Japan's Imperial Army

by Edward J Drea

  Fears of a Russian invasion had fed Japanese nightmares since the 1850s, but until the 1880s the army was too weak to do much about it. Following Meckel’s guidance, the army refined counter-amphibious doctrine and tested it during a new joint grand exercise conducted in March 1890 near Nagoya. The stylized scenario had a predictable outcome (the invaders lost), but the army displayed its imagination and creativity by moving large units by rail and testing field telegraph communications to improve command and control. The emperor lent importance to the inaugural event by presiding over the maneuvers dressed in an army uniform and observing the culmination of the exercise during a driving rainstorm. Thereafter he attended special army grand maneuvers on ten occasions, always wearing his army uniform, a practice that dated from public appearances in 1880 as supreme commander.21

  The 1890 and 1892 maneuvers field-tested the new mobile division tactics, an operational departure and a significant shift from the traditional doctrine of waterline defense. After a May 1893 mobilization exercise revealed that reserve NCOs and junior officer platoon leaders were less proficient than their regular counterparts, the war ministry redoubled efforts to improve reserve training.22

  The same year, the ministry reorganized the tondenhei (the militia the authorities formed from samurai settlers in Hokkaidō in the 1870s) into an under-strength division because the available Hokkaidō cohort was still too small to fill a full division’s ranks. Finally, the war minister also revamped the wartime table of organization to draw on the approximately 150,000 strong first reserves (120,000 more in the second reserve) to field a wartime division of 18,500 personnel (the Imperial Guard strength was set at 13,000). The expanded wartime division added one infantry company per battalion (twelve total), strengthened the cavalry squadron and field artillery regiment, and added two engineer companies and a transport battalion. Wartime mobilization required additional reserve officers and NCOs, and the army expanded its one-year volunteer system to train and build a larger reserve officer pool.23

  More young men were conscripted for active service, but a rapidly growing population provided a larger available cohort, and the percentage of those conscripted remained fairly constant. Draft resistance or evasion was negligible—less than 1 percent of the cohort per year between 1882 and 1896. Each year about 3,000 youths skipped the annual physical exam or appeared late for testing,24 which suggests the system had become institutionalized and accepted by the larger society (see Table 5.1).

  An unknown artist’s depiction of the March 1890 Nagoya Army-Navy Grand Maneuvers. Besides the Meiji emperor, the scroll on the top left records the presence of every major army leader at the counteramphibious landing exercises. (Author’s collection)

  Training reforms instituted in 1888 devoted more time to unit exercises and field maneuvers. Company commanders were expected to display initiative and seize tactical opportunities without waiting for orders from higher headquarters, but the revised 1891 infantry regulations perpetuated Meckel’s inflexible massed columns and skirmisher formations. Planners projected losses of between 25 and 50 percent during operations. In order to sustain the offensive under such conditions, officers and NCOs were expected to enforce iron discipline during the tactical advance. Army authorities relied on intensive indoctrination in the intangibles of élan and esprit to promote each soldier’s sense of obligation to the nation and his unit as well as his determination to press home attacks whatever the cost.25

  Imperial General Headquarters, Planning, and Wartime Performance

  Although the services had conducted joint maneuvers, interservice cooperation and coordination faltered because the army was determined to retain its primary role in national defense. In 1886 the navy embarked on its first replenishment plan and saw the establishment of a naval general staff with a corresponding resentment among naval leaders about their service’s second-class status. The admirals’ push for a totally independent naval general staff was countered by the generals’ insistence that wartime operations had to be based on peacetime plans prepared by a single authority—the army.26 Advocates couched their arguments against the cabinet’s push for joint general staff in terms of imperial prerogatives, span of control issues, and administrative requirements. The fundamental debate, however, was about the future of the army; its strategic role, its force structure, and its force design.

  Table 5.1 Conscripts and Percentage per Cohort, 1884–1890

  Year

  Size

  Conscripts

  Cohort

  Percentage

  1884

  49,632

  19,637

  320,070

  6.1

  1885

  54,124

  27,389

  388,389

  7.1

  1886

  59,009

  17,963

  421,278

  4.3

  1887

  64,689

  33,808

  777,972

  4.3

  1888

  65,015

  19,685

  427,846

  4.6

  1889

  66,744

  18,477

  360,357

  5.1

  1890

  69,000

  19,119

  350,369

  5.5

  Source: Katō, Chōheisei, 20.

  In January 1893 the cabinet presented the navy’s proposal for an independent staff to the emperor, who harbored reservations that interservice staff rivalry might interfere with wartime performance. The army was willing to accept an independent naval general staff provided that during wartime the army chief of staff was in charge of an imperial general headquarters (IGHQ). Several days later Prince Arisugawa, the chief of the joint staff, recommended that the IGHQ chief of staff should be from the primary service—the army—and serve as the emperor’s chief of staff. This would unify the services’ planning and operational efforts as well as ease imperial concerns that separate staffs might create serious coordination issues.27

  Emperor Meiji approved the establishment of a separate naval general staff on May 19, 1893, creating two parallel and independent chains of command whose chiefs reported directly to the emperor during peacetime. That same day, Meiji sanctioned regulations to organize an imperial general headquarters directly under the emperor to control wartime operations. An army general officer would fill the post of chief of the IGHQ staff to ensure that service’s primary role in national defense. During wartime he had the authority to issue operational orders sanctioned by the emperor, and the army vice chief of staff and the naval chief of staff served under him.28

  Operational Planning

  Military strategy, such as it was, relied on mobile divisions to defend the homeland, a fixed defense anchored by coastal fortifications, and an offensive strategy against China in case of emergency. Col. Ogawa Mataji, the chief, second bureau, of the general staff, guided the first serious planning for offensive operations against China. His 1887 draft employed an eight-division (six regular and two reserve) expeditionary force to seize Peking. Six divisions would land near Shanhaiguan at the head of the Bohai Gulf and then advance on the capital. The remaining two divisions would land further south (along Changkiang coast) to prevent Chinese armies from relieving Peking. Ogawa’s plan was mostly wishful thinking because the Japanese navy could neither maintain a line of communication to the continent nor transport such large numbers of troops overseas. His operational concept did serve as a strategic statement to justify the army’s budget for its five-year expansion program and became a point of departure for subsequent general staff planning that influenced Vice Chief of Staff Kawakami’s thinking.29

  Officially the army continued to advocate a strategic defensive. In February 1892, for example, Kawakami submitted an operational plan to the emperor that apparently outlined a counter-amphibious campaign against an invasion. Unofficially the army had a clear awareness that it might be fighting a war on the As
ian continent.30 Since 1889 Kawakami had overseen contingency wartime planning directed against China. The army’s Plan “A” for a war against China and Korea landed forces along the head of the Bohai Gulf near Shanhaiguan and then moved them west to fight a decisive battle on the Zhili (Hebei) plain. With imperial approval, Kawakami and other senior staff officers conducted a terrain reconnaissance (described as an inspection tour) in north and central China during mid-1893 to gather intelligence on Chinese forces and defenses.31

  The team’s evaluation of the state of Chinese army training, coastal defenses, and munitions factories as well as Kawakami’s firsthand observations convinced him that Japan could defeat the Chinese army because the latter lacked mobilization and logistics capabilities, had no standard doctrine, and neither operated nor trained as a modern combined arms force. Army leaders excluded civilian ministers from their subsequent operational planning, justifying the action as necessary to protect the prerogative of supreme command from political interference. This military bias against civilian authorities ignored the need to integrate national political and military strategies, isolating army planning from the larger context of Japan’s political and diplomatic objectives.32

  Peasant uprisings in Korea in the early 1890s and the kingdom’s growing dependence on China threatened Yamagata’s strategic benchmark of a neutral Korea. In the spring of 1894 Korean peasants rebelled against the radical reforms imposed by the court, blaming the Korean elite and foreigners, especially Japanese, for their impoverishment. The Korean emperor appealed to China for help, which in turn dispatched troops to Korea to suppress the Tonghak Rebellion. The intervention violated China’s 1885 agreement with Japan whereby both countries withdrew their troops from Korea and promised advance notification to the other should they return. In these explosive circumstances, the general staff dispatched an officer to Pusan for firsthand assessment. His May 20 dispatch described an organized rebellion, led by a rebel army armed with some modern weapons and an effective command and control system that was determined to overthrow the government. Because the prospect of an anti-Japanese faction seizing power was unacceptable, he recommended sending troops to protect the more than 9,000 Japanese nationals residing in Korea.33

  At a June 2 cabinet meeting Prime Minister Itō discussed unconfirmed reports from the army attaché in Tientsin, later proved erroneous, that 5,000 Chinese troops had moved into Korea. Despite its dubious quality, Kawakami and Foreign Minister Mutsu Munemitsu used the intelligence to justify military intervention. It was later alleged that the two conspired to conceal information from Itō that negotiations had taken a favorable turn and calm was returning to Korea.34 Regardless of Kawakami’s and Mutsu’s conduct, the full cabinet likely drew the lesson based on previous Japanese setbacks in Korea in the 1880s that in order to preserve the military balance it had to commit forces before China did. With compromise impossible, war with China was inevitable.35

  The cabinet dispatched troops to Korea the same day, and Meiji instructed his military leaders, referring to them as his daimyōs (military lords), to establish a mechanism to handle wartime matters. On June 4, senior officers from each service, following the emperor’s guidance to cooperate, met at the war minister’s residence and, after haggling most of the day over command procedures, finally agreed to establish an imperial general headquarters in accordance with the 1893 regulations. The Chief of the Combined Staff, Prince Arisugawa, received imperial approval to open imperial headquarters in the general staff building on June 5, the same day the first echelon of the 5th Division mobilized for deployment to Korea.36

  During the almost two-month interval between the establishment of IGHQ and the declaration of war against China on August 1, the service staffs refined a two-stage operational plan. The 5th Division would prevent a Chinese advance in Korea while the navy eliminated the Chinese fleet in order to secure control of the seas. Phase two had multiple options contingent upon naval success. In the best-case scenario, the navy would defeat the Chinese fleet and secure control of the seas, which would allow the army free passage to land on Chinese soil and advance to the decisive battle on the Zhili plain. If neither navy could gain supremacy, the army would occupy Korea to exclude Chinese influence. If Japan lost control of the seas to the Chinese navy, this worst case foresaw attempts to rescue the beleaguered 5th Division in Korea while simultaneously strengthening homeland defenses to repulse a Chinese invasion. In other words, the army’s contingency plans were both offensive and defensive, depending on the outcome of the naval operations.37

  The government had initially moved cautiously. On June 2, Itō ordered the army to avoid clashes with Chinese, and Ōyama notified the 5th Division commander that his mission was to protect Japanese citizens and diplomatic outposts in Korea, not fight Chinese. Itō’s resolve hardened after Mutsu provided attaché reports in mid-June that the Russian forces in northeast Asia were too few in number to intervene militarily in Korea. With Russian intervention unlikely, the army unilaterally implemented its plan to land in Bohai Gulf in anticipation of a decisive battle on the Zhili plain.38

  Civilian ministers were not involved in the army’s planning and had to rely on the military’s professional expertise to prepare the nation for a possible war. Unfettered by civilian restraint, army generals likewise expected the navy to escort troop convoys to the continent, but had neither consulted with their naval counterparts beforehand nor considered the necessity of securing command of the sea before sending any transports. This haughtiness led to Captain Yamamoto Gonbei, the navy minister’s secretary, to remark caustically that if army engineers built a bridge between Kyūshū and Korea the generals could probably fight the campaign all by themselves.39

  On July 2 the full cabinet with the respective chiefs of staff present agreed on war. The first IGHQ imperial conference met in the palace on July 17 with the emperor and twelve senior officials, including the chief of the combined staff, the army vice chief of staff, the war and navy ministers, and the naval chief of staff in attendance. Privy Council Seal Yamagata was the only civilian in the room. Prime Minister Itō and Foreign Minister Mutsu then demanded the same access, and the emperor ordered the service chiefs to allow senior civilian officials to participate in IGHQ’s conferences, which convened every Tuesday and Friday. The general staff presented its operational plan to the emperor on August 5, and the same day IGHQ moved onto the palace grounds.40

  Emperor Meiji played a significant, if mostly symbolic, role in mobilizing the people for war. Despite his own reservations—allegedly remarking, “This is not my war”—he compliantly relocated along with IGHQ to Hiroshima, ostensibly to be closer to his troops fighting in Korea. Meiji always appeared in an army uniform at Hiroshima, the first time the image of the emperor as the supreme commander was consciously cultivated for the common people.41 He lived a Spartan existence to set an example for his subjects. His quarters had no separate bedroom, and each evening orderlies cleared a chair or desk as a place for him to sleep, evidently a sign of his willingness to share the deprivations of his loyal forces.

  The army acted circumspectly in June and July, carefully developing a three-month campaign in anticipation that British mediation would end any fighting by October. In mid-August, the general staff’s main objective was to secure the Korean peninsula militarily before the arrival of winter weather. After China refused Japanese demands conveyed through the British, Itō resigned himself to a longer campaign and the necessity of a spring 1895 offensive. In mid-September IGHQ displaced to Hiroshima, where Itō could keep a closer eye on the field armies to ensure a unified national policy. Reminiscent of the Satsuma Rebellion, the imperial relocation hampered timely and effective liaison with the foreign ministry and the bureaucracy that remained behind in Tokyo.42

  Kawakami’s certitude in victory aside, the army hedged its bets by deploying troops overseas while simultaneously bolstering homeland garrisons and coastal defenses. Only after the September 17 naval Battle of the Yalu did I
GHQ announce that the navy’s victory reduced the likelihood of invasion and release homeland defense garrisons to reorganize into infantry regiments. IGHQ still retained almost 100,000 mobilized reserves in Japan throughout the conflict, most of them engaged in logistics support duties.43

  The mobilized army grew to more than 220,000 men, including all seven regular divisions, which at wartime strength numbered about 125,000 personnel. The army relied more heavily on the reserves for its NCOs and infantrymen (40 percent of wartime NCOs and infantrymen were reservists) than for its junior officers (only 10 percent). Senior officers and division commanders were, with two exceptions, Boshin War veterans, as were most brigade commanders.44

  The campaigns of the Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895) may be described briefly. On June 12 a brigade from the 5th Division landed at Inchon, the port of Seoul, followed throughout the month by the rest of the unit. Peking ordered its small (500-man) force in Kunsan to withdraw to Pyongyang by sea on July 15, but the Chinese commander declared that course too dangerous, refused the order, and demanded reinforcements. Eight days later three transports carrying Chinese troops and equipment sailed for Korea.

  On July 25 Captain Tōgō Heihachirō, commanding the armored cruiser Naniwa, intercepted the third transport as it approached the Korean coast. Although the Chinese ship was sailing under British registry and Japan and China were not at war, Tōgō sank the vessel. Soon afterward, Japanese and Chinese troops clashed near Kunsan, and on August 1 Japan officially declared war on China. By mid-August IGHQ concluded that a decisive battle on the Zhili plain was infeasible before the arrival of winter. Anticipating a short war, the army found itself in a prolonged struggle and commenced planning for a spring 1895 campaign.45