Naval history of Japan
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The naval history of Japan traces back to early interactions with states on the Asian continent at the beginning of the medieval period, and reached a peak of activity during the 16th and 17th century at a time of cultural exchange with European powers during the Nanban trade period. After two centuries of stagnation during the country's ensuing seclusion policy under the shoguns of the Edo period, Japan's navy was technologically inferior compared to Western navies when the country was forced open to trade by American intervention in 1854. This and other events eventually led to the Meiji Restoration, a period of frantic modernization and industrialization accompanied by the re-ascendence of the emperor, making the IJN the third largest navy in the world by 1920, and perhaps the most modern at the brink of World War II.
The Imperial Japanese Navy's history of successes, sometimes against much more powerful foes as in the 1895 Sino-Japanese war and the 1905 Russo-Japanese War, ended with almost complete annhiliation in 1945 against the United States Navy, and official dissolution at the end of the conflict. Japan's current navy falls under the umbrella of the Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) as the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF). It still one of the first navies in the world in term of budget, although it is denied any offensive role.
Prehistory
Japan seems to have been connected to the Asian landmass during the last Ice Age until around 20,000 BCE, both because of glaciation of sea water and the concommitent lowering of sea level by about 80 to 100 meters. This allowed for the transmission of fauna and flaura, including the establishment of the Jomon culture. After that period however, Japan became an isolated island territory, depending entirely on sporadic naval activity for its interactions with the mainland. The shortest seapath to the mainland (besides the inhospitable northern path from Hokkaido to Sakhalin) then involved two streches of open water about 50 kilometers wide, between Korea and the island of Tsushima, and then from Tsushima to the major island of Kyushu.
Various influences have also been suggested from the direction of the Pacific Ocean, as various cultural and even genetic traits seem to point to partial Pacific origins, possibly in relation with the Austronesian expansion.
Early historical period
Ambassadorial visits to Japan by the later Northern Chinese dynasties Wei and Jin (Encounters of the Eastern Barbarians, Wei Chronicles) recorded that some Japanese people claimed to be descendants of Taibo of Wu, refugees after the fall of the Wu state in the 5th century BCE. History books do have records of Wu Taibo sending 4000 males and 4000 females to Japan [2].
Yayoi Period
The first major naval contacts start with the Yayoi period in the 3rd century BCE, when rice-farming and metallurgy were introduced, probably through Korea, from the continent.
The invasion of Silla(新羅, Shiragi in Japanese), one of Three Kingdoms of Korea 14 CE is the earliest Japanese military action recorded in Samguk Sagi. According to Samguk Sagi, Wa sent hundred ships and sacked the coastal area of Shiragi. The Japanese were driven off by the Korean army.
Yamato Period
During the Yamato period, Japan had intense naval interaction with the Asian continent, involving transportation of troops between Korea and Japan, starting at least with the beginning of the Kofun period in the 3rd century. Traditionnaly, the princess Jingu is said to have invaded Korea during the 3rd century CE, although historians do not agree on the authenticity of the story. It has been suggested that, on the contrary, Korean invasions from the continent may have occurred at that time, especially against the Japanese statelets in Kyushu. The Battle of Baekgang (白村江, "Battle of Hakusukinoe" in Japanese) occurred in Korea in 663. Japan sent 32,000 troops and possibly as much as 1,000 ships to Korea to support the declining Baekje kingdom (百済國). They were defeated by the combined armies of the Tang Dynasty of China and Silla Dynasty of Korea.
Medieval period
Naval battles of a very large scale, fought between Japanese clans and involving more than 1000 warships, are recorded from the 12th century. The decisive battle of the Genpei War was the 1185 naval engagement of Dan-no-ura between the fleets of the Minamoto and Taira clans. These battles consisted first of long-range archery exchanges, then gaving way to hand-to-hand combat with swords and daggers.
Mongol invasions (1274–1281)
The first major references to Japanese naval actions against other Asian powers occur in the accounts of the Mongol invasions of Japan by Kubilai Khan in 1281. Japan had no navy which could seriously challenge the Mongol navy, so most of the action took place on Japanese land. But groups of samurai, transported on small coastal boats, are recorded to have boarded, taken over and burned several ships of the Mongol navy.
Wakou piracy (13th–16th century)
During the following centuries, Japanese "Wakou" pirates became very active plundering the coast of the Chinese Empire. The first raid by Wokou on record occurred in the summer of 1223, on the south coast of Goryeo. At the peak of Wakou activity, circa 1350, fleets of 300 to 500 ships, transporting several hundred horsemen and several thousand soldiers, would raid the coast of China[3]. For the next half-century, sailing principally from Iki and Tsushima, they engulfed the southern half of Goryeo. The worst period was the decade between 1376 and 1385, when no fewer than 174 instances of pirate raids were recorded in Korea. Wakou activity would only end in the 1580s with its interdiction by Toyotomi Hideyoshi.
Official trading missions, such as the Tenryujibune, were also sent to China around 1341.
Warring States period (15th–16th century)
Japan undertook major naval building efforts in the 16th century, during the Warring States period, when feudal rulers vying for supremacy built vast coastal navies of several hundred ships. The largest of these ships were called atakebune. Around that time, Japan seems to have developed one of the first ironclad warships in history, when Oda Nobunaga, a Japanese daimyo, had six iron-covered oatakebune ("great atakebune") made in 1576 [4]. These ships were called tekkousen (鉄甲船), literally "iron armored ships" and were armed with multiple cannons and large caliber rifles to defeat the large, but all wooden, vessels of the enemy. With these ships, Nobunaga defeated the Mori navy at the mouth of the Kizu River, near Osaka in 1578, and began a successful naval blockade. The Oatakebune are regarded as floating fortresses rather than true warships, however, and were only used in coastal actions.
European contacts
Main article: Nanban trade period
The first Europeans reached Japan in 1543 on Chinese junks, and Portuguese ships started to arrive in Japan soon after. At that time, there was already trade exchanges between Portugal and Goa (since around 1515), consisting in 3 to 4 carracks leaving Lisbon with silver to purchase cotton and spices in India. Out of these, only one carrack went on to China in order to purchase silk, also in exchange for Portuguese silver. Accordingly, the cargo of the first Portuguese ships (usually about 4 smaller-sized ships every year) arriving in Japan almost entirely consisted of Chinese goods (silk, porcelain). The Japanese were very much looking forward to acquiring such goods, but had been prohited from any contacts with by the Emperor of China, as a punishment for Wakō pirate raids. The Portuguese (who were called Nanban, lit. Southern Barbarians) therefore found the opportunity to act as intermediaries in Asian trade.
From the time of the acquisition of Macao in 1557, and their formal recognition as trade partners by the Chinese, the Portuguese Crown started to regulate trade to Japan, by selling to the highest bidder the annual "Capitaincy" to Japan, in effect confering exclusive trading rights for a single carrack bound for Japan every year. The carracks were very large ships, usually between 1000 and 1500 tons, about double or triple the size of a large galleon or junk.
That trade continued with few interruptions until 1638, when it was prohibited on the ground that the ships were smuggling priests into Japan.
Portuguese trade was progressively more and more challenged by Chinese smugglers on junks, Japanese Red Seal Ships from around 1592 (about ten ships every year), Spanish ships from Manila from around 1600 (about one ship a year), the Dutch from 1609, the English from 1613 (about one ship per year). Some Japanese are known to have travelled abroad on foreign ships as well, such as Christopher and Cosmas who crossed the Pacific on a Spanish galleon as early as 1587, and then sailed to Europe with Thomas Cavendish.
The Dutch, who, rather than Nanban were called Kōmō (紅毛), lit. "Red Hair" by the Japanese, first arrived in Japan in 1600, onbard the Liefde. Their pilot was William Adams , the first Englishman to reach Japan. In 1605, two of the Liefde's crew were sent to Pattani by Tokugawa Ieyasu, to invite Dutch trade to Japan. The head of the Pattani Dutch trading post, Victor Sprinckel, refused on the ground that he was too busy dealing with Portuguese opposition in Southeast Asia. In 1609 however, the Dutch Jacques Specx arrived with two ships in Hirado, and through Adams obtained trading privileges from Ieyasu.
The Dutch also engaged in piracy and naval combat to weaken Portuguese and Spanish shipping in the Pacific, and ultimately became the only westerners to be allowed access to Japan from the small enclave of Dejima after 1638 and for the next two centuries.
Invasion of Korea and the Ryukyus
In 1592 and again in 1598, Japan invaded Korea with an army of 160,000, in the Seven-Year War. Japan had several victories on land, completing the occupation of the Korean peninsula, until the Chinese Ming army intervened and counter-attacked in concert with Korean forces. Japan's navy suffered several major setbacks against the Korean navy, led by Admiral Yi Sunsin, particularly at the Battle of Myeongnyang. The Korean navy also featured ironclad Turtle Ships, which played an instrumental role in later battles. Japan's failure at sea, and the difficulty in resupplying troops on land, were one of the major reasons for the invasion's ultimate failure, together with the death of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the main proponent of the invasion. From 1592, the supreme commander of Hideyoshi's fleet was Kuki Yoshitaka, whose flagship was the 33 meter flagship Nihonmaru.
In 1609, the lord Shimazu Tadatsune of Satsuma invaded the southern islands of Ryukyu (modern Okinawa) with a fleet of 13 junks and 2,500 samurai, thereby establishing suzerainty over the islands.
Oceanic trade (16th–17th century)
Japan built her first large ocean-going warships in the beginning of the 17th century, following contacts with the Western nations during the Nanban trade period. In 1604, the Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu ordered William Adams and his companions to build Japan's first western-style sailing ship at Ito, on the east coast of the Izu Peninsula. An 80-ton vessel was completed and the Shogun ordered a larger ship, 120 tons, to be built the following year (both were slightly smaller than the Liefde, the ship in which William Adams came to Japan, which was 150 tons). According to Adams, Ieyasu "came aboard to see it, and the sight whereof gave him great content". The ship, named San Buena Ventura, was lent to shipwrecked Spanish sailors for their return to Mexico in 1610.
In 1613, the Daimyo of Sendai, in agreement with the Tokugawa Bakufu, built Date Maru, a 500 ton galleon-type ship that transported a Japanese embassy to the Americas, and then continued to Europe.
From 1604, about 350 Red seal ships, usually armed and incorporating some Western technologies, were also commissionned by the Bakufu, mainly for Southeast Asian trade. Japanese ships and samurai helped in the defense of Malacca on the side of the Portuguese against the Dutch Admiral Cornelis Matelief in 1606. Several armed ships of the Japanese adventurer Yamada Nagamasa would play a military role in Siam (Thailand). The English adventurer William Adams, who participated in the Red Seal ship trade, would comment that "the people of this land (Japan) are very stout seamen".
Invasion project of the Philippines
The Tokugawa shogunate had, for some time, planned to invade the Philippines in order to eradicate Spanish expansionism in Asia, and its support of Christian factions within Japan. In November 1637 it notified Nicolas Couckebacker, the head of the Dutch East India Company in Japan, of its intentions. About 10,000 samurai were prepared for the expedition, and the Dutch agreed to provide four warships and two yachts to support the Japanese junks against Spanish galleons. The plans were cancelled at the last minute with the advent of the Christian Shimabara Rebellion in Japan in December 1637.
Seclusion (1640–1840)
The Dutch's cooperation on these, and other matters, would help ensure they were the only Westerners allowed in Japan for the next two centuries. Following these events, Japan chose the policy of Sakoku (seclusion), which forbid contacts with the West, eradicated Christianity, and prohibited the construction of ocean-going ships on pain of death. The size of ships was restricted by law, and design specifications limiting sea-worthiness (such as the provision for a gaping hole in the aft of the hull) were implemented. Sailors who happened to be stranded to foreign countries were prohibited from returning to Japan on pain of death.
A tiny Dutch delegation in Dejima, Nagasaki was the only allowed contact with the West, from which the Japanese were kept partly informed of western scientific and technological advances, establishing a body of knowledge known as Rangaku.
Many isolated attempts to end Japan's seclusion were made by expanding Western powers during the 19th century. American, Russian and French ships all attempted to engage in relationship with Japan, but were rejected.
- In 1778, a merchant from Yakutsk by the name of Pavel Lebedev-Lastoschkin arrived in Hokkaido with a small expedition. He offered gifts, and politely asked to trade in vain.
- In 1787, La Perouse (1741–1788) navigates in Japanese waters in 1787. He visit the Ryukyu island, and the strait between Hokkaido and Honshu, giving it his name.
- In 1791, two American ships commanded by the American explorer John Kendrick stop for 11 days on Kii Oshima island, south of the Kii Peninsula. He is the first known American to have visited Japan. He apparently planted an American flag and claimed the islands, although accounts of his visit in Japan are inexistant.
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- From 1797 to 1809, several American ships traded in Nagasaki under the Dutch flag, upon the request of the Dutch who were not able to send their own ships because of their conflict against Britain during the Napoleonic Wars[1]:
- In 1797 US Captain William Robert Stewart, commissionned by the Dutch from Batavia, takes the ship Eliza of New York to Nagasaki, Japan, with a cargo of Dutch trade goods.
- In 1803 William Robert Stewart returned onboard a ship named "The Emperor of Japan" (the stollen and renamed "Eliza of New York"), entered Nagasaki harbour and tried in vain to trade through the Dutch enclave of Dejima.
- Another American captain John Derby of Salem, tried in vain to open Japan to the opium trade.
- In 1804 a Russian envoy named Nikolai Rezanov, sailed into Nagasaki, to request trade exchanges. The bakufu refused the request, and the Russian attacked Sakhalin and the Kuril islands during the following three years, prompting the Bakufu to build up defenses in Ezo.
- In 1808, the English warship HMS Phaeton, raiding on Dutch shipping in the Pacific, sailed into Nagasaki under a Dutch flag, demanding and obtaining supplies by force of arms.
- In 1811, the Russian naval lieutenant Vasily Golovnin landed on Kunashiri Island, and was arrested by the Bakufu and emprisonned for 2 years.
In 1825, following a proposal by Takahashi Kageyasu, the Bakufu issued an "Order to Drive Away Foreign Ships" (Ikokusen uchiharairei, also known as the "Ninen nashi", or "No second thought" law), ordering coastal authorities to arrest or kill foreigners coming ashore.
- In 1837, an American businessman in Canton, named Charles W. King saw an opportunity to open trade by trying to return to Japan three Japanese sailors (among them, Otokichi) who had been shipwrecked a few years before on the coast of Oregon. He went to Uraga Channel with Morrison, an unarmed American merchant ship. The ship was fired upon several times, and finally sailed back unsuccessfully.
In 1842, following the news of the defeat of China in the Opium War and internal criticism following the Morisson incident, the Bakufu responded favorably to foreign demands for the right to refuel in Japan by suspending the order to execute foreigners and adopting the "Order for the Provision of Firewood and Water" (Shinsui kyuyorei).
- In 1844, a French naval expedition under Captain Fornier-Duplan visits Okinawa on April 28, 1844. Trade is denied, but Father Forcade is left behind with a translator.
- In 1846, Commander James Biddle, sent by the United States Government to open trade, anchored in Tokyo Bay with two ships, including one warship armed with 72 cannons, but his demands for a trade agreement remained unsuccessful.
- In 1846, the French Admiral Cecille arrives in Nagasaki, but is denied landing.
- In 1848, Captain James Glynn sailed to Nagasaki, leading at last to the first successful negotiation by an American with "Closed Country" Japan. James Glynn recommended to the United States Congress that negotiations to open Japan should be backed up by a demonstration of force, thus paving the way to Perry's expedition.
- In 1849, the British Navy's HMS Mariner entered Uraga Harbour to conduct a topographical survey. Onboard was the Japanese castaway Otokichi, who acted as a translator. To avoid problems with the Japanese authorities, he disguised himself as Chinese, and said that he had learnt Japanese from his father, allegedly a businessman who had worked in relation with Nagasaki.
These largely unsuccesful attempts continued until, on July 8, 1853, Commodore Matthew Perry of the U.S. Navy with four warships: Mississippi,Plymouth, Saratoga, and Susquehanna steamed into the Bay of Edo (Tokyo) and displayed the threatening power of his ships' Paixhans guns. He demanded that Japan open to trade with the West. These ships became known as the kurofune, the Black Ships.
The following year, at the Convention of Kanagawa (March 31, 1854), Perry returned with seven ships and forced the Shogun to sign the "Treaty of Peace and Amity", establishing formal diplomatic relations between Japan and the United States. Within five years Japan had signed similar treaties with other western countries. The Harris Treaty was signed with the United States on July 29, 1858. These treaties were widely regarded by Japanese intellectuals as unequal, having been forced on Japan through gunboat diplomacy, and as a sign of the West's desire to incorporate Japan into the imperialism that had been taking hold of the continent. Among other measures, they gave the Western nations unequivocal control of tariffs on imports and the right of extraterritoriality to all their visiting nationals. They would remain a sticking point in Japan's relations with the West up to the turn of the century.
Modernization: Bakumatsu period (1853-1868)
The study of Western shipbuilding techniques resumed in the 1840s. This process intensified along with the increased activity of Western shipping along the coasts of Japan, due to the China trade and the development of whaling.
From 1852, the government of the Shogun (the Late Tokugawa shogunate or "Bakumatsu") was warned by Holland of the plans of Commodore Perry. Three months after Perry's first visit in 1853, the Bakufu cancelled the law prohibiting the construction of large ships (大船建造禁止令), and started organizing the construction of a fleet of Western-style sail warships, such as the Hou-Ou Maru, the Shouhei Maru or the Asahi Maru, usually asking each fief to build their own modern ships. These ships were built using Dutch sailing manuals, and the know-how of a few returnees from the West, such as Nakahama Manjiro. Also with the help of Nakahama Manjiro, the Satsuma fief built Japan's first steam ship, the Unkoumaru (雲行丸) in 1855 [2]. The Bakufu also established defensive coastal fortifications, such as at Odaiba.
Birth of a modern Navy
As soon as Japan agreed to open up to foreign influence, the Tokugawa shogun government initiated an active policy of assimilation of Western naval technologies. In 1855, with Dutch assistance, the Shogunate acquired its first steam warship, the Kankō Maru, which was used for training, and established the Nagasaki Naval Training Center. In 1857, it acquired its first screw-driven steam warship, the Kanrin Maru. Naval students were sent to study in Western naval schools for several years, such as the future Admiral Enomoto (who studied in the Netherlands from 1862-1867), starting a tradition of foreign-educated future leaders such Admirals Togo and, later, Yamamoto.
In 1863, Japan completed her first domestically-built steam warship, the Chiyodagata, a 140 ton gunboat commissioned into the Tokugawa Navy. The ship was manufactured by the future industrial giant, Ishikawajima, thus initiating Japan's efforts to acquire and fully develop shipbuilding capabilities.
Following the humiliations at the hands of foreign navies in the Bombardment of Kagoshima in 1863, and the Bombardment of Shimonoseki in 1864, the Shogunate stepped up efforts to modernize, relying more and more on French and British assistance. In 1865, the French naval engineer Léonce Verny was hired to build Japan's first modern naval arsenals, at Yokosuka and Nagasaki. More ships were imported, such as the Jho Sho Maru, the Ho Sho Maru and the Kagoshima, all built by Thomas Blake Glover in Aberdeen.
By the end of the Tokugawa shogunate in 1867, the Japanese navy already possessed eight Western-style steam warships around the flagship Kaiyou Maru which were used against pro-imperial forces during the Boshin war, under the command of Admiral Enomoto. The conflict culminated with the Naval Battle of Hakodate in 1869, Japan's first large-scale modern naval battle.
In 1869, Japan acquired its first ocean-going ironclad warship, the Kotetsu, ordered by the Bakufu but received by the new Imperial government, barely ten years after such ships were first introduced in the West with the launch of the French La Gloire.
Meiji restoration and creation of the Imperial Japanese Navy
Main article:Imperial Japanese Navy
The Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) (Japanese: 大日本帝国海軍) was the navy of Japan between 1867 and until 1947, when it was dissolved following Japan's constitutional renouncement of the use of force as a means of settling international disputes.
From 1868, the restored Meiji Emperor continued with reforms to industrialize and militarize Japan in order to prevent it from being overwhelmed by the United States and European powers. The Imperial Japanese Navy was formally established in 1869. The new government drafted a very ambitious plan to create a Navy with 200 ships, organized into 10 fleets, but the plan was abandonned within a year due to lack of ressources. Internally, domestic rebellions, and especially the Satsuma Rebellion (1877) forced the government to focus on land warfare. Naval policy, expressed by the slogan Shusei Kokubou (Jp:守勢国防, lit. "Static Defense"), focused on coastal defenses, a standing army, and a coastal Navy, leading to a military organization under the Rikushu Kaiju (Jp:陸主海従, Army first, Navy second) principle.
During the 1870s and 1880s, the Japanese Navy remained an essentially coastal defense force, although the Meiji government continued to modernize it. In 1870 an Imperial decree determined that the British Navy should be the model for development.
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During the 1880s, France took the lead in influence, due to its "Jeune Ecole" doctrine favoring small, fast warships, especially cruisers and torpedo boats, against bigger units. The Meiji government issued its First Naval Expansion bill in 1882, requiring the construction of 48 warships, of which 22 were to be torpedo boats. The naval successes of the French Navy against China in the Sino-French War of 1883-85 seemed to validate the potential of torpedo boats, an approach which was also attractive to the limited ressources of Japan. In 1885, the new Navy slogan became Kaikoku Nippon (Jp:海国日本, lit. "Maritime Japan").
In 1886, the leading French Navy engineer Emile Bertin was hired for four years to reinforce the Japanese Navy, and to direct the construction of the arsenals of Kure and Sasebo. He developed the Sanseikan class of cruisers, 3 units featuring a single but powerful main gun, the 12.6 inch Canet gun.
This period also allowed Japan to adopt new technologies such as torpedoes, torpedo-boats and mines, which were actively promoted by the French Navy (Howe, p281). Japan acquired its first torpedoes in 1884, and established a "Torpedo Training Center" at Yokosuka in 1886.
Sino-Japanese War
Japan continued the modernization of its navy, especially as China was also building a powerful modern fleet with foreign, especially German, assistance, and the pressure was building between the two countries to take control of Korea. The Sino-Japanese war was officially declared on August 1, 1894, though some naval fighting had already taken place.
The Japanese navy devastated Qing's northern fleet off the mouth of the Yalu River at the Battle of Yalu River on September 17, 1894, in which the Chinese fleet lost 8 out of 12 warships. Although Japan turned out victorious, the two large German-made battleships of the Chinese Navy remained almost impervious to Japanese guns, highlighting the need for bigger capital ships in the Japanese Navy (the Ting Yuan was finally sunk by torpedoes, and the Chen-Yuan was captured with little damage). The next step of the Imperial Japanese Navy's expansion would thus involve a combination of heavily armed large warships, with smaller and innovative offensive units permitting aggressive tactics.
The Imperial Japanese Navy further intervened in China in 1900, by participating together with Western Powers to the suppression of the Chinese Boxer Rebellion. The Navy supplied the largest number of warships (18, out of a total of 50 warships), and delivered the largest contingent of Army and Navy troops among the intervening nations (20,840 soldiers, out of total of 54,000).
Russo-Japanese War
Following the Sino-Japanese War, and the humiliation of the forced return of the Liaotung peninsula to China under Russian pressure (the "Triple Intervention"), Japan began to build up its military strength in preparation for further confrontations. Japan promulgated a ten-year naval build-up program, under the slogan "Perseverance and determination" (Jp:臥薪嘗胆, Gashinshoutan), in which it commissioned 109 warships, for a total of 200,000 tons, and increased its Navy personnel from 15,100 to 40,800.
These dispositions culminated with the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905). At the Battle of Tsushima, the Mikasa led the combined Japanese fleet into what has been called "the most decisive naval battle in history".[5] The Russian fleet was almost completely anihilated: out of 38 Russian ships, 21 were sunk, 7 captured, 6 disarmed, 4,545 Russian servicemen died and 6,106 were taken prisoner. On the other hand, the Japanese only lost 116 men and 3 torpedo boats.
World War II
In the years before WW II the IJN began to structure itself specifically to fight the United States. A long stretch of militaristic expansion and the start of the Second Sino-Japanese war in 1937 had alienated the United States the country was seen as a rival of Japan.
To achieve Japan’s expansionist policies, the Imperial Japanese Navy also had to fight off the largest navies in the world (The 1922 Washington Naval Treaty allotted a 5/5/3 ratio for the navies of Great Britain, the United States and Japan). She was therefore numerically inferior and her industrial base for expansion was limited (in particular compared to the United States). Her battle tactics therefore tended to rely on technical superiority (fewer, but faster, more powerful ships), and aggressive tactics (daring and speedy attacks overwhelming the enemy, a recipe for success in her previous conflicts).
The Imperial Japanese Navy was administered by the Ministry of the Navy of Japan and controlled by the Chief of the Imperial Japanese Navy General Staff at Imperial General Headquarters. In order to combat the numerically superior American navy, the IJN devoted large amounts of resources to creating a force superior in quality to any navy at the time. Consequently, at the beginning of World War II, Japan probably had the most sophisticated Navy in the world.[6] Betting on the speedy success of aggressive tactics, Japan did not invest significantly on defensive organization: she should also have been able to protect her long shipping lines against enemy submarines, which she never managed to do, particularly under-investing in anti-submarine escort ships and escort aircraft carriers.
The Japanese Navy enjoyed spectacular success during the first part of the hostilities, but American forces ultimately managed to gain the upper hand through technological upgrades to its air and naval forces, and a vastly stronger industrial output. Japan's reluctance to use their submarine fleet for commerce raiding and failure to secure their communications also added to their defeat. During the last phase of the war the Imperial Japanese Navy resorted to a series of desperate measures, including Kamikaze (suicide) actions.
Self-Defense Forces
Following Japan's surrender to the United States at the conclusion of World War II, and Japan's subsequent occupation, Japan's entire imperial military was dissolved in the new 1947 constitution which states, "The Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes." Japan's current navy falls under the umbrella of the Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) as the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF).
The Maritime Self-Defense Force (MSDF) had an authorized strength in 1992 of 46,000 and maintained some 44,400 personnel and operated 155 major combatants, including thirteen submarines, sixty-four destroyers and frigates, forty-three mine warfare ships and boats, eleven patrol craft, and six amphibious ships. It also flew some 205 fixed-wing aircraft and 134 helicopters. Most of these aircraft were used in antisubmarine and mine warfare operations.
References
- Boxer, C.R. (1993) "The Christian Century in Japan 1549-1650", ISBN 1-85754-035-2
- Delorme, Pierre, Les Grandes Batailles de l'Histoire, Port-Arhur 1904, Socomer Editions (French)
- Dull, Paul S. (1978) A Battle History of The Imperial Japanese Navy ISBN 0-85059-295-X
- Evans, David C & Peattie, Mark R. (1997) Kaigun: strategy, tactics, and technology in the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1887-1941 Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Maryland ISBN 0870211927
- Gardiner, Robert (editor) (2001) Steam, Steel and Shellfire, The Steam Warship 1815-1905, ISBN 0785814132
- Howe, Christopher (1996) The origins of Japanese Trade Supremacy, Development and technology in Asia from 1540 to the Pacific War, The University of Chicago Press ISBN 0-226-35485-7
- Ireland, Bernard (1996) Jane's Battleships of the 20th Century ISBN 0-00-470997-7
- Lyon, D.J. (1976) World War II warships, Excalibur Books ISBN 0-85613-220-9
- Nagazumi, Yōko (永積洋子) Red Seal Ships (朱印船), ISBN 4642066594 (Japanese)
- Tōgō Shrine and Tōgō Association (東郷神社・東郷会), Togo Heihachiro in images, illustrated Meiji Navy (図説東郷平八郎、目で見る明治の海軍), (Japanese)
- Japanese submarines 潜水艦大作戦, Jinbutsu publishing (新人物従来社) (Japanese)
See also
- "Strike South" Group
- Fleet Faction - Navy political group
- Treaty Faction - Navy political group
- May 15 Incident - coup d'etat with Navy support
- Imperial Way Faction
- Japanese nationalism
- The Japanese Navy Taiwan and South Pacific Mandate political project
Notes
- ^ Video footage of the Sino-Japanese war: Video (external link).
- ^ :魏略：「倭人自謂太伯之後。」 /晉書：「自謂太伯之後，又言上古使詣中國，皆自稱大夫。」 列傳第六十七 四夷 /資治通鑑：「今日本又云呉太伯之後，蓋呉亡，其支庶入海為倭。」
- ^ Nagazumi Red Seal Ships, p21
- ^ THE FIRST IRONCLADS In Japanese: [7], [8]. Also in English: [9]: "Iron clad ships, however, were not new to Japan and Hideyoshi; Oda Nobunaga, in fact, had many iron clad ships in his fleet." (referring to the anteriority of Japanese ironclads (1578) to the Korean Turtle ships (1592)). In Western sources, Japanese ironclads are described in CR Boxer "The Christian Century in Japan 1549-1650", p122, quoting the account of the Italian Jesuit Organtino visiting Japan in 1578. Nobunaga's ironclad fleet is also described in "A History of Japan, 1334-1615", Georges Samson, p309 ISBN 0804705259. Korea's "ironclad Turtle ships" were invented by Admiral Yi Sun-sin (1545-1598), and are first documented in 1592. Incidentally, Korea's iron plates only covered the roof (to prevent intrusion), and not the sides of their ships. The first Western ironclads date to 1859 with the French Gloire ("Steam, Steel and Shellfire").
- ^ Corbett Maritime Operations in the Russo-Japanese War, 2:333
- ^ Howe, p286
External links
- Nobunaga's ironclad navy
- Hiroshi Nishida's IJN site
- Imperial Japanese Navy Page
- JSDF video commercial