9 - Imperial Japanese Army Culture, 1918–1945

Summary

By 1918, Japan had achieved lofty goals conceived more than fifty years previously by those known in the West as the oligarchs, and in Japan as genro (elder statesmen). Over the next twenty-five years, these gains were lost as Japan experienced crises at home and launched disastrous military adventures abroad. In Japan, power had long adhered to those close to the emperor, who, himself, seldom ruled and who stood for no particular ideology. Japanese society consisted of many autonomous, competing groups. The father of the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA), Yamagata Aritomo, equipped it with several advantages in this competition, allowing it to eventually seize control of the state. The IJA led the nation into war with Manchuria, then China, and then the Allies. Its organizational culture produced tough, proficient, and courageous soldiers, who won three conventional conflicts. But its culture left it unable to deal with military losses; it was a culture that prized reputation over public honesty, ritualized death and placed its own judgment above question. According to its own creed, the IJA should have “done its utmost to protect the state.” Instead its soldiers are remembered in Japan and much of the world as “beasts.”