In
Japanese military history
The military history of Japan covers a vast time-period of over three millennia - from the Jōmon ( 1000 BC) to the present day. After a long period of clan warfare until the 12th century, there followed feudal wars that culminated in milita ...
, the modernization of the Japanese army and navy during the
Meiji period
The is an era of Japanese history that extended from October 23, 1868 to July 30, 1912.
The Meiji era was the first half of the Empire of Japan, when the Japanese people moved from being an isolated feudal society at risk of colonization ...
(1868–1912) and until the
Mukden Incident
The Mukden Incident, or Manchurian Incident, known in Chinese as the 9.18 Incident (九・一八), was a false flag event staged by Japanese military personnel as a pretext for the 1931 Japanese invasion of Manchuria.
On September 18, 1931, L ...
(1931) was carried out by the newly founded
national government, a military leadership that was only responsible to the
Emperor
An emperor (from la, imperator, via fro, empereor) is a monarch, and usually the sovereignty, sovereign ruler of an empire or another type of imperial realm. Empress, the female equivalent, may indicate an emperor's wife (empress consort), ...
, and with the help of
France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...
,
Britain
Britain most often refers to:
* The United Kingdom, a sovereign state in Europe comprising the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland and many smaller islands
* Great Britain, the largest island in the United King ...
, and later
Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
.
Meiji reforms
![Franco-JapaneseInfantryTraining](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/01/Franco-JapaneseInfantryTraining.jpg)
When Western powers began to use their superior military strength to press Japan for trade relations in the 1850s, the country's decentralized and antiquated military forces were unable to provide an effective defense against their advances.
The fall of the
Tokugawa shogunate
The Tokugawa shogunate (, Japanese 徳川幕府 ''Tokugawa bakufu''), also known as the , was the military government of Japan during the Edo period from 1603 to 1868. Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005)"''Tokugawa-jidai''"in ''Japan Encyclopedia ...
in 1867 led to the restoration of the
Meiji Emperor
, also called or , was the 122nd emperor of Japan according to the traditional order of succession. Reigning from 13 February 1867 to his death, he was the first monarch of the Empire of Japan and presided over the Meiji era. He was the figure ...
and a remarkable period of national growth. De facto political and administrative power shifted to a group of younger
samurai
were the hereditary military nobility and officer caste of medieval and early-modern Japan from the late 12th century until their abolition in 1876. They were the well-paid retainers of the '' daimyo'' (the great feudal landholders). They h ...
who had been instrumental in forming the new system and were committed to modernizing the military. They introduced drastic changes, which cleared the way for the development of modern, European-style armed forces.
![MikadoWithFrenchMission](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6a/MikadoWithFrenchMission.jpg)
In an attempt to increase the number of soldiers the use of
conscription
Conscription (also called the draft in the United States) is the state-mandated enlistment of people in a national service, mainly a military service. Conscription dates back to antiquity and it continues in some countries to the present day un ...
became universal and obligatory in 1872 and, although samurai wedded to their traditional prerogatives resisted, by 1880 a conscript army was firmly established. The
Imperial Army General Staff Office
The , also called the Army General Staff, was one of the two principal agencies charged with overseeing the Imperial Japanese Army.
Role
The was created in April 1872, along with the Navy Ministry, to replace the Ministry of Military Affairs ...
, created after the Prussian model of the
Generalstab
The German General Staff, originally the Prussian General Staff and officially the Great General Staff (german: Großer Generalstab), was a full-time body at the head of the Prussian Army and later, the Imperial German Army, German Army, respons ...
, was established directly under the emperor in 1878 and was given broad powers for military planning and strategy. The new force eventually made the samurai spirit its own. Loyalties formerly accorded to feudal lords were transferred to the state and the emperor. Upon release from service, soldiers carried these ideals back to their home communities, extending military-derived standards to all classes.
Japan was dedicated to creating a unified, modern nation by the late nineteenth–century. Among their goals were to instill respect for the emperor, the requiring of universal education throughout the Japanese nation, and lastly the privilege and importance of military service. The Conscription Law established on January 10, 1873, made military service mandatory for all men in their twenties to enlist. "In 1873, no one could predict with certainty whether these quarrels would end peacefully or through military action, nor was it clear which individuals or groups would come out on top in the expected power struggle." This legislation was the most significant military reform of the Meiji era. The samurai class no longer held a monopoly on military power; their benefits and status were stripped from them after the Meiji Restoration. The dissolution of the samurai class would create a modern army of men of equal status. However, many of the samurai were unhappy with reforms and openly shared their concerns.
The conscription law was a way of social control: placing the unruly samurai class back into their roles as warriors. The Japanese government intended that conscription would build a modern army capable of standing against the armies of Europe. However, the Meiji Restoration initially caused dissent among the dissolved samurai class, but the conscription system was a way of stabilizing that dissent. Some of the samurai, more disgruntled than the others, formed pockets of resistance to circumvent the mandatory military service. Many committed self-mutilation or openly rebelled (
Satsuma Rebellion
The Satsuma Rebellion, also known as the was a revolt of disaffected samurai against the new imperial government, nine years into the Meiji Era. Its name comes from the Satsuma Domain, which had been influential in the Restoration and beca ...
). They expressed their displeasure, because rejecting Western culture "became a way of demonstrating one's commitment" to the ways of the earlier Tokugawa era.
The law also allowed the military to educate the enlisted. With the swing towards urbanization, the government was concerned about the population’s education lagging behind: Most commoners were illiterate and unknowing. The military provided "fresh opportunities for education" and career advancement. The "raw recruits would, especially in the first years of conscription, learn how to read". The government realized that an educated soldier could become a productive member of society; education was for the betterment of the state.
For men to serve in the army, they were required to submit to a medical examination. This conscription exam measured height, weight and included an inspection of the candidate's genitals. Those unable to pass the exam, the "congenitally weak, inveterately diseased, or deformed", were sent back to their families. The exam "divided the citizenry into those who were fit for duty and those who were not". There was no material penalty for failing the exam, but those who were unable to serve could be marginalized by society.
An
imperial rescript
In legal terminology, a rescript is a document that is issued not on the initiative of the author, but in response (it literally means 'written back') to a specific demand made by its addressee. It does not apply to more general legislation.
Over ...
of 1882 called for unquestioning loyalty to the emperor by the new armed forces and asserted that commands from superior officers were equivalent to commands from the emperor. Thenceforth, the military existed in an intimate and privileged relationship with the imperial institution. Top-ranking military leaders were given direct access to the emperor and the authority to transmit his pronouncements directly to the troops. The sympathetic relationship between conscripts and officers, particularly junior officers who were drawn mostly from the peasantry, tended to draw the military closer to the people. In time, most people came to look more for guidance in national matters to military commanders than to political leaders.
The main concern of Japanese military modernization in the early 1900s focused on adopting the weaponry of the Western world. To do so Japan had to create a system where they could manufacture the technology themselves. This would cause the industrialization of Japan, called for by the leaders of the island country. Another strategy that Japan used to advance their position in the world would be to ally with European nations. Japan saw itself vulnerable to European powers, thus the country decided to ally with Great Britain in 1902. The alliance, named the
Anglo-Japanese alliance
The first was an alliance between Britain and Japan, signed in January 1902. The alliance was signed in London at Lansdowne House on 30 January 1902 by Lord Lansdowne, British Foreign Secretary, and Hayashi Tadasu, Japanese diplomat. A dip ...
, called for both nations to come to each others aid if a war with more than two additional nations broke out.
Wars and other conflicts
The first overseas test of the nation's new military capabilities was the
Taiwan Expedition of 1874
The Japanese punitive expedition to Taiwan in 1874, referred to in Japan as the and in Taiwan and Mainland China as the Mudan incident (), was a punitive expedition launched by the Japanese in retaliation for the murder of 54 Ryukyuan sailo ...
, which was in retaliation for the
1871 murder of shipwrecked Ryūkyūan sailors. It was followed by a series of victorious military ventures until
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
. Japan moved against Korea and China (
First Sino-Japanese War
The First Sino-Japanese War (25 July 1894 – 17 April 1895) was a conflict between China and Japan primarily over influence in Korea. After more than six months of unbroken successes by Japanese land and naval forces and the loss of the po ...
), and Russia (
Russo-Japanese War
The Russo-Japanese War ( ja, 日露戦争, Nichiro sensō, Japanese-Russian War; russian: Ру́сско-япóнская войнá, Rússko-yapónskaya voyná) was fought between the Empire of Japan and the Russian Empire during 1904 and 1 ...
) to secure the raw materials and strategic territories it believed necessary for the development and protection of the homeland. Territorial gains were achieved in Korea, the southern half of
Sakhalin
Sakhalin ( rus, Сахали́н, r=Sakhalín, p=səxɐˈlʲin; ja, 樺太 ''Karafuto''; zh, c=, p=Kùyèdǎo, s=库页岛, t=庫頁島; Manchu: ᠰᠠᡥᠠᠯᡳᠶᠠᠨ, ''Sahaliyan''; Orok: Бугата на̄, ''Bugata nā''; Nivkh: ...
("Karafuto" in Japanese), and
Manchuria
Manchuria is an exonym (derived from the endo demonym " Manchu") for a historical and geographic region in Northeast Asia encompassing the entirety of present-day Northeast China (Inner Manchuria) and parts of the Russian Far East (Outer Manc ...
. As an
ally of Britain in
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
, Japan assumed control over Germany's possessions in Asia in the
Treaty of Versailles
The Treaty of Versailles (french: Traité de Versailles; german: Versailler Vertrag, ) was the most important of the peace treaties of World War I. It ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. It was signed on 28 June ...
, notably in China's
Shandong
Shandong ( , ; ; alternately romanized as Shantung) is a coastal province of the People's Republic of China and is part of the East China region.
Shandong has played a major role in Chinese history since the beginning of Chinese civilizati ...
Province, and the German-controlled Mariana, Caroline, and
Marshall islands
The Marshall Islands ( mh, Ṃajeḷ), officially the Republic of the Marshall Islands ( mh, Aolepān Aorōkin Ṃajeḷ),'' () is an independent island country and microstate near the Equator in the Pacific Ocean, slightly west of the Internati ...
in the Pacific Ocean.
During the
Boxer Rebellion
The Boxer Rebellion, also known as the Boxer Uprising, the Boxer Insurrection, or the Yihetuan Movement, was an anti-foreign, anti-colonial, and anti-Christian uprising in China between 1899 and 1901, towards the end of the Qing dynasty, by ...
(1899-1901) in China, the Japanese contingent was the largest among the
Eight-Nation Alliance
The Eight-Nation Alliance was a multinational military coalition that invaded northern China in 1900 with the stated aim of relieving the foreign legations in Beijing, then besieged by the popular Boxer militia, who were determined to remove fo ...
. The
Russian Civil War
, date = October Revolution, 7 November 1917 – Yakut revolt, 16 June 1923{{Efn, The main phase ended on 25 October 1922. Revolt against the Bolsheviks continued Basmachi movement, in Central Asia and Tungus Republic, the Far East th ...
led to
Japanese intervention in Siberia
The of 1918–1922 was the dispatch of Japanese military forces to the Russian Maritime Provinces as part of a larger effort by western powers and Japan to support White Russian forces against the Bolshevik Red Army during the Russian Civil ...
to prop up the
White Guard.
The
Naval General Staff, independent from the supreme command from 1893, became even more powerful after World War I. At the 1921–22
Washington Naval Conference
The Washington Naval Conference was a disarmament conference called by the United States and held in Washington, DC from November 12, 1921 to February 6, 1922. It was conducted outside the auspices of the League of Nations. It was attended by nine ...
, the major powers signed the Five Power Naval Disarmament Treaty, which set the international capital ship ratio for the United States, Britain, Japan, France, and Italy at 5, 5, 3, 1.75, and 1.75, respectively. The Imperial Navy insisted that it required a ratio of seven ships for every eight United States naval ships but settled for three to five, a ratio acceptable to the Japanese public.
The
London Naval Treaty
The London Naval Treaty, officially the Treaty for the Limitation and Reduction of Naval Armament, was an agreement between the United Kingdom, Japan, France, Italy, and the United States that was signed on 22 April 1930. Seeking to address is ...
of 1930 brought about further reductions but, by the end of 1935, Japan had entered a period of unlimited military expansion and ignored its previous commitments. By the late 1930s, the proportion of Japanese to United States naval forces was 70.6 percent in total tonnage and 94 percent in aircraft carriers, and Japanese ships slightly outnumbered those of the United States. They also had many people fight for their country.
References
*
Japan
{{DEFAULTSORT:Modernization of Japanese Military 1868-1931
Military of the Empire of Japan