar on the history of modern Japan. Historian Edward Drea has called him "the doyen of Japanese military historians", and has written that Hata's "published works are models of scholarship, research, accuracy, and judicious interpretation", and Joshua A. Fogel, a historian of China at York University, concurs that Hata "is an eminent scholar who has for over forty years been writing numerous excellent studies of Japan at war." Masahiro Yamamoto called him "a leading Japanese scholar in the field of Japan's modern history".