Japan's Imperial Army

by Edward J Drea

  The army’s first priority was to protect Japan’s recently acquired concessions. Some officers believed Russia’s defeat had secured Japan’s northern frontiers and that future expansion should occur in central China or the South Seas. Others insisted Russia wanted revenge and remained a threat. The government’s position was equally ambiguous. When signing the Russo-Japanese commercial treaty of 1907, for example, Prime Minister Saionji Kinmochi’s cabinet appended a secret protocol that placed southern Manchuria in Japan’s sphere of influence, thereby committing Japan not simply to preserving the status quo in Korea but to expanding its influence northward into Manchuria. In other words, there was no consensus between cabinet and army on national defense strategy.2

  During the immediate postwar years, army leaders repeatedly appealed to Japan’s special characteristics when crafting military strategy and tactical doctrine. But planning for the army’s postwar expansion threatened the consensus forged by its founders. Competing visions of a future army and future warfare divided army leaders into those who favored modern, industrial, machine warfare and those who believed that traditional combat relying on manpower and morale could overcome a materially superior opponent.

  Disagreements within the army over force structure reflected the philosophical differences in styles of warfare. The army had mobilized twenty-five divisions (seventeen active and eight reserve) during the Russo-Japanese War, yet personnel shortages had still stripped the nation of its strategic reserve.3 To prevent a reoccurrence, the ever-cautious Yamagata, convinced that Russia would seek revenge, wanted a fifty-division force structure (twenty-five active and twenty-five reserve divisions).

  Army Chief of Staff Kodama insisted that equipping and sustaining that many divisions would exceed the nation’s industrial capacity and would ruin the national economy. He proposed a modest two-division increase in the active forces and a thirty-eight-division force structure (nineteen active and nineteen reserve) whose modernization would improve mobility and artillery firepower. Kodama’s quest for quality over quantity ended with his sudden death in July 1906, just three months after he became chief of staff. The long-serving War Minister Gen. Terauchi Masatake, a Yamagata protégé, sided with his mentor and in October submitted the fifty-division proposal with requirements for rearmament and modernization to the emperor.4

  During the first half of 1906 Lt. Col. Tanaka Giichi, the operations branch chief, had tried to mediate the increasingly bitter dispute between Kodama and Yamagata over the postwar army’s size. Tanaka hoped to avoid a repetition of the wartime interservice rivalry and divided command structure by devising an agreed-upon national defense strategy that would integrate political and military strategy, coordinate military expenditures with the economic productivity, and serve as the basis for joint operational plans to meet the rapidly changing international situation. Like Yamagata, Tanaka sought to institutionalize the army’s paramount strategic offensive role on the Asian continent to justify its budget requirements. Otherwise interservice rivalry, the navy’s recent wartime popularity, and the growing influence of naval theorists might interfere with army expansion.5

  Yamagata reworked Tanaka’s ideas and, in his capacity as a member of the Board of Field Marshals and Fleet Admirals, that October presented his plan to the emperor, who in turn ordered joint studies to designate a primary hypothetical enemy. Beginning in mid-December the service staffs exchanged written proposals about the operational use of forces for national defense and by mid-January 1907 had met five times to discuss four fundamental issues: (1) identifying the objective of national defense, (2) aligning military strategy with national strategy to coordinate political and military goals, (3) formulating a joint strategy, and (4) determining the appropriate force structures. Three disagreements emerged between the services; the designation of hypothetical enemies Russia for the army and the United States for the navy; the adoption of the army’s continental offensive strategy versus the navy’s deep water strategy; and the distribution of resources, especially budget shares.6

  Tanaka had originally expected the services to work with the prime minister to formulate a comprehensive political-military strategy. Yamagata and other army leaders, however, invoked the prerogative of supreme command to exclude civilian participation in operational military matters. Military authorities did discuss the general outline of their draft policy with Prime Minister Saionji, but they only allowed him to see the section outlining their force structure requirements. Even that concession was made grudgingly because the cabinet would need the specific information on service expansion to justify the budget it would present to the Diet.7

  Emperor Meiji approved imperial defense policy in April 1907 and issued it to the respective chiefs of staff as imperial guidance. The document had three sections: general military strategy, the force structure needed to execute the strategy, and the operational plans to employ the forces. Section one designated Russia as the army’s primary hypothetical opponent and in deference to the navy also identified the United States as a likely opponent. It extended Japanese influence by expanding national interests in Manchuria and protecting development in Asia’s southern regions. The army would conduct forward offensive operations on the Asian continent or joint operations in the Pacific. Aware of the dangers of protracted warfare, army strategists devised preemptive offensives to win the opening campaign decisively and end any conflict quickly. To win the opening battles, however, the army had to have sufficient forces immediately available to occupy strategic locations before the enemy could react.8

  Section two set requirements for a fifty-division army (split evenly between active and reserve) and a navy with eight battleships and eight heavy cruisers by 1928. Because the services could not define a common opponent, they independently calculated their respective force structures based on differing hypothetical enemies. The number of divisions needed to win a war against Russia became the army’s yardstick whereas the U.S. Navy served as the navy’s standard. Neither service would compromise because of the possibility that Japan might have to fight both simultaneously.9

  Section three assigned the navy the operational objective of destroying the enemy fleet on the high seas and the army to annihilate opposing ground forces in a series of rapidly conducted offensives. The army’s theater of operations was Manchuria and the Ussuri River basin; the navy’s the Pacific, although it also had to protect the line of communication to the continent and convoy army troop transports through the Yellow Sea.The navy’s concession came with the caveat that a war against a coalition might make convoy escort impossible.10

  Contrary to Tanaka’s expectations, national defense policy codified strategic differences without resolving them. The services remained divided over their hypothetical enemies, their operational theaters, and their strategic objectives. Cabinet policies contradicted military ones. The army called for forward offensive ground operations on the northeast Asia continent that decoupled military strategy from the cabinet’s foreign policy of promoting alliances, trade, and improved diplomatic relations to secure Japan’s interests in northeast Asia. But international agreements might limit the army’s freedom on the continent. Furthermore, civilian leaders saw the Anglo-Japanese alliance of 1902 as the linchpin of regional security, but the military gave primacy to unilateral action and relegated the alliance to a secondary role. Whereas civilian cabinet members identified Germany as Japan’s main threat and promoted friendly relations with the United States, imperial defense policy ranked Russia and the United States as the most likely future opponents. The services’ military respective strategies were also contradictory.11

  Without a single strategic focus, the services developed plans and budgets independently, each seeking the optimum for its contingencies while dismissing the foreign ministry’s holistic approach to Asia. Imperial defense policy of 1907 was at best two operational war plans—one army, one navy—that failed to address fundamental questions of common threats, available resources, and the prope
r integration of military strategy into a more comprehensive national strategy. These inconsistencies would never be resolved and became continual flash points between the cabinet and the military.

  The army’s desired force structure quickly ran into trouble. Prime Minister Saionji and Hara Kei, the leader of the Seiyūkai political party, were on record in mid-November 1906 opposing any increase in military spending for the 1907 budget because the late war had emptied the nation’s coffers. Angered by the army’s stubbornness during preliminary budget discussions, Saionji had threatened to resign rather than give in to the military’s demands and informed the emperor that such an ambitious military expansion would bankrupt the nation. The army resentfully accepted two additional active duty divisions instead of the three it sought, and the navy agreed to refurbish captured Russian warships rather than build new ones.12 With Japan’s financial condition worsening in 1907, the cabinet adopted a retrenchment policy that forced the army to postpone its two-division increase for three additional years and the navy to suspend new ship construction for six.

  The imbroglio with Saionji was only the latest in a series of clashes between the army and the political parties, which were gradually expanding their influence at the cabinet level. In 1898 Prime Minister Ōkuma Shigenobu had requested Meiji’s permission to select a war minister from the inactive list because all the eligible candidates on the active list demanded a vastly increased military budget to pay for army expansion. The emperor refused, asserting that such action was beyond his purview, and the incumbents remained in office. Unable to work with the serving war minister, Okuma’s cabinet collapsed within six months.

  The new cabinet, headed by Yamagata, enacted legislation in May 1900 that restricted the war minister’s portfolio to generals serving on active duty precisely to prevent the political parties from using the increasing number of retired general officers for political ends in the cabinets and to preclude dissatisfied retired generals from encroaching on the prerogative of supreme command as war ministers. The legislation institutionalized rather than altered the current informal arrangement, but it also handed the army the legal power of life and death over any cabinet.13

  Army leaders had been wary of political parties since their inception in the 1880s, believing that parties were by nature divisive elements that invariably provoked friction and detracted from national unity.14 Although parties had contested national elections since 1890, the struggle was for legislative control of the Diet, not executive authority in the form of a party cabinet. The oligarchs dominated the selection of cabinet ministers and the organization of the cabinets, which until 1918 were regarded, at least in theory, as nonparty entities. The parties gained influence by voting on the annual budget in the Diet. If they refused to enact the cabinet’s submitted budget, by law the previous year’s appropriation remained in effect. Because government expenditures, particularly for defense, increased each year, the ministers always needed more money. Regardless of the army’s attitude about political parties, it had to have party support to pass the military budgets that the cabinet submitted to the legislature, and army leaders struck bargains with politicians to pay for military expansion and modernization.

  In exchange for Diet votes, the cabinet and oligarchs worked a series of compromises with the political parties, including entry of party leaders into cabinets. In 1904, for example, Hara Kei and Prime Minister Katsura Tarō agreed that in exchange for the Diet’s support of his wartime budget, Katsura would appoint Saionji prime minister in the postwar cabinet.This concession opened the way for party politicians to hold cabinet positions (see Table 7.1).

  The violent popular demonstrations in Tokyo in 1905 against the Treaty of Portsmouth renewed Yamagata’s fear of the mob and determination to curb the parties, especially the opposition Seiyūkai, which he felt bore a large measure of responsibility for the popular outbursts. For their part, Seiyūkai leaders tried to gain leverage over the army. In February 1907 the Diet enacted a law allowing the prime minister to countersign army orders submitted to the throne in peacetime (previously the army minister and vice war minister were the signatories).

  Backed by Yamagata, War Minister Terauchi protested this break with custom, arguing that it would violate the independence of supreme command. That September newly enacted war ministry regulations excluded the prime minister from the process. The war minister alone could countersign orders or ordnances in his role as an adviser directly responsible to the emperor, and he could also present these documents directly to the throne. Saionji and senior statesman Itō Hirobumi questioned the constitutionality of military regulations that denied the emperor the advice of his senior civilian advisers, but after listening to Itō debate the point with Yamagata, the emperor authorized the revisions.15

  Table 7.1. Military Budgets and Army-Navy Breakdowns, Selected Years, 1890–1914

  Source: Tobe, Gyakusetsu, 109 and 137; extraordinary wartime budgets not included.

  Haggling also continued between the legislature and the army over force structure, aggravated by the navy’s demands for a larger share of the military budget. Japan’s formal annexation of Korea in 1910 revived the army’s justification for two additional divisions to protect the new colony and be positioned for forward offensive operations. Simultaneously the navy wanted to increase the size of the fleet because it faced multiple threats from the combined fleets of the United States, Great Britain, and Imperial Germany.16

  During these struggles with the Diet the army benefited from the long tenure of War Minister Terauchi, who served from March 1902 to August 1911, with a concurrent appointment as governor-general of Korea from October 1910. Terauchi, a skilled military bureaucrat, was arrogant, often browbeat opponents, and used his web of connections and knowledge of the bureaucracy to outmaneuver the legislature in his quest for the additional divisions. He also enhanced the authority of the war ministry at the expense of the general staff and blatantly favored his Chōshū clansmen, awarding them plum assignments and choice commands throughout the army.17 In 1911 Terauchi resigned to devote his full attention to the pacification of Korea. His handpicked protégé replaced him but died a few months later, in April 1912.

  The army then nominated two candidates for war minister; one was a protégé of Katsura Tarō, and the other, Lt. Gen. Uehara Yūsaku, was a Satsuma native. Saionji selected Uehara, described as “willful, egotistical, and jealous of his prerogatives.” But he rejected Uehara’s agenda for two additional divisions because the nation’s grave financial condition necessitated increased taxes and sale of government bonds to redeem debts still outstanding from the Russo-Japanese War and to pay the heavy costs of incorporating the new colony of Korea and the Kwantung leased territory into the empire. Saionji’s orders for a government-wide retrenchment program included an across-the-board 10–15 percent budget cut. Uehara promptly resigned, an act that made him a political martyr to the army and enhanced his following within the officer corps.18

  Army leaders refused to nominate a successor, and with no active duty officer willing to accept the portfolio, Saionji’s cabinet collapsed. The army, however, damaged its own case with the public by its heavy-handed maneuvering to bring down the cabinet and its attempt to manipulate the new Taishō emperor, who suffered from physical and mental disabilities, to force party leaders to form a new cabinet sympathetic to military expansion. These actions precipitated the so-called Taishō Political Crisis of 1912–1913. Nationwide popular demonstrations to protect constitutional government, fueled by the press and political party activists, forced the army into retreat. Besides its inept political performance, the military also ignored the heavy burden imperial defense was imposing on the nation’s financial health.The army’s political assertiveness was an embarrassment, and it had only limited success in reasserting its prominence in society into the 1920s.

  When Adm. Yamamoto Gonbei organized a reform cabinet in June 1913, the army was still reeling from the aftershock of the Taishō Political Cri
sis and the spectacle of mobs in the street. With the arbitrary concurrence of War Minister Kigoshi Yasutsuna, Yamamoto eliminated the proviso that only active duty officers could serve as war minister and searched the inactive list for a suitable candidate. This undid Yamagata and Terauchi’s earlier work and infuriated general staff officers because Kigoshi had agreed to the revision without consulting them. Indeed, the approving document’s coordination column, usually red with the seals of the various army bureaus, was blank. Army leaders ostracized Kigoshi, causing his premature retirement.19 The army further reacted to Yamamoto’s decision by reorganizing its command structure to divest power from the war minister and redistribute it to the chief of staff and inspector-general of military education. Mobilization planning and operational matters were shifted from the war ministry to the general staff; personnel and doctrinal issues were decided by the ministry, staff, and inspectorate; and the inspector-general took charge of doctrine and training.

  Tactical Doctrine

  Postwar analysis of the army’s performance in the Russo-Japanese War sought indigenous attributes to explain its victory and found them in real or imagined traditions. Army leaders officially attributed victory foremost to spiritual elitism (élan) and only secondly to the proficiency of the troops.20 Military schools throughout the army taught this narrative of the conflict, and almost all officers studied the orthodox interpretation and lessons of the war.