In the previous post, it was noted that at the end of the First World War the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) had expectations but were realistic. They expected that their coalition work with the British in the Indian Ocean, Mediterranean, and taking on maritime security in the Pacific had earned them recognition, respect and parity with the western navies. They had just successfully operated as a “global navy.” They also recognized that maintenance and expansion of their fleet was directly tied to shipyard capacity, raw materials and industrial throughput. These were industrial limits impossible to ignore and were not limitations on either British or the Americans.

Japanese Naval Planning

The nation of Japan continued to struggle financially with the burden of Russo-Japanese war debt, expenditures on military replenishment, expenses on the build up and securing their footholds in Manchuria, Korea, and Liaodong. At the same time, like all nations post-WW1, there was a desire to return to a consumer economy after the deprivations of the war years.

The Navy’s planning division began to look ahead a decade to see what would be needed in the 1930s in order to support nascent plans for a Japanese-led Asia prosperity zone. The conclusion was that the Navy required two fleet groups, each consisting of 4 battleships and 4 heavy cruisers. Thus was born the 8-8 plan. The basis of the plan was the theory of sea power of Alfred Thayer Mahan which was the foundation of both Japanese and American naval strategy. One of the central theses of Mahanian thought was the “decisive battle” after which “control of the sea” would automatically default to the winner. The Japanese had to control the Western Pacific.

The problem was that in 1918-1919 Japan was experiencing a post-WW 1 economic depression making their 8-8 fleet plan financially impossible. Nishihara Hajime, Vice Minister of Finance noted to the Navy Minister Kato that not only would the capital budget for new construction consume 20-30% of the national budget, the outyear expenses for maintenance, operations, etc, for a fully operations 8-8 fleet would extend the budgetary consumption at similar percentage rates. It was not viable or sustainable. And the problem with that was the overall naval strategy was based on several premises:

• The U.S. would not construct any fortifications/bases west of the Philippines or Guam.
• So that in the event of a US-Japan conflict, the U.S. fleet would have to cross the Pacific for any hostile action against Japan.
• Based on Mahan’s theory, the U.S. would lose 10% of its force effectiveness for every 1,000 miles of steaming – so after 3,000 miles of Pacific transit, the U.S. fleet would effectively be 70% of its original force structure.

Japan was in a position that it needed to understand what it could afford to build and maintain a 10:7 ratio of naval combatants. In other words, the two nations that had access to raw materials, finances, and shipyard capacity to outbuild Japan – they needed to be constrained to a limitation that fit within Japan’s strategic plan.

Forestalling an Arms Race

Meanwhile, there were growing tensions in East Asia over an unstable China, Japanese occupation of Shandong (former German territory), Manchuria, and more. Leaders in the international community sought to prevent the possibility of another war. Rising Japanese militarism and an international arms race heightened these concerns. Within the United States there were congressional calls for the U.S. to engage Britain and Japan in naval arms limitation negotiations.

In what must have seemed like a godsend to the Japanese in this era of growing tension, in 1921, U.S. Secretary of State Hughes invited nine nations to Washington, D.C. to discuss naval reductions and the situation in the Far East. This gathering is known as the Washington Naval Conference which produced three treaties: the Five-Power Treaty, the Four-Power Treaty, and the Nine-Power Treaty. Not terribly imaginative, but nonetheless descriptive.

• The Five-Power Treaty, signed by the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, France and Italy was the cornerstone of the naval disarmament program. It called for each of the countries involved to maintain a set ratio of warship tonnage which allowed the United States and the United Kingdom 500,000 tons, Japan 300,000 tons, and France and Italy each 175,000 tons. If you do the math the ratio between US/Britain and Japan was 5:3 (10:6 equivalent and not the 10:7 Japan desired)
• In the Four-Power Treaty, the United States, France, the United Kingdom, and Japan agreed to consult with each other in the event of a future crisis in East Asia before taking action. This nullified the Anglo-Japanese Treaty of 1902, freeing Britain from coming to the aid of Japan in the event of war.
• The Nine-Power Treaty, marked the internationalization of the U.S. Open Door Policy in China. The treaty promised that each of the signatories (the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, France, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Portugal, and China) would respect the territorial integrity of China. The treaty recognized Japanese dominance in Manchuria but otherwise affirmed the importance of equal opportunity for all nations doing business in China.

Japan and China also signed a bilateral agreement, the Shandong Treaty, which returned control of that province and its railroad to China. Japan had taken control of the area from the Germans during the First World War and maintained control of it over the years that followed. Combined with the Nine-Power Treaty the effect was meant to reassure China that its territory would not be further compromised by Japanese expansion. All of these treaties were set to expire in 1936.

The treaties of the Washington Naval Conference stabilized naval competition but ignored land-based conflicts. Rising Chinese nationalism with its own imperial privileges and Japanese ambitions. Manchuria remained unresolved as Soviet reemergence added strategic anxiety for Japan. Meanwhile, Western powers lacked capacity or will to enforce the system they had just created. East Asia was not at peace, it was balanced as long as there was restraint from all parties, but ready to topple once the first party was willing to move unrestrained.

Image credit: various photographs from Naval Aviation Museum, National World War II Museum, and US Navy Archives.

The first concerns itself with the international situation, particularly in regard to China. The second deals specifically with Japan and how this conflict affected it. At the time, World War I was widely regarded within Japan as “an opportunity that comes once every thousand years” because it produced assured profitability for the nation and for its industries, unprecedented industrial and financial opportunity, and minimal obligation and commitment. Japan, before 1914, was poor. The country was obliged to import British and German steel because it was cheaper than steel made in Japan, and there were very few shipyards that could build steel vessels of any size. It was not until 1905 that Japan laid down a battleship built with home-produced steel. As late as 1914 state spending, especially on the armed services, remained very low because of the debt that had been accumulated in the Russian war. A mark of the narrow margins on which Japan was forced to operate was the fact that before 1914 the greatest annual profit recorded by its largest shipping company, Nippon Yusen Kaisha, was about 6 million yen. 

With the start of the war all the European powers were diminished in terms of Pacific presence and merchant traffic and trade. Merchant shipping, other than Japan’s, virtually disappeared from the Indian and Pacific oceans during this war. A mark of the impact of World War I was the fact that in 1918 Nippon Yusen Kaisha ran a profit of 86 million yen. In the course of World War I, Japanese shipping came to dominate Pacific routes, even dominating U.S. trade on the Pacific Coast – a fact that caused concerns in the U.S. and led directly to building the Mare Island shipyard and a post-war effort to reestablish U.S. trade and shipping in the Pacific.

Japan: post-war

Japan’s post-war economic policy shifted to focus on development of the civil sector, enhancement of light industry, and improvement of the economic lives of ordinary citizens. However, good intentions aside, the nation experienced a sharp economic downturn after its wartime boom, characterized by speculative bubbles bursting in 1920, leading to bank failures, widespread bad loans, and a chronic depression throughout the 1920s. A key event was the Great Kantō Earthquake (1923) which devastated Tokyo and surrounding areas, leading to huge reconstruction efforts and “earthquake bonds issued by the Bank of Japan to help overextended banks. This intervention, intended to rescue solvent but illiquid banks, was abused by already distressed institutions, accumulating a series of bad loans. When the government proposed redeeming the earthquake bonds in 1927, rumors of bank insolvency spread, causing nationwide bank runs and failure of major banks (the Shōwa Financial Crisis). Throughout this period there were shortages, price rises, and food riots especially in the 1920 crisis. The IJA was called in to quell the riots which hurt the army’s relationship with the civilian population in the home islands.

In parallel to this, encouraged by their far ranging naval activities during the war, Japan found itself with only one western power against which they could compare themselves: the United States. The Imperial Defense Policy statement of April 1907, was rewritten to change the most likely military opponent from Russia to the United States. It sanctioned the decisive battle doctrine, which stressed the importance of acquiring big ships with big guns through a program for the construction of eight 20,000-ton battleships and eight 18,000-ton battle cruisers. This was known as the 8:8 program.

The IJN proposal came during the war years but the Japanese Diet (house and senate equivalent) refused to authorize more than one battleship and two battle cruisers. This came at the same time when the United States was vociferously claiming the right to build a fleet “second to none.”  Within the US, naval leaders proposed a theoretical threat of  Germany in the Atlantic and Japan in the Pacific (as well as a German-Japanese alliance). This was the warrant for a two-ocean navy. The goal was less national defense than to protect overseas trade. Tohmatsu and Willmott note: “The least that could be said about such logic was that it grasped at the exceedingly unlikely in order to justify the manifestly unnecessary.”

Both countries had building programs that planned large increases in combatants by 1925, but the U.S. was capable of building far more than Japan because of its industrial capacity and financial strength. But in fact neither country was financially capable of implementing such grandiose plans. In Japan there was not enough capital, access to lines of credit, plus the ongoing financial problems. In the U.S. there was too much national debt associated with WW1 and a growing isolationist movement in Congress.

All of this led to the Washington Naval Conference of 1922. The simplest description of the conference: it was complicated. The agreements concluded at Washington were important because they provided the basis of how Japanese-American relations could be stripped of hostility and ill-intent. They halted what promised to be a disastrous naval race in the Pacific and put in its place arrangements for the scrapping of many existing warships and limitation of the size of fleets that could be retained. When allied with the ban on Britain fortifying any base beyond Singapore and on the Americans beyond the Hawaiian Islands, the agreements created a balance in the Far East – not only militarily but also commercially. 

Japan’s acceptance of such arrangements was the result of a singular balanced vision championed by one person: Admiral Kato Tomosaburo, the Navy minister. He held that the only eventuality that could be worse for Japan than an unrestricted naval construction race with the United States would be war against that country. An unrestricted naval race could only result in the inevitable and irreversible erosion of Japan’s position relative to the United States because of the industrial power of the U.S.  Kato believed that as a consequence, Japan had to seek security through peaceful cooperation and diplomatic negotiations rather than through international rivalry and conquest. While the IJN itself saw its role as a deterrent and, in the event of war, defensive, individuals such as Kato saw Japan’s best interest served not by confrontation and conflict with the United States but by arrangements that limited American construction relative to Japan and that provided the basis of future U.S. recognition and acceptance of Japan’s regional naval and commercial positions. The next post takes a “deeper dive” into the details of all the treaties that emerge from the Washington Conference.

The Next Generation

Germany’s loss in WW1 was seen as victory of democracy over militarism and came as a considerable surprise to many Japanese, especially those associated with the Imperial Army. But, for much of the 1920s there was no major military commitment that involved substantial taxation and financial sacrifice. The 1920s held out hope for the triumph of liberal democracy within Japan and the prospect of a better future.

But Japan had no long-term legacy of such a form of government.  It is one thing to model your military on western models, but governance is a different matter. The Meiji Constitution’s implementation of parliamentary representation, separation of powers and independence of the judiciary, and accountability under the law, were relatively new – all still within the generation of the people whose culture and frame was the Tokugawa Shogunate. There was no more than a single lifetime of support and investment in them on the part of society.

The 1920s saw the passing of the genro, or elder statesmen, who had led the country since 1868 – and especially since 1898 when many significant changes were implemented. These men, in a sense, were not only the living memory of Meiji, but were the “glue” that held the reforms together and steered national and regional interests to a common goal. Their passing created a collective gap in leadership that the next generation prime ministers could not fill. What was lost was moderation and continuity of memory.

As Japan worked to transition politically, financially and culturally, the 1920s – despite its problems – was one of peace and slowly improving conditions. But there was a different sense within the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA). There were three overseas military commitments in this decade. The first was the intervention in the Russian civil war, which in effect ended in October 1922 when Japanese forces finally withdrew from Soviet mainland territory. The second was a deepening Japanese army involvement in China’s civil wars, most notably after 1926. The third, directly related to the second, was IJA operations inside Manchuria.

Notably, during IJA involvement in China’s civil war and Manchuria, the Japanese military was without guidance from Tokyo and as such set their own rules of engagement, as they decided which side to back in which province or area, and to do so without reference or consultation with Tokyo. The habit, once acquired, was never broken. 

In 1924, the Prime Minister reduced the size of the IJA, involuntarily moving officers and senior enlisted personnel into retirement or simply discharged from the military. But for their loyal service many were directed into the state education administration in positions of supervision for a newly introduced scheme of compulsory military training for children. This was especially true outside urban areas and resulted in an imposition of military values on far less well educated children with little job prospects. When we arrived in the 1930s these youths found opportunity in military service as the IJA was expanded – and the veteran’s association became a powerful political voice in the nation.. 

By the time we reached the 1930s, the IJA had developed a culture of insubordination within the army. The most notable trait was gekokujo, the manipulation of senior officers by their subordinates. Among the most radical/nationalistic members of the IGA this led to the phenomenon of “government by assassination” as cabals of junior officers (colonel and below) assassinated civil leadership leading to the setbacks of nascent parliamentary democracy. Although the Japanese Constitution was amended in 1936 to mandate that four of the six key cabinet positions be occupied by active duty military personnel. By the late 1920s and early 1930s it was a practice politically necessary to form governments under the Prime Minister. The Meiji era civilian control of the military was eroding and beginning to exist in name only. Increasingly the real power belonged to the IJA and IJN.

The Rise of Nationalism

The 1930s saw a marked rise in nationalism within Japan. It is a complex topic whose details are too complex for this series particularly to attempt to explain in terms of cause and effect. But there are “snapshots” that mark the changes.

Prior to 1933 Japanese schoolbooks made reference to non-Japanese western historical figures associated with democratic movements in history, e.g.  Washington and Lincoln. After 1933 virtually all western society references were removed. Key figures were replaced by Japanese national heroes. If there were mention of westerners, they tended to be famous military leaders such as Admiral Nelson or Napoleon Bonaparte. Overall the tone of the school curriculum became increasingly nationalistic and strident. 

By 1936 the books that taught children to read were no longer based on nature and the richness of Japanese animal life. In their place came topics of the Emperor, soldiers, duty, loyalty to the nation and service/sacrifice. Even cartoon strips were not immune. The Japanese equivalent of Felix the Cat, a dog named Norakuro, joined a regiment of dogs in the army because in the country of the Sheep (Manchuria), the latter had been obliged, because of the aggressiveness of the Pigs (the Chinese), to call in the Dogs (the Japanese), which had chased out the Pigs and created a haven for the Sheep and the Goats (the Mongolians). And in the future the Dogs would have to stand guard because the Pigs had tried to enlist the support of the Bears. Significant? Make of what you will, but it and many other examples begin to paint a picture. Clearly something was afoot that made for a fundamental change of attitudes within Japanese society. 

One example can be seen in the expected behaviors of soldiers. Thousands of Japanese soldiers taken prisoner during the Russo-Japanese war of 1904–05 when they were repatriated were seen as heroes and honored. Almost three decades later, in the course of the fighting at Shanghai in January 1932, the Chinese took prisoner a severely wounded and unconscious Japanese officer. He recovered and was exchanged, but he killed himself because of the dishonor he felt for having been made a prisoner. Only after his suicide did the national praise him because he had embraced real Japanese values. In the same conflict three soldiers blew themselves up during the fighting at Shanghai to provide a key action in the battle. They were afforded a degree of national veneration because they had embraced the honorable value of self-sacrifice. It was never determined if the action was accidental or intentional in fact, but it was clear how it was promoted.

Change was afoot across Japanese society.

What were the root causes? While arguable – and scholars all have different takes on the question – a short list of “what” generally includes: 

• The Great Depression’s economic devastation, the perceived failures of democracy, a rising belief in Japanese racial superiority, and military leaders’ desire for expansion to secure resources and power.  These are some of the factors that led to a surge in ultranationalism, militarism, and imperialist ambitions that challenged both Western influence and Japanese civilian government. 
• The economic crises associated with the Great Depression. As elsewhere, following the 1927 banking crisis, the 1929 stock market crash devastated Japan’s export-dependent economy, causing widespread poverty, especially in rural areas, making radical, immediate solutions attractive.
• Civilian governments struggled to handle the economic collapse, leading many to view democracy as weak and ineffective, paving the way for authoritarianism. It must be remembered that the Shogunate period and the local authoritarian leaders were only a few decades past. There was a romanticizing of the “good years” when leaders were strong. 
• The military, particularly the army, presented itself as the solution, gaining influence through successful campaigns (like invading Manchuria in 1931) and advocating for expansion as a path to economic security and national strength.

From all this a virulent nationalism emerged. The idea – already and always present – was promoted that the Japanese people were racially superior and divinely destined to lead Asia, with emperors as direct descendants of the Sun Goddess. In essentially one lifetime, national sentiment moved from the isolationist period of the Tokugawa Shogunate to a globalist vision of Japan’s destiny. Nationalists argued that imperialist expansion was necessary to overcome overpopulation and resource scarcity, providing Japan with economic security and a greater role on the world stage.

On the far right was the drum beat of the ultra-Nationalist Movements. They denounced democracy, big business, and Western influence, advocated a return to traditional values, loyalty to the Emperor, and warrior/samurai ethics. They were not restrained in the use of political violence and assassinations. 

These are some of the factors combined to hollow out democratic institutions and shift Japan toward a militaristic, expansionist path by the mid-1930s, setting the stage for further aggression in Asia and another step to the broader Asia-Pacific War.

Image credit: various photographs from Naval Aviation Museum, National World War II Museum, and US Navy Archives. Source reference: Gathering Darkness: The Coming of War to the Far East and the Pacific, 1921-1941 by Haruo Tohmatsu and H.P. Willmott (War and Society Book 3)

In previous posts there have been references to internal dynamics within the governance structures of Japan. By the 20th century that structure would best be described as a constitutional monarchy, somewhat akin to Great Britain which served as the model for the Meiji Constitution. Akin, but not exactly a match. The differences involved the role of the king/emperor and the makeup of the cabinet.  If you’d like to learn more, take a look at the post, In the Beginning. In more recent posts there have been references to the rise of ultra-nationalism, militarism, and other movements within Japanese society. The rise in nationalism is a natural consequence of pride in its language, culture, and uniqueness – as well as a reaction to the incursion of western imperialism into the world of East Asia. In recent memory of the nation is not only the samurai culture, but also the recent military victories in the First Sino-Japanese War as well as the Russo-Japanese War. True, each of these victories came at a cost of lives and led to wartime sacrifice, but Japan was a nation that had never been defeated. Those victories, from the centuries earlier Mongol invasions, turned back by divine winds (kamikaze) to the more recent victories were guided by the hand of Emperor, descendant of the sun goddess. 

The military rose to great prestige in civil society’s eyes because of Japan’s war victories. These reinforced the idea that military strength was central to Japan’s survival and success especially against the intrusion of western influences. The Meiji Constitution of 1889 gave the military independence from civilian control: the army and navy were responsible only to the Emperor. In addition, the cabinet required that the Army and Navy ministers be active-duty officers, giving the military an essential veto over government policies. This structural design later allowed military leaders to dominate politics in the 1920s and 1930s. Combine this with the military indoctrination of bushidō focused on reverence for the Emperor and you have an environment where militarists could claim to act in the Emperor’s name for the good of Japan.

Within the Japanese government this gives rise to a moderate wing who believe the diplomatic path is the way forward for Japan to take its place in the world order. Opposing them will be the militarist wing which holds up evidence of the U.S. Immigration Act of 1924 and other western impositions as evidence of the weakness and ultimate failure of diplomatic efforts. In their minds, respect, dignity and the place in the world order would be achieved with demonstrations of military power and the will to use it.

The problem is that the Japanese military was not of one mind, vision, purpose or strategy.

The Roots of Imperial Rivalry

From the beginning there was a natural divide between the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) and Navy (IJN) that can be traced to the Meiji decision to emulate western military power and structure as a means to ensure Japan did not fall to the same fate as China in the 19th century. The IJA was formed by Prussian advisors whose experience was limited to ground warfare. The Prussian model emphasized discipline, mass conscription, and decisive land battles which were closely tied to Japan’s mainland Asia strategy and the Emperor as supreme commander.

The IJN was formed and modeled on the British Navy who, as expected, faced seaward. The emphasis was professionalism, technology, and command of sea lanes with an oriented toward commerce protection and fleet engagements. While professionalism might seem an odd thing to mention, it stands out within the IJN mainly because within the IJA we will see repeated instances of junior office initiative/insubordination (sometimes a thin line) that had major consequences on national policy and on the battlefield. The IJN did not experience anything similar.

From their formation the two branches of the military developed distinct institutional cultures, different strategic geographies (mainland vs. ocean), and separate professional identities from the very beginning.

Back Home

As mentioned above, the Meiji Constitution placed the Army and Navy directly under the Emperor, outside normal cabinet and parliamentary control. Which meant there was no direct civilian control of the military. In addition, there was no unified command/organization such as the (later) U.S. Joint Chiefs, or a single Department of Defence/War as a cabinet position. Each branch of the military had its own Ministers at the cabinet level as well as their own General Staffs. The results were many, but one was that with independent budgets there would always be major infighting for funds based on their strategic geographical forces. As one might expect, the structure encouraged competition rather than coordination, political intrigue, and direct appeals to the Emperor. But also, the cabinet included both Ministers as well as the head of the Army and Navy.  Very often the Ministers were either active duty or retired military leaders. Together or separately, the armed forces had political leverage through institutional veto power.

The Experience of Combat

The success of the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-95) and the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05) brought success, victory, but very different conclusions. In the earlier war the Navy’s victory at the Yalu River secured sea control which they believed enabled the Army’s rapid victories on land by interfering with Chinese logistics. Those same victories reinforced the Army’s belief in offensive spirit as the critical success factor. Each service thus drew different lessons. The Army believed moral superiority and offensive will were decisive while the Navy concluded sea control and modern fleets were decisive. There was no structure where unified doctrine was examined. As a result, rather than fostering joint doctrine, success hardened service parochialism.

The critical element to Japan’s victory in the Russo-Japanese War was … well it depended upon who you asked. The Army was victorious on land, but at a great cost of manpower. The casualties in Manchuria were enormous, but it reinforced their belief in sacrifice as the key to mainland success which in turn was the essential element to safeguard Japan from foreign incursions. The Navy was phenomenally successful at sea from its peremptory strike against the Russian Eastern Navy at Port Arthur at the beginning of the war, to its devastation of the Russian Baltic Fleet at the Battle of Tsushima. These two battles became almost mythic within naval circles and confirmed their commitment to the Mahanian doctrine of sea power as the key to national security and empire. (Alfred Thayer Mahan, naval strategist, whose work The Influence of Sea Power on History was the framework of Japanese and U.S. naval strategies in the 20th century.)

After 1905 the Navy saw itself as Japan’s strategic shield against great powers while the Army saw itself as the nation’s blood-paying guardian on the continent. Both believed they had saved Japan. A rivalry was born.

The Infighting

As mentioned in earlier posts, the Russo-Japanese War resulted in territorial gains, but not the war indemnities that had enriched the national coffers after the earlier Sino-Japanese War. Now Japan faced heavy war debts, limited industrial capacity, and finite state resources. At the time there was a need to resupply and replenish the Army so that it would be able to secure and hold the recent gains in Manchuria and Korea, recruit and train new soldiers, begin to enhance the recently acquired Southern Manchurian Railroad, and build supporting garrisons.

The Navy’s priority was the development of their 8-8 plan: 8 battleships and 8 heavy cruisers in order to form two battle fleets inspired by Admiral Satō Tetsutarō’s Mahanian theories This meant a huge capital investment in shipyards and new construction, recruiting and training to man the new ships, technological innovation, and the development of bases and coaling stations.

Budgeting became a zero-sum competition, not a joint planning exercise.

World War I did not help the rivalry. The Army was largely sidelined with no active role in the war in which Japan fought against Germany on the side of the British and Americans. The Navy benefited from expanded operations and increased prestige via its experience in coalition warfare with Britain. 

Japan neutralized German naval forces in East Asia, protected sea lanes vital to British imperial communications and supply in the Western Pacific and parts of the Indian Ocean, providing security of sea lanes from Southeast Asia to the Mediterranean. In addition, a flotilla of Japanese destroyers deployed to the Mediterranean conducting convoy escort, anti-submarine patrols and search and rescue operations. At the same time, the IJN hunted German commerce raiders in the Pacific and laid siege to German commerce ports in China (Shandong ) which would later become Japanese possessions, as well as the Mariana, Caroline, and Marshall Islands.

Coalition warfare reinforced several naval convictions about sea power, technology and alliances (this latter conviction would be shattered in the post-war naval conferences). Meanwhile the IJA was largely on its own in China and Manchuria. As a result the IJN took on a more internationalist, technocratic view of its role and developed realistic views about industrial limits.  Unlike the Army, the Navy could not avoid confronting industrial constraints because warships required steel, precision machining, turbines, armor plate, fire control systems and ships took years, not months, to build. Costs were enormous and easily quantified. The IJN understood that their mission was directly tied to fleet size which depended on shipyard capacity and industrial throughput. All this made industrial limits impossible to ignore.

The Army was far more dependent upon simple manpower although they too needed the industrial capacity for production of weapons, artillery, and ammunition – all of which, by comparison, we “light” industry. Their concerns centered more on suspicion of diplomacy, the priority of unilateral continental action, and that they were becoming the “little brother” to IJN. As a result, within the IJA there was a renewed emphasis on spiritual purity, bushidō, and a national destiny to be fulfilled on the Asia mainland. Lacking coalition experience, there was a suspicion of internationalism in general, but with the turn inward, there was a marked increase in the politicization of Army officers, especially among the junior officers.

After the War

Based on their experience during the First World War, the IJN expected to have won and secured continued recognition as a British partner in maritime matters. During the war they had partnered so that Japan was responsible for maritime security in the western Pacific and eastern Indian Ocean – they expected this division of responsibilities to continue. It was believed they had achieved parity with the western navies. Then came the shock of:

• Indifference of British willingness to prioritize the alliance as they assumed responsibility for maritime security of their own Pacific colonial interests.
• 1922 Washington Naval Conference and what seemed to be an Anglo-American effort to contain and diminish the IJN.
• 1924 U.S. immigration exclusion

The 1922 Washington Naval Conference was a moment that would fracture the cohesiveness of the Imperial Navy, deepen the sense of needing to set its course and destiny independent of the view and consensus of western powers.

Up next: 1920s – the decade of treaties

Image credit: various photographs from Naval Aviation Museum, National World War II Museum, and US Navy Archives. | The Immigration Act of 1924 (The Johnson-Reed Act), Office of the Historian, U.S. State Department

In the previous post we explored the Taft-Katsura Agreement between Japan and the United States. The purpose was to use that as an example of two nations seeking a means to “keep a lid” on a pot that seems to be forever threatening to boil over. Immigration of Japanese to U.S. territories and the mainland was a flame that seemed to keep the pot at or near boiling.

The Chinese Exclusion Act

The first significant wave of 19th-century Chinese immigration to America began with the California gold rush of 1848–1855 and continued with subsequent large labor projects, such as the building of the first transcontinental railroad. Over time animosity toward the Chinese and other foreigners increased for reasons of economic competition and simple racism. Attitudes, violence and state laws led the immigrant Chinese to settle in enclaves in cities, mainly San Francisco, and took up low-wage labor, such as restaurant and laundry work. California became the hotbed of anti-Chinese fear, segregation and exclusion laws, many of which were struck down by the Supreme Court. But the sentiment was building.

In 1892 the U.S. signed into law, the Chinese Exclusion Act prohibiting all immigration of Chinese laborers for 10 years. The Act also denied Chinese residents already in the US the ability to become citizens and Chinese people traveling in or out of the country were required to carry a certificate identifying their status or risk deportation. It was the first major US law implemented to prevent all members of a specific national group from immigrating to the United States, and therefore significantly shaped twentieth-century immigration policy. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 shaped everything that followed. The law alarmed Japan, which regarded China’s treatment as a sign of racial contempt. While Japan was not yet a great power in 1882. By 1905, it was and it expected to be treated differently.

Japanese Immigration

At the same time as the Law was being passed, there was rapid population growth after the Meiji Restoration especially in rural areas and among the urban poor. The government encouraged overseas labor migration as a means to relieve overcrowding. Meanwhile in the U.S. there was a demand for inexpensive labor in Hawaiian sugar plantations, West Coast agriculture, railroads, fisheries, and urban service work. Once the Chinese were excluded Japanese workers were more actively recruited. A U.S.-Japanese treaty signed in 1894 had guaranteed the Japanese the right to immigrate to the United States, and to enjoy the same rights in the country as U.S. citizens. 

By 1900 the Japanese immigrant population in California was small but was being noticed. As seems to be the case with immigrants in America, they work hard and become another “American success story” that, unfortunately, breeds jealousy. Labor unions had gained size and power and they became one of the voices that began to call for control, segregation or exclusion. The instances are many but the act that caused the pot to boil over was the 1906 San Francisco Board of Education enactment of a measure to send Japanese and Chinese children to segregated schools. The Government of Japan was outraged by this policy, claiming that it violated the 1894 treaty. In a series of notes exchanged between late 1907 and early 1908, known collectively as the Gentlemen’s Agreement, the U.S. agreed to pressure the San Francisco authorities to withdraw the measure, and Japan promised to restrict the immigration of laborers to the United States. By this time expansion into Manchuria called for settlers and laborers and as a result immigrants were directed there.

This series of agreements still did not resolve all of the outstanding issues. U.S. treatment of Japanese residents continued to cause tension between the two nations. The Alien Land Act of 1913, for example, barred Japanese from owning or leasing land for longer than three years and adversely affected U.S.-Japanese relations in the years leading up to World War I. As before, these actions were driven by local politics, not federal diplomacy but they had international consequences.

Nativism, Immigration and U.S. Politics

During the First World War Japan was a U.S. ally and for the moment immigration tensions were muted but remained unresolved. After the war there was a national movement towards isolationism and not wanting to be involved in foreign affairs. This was accompanied by a minor, but vocal, sentiment of nativism which led to a general hardening of racial theories and stereotypes. As a result, immigration restriction became a political “hot potato” and then a national priority.  The Japanese view of all this was that the U.S. was willing to accept Japan as a partner when it suited their needs and interests, but never as an equal civilization.

There was a sense on the American side that Japan was a partner that one had to keep an eye upon. The U.S. had long worked on getting all nations to agree to its Open Door Policy for China. With the outbreak of world war, Japan seemed to take advantage of the world’s attention elsewhere and in 1915 issued its “Twenty-One Demands” of China. The demands asked that China recognize Japan’s territorial claims in Manchuria, Liaodong and other areas; prevent other nations from obtaining new concessions along its coast; and take a series of actions designed to benefit the Japanese economically. The U.S. and other nations effectively pressured Japan to drop any demand that changed the Open Door policy, but the other demands were left to China which had to acquiesce. 

The boiling point soon arrived. In 1917, worried about national security, the U.S. passed immigration laws which instituted literacy tests, an arrival tax, and excluded anyone from an “Asiatic Barred Zone” except for Japanese and Filipinos.

The Immigration Act of 1924 

This federal law limited the number of immigrants allowed entry into the United States through a national origins quota. The quota provided immigration visas to two percent of the total number of people of each nationality in the United States as of the 1890 national census. The Act also included a provision excluding from entry any alien who by virtue of race or nationality was ineligible for citizenship. Existing nationality laws dating from 1790 and 1870 excluded people of Asian lineage from naturalizing. As a result, the 1924 Act meant that even Asians not previously prevented from immigrating, the Japanese in particular, would no longer be admitted to the United States. Many in Japan were very offended by the new law, which was a violation of the Gentlemen’s Agreement. The Japanese government protested, but the law remained, resulting in an increase in existing tensions between the two nations. 

Within Japan, the act created iIntense public outrage. Newspapers framed it as a national humiliation arguing that the West will never treat Japan as an equal. Within the Japanese government, the moderates lost ground to the nationalists and militarists. This law did more damage to U.S.–Japanese relations than almost any single diplomatic act before the 1930s.

From Japan’s viewpoint, this law struck at the very heart of their view of themselves and their place in the world order. Japan demanded recognition as a “civilized” nation and yet this exclusion implied inferiority and contradicted Japan’s self-image as a great power. It was a blow to their sovereignty and dignity. Further it clarified for them that the U.S., which had just embedded a racial hierarchy into federal law, would never see them as more than a partner of convenience, and would always seek to block Japan’s efforts in Eastern Asia and the Western Pacific. From this point on these would always be a strategic mistrust of U.S. intentions.

Even more, these immigration disputes fed the nationalist narratives within Japan, strengthened arguments for self-sufficiency, and increased the military’s skepticism toward diplomacy. What made immigration explosive was not demographics, but symbolism: it convinced many Japanese that even military victory, modernization, and alliance could not overcome racial barriers in the American-led international order.

All of this was well known within the debate leading to the enactment of the law. The law was opposed by a host of interest groups and diplomats: Secretary of State Hughes, career diplomats and embassy officials in Japan, Asia specialists, academics and foreign policy intellectuals, business and commercial interests,  and Christian missionaries – even President Coolidge was reluctant to sign it. The voices all argued that the law would: humiliate Japan, damage diplomacy, strengthen hardliners within the Japanese government, undermine long-term Pacific stability, and strengthen Japanese arguments for strategic autarky* and empire. All of which came true. 

*economic self-sufficiency (I had to look that word up!

Image credit: various photographs from Naval Aviation Museum, National World War II Museum, and US Navy Archives. | The Immigration Act of 1924 (The Johnson-Reed Act), Office of the Historian, U.S. State Department

At the start of the 20th century, U.S. and Japanese interests appeared to be aligned both nations supported the idea of an “open door” for commercial expansion in China. After the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05, U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt acted as a mediator at Japan’s request, and the two sides of the conflict met on neutral territory in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. In the same year, U.S. Secretary of War William Howard Taft met with Prime Minister Katsura Taro in Japan. The two concluded the Taft-Katsura Agreement, in which the United States acknowledged Japanese rule over Korea and condoned the Anglo-Japanese alliance of 1902. At the same time, Japan recognized U.S. control of the Philippines. It seemed as though the great powers in the Pacific region had reached a detent.

The apparent stability in U.S.–Japanese relations after 1905 can be misleading if we assume it removed Japan’s own strategic imperatives. In fact, the Russo-Japanese War settlement and the Taft–Katsura understanding reinforced rather than reduced Japan’s incentive to deepen its position in Manchuria. Several interlocking reasons explain this.

Manchuria 

Japan did not go to war with Russia primarily to win diplomatic recognition or goodwill from the United States. Its central objectives were security and economic survival. Manchuria was always the goal of the 1904-1905 war. The war was meant prevent a renewed Russian threat on the Asian mainland and to secure resources and markets unavailable in Japan itself

The Treaty of Portsmouth transferred to Japan Russia’s leasehold on the Liaodong Peninsula (Port Arthur, Dairen), control of the South Manchuria Railway (SMR) south of Changchun, and recognition of Japan’s “paramount interests” in Korea. These gains were geographically limited and strategically fragile. From Tokyo’s perspective, holding them required deeper penetration, not restraint. A narrow railway zone without political, economic, and military depth was indefensible. Taft–Katsura effectively removed constraints upon Japan rather than imposed limits.

From the U.S. perspective, the 1905 Taft–Katsura Agreement was seen as a mutual guarantee of peace. It is true that the Agreement established a recognition-of-spheres: U.S. acceptance of Japanese predominance in Korea and Japanese acceptance of U.S. control of the Philippines. But crucially, Manchuria was not restricted as the U.S. did not guarantee China’s territorial integrity in practice. So, on the Japanese side of things they concluded that as long as American core interests were untouched, it had room to maneuver on the continent. To the Japanese, Taft–Katsura signaled permissiveness, not partnership.

Economic Reality

Simply put, Manchuria was essential to Japan’s economic strategy. By 1905 Japan faced structural problems of rapid population growth, limited arable land, and dependence on foreign raw materials (coal, iron, soybeans). Manchuria offered vast resources of coal and iron, agricultural land and food supplies, a market for Japanese industry, and a base for settler colonialism, seen as a solution to domestic social pressures. The South Manchuria Railway Company quickly became a transportation firm, a development agency and a political and intelligence instrument. Economic logic alone pushed Japan beyond mere treaty rights.

The war with Russia had been a massive financial strain on Japan. The total cost of the war is estimated at around ¥17–20 billion. By comparison, government revenues in 1905 were only about ¥400 million, meaning war spending equaled roughly five years of peacetime revenue. Other war expense estimates range at nearly 11–12 times revenues.  Whatever the case, Japan had to finance the war.

Roughly three-quarters of the war cost was covered by public bonds rather than taxes. A significant portion of this debt was sold on international markets, especially in London and other European financial centers, where Japanese foreign bonds found buyers through syndicates of banks supported ultimately by foreign credit. Around 40% of war expenditure was funded via overseas borrowing.

Japan’s banking and financial markets at the end of the Russo-Japanese War were under significant stress from heavy deficit spending, heavy reliance on debt finance (both domestic and foreign), and strained central bank reserves. The war pushed the government well into deficit territory by peacetime standards and transformed how public finance and capital markets operated in modern Japan.

Manchuria was the means to solve their economic and strategic concerns.

The Pattern

At the same time, China’s weakness invited Japanese incursions into Manchuria. Qing China was militarily weak, politically unstable, and had no means to enforce sovereignty in Manchuria. Japan simply followed an imperial pattern they had seen employed by the European powers: de facto control without overt conquests. It started with the railway zones, embedding imperial advisors in positions of power, instituting a separate police force, monopolizing the financial and banking systems, inserting itself into the local school system or offering “premium” schooling opportunities.

By 1905, outright annexation was no longer the preferred first step of empire-building among great powers. It was diplomatically risky and expensive. Instead, empires sought control without sovereignty. Manchuria remained nominally sovereign as real power shifted to Japan. Japan initially avoided annexation precisely because it wished to avoid provoking the U.S. and Britain and it could extract economic and strategic benefits without legal responsibility.

Control of the Southern Manchurian Railroad (SMR) might seem somewhat minor, but was exactly the means for controlled troop movement and logistics.  The immigration of Japanese citizens to Manchuria was into settlements anchored on the railway. At the same time, the Chinese residents became economically dependent upon SMR services to transport their goods to market. In addition, by international norms of the time, railways created and defined extraterritorial “railway zones,” quasi-sovereign spaces. It is here that Japan stationed police, courts, and troops along the line. This allowed Japan to dominate Manchuria without governing all of it.

But who is in charge?

While Taft-Katsura recognized Manchuria as a “special interest” zone for Japan (since the U.S. had limited business interests there), diplomatically the U.S. held that Manchuria was part of China. As we’ve pointed out, Japan was slowly exerting increasing levels of dominance over Manchuria. But who was in charge of the Japanese strategy? The diplomats had negotiated Taft-Katsura, but it was the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) that drove policy in Manchuria. The IJA was of the view that Manchuria was the strategic barrier protecting Korea from the next Russian offensive. As a result they acted rather autonomously in the field, expanding their Japanese-held territories in Manchuria. Actions of the Japanese army (known as the Kwantung Army – Kwantung was another name for the Laiodong Peninsula area) set national policy as the government in Tokyo raced to catch up.

Where was the United States?

At this time the interests of the U.S. was maintaining the “Open Door” policy for China to ensure business interests, but also the U.S. has concerns about stability in the Philippines as well as being heavily involved in interventions and peacekeeping in the Caribbean and Central America, notably in Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua. As a result, the U.S. had limited military presence in East Asia, and as long as China trade was open, had other concerns. Only later, after immigration disputes, naval competition, and China policy clashes did Manchuria become a focal point of U.S. tension with Japan.

Image credit: various photographs from Naval Aviation Museum, National World War II Museum, and US Navy Archives.

At this point in the series we have reached 1905. The Russo-Japanese War had just concluded with a peace settlement reached, moderated by the United States. China was technically at peace, but as we’ll explore later in this post, there was a lot of conflict ongoing within China’s borders – foreign states fighting one another and internal actors seeking to overthrow the Chinese Qing Dynasty government (the last of the Chinese imperial governments established by the Manchu people of northern China). What becomes confusing is the ebb-and-flow of  the control of “areas” of China in the first half of the 20th century. This post will attempt to offer a primer in area and names that will be bandied about in the following posts.

The major “areas” are as follows – and some of the nomenclature is mine in an attempt to (hopefully) make it easier to follow the storyline:

• China: the southern part of the nation nominally in control of the Chinese government(s) and unoccupied by a foreign power. Under the China “Open Door” policy (not a treaty but a working understanding) most European powers had enclaves in port cities and important cities of the interior prior to WW2.
• Manchuria: the traditional area in the northernmost bounds of the nation of China that was occupied, reoccupied, and in conflict between non-Chinese nations for the first half of the 20th century. It shares a border with Korea and Liaodong to the south and Siberia to the north. Importantly the railroad across Manchuria connected the TransSiberian Railroad to Russia’s eastern port of Vladivostok. 
• Northern China: a “made up” term that will be used to describe the area south of Manchuria and north of the rest of China. It is the area during the Second Sino-Japanese War (b. 1937) and incidents leading up to that conflict in which Japanese and Chinese forces clashed. While not exactly accurate, it is an area north of the Great Wall of China.
• Inner Mongolia: a crescent shaped area north of “Northern China” and west-southwest of Manchuria. It largely borders Mongolia (a Russian state) with some shared border area with Russia (Siberia) 
• Laiodong (Kwantung): a peninsula west of Korea peninsula that is important for its warm water ports (notably Port Arthur) and the terminus of a railway system that connected the ports to the Trans-Siberian Railroad. The Chinese Eastern Railroad will later be called South Manchurian Railroad and later designated the North Manchurian Railroad
• Korea: the boundaries then are the same as now. In the early 20th century it was technically an independent nation with its own king and queen.
• Formosa: now known as Taiwan.

Korea

Korea has its own rich and varied history, but for purposes of this post, by the 20th century Korea was either a tribute state subject to China or a battleground for China, Russia, and Japan. Korea had once been a land of the “Three Kingdoms” – Goguryeo, Paekche (Baekje), and Silla. At the height of its powers the three kingdoms occupied the entire peninsula and roughly half of Manchuria and small parts of the modern Russian Far East. Goguryeo controlled the northern half of the peninsula, as well as Liaodong Peninsula and Manchuria. Paekche and Silla occupied the southern half of the peninsula. 

Paekche was a great maritime power and was instrumental in the dissemination of Buddhism and its culture/skills to  ancient Japan. This included Chinese written characters, Chinese and Korean literature, and technologies such as ferrous metallurgy and ceramics, architectural styles, sericulture (silk worms) and Buddhism.

The history of Korea is far more complicated than the “Three Kingdom” but that was the foundation that became modern Korea (after many twists and turns!) In the late 19th century, the government implemented a strict isolationist policy, earning Korea the nickname “Hermit Kingdom”. Like Japan, the policy had been established primarily for protection against Western imperialism, but soon the ruling dynasty was forced to open trade, beginning an era leading into competing Chinese and Japanese pressures. Prior to the First Sino-Japanese War, Korea was a tribute state to China. The 1895 post-war settlement gave them independence and the King became the Emperor of Korea. 

Japan, Russia and China were the major foreign powers with interests in Korea, but at the end of the Russo-Japanese War in 1905, the Korean Empire effectively became a protectorate of Japan. At point of great contention, then and now, is that the 1905 Protectorate Treaty promulgated without the Emperor. It was not dissimilar to the U.S. annexation of Hawaii in 1898. Japan annexed Korea in 1910 and so things remained until 1945 and the defeat of Japan. 

There is a long history of animosity between Korea and Japan stemming from the 1905-1945 period. Even today, Korea feels that Japan has not sufficiently acknowledged numerous injustices from the period, with grievances focusing on an alleged lack of a clear, straightforward admission of historical wrongdoing, denial of specific atrocities, and failure to provide appropriate reparations to individual victims. The list of injustices includes:

• Sexual slavery (“comfort women”): the forced recruitment of tens of thousands of women, mostly Korean, into Japanese military brothels across Asia and the Pacific as sexual slaves.
• Forced labor: millions of Koreans were forced to work in harsh conditions in mines, factories, and on construction sites in Japan and its colonies with little to no payment.
• Cultural suppression: Japan implemented policies aimed at erasing Korean national identity, including banning the Korean language in schools and public spaces, forcing Koreans to adopt Japanese names, burning Korean historical documents, and converting Korean temples to honor Japanese deities.    
• Massacres and war crimes: Koreans highlight several mass murders and atrocities committed by Japanese forces, such as the Gando and Kantō massacres, not acknowledged by Japan.
• Legality of annexation: There is an ongoing dispute over the legality of the 1910 Annexation Treaty itself, which many Koreans view as having been signed under duress and therefore invalid. 

Japan and Korea

Japan had long been interested in Korea, “the dagger pointed at the heart of Japan.” Neutrality was not an option. Japan wanted control as part of its vision of strategic buffers. But in addition, Japan needed Korea’s food production, natural resources, and land for Japanese emigrants due over population concerns in the home islands. 

Image credit: various photographs from Naval Aviation Museum, National World War II Museum, and US Navy Archives. | Map courtesy of MapWorks 2005

The First Sino-Japanese war marked Japan as a military power – but was Japan capable of engaging a western military power? That question would be put to the test in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905.

In the previous post we noted that the transfer of Liaodong Peninsula and its warm water Port Arthur were ceded to Japan in the treaty that ended the First Sino-Japanese War.  Via the “Triple Intervention,” (of which Russia was the primary animator), Japan reluctantly agreed to return Liaodong to China in 1895, the same year the war ended. In 1898 the ports of Liaodong and Port Authur were leased to Russia. The news was not received well in Japan. Beyond the humiliation, this meant the very thing Japan feared: a western imperial power gaining a foothold in what Japan considered its “security zone.” But Japan also realized Russia’ long term goals and objectives were even more ominous.

Russia had a similar view of Japan and sought to construct “security zones” that provided protection, strategic depth while providing economic and diplomatic leverage. Russia’s Far Eastern policy aimed at the warm-water port of Port Arthur. In addition Russia wanted to extend its influence southward from Siberia into Manchuria and Korea. This would link the Pacific coast firmly to European Russia. 

All this brought Russia even more deeply and directly into Japan’s perceived security zone.

Precursors to War

After 1895, Russia steadily entrenched itself in Manchuria as it had gained rights to build the Chinese Eastern Railway across Manchuria to connect to the Trans-Siberian Railway. In 1898 the aforementioned lease of Port Arthur was secured and in 1900 the Russian military took advantage of conflict and occupied Manchuria during China’s Boxer Rebellion. Then Russia failed to fully withdraw from Manchuria afterward, despite repeated promises. Japanese leaders interpreted this as bad faith and evidence of permanent annexation plans. All this transformed Russia from a distant empire into a direct territorial rival.

Although Manchuria was vital, Korea was the emotional and strategic trigger. After 1895, Russia increased diplomatic, financial, and military involvement in Korea. Russian advisers appeared at the Korean court. Russia was giving all the signs and indications that their goal was for Korea to become a Russian protectorate, mirroring what had happened in Manchuria. Japan was willing to compromise on Manchuria; it was not willing to compromise on Korea.

From 1901–1904, Japan sought negotiated settlements, proposing that Japan recognize Russian predominance in Manchuria in exchange for Russian recognition of Japanese predominance in Korea. Russia repeatedly delayed responses and when they did reply the concessions or counters were vague or conditional. At the same time the Russians continued strengthening their military position. Japan rightly concluded that Russia was using diplomacy to buy time.

Internal pressures pushed Japan toward war. After the Triple Intervention, Japan believed its status as a great power depended on resisting further humiliation. Many Japanese believed they must fight before Russia completed the Chinese Eastern Railway and achieved overwhelming superiority – it was now or never – and the nation, for 20 years, had been investing in the military for a contingency just like this. Further delay favored Russia and so “now” seemed to be the window for victory; a window that might soon close. War increasingly appeared to be the least bad option.

How to understand the Russo-Japanese War

The Triple Intervention’s legacy went beyond immediate grievance. It convinced Japan that international law and diplomacy favored the strong, hardened Japanese elites against reliance on Western goodwill, and reinforced the belief that only decisive force could secure Japan’s place. The Triple Intervention was not a cause of war, but a lesson learned.

Other world powers had their own concerns about Russia. Britain and the United States preferred a strong Japan to check Russian expansion and applied no serious pressure on Japan to back down. In addition the Britain–Japan Alliance (1902) reassured Japan that it would not face a multi-power coalition. And so Japan did not fear diplomatic isolation in the way it had regarding the First Sino-Japanese War. All of this gave indications that perhaps Japan was being accepted as a world power or at least acknowledged as the preeminent Asia power.

Meanwhile, Russia never prepared for war. On one hand Russia was far more concerned with European matters and internal court intrigue. On the other, Russia severely underestimated Japan’s military power, the existential threat they were imposing upon Japan, its willingness to attack a European power, and other factors that likely included racial and cultural assumptions that Japan was a “second-rate” power. Besides, time was on their side; or so they believed.

Over time, historians have developed different views of the war. In part, because more primary source information became available and the lenses of understanding changed between generations.  Up until the 1950s, the understanding was that Russian aggression and imperial expansion were the primary causes; Japan fought a defensive, pre-emptive war. It was believed that Japan exhausted diplomatic options and struck only when delay became fatal. Overall, the clash is viewed as a case of a rising regional power resisting European imperialism. Any Japanese imperial ambitions are downplayed and priority is given to the perceived threat from Russia.

In the 1960s the assertion was that Japan deliberately chose war to secure imperial expansion. Russia was cautious, divided, and often defensive while Japan overstated the Korean security threat to justify expansion. Captured by internal politics, Tokyo rejected workable compromises to avoid diplomatic limits on its freedom. At the same time, military and naval elites used war to secure budgets, cement political influence and validate the expenses of the modernization efforts.  Russia, lacking a coherent Far Eastern strategy, repeatedly sought delays. This view underplays how threatening Russian actions appeared to Japanese decision-makers at the time.

From the 1990s onward the view judges that the war resulted from mutual imperial ambitions, compounded by misperception, bureaucratic politics, and structural insecurity. This approach does not split blame cleanly but asks, “Why did compromise fail when it seemed possible?”

The general conclusion is that diplomacy failed because Russia’s bureaucracy was fragmented causing delays which Japan interpreted as deception. Both sides believed time favored the other, creating a commitment trap. Along with other factors, war was not inevitable, but once certain thresholds were crossed, it became likely. 

When one looks at the analysis of the later Asian-Pacific War, you will discover elements of the same pattern. Often these phases are described as orthodox, revisionist, and modern (sometimes followed by neo-orthodox). It is especially in the last phases, when more primary source documents become available that specialists begin to view through specific lenses reflecting what the historian thinks is the primary driver:  economics, diplomacy, policy, politics, security, and more.

Why do I mention this? Because later in this series we will review that same morphing historiography as concerns Pearl Harbor and the Asia-Pacific War.

The War

After years of failed diplomacy, Japan launched a surprise attack on the Russian fleet at Port Arthur in February 1904. Japan quickly seized the initiative on land and sea, winning major battles at Liaoyang, Mukden (remember this name), and decisively at the naval Battle of Tsushima, where Japan destroyed Russia’s Baltic Fleet. Tsushima turned a prolonged war of attrition into a rapid path to Japanese victory.

Despite Russia’s larger population and resources, she suffered from poor leadership, long supply lines, and domestic unrest all of which crippled her war effort. Japan’s modernized army and navy achieved rapid, coordinated victories but at high cost. The war ended with the Treaty of Portsmouth (1905), mediated by the United States, recognizing Japan’s predominance in Korea, transferring Port Arthur and southern Manchuria to Japan, and confirming Japan as the first Asian power to defeat a European great power in modern war.

The Aftermath

The Japanese victory in the Russo-Japanese War is described as coming “at high cost” because military success pushed Japan close to the limits of its manpower, finances, and social cohesion, even while it won on the battlefield. The costs were real, visible, and politically destabilizing, leaving deep scars beneath the triumph.

Japan won most major engagements, but often through frontal assaults against entrenched Russian positions. The losses (deaths and casualties) were exceptionally high for a small nation. Total casualties (killed, wounded, missing) were 70,000–80,000. While the Russian losses were higher in absolute numbers, the losses were not as devastating or proportionally large.  Further, for Japan the losses fell heavily on young, conscripted males, straining villages and families. The army began to fear it was winning battles faster than it could replace men.

Japanese doctrine emphasized an offensive spirit and tactical mindset regardless of the cost. While it worked tactically in this war, attrition favored Russia in the long run. Japan’s leaders quickly came to understand that they could not sustain another year of fighting. By early 1905 ammunition stockpiles were low, replacement soldiers were less well trained, and the army was nearing exhaustion. Victory arrived just before exhaustion became defeat.

In a certain sense Japan lost the war. Japan had financed the war largely through Britain and U.S. loans supplemented by heavy domestic taxation. As a result national debt skyrocketed as war expenditures consumed well over half of government spending. Japan emerged victorious but financially dependent on international credit, and most importantly, had no leverage to impose a punitive peace as it had done after the First Sino-Japanese War. Punitive peace was the expectation of the people after such a great sacrifice.

But unlike earlier wars, Russia had suffered casualties and loss, but overall their army and navy were still substantial, no Russian territory was occupied, and the regime of Russia was not really threatened, nor was the Trans-Siberian Railway. In addition, the U.S. had moderated the treaty/settlement. President Roosevelt’s priorities were ending the war quickly, preserving a balance of power in East Asia and avoiding Russia’s complete humiliation which might destabilize Europe. Roosevelt pressed Japan to drop  indemnity demands and accept territorial and political concessions instead

Japan accepted because it needed peace more than money.

Back home, the public expected indemnity payments, territorial expansion of more than Korea and southern Manchuria, and some step-up in recognition. The perceived gap between sacrifice and reward sparked riots in Tokyo and a growing disillusionment with the current political leaders. Victory felt incomplete, even humiliating to some.

The war reinforced dangerous lessons for the Japanese military that cemented the bushidō philosophy in their ranks. It became, not just an understanding, but doctrine that bushidō spirit could overcome material disadvantage. Also, that decisive victory required willingness to accept massive losses. These lessons contributed to later tolerance for extreme casualties in future wars. In a way, the cost was not only human and financial, but ideological. And to the western mind, irrational.

Image credit: various photographs from Naval Aviation Museum, National World War II Museum, and US Navy Archives.

The series to this point has attempted to “paint a picture” of the nation of Japan at the doorstep of the 20th century. In one way it can be viewed as Japan’s experience and reaction to the western world. There was a point in time when Japan, as the apprentice, looked to China as the master of knowledge, spirituality, statecraft, governance, and the model of Japan’s aspirations. But by the late 9th century AD, the apprentice had matured and the master diminished. Japan stopped official missions to China. For the next 800 years or so, until the late 16th or early 17th centuries, the relationship was largely trade with occasional moments of diplomacy when one side or the other wanted something. As Japan entered the Edo Period, as mentioned in an earlier post, Korea became a point of contention between China and Japan with a series of wars in the 1590s fought on the Korean peninsula. It was at this point that Japan entered the Tokugawa Shogunate period and the nation of Japan implemented severe maritime policies that isolated the nation and the people from outside contact – which at this point meant the western powers and proselytizing Christian denominations. When Japan emerged from isolation with the fall of Tokugawa and the rise of the Meiji era, the world of Asia was radically changed. The once great China had been humbled and reduced to a near vassal state under the power of western commerce supported by its military.

This is when the theory of social darwinism left its mark on Japan. The leaders of Japan concluded that nations are competing organisms with only two outcomes: domination or eradication. China was the proof. Japan’s national strategies began to coalesce around this idea, especially buffer zones and strategic depth. Korea was described as “a dagger pointed at the heart of Japan.” And since conflict was inevitable, preemptive expansion was critical and the first goal was Korea. Leadership and thinkers concluded that if Japan did not dominate Korea, another power would. Japan rapidly modernized along Western military, industrial, and administrative lines. The most recent posts outlined the transformation of Japan’s military in support of these conclusions.

Meanwhile, China was a shell of its former self but Korea was still a tribute state dependent upon them.

Korea would be the flash point. The First Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895) did not arise from a single crisis but from the collision of long-term structural change and immediate political triggers, centered above all on Korea.

Changes in Asian Dynamics

For centuries China presided over a tributary system in which Korea was a loyal client. By the late 19th century Western imperialism shattered this system and Japan has evolved into a nation ready to resist that same Western force to maintain its sovereignty even as China was losing theirs. Critical to Japan’s sovereignty was control of the “dagger pointed at the heart of Japan” – Korea. Japanese elites concluded that China was structurally incapable of defending Korea and that delay would allow Western powers or Russia to intervene. If Korea fell under hostile control, Japan would be exposed. Control of Korea, not its independence or vassalage to China was acceptable. Control of Korea was non-negotiable to Japan. Under such assumptions, diplomacy would fail and war was inevitable.

During the late 19th century, Korean society faced various social problems such as inequality, corruption, and excessive taxation. These problems later sparked a series of peasant-led rebellions culminating in the 1894 Donghak Peasant Rebellion. In the decade before this uprising, China and Japan signed the Tientsin Convention (1885) agreeing to withdraw their troops from Korea and agreed to notify each other before future deployments. During the rebellion, the Korean government requested troop support from China, who did not notify Japan. Soon enough Japan deployed army and navy assets to Korea – in far greater numbers than China’s deployment. Japan quickly captured and occupied Seoul and installed a pro-Japanese government.

Japan demanded joint Sino-Japanese reform of Korea and an end to Chinese vassalage. China rejected these terms and insisted on traditional authority. With terms and conditions far apart, Japan feared that further delay would give Western powers space to insert themselves into the problem. China feared humiliation. Negotiation collapsed, military incidents happened, fighting intensified and eventually war was formally declared. The First Sino-Japanese War resulted from the collision of Japan’s modern, survival-oriented strategy and China’s declining tributary authority, with Korea’s instability transforming long-term rivalry into unavoidable armed conflict (1894-95)

One step forward, one step back

I leave the details of the fighting to others. Japan won and extracted major concessions from China (Treaty of Shimonoseki):

• China transferred full sovereignty of Taiwan (then called Formosa), the Pescadores (Penghu Islands) and the Liaodong Peninsula including Port Arthur, a warm water port.
• China agreed to pay 200 million taels of silver which was about twice Japan’s annual budget.
• Opening of ports to Japan with the same favored-nation status as the western powers. In addition Japan could operate factories and industries in treaty ports meaning they could engage in manufacturing, not just trade
• For the first time in history, the two nations exchanged ambassadors – Japan was now one of the great powers.

This was a great step forward for Japan.

Immediately after the terms of the treaty became public, Russia, with its own designs and sphere of influence in China, expressed concern about the Japanese acquisition of the Liaodong Peninsula and the possible impact of the terms of the treaty on the stability of China. Russia persuaded France and Germany to apply diplomatic pressure on Japan for the return of the territory to China in exchange for a larger indemnity. 

At the end of 1895 Russia, France, and Germany (the Triple Intervention) pressured Japan to return Liaodong to China. Russia had the most to gain from the Triple Intervention. In the preceding years, Russia had been slowly increasing its influence in the Far East and had built a warm water port in the Russian east, Vladivostok. The construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway and the acquisition of another warm-water port on the China Seas would enable Russia to consolidate her presence in the region and further expand into Asia and the Pacific. Port Arthur falling into Japanese hands undermined its own need for the additional warm-water port in Asia. France and Russia agreed to help for their own reasons.

Japan complied but felt humiliated calculating it would not be able to resist a military takeover. The Liaodong episode radicalized Japanese attitudes toward Western powers and China. The Japanese public was outraged, especially after Russia obtained a 25-year lease on the peninsula in 1898. The reaction against the Triple Intervention was one of ongoing diplomatic conflicts with Russia.

One step back.

Implications and observations

The Treaty of Shimonoseki marked China’s transition from being the regional power broker to that of a  semi-colonial state. At the same time, it confirmed Japan as a modern imperial power and set the stage for Japan’s later continental expansion outlined in its “strategic buffer” policy.

The First Sino-Japanese war marked Japan as a military power – but was Japan capable of engaging a western military power? That question would be put to the test in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905.

One of Japan’s conclusions about western powers is the pattern of unequal treaties that were forced upon China. Ironically, when one considers the Treaty of Shimonoseki, the terms heavily borrowed the mechanisms of Western unequal treaties but applied them with greater strategic finality. Where Western powers sought access and influence, Japan sought territory, hierarchy, and regional leadership. For China, this made the treaty uniquely traumatic: it confirmed not only military defeat but the collapse of an entire worldview in which China stood at Asia’s center.

In their treaties with China, western powers sought territorial concessions that were limited (e.g., Hong Kong) and strategic enclaves rather than full provinces. Japan demanded entire territories that were permanently transferred and then governed directly as colonies. Japan replicated Western economic imperialism but compressed its demands into a single treaty having learned all the lessons that came before. The treaty directly dismantled China’s tributary system, its regional leadership and removed Korea from China’s orbit. Where the western treaties weakened China globally; Japan destroyed China’s East Asian order.

The Treaty of Shimonoseki borrowed the mechanisms of Western unequal treaties but applied them with greater strategic finality. Where Western powers sought access and influence, Japan sought territory, hierarchy, and regional leadership. For China, this made the treaty uniquely traumatic: it confirmed not only military defeat but the collapse of an entire worldview in which China stood at Asia’s center.

Image credit: various photographs from Naval Aviation Museum, National World War II Museum, and US Navy Archives. 

When the Meiji era began in 1868, just as the nation was in transition from the Shogunate to a Constitutional Monarch, the Japanese military was undergoing a similar radical transformation. The underlying impetus was national survival. Having witnessed the fate of China in the face of more modern and powerful western militaries, Japan concluded that they too required a modern, Western-style military. They dismantled the Tokugawa samurai-based system and built a centralized national force modeled on European powers. 

At the beginning of the Meiji period the army was a fragmented, transitional force composed largely of former samurai from the victorious domains that had initiated the downfall of the Shogunate. It was not yet a national army as the soldiers’ loyalty was often domain-based. Training was uneven and nascent and not anywhere near the standards required to face western military power. There was a limited amount of modern rifles, some firearms left over from the previous age, but a wealth of samurai weaponry. But even if there were adequate manpower and suitable training, there was no professional officer corps with an understanding of modern warfare, tactics such as combined arms combat (soldiers and artillery support), and the necessary general staff to wage and support an army in the field under combat. All semblance of modern western military capability was lacking.

The Navy was a small, underdeveloped fleet inherited from the late Tokugawa period. There were sailing vessels and a handful of modern steamships, many purchased from abroad. While they possessed good seamanship and ship-to-ship engagements, fleet engagements were foreign to them, and even then lack the capital ships common to the western fleets, namely, battleships, cruisers, destroyers, auxiliary ships, and logistics capability to be a “blue water” navy. In the beginning they are best described as a coastal-defense force.

Twenty years later the army was fully centralized, conscription was in place, training was based on the ideal of Bushidō and Prussian organization and tactics. The army possessed a professional officer corps and general staff (logistics, intelligence, planning, medical services and more). Weaponry was modern in terms of rifles and artillery. Command and control functions were Prussian: centralized, disciplined and bureaucratic. It was a modern national army, capable of coordinated large-scale operations overseas.

The Navy had been reorganized and closely modeled the Royal Navy. Ships were constructed of steel and consisted of a range of large and small capital ships. A professionalized officer corps was in place, well versed in modern navigation, gunnery, and signaling. Even more, their role was integrated into a larger national planning to support Army operations with control of the sea, troop transport and blockade capabilities. In the Asia-Pacific region, apart from western fleets, they were the premier naval force.

At the start of hostilities, the IJN Combined Fleet composition was :

• 12 modern warships (primarily cruisers),
• 8 corvettes,
• 1 ironclad warship,
• 26 torpedo boats, and
• Numerous auxiliaries, armed merchant cruisers, and converted liners used for transport and support

There was a similar buildup and expansion of the Army. All of this came at a cost, but also with benefits. Among the benefits of the military buildup in the late-19th century was the acceleration of Japan’s industrial economy. The state invested heavily in shipyards, arsenals, steelworks, railways, and telegraph lines all of which helped create the foundations for heavy industries which were later transferred to private firms. The build up also stimulated existing sectors such as coal mining, metallurgy, engineering, and shipbuilding. The military buildup acted as a state-led industrial catalyst.

All of this needed to be funded, financed and paid for. To this end the government implemented the land tax reform, creating a stable, cash-based tax system. Revenue became more predictable and as a result enabled long-term military and infrastructure planning. This radical shift in central planning and finance strengthened the modern fiscal state but increased pressure on rural society where the land tax burden landed.

Military expansion was expensive, leading the early Meiji governments to run budget deficits. This problem was compounded by issuing paper currency accelerating inflation throughout the 1870s into the early 1880s. Military spending diverted resources from social welfare, rural investment, and development of the consumer sector of the economy. As a result, the citizens, especially the peasants bore much of the cost through taxes, while economic benefits were unevenly distributed. The social unrest came to a head in the Satsuma Rebellion, a revolt of disaffected samurai against the central government. The rebellion was very expensive for the government, which forced it to make additional monetary reforms including leaving the gold standard. The conflict effectively ended the samurai class. Economic discipline only stabilized in the early 1890s.

Military procurement fostered close ties between the state and emerging industrial conglomerates (zaibatsu such as Mitsubishi). These firms benefited from government contracts, subsidies and technology transfers, and access to capital and overseas markets. This helped create a modern capitalist elite aligned with state goals. Overall, military expansion stimulated economic modernization, but it did so through top-down coercive extraction, embedding a long-term pattern in which economic growth was closely tied to military and imperial priorities.

Image credit: various photographs from Naval Aviation Museum, National World War II Museum, and US Navy Archives.

It would not be accurate to describe the evolution of the Japanese military in the latter half of the 19th century. It was a radical revolution. After the Meiji Restoration (1868), Japan’s leaders concluded that national survival required a modern, Western-style military. They dismantled the Tokugawa samurai-based system and built a centralized national force modeled on European powers. This was made possible by Universal male conscription (1873) replacing hereditary samurai service, creating a national military loyal to the emperor rather than to domains or lords.

In order to accomplish this radical change, Japan looked to the nations it considered threats to Japan’s independence. This was accomplished by adopting foreign military models under the tutelage of foreign advisors. The army was modeled on Prussian doctrine that emphasized discipline, general staff organization, and state-controlled command. The navy was modeled on the British Royal Navy, adopting British ship designs, training methods, and naval strategy. At the same time, Japan imported modern rifles, artillery, and warships, then rapidly developed domestic arms industries, arsenals, and shipyards to ensure self-sufficiency.

Essential to the development of a modern military was formation and education. To this end, western-style military academies, staff colleges, and technical schools were established, professionalizing the officer corps and emphasizing science, engineering, and modern tactics. Western techniques were combined with emperor-centered loyalty, making the military both modern in form and uniquely Japanese in spirit. In addition, the spirit and lessons of the samurai were not lost. Japan did not simply preserve samurai tradition; it selectively reconstructed it.

Bushidō and the Meiji Military

Under Tokugawa Shogunate rule, “samurai spirit” referred to class-based ideals: loyalty to one’s lord, honor, discipline, and readiness to die. After 1868, the Meiji state detached these values from the samurai class and recast them as virtues for all citizens, especially soldiers. This recasting of the “samurai spirit” became known as Bushidō, and was a national moral code, not a code restricted to the military. But it did serve as a bridge between Japan’s past and its modern conscript army. No longer was there feudal loyalty to a daimyō; loyalty was now absolute and directed to the emperor. The Meiji Constitution made the emperor the “command-in-chief” of the army and navy. Bushidō preserved the form of samurai loyalty while transforming its object.

Formation and indoctrination of Bushidō was incorporated into every level of military training. While Japan adopted western drill, weapons, and organization, it paired them with ethical and spiritual instruction drawn from samurai ideals. Soldiers were taught: endurance, self-control, obedience, and acceptance of death as honorable if done in imperial service. These ideals were reinforced from the oath of service and in every course of education and training. Bushidō was simplified from is historical samurai basis and then standarized for modern instruction.

Bushidō was also incorporated in symbolic practices and rituals. Ceremonial language was ripe with honor and shame, casting failure as disloyalty to comrades and especially to the Emperor. Rituals reinforcing collective identity, willingness to endure hardship, and death as preferable to dishonor. The officer corp carried swords as symbols of moral authority and leadership. Clearly in modern warfare, the use of the sword was limited, but at the end of World War II photographs of kamikaze pilots before their final mission showed the officers with their swords which were carried in the cockpit on the one-way flight. All of this was an effort to link the modern military psychologically to the samurai past. 

Key writers and thinkers such as Nitobe Inazō positioned bushidō as Japan’s equivalent to Western chivalry, and proof Japan possessed a moral civilization worthy of great-power status. This intellectualization helped justify both military discipline at home and imperial mission abroad.

The fusion of western military structure, samurai-derived moral absolutism, and emperor-centered ideology produced a military culture that valued spirit (seishin) over material limits, encouraged endurance and sacrifice, and discouraged surrender and compromise. These traits became especially pronounced in the early 20th century. It is noteworthy that during World War II, less than 3% of imperial Japanese soldiers surrendered – and most of these were extremely sick, starving or critically wounded. In many instances, there were no Japanese survivors.

The effects of bushidō formation was strikingly evident in 20th century combat behavior.

• preference for death over surrender
• emphasis on spirit over material reality – commanders often stressed seishin (spiritual strength) to compensate for shortages in equipment or supplies, encouraging frontal assaults and last-stand defenses even when strategically unsound.
• fanatical defensive tactics where soldiers fought to the last man in Biak, Pelilui, Tarawa, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa reflecting the belief that total sacrifice was the highest form of loyalty.
• Banzai charges and later kamikaze missions were framed as noble offerings to the emperor, transforming death into a sanctioned military tactic.
• harsh treatment of prisoners and civilians since their surrender was and thus the prisoners were viewed with contempt, brutalized and executed in violation of the Law of War to which Japan was a signatory.

It also led to actions and campaigns that were strategically and tactically questionable supported by the guise that the bushidō spirit would compensate for all the evident shortcomings.

At the advent of the 20th century

By the late 19th century, Japan possessed a modern, disciplined, and industrialized military, capable of defeating China (1894–95) and Russia (1904–05), demonstrating that Japan had successfully adapted Western military systems to its own political and ideological framework.

When Japan adopted a Social Darwinist lens, East Asia ceased to be a shared moral world and became a competitive ecological system. Bushidō was the ideological element needed to form the military and the citizenry to not simply remain competitive but to become the apex nation in the Asia-Pacific sphere.

Image credit: various photographs from Naval Aviation Museum, National World War II Museum, and US Navy Archives.