Japan's Imperial Army

by Edward J Drea

  Port Arthur

  By November 1, 1904, the Russian Baltic Fleet had reached the North African port of Tangiers. Japanese naval specialists estimated that the fleet could arrive at Taiwan’s coast by early January 1905.69 The fleet’s progress intensified the naval general staff’s demands that the army capture Port Arthur no later than December 1 to eliminate the potential threat to Tōgō’s combined fleet from the rear; this move would give the admiral at least a month to refit his fleet and reinforce it with the warships currently assigned to blockade duty. Yamagata in turn notified Ōyama on November 9 that the Third Army had to take Port Arthur.70

  Yamagata then requested the emperor replace Nogi because he was unfit for command. The emperor disagreed; he was uncertain who would replace Nogi and afraid the disgrace might drive the general to suicide. With Nogi untouchable, Manchurian Army commander Ōyama sent his chief of staff, Gen. Kodama Gentarō, to Port Arthur to direct an assault on Hill 203, the key terrain feature. He authorized Kodama to remove Nogi, if necessary. Nogi, however, accepted the new arrangement and remained in nominal control while Kodama “borrowed” his operational authority.71

  The Third Army attack on Hill 203 began November 26 and soon suffered heavy losses. After two days of fighting, heavy artillery finally beat down Russian fortifications on Hill 203 and a night attack by the 1st Division captured part of the critical terrain. When a Russian counterattack early the next morning threatened to retake the lost ground, Kodama took command, relegated Nogi to a deputy status, committed the Third Army’s final reserves, and finally drove the Russians from the high ground on November 30.72 Almost 17,000 Japanese troops were killed or wounded.

  By early December Japanese forward observers perched atop Hill 203 were connected by telephone landlines to artillery batteries and could accurately direct plunging fire into the town and port below, making the fortress untenable. The Russian commander’s offer to negotiate surrender terms on January 1, 1905, transformed Nogi into an international superstar.

  Nogi’s incompetence disgusted many senior officers, including one who literally wanted his freshly severed head on a platter. On New Year’s Day 1905, Lt. Col. Tanaka Giichi, now assigned to Ōyama’s staff, recommended Nogi’s relief before the Third Army marched north toward Mukden. Kodama countered that removing the famous conqueror of Port Arthur, whose very name struck fear into Russian hearts, would destroy army morale and stain the Third Army’s accomplishments. Firing Nogi, he added, would insult the spirits of the 20,000 war-dead at Port Arthur who wanted to join their commander for the decisive battle. Regardless of the rhetoric, in the end it was more important to protect the army’s reputation than to relieve Nogi.73

  Ōyama expected to use Nogi’s Third Army as one arm of the massive pincer maneuver in a double envelopment that would encircle and then destroy the Russian field armies near Mukden. On the morning of February 27, while artillery fire of the First, Second, and Fourth armies diverted Russian attention, the Third Army moved north. By the time Ōyama launched his March 1 main attack, however, Nogi had positioned his army too far north to influence the action. Two days later he countermarched to link up with the Second Army and close the trap on the Russians; he moved too slowly, creating a gap that allowed the main Russian forces to escape. Nogi was not solely to blame. Senior commanders and staff officers experienced great difficulty coordinating the complex maneuvers of multiple field armies during the two-week battle. Scores of units got intermingled during the fighting, and crisscrossing supply wagons, troops, and porters congested road traffic, further impeding rapid maneuver.74

  The inconclusive ground campaigns cost the army heavily, but precise figures are unclear. The general staff’s official history acknowledged about 120,000 casualties, including 2,600 prisoners. Official statistics, however, reported only those wounded seriously enough to be invalided from service, about 58,000 personnel. Other records document more than 130,000 troops hospitalized for wounds. About 60,000 men were killed in action, most falling to small arms fire (78.6 percent, followed far behind by artillery at 12.9 percent) and 21,500 more perished from disease, with beriberi, typhoid, and amoebic dysentery accounting for 80 percent of the illness-related deaths (see Table 6.1).75

  About four times more Japanese troops deployed to China during the Russo-Japanese War than in the earlier Sino-Japanese War and, exposed to the same indirect contact with some of the lowest classes, many concluded that all Chinese were poor, dirty, smelly, and lived in squalor. Soldiers’ letters home recounted the appalling conditions, wartime diaries and postwar memoirs commented on them, and these strong impressions came home with the troops and spread throughout the community, reinforcing a prejudice among the general public about the inferiority of the Chinese.76

  Attitudes about Death and Prisoners

  The army ritualized death. Before the war, the service had popularized the concept of death before dishonor, citing ancient practices of killing oneself in accordance with the tenets of bushidō and Yamato damashii (Japanese spirit). Death in battle or suicide was preferable to capture, and catchphrases assured the public that soldiers had to avoid the shame of captivity and its accompanying stigma of cowardice. The popular imagination internalized the informal taboo against being taken captive, and repatriated prisoners of war were expected to endure vituperation and insults while they apologized for allowing themselves to be captured.77

  Postwar military councils investigated about 2,000 repatriated prisoners of war. The ex-prisoner’s parent unit conducted an initial screening, and the soldier could not be discharged until the inquiry was completed. At its simplest, the process took a couple of hours, but it could become a more complicated affair. No one was formally court-martialed, but administrative punishment could be severe. Eight officers (five army) captured when their ships were sunk were later cashiered and stripped of their rank and decorations.78 Their names and punishments were also published in the Official Gazette.79 There were also cases where some communities ostracized former prisoners, forcing them to move elsewhere.

  Table 6.1. Number of Japanese Soldiers Killed, Wounded, or Captured during Selected Battles of the Russo-Japanese War

  Battle

  Killed

  Wounded

  Prisoner

  Total

  Liaoyang

  5,557

  17,976

  236

  23,533

  Port Arthur

  15,390

  43,914

  —

  59,304

  Sha ho

  4,099

  16,398

  628

  20,497

  Kurokodai

  1,848

  7,241

  242

  9,316

  Mukden

  15,683

  51,247

  1,581

  70,028

  Total

  42,577

  136,776

  2,687

  182,678

  Source: Ōe, Nichi-Ro, table 2–4, 132–133.

  The army’s treatment of former prisoners was selective. The commander of the 28th Infantry Regiment was placed on leave in August 1906 and retired being seconded to the reserves the following February. Other captured officers, however, received medals, awards, and emoluments. Two intelligence officers operating in Manchuria were captured soon after the outbreak of the war. One was later awarded a medal for bravery and went on to become a major general. The other had the misfortune to be captured along with a supply train that offered no resistance. He had to resign. A major who was taken prisoner on a reconnaissance mission later escaped and brought back valuable intelligence. He got a medal. A second lieutenant captured on long-range reconnaissance patrol behind Russian lines received a commendation after escaping and bringing back valuable intelligence. The criterion seemed to be, “Did they do their duty to the full extent before being captured?”80

  The distinction was lost on most of the public. Rumors spread about the shame of cap
tivity, including one about a Diet member who was unable to bear the embarrassment of his son’s captivity and committed suicide. These apocryphal stories were sufficiently widespread to convince popular opinion that captivity was shameful. Along with ideas of racial superiority, national uniqueness, and seishin, the myth of death before dishonor slowly permeated postwar society, incubating until the army could use it again.

  Despite disparaging surrender, the army treated its almost 80,000 Russian prisoners of war decently. Those accepting parole were repatriated along with the wounded and family members, and Russian hospitals at Port Arthur continued to treat patients after the surrender. Japanese conduct toward Caucasian prisoners again demonstrated Tokyo’s desire to be accepted by the West, a condition of ending the final vestiges of the unequal treaty system. After all, Japan had signed and abided by the 1899 Hague Convention on the Laws and Customs of War. At the outbreak of the war, the government had established the Prisoner of War Information Bureau in the war ministry. The bureau issued regulations regarding the treatment of prisoners who were eventually held at twenty-nine camps in Japan. After the war, the International Red Cross commended the Japanese government for its humane treatment of prisoners of war.81

  Official and Unofficial Legacies

  Strict wartime censorship played on the army’s carefully cultivated prewar image as an institution that served the emperor and the nation to reinforce patriotism and obedience. In the immediate postwar era, the army created its mythology of the war with romantic and distorted tales of human bullets, whose popularity spread to the West in Lt. (later major general) Sakurai Tadayoshi’s best-selling book by the same name. According to his narrative, Japanese fighting spirit overcame the enemy’s advantages in men, money, and material. The offensive manifested this intangible and uniquely Japanese trait, and this belief underpinned the wholesale revision of the army’s field manuals during the immediate postwar era.82 Even the decision to die became a uniquely Japanese characteristic.

  Yet the deified heroes of the war were not enlisted soldiers but two midlevel commanders, the navy’s Lt. Cmdr. Hirose Takeo, killed after running his blockship aground in the Port Arthur channel, and the army’s Maj. Tachibana Shūta, killed while leading an assault that captured a key Russian redoubt at Liaoyang. Using officially sponsored mass ceremonies and public announcements, the government transmogrified both into “war gods,” which was the first instance of the idea in modern Japan. The concept, interestingly enough, resonated with the larger public more because of the two officers’ display of Japanese warrior spirit and virtue than for tactical success. Both officers were model commanders, respected and liked by their men, so their military prowess merely complemented their sterling characters. At a deeper level, their sacrifice stimulated a rediscovery of traditional Japanese values by ordinary citizens, many of whom felt overwhelmed and threatened by the steady encroachment of western culture on the nation. In other words, the two “war gods” exemplified the unique characteristics harbored deep in the heart of every Japanese.83

  As would be expected, soldiers’ attitudes toward death and battle depended on their proximity to the actual fighting. Survivors who witnessed the destruction and devastation described the battlefield as a cruel, tragic, or pitiful place. Professional officers generally accepted the army’s idealized derivative samurai values, likely because so many of them during that era were from samurai stock. The conscripts and reserve officers, however, did not share the same values, and appeals to grandiose notions like an honorable death in battle or dying for the sake of the emperor held little attraction for them. Few aspired to become human bullets, and competent officers realized the folly of such tactics.84

  The army and the government also suppressed inconvenient or embarrassing facts. Newspapers, for instance, published Nogi’s wartime after-action report to the throne but deleted a passage critical of his performance at Mukden. Army officials later excised the offending passage from the official report on grounds of national security.85

  Confidential internal assessments of the army’s wartime performance were mixed. The army’s official histories were written from the perspective of frontline commanders bragging about the spirit of the attack and the offensive. They omitted details of staff planning and coordination. Regimental histories routinely deleted references to chronic shortages of munitions that had short-circuited Japanese offensives. Bland, almost identical accounts uniformly praised the effectiveness of replacement training and the performance of reserve units.86

  Secrecy carried beyond publications intended for general consumption. The army’s multivolume official history of the war omitted detailed accounts of prewar planning, mobilization, logistics, diplomacy, reserve affairs, and ammunition and personnel shortages. A meticulous compilation dealing with those issues remained classified “top secret” and was tightly restricted even within the army. From the mid-1920s Col. Tani Hisao convened an annual special seminar of ten staff college students and used these sensitive, still highly classified documents unavailable to other officers to present a comprehensive strategic, diplomatic, and logistic appreciation of the Russo-Japanese War to the privileged elite.87 In short, only a handful of carefully selected officers delved into the army’s shortcomings during the war; the rest were left with a distorted understanding of the campaigns.

  War with Russia and the postwar mythology defined modern Japan and its army. Japan’s two foreign wars sharpened a popular sense of national identity and cemented national solidarity. Defeat likely would have meant permanent relegation as a second- or third-rate nation and, at worst, semicolonial status. In the public mind, victory over a major western power had achieved the Meiji leaders’ goals to create a rich country and strong army, and victory parades and national interment commemorations marked the passing of an era. It also coincided with a new nationalism that reasserted mythical Japanese values in reaction to fears that the adoption of western techniques and fads brought along a social malaise that would topple traditional morality.

  The concept of the Yasukuni Shrine as the final resting place for those killed in action had previously registered in a vague way in the popular imagination. After the war the shrine became a centerpiece of militarism. Both services held large public interment ceremonies at Yasukuni, and the army’s grand triumphal return review there on April 30, 1906, became Army Day, a national holiday. Emperor Meiji presided over one national ceremony at Yasukuni for soldiers and sailors killed in action during the Russo-Japanese War and another one in 1907 when the army reinterred its dead from Manchurian graveyards to Yasukuni, with a concurrent special enshrinement for soldiers who had died of wounds following the war.88 Other imperial rituals burnished Yasukuni’s image. For the first time, a special imperial envoy carried word of the declaration of war against Russia to Yasukuni. Another imperial messenger announced the terms of the peace treaty to the spirits reposing there.

  A July 1905 meeting of the victors in the Russo-Japanese War in Fengtin, China. Left to right: Kuroki Tamemoto, commander First Army; Nozu Michitsura, commander Fourth Army; Yamagata Aritomo; Ōyama Iwao; Oku Yasukata, commander Second Army; Nogi Maresuke, commander Third Army; Kodama Gentarō, Chief of Staff, Manchurian Army; and Kawamura Kageaki, Yalu River Army commander. (Courtesy Japan, National Diet Library)

  Just as the Yasukuni bequeathed special qualities to the war dead, victory over Russia endowed an Asian nation with world-class stature and respect, or as a brigade commander’s letter to his wife more coarsely phrased it, equaled the difference between becoming a baron’s wife or a back-alley whore.89 Japan’s triumph cracked the myth of white supremacy and invincibility, and the nation emerged as the premier regional military power in northeast Asia. But it also brought new, unanticipated responsibilities and commitments.

  A recognized world-class navy and the Anglo-Japanese alliance removed any threat of invasion from Japan’s strategic thinking. The army in turn developed an aggressive forward-based strategy and justified its special
continental interests because of the price it had paid in blood and treasure to defeat the Russians in Manchuria. The war ministry kept two divisions in Manchuria to protect Japanese lives and property until 1910. Thereafter an independent garrison unit of six reserve battalions defended Japanese interests until regular units replaced them in 1916. Army Order No. 12 in 1919 activated the Headquarters, Kwantung Army to control the 10,000-man garrison. Together with the China Garrison Army, the units in Manchuria afforded the army permanent forward operating bases in China. Korea soon came completely under Japanese control, adding still another mission for the army. In response to this expanded mission, generals demanded a larger force structure to deal with the new responsibilities. Adm. Tōgō’s epic victory at Tsushima elevated the navy to a coequal status with the army, and the services had to reconcile their respective differences over requirements, potential opponents, and theaters of operations with an overarching national military strategy. A new generation of army leaders had to grapple with all these issues while it ensured that the institution’s prominence in state affairs would continue.

  7

  Institutionalizing National Military Strategy

  The Meiji ruling elite—the civilian or military oligarchs—all came from the samurai class, shared common values and national objectives, and in many cases had known each other for decades. The rise of military professionalism during the late nineteenth century altered the status quo by placing a premium on specialized knowledge, a far different criterion than the personality-based army cliques dominated by officers from the former Chōshū and Satsuma fiefs. The next generation of army leaders had to compete for power with other emerging elites, particularly the political parties, which had their own agendas. Frustrated by nepotism and determined to break the regional cliques’ stranglehold on power, the army’s up-and-coming leaders contested not only the political parties but also their military institution as it struggled to integrate new ideas and technologies while preserving its traditional core identity.1