The one possible weak point which existed in the military structure of authority was the division of responsibility among a large number of military offices. In this respect Japanese organization resembled pre-World War I German organization. The army was headed by the “Big Three”: the Minister of War, the Chief of the Army General Staff, and the Inspector General of Military Training. Naval organization culminated in the minister and the Chief of the Naval Staff. In addition, there was the Board of Field Marshals and Fleet Admirals created in 1898 which, however, was primarily an honorific body. More significant was the Supreme Military Council made up of all the leading generals and admirals and responsible for broad military policy. During war an Imperial Headquarters came into existence drawn from the army and navy staffs. The potential rivalry of these various organizations was curbed by the mutual feeling that they could all increase their power by working together. In 1931, for instance, when the political parties were increasing in importance, the Big Three of the army reached an understanding that all significant personnel appointments would only be made with their mutual concurrence. Subsequently, the War Minister became more powerful and, in 1935, asserted his authority over the Inspector General of Military Training. The understanding of 1931 was abrogated, and the minister assumed full authority with respect to appointments. The Minister of War thus tended to become first among equals. Either cooperation among the military authorities, or the subordination of one to another, prevented civilians from benefiting by the profusion of military offices.40
While, theoretically, the two Japanese governments functioned in entirely separate spheres, in practice the civilians remained excluded from military affairs while the military played an active role in civilian affairs. Both the authority and the influence of the military extended into foreign and domestic policy. One Minister of War stated that, “While the generally accepted limits of the deliberations of the Supreme Military Council are matters of policy pertaining to national defence, there are in fact no limitations or qualifications to the scope of its deliberations.”41 Dual government inevitably produced dual diplomacy. The actions taken by military commanders to safeguard their forces and meet the requirements of the situation in the field were not subject to control by the cabinet. In the Manchurian crisis of 1931, for example, the military commanders in the field, supported by the military leadership in Tokyo, pursued an independent line which frustrated the Foreign Minister’s efforts to limit the effects of the September 18th incident. The military ordered Japanese forces in Korea across the border into Manchuria despite the opposition of the foreign office and the cabinet. A few weeks later the Foreign Minister assured the United States that the Japanese would not attack the border town of Chinchow, but the army went right ahead and occupied it anyway. One general expressed the military view with respect to Manchuria when he wrote that “it would be very dangerous to have trusted our national diplomacy to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which is incapable of visualizing our national destinies . . . only the army is able to conduct a national policy.”42
The military not only tended to pursue their own foreign policy, but also had no hesitations in pushing the adoption of a definite domestic economic program. General Araki once said, “The army should be prepared not only for military action but for solving economic, social and cultural problems, pursuing in foreign policy an independent line founded on firm, sound and just premises.”43 The war ministry during the 1930’s evolved an entire economic philosophy of “Imperial Socialism” which more or less amounted to a military welfare state. The principal opposition to the military in domestic politics normally came from the upper bourgeoisie, and the military economic program was anti-capitalist in spirit. It opposed free enterprise, and favored rigid state controls over the economy, expanded social security and unemployment insurance programs, and revision of the tax system to prevent the accumulation of great concentrations of wealth. Many of the economic ideas of the military found their way into the National Mobilization Law passed in 1938.
MILITARY POLITICAL INFLUENCE. The political influence of the military in Japanese society remained constantly high throughout this period. Its only lapse occurred during the years from 1922 to 1931 when there seemed to be little likelihood of war and Japan had its only real experiences with responsible party government. This low point in military influence also reflected a shift in the foundation of military power from clan support to more widely based popular support. The political influence of the military in Japan had five key elements.
First, there was the affiliation of the military with the powerful western clans of Japan, the Choshu and the Satsuma. These clans had provided most of the leadership for the Restoration of 1868. In the years after the Restoration the Choshu dominated the army and the Satsuma the navy. Down to 1922 virtually all the high officers of the services were drawn from one or the other of these two clans. Since the rivalry between the two pervaded the government generally, this tended to draw the military into politics, but it also afforded each service a secure basis of political support and leadership. In 1909, for instance, the Choshu clan included Marshal Yamagata, the most influential elder statesman in the government, the Prime Minister, the Minister of War and the Chief of the Army Staff. Virtually all the leading admirals (except for the Navy Minister) and a number of generals, on the other hand, were members of the Satsuma clan. The affiliations of the services with these samurai groups began to diminish about the time of the First World War. Choshu influence was greatly weakened by the death of Yamagata in 1922. It became physically impossible for the clans to maintain their monopoly in the officer corps. Representatives of lesser clans and of the bourgeoisie began to find their way into the military hierarchy. By the end of the 1920’s the officer corps was drawing its recruits predominantly from the lower middle class: the small landowners, shopkeepers, small factory owners, and the like. This broadening of the base of the officer corps was in many respects similar to the gradual weakening of the affiliations of the German military with the Junker aristocracy. It tended to shift the primary reliance of the military for support from a concentrated social-geographic group to society at large.
A second element in the political influence of the Japanese military was almost entirely missing in the case of Germany. This was the phenomenon of military men holding important nonmilitary posts in government. In Germany the political soldier such as Caprivi and Schleicher was the exception; in Japan the soldier-statesman was the rule, the combination of military and nonmilitary functions in the same person being a continuation of the feudal tradition. In the early days of the Restoration military leaders played an important role in codifying laws, establishing an education system, organizing the national bureaucracy, and carrying out many other reforms. In the following years it became the accepted thing for military men to hold top posts in the government. Their influence was felt in the cabinet, the Privy Council, and the Imperial Household.
From the inauguration of cabinet government in December 1885 to the surrender in August 1945, Japan had thirty premiers heading forty-two cabinets. Fifteen of the premiers were generals or admirals and they led nineteen governments. Three Choshu generals, Yamagata, Katsura, and Terauchi, occupied the premiership for more than half of the thirty years from 1889 to 1918. Military participation in civil government declined during the years of party dominance in the 1920’s. But even then Admirals Kato and Yamamoto were premiers in 1923 and 1924, and General Tanaka from 1927 to 1929. After the Manchurian incident military influence was again in the ascendant. Admirals Saito and Okado held the premiership from May 1932 to February 1936, and, from that date to the surrender in August 1945, Japan had nine premiers, four of whom were generals and two admirals. The longest occupant of the office was General Tojo who was in from October 1941 to July 1944. Whether or not the cabinets were headed by military men, officers frequently occupied nonmilitary posts. The military held five of the ten positions in the Yamagata cabinet of 1898–1900. When he was premier
from 1927 to 1929, General Tanaka also held the position of Foreign Minister. At various times during the 1930’s military men held the posts of Minister of Home Affairs, Foreign Minister, and Minister of Education.
Military influence also was felt in other branches of the government. Marshal Yamagata was president of the Privy Council from 1902 to 1922 and one of the most influential members of the Genro, the body of elder statesmen who advised the Throne. He was regarded “both in politics and in military affairs, as the power behind the throne, the maker or breaker of Cabinets, and the man whose word was law.”44 The Council usually had a promilitary orientation; in 1930, for instance, it blocked for five months ratification of the London Naval Treaty. Traditionally the military were also strong among the advisers to the Emperor in the Imperial Household. In the 1930’s, however, their influence there was weakened by the appointment of a number of more liberally minded statesmen to the court positions.
A third important element in the political power of the military was the support which they received from patriotic, fascist, and militaristic societies. These included small secret societies such as the Black Ocean and Black Dragon groups as well as large mass organizations such as the Ex-Servicemen’s Association, the Patriotic Women’s Society, and the Women’s Society for National Defense. The activities of these and other groups ranged from terrorism to propaganda. Military officers frequently played an important role in organizing, leading, and financing them, and the groups invariably supported military foreign and domestic policies of external expansion and internal reforms and control.
With the decline of clan influence the most significant political support of the military came from the people as a whole. The Army in particular went to great lengths to identify itself with the common man. In the years immediately after the Restoration, military service was required of all able-bodied males and the ranks of the officer corps were open to all on the basis of merit. The Army traditionally followed a highly paternalistic policy toward those serving in its ranks and promoted many schemes for improving the welfare of the Japanese masses. Both major political parties before World War II were closely tied in with the interests of big business. The Army frequently attacked this “corrupt” alliance of politicians, industrialists, and bankers, and endeavored to identify itself as standing for impartial, efficient, honest administration of national affairs in the interests of the nation as a whole. It became the embodiment of the national interests and national ideals. While the popular support of the Army waned in the 1920’s, the military never lost their fundamental appeal to the average man of Japan.
A fifth and final aspect of military political influence was the reversion in 1931 to terroristic methods of government in Japan. In effect, this involved the superimposing of an extralegal system of violence upon the formal system of constitutional government. Political leaders who opposed military demands ran the risk of assassination. Premier Hamaguchi who put through the London Naval Treaty was attacked in November 1930 and died of his wounds. His successor, Inukai, was murdered in the military uprising of May 15, 1932. The most elaborate plot was that of February 26, 1936 in which the Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal, the Inspector General of Military Education, and the Finance Minister were assassinated and most of the other high governmental officials barely escaped with their lives. The perpetrators of these assassinations were young officers and cadets who felt that the government was not taking strong enough measures to put through the military program at home and abroad. While the relation between these extremist younger officers and the top military leaders was by no means clear, every outbreak of violence clearly redounded to the benefit of the latter. Each of the major assaults was followed by a substantial increase in military influence and concessions to military demands. After the February 26th incident, the military virtually dictated the composition of the new cabinet and secured a repeal of the 1912 ordinance which permitted reserve officers to become service ministers. The undercover threat of violence was a key component of military political influence. The German officers were psychologically incapable of carrying out even one assassination successfully; their Japanese counterparts suffered from no such inhibitions nor lack of skills.
THE FUTURE OF JAPANESE CIVIL-MILITARY RELATIONS. The pattern of sustained military involvement in politics ended with the destruction of the Japanese officer corps in 1945. The slate was wiped clean, and for eight years after her defeat the only civil-military relations in Japan was between the American occupation authorities and the Japanese civilian institutions. Immediately after Japan regained sovereignty, she still had no armed forces to speak of, and, consequently, no real civil-military relations. This situation could not continue indefinitely. Starting with a tabula rasa, Japan, in a sense, possesses an unusual freedom in creating new military institutions. An awareness among Japanese leaders of the political character of the old officer corps and its disastrous consequences could lead to an insistence upon the absolute abstention of the new one from politics. On the other hand, the contemporary ideology of Japan is strongly pacifist. Although vastly different from the prewar bellicose nationalism, it is equally hostile to military professionalism. In addition, the absence of a professional military tradition and the influence of American ideas and practices are likely to complicate further the achievement of objective civilian control. The odds would appear to favor the emergence in Japan of a system of civil-military relations differing in appearance but not in essentials from that which prevailed prior to 1945.
* A brilliant restatement of the military ethic was made by General Ludwig Beck, Chief of the General Staff, in a speech at the reopening of the War Academy in October 1935. Beck’s theme was Moltke’s dictum that “Genius is work” and he vigorously attacked “sudden inspirations” and “wishful thinking.” The speech did not make him any friends among the Nazis.
* “From a military standpoint the Japanese mind may be described as being subjective rather than objective. In peacetime, an American writer can impassionately discuss a war in the Pacific just as a British student can compose a disquisition upon command of the Mediterranean; and either can discuss at length imaginary campaigns wherein France is opposed to Italy or Germany to Russia. The Japanese, on the contrary, lack interest in waters which do not directly concern them. Whereas the western student will proceed along purely academic lines, concentrating upon the naval factors alone, the Japanese find difficulty in eliminating the national-political approach. As a rule they have been unable to discuss Guam without stating or implying that it was a threat to their country which must be removed.” Alexander Kiralfy, “Japanese Naval Strategy,” in Edward Mead Earle (ed.), Makers of Modern Strategy (Princeton, 1952), p. 459.
* In 1912, when the cabinet of Prince Saionji rejected a demand for an increase in army strength, the War Minister resigned and the cabinet fell. In 1914, Viscount Kiyoura attempted to form a cabinet but no admiral would serve as Navy Minister and he had to give up his efforts. In 1936, when Hirota formed a cabinet, the army vetoed his proposed appointments to the foreign office, the colonial office, and the justice ministry, and forced the selection of men more in accord with its views. A year later the army broke with Hirota, the war minister resigned, and the cabinet fell. A liberal officer, General Ugaki, was called upon to become premier. The dominant forces in the army, however, had old scores to settle with Ugaki and defeated him by refusing to permit any generals to join the cabinet. The army was more lenient with General Hayashi, who succeeded where Ugaki failed, but the army dictated his choice of War Minister and his cabinet program. In 1940 the downfall of the Yonai cabinet was precipitated by the resignation of the army representative, and Yonai was replaced by Konoye who adopted the army program almost completely. See Chitoshi Yanaga “The Military and the Government in Japan,” Amer. Pol. Sci. Rev., XXXV (June 1941), 535–539; Hillis Lory, Japan’s Military Masters (New York, 1943), ch. 5; Hugh Borton, Japan Since 1931 (New York, 1940), pp. 45–55.
PART II
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p; MILITARY POWER IN AMERICA: THE HISTORICAL EXPERIENCE, 1789–1940
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The Ideological Constant: The Liberal Society versus Military Professionalism
THE HISTORICAL CONSTANTS OF AMERICAN CIVIL-MILITARY RELATIONS
Liberalism has always been the dominant ideology in the United States. The American Constitution, on the other hand, is fundamentally conservative, the product of men who feared concentrated political power and who provided for the widespread dispersion of that power among numerous governmental units. Yet, the outstanding historical fact of American civil-military relations has been the extent to which liberal ideology and conservative Constitution combined to dictate an inverse relation between political power and military professionalism. From the birth of the Republic through the Second World War liberalism and the Constitution were the relatively unchanging environmental constants of American civil-military relations. Together, they delayed the professionalization of officership in America until it had almost been completed in Europe. Together, they made objective civilian control depend upon the virtually total exclusion of the military from political power.
The Soldier and the State Page 17