Japan's Imperial Army

by Edward J Drea

60. Hackett, Yamagata, 329;Tobe, Gyakusetsu, 180–181; Humphreys, Heavenly Sword, 25–29; Ōe, Sanbō honbu, 134.

  61. Kobayashi, Sōryokusen, 244–245.

  62. Ibid., 258–261.

  63. Humphreys, Heavenly Sword, 28–29.

  64. Ibid., 45–46.

  Chapter 8. Short War or Total War?

  1. Kurono, Daigaku, 184.

  2. Ibid., 179.

  3. Kurono, Nihon o horoboshita, 108, 115–116.

  4. Ibid., 98.

  5. Kurokawa, Kindai Nihon gunji senryaku, 132, 139–141.

  6. Katogawa Kōtarō, Teikoku rikugun kikōbutai [The imperial army’s mechanized corps] (Hara shobō, 1981 rev. ed.), 43–44; Kurokawa, Kindai Nihon gunji senryaku, 132.

  7. Humphreys, Heavenly Sword, 62; Kurono, Teikoku kokubō, 226; Katogawa Kōtarō, Rikugun no hanshō [Reflections on the army] (ge) (Bunkyō shuppan, 1996), 26.

  8. Sayama Jirō, Taihō nyūmon [A guide to artillery weapons] (Kōjinsha NF bunko, 1999), 108; Katogawa, Hanshō, 19; Kuzuhara, “‘Sentō kōyō’ no kyōgi,” 25–26.

  9. Katogawa, Teikoku rikugun kikōbutai, 43, 72; Katogawa, Hanshō, 16.

  10. Kurono, Nihon o horoboshita, 102.

  11. Kurono, Daigaku, 179–180.

  12. Humphreys, Heavenly Sword, 65; Kurono, Teikoku rikugun kaikaku to teikō, 120.

  13. See Humphreys, Heavenly Sword, 64–72, for a detailed account.

  14. Kurono, Teikoku rikugun kaikaku to teikō, 120.

  15. Kurono, Teikoku kokubō, 9.

  16. Ibid., 211.

  17. Kurono, Nihon o horoboshita, 112–115; Kurono, Teikoku kokubō, 234; Matsushita, Nihon kokubō higeki, 92.

  18. Kurono, Teikoku kokubō, 238. Ugaki wanted to reduce the number of active divisions to seventeen, and this would become a bone of contention in the 1925 reorganization plan.

  19. Kurono, Nihon o horoboshita, 115; Kurokawa, Kindai gunji senryaku, 143–144, 148.

  20. Kurokawa, Kindai gunji senryaku, 139–141, 147; Kurono, Teikoku rikugun kaikaku to teikō, 112–118.

  21. Kurono, Daigaku, 181; Kurono, Teikoku kokubō, 224–225. Fukuda was the commander of the Taiwan Army and in August 1923 became a member of the Board of Military Councilors.

  22. Kurono, Nihon o horoboshita, 102–103.

  23. Ibid.

  24. Kurono, Teikoku kokubō, 231.

  25. Kitaoka Shinichi, Nihon no kindai [Modern Japan] 5, Seitō kara gunbu e, 1924–1941 [From political parties to military (control), 1924–1941] (Chūō kōronsha, 1999), 145–147. In 1909 the army had created a Joint Provisional Military Balloon Research Committee for aerial observation, and six years later the war ministry formed the army air force as an independent branch to support ground operations. During World War I, a few army and navy aircraft reconnoitered or bombed the German fortress at Qingdao. The army also activated its first air squadron in Japan. Ōe, Tennō no guntai, 224–225.

  26. Ikuda, Nihon rikugunshi, 113–114.

  27. Yoshida, Nihon no guntai, 5, 8.

  28. Kurono, Nihon o horoboshita, 106.

  29. Smethurst, Social Basis, 39; Yoshida, Nihon guntai, 143; Kawashima, “Gun dōin no seidō,” 95 RO-4H, 85–87, 93.

  30. WatanabeYukio, Ugaki Kazushige (Chūkō shinsho, 1993), 17 (chart).

  31. Takahashi Masae, Shōwa no gunbatsu [The military cliques of the Shōwa period] (Chūkō shinsho, 1969), 54.

  32. See Humphreys, Heavenly Sword, 111–116.

  33. For example, see Yamaguchi Muneyuki, Rikugun to kaigun—rikukaigun shōkōshi no kenkyū [Army and navy—research about the army’s and navy’s officers] (Osaka: Seibundō, 2000), 45.

  34. Humphreys, Heavenly Sword, 40; Hori Shigeru, “‘Chōbatsu’ no sūchiteki jittai ni kansuru hitotsu kyōsai” [Considerations concerning the actual numbers of the Chōshū clique] Gunji Shigaku 43:1 (June 2007), 23–25, 29, 31. See also Tobe, Gyakusetsu, 267.

  35. Kurokawa, Kindai gunji senryaku, 113.

  36. Maebara, “Nihon rikugun no ‘kōbō,’” 86 RO-5H, 147, 203; Kurogawa, Kindai gunji senryaku, 113–114.

  37. Maebara, “Nihon rikugun no ‘kōbō,’” 86 RO-5H, 201–206, 257; Humphreys, Heavenly Sword, viii; Bōeicho bōei kenshūjō, senshishitsu, ed., Senshi sōsho [Official military history] 27, Kantōgun [The Kwantung army] part 1 (Asagumo shimbunsha, 1969), 25–27. I am indebted to Stanford University Press for permission to use material in this section that will appear in the forthcoming publication The Battle for China: Essays on the Military History of the Sino-Japanese War.

  38. Bōeicho, Kantōgun, 25–27; Ōe, Tennō no guntai, 218 (quote).

  39. Kuzuhara, “‘Sentō kōyō’ no kyōgi,” 19.

  40. Ibid., 21.

  41. Endō, Kindai Nihon guntai kyōikushi kenkyū, 165–166; Rikugunshō [War ministry], Sentō kōryō, [Combat principles], February 6, 1929 (Ikeda shoten, reprint 1977), 12, 65, 69, 128; Maebara, “Nihon rikugun,” 220, 226.

  42. Kuzuhara, “‘Sentō kōyō,’” 23, 27; Kyōiku sōkanbu [Inspector-general of military education], “Hohei sōten sōan hensan riyūsho” [Reasons for the revisions to the draft infantry manual], 1928, 9, para 3, Japan Defense Agency Archives (hereafter JDA).

  43. For other possible reasons, see Ulrich Straus, The Anguish of Surrender (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003), 21.

  44. Endō, Kindai Nihon guntai kyōikushi kenkyū, 176.

  45. Kuzuhara, “‘Sentō kōyō,’” 27–28.

  46. Ibid.; Sanbō sōchō [Chief of staff, army], “TaiSō sentōhō yōkō” [Summary of combat methods against the Soviets], May 6, 1933, JDA.

  47. Yoshida, Nihon no guntai, 156–158; Tobe, Gyakusetsu, 258 and 259 (chart); Fujiwara Akira, Nihon gunjishi (jō) [Japanese military history] (Nihon hyōronsha, 1987), 191–192. The number of graduates varied; between 1910 and 1915 they averaged about 720 per class but thereafter declined to less than half that number by the early 1920s.

  48. Tanaka Keishi, “Rikugun jinji seidō gaisetsu” (kōban) [An overview of the army personnel system] part 2, in Bōeichō bōei kenshōjō senshibu, Kenkyū shiryō, 80 RO-1H, mimeo, 1980, 34–35; KumagaiTadasu, Kisō chishiki, 141–144. It cost an estimated 210 yen annually for food and clothing at a time when an average white-collar worker’s yearly salary was about 950–1,000 yen. Kumagai, Kisō chishiki,144.

  49. Yoshida, Nihon no guntai, 73; Kumagai Mikahisa, “Kyūriku kaigun shōkō no senbatsu to kyōiku,” Kenkyū shiryō, 80 R-12H, 129.

  50. Tanaka, “Rikugun jinji,” 113;Yoshida, Nihon no guntai, 88, 91.

  51. Yoshida, Nihon no guntai, 103, 159–160; Kumagai Mikahisa, Nihongun no jinteki seidō to mondaiten no kenkyū, 109; Itō and Momose, Jiten, 372.

  52. Ishige Shin’ichi, “Chū kō itchi ni okeru guntai shisō to kyōiku shisō” [The military’s concept of loyalty and filial piety as seen in educational concepts] Gunji shigaku 37:4 (March 2002), 15.

  53. Tobe, Gyakusetsu, 197 (chart).

  54. Endō, Kindai Nihon guntai kyōikushi kenkyū, 80, 258–259; Yoshida, Nihon no guntai, 168–169, 190.

  55. Yoshida, Nihon no guntai, 161–164.

  56. Fujiwara Akira, Uejinishita eiyūtachi [Starving heroes] (Aoki shoten, 2001), 186–187; Edward J. Drea, “In the Army Barracks of Imperial Japan,” Armed Forces and Society 15:3 (1989); Humphreys, Heavenly Sword, 80, 106, and 171; Yoshida, “Nihon no guntai,” 169–170; Yoshida, Nihon no guntai, 182.

  Chapter 9. Conspiracies, Coups, and Reshaping the Army

  1. Yamagata, Katsura, and Terauchi were still active-duty general officers when serving as prime minister.

  2. Tobe Ryōichi, Nihon rikugun to Chūgoku [The Japanese army and China] (Kōdansha, 1999), 143; Marius B. Jansen, “Introduction,” in James William Morley, ed., Japan’s Road to the Pacific War: Japan Erupts: The London Naval Conference and the Manchurian Incident, 1928–1932; Selected Translations from Taiheiyō sensō e no michi: kaisen gaiko shi (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984), 128–129.

  3. Tobe, Nihon rikugun, 147.

  4. Jansen,
“Introduction,” 129.

  5. Tobe, Nihon rikugun, 86.

  6. Ibid., 84–85, 87; Kitaoka, Seitō kara gunbu e, 80–81.

  7. Masumi Junnosuke, Shōwa tennō to sono jidai [The Shōwa emperor and that era] (Yamakawa shuppansha, 1998), 95; Kojima Noboru, Tennō [The emperor] 2 (Bungei shūnjū, 1974), 40–41; Humphreys, Heavenly Sword, 165 n 82, 225.

  8. Hirohito was 26 years old when he became emperor in December 1926. He selected Shōwa (Enlightened Peace) for his reign name. Japanese emperors are referred to posthumously by the era name of the reign, i.e., Hirohito is now known as the Shōwa emperor.

  9. Handō Kuzutoshi, Shōwashi, 1926–1945 [Shōwa history from 1926 to 1945] (Heibonsha, 2004), 31–32; Masumi, Shōwa tennō, 95; Kojima, Tennō, 43, 45. Saionji had learned the details of the plot in late August.

  10. Nihon kokusai seiji gakkai, eds., Taiheiyō sensō e no michi [The road to the Pacific war] 1, Manshū jihen zenya [The eve of the Manchurian incident] (Asahi shimbunsha, 1963), 316; Humphreys, Heavenly Sword, 166.

  11. Masumi, Shōwa tennō, 101; Kojima, Tennō, 61.

  12. Nara Takeji, “Nara Takeji jijiūbukanchō nikki” (shō), [Selections from imperial aidede-camp General Nara Takeji’s diary], Chūō kōron (September 1990), 327, 330; Humphries, Heavenly Sword, 169; Masumi, Shōwa tennō, 107.

  13. Mark R. Peattie, Ishiwara Kanji and Japan’s Confrontation with the West (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975), 110–122; Takehiko Yoshihashi, Conspiracy at Mukden: The Rise of the Japanese Military (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1963), 145–165.

  14. Yoshihisa Nakamura and Ryōichi Tobe, “The Imperial Japanese Army and Politics,” Armed Forces and Society 14:4 (Summer 1988), 521.

  15. WatanabeYukio, Ugaki Kazushige (Chūkō shinsho, 1993), 62–63, 66–67; Hata Ikuhiko, Gun fashizumu undōshi [A history of the military fascist movement] (Kawade shobō shinsha, 1962), 26.

  16. Watanabe, Ugaki, 55–57. Ugaki remained as war minister until April 1931. In June he went on the reserve list and became governor-general of Korea, a post he held for the next five years.

  17. Tobe, Gyakusetsu, 254;Watanabe, Ugaki, 72; James B. Crowley, Japan’s Quest for Autonomy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968), 99–100; Kitaoka, Seitō kara gunbu e, 221.

  18. Kitaoka, Seitō kara gunbu e, 156–157; Nakamura and Tobe, “Imperial Japanese Army and Politics,” 522; Hata, Tōsuiken, 192.

  19. Shiraishi Hiroshi, “Manshū jiken ni okeru Kantōgun no kōyū ninmu to sono kaiwakuunyō mondai” [The Kwantung army’s basic mission during the Manchurian incident and an interpretation of the problem of operational movement of troops], in Saikō: Manshū jiken [Reconsiderations of the Manchurian incident] Gunji shigaku 37:2 and 3 (October 2001), 196–197; Hata Ikuhiko, “Manshū ryōyū no shisoteki genryū” [The ideological background of the occupation of Manchuria] in ibid., 43; Nara, “Nara Takeji jijiūbukanchō nikki,” 338.

  20. Usui Katsumi, Manshū jihen [The Manchurian incident] (Chūkō shinsho, 1974), 45, 48–49. Vice Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Ninomiya Harushige initially refused to send reinforcements and instructed Honjō to handle the incident with the minimum necessary force. Although unwilling to send reinforcements, the next day Ninomiya, along with Lt. Gen. Araki, the inspector-general of military education; and Lt. Gen. Sugiyama Hajime, the vice war minister agreed that the army would have to bring down the government if it interfered with current operations in Manchuria.

  21. Kitaoka, Seitō kara gunbu e, 160; Nara, “Nara Takeji jijiūbukanchō nikki,” 340–341.

  22. Usui, Manshū jiken, 41; IkōToshiya, Sensō no Nihonshi [Warfare in Japanese history] 22, Manshū jihen kara Nitchū zenmen sensō e [From the Manchurian incident to the total war in China] (Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 2007), 21–22.

  23. Takahashi, Shōwa no gunbatsu, 125; Hashimoto Kingoro, “Hashimoto taisa no shuki” [Colonel Hashimoto’s notes], in Nakano Hideo, Shōwashi no genten [The source of Shōwa history] 2, Manshū jihen to Jūgatsu jiken [The Manchurian incident and the October incident] (Kōdansha, 1973), 252.

  24. Takahashi, Shōwa no gunbatsu, 129; Tobe, Gyakusetsu, 255. Tatekawa assumed the post in August.

  25. Hata, Gun fashizumu, 35–36; Kitaoka, Seitō kara gunbu e, 221–222; Tobe, Gyakusetsu, 255.

  26. Takahashi, Shōwa no gunbatsu, 116; Hata, Gun fashimzumu, 48–49 n 4; Nakano Hideo, Shōwashi no genten [The origins of Shōwa history] 3, Go ichi go jihen, Kisareta shinjitsu [The vanished truth of the May 15 incident] (Kōdansha, 1974), 104.

  27. Ben-Ami Shillony, Revolt in Japan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973), 29.

  28. Troops moved on Harbin on January 27 and captured it in early February 1932. On March 1, the Japanese government announced the creation of the new state of Manchukuo.

  29. Handō, Shōwashi, 92; Donald A. Jordan, China’s Trial by Fire: The Shanghai War of 1932 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001), 11–12. There are doubts about Tanaka’s direct involvement in the attack (the chanting procession took a wrong turn and ended up near the factory), but no doubt that he was an agent provocateur. See Kojima Noboru, Nitchū sensō [The Sino-Japanese war] 2 (Bunshūn bunkō, 1988), 176.

  30. Jordan, China’s Trial, 87.

  31. Kojima Noboru, Nitchū sensō, 221.

  32. Ibid., 252.

  33. A more critical version states an officer threatened to shoot them if they did not advance. Yukan Fuji, August 27, 1970. See also Asahi shimbun, June 13, 2007.

  34. Hillis Lory, Japan’s Military Masters (NewYork:Viking, 1943), 44; Katō Hidetoshi, “Bidan no genkei” [The origins of a legend], in Asahi jyanaru, ed., Shōwashi no shunkan [Dramatic moments in Shōwa history] (jō), Asahi sensho 11 (Asahi shimbunsha, 1974), 128; Japan Weekly Chronicle, March 24, 1932. For an extended analysis of the bakudan sanyūshi, see Yamamuro, Gunshin, 189–260.

  35. Yamamuro, Gunshin, 225–228, 234, 237, 260.

  36. Katō, “Bidan no genkei,” 127; Furikawa Seisuke, ed., Nikudan sanyūshi dōzō kensetsukai hōkoku [Report of the construction committee for the human bullet three brave heroes statue] (privately published, 1936), 8.

  37. Hata, Nihonjin horyu, 33–39.

  38. Terasaki Hidenari and Mariko Terasaki Miller, eds., Shōwa tennō Dokuhakuroku—Terasaki Hidenari goyōgakari nikki [The Shōwa emperor’s soliloquy—unattached court official Terasaki Hidenari’s diary] (Bungei shūnjū, 1991), 28; Kuwada and Maebara, Nihon no sensō, plate 15. Also see Jordan, China’s Trial, 187–190.

  39. Ōuchi, Fashizumu e no dori, 310.

  40. Stephen S. Large, “Nationalist Extremism in Early Shōwa Japan: Inoue Nissho and the ‘Blood-Pledge Corps Incident,’ 1932,” Modern Asian Studies 35:3 (2001), 535, 544; Nakano, Go ichi go jiken, 123–124; Hata, Gun fashizumu, 46–48. The lengthy and sensational Blood Brotherhood trial began in late June 1933 but was prorogued in August by a defense motion to censure the presiding judge. When the court reconvened in late March 1934, Inoue turned it into a political theater that generated enormous public sympathy, including thousands of petitions for clemency on the grounds that the murderers had acted sincerely from noble motives. After a two-and-one-half-year trial, judges sentenced Inoue and his two triggermen to life in prison and other members to various prison terms. All were paroled in a general amnesty of 1940.

  41. Shillony, Revolt in Japan, 36.

  42. Humphreys, Heavenly Sword, 61; Bōeichō, Bōeikenshūjō, senshibu, Daihon’ei rikugunbu, 402; Bōeichō, Bōeikenshūjō, senshibu, Senshi sōsho [Official military history] vol. 27, Kantōgun (1) [The Kwantung Army, part 1] (Asagumo shimbunsha, 1969), 145.

  43. Kurono, Teikoku kokubō, 249.

  44. Ibid., 254–255.

  45. Humphreys, Heavenly Sword, 178; Kurono, Horoboshita, 130; Kurono, Teikoku kokubō, 264.

  46. Kurono, Horoboshita, 128.

  47. Shillony, Revolt in Japan, 31–32;Yoshida, Nihon no guntai, 190.

  48. Yoshida, Nihon no guntai, 183–184.

  49. Kurono, Horoboshita, 122–125,
128, 130–134; Kurono, Teikoku kokubō, 251, 262; Obata was promoted to colonel in July 1937 and to major general in April 1932.

  50. Michael Barnhart, Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919–1941 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987), 34–35; Kitaoka, Seitō kara gunbu e, 176. In 1933 Prime Minister Saitō Makoto established the five-ministers conference composed of the premier and foreign, finance, army, and navy ministers to coordinate revisions to Japan’s diplomatic, financial, and defense policies. Kitaoka, Seitō kara gunbu e, 184.

  51. Kurono, Teikoku kokubō, 258–259; Bōeichō, Bōeikenshūjō, senshibu, Daihon’ei rikugunbu, 347–348; Kitaoka, Seitō kara gunbu e, 216.

  52. Tobe, Gyakusetsu, 275–276. First Lt. Kurihara Yasuhide, “Seinen shōkō undō to wa nani ka” [What is the young (army) officers’ movement?], in Takahashi Masae, ed., Gendaishi shiryō [Documents of contemporary history] 5, Kokkashugi undō [The nationalist movement] (Misuzu shobō, 1964), 764–774. Wada Hidekichi, a member of the editorial board of Tokyo’s Jiji newspaper, interviewed Kurihara and Capt. Ōkura Eiichi, an activist stationed outside of Tokyo, for the article. See Wada Hidekichi, “Ni ni roku jihen zenya” [The eve of the 2-26 incident], in Asahi shimbunsha, eds., Kataritsugu Shōwashi [Shōwa history handed down from one generation to the next] 2 (Asahi shimbun, 1976), 10–13.

  53. Shillony, Revolt in Japan, 45–46; Kitaoka, Seitō kara gunbu e, 228–229.

  54. Emperor Hirohito and His Chief Aide-de-Camp: The Honjō Diary, 1933–36, translated by Mikiso Hane (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1982), 151–152, entry for July 16, 1935.

  55. Shillony, Revolt in Japan, 47, 53; Kurihara, “Seinen shōkō undō,” 765; Crowley, Japan’s Quest, 267.

  56. Takahashi Masae, Ni ni roku jiken [The 2-26 incident] (Chūkō shinsho, 1994, rev. ed.), 229–230.

  57. Shillony, Revolt in Japan, 169–170.

  58. Shillony, Revolt in Japan, 169–170, 201; Takahashi, Ni ni roku, 179, 227. Two other rebel officers had previously committed suicide.

  59. Hayashi Shigeru, Nihon no rekishi [A history of Japan] 25, Taiheiyō sensō [The Pacific war] (Chūō kōronsha, 1967), 17; Fujiwara, Gunjishi, 175; Ōe, Tennō no guntai, 211–212.