Japan

Japan

1. Introduction

By July 1937, when undeclared war broke out between China and Japan, the so-called China incident, Japan was a strong, technologically advanced country with a population of 70 million. About 14 million Japanese were engaged in agriculture, 7.5 million in manufacturing, and 5 million in commerce. Some sectors of Japanese industry had reached the highest world standards but this applied mainly to consumer products: cotton piece goods, silk goods, toys, matches, and so on. The textile industry employed 38% of the total labour force, while machinery, vehicles, tools, and chemicals together employed some 30%. From the Manchurian crisis of 1931 onwards (see Manchukuo) a perceptible militarization of the economy took place. Japan's free market economy was replaced by government control and planning. Electricity and oil were brought under state control in 1934–6. Rice production was controlled from 1936 onwards and rationing was introduced in 1939 when the government gained the power to purchase the total rice crop. In order to prepare for military campaigns overseas it was necessary to develop the heavy and chemical industries rapidly, using male manpower rather than the female labour used in the textile factories. By the end of the 1930s the country had been largely converted from a free market, with some guidance from an efficient bureaucracy, to a controlled war economy.

But Japan was not financially ready for total war. The 1920s had been a harsh time for the country: the recession following the First World War had led to a banking crisis in 1927, agricultural collapse, and complaints of over-population. As a country dependent on foreign trade, Japan also suffered from the world depression of 1930–2 during which both exports and imports declined. That the economy recovered was due to the skills of the minister of finance (1931–6), Takahashi Korekiyo. By initiating a Keynesian spending policy before Keynes, he enabled Japan to recover from the worst aspects of the depression earlier than the UK or USA.

Japan faced in two directions: towards the continent of Asia and towards the Pacific Ocean, and especially the western Pacific. This created difficulties for strategic planning at a time when the army and the navy were not only gaining increased political power over the civilian governments of the day but were in open confrontation with one another over sharing out the defence budget. This problem became more marked after the London Naval conference of 1930 when the naval general staff expressed extreme dissatisfaction with the treaty that emerged—they tried unsuccessfully to prevent its ratification—and in December 1934 Admiral Okada Keisuke's cabinet announced the obligatory two years' notice of Japan's unilateral withdrawal from it. Then in January 1936 the Japanese delegates at the Second London Naval Conference withdrew (see Versailles settlement) leaving Japan free to build without restrictions from 1937 onwards.

This increasing assertiveness on the part of the naval leadership led to the adoption of what was known as the southern strategy, that is expansion into South-East Asia. In February 1936 there was a general election, the results of which displeased the army: and junior officers planned a coup d'état, occupying the government district of central Tokyo and assassinating the home and finance ministers (the so-called ‘ 26 February incident’). The army was by this time becoming increasingly worried by reports of growing Soviet forces marshalling on the borders of Manchukuo, while the navy was preoccupied with making sure that its legitimate claim for appropriations should not be overlooked because of increased army demands. During April the navy negotiated with the army general staff over the need for a southern strategy. Eventually a new Imperial Defence policy was worked out and approved by the emperor on 29 May 1936. But the debate over national policy and the financial needs for new weapons systems persisted throughout the summer. Eventually after a Five Ministers' conference it was agreed that there should be expansion both on the continent and towards the south. This was in the nature of a compromise between the two services, leaving open the question of whether Japan would contemplate moving north or south. But the navy's desire for a southern initiative now enjoyed equal prominence with the army's continental ambitions which had been the essence of defence planning hitherto. This implied an accommodation rather than a reconciliation of wills: the army did not share the navy's thinking found in the phrase Hokushu nanshin (‘Stay put in the north; advance to the south’).

From July 1937 onwards Japan was to be fully stretched by the needs of the military campaign in north and central China. The army opposed the navy's demand for a southern front, though the navy seized the opportunity of seizing some islands in the neighbourhood of Amoy and Hong Kong. However, the army's invasion of China did not bring the Chinese to the negotiating table, and, from 1938 onwards, distinguished figures in the army general staff did not favour a further extension of lines of communication in central China, especially as there was evidence that the Soviet Union was supporting the Chinese war effort and might strike against Manchukuo at any moment. Frontier incidents such as the one at Nomonhan in August 1939 (see Japanese–Soviet campaigns) seemed to confirm this fear.

When the European war broke out, there was the possibility that the Germans would call on Japan to support the Axis by implementing the southern strategy in some form. But though Japan had entered into the Anti-Comintern pact with Germany in 1936, the navy had consistently opposed its being converted into an alliance. Moreover, the Japanese were deeply resentful of the Nazi–Soviet Pact of August 1939, of which Germany had given them no advance notice. As a result Japan declared its strict neutrality. However, after the fall of France in June 1940, the arguments for a German alliance and for an advance into Dutch and French colonies in South-East Asia were heard again. The navy's leaders generally opposed these ideas from their fear of Anglo-American naval co-operation, but in September 1940 Japan joined with Germany and Italy in the Tripartite Pact. By this time the army had withdrawn its resistance to a southern advance, while the new naval leaders took the view that, if it meant war with the USA, they would need time to make appropriate preparations. Both services were agreed that the best chance of severing the supply routes that were supporting China's war effort (see Burma Road) was to move in to southern China and South-East Asia. Japan therefore occupied the northern part of French Indo-China during the summer of 1940, and in July 1941, instead of attacking the Soviet Union as Stalin had feared, moved into southern French Indo-China.

By the summer of 1941 Japan had therefore added substantially to its earlier empire in the north which comprised Sakhalin south of the 50th parallel, acquired in 1920; Korea, a colony since 1910; Formosa, Japan's oldest colony having been acquired in 1895; and it also had an alliance with the puppet state of Manchukuo which had been created in 1932. From Formosa it had also moved southwards by occupying the Chinese-owned Hainan Island in February 1939 and the strategically placed Spratly Islands the following month. As mediator in the frontier dispute between Thailand and France, Japan also enjoyed a close relationship with the Thai military leadership. In this way it was able to locate air bases and establish naval stations which would be invaluable if war occurred.

In negotiations which were under way in Washington during the summer of 1941 (see USA, 1), Japan was asked by the USA to withdraw all its military forces from China and French Indo-China. The Japanese replied ambivalently while preparations for war were continued by General Tōjō's cabinet, and in November 1941 the army and navy were able to reconcile their positions on the southern advance by agreeing ‘to seize the initiative with a sudden attack on the Philippines and Malaya while opening operations at the same time elsewhere’. This last, a veiled reference to the attack on Pearl Harbor, was the navy's precondition for embarking on the southern strategy. There were also to be subsidiary operations against Guam, Hong Kong, and British North Borneo, and measures for the ‘stabilization’ of Thailand, especially if the UK were to invade southern Thailand while Japan was still preparing for operations.

Thus the Greater East Asian war of December 1941 unfolded into its two separate sectors: the South-East Asian theatre, starting with the highly successful Malayan campaign, the invasion of the Netherlands East Indies, and the Burma campaign; and the Pacific theatre, starting with Pearl Harbor and extending to the islands in the central and southern Pacific.

Ian Nish

2. Domestic life, economy, and war effort

Following Japan's conquest of Manchuria in 1931, the Japanese government successfully encouraged planned industrial development and modernization, a process which was helped by the existence of the large conglomerates, the Zaibatsu, which combined mining, shipping, manufacturing, and banking activities. Textiles experienced relative decline but heavy industry grew rapidly, accounting for 73% of industrial production at the end of 1941 compared with 58% at the start of the China Incident in July 1937. Increasing numbers of workers left the land to work in urban factories so that the percentage employed in agriculture dropped from 48% in 1930 to 42% a decade later. Of even greater significance was the creation and expansion of distinctly modern sectors of military production. The motor vehicle, aircraft, and shipbuilding industries expanded rapidly and were sustained by army and navy expenditure which, by 1938, absorbed 75% of Japan's national budget (see Table 1). To support this increase in public spending bank credit was expanded and large deficits became a lasting feature of national accounting. Very high inflation was the result and the retail price index rose from 100 in 1936 to 175 in 1940. During the same period the UK's rose to 125 and that of the USA to just 101.

Japan, 2, Table 1: Military budget and total expenditures, 1931-40 (in millions of yen)

Fiscal Year	Military Budget	Total Expenditures	Military Budget as % of Total Expenditures
Sources: War, Navy and Finance Ministries, from Cohen, J., Japan's Economy in War and Reconstruction, (Minneapolis, 1949, repr. Westport, Conn., 1973).
1931	434	1,477	29.4
1932	733	1,950	37.6
1933	873	2,225	39.2
1934	955	2,163	44.2
1935	1,032	2,206	46.8
1936	1,105	2,282	48.4
1937	3,953	5,521	71.6
1938	6,097	8,084	75.4
1939	6,417	8,952	71.7
1940	7,266	11,033	65.9

Even more crucial was Japan's increasing dependence on imported raw materials to sustain this expansion. Oil, bauxite, tin, rubber, and nickel—all essential to its military industries—could not be provided by Manchukuo, nor was Japan self-sufficient in them itself (see Table 2). In 1936 two-thirds of Japan's oil was imported from the USA, while rubber and tin had to be purchased from European colonies in South-East Asia. Soon new Japanese oil refineries were built, the production of synthetic petroleum was attempted, and national stockpiling began. However, none of these measures could prevent Japan's growing dependence upon international shipping, and the oilfields, mines, and plantations of South-East Asia.

Japan, 2, Table 2: Dependence on imports of industrial raw materials

Commodity	Percent Self-Sufficient in 1936
Sources: Japan's Dependence on Imports, Special Study No. 28, Mitsubishi Keizai Kenkyu Kyoku (in Japanese), (Tokyo, 1938), p. 11.; From Cohen.
Iron Ore	16.7
Pig Iron	93.8
Steel	62.2
Scrap Iron	–
Copper	63.2
Lead	8.2
Tin	28.8
Zinc	38.9
Bauxite	–
Finished Aluminium	40.6
Nickel	–
Sulphuric Acid	14.1
Crude Oil	20.2
Coal	90.9
Crude Rubber	–
Salt	31.3
Phosphate rock	12.0
Raw cotton	–

Similarly, the domestic sources of Japan's food supplies depended on small-scale, non-mechanized farms. By 1941 the cultivation of arable land had just about reached its maximum possible expansion—even golf courses were ploughed up—but in that year Japan needed to import 22% of its rice, 72% of its soyabeans, and 82% of its sugar. The line between adequate supplies and starvation was a very thin one, but domestic rice crops and imports kept the population adequately fed until the shipping blockade and strategic air offensive during the last year of the war disrupted supplies and brought quite severe shortages and some malnutrition.

When undeclared war broke out between Japan and China in July 1937—the China Incident—Japanese civilians showed little spontaneous enthusiasm. Not only was it a distant conflict, but Japanese aims were largely undefined. Soon Japan's leaders sought to remedy this popular indifference by promoting a major programme of spiritual or psychological mobilization. In October a National Spiritual Mobilization Central League was established which organized lectures, distributed pamphlets, and encouraged visits to important patriotic shrines. The League's local sub-committees reinforced these activities by providing psychological support for the families of servicemen going to the front. Soldiers were sent off amid flags, banners, and martial music, and later more subdued ceremonies were held to receive the ashes of the fallen. Groups of housewives also showed their patriotism by making ‘thousand stitch belts’ which were reputed to protect their wearers from bullets and the Chinese winter cold.

Alongside the encouragement of patriotic enthusiasm the government took increasingly severe measures against any signs of political or social dissent. In December the renowned Christian scholar Yanaihara Tadao was driven from his position at Tokyo Imperial University and more than 400 left-wing activists were arrested, accused of conspiring to establish a popular front.

Parallel with morale building and political discipline the government shaped economic policies designed to increase military production and national efficiency. As early as 1936 Japan had instituted a ‘quasi-wartime economy’ and in August 1937 the ministry of commerce and industry took new powers to encourage the creation of cartels and enforce obedience to industry-wide agreements. Further powers were provided by the Foreign Trade Adjustment Law. This enabled the government to ban the import of foreign luxuries and ‘unnecessary’ products, and prevent the export of goods and materials which were essential for military production. A new planning body was also established to integrate production and prepare new legislation for the control of the economy. In late October the existing Cabinet Planning Office and Resources Bureau were merged to form the Cabinet Planning Board, which soon began the drafting of a National General Mobilization Law. When this wide-ranging law was presented to the Diet (the Japanese parliament) in February 1938 a handful of conservative members criticized it as unconstitutional, but it was soon approved and provided the legal foundation for a network of wartime rules and regulations which would control almost every aspect of economic life.

Government intervention was further extended by the creation of the Industrial Patriotic League, which aimed to replace conventional union activity with ‘Industrial Patriotic Associations’ promoting labour—management co-operation. The League's slogans were ‘Family Harmony’ and ‘The Plant as One Family’, and by 1939 almost three million workers and managers had been drawn into these company organizations.

In addition to economic and political policies designed to promote industrial efficiency the cabinet shaped social policies to improve the nation's physical and psychological health. In January 1938 a Welfare Ministry was founded to improve the physical fitness of potential recruits to industry, agriculture, and the armed forces. In contrast, philanthropic organizations which could be construed as ‘hotbeds of left-wing thought’, such as Tokyo Imperial University's ‘Settlement’, were promptly closed.

Although Japan's diplomatic links with Nazi Germany and fascist Italy still remained issues of serious controversy, government policies increasingly aimed to promote pro-German and pro-Italian feeling among Japanese civilians. In the summer of 1938, 30 members of the Hitler Youth were entertained in Japan. A Japanese youth delegation visited Germany and Japan's most popular female entertainers, the Takarazaka Girls' Opera Group, sailed for a goodwill tour of Germany and Italy.

By the end of 1938 broad government strategies increasingly impinged upon the details of Japanese daily life. Fuel shortages brought charcoal-powered buses on to Tokyo's streets, and restricted the opening hours of public bathhouses. Cotton goods were increasingly replaced by textiles made of a blended ‘staple fibre’, and wood and bamboo often replaced metal in the manufacture of kitchen utensils.

In 1939 not only did the China Incident absorb increasing numbers of Japanese troops but a protracted campaign against Soviet forces on the Manchurian border (see Japanese–Soviet campaigns) reinforced demands for the creation of a yet more disciplined society. In March a new national committee gave a fresh impetus to spiritual mobilization; in April attendance at ideological evening schools was made compulsory for boys outside conventional education; and in May martial arts were added to the junior school curriculum. Even more dramatic were prohibitions on women having permanent waves, and restrictions on the opening hours of restaurants, bars, and dancehalls. Discipline and ‘spirituality’ were further intensified on 1 September 1939 when the first day of every month was declared ‘Public Service for Asia Day’. This somewhat euphemistic term described days when citizens carried out ‘labour service’, neon signs were extinguished, and sake (rice wine) was removed from public sale.

Throughout 1939 economic controls affected an increasing range of daily necessities. Rice distribution was brought under government regulation. The price of sugar was fixed by civil servants, and in October the price of many goods was frozen at their 18 September level. By December even the distribution of charcoal was subjected to government ordinance. Despite this fine mesh of official regulations, Japan's consumer economy still proved difficult to control. The October price freeze was impossible to enforce and black marketeering became an established feature of city life. Perhaps the strangest product of the new, supposedly moralistic economy, was the appearance of scrap metal dealers on annual lists of Tokyo's wealthiest citizens.

By 1940 government slogans, rules, and prohibitions may have appeared all-pervasive but the possibility of war with the western powers stimulated a new wave of petty controls. Attempts to create a more patriotic and disciplined culture soon reshaped what remained of popular pleasure and entertainment. Singers with western stage names were compelled to adopt more Japanese equivalents; traditional story-tellers were ordered to purge salacious or criminal content from their stories; and cigarettes with English names such as Cherry or Golden Bat were converted into more ‘patriotic’ brands.

But for most Japanese, food and clothing remained their most pressing concerns. These were subjected to further restrictions and rationing procedures. In June, rice, salt, sugar, and soy sauce were distributed against coupons in six major cities, and five months later the system was extended to the entire country. In these months the manufacture of silk clothing and neckties was forbidden and in November an austere national people's uniform was launched for civilians of both sexes.

The imposition of orthodox conduct was most marked in the policies of the home ministry which was the most powerful agency of domestic administration. The newly founded Imperial Rule Assistance Association was designed to provide a Japanese equivalent of the Nazi Party, but it proved an ineffective structure. In contrast the home ministry successfully brought all voluntary and quasi-voluntary neighbourhood and hamlet associations under local government control. In later years all would hold meetings at centrally determined times, listen to identical radio broadcasts, and support savings and salvage campaigns according to government order.

At the beginning of 1941 the army minister, General Tōjō, placed a new emphasis on the training of children and young people for a role in the new National Defence State Structure. On 16 January the government created the Greater Japan Youth Corps which was to integrate its training programme with those of conventional schools, and in April junior schools were drastically changed. Renamed People's Schools (kokumin gakko—a literal translation of the Nazi Volkschule), these eschewed such democratic concepts as liberalism and individualism, and replaced so-called ‘intellectualism’ with ‘the union of mind and body’. A new five-subject curriculum sought to ‘refine an imperial nation’, and placed increasing emphasis on collective acts, such as regular bowing towards the imperial palace. Even more dramatic was the introduction of semi-military ‘national defence sports’ into outdoor school activities. Institutions of secondary and higher education were also subjected to powerful military influences. In late August military training experts were attached to all universities and, soon after, the academic year for universities, higher schools, and technical colleges was shortened in the interests of military service and the war economy.

The dominance of military priorities in national life was also apparent from the steady deterioration of many civilian services. Virtually all group travel was forbidden. Third class sleeping-cars disappeared from the national railways and dining-cars became very scarce delights. The communications ministry even forbade the sending of greetings or condolence telegrams.

As relations with the western nations deteriorated, anti-Western propaganda became more bitter. Its most common theme was Japan's encirclement by the ABCD League (America, Britain, China, and the Dutch). This was a strange emotional fabrication, but the public's increasing xenophobia received serious justification when, on 15 October 1941 one of Japan's most distinguished journalists, Ozaki Hotsumi, was arrested on a charge of transmitting secrets to the USSR; and three days later a raffish German journalist, Richard Sorge, was seized for participating in the same spy ring. These dramatic events gave added strength to government appeals for vigilance, and popular fears of aliens and dissidents.

During the first months of the Pacific war a rapid series of victories aroused public enthusiasm and assisted the government in consolidating its so-called ‘new order’. In January 1942 the Great Japan Imperial Rule Assistance Youth Corps was established to create an ideologically aggressive youth movement and four months later the Imperial Rule Assistance Political Association was founded to include virtually all members of both houses of the Diet. This policy of amalgamating similar groups into new inclusive organizations was further extended with the creation of the Great Japan Women's Association—which, it has been claimed, had more than 19 million members—the Great Japan Martial Arts Association, and the Japan Publications Culture Association. This process reached its climax with the integration of all neighbourhood associations into the Imperial Rule Assistance Association.

Yet victories and organizational changes could not prevent the appearance of new shortages and greater austerity. In January 1942 gas and cooking salt were subjected to systems of rationing and 37 Ginza restaurants were closed after participating in black market activities. By the end of the year a network of local foodstuff corporations had been organized to distribute staple foods to neighbourhood associations; these grassroots organizations were to play a vitally important role in the distribution of rice and basic foods to individual families.

Shortages of consumer goods reflected the dominance of military priorities in the national economy, but in late 1942 problems in military production began to trouble Japan's leaders. Initially Japan had expected a short war and its economic plans had been based upon this erroneous premiss. Indeed the first year of war was a time of surprising complacency. Not only was little attention paid to the production of essential ships such as tankers and ocean freighters, but little attempt was made to stimulate the overall growth of the economy. Even more marked was the inefficiency of government planning agencies. The cabinet planning board could draft detailed plans, but it had no authority to impose them upon particular industries or private companies. This power was left in the hands of individual ministers. In late 1941 pre-war cartels had been replaced by a series of industrial control associations which were to organize production and distribution in particular sectors. The Transfer of Administrative Authority Law soon gave these associations additional powers, but industrialists rather than ministers or civil servants controlled these organizations. As a result the government's wishes could still be thwarted by industrial leaders.

By March 1943 Japanese forces had suffered important defeats at Midway and Guadalcanal and Tōjō (prime minister from October 1941) took increased powers to direct the economy. Now maximum emphasis was placed upon five industrial sectors: coal, steel, light metals, ships, and military aircraft (see Table 3). At the same time army/navy rivalries were increasingly seen as serious impediments to effective planning. Simultaneously a high-level study of aircraft production revealed that 45% of Japan's aluminium supplies was being sold on the black market, or being used for the manufacture of pots, pans, or other inessentials. In the face of these discoveries and a worsening military situation Tōjō brought about an administrative revolution. The ministry of commerce and cabinet planning board were abolished and a new ministry of munitions was created. Furthermore a new transportation ministry replaced the previous communications and railway ministries. The main aims of these radical changes were the effective control of aircraft production and the creation of integrated land and maritime transport policies. However, the attainment of these vital objectives was partially undermined by continued military interference.

Japan, 2, Table 3: Production of matériel^c

Type	1941	1942	1943	1944	1945
aApril-July 1945
btotal annual aircraft production, including fighters, bombers, reconnaissance aircraft, trainers, flying boats, gliders, etc., was 5,088 (1941) 8,861 (1942), 16,693 (1943), 28,180 (1944), and 11,066 (1945)
cFor production of merchant ships, see section 7, below
Medium tanks (14-17 tons)	495	531	554	294	89a
Light tanks	529	634	232	48	5a
Self-propelled guns		26	14	59	48a
Armoured cars	88	442	615	725	105a
Fightersb	1,080	2,935	7,147	13,811	5,474
Bombers	1,461	2,433	4,189	5,100	1,934
Reconnaissance aircraft	639	967	2,070	2,147	855
Battleships	1	1
Aircraft carriers	5	6	3	4
Cruisers	1	2	2	1
Destroyers	9	9	15	31	6
Submarines	11	22	40	37	22

Such drastic changes inevitably made further inroads into what remained of normality or semi-normality in Japanese civilian life. Middle-school education was reduced from five to four years, limits on the working hours of women and minors were waived, and cloth shortages led to restrictions on the sleeve length of traditional dress and a prohibition on the manufacture of double-breasted suits. But perhaps the most striking changes were those which revealed a serious reappraisal or abandonment of values which had, hitherto, been central to Japanese life. Tōjō had viewed the traditional domestic role of women as a major strength of the nation, but in September 1943 unmarried women under the age of 25 were conscripted into a labour volunteer corps. A powerful symbol of Japan's crisis was a large-scale ceremony at the Meiji Shrine Stadium on 21 October 1943 to bid farewell to thousands of university students who were to join the imperial army and navy. Even Japan's precious intellectual élite was no longer immune from the hazards of modern war.

Despite the organizational difficulties of Japanese economic planning, 1943 and 1944 saw remarkable achievements in some spheres of war production. These successes did not result from the utilization of raw materials from conquered territories, for Allied submarines controlled the southern seas. Instead, rapid increases in production were based on plundering raw material stockpiles, reducing civilian production, and the desperate employment of an emergency workforce. Perhaps Japan's greatest success was in aircraft production. In 1943 it produced 16,693 aircraft and in 1944 28,180, representing a remarkable advance on the 5,088 planes which had been manufactured in the first year of war. However this was a once- and-for-all achievement, for when stockpiled raw materials had been exhausted many factories were left with spare capacity and an under-used labour force. Soon, fear of American bombing ushered in measures which caused further interruptions to production. In an attempt to preserve large numbers of strategic factories machinery was dispersed to mountain and rural regions—often by means of primitive ox-carts and other improvised transport. In many cases, machinery was relocated in damp caves and underl ground chambers where corrosion soon ruined sophisticated equipment.

For Japanese civilians temporary industrial achievements brought little reward; shortages multiplied and the fabric of city life was eroded by new scarcities and further restrictions. On 20 April 1944 all Tokyo kindergartens were closed. In August sugar rations were suspended and in the autumn passenger trains were drastically reduced to permit the transport of larger quantities of military equipment. Even worse, food shortages led to wild dogs roaming the streets of Tokyo. Some were even killed and marketed for human consumption.

While the Japanese government now prepared to resist an Allied invasion, American bombing of Japan's cities began in earnest. At first B29 raids sought to destroy defined industrial targets, but on 9 March 1945, 334 B29 Superfortresses launched a low-level incendiary attack on northern Tokyo. Within hours 40 sq. km. (15.4 sq. mi.) of the city were destroyed and tens of thousands of civilians were killed. This raid demonstrated the total inadequacy of Japan's defences and stimulated a vast process of urban flight. During the last months before surrender more than 10 million city dwellers—two-thirds of them women and children—fled to the countryside. Increasingly pessimistic rumours circulated among civilians and Korean immigrants were accused of guiding American bombers to their targets.

Now a complex of economic forces began the final dislocation of Japan's economy and society. Food shortages drove workers to the countryside to buy rice and vegetables, and industrial absenteeism rose to unprecedented heights. Simultaneously, blockade made the importation of food and raw materials from Korea virtually impossible; even ferry links between Japan's two principal islands, Hokkaido and Honshu, were interrupted by bombing; and soon the process of aerial destruction was extended to virtually every significant provincial town and city in Japan.

Government spokesmen continued to talk of discipline, duty, and resistance, and fortune tellers were officially instructed to produce optimistic forecasts, but the Soviet declaration of war on 8 August, and nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki brought a swift acceptance of Allied terms. At first little changed. Special police (see Tokkō) continued to trail potential dissidents, and political prisoners remained in gaol, but soon fear of the ‘devilish’ enemy brought new policies and patterns of behaviour. Thousands of wives and daughters were sent into the countryside for fear of American molestation, while the government instructed local authorities to establish brothels to satisfy the anticipated desires of the occupiers. Much of the army which had been prepared to resist an Allied invasion was rapidly demobilized and ministers now urged citizens to turn their attention to national reconstruction and peace. Indeed, soldiers were instructed to avoid any actions which might produce friction with American units. By the time US forces arrived, and the war was formally ended on 2 September, Japanese society was mentally and physically disarmed.

Gordon Daniels

3. Government

To outsiders, wartime Japan appeared to be a fascist totalitarian state ruled by a military dictatorship. Thus, the prime minister, General T̄jōo, who held office from 18 October 1941 to 18 July 1944, was often likened to Hitler. Yet the reality was quite different, for Tōjō inherited a complex political system which he found impossible to master.

This complexity originated in the contradictory, dual, nature of Japan's constitutional monarchy, as defined by the 1889 Meiji Constitution. On the one hand, the constitution located sovereignty in the emperor and attributed to him executive, legislative, and military prerogatives so extensive as to make him virtually an absolute monarch who, being ‘sacred and inviolable’, possessed supreme authority as ‘head of the Empire’. Yet on the other hand, the constitution also contained articles which significantly limited him by delegating the exercise of his prerogatives, for example, to the cabinet in the case of his executive powers, to the bicameral parliament, or Diet, where his legislative powers were concerned, and to the military, with respect to his powers of ‘supreme command’ and military administration.

The net effect of this ambiguous blend of absolute and limited monarchy was that emperor Hirohito reigned but did not rule. Rather, his primary political function was formally to legitimize policy decisions reached by his government and in performing this role, he was advised at court by the Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal, the Grand Chamberlain, and other officials who generally kept him neutral as a transcendental symbol of national unity. Inevitably the various institutions established by the constitution, which exercised his prerogatives in actual practice, engaged in acute sectarian rivalry to have their respective, and often conflicting, policies ratified by the ‘Imperial Will’.

Ostensibly, national policy was made by the cabinet, which was responsible not to the Diet but to the emperor, who appointed the prime minister on the recommendation of his court advisers, including especially, from 1940, the lord keeper of the privy seal, in consultation with the informal conference of ‘elder statesmen’ made up of former prime ministers ( Jūshin Kaigi). However, the cabinet's position was weak vis-à-vis the military; and the central bureaucracy, which implemented the policies of the foreign, finance, home, and other cabinet ministries, constituted a conservative and increasingly assertive political force in its own right. In addition, the co-operation of the Diet was required to legislate policy. But the mainstream, conservative parties—the Minseitō and Seiyūkai—which together dominated the lower House of Representatives as a consequence of national elections, did not always comply. Their formal powers were limited, essentially to budgetary review. The even more conservative upper House of Peers, composed of hereditary nobles and appointed officials, acted as a check on the lower house. A multiplicity of other institutions, some civilian, some military, also tried to influence policy formally or informally. They included: the privy council; business and labour interest groups; the military Reservists' Association; the Board of Field Marshals and Fleet Admirals; the Supreme War Council, which included the last-named board, and the service ministers and chiefs.

The conflicts inherent in this system of élite pluralism had proved manageable until they were greatly intensified by the crises of the early 1930s, particularly the great depression and the 1931 Manchurian Incident (see Manchukuo). Furthermore, the system as a whole was weakened by a deepening ultran ationalist reaction, especially on the part of radical dissidents within the armed forces who aspired to install a military dictatorship. Had one of the planned or attempted coups d'état perpetrated by radical young officers been successful, such a dictatorship might well have resulted. However, once these attempted coups, culminating in the rebellion of 26 February 1936, were repressed, the army chose to rely on gradual penetration and subtle manipulation of the government to increase its leverage over the bureaucratic, non-party, cabinets which followed the Seiyūkai party administration of Inukai Tsuyoshi upon his assassination in May 1932.

The army was able to do so mainly because there was widespread support for its plans to build a powerful, self-sufficient, ‘national defence state’ (kokubō kokka) in a context of perceived foreign threats to the empire. Two additional factors assisted the army's political ascendancy. First, while the Meiji Constitution had given Hirohito the right of supreme command, over which the cabinet had no control, in practice the military, and in particular the army general staff office, used the so-called ‘independence of the supreme command’ and the direct access of the chief of staff to the throne, to usurp this imperial prerogative, as had been done, for example, in the Manchurian Incident earlier. Notably, this continued to be the case after the control of combat operations was broadly assumed by Imperial General Headquarters (see 5(a), below); revived in November 1937 during the early stages of the China Incident, this institution, which also included the army and navy ministers, was dominated by the army and navy chiefs of staff.

Second, through an arrangement whereby the service ministers were required to be generals and admirals on active service rather than in the reserves, in 1936 the army acquired the ability to cause the fall of a given cabinet simply by withdrawing or refusing to provide an army minister. This ‘veto’, which made the cabinet all the more subservient to the army's priorities, was applied on several occasions in pre-war Japan when the cabinet, including even administrations headed by military men, proved incapable of obtaining the Diet's support for specific national defence measures.

That the army found it necessary to abort cabinets in this way suggests the extent to which the Minseitō and Seiyūkai parties were anxious to preserve as much political influence as possible, notwithstanding their general support of a ‘national defence state’. In retrospect, their resistance to political centralization favouring the military was natural. Having formed the government for most of the period 1918–32, the parties resented their loss of power.

The China Incident, which started in July 1937, dramatically intensified the process of building a ‘national defence state’. In March 1938, Prime Minister Prince Konoe and his cabinet negotiated the support of the Diet for the enactment of a National Mobilization Law which gave the government comprehensive wartime controls over manpower, resources, production, transportation, wages, and prices. Similarly, in August that year, Konoe launched a ‘spiritual mobilization’ campaign to whip up public support for what had already become a military stalemate in China. As part of this campaign, various patriotic front organizations, typified by the National Defence Women's Association, increased their activities. Another example of mobilization occurred under Konoe's successor, Hiranuma Kiichirō, who took office in January 1939, when the Diet enacted the Major Industries Association Ordinance in August 1939. The ordinance was intended to enhance the government's economic controls through the formation of compulsory cartels in strategic industries. However, no single organ was established to supervise the cartels, and control was divided among several ministries.

The army and the ‘revisionist bureaucrats’, who wanted greater centralization of state power, were frustrated by the need for the government to negotiate with the parties for their support in the Diet. Accordingly, a new national unity front, the Imperial Rule Assistance Association, or IRAA, was founded on 12 October 1940, with Konoe, who had returned as prime minister that July, as its ex-officio president. The existing parties were then pressured to dissolve themselves voluntarily and join the IRAA, just as labour unions and business organizations were pressured to merge into a new Industrial Patriotic League. But contrary to expectations in some quarters that the IRAA, as a Nazi-type organization, would strengthen the hand of the government, it proved to be little more than a sounding-board for the government's defence agenda. The Diet members of the former Minseitō and Seiyūkai parties, the bureaucracy, and indeed the army itself, were prepared to support the IRAA only insofar as it did not compromise their respective powers and interests.

Hence, prior to Tōjō's appointment as prime minister, the Japanese political system was a balance between competing élites, with the army's predominance more hegemonic than dictatorial because of its need to forge co-operative working relationships with other élites. However, this system was further complicated by the many divisions that existed within the government concerning defence priorities and the role of Japan's growing military power in the critical area of foreign policy. In addition to acute civil–military rivalry, debates on these issues reflected conflict between, and within, the army and the navy, and tensions between the general staff and field commanders who frequently undertook operations that had not been authorized by the government.

Since the army and navy general staff offices conducted operations without cabinet control, the cabinet itself could not make foreign policy decisions with any confidence in the military's compliance. Therefore, during the China Incident, when both general staff offices became the Imperial General Headquarters, the Liaison Conference (Renraku Kaigi) was established to co-ordinate the military and civilian branches of government in decision-making. It usually included the prime minister, the service ministers, the foreign minister, and sometimes the finance minister from the cabinet and, representing Imperial Headquarters, the army and navy chiefs and vice-chiefs of staff and numerous bureau chiefs who served as secretaries. This extra-constitutional body, which was numerically dominated by the military, quickly superseded the cabinet as the centre of Japanese decision-making. Its meetings were often prolonged by heated disagreements but once decisions were made, they were then automatically sanctioned by the emperor when the members of the Liaison Conference met him formally in subsequent Imperial Conferences (Gozen Kaigi). After this, the cabinet conferred its endorsement, again as a matter of routine, whereupon decisions became official national policy.

All major foreign policy decisions in the pre-war period, including, for example, the decision to enter the Tripartite Pact and advance south in 1940, and the decisions leading to the Pearl Harbor attack in December 1941, were taken in this labyrinthine institutional setting. While in each case the military had its way, it should be emphasized that decision-making involved the often laborious process of negotiating a collective consensus of all the participants. Thus, while power was highly centralized, it was also significantly fragmented and although the military dominated the government, its leadership was by no means absolute. Because these conditions continued to prevail in Japan throughout the Second World War, the long-standing aim of a totalitarian ‘national defence state’ was never achieved.

When Konoe's clash with the military over the question of war or peace caused him to resign in October 1941, he was replaced by Tōjō on the recommendation of the emperor's advisers, with a mandate to continue final preparations for war with the Anglo-American powers in the expected event that further negotiations in Washington, would fail to prevent war. Tōjō served concurrently as army minister to bolster his own position, and to co-ordinate better civil and military administration. Until mid-February 1942 he also served as home minister. Apart from Admiral Shimada Shigetarō, the navy minister, most other members of his cabinet were civilian bureaucrats.

The onset of war in Asia and the Pacific made this a war cabinet but Tōjō did not proclaim a state of emergency. Rather, he relied upon the Diet, which continued to function throughout the conflict, to enact wartime legislation. Thus, in the spring of 1942 he called a general election in order to strengthen the Diet's co-operation with his administration. A list of approved, pro-government, candidates was prepared and they were duly elected. Remarkably, however, a small minority of non-listed independent candidates, including such outspoken critics of Tōjō as the conservative Nakano Seigō and the liberal Ozaki Yukio, were also elected that year. Some of these men refused to join a new parliamentary body, the Imperial Rule Assistance Political Association, which was formed as an offshoot of the IRAA, soon after the election. Although the wartime Diet co-operated with the government, Nakano, Ozaki, and others often publicly criticized Tōjō for having amassed too much personal power.

Ozaki was arrested, convicted (of lèse majesté during the recent election campaign) and sentenced to imprisonment, although he was subsequently pardoned. Nakano, too, suffered police harassment for his bold advocacy of Tōjō's dismissal and ultimately committed suicide, in 1943. More broadly, Tōjō used the Special Higher Police the Tokkō, the Military Police, known as the Kempei, and the courts to suppress known and suspected ‘thought criminals’ who allegedly threatened the state and Japan's war effort. In addition to the 1925 Peace Preservation Law, aimed mainly at the communists, other laws, such as the Special Emergency Act of December 1942, greatly extended the state's authority to carry out sweeping arrests. Yet the number of prosecutions for illegal dissent was lower than might be expected; at the end of the war there were only 2,500 political prisoners in detention. Torture was seldom used, more subtle forms of persuasion to elicit confessions being preferred. The scale and severity of repression in wartime Japan did not compare with that exercised by the Gestapo or the NKVD in the USSR.

During the tenure of Tōjō's administration, bureaucratic centralization proceeded rapidly. The home ministry, which was responsible for internal security, also strengthened its control over neighbourhood associations (tonarigumi) which had been organized to conduct civil defence drills, distribute rations, and maintain public order. The home ministry likewise gained control of the IRAA and the army-backed Young Men's Corps, which had been founded in early 1942 in the expectation, which proved futile, that it would evolve as a Nazi-style organization. Similarly, the new Greater East Asia ministry, founded in September 1942, all but eclipsed the foreign ministry by assuming responsibility for Japan's wartime relations with Asia.

Furthermore, a new Special Wartime Administrative Law, passed in March 1943, empowered the prime minister to direct various ministries concerning war-related economic production and, relatedly, Tōjō also personally took charge of the ministry of munitions, established eight months later. His new powers generally reflected the further encroachment of the military in government; the cabinet planning board, established in 1937, and similar agencies, were increasingly dominated by the army despite their putative civilian status.

Politically, Tōjō was still obliged to orchestrate a wartime coalition of Japan's competing élites. His augmented powers still proved insufficient to overcome the intractable problem of army–navy rivalry which constantly obstructed Japan's conduct of the war. Although Tōjō was army minister, he had no control over the navy. Overall, he was as frustrated by the independence of the Imperial General Headquarters as his predecessors had been.

He therefore took the unprecedented step of assuming yet another post, that of army chief of staff, on 21 February 1944, with navy minister Shimada Shigeru serving concurrently as navy chief. But this belated attempt to co-ordinate the services fell short of establishing a unified command and as Japan's position in the war sharply deteriorated, Tōjō was increasingly vulnerable to a growing coalition of former prime ministers (the jūshin), diplomats, and imperial princes who regarded his removal as the first step to ending the war. Finally, after the fall of Saipan on 7 July 1944, he was forced to resign, along with his cabinet, on 18 July.

If, with all his powers, by virtue of the concurrent posts he held, Tōjō could not impose control over the war effort, it was unreasonable to expect that his successor, General Koiso Kuniaki, who held only the post of prime minister, could do so. When he took office, Koiso was urged by the emperor and his advisers to improve army–navy relations as the most urgent priority. To accomplish this, a new, more streamlined, war cabinet, the Supreme Council for the Direction of the War, was established in August 1944, to replace the former Liaison Conference as the principal centre of decision-making.

Consisting of the prime minister, the service ministers, the chiefs of staff, and the foreign minister, the Council proved somewhat more effective. But Koiso's personal influence on its deliberations was insignificant and the political divisions that had plagued the Tōjō cabinet remained. Above all, little was done to solve the ever-growing dilemma of army–navy rivalry, exemplified by the operational discord between, and within, the two services that contributed to heavy Japanese losses in the second of the two Philippines campaigns. As another calamitous defeat, on Okinawa, loomed, and with American planes bombing Japan at will in their strategic air offensive, Koiso resigned on 5 April 1945, vainly recommending that only a powerful government combining the cabinet and the supreme command could possibly save the empire.

However, the structure of the government was not changed under Koiso's successor, Admiral Suzuki Kantarō, whose cabinet is notable for the predominance of naval, rather than army, officers and for the inclusion of former party politicians. Whereas it would have been possible to declare martial law and rule arbitrarily, the government preferred still to depend upon the Diet to legislate new bills related to the final defence of Japan in the last desperate stages of the war. On 12 June 1945, for instance, the Diet legislated that most adults, including women, had to join a so-called Volunteer Fighting Corps and a separate wartime emergency measure bill was passed which gave the government authority to do virtually whatever was necessary to hold the economy and society together. Even at this point, though, the Diet obliged the government to consult with it in implementing national policies.

Like Koiso, Suzuki was permitted by the military to attend the meetings of Imperial Headquarters but inter-service co-operation remained elusive. While the military persisted in its determination to carry on fighting, a ‘peace party’ centred primarily on the jūshin and the imperial court manoeuvred behind the scenes to bring the conflict to a close before the country was completely destroyed.

In this polarized context, the issue of continued war or surrender was to be settled by the Supreme Council for the Direction of the War. But its proceedings were completely deadlocked between those who wanted to fight to the finish and those who advocated surrender on the terms set forth by the Allies in the Potsdam Proclamation of 26 July 1945 (see Terminal). When the government could no longer function in resolving this impasse, it took the unprecedented intervention of Emperor Hirohito, at Suzuki's invitation, to break the deadlock and end the war, with the result that the emperor announced Japan's termination of hostilities on 15 August 1945. On that day, Suzuki resigned, taking official responsibility for the defeat. He was replaced by Prince Higashikuni Naruhiko (1887–1990) the first imperial prince to serve as prime minister, who had the task of managing the country's transition into the post-war occupation.

It is striking how little the experience of total war altered the Japanese system of government. The Meiji constitutional order remained intact; the emperor's role was largely confined to legitimating policies decided upon by his government, as his predecessors had always done; despite the façade of central controls, power was diffused among different competing élites, with the Diet continuing to function pretty much as it had functioned before the war; and transitions from one wartime administration to the next were relatively smooth and unmarked by bloodshed. Basically, in these respects, the government operated quite effectively. But its great defect was the independence of the supreme command which, more than any other single factor, had led Japan down the path to war and contributed to the lack of co-ordination that might have facilitated the war effort.

Japan's wartime regime was repressive but it was not a fascist regime in the sense found in Europe. Its ideology, combining traditional communitarian values and loyalty to the emperor, was deliberately projected as uniquely Japanese and altogether unrelated to European fascism. The various experiments with Nazi-type organizations were distinctly unsuccessful.

Did the wartime government have the public trust even though it was scarcely accountable to the public? Perhaps it did, at least early in the Pacific war, although many Japanese may have gone along with it less out of conviction than from the perceived necessity to conform to the dictates of the state. But this trust did not survive the conflict. Rather, the widespread disillusionment of the people with a government that had waged a catastrophic war made them generally receptive to the reforms of demilitarization and political democratization which were soon introduced by the occupation.

Stephen Large

4. Defence forces and civil defence

Although Japan held its first air raid drill in July 1928, little serious attention was devoted to civil defence until the eve of the China Incident. On 5 April 1937 the government promulgated the Air Defence Law which proclaimed broad principles of policy and made prefectural governors responsible for local civil defence. Two years later the home ministry established auxiliary police and fire units which were largely based upon traditional volunteer associations. Civil defence was further encouraged by the founding of the Great Japan Air Defence Association and the Great Japan Fire Defence Association, nationwide bodies which sponsored publicity and training, and provided financial aid to local citizens' groups.

Even after Pearl Harbor most civil defence preparations remained the responsibility of local officials and bitter inter-ministerial rivalries obstructed the formation of integrated policies. Even more damaging were the military assumptions which formed the basis of civil defence planning. Army and navy commanders claimed that Japan would never face large-scale air attacks, and that limited preparations would suffice to protect her major cities. In April 1942 the Doolittle raid penetrated Japan's air defences, but it was ineffective and seemed to confirm rather than challenge the premisses of government policy.

These complacent attitudes remained largely unchanged until November 1943, when news of Allied victories and the bombing of German cities gave a new urgency to civil defence policy. Symbolic of this new mood was the creation of the Air Defence Headquarters under the minister of home affairs. This new organization attempted to co-ordinate policies between rival ministries and initiate new lines of action. By this time large numbers of trench shelters had been constructed; now these were roofed, and local authorities were urged to excavate public tunnel shelters in cliffs and hillsides. Tunnel shelter construction was further encouraged by government offers of large subsidies to prefectural and city governments.

In late 1943 the central government also began drafting formal plans for the evacuation of non-essential personnel from the Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka, and north Kyūshū conurbations. Initially, Prime Minister Tōjō opposed such schemes as he feared that they would fragment families and undermine national morale. However his reservations were gradually overcome by his desire to preserve the next generation for future wars. Old people, mothers, and children were encouraged to move to the homes of friends and relatives in the countryside. In cases where this was impossible junior school pupils from the third to the sixth grade were to be evacuated, as classes, with their teachers. In the summer of 1944 thousands of city teachers visited parents to persuade them of the virtues of school evacuation and by August more than 333,000 children had travelled to rural villages. Here they lived in inns, temples, and public halls, and despite homesickness and meagre rations, continued their education with tolerable success. A further 459,000 children travelled with their parents to the homes of country relatives.

A further wave of evacuees was precipitated by radical fire prevention policies. In 1943 the government began the destruction of thousands of dwelling houses to create fire-breaks; this destruction soon drove more than 343,000 city dwellers to rural areas, or to temporary accommodation near their workplaces.

Besides these ambitious evacuation policies the government also encouraged local training for expected incendiary raids. In every town and city ‘block associations’ and neighbourhood groups donned padded clothing and practised ‘bucket relays’ and other primitive methods of fire-fighting. Equally important was the ‘air defence oath’ which urged citizens to stand their ground in the face of incendiary or high explosive bombs. Such training was understandable but suicidal, for by 1945 Japan's anti-aircraft batteries and fighter squadrons were obsolete and could offer no challenge to modern, high-flying bombers. When large-scale incendiary raids began on 9 March radio warnings effectively mobilized fire brigades and civil defence workers but neither could control the firestorms which swept across northern Tokyo. In the aftermath of this catastrophe the evacuation of third to sixth grade pupils was made compulsory, and first and second grade pupils were urged to leave all major cities. Within a month 87% of children in these groups had reached sanctuaries in the country.

As American bombers devastated city after city thousands of medical personnel and civil defence workers ignored orders and fled. For millions of urban Japanese escape to the country now constituted the only effective form of ‘civil defence’. Government rules, plans, and preparations were soon rapidly overwhelmed by a mass unplanned exodus to the safety of provincial villages. The country's defence forces never had to be employed operationally and would have proved equally ineffective if they had been.

In January 1945 Imperial General Headquarters (see armed forces (a), below) formulated a Homeland Operations Plan in preparation for an expected Allied invasion. Army and navy leaders planned large-scale military resistance and Prime Minister Koiso sought to reinforce these efforts by drawing millions of citizens into auxiliary activities. On 23 March the cabinet formally decided to establish People's Volunteer Units (Kokumin Giyūtai). These were to consist of both men's and women's sections, and were to be organized on the basis of school, workplace, or locality. Volunteers were to assist the army, navy, and police in such diverse tasks as military construction, evacuation, transport, food production, air defence, the repair of roads and buildings, and the maintenance of public order. In May and June the government gave further encouragement to the growth of the volunteer movement by dissolving the Imperial Rule Assistance Association and other patriotic societies (see government, above) and encouraging their members to join the new volunteers.

As the danger of invasion grew the government moved to transform many of the new groups into fighting units. On 23 June a new volunteer military service law created the People's Volunteer Combat Corps (Kokumin giyū Sentōtai) to be raised from men aged from 15 to 60 and women aged from 17 to 40. These citizen forces were planned as city or prefectural federations, appropriate for flexible local defence. They were under the control of local governors and the prime minister acted as the corps' C-in-C. By this time modern weapons were almost unobtainable and tens of thousands of volunteers were trained with simple staves and bamboo spears. Government propagandists now advocated ‘The Glorious Death of One Hundred Million’ to ‘Defend the National Polity’ but the atomic bomb attacks brought surrender before an invasion, and on 2 September 1945 all People's Volunteer organizations were dissolved and their activities ended.

Gordon Daniels

5. Armed forces

Two military codes regulated the behaviour of Japanese servicemen: the Imperial Rescript to Soldiers and Sailors (Gunjin Chokuyu) and Instructions for the Battlefield (Senjinkun). The former was read every day by servicemen, particularly in the army, and copies of the latter were distributed to everyone on active duty.

The Gunjin Chokuyu, first issued in 1882, stressed that the armed forces were directly responsible to the divine figure of the emperor (see religion) and laid down five principles to guide a serviceman's conduct: loyalty, propriety, valour, righteousness, and simplicity. Loyalty called for absolute obedience to the emperor and propriety demanded the acceptance of orders from a superior as if they had come direct from the emperor.

The Senjinkun was issued on 8 January 1941 in the name of General Tōjō, who was then war minister. This enjoined absolute obedience to orders and forbade any retreat (‘A soldier must never abandon the field to the enemy, even at the risk of his life’) or surrender (‘A soldier must never suffer the disgrace of being captured alive’).

These codes, and Bushidō, led to what western observers have called ‘fanatical’ resistance (see also heroism), to suicidal banzai charges, to many soldiers shouting ‘Long Live the Emperor’ as they died, and to some refusing to surrender even after the war had ended. Lieutenant Onoda Hiroo, for instance, ordered to undertake guerrilla warfare on Lubang Island in the Philippines, refused to give himself up until 1974.

(a) High Command

The Meiji Constitution (1898–1947) declared that ‘the Emperor has the supreme command of the Army and Navy’, but it was Imperial General Headquarters (IGH) that directed Japanese forces during the war (see Chart 1). The prime minister became an ex-officio member in March 1945 but civilian control of IGH was minimal (see government, above).

In peacetime both general staffs were responsible to their respective ministries, but after the start of the China Incident in July 1937 IGH was formed and the two staffs were then known as IGH, Army Section, and IGH, Navy Section. However, the sections remained independent of each other and there was no unified command system such as the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, though the formation of IGH was an attempt to create one. No one co-ordinated the two staffs nor was there anyone to act as an arbiter, or final decision-maker, when a disagreement occurred.

By 1941 IGH, Army Section, or Army High Command, was headed by General Sugiyama Hajime (later succeeded by General Tōjō and then General Umezu Yoshijirō), who was assisted by a deputy chief. The Navy High Command was headed by Admiral Nagano Osami (later succeeded by Admiral Shimada Shigeru and then Admiral Toyoda). Each section had its own bureaux for operations, intelligence, and logistics. The operations bureau, particularly in the army, always attracted the top staff officers, a tradition which led to intelligence and logistics being underrated. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that Japan lost the Pacific war because staff officers neglected intelligence.

Other factors also hindered the efficiency of IGH. The conservative seniority system stifled the promotion of talented staff officers. Neither Shimada nor Sugiyama was particularly able, but because of the seniority system each occupied the highest post in their respective services for part of the war. The training of staff officers ignored strategy and war theory in favour of tactics. It also created an élite officer corps where a network of personal relationships, founded on paternalism, made it difficult to discipline subordinates and where the principle of reward and punishment failed to apply. This was tolerated by both high commands though it functioned to the detriment of the system as a whole.

Both sections of IGH frequently failed to clarify their strategic or operational objectives. As a result, staff officers, especially in the field armies, resorted to dokudan senkō (complete operational freedom) and gekokujō (where junior officers defied their seniors), and they often seemed incapable of formulating strategies based upon scientific reasoning. Anyone who argued rationally or advised prudence could be accused of cowardice, and the superiority of spiritual power over material strength was always being emphasized.

This attitude led to the High Command neglecting to improve weapons and mechanize the army. Infantrymen were armed with rifles made in 1905 which had been hardly improved since that date. The navy's emphasis on rigorous training, which in itself was excellent, retarded the development of much modern technology; and though it developed the outstanding Zero fighter it failed to give its pilots adequate protective armour because it wanted to promote offensive thinking. This inability to use a scientific approach needlessly cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of Japanese servicemen.

Senior Japanese commanders and staff officers of both services were good at planning surprise attacks for defeating an adversary in a short and decisive battle, but they hardly gave a thought to the problems of a protracted war. Neither Nagano nor Sugiyama, when questioned by the emperor in September 1941, had a long-term strategy. They staked all on rapidly smashing the US Navy and compelling Roosevelt to negotiate a peace on adverse terms.

Despite its weaknesses and defects, the Japanese High Command in its short history should be given some credit for building up its armed forces to equal those of western powers, and for creating, despite its weaknesses, a professional officer corps.

(b) Army

The Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) was run by a triumvirate: the Inspectorate General of Military Training, the War Ministry, and the General Staff (see high command, above). The Inspectorate General of Military Training was primarily concerned with the administration of the military academy, the war college, and other service schools. The war ministry dealt with politico-military affairs, budget, personnel, mobilization, and ordnance, and had under it Central Shipping Transportation (until July 1942 when it came under the direct control of the IJA's Chief of Staff) and the HQ of the departments of armour, army aeronautics, fortifications, fuel, and arsenal administration.

The peacetime standing army comprised 17 divisions in addition to the Korean Army, the Formosan Army, and the Kwantung Army in Manchukuo. Between 1937 and 1941 this number was increased to 31 divisions to reinforce the China Expeditionary Army fighting in the China Incident, and to prepare for the invasion of South-East Asia, and the Kwantung Army was also increased, from 5 to 13 divisions. The Indian National Army and the Burma Independence Army, raised with Japanese help, fought alongside the IJA in the Burma campaign; and volunteer armies (giyūgun) were raised in Java and elsewhere, but these were merely auxiliary forces for bolstering Japanese coastal defences.

The IJA's command structure (see Chart 2) embraced a number of general armies, area armies, and armies. Armies were formed from two or more divisions, which were the basic fighting formation. The wide variety of tasks imposed on the IJA demanded flexibility in its divisions. By 1939 the standard one was the B (Otsu) type, with a total strength of 20,000 men. This had three infantry regiments and one engineer, one transport, and one artillery regiment (36 guns), plus a reconnaissance unit (in Manchukuo often cavalry, which the Japanese retained throughout the war), and service troops. There were also the A (Kō) and C (Hei) type divisions. The former (29,000 men) operated in China and Manchukuo and had extra artillery, larger infantry battalions, and, often, a tank battalion; the latter (13,500–15,000 men), used for garrison and anti-guerrilla duties, had just two brigades of two infantry battalions.

Independent Mixed Brigades, first used in China, had between three and six infantry battalions (each 750–900 strong) with artillery, signals, and engineer units attached. When used in the Pacific war they had extra artillery and four to eight battalions as well as specialist anti-aircraft and anti-tank units. Commanded by a major-general, their strength varied between 3,100 and 6,000 men. Scaled-down versions, Independent Mixed Regiments, were used to defend Pacific islands.

Special Detachments (shitai), all-arms forces of brigade strength, were often raised for special missions. They were sometimes named after their commander (e.g. the Ichiki Detachment on Guadalcanal), and sometimes according to where they operated (such as the South Seas, which landed at Guam and then on New Guinea, and the North Seas, which started the Aleutian Islands campaigns). They were normally formed and controlled by army or area army commanders, but also directly from Imperial General HQ.

Up to August 1939 the Japanese used their armour only to support their infantry, but the battle of Nomonhan (see Japanese–Soviet campaigns) changed their perception of how it should be employed. Nevertheless, the first Japanese armoured division was not ready for service, in Manchukuo, until 1943. Before then their armour operated in tank groups (sensha dan) of three or four tank regiments (80 tanks each) from which tank companies (12 tanks) were detached to operate with infantry if required.

Both the IJA and the navy had parachutists. The army's basic unit was what was known as the Raiding Regiment (teishin rentai). This contained about 600 parachutists and was part of a Raiding Group (teishin dan) which had two parachute regiments, two squadrons of transport aircraft to carry them, and a glider regiment.

The nature of the Pacific war led the IJA to being widely involved in seaborne operations and administration. Two divisions, 5th (Samurai) and 11th, were specially trained in amphibious warfare, of which the IJA had, from earlier conflicts, long experience. Though supported by the navy, all large landings were conducted by the IJA (but seewake island), and it was army engineers who, between the wars, developed the necessary landing craft—including the bow ramp which the Americans and the British were to copy—shipping facilities, and complete operational techniques.

Once it had occupied so many far-flung islands the IJA was obliged to supply and reinforce its garrisons. Central Shipping Transportation's Shipping and Transport Command controlled three Water Transport Commands (whose code, when broken, provided early ULTRA intelligence) which in turn controlled a network of island anchorages and the shipping using them. It also commanded Shipping Artillery Regiments (senpaku hōhei rentai), Shipping Regiments (senpaku kōhei rentai), which were similar to the US Seabees, and Shipping Communications units (senpaku tsūshintai), which mounted amphibious operations.

In 1943 several mobile seaborne brigades (kaijō kidō ryodan) of three reinforced infantry battalions were raised, to each of which was permanently attached a 1,500-strong shipping engineer regiment, which was called a ‘sea transport unit’. These brigades were intended as mobile reserves for IJA island garrisons but were, in fact, only used in a static defence role.

By the end of the war the IJA was even operating its own escort carriers to protect its convoys with Army Air Force aircraft. But its air force was mostly employed in Manchukuo and China, or on larger land masses such as New Guinea, as its short-range aircraft were not suitable for the Pacific war nor were its pilots trained for flying long distances over water. The basic air force unit was the Air Group (sentai), which had three squadrons or companies (chūtai) of nine to twelve aircraft. Above the Group was the Air Brigade (hikōdan), which had three fighter, light bomber, or heavy bomber groups, and a reconnaissance unit. Two or three Air Brigades formed an Air Division (hikōshidan) and two or three divisions an Air Army (kōkūgun). First, Second, and Third Air Armies were created in June and July 1942; the Fourth in July 1943; the Fifth in February 1944; and the Sixth in August 1944.

In December 1941 IJA troops were deployed as shown in Table 4 and supporting them were 151 squadrons, based mostly on Formosa, or in French Indo-China, Manchukuo, and China. Hostilities began with landings by the Twenty-Fifth Army in southern Thailand and northern Malaya. These were followed by the Fourteenth Army landing on Luzon Island at the start of the second of the two Philippines campaigns; Twenty-Third Army's attack on Hong Kong; Fifteenth Army's invasion of Burma from Thailand; and several amphibious operations launched by Sixteenth Army in the Netherlands East Indies. General Terauchi, based at Saigon, took overall charge of these operations as commander of the Southern Expeditionary Army.

Japan, Table 4: Deployment of ground forces, December 1941

Locations	Names of Commands	Attached Divisions	Nos of Brigades or Equivalent
a There was no standing army of division strength in Formosa in December 1941 excepting a garrison army consisting of a few infantry regiments (including an air regiment) and a few artillery battalions. Formosa served as a staging station for troops before deployment elsewhere in China and South-East Asia. In September 1944, the Formosa Arm was reorganized as the 19th Area Army composed of the Thirty-second Army (24th, 26th, 62nd Divisions), 9th, 12th, 50th, 66th, 71st Divisions. Its defence area covered Formosa and the Ryūkyū Islands.
b The Sixteenth Army, when organized in November 1941, was located in Tokyo, and its troops were assembled in phases at Saigon via Kaohsiur Formosa during the period between late December 1941 and January 1942. The 38th Division after completing the campaign in Hong Kong joined with the Sixteenth Army on 14 February to capture Palembang, Sumatra, and 48th Division after capturing Manila joined on 1 March to attack eastern Java.
Source: Contributor.
Japan
Tokyo	General Defence Army HQ
Tokyo	Eastern District Army HQ	52 nd	4
Osaka	Central District Army HQ	53rd, 54th	3
Fukuoka	Western District Army HQ		3
Sapporo	Northern District Army HQ	7th	1
Korea
Seoul	Korean Army HQ	19th, 20th	0
Formosa
Taipei	Formosan Army HQa	0	0
Manchukuo
Hsinking	Kwantung Army HQ	10th, 28th, 29th	1
Mutankiang	Third Army HQ	9th, 12th	4
Pehan	Fourth Army HQ	1st, 14th, 57th	5
Tungan	(Mishan from 1943) Fifth Army HQ	11th, 24th	4
Hailar	Sixth Army HQ	23rd	1
Chi-ning	Twentieth Army HQ	8th, 25th	4
Hsinking	Kwantung Defence Army HQ		5
China
Nanking	China Expeditionary Army HQ
Peking	North China Area Army HQ	27th, 35th, 110th	5
Tayuan	First Army HQ	36th, 37th, 41st	3
Tsinan	Twelfth Army HQ	17th, 32nd	3
Changchiakow	Mongolia Garrison HQ	36th, Cavalry Group Corps	1
Hankow	Eleventh Army HQ	3rd, 6th, 13th, 34th, 39th, 40th	2
Shanghai	Thirteenth Army HQ	15th, 22nd, 116th	5
Canton	Twenty-Third Army HQ	38th, 51st, 104th	1
South-East Asia
Saigon	Southern Expeditionary Army HQ	21st	1
Kao-hsiung	Fourteenth Army HQ	16th, 48th	1
Saigon/Haiphong	Fifteenth Army HQ	33rd, 55th	0
Tokyo, Saigon	Sixteenth Army HQb	2nd, 38th, 48th	1
Sanya (Hainan I.)	Twenty-Fifth Army HQ	Imp. Guard, 5th, 18th, 56th
Bonin Is	Nankai Detachment HQ

In China the 3rd, 6th, 34th, and 40th divisions of the Eleventh Army, based at Hankow, attacked Changsha, and in May and June 1942, after the bombers participating in the Doolittle raid on Tokyo landed at Chinese-held air bases, the China Expeditionary Army ordered the Eleventh and Thirteenth Armies to attack Kuomintang army air bases at Lishui, Yüshan, and Chuchow. The Thirteenth Army advanced westwards from Hangchow while Eleventh Army advanced eastwards, and by early June the Kuomintang armies were driven out of the Chekiang-Kiangsi district. These operations apart, the fighting in China was minimal until the ICHI-GŌ offensive of 1944.

The first phase of the war ended with victories beyond Japanese expectations. But just as the IJA was readjusting to prepare for a protracted war and to consolidate an impregnable defensive perimeter in occupied South-East Asia, an Allied counter-offensive, beginning with the landing of US Marines on Guadalcanal in August 1942, upset its strategy. The Seventeenth Army, formed in May to take Port Moresby, was forced to divert its divisions (38th and 51st) to Guadalcanal to support 2nd Division, where they incurred serious losses. To deal with this serious situation Eighth Area Army was formed under General Imamura Hitoshi at Rabaul. This controlled Eighteenth Army, formed at the same time at Rabaul as Eighth Area Army to take over the New Guinea campaign, and the Seventeenth Army, which was relieved of the Guadalcanal operations to defend the rest of the Solomon Islands. But these changes, delayed by squabbles within the Army High Command, were too little and too late, and Guadalcanal was eventually evacuated in February 1943.

As the Allied counter-offensive intensified, the Army High Command was compelled to deploy additional troops. During the first half of 1943 the Eighteenth Army's 20th and 51st Divisions, which had originally been intended for Guadalcanal, were sent with the Eighteenth Army's 41st Division to fight in the New Guinea campaign, and 6th Air Division was dispatched to support Eighth Area Army's operations there. In late June 1943 Eighth Area Army's air power was further augmented by deploying the newly created 7th Air Division, and in July Fourth Air Army was created to control the two air divisions. By July the main forces of Eighth Area Army had been deployed for the defence of eastern New Guinea, while Seventeenth Army co-operated with Eighth Fleet to defend the central and northern Solomon Islands (see Bougainville, for example).

In the meantime, Terauchi had transferred his HQ from Saigon to Syonan (Singapore) and had created the Palembang Defence Army, supported by Third Air Army's 9th Air Division, to defend the Palembang oilfields; the Borneo Garrison at Kuching, Sarawak, mainly to establish a military government; the French Indo-China Garrison at Saigon in French Indo-China; and a garrison at Bangkok. In March 1943 the Twenty-Fifth Army was transferred to Bukittinggi, Sumatra.

To strengthen the defensive perimeter in the eastern part of the Indonesian archipelago, the Southern Expeditionary Army deployed, after October 1942, 48th Division for the defence of Timor, Sumba, and Lombok, and ordered a contingent of 5th Division to occupy islands in the Banda Sea. To control these two divisions, and to consolidate the area's defences, the Nineteenth Army was formed in January 1943. Supporting it was the Third Air Army's newly organized 7th Air Division, though this was transferred to New Guinea shortly afterwards. Additionally, 54th Division, organized in Himeji, Japan, was transferred to the Sixteenth Army to defend the Lesser Sunda Islands. In November 1943 the defensive perimeter north of Australia was strengthened further by transferring Second Area Army, commanded by General Anami, and Second Army (36th and 46th Divisions) from Manchukuo and putting the Nineteenth Army under Anami's command.

Following signs of an Allied counter-offensive in Burma the Army High Command, in March 1943, hastily organized the Burma Area Army under the command of Lt-General Kawabe Masakazu, which had a strengthened Fifteenth Army under Lt-General Mutaguchi as its core. It also commanded the newly created 31st Division at Bangkok, 25th Independent Brigade in Malaya, 124th Regiment from Guadalcanal, and howitzer and engineer regiments from central and southern China, and 15th Division from Nanjing, though this was not up to full strength until after October 1943. By the time of Mutaguchi's Imphal offensive in April 1944, the Twenty-Eighth and Thirty-Third Armies had also been created from these forces.

In response to the reinforcement of Allied naval forces in the Indian Ocean, and an expected further increase in their power, the Southern Expeditionary Army created 24th Independent Mixed Brigade in Tenasserim and 29th Independent Mixed Brigade in Thailand and dispatched a contingent of the Twenty-Fifth Army's Imperial Guards Division in Sumatra to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Furthermore, at Terauchi's request, the Army High Command authorized the deployment of 4th Division to Sumatra, the reorganization of two garrisons into the 27th and 28th Independent Mixed Brigades, and the deployment of 53rd Division to Malaya in November as a reserve force under the Southern Expeditionary Army Command. To complete the defensive perimeter in the Indian Ocean, the Twenty-Ninth Army was formed at Taiping (northern Malaya) in January 1944, and the 35th and 37th Independent Mixed Brigades were placed under its command.

Before US naval forces launched their counter-offensive across the Central Pacific in November 1943, the Army High Command deployed the home-based 52nd Division to islands scattered in the central Pacific. Detachments were thinly spread out on Tarawa and Makin in the Gilbert Islands, Kwajalein and Eniwetok in the Marshall Islands, and on many other islands, but they were insufficient to halt the American drive and were all eventually overrun or bypassed. In a further attempt to halt the American advance and establish an invincible defensive perimeter in the Central Pacific the Army High Command created, on 18 February 1944, the Thirty-First Army, which came under the command of Vice-Admiral Nagumo's Central Pacific Fleet based at Saipan. It comprised 52nd Division at Truk; 14th Division in the Palaus; 43rd Division, which was mobilized in Nagoya and transferred to Saipan in the Mariana Islands; 29th Division, which was transferred from Manchukuo to Guam; and 109th Division, which was formed in Kōfu and dispatched to Iwo Jima.

To counter any further northern offensive by US forces, after these had recaptured Attu in the Aleutian Islands campaigns in August 1943, the Army High Command upgraded the North District Army at Sapporo to become the Fifth Area Army and formed Twenty-Seventh Army. This covered Hokkaido, the Kurile Islands, and Sakhalin with 42nd Division, mobilized at Sendai in February 1944, and 7th Division based at Obihiro, Hokkaido. Reinforcing the Fifth Area Army further were 91st Division, 69th Independent Mixed Brigade, and 3rd, 4th, and 43rd Brigades in the Kurile Islands, 77th Division at Kajiki in Western Hokkaido, the Sakhalin Mixed Brigade, 1st Air Division at Sapporo, and rear echelons of 7th Division.

In March 1944 all the armies deployed in South-East Asia were integrated under the Southern Expeditionary Army. Its HQ was moved to Manila in May 1944, commanding an area which stretched from the western part of New Guinea to Burma. Under its command were: the Second Area Army at Amboina, which included the Second Army (Western New Guinea) and Nineteenth Army (Banda Sea); Seventh Area Army based in Singapore, which comprised the Sixteenth Army (Java), Twenty-Fifth Army (Sumatra), Twenty-Ninth Army (Malaya), and the Borneo Garrison Army (upgraded to Thirty-Seventh Army in September 1944); the Burma Area Army, which commanded Fifteenth Army in north Burma, Twenty-Eighth Army in west Burma, and Thirty-Third Army in east Burma; the Fourteenth Army in the Philippines (upgraded in September 1944 to Fourteenth Area Army under General Yamashita); the French Indo-China Garrison Army (upgraded to Thirty-Eighth Army in December 1944); the Thai Garrison Army (upgraded to Thirty-Ninth Army in December 1944); Third Air Army (Malaya); and Fourth Air Army (the Philippines).

Expecting that the next decisive battle would be on the Philippines, and that air power would play a crucial role, the Army High Command strengthened the Southern Expeditionary Army's air force with 2nd and 4th Air Divisions, which were transferred from Manchukuo. The Fourteenth Army, which until early 1944 had consisted of only 16th Division and 30th and 33rd Independent Mixed Brigades, was also reinforced from May 1944 with six more divisions and three Independent Mixed Brigades, but with the exception of two divisions these forces were hastily mobilized, poorly equipped, and badly trained.

With the situation worsening in the central Pacific, the Army High Command restructured the General Defence Command to bolster the defence of mainland Japan and the nearby Ryūkyū islands. In the spring of 1944 the Eastern, Western, and Central District Armies, Formosan Army, Korean Army, and various air formations, including the First Air Army, were put under the General Defence Command and Thirty-Second Army was created to defend the Ryūkyūs with its 9th, 24th, and 62nd Divisions stationed on Okinawa.

By July 1944, US Central Pacific forces had driven a wedge into the empire's inner perimeter of defence, seizing Saipan and Guam, thereby forcing Tōjō's resignation from all of the offices he held, including chief of staff. In Burma, too, Japanese forces had taken a beating with the ill-fated Imphal offensive turning into a rout.

The second Philippines campaign began in October 1944. The Thirty-Fifth Army (1st, 16th, 26th, 30th, 100th, and 102nd Divisions, and 18th, 54th, and 55th Independent Mixed Brigades), supported by the Fourth Air Army, fought until it was annihilated, with Fourth Air Army pilots resorting to kamikaze attacks. By February 1945 organized resistance by the Fourteenth Area Army had virtually ceased.

After the fall of the Philippines, US forces took Iwo Jima and Okinawa after very bloody struggles and prepared for landing operations in Japan's mainland. These were scheduled for Kyūshū in November 1945 and to the east of Tokyo in January 1946. Waiting for the invasion were 1,900,000 troops organized into 53 divisions (of which 40 were newly mobilized between January and July 1945), 23 independent mixed brigades, 3 security brigades, and 2 tank divisions.

By August 1945 the IJA had raised 170 infantry, 13 air, 4 tank, and 4 anti-aircraft divisions. These totalled 2,343,483 men of whom 1,439,101 either perished or were counted as missing in action, and 85,620 were permanently handicapped through injuries.

Akashi Yogi

(c) Navy

The Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) emerged from the First World War as the world's third largest sea power. This was duly acknowledged in the Washington naval arms limitation conference of 1922 at which the Americans, with some British support, restricted Japanese capital ship tonnage to 60% of their own. Subsequently, Japan constructed aircraft carriers and more powerful cruisers than its western counterparts, and infringed the capital ship tonnage limit, so that by 1939 the IJN was a very formidable force.

The IJN, which was much influenced by the Royal Navy, had a higher status than the army; its officer corps, trained at the Naval Academy (Etajima) and the Naval War College (Meguro), was socially and intellectually part of Japan's élite. But a purge during the early 1930s removed some of the IJN's best officers. Consequently, Admirals Oikawa Koshirō and Nagano Osami, who held the posts of navy minister and chief of the naval general staff in 1941, were second-rank admirals and were noted for their tendency to accept the view of army leaders and their own, more hawkish, juniors. Additionally, the IJN's rivalry with the army caused major strains, in budgetary and strategic terms, and this further weakened the Naval High Command. However, during the 1930s the IJN supported army operations on the Chinese mainland, and in doing so it acquired valuable experience in the use of naval air power. This support role continued during the Pacific war, which taxed its capabilities for an independent strategic role, particularly from 1943 onwards.

Japanese naval strategy was predicated on the assumption that the USA, because of its industrial might and greater resources, would be able to maintain a larger fleet. However, by utilizing the IJN's advances in air power, and developments in submarine and torpedo technology, and by using the Pacific mandates, the Caroline, Mariana, and Marshall Islands as bases, IJN planners developed a strategy of attrition which would erode this superiority. Basically, they envisaged luring the US Pacific Fleet to a ‘decisive’ battle. While attempting to reach across the Pacific at Japan, the US fleet would be whittled down until the two main battle fleets reached something approaching parity. Then, with the IJN able to operate from its own bases, but with US lines of communication and supply overextended, a ‘decisive’ battle would be fought and won.

In 1934 Japan abrogated the naval treaty agreements and began a construction programme which included, besides a number of aircraft carriers, the keels of two Yamato class battleships, the most powerful warships ever built. A rapid expansion of the IJN's air force was also planned, so that by December 1941 the navy had available, besides a powerful surface fleet and submarine force (see Table 5), a front line strength of about 1,750 fighters, torpedo-bombers, and bombers, and some 530 flying boats and float planes for reconnaissance missions. Oil, the lack of which eventually crippled the IJN, had been stockpiled to provide a two-year reserve.

Japan, 5(c), Table 5: IJN strength in ships on 7 December 1941

	Existing strength	Under Construction
Classification	Number of Vessels	Tonnage	No. of Vessels	Tonnage
a Twenty-one of these boats were obsolete and of little value.
Source: Hattori Takushiró, The Complete History of the Greater East Asia War (Washington DC, 1953).
Battleships	10	301,400	2	128,000
Aircraft carriers	10	152,970	4	77,860
Heavy cruisers	18	158,800	–	–
Light cruisers	20	98,855	4	42,700
Destroyers	112	165,868	12	27,120
Submarines	65a	97,900	29	42,554
Others	156	490,384	37	57,225
total	391	1,466,177	88	375,459

The steady accretion of such powerful forces, the emphasis on fighting spirit which had been fostered to counter treaty-imposed deficiencies, and a purge in 1934 which resulted in major commands at sea being given to over-aggressive officers created an overweening superiority complex in the IJN. This feeling of invincibility—the ‘victory disease’, as some called it after the victories of Pearl Harbor and the fall of Singapore—led to the IJN making such major errors as extending Japan's defensive Pacific perimeter beyond the range of land-based air cover, failing to ensure an adequate training programme for replacement pilots, sacrificing defensive armour in its ships and aircraft in favour of speed and offensive power, neglecting the protection of convoys, and ignoring such vital technological advances as radar and ASDIC.

Despite these obvious drawbacks—to which should be added its external conflicts with the army and internal ones that hinged on the relative superiority of the battleship and air power—the IJN was, by 1941, a highly disciplined, well-trained and powerfully armed force. Only 20% of the lower deck were conscripts; its ‘Long Lance’ oxygen-fuelled torpedoes were the most advanced in the world; its gunnery out-ranged any opponent; its navigators were skilled; and its air power was highly developed. In night fighting, its superior night binoculars, pyrotechnics, and highly trained lookouts, gave it a definite edge over its opponents, as the Allies (who, in their assessment of the IJN, had been just as arrogant as the IJN was in its outlook) found to their cost off Savo Island and in other night actions during the Guadalcanal campaign.

Describing the IJN's various fleets, task forces, strike forces, and special units has defeated western and Japanese naval historians. But broadly speaking virtually all the IJN's warships except the China Fleet were organized administratively into fleets which were all part of the Combined Fleet commanded by the highest ranking naval officer afloat (Admiral Yamamoto, then Admiral Koga, and finally Admiral Toyoda). In December 1941 these were the First (Battle), Second (Scouting Force), Third (Blockade and Amphibious Force), Fourth (Mandates Fleet), Fifth (Northern Fleet), and Sixth (Submarine) Fleets, and two air fleets, the First (carrier aircraft) and Eleventh (land-based aircraft). Home Naval Stations at Kure, Sasebo, Maizuru, and Yokosuka had the responsibility of patrolling home waters and, almost incidentally, of escorting convoys. Their counterparts outside the home islands (Manchukuo, Korea, Formosa, Hainan Island) were Naval Guard Stations.

From the administrative fleets various task forces were formed. In December 1941 these comprised the Main Body under Admiral Yamamoto; the Striking Force under Vice-Admiral Nagumo; the Southern Force under Vice-Admiral Kondō; a South Seas Force under Vice-Admiral Inoue Shigeoyoshi; a Northern Force under Vice-Admiral Hosogaya Boshiro of one cruiser squadron; and a Submarine Fleet under Vice-Admiral Shimizu Mitsumi of 26 submarines. It was the Striking Force which undertook the Pearl Harbor raid and the Southern Force which covered the landings which began the Malayan campaign. The First Air Fleet provided the aircraft for Nagumo's fleet carriers which carried from 63 to 72 aircraft each; Eleventh Air Fleet, of three air flotillas, was based mostly on Formosa and in French Indo-China. This supported Southern Force and came under Kondō's command.

Once the colonies of the western powers had been occupied, the Seventh (Korean Straits), Eighth (Rabaul), and Ninth (New Guinea) Fleets were formed as well as another six air fleets (Second, Third, Fifth, Tenth, Twelfth, and Thirteenth), and naval troops (Naval Base Corps, Special Naval Base Corps, and Naval Garrison Units) were used to garrison ports and defend island harbours and anchorages. There were also area fleets (North-East, South-West, South-East, China, Central Pacific Area, and so on) which were combined administrative commands. For example, Vice-Admiral Kusaka Jinichi, commander of the Eleventh Air Fleet at Rabaul, was also commander of the South-East Area Fleet which made him responsible for the Eighth Fleet and all naval forces in the Bismarcks, Solomons, and New Guinea.

By August 1943 the principal fleets and the names of the tactical forces formed from them were as follows:

Fleet	Tactical Title
First	Battleship Force
Second	Diversion Attack Force
Third	Striking Force
Fourth	Inner South Seas Force
Fifth	Northerh Force
Sixth	Advance Expeditionary Force
Eighth	Outer South Seas Force

In November 1943, in response to increasing US submarine attacks, a General Escort Command was formed, but the numbers of vessels allotted to it were inadequate and losses continued to mount. In March 1944 the IJN underwent a radical reorganization and the Combined Fleet was redesignated the First Mobile Fleet (Dai Ichi Kidō Kantani) which became First Mobile Force for tactical operations such as A-GŌ. First Mobile Fleet included practically all surface warships, its Second Fleet consisted largely of battleships, and its Third Fleet of carriers.

The Sixth Fleet, based in the Marshall Islands, was assigned a vital role in the IJN's strategy: its submarines, working with the surface fleet, were to help whittle down the US Pacific Fleet as it moved westwards. Between 1925 and 1940 three types of submarine were developed, but emphasis was placed on the largest, the long-range Kaidai type. This type had various I-class boats which were heavily armed, and 36 of them carried one or more seaplanes. It was these which carried out the few attacks that were made against the North American mainland. In February 1942, I17 penetrated the Santa Barbara Straits, north of Los Angeles, and fired ten rounds at the shore. In June 1942, I26 fired seventeen rounds at a naval wireless station on Vancouver Island, Canada. Other attacks included two on Australia (Port Gregory and Newcastle) and one on the Cocos Islands. At the other extreme midget submarines, which could be carried by I-class submarines, were constructed from 1938, but these failed at Pearl Harbor and had little success when they attacked Sydney harbour in 1942. After Pearl Harbor the submarine force fell from favour, and the fact that it continued to be used in its original role, instead of attacking Allied merchant shipping, made it largely ineffective.

The IJN's role in amphibious warfare was mainly one of supporting the army. However, it did have its own offensive, as well as defensive, naval troops which were employed in amphibious operations such as Wake Island, for example. They were named after the naval station where they were trained (e.g. Kure) and were called Special Naval Landing Forces. From one of these were raised two battalions of paratroops (Yokosuka 1st and 3rd Special Naval Paratroops), some of whom helped capture Timor.

The IJN's air force took the brunt of the air fighting during the Pacific war. Thanks to its strongest proponent, Admiral Yamamoto, it was well equipped and trained. With the Zero (codenamed ZEKE by the Allies) it had a fighter that outclassed anything the Allies were flying in 1941 and it also had the excellent Mitsubishi (NELL, BETTY, and KATE) and Yokosuka (JEAN) bombers, and one of the war's best flying boats in the Kawanishi (MAVIS). Initially, its pilots were superbly trained: those who took part in the Pearl Harbor attack had a minimum of 300 hours' training and an average of 800 (British Fleet Air Arm pilots at that time had, at most, 150 hours). Apart from the First and Eleventh Air Fleets, six other Air Fleets were formed (Second, Third, Fifth, Tenth, Twelfth, Thirteenth) during the war. Often commanded by the Cs-in-C of area fleets, they were divided into two or more Air Flotillas (commanded operationally by the Air Fleet C-in-C) which had two or more Air Groups of 50–150 aircraft each.

Pearl Harbor and the sinking of the Prince of Wales and Repulse were a major boost to supporters of air power within the IJN, and Admiral Nagumo's victory over the British Eastern Fleet off Ceylon (see Indian Ocean) in April 1942 was a further argument in their favour. But though the Coral Sea battle the following month was a tactical victory for the IJN, it was a strategic one for the Allies; and, having goaded the US fleet to a decisive encounter at Midway, the IJN was stripped of all its initial advantages by losing its four key carriers and, more importantly, a massive number of seasoned and irreplaceable pilots.

The series of naval actions in the Solomons during 1942 and 1943 slowly eroded IJN strength and it became locked into a war of attrition for which it was neither materially nor mentally equipped; and the lack of an adequate training programme for replacement pilots resulted in the débâcle—dubbed the ‘Great Marianas Turkey Shoot’ by the Americans—in which 243 Japanese carrier aircraft, piloted by raw recruits, were lost in the Philippine Sea battle of June 1944. As a consequence of this battle, the IJN was so bereft of its air component that by the time of the Leyte Gulf battle in October 1944 it could only use its remaining carrier strength as a lure; and by the last months of the war it could resort only to kamikaze attacks, to the use of such suicide weapons as the human torpedo, explosive motor boat, and Baka bomb, and to the deployment of Yamato that led to the battle of the East China Sea. This pointless sacrifice of its last super-battleship was final proof that, by early 1945, the once proud Imperial Navy was finished as a fighting force and its few remaining units, immobilized by lack of fuel, were sunk at Kure in July.

Out of the total of 451 surface warships and submarines in commission during the war, 332 had been sunk by the time Japan surrendered and only 37, or 8.2%, remained operational.

Ian Gow

6. Intelligence

Historically, the Japanese were well versed in intelligence matters. Military intelligence had played an important part in Japan's victory over China in 1895; army spies had reported on Russian preparations and naval operators had intercepted Russian fleet signals during the Russo-Japanese war of 1904–5; and during its Siberian intervention in the early 1920s the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) had formed ‘Special Service Organizations’ (tokumu kikan) to gather intelligence on the Soviet guerrillas it was fighting, and to foster sabotage and subversion (bōryaku).

The Japanese foreign ministry had its own separate political intelligence agency, which appears to have relied on journalists, businessmen, and the like, but military and naval attachés in diplomatic posts were also proficient at intelligence-gathering. They had budgets to employ spies, who were sometimes appointed to consular posts, and purchase information, and they could also engage in sabotage and subversive activities. So assiduous were they at this type of work that although their ciphers were eventually broken—army attaché ciphers began to be resolved by the Americans in the spring of 1943, and, after a lapse of six years naval attaché ciphers were re-entered in 1944, mainly by the British—it has been suggested that they became the best spies the Allies had inside occupied Europe.

Before the start of the Pacific war Japanese signals intelligence (sigint) also made significant contributions to Japanese knowledge of its potential, and actual, opponents. For example, some simpler UK and US diplomatic systems were broken from the early 1930s, and US state department radio traffic and the British Interdepartmental code and Administrative code (used by the Admiralty as well as by the Foreign Office) were penetrated. Additionally, the IJA broke the Diplomatic code used by the Chinese mission in Tokyo; traffic analysis and direction-finding units of the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) could, and did, track individual warships of the US Pacific Fleet across the Pacific; and close monitoring of local Hawaii radio stations helped reveal the names of US warships in port prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor.

The Japanese also had long-standing organizations for internal security and counter-intelligence, this being one of the responsibilities of the Kempei (law police), a branch of the army founded in 1881, and of the Tokkō (known as thought police) which had been formed in 1911.

However, contrary to what many thought at the time, Japanese intelligence during the Pacific war proved to be, in nearly every respect, inadequate. The reason was partly one of attitude—once hostilities had begun, intelligence work failed to appeal to the Samurai spirit—and partly one of lack of co-ordination, co-operation, and organization. There was no formal combined intelligence structure, either for overt (jōhō) or covert (chōhō) activities, and the profound difference in the strategic outlook of the two services exacerbated their traditional rivalries in intelligence as in other matters. These antagonisms were so intense that within Imperial General Headquarters (IGH) the intelligence bureau of each service remained totally separate, with an exchange of intelligence but no central analysis of their joint product, and both services remained opposed to the principle of civil control over either of them. Excessive zeal, especially in the army, led secret organizations to trespass outside strictly intelligence functions, both in covert operations and in political decision-making. Moreover, each service devoted a substantial part of its resources to trying to discern the real intentions of the other. Meticulous inter-service agreements had to be worked out before each campaign; the strains on national strategic capabilities were enormous.

These handicaps, combined with the Japanese predilection for the decisive battle and offensive thinking, led to intelligence units, both at IGH and in the field, boften being largely ignored and frequently undermanned. ‘The American section of the General Staff's Intelligence Bureau was not set up until 1942 and even then it had only three permanent officers’ (see Harries [below], p.320) and intelligence units in the field were hurriedly formed and inadequately staffed. For instance, the commander of the Army Air Force's 4th Air Intelligence Detachment, formed in November 1942 and sent to New Guinea, was the only person trained in intelligence.

The intelligence departments of both services ran Special Service Organizations. From the period just before Pearl Harbor the sigint and undercover desks of the Naval Staff were brought together under the head of the Naval Intelligence Department so that attaché, agent, and decrypt sources could be combined more effectively, and this became known as the Chūō Kikan (Special Service Headquarters). The IJN also had special service organizations, called kaigun tokumu bu. These operated in occupied territories administered by the IJN and were present in most major ports in China and South-East Asia—even among local fishing fleets—but the IJA's were more numerous, larger, and more powerful. Several schools were set up to train officers in secret warfare, of which the Nakano school, formed in 1938, became the best known. Later, civilian specialists (bunkan), who wore uniform but with different badges of rank, were also employed.

Before a country was occupied the function of a Special Service Organization included espionage, propaganda, and fifth columnist activities; afterwards it helped in internal security, counter-espionage, and pacification. Economic exploitation was also an important task (not often appreciated in the literature), especially after 1940, when increasingly scarce sources of raw materials were sought out, and heroin and other drugs were bartered for strategic mineral supplies. Except in Sumatra, where Kikan personnel worked directly with the intelligence unit of the highest IJA formation on the island, the Kikan became part of the military administration and liaised closely with the administration's councillors' department (komon-bu) or the chief administrator (shishei chokan).

Special Service Organizations covered every aspect of clandestine warfare and many spawned large sub-networks of their own. Dozens were formed during the course of the war. One, the Nami Kikan, was set up in May 1944 to detect landings by enemy agents on the coastline of occupied territories and, with the help of fishermen, to report on the movements of Allied shipping, but in May 1945 it became a sabotage organization. Another, the Ibaragi Kikan, was formed in March 1945 to counter the activities of the communist resistance in Malaya. A third, the Matsu Kikan, based in Timor and led by a graduate of the Nakano school, Captain Yamamoto Masayoshi, landed a reconnaissance patrol in northern Australia in January 1944 which stayed ashore for four days.

The best known were the Minami Kikan, which organized the Burma Independence Army, and the F Kikan (F stood for its leader, Major Fujiwara Iwaichi, and for freedom and friendship) which recruited the Indian National Army. It was Fujiwara who, before the war, fostered the Indian Independence League and who dispatched various teams ahead of, or with, the Japanese forces invading South-East Asia. They had various objectives, such as to subvert Indian troops during the fighting and to sow propaganda amongst the local populations. In this they had some success. F Kikan was replaced by Colonel Iwakura Hideo's Hikari Kikan (Lightning Organization), which assumed the task of liaison with the Indian National Army, and when Iwakura later became chief of staff at Twenty-Eighth Army in Burma he created a number of intelligence and reconnaissance units, some of which penetrated British lines. The Hikari Kikan changed names several times as it increased in size and one of its tasks included infiltrating agents into India for espionage, sabotage, propaganda, and subversion. Perhaps there were as many as 600 of these so called JIFs (Japanese inspired fifth columnists), but they achieved very little.

However, supporters of intelligence such as Fujiwara and Iwakura were few and far between, and the use of intelligence in the field was more the exception than the rule. For example, Lt-General Mutaguchi, who commanded Fifteenth Army in northern Burma—in which Fujiwara served as both intelligence and operational staff officer—preferred to rely on seisho (spirit) for victory.

In the field of sigint the Japanese had three distinct organizations: the IJA's Central Special Intelligence Department (Chūo Tokushu Jōhō Bu), the IJN's Special Service Section (Tokumu Han), and the foreign office's Cryptographic Research Section (Angō Kenkyū Han). The IJN, like the Germans (see B-Dienst), read British instructions to their convoys until 1942, and thereafter managed to keep close track of these, and most surface warship movements, by traffic analysis and air reconnaissance. The known facts about what army sigint teams accomplished are sparse because little, if any, documentation survives. But it has been claimed that 95% of China's codes were deciphered by Japanese cryptographers; that radio messages of US Army Air Forces units in China and Burma, some encoded by machine cipher, were successfully broken, as were those of the British intelligence-gathering unit V-Force; and that the radios of captured Allied agents were used to dupe those who had dispatched them (see special operations Australia, for example). However, none of this activity appears to have led to any decisive victory in the field, though in the case of the Chinese codes it definitely aided Japanese formations to counter the moves of the Chinese Army during the latter part of the Burma campaign. Certainly, Japanese signals intelligence failed to achieve anywhere near the same level of success as that achieved by the Allies with their MAGIC and ULTRA intelligence, as is shown by the title of Professor Iwashima Hisao's book on the subject, Japan's Total Defeat in the Intelligence War (Jōhōsen ni kanpai shita Nihon), which was published in 1984.

As it was deemed a disgrace to be made prisoner, there was no Japanese equivalent of MI9, which trained Allied personnel in counter-interrogation techniques. Japanese prisoners were rarely of a high enough rank to know anything of long-term value, but those who did talked freely.

Finally, the Japanese were not alone in sometimes allowing crucial intelligence to fall into the hands of a potential, or actual, opponent (see automedon, for an example, which proved of immense value to the Japanese), but their lapses often proved invaluable to the Allies. For instance, after the Bismarck Sea battle in March 1943, the current Japanese Army List, which detailed the names and assignments of all IJA officers, was found aboard a lifeboat; following the Saipan landings in 1944, US forces captured seven tons of documents of which 60% had some intelligence value; and the careless burial in New Guinea of the codebooks of the IJA's main code resulted in ULTRA intelligence which gave MacArthur a critical edge in the New Guinea campaign.

John Chapman

7. Merchant marine

Japan made a late start in joining the industrialized economies of the world but by the First World War her shipping industries had already made up much of the lost ground. Thus by 1910 the Japanese merchant fleet consisted of 1,146,977 million tons and was third in size after the UK's (over 13 million tons) and Germany's (3 million tons). This success was only partly emulated by the Japanese shipbuilding industry owing to the lack of efficient steel producers and a viable engineering sector but, even so, in 1914 it was able to complete 86,000 tons. This was sufficient to place it in sixth international position but it was a long way behind the UK's output of 1,680,000 tons.

Further progress was made during the period 1914–18, but both the operating and building sides of the industry fell back sharply in the early post-war years. As a result production was down to only 48,185 tons in 1925. This caused great consternation in Tokyo and led to demands for additional state aid. The replacement of the ‘liberal’ administrations of the 1920s by the more militaristic governments of the early 1930s then saw a series of measures designed to make production more attractive. These included ‘Scrap and Build’ schemes, a ‘Superior Ship Building Promotion’ scheme, and the guarantee of profitable freight rates. The effect of these incentives can be seen in the steady increases in output which followed: 147,118 tons in 1934, 217,461 tons in 1936, and 423,039 tons in 1938.

With a few notable exceptions many of these vessels were less advanced and more expensive than those produced in the west, so it was not possible for any to be exported. Thus although Japan was able to compete on the profitable New York routes with its sophisticated motor vessels, it also held its own at the bottom of the market against Greek owners by utilizing sub-standard tonnage with poorly paid crews. These tactics enabled the fleet to grow in spite of the world depression but its average age gradually increased and much was characterized by only moderate quality and efficiency.

The opening of hostilities in China following the Manchuria Incident in 1931 led to both sides of the shipping industry being subject to increasingly tight government control. These moves towards a quasi-war footing led the shipping companies to develop a self-regulating system (kaiun jiji renmei), but as the demands of the state intensified the degree of autonomy steadily declined. Then in mid-1941 the government initiated a plan called the Senji Kaiun Kanri Yoko (Outline of Wartime Shipping Control). The first part of the resulting legislation came into effect in March 1942, so that all steamships over 100 tons and sailing vessels of over 150 tons were requisitioned. This was quickly followed by the establishment of the Senpaku Uneikai (Shipping Committee) which then acted as the sole employer of all of Japan's merchant seamen. The actual ship operations were, wisely, left to the shipowners and this ensured that practical men of experience—mainly from NYK, OSK, Mitsui Bussan, Yamashita Kisen, Kawasaki Kisen, and Tatsuuma Kisen—were responsible for all aspects of organization. During the course of the war the ever increasing shortage of tonnage (see Table 6) led to further attempts to improve efficiency, such as the reduction of the number of shipping companies from 350 in 1941 to 90 by the end of 1943.

Japan, 7, Table 6: Japanese merchant shipping during the Second World War

Period	Tonnage Capture or Salvaged	Tonnage Built	Total Gain	Tonnage Losta	+ or ç	Tonnage Available
The table excludes all ships of less than 500 tons gross weight.
aOf this the tanker tonnage lost was:
8 Dec 41– 31 Dec 42	9,538	(2 ships)
1 Jan 43– 31 Dec 43	169,491	(23 ships)
1 Jan 44– 31 Dec 44	754,889	(131 ships)
1 Jan 45– 15 Aug 45	351,028	(103 ships)
total	1,284,946	(259 ships or 15% of total losses)
bIn addition 1,966,521 tons of naval shipping (687 ships) were sunk, making the total tonnage lost 10,583,755.
cOf this tonnage only some 557,000 was operable.
Source: Woodburn Kirby, S., The War Against Japan (London, 1969), Vol. V, p. 475.
8 Dec 41	–	–	–	–	–	5,996,657
8 Dec 41– 31 Dec 42	672,411	272,963	945,374	1,123,156	ç177,782	5,818,875
				(241 ships)
1 Jan 43– 31 Dec 43	109,028	769,085	878,113	1,820,919	ç942,806	4,876,069
				(434 ships)
1 Jan 44– 31 Dec 44	35,644	1,699,203	1,734,847	3,891,019	ç2,156,172	2,719,897
				(969 ships)
1 Jan 45– 15 Aug 45	5,880	559,563	565,443	1,782,140	ç1,216,697	1,503,200c
				(701 ships)
	822,96	3,300,814	4,123,777	8,617,234	ç4,493,457
				(2,345 ships)b

The shipbuilding sector also moved under the control of the state and after 1937 all construction had to be authorized by the government. These regulations were further extended by the Zosen Jigyo Ho (Shipbuilding Industry Law) in 1939 and thereafter a broader view was taken in an effort to maximize total production. Six designs for ‘standard’ ships were adopted and there can be no doubt that this simplification of the product mix did much to raise output, even though the vessels concerned were of inferior quality in many respects. A further difficulty was that one-third of capacity was already being used for naval construction in 1941 and conflict arose between those who wished to give further priority to this need and those who wanted to increase the building of merchant ships. The establishment of the Zosen Tosei Kai (Shipbuilding Control Association) and the Keikaku Zosen (Programmed Shipbuilding Scheme) helped to rationalize the system, but the conflict with the naval authorities was only resolved when the Imperial Japanese Navy, whose concept of the decisive battle and a short war had led to its neglecting the need to enlarge and protect the country's merchant fleet, was made responsible for all shipbuilding in February 1943.

In December 1941 when Japan became involved in war with the western Allies its merchant marine amounted to about six million tons plus a million tons of coastal and fishing vessels, many of which were constructed of wood. The vast extent of Japan's early conquests made this tonnage totally inadequate for its needs and many expedients, such as the building of the Burma–Thailand railway, were adopted to save shipping space. With the aid of a workforce which rose from 80,161 in 1936 to 287,799 in 1944, construction was steadily increased and 3,300,814 tons were completed from December 1941 to August 1945. During this period the technical aspects of production changed very little and there was no widespread acceptance of developments like block construction and welding which were being pioneered by the Kaiser Corporation in the United States (see liberty ships).

A further 822,963 tons were either captured or salvaged by the Japanese during the war, but the total additions to the fleet were insufficient to offset the severe losses inflicted principally by American submarines and aircraft. Japan's failure to introduce convoys at an early stage was undoubtedly a significant factor in these sinkings which rose from just over 1 million tons in the first year of hostilities to nearly 4 million in 1944 and to a total of 2,345 ships, totalling more than 8.5 million tons over the whole period. As a result when Japan surrendered on 15 August 1945 its merchant marine had been reduced to 1.5 million tons, only 557,000 tons of which was still in seagoing condition.

With the benefit of hindsight it is clear that two of Japan's most important wartime weaknesses were its shortage of oil and the limited size of its merchant navy. These two major constraints on its freedom of action can both be illustrated by reference to the role played by its oil tanker fleet. This consisted of only 42 vessels amounting to 356,000 tons in 1941 and although many more were built during the war they were always in short supply. From the beginning they were made a prime target and the fact that 259 tankers of 1.3 million tons were sunk by Allied action was undoubtedly extremely significant in reducing Japan's capacity to wage an effective war.

Peter Davies

8. Culture

For most Japanese artists and intellectuals war began on 7 July 1937 when Japanese and Chinese forces exchanged fire at the Marco Polo Bridge near Peking. Fighting soon spread across north and central China and Japanese publishers and government organizations mobilized literary celebrities to raise national morale. In August and September prominent writers were dispatched to the front and produced vivid, if highly censored, accounts of Japanese campaigning. Among these literary chroniclers perhaps the most successful was Hino Ashihei whose trilogy Wheat and Soldiers, Earth and Soldiers, and Flowers and Soldiers became best-sellers.

Four years later Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor aroused near-mystical delight among Japanese writers. Intense patriotism and anti-colonialism united authors from right to left, and in May 1942 virtually all professional writers joined the Japan Literature Patriotic Association (Nihon Bungaku Hōkokukai). This government-sponsored organization included eight sections embracing novels, drama, general poetry, tanka (31-syllable verse), haiku (17-syllable verse), the history of Japanese literature, the history of western literature, and literary criticism; it was headed by the veteran writer Tokutomi Sohō. In April 1943 its first conference discussed ‘The Creation of a Literature of the Annihilation of America and England’ and a month later the association produced a new variant of the popular anthology Poems by One Hundred Poets entitled Patriotic Poems by One Hundred Poets.

Writers were also mobilized for pan-Asian propaganda in the Greater East Asian Writers Congress (Daitōa Bungakusha Taikai). The congress included authors from Japan, Korea, Formosa, China, Manchukuo, and Mongolia, and held wartime conferences in Tokyo and Nanking. These Japanese-dominated gatherings repeatedly emphasized such themes as anti-westernism and Asian solidarity, and promoted the Japanese language as the new life-force of East Asian culture.

As in the China Incident, writers were frequently sent abroad to produce reportage and spread knowledge of Japanese civilization. Visits to South-East Asia brought contact with unfamiliar cultures, and writers responded with reflective fiction and propaganda. Ozaki Shirō's Cumulus Clouds described American defeats from a Filipino viewpoint while Ibuse Masuji's City of Flowers recounted the adventures of Japanese propagandists in occupied Singapore; arguably the most effective short work of this genre was Takami Jun's Nowkana, an account of Japanese difficulties with Indian cooks and servants, which unconsciously echoed European colonial writing.

One of the most remarkable literary products of the war years was a vast outpouring of nationalistic poetry, particularly in the traditional tanka form. But such works as Noguchi Yonejirō's ‘Slaughter them, the English and Americans are our enemies’ were too direct and emotive to attract discriminating readers.

Wartime dramatists also sought to utilize traditional forms to present pan-Asian and anti-Western themes to domestic audiences. A medieval-style nō play was produced to commemorate the capture of Rangoon, and traditional farces (kyōgen) were written to excoriate Western imperialism. A typical one was Treasure Island in which greedy English and American devils were attacked by swarms of bees and driven into the sea.

As Japan's fortunes declined official censorship tightened, and one of Japan's most distinguished writers became a victim of it. In January 1943 the élite magazine Chūō Kōron began the serialization of Tanizaki Junichirō's novel The Makioka Sisters, but after two instalments, publication was banned. This major work contained no criticism of official policy, but its subject, pre-war middle-class life, was considered too frivolous for a nation at war.

Throughout eight years of hostilities Japanese writers showed little overt resistance to government policy. Many sincerely believed in Japan's cause, and non-co-operation would have closed all doors to work and publication. Nevertheless, one writer of independent means, Nagai Kafū, abstained from all public pronouncements and confined himself to acid criticisms of the government in his private diary.

Newspapers and magazines were equally powerful cultural influences on public opinion (see also press). In earlier times the Japanese press had a vigorous tradition of exposing public corruption but the China war brought a tightening net of government controls. Although all editors spontaneously supported the war effort, daily censorship was imposed by the press sections of the army and navy, and of the foreign, home, and Greater East Asia ministries. In addition the Cabinet Information Bureau, the quasi-official news agency Dōmei, and the press department of Imperial Headquarters carried out effective programmes of news management. These organizations blacklisted some authors, approved others, and imposed news bulletins and commentaries on national and provincial newspapers.

In the early months of war when Japanese armies won sweeping victories there was little need for deception or distortion in the projection of daily news, but in 1942 the catastrophe of Midway was reported as a victory, and in the following year Japanese forces were said to have carried out a ‘sideways advance’. In contrast the European conflict was described with relative objectivity, and Japanese readers were clearly aware of the declining fortunes of their allies in Rome and Berlin. Similarly, Japan's domestic difficulties were often analysed with surprising frankness. No journalist ever criticized the government's ultimate objectives but inefficiency and mismanagement were frequently attacked; food distribution, local administration, air raid defence, and industrial management were all targets of editorial criticism. Even more remarkable were admissions of glorious defeats and occasional criticisms of the conduct of war. In May 1943 the annihilation of Japanese forces on Attu in the Aleutian Islands campaigns was openly reported, while in February 1944 the Mainichi Shimbun's naval correspondent attacked the army's preparations for an Allied invasion in an article entitled ‘Bamboo Spears are Not Enough’. The author was soon conscripted into the army but even Prime Minister Tōjō did not dare to close a national newspaper with several million readers.

Although Japan's illustrious ‘general magazines’ had far fewer subscribers than daily newspapers, their influence and intellectual character made them deeply suspect in the eyes of official censors. In September 1942 a contributor to Kaizō was arrested for praising Soviet policies towards minority peoples and, soon after, the editor and his senior staff were compelled to resign. Further arrests and four deaths under torture followed, and in 1944 both Kaizō and Chūō Kōron were closed.

In contrast with the UK, where painting as a means of communicating the horrors of war produced a number of great works of art, Japanese painters played a relatively minor role in their country's wartime culture. In April 1942 many of Japan's most important artists were commissioned to travel to South-East Asia to paint battle scenes and other war subjects, but there is little evidence that these works exerted a major influence on public opinion. Instead, bringing the visual impact of the war to the Japanese public was largely left to the cinema.

By 1937 Japan had a highly developed film industry which was dominated by two powerful companies, Tōhō and Shōchiku, and a number of important documentary producers.

Like publishers, film companies saw the war in China as a subject of profound public interest and newsreel cameramen were posted to the front to cover the fighting. Soon Tōhō, Shōchiku, and their satellites began producing feature films set against the background of the China campaign. Many roughly-made productions were unsuccessful but such films as Tasaka Tomotaka's Five Scouts recreated the ordeal of combat with sombre accuracy. The most highly acclaimed film of this genre was Tasaka's rendering of the novel Earth and Soldiers which described a unit's physical and emotional endurance in the Hangchow campaign. Another common cinematic theme was Japan's mission in China and the building of Sino-Japanese co-operation. Watanabe Kunio's Vow of the Desert showed co-operation in highway building and a Sino-Japanese romance, while Fushimizu Osamu's China Nights featured a tender relationship between a Japanese naval officer and a Shanghai orphan. Efforts were also made to reinforce Japanese links with Nazi Germany by encouraging a major co-production. Arnold Fanck's The New Land attempted to explain the cultural mainsprings of Japanese conduct; but despite fine photography it failed to attract Japanese audiences.

By 1939 Japan was increasingly attracted to Nazi methods of film propaganda and a Film Law was passed modelled upon German legislation (see Germany, 10). This established pre-production censorship, government control of film distribution, restrictions on the import of foreign films, and the compulsory showing of newsreels. In 1940 government controls were further extended with the forced amalgamation of all private newsreel companies into the Nippon News Film Company (Nippon Nyūsu Eigasha).

Japan's attack on British, Dutch, and American territories at the start of the Pacific war brought new cinematic opportunities. Cameramen recorded not only impressive victories but also the exotic scenery of Malaya, Burma, and the Philippines which added to the novelty of documentary productions. In the early months of war newsreels were far more popular than ever before and the Japanese armed forces shot lengthy documentaries chronicling recent conquests; the army's Malaya War Record, Burma War Record, and Victory Song of the Orient were widely shown in schools and community centres, as well as in conventional cinemas.

As victories became fewer the government attempted to maintain public morale by reconstructing earlier successes in major feature films. In 1942 the navy encouraged the production of the first such work, The War at Sea from Hawaii to Malaya, and later examples depicted the capture of Hong Kong and Singapore. Like most countries at war Japan also deployed history or quasi-history in the cause of propaganda. Stories of samurai self-sacrifice such as Chūshingura, and depictions of Western imperialism, notably The Opium War, attracted large audiences in both Japan and South-East Asia. As Japan's situation became critical film-makers were pressed to create civil defence documentaries, and feature films relevant to increased production. In 1944 and 1945 air raid precautions were the subject of several instructional films while the young Kurosawa's The Most Beautiful depicted women workers in an optical lens factory. By the final months of war film stock had become extremely scarce and new productions were shorter and fewer than in earlier years. In addition American bombing destroyed hundreds of cinemas.

Although film may have been the most sophisticated wartime medium, radio was perhaps the most flexible. The Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK) had been founded in 1926 and by 1937 over a quarter of Japanese were licence holders. In peace and war the Japanese government saw radio as an important vehicle of education and propaganda; entertainment occupied only a minor place in broadcasting schedules.

During the China Incident news bulletins were extended and ministers and civil servants regularly explained government objectives over the radio. More original were special programmes which linked troops at the front with their home towns and prefectures. In these years radio ownership spread rapidly, and the armed forces became an increasingly powerful voice in determining broadcasting policies.

By the time of Pearl Harbor wartime schedules had been carefully prepared and news was supplemented by ministerial speeches, and readings from patriotic and anti-western works such as Ōkawa Shūmei's A History of American and British Aggression in Asia. Particularly impressive were attempts to deepen national resolve by transmitting cultural programmes of high quality. This trend began in 1939 with the broadcasting of Yoshikawa Eiji's historical novel Miyamoto Musashi, continuing with talks on such subjects as Zen Buddhism and traditional flower arrangement. By 1944, when it was clear that monotonous exhortation was achieving little, a new radio strategy was adopted which attempted to raise morale by increasing and improving entertainment programmes.

‘Sensuous’ western melodies had already been banned, but European classical music now occupied a significant place in NHK schedules. Such operas as The Marriage of Figaro and Tannhäuser were broadcast and attracted large audiences. An even more impressive example of quality entertainment was a star-studded radio production of the famous kabuki (music and dance) play Kanjinchō on New Year's Day 1945. This provided a significant fillip to national morale when economic and social conditions were declining rapidly; but in the final months of war the production of radio sets fell, and their repair was rendered increasing difficult by shortages of valves and components.

Although music could not convey complex and detailed propaganda messages it was viewed as an important element in Japanese ideological policy. As early as 1937 the authorities aimed to create a Japanese equivalent of the Nazi ‘Horst Wessel’ song (see marching songs) and organized a national competition for suitable words for Setoguchi Tokichi's ‘Patriotic March’. This composition was jaunty rather than military and became popular throughout Japan and South-East Asia. Further marches followed and songs from successful films such as Earth and Soldiers and China Nights achieved widespread popularity. Throughout the war special songs were composed to commemorate victories and inspire national support for vital campaigns. Yet despite official attempts to emphasize national and patriotic elements in Japanese musical life European classical music remained widely popular and orchestral concerts continued until June 1945.

Despite its superficial orientalism Japanese cultural propaganda employed themes which were also used in Allied films, books, and broadcasts. Historic victories, national solidarity and diligence were emphasized by both democrats and proponents of authoritarian ideals. Ironically, Japan's centralized mass media were used by American occupiers to spread democracy in the post-war years.

Gordon Daniels

Bibliography

Domestic life, economy, and war effort Cohen, J. B. , Japan's Economy in War and Reconstruction (Minneapolis, 1949, repr. Westport, Conn., 1973).
Havens, T. R. H. , Valley of Darkness. The Japanese People and World War Two (New York, 1978).
Johnston, B. F. , Japanese Food Management in World War II (Stanford, Calif., 1953).

Bibliography

Government/Culture Berger, G. M. , Parties out of Power in Japan, 1931–1941 (Princeton, 1977).
—— ‘Politics and mobilization in Japan, 1931–1945’, in P. Duus (ed.), The Cambridge History of Japan, Vol. 6: The Twentieth Century (Cambridge, 1988).
Maxon, Y. C. , Control of Japanese Foreign Policy: A Study of Civil—Military Rivalry 1930–1945 (Berkeley, 1957; repr. Westport, Conn., 1975).
Shillony, B.- A. , Politics and Culture in Wartime Japan (new edn., Oxford, 1991).

Bibliography

Defence forces and civil defenceUnited States Strategic Bombing Survey Field Report Covering Air Raid Protection and Allied Subjects in Kyoto (Washington, DC, 1947).
—— Final Report Covering Air Raid Protection and Allied Subjects in Japan (Washington, DC, 1947).

Bibliography

Armed forces/Intelligence Allen, L. ‘Japanese Intelligence Systems’, Journal of Contemporary History (October, 1987).
Barker, A. J. , Japanese Handbook, 1939–1945 (London, 1979).
Chapman, J. , ‘Japanese Intelligence 1918–1945’, in C. Andrew and J. Noakes (eds.), Intelligence and International Relations 1900–1945 (Exeter, 1987).
Drea, E. , MacArthur's ULTRA: Codebreaking and the War Against Japan (Lawrence, Kans., 1992).
Francillon, R. J. , Japanese Aircraft of the Pacific War (London, 1970).
Fujiwara Iwaichi , F. Kikan: Japanese Army Intelligence Operations in Southeast Asia during World War II (Hong Kong, 1983).
Harries, M. and and S. , Soldiers of the Sun (London, 1991).
Hashimoto Mochitsura , Sunk. The Story of the Japanese Submarine Fleet, 1942–45 (London, 1954).
Hayashi Saburo, and and Coox, A. D. , Kogun: The Japanese Army in Pacific War (Quantico, Va., 1959).
Marder, A. , Old Friends, New Enemies, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1981–90).
Stripp, A. , Codebreaker in the Far East (London, 1989).

Bibliography

Merchant marine Chida, T., and and Davies, P. N. , The Japanese Shipping and Shipbuilding Industries: A History of their Modern Growth (London, 1990).
Davies, P. N. , ‘Japanese Merchant Shipping and the Bridge over the River Kwai’, in C. G. Reynolds (ed.), Global Crossroads and the American Seas (Missoula, Mont., 1988).