Historical background

Summary

In June 1937, Prince Konoe was handed an imperial edict and ordered to form a cabinet. Exactly a month later, the Marco Polo Bridge Incident occurred, engineered by elements of the Japanese army, and it developed into the Sino-Japanese War. More than two years before the German invasion of Poland, Japan was effectively at war. In July 1940, the second Konoe cabinet prepared Japanese invasion plans for South East Asia, a direct response to the German success in Europe. Two months afterwards the Tripartite Pact between Japan, Germany and Italy was concluded. In June 1941 the Japanese army and navy invaded French Indo-China, an action which was fatal for the American–Japanese negotiations in which the second Konoe cabinet was desperately, if incompetently, engaged. It was, however, the Tojo cabinet in October 1941 which determined the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on 8 December 1941 (Japan Time) initiating all-out war against the rest of the world in the Pacific area. Despite the spectacular advance of the Japanese forces south-eastwards into Asia, within six months, in June 1942, Japan lost the Battle of Midway. This was indeed, in military and in economic terms, the crucial turning point of the Pacific War. In spite of her achievement, Japan was never in a position to win this war. As early as 1942 Japanese industrial production was in the doldrums and her economic resources were, despite the National General Mobilisation policies, exhausted. Japanese banking, well integrated into the national economy, was in the same boat which ultimately sank in August 1945.