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I recently finished reading Eri Hotta's Japan 1941: Countdown to Infamy, which explores the political and diplomatic situation in Japan leading up to Japan's attacks on the UK, US and the Dutch East Indies in early December 1941. Ms Hotta gives a thorough look into the Sino-Japanese War of the 1930's and how failures of leadership led to unplanned expansion of that war, inept diplomacy, increasingly painful sanctions from the US, and a gamble on a wider Pacific War that virtually no one in the Japanese government thought was going to be winnable except through blind luck.
It was a system led by an emperor who believed he should act like the king of Great Britain of that era and stay out of politics. Unfortunately the constitution under which Japan was operating, the army and the navy were responsible not to the government, but only to the emperor. Worse the army and the navy each separately had what amounted to veto powers over the government. The Japanese military was known for harsh discipline and yet virtually nothing was done between the two world wars to curb the growing fanaticism among some of the junior officers which led to repeated assassinations and attempted assassinations of those in the government who were not seen as wholly supportive of Japan's glorious future and of the honor of the military (Witness the attempted coup to prevent Japan from surrendering, in the hours before the emperor's message announced the end of the war in 1945). Indeed those pre-war acts were often portrayed sympathetically by the Japanese press,
We learn from the book that the policy that soldiers and sailors were to die rather than surrender, was made official in 1940 in a work by General Tojo, who would become the infamous symbol in the US as prime minister of Japan. There was nothing of the sort in the Russo-Japanese war of 1905 nor in Japan's brief fight in World War I to capture Germany's Asian colonies. Perhaps the mutual ill treatment of prisoners by the Chinese and the Japanese in their ongoing war was the rationale. But it did not take much to encourage the fanatical officers to insist that this applied to Japanese civilians as well, causing thousands of needless civilian deaths in places like Okinawa and Saipan.
Bluster and brinksmanship may have played well for the Japanese press leading up to Pearl Harbor, but it accomplished nothing but causing caution and distrust in the nations Japan was dealing with. So many times a Japanese top diplomat or government official thought that showing unyielding strength was the only way to get the western nations to negotiate anything. Clearly the bad behavior of the European powers and the US in Asia in the 1800s played a role. But often it was the case where Japanese with experience living and studying in the US had extremely warped ideas of how Americans would react to such shows of force.
Hotta's book shows more clearly why Japan went to war with the West than most books on the war itself. It also shows the very serious affects of keeping up false appearances.
It was a system led by an emperor who believed he should act like the king of Great Britain of that era and stay out of politics. Unfortunately the constitution under which Japan was operating, the army and the navy were responsible not to the government, but only to the emperor. Worse the army and the navy each separately had what amounted to veto powers over the government. The Japanese military was known for harsh discipline and yet virtually nothing was done between the two world wars to curb the growing fanaticism among some of the junior officers which led to repeated assassinations and attempted assassinations of those in the government who were not seen as wholly supportive of Japan's glorious future and of the honor of the military (Witness the attempted coup to prevent Japan from surrendering, in the hours before the emperor's message announced the end of the war in 1945). Indeed those pre-war acts were often portrayed sympathetically by the Japanese press,
We learn from the book that the policy that soldiers and sailors were to die rather than surrender, was made official in 1940 in a work by General Tojo, who would become the infamous symbol in the US as prime minister of Japan. There was nothing of the sort in the Russo-Japanese war of 1905 nor in Japan's brief fight in World War I to capture Germany's Asian colonies. Perhaps the mutual ill treatment of prisoners by the Chinese and the Japanese in their ongoing war was the rationale. But it did not take much to encourage the fanatical officers to insist that this applied to Japanese civilians as well, causing thousands of needless civilian deaths in places like Okinawa and Saipan.
Bluster and brinksmanship may have played well for the Japanese press leading up to Pearl Harbor, but it accomplished nothing but causing caution and distrust in the nations Japan was dealing with. So many times a Japanese top diplomat or government official thought that showing unyielding strength was the only way to get the western nations to negotiate anything. Clearly the bad behavior of the European powers and the US in Asia in the 1800s played a role. But often it was the case where Japanese with experience living and studying in the US had extremely warped ideas of how Americans would react to such shows of force.
Hotta's book shows more clearly why Japan went to war with the West than most books on the war itself. It also shows the very serious affects of keeping up false appearances.