**the military institutional CLOWNSHOW of Imperial Japan, Featuring the World-Famous Imperial Army/Navy Stars of the Circus.**
*(This is a edited version of a Long Writeup I found a long time ago that I can no longer find the source., It offered great insight into the terrible state of Imperial Japanese institution, but had some flaws. Some historical inaccuracies, but also attributed Some failures to ONLY Japanese/Army rivaly when in reality it was* ***the whole SYSTEM that was fucked, not just army navy/rivalry.***
*And finally, I originally took this as a simple “LoL Japan bad” but my understanding has since matured, and it can be viewed as a general cautionary tales of military institution gone wrong, as every country struggled with interserive rivalry. But either way:)*
**HOLY FUCK WHAT ABSOLUTE CLOWNS.**
One of the issues among many many issues was the rivalry between the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) and the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN). It’s tempting to think of this in western terms, as jovial and playful, good for morale. But saying they had a “rivalry” similar to the US army and navy (who play a yearly, hotly contested, football game against each other). We shouldn’t do that because this rivalry was much more serious and intense (and damaging). It was one of the worst cases of interservice rivalry in world history.
**Or in other words, “Why fight other countries’ militaries when you could fight your own?”.**
The issue came from both the IJN and the IJA both considering themselves to be the representatives of a new state in an old nation, the “true heir to the samurai ideals and the face of modern Japan” and the other to be “backward peasants whose job it is to support us and be subservient to us, and not complain abut this because that’s their job.” The army considered the navy to be their personal taxi and logistics train and “not real warriors”, while the navy considered the army to be dirty peasants who load their supplies and die in random fields because fuck you that’s why. t**he Japanese army had their own aircraft carriers and submarines, because they simply could not rely on the navy, and why the navy had its own soldiers and tanks and shit because they couldn’t rely on the army, and both had their own Air Forces.**
The period of Japanese politics prior to world war 2 is sometimes referred to as **”rulership by assassination”.**
This period was rife with radical groups of fascist young army and navy officers opposing Japan’s modernization and liberalizations, competing Army/Navy interests, and multiple Sub-splits between the officers that did and didn’t go to Staff College, (educated elitists thinking dirty peasant officers were bellow them) and even Intra-Service Splits within the army and Navy of those following General A vs General B, (the Kodoha/Toseiha Split) because fuck you. In this period, multiple coups went off and 2 prime ministers were assassinated. So it’s more Everyone going “fuck you” to everyone rather than just army/navy.
The first assassination was by a Civilian, but the more relvant stuff happened when the Army after launching a few failed Coups, made the infamous Pro Gamer Move of Staging a False-Flag Terrorist attack in Manchuria (the Mukden Incident) and Invaded China BY THEMSELVES, Yes, the **ARMY ON IT’S OWN invaded another country**, basically if the US Marine Corps ALONE Invaded Venezuela without telling POTUS/the DoD. And when the Prime Minister didn’t immediately recognize the Army’s invasion, A group of pro-war Army/Navy Radical assassinated the Prime Minister *AGAIN* for not supporting their invasion. And that led to ANOTHER Coup by radicals (Both army/navy) (the feb 26^(th) incident) that saw the Navy deploying an entire Fleet to Tokyo ready to Bombard their own capital to stop the coup and defend naval facilities, and that kinda got the Navy more favored by the Emperor due to their larger response.
thelostnz on
The IJA mistrusted the IJN so much, they built their own aircraft carrier (glorified transport ship) rather than ask the IJN to deliver their aircraft
Rome453 on
How did the IJA and IJN manage to find time to fight the Americans when they so clearly hated each other more?
Simple, they believed in “business before pleasure.”
creeper321448 on
To be fair, the Japanese Army’s transport branch (they didn’t have a proper logistics branch) was utterly garbage even before the first China war.
The soldiers in the transport branch were largely Burakumin (Japanese outcasts who were literally called non-human) and the lowest graduates of the officer academy went into transport. There was no respect to them from anyone, and they were often called, “useless porters” and subjected to endless harassment. In a lot of cases, as well, the soldiers in the transport branch were outright untrained.
The Navy was a lot better about this, but when the Army hates you and you can’t replace any lost ships, losing a war to the U.S. is inevitable. Also, as you can imagine, every war Japan ever fought was plagued with logistics issues and they were always on the brink of economic collapse. The Russo-Japanese war especially was a lucky win, because Russia just happened to be in slightly worse shape than they were.
Black6Blue on
This kind of backwards ass shit makes me wonder what they could have accomplished if they had been capable of pulling their heads out of their asses. Not that any kind of common sense reform would have been tolerated by that society.
I wonder if they hadn’t been so isolationist for so long if it would have been this bad. Societies in isolation always seem to adopt more and more self defeating cultural practices as time progresses. It’s like we need the cultural whetstone of cross culture competition to continuously grind down the rough edges.
5 Comments
**Mother of All Clownshows:**
**the military institutional CLOWNSHOW of Imperial Japan, Featuring the World-Famous Imperial Army/Navy Stars of the Circus.**
*(This is a edited version of a Long Writeup I found a long time ago that I can no longer find the source., It offered great insight into the terrible state of Imperial Japanese institution, but had some flaws. Some historical inaccuracies, but also attributed Some failures to ONLY Japanese/Army rivaly when in reality it was* ***the whole SYSTEM that was fucked, not just army navy/rivalry.***
*And finally, I originally took this as a simple “LoL Japan bad” but my understanding has since matured, and it can be viewed as a general cautionary tales of military institution gone wrong, as every country struggled with interserive rivalry. But either way:)*
**HOLY FUCK WHAT ABSOLUTE CLOWNS.**
One of the issues among many many issues was the rivalry between the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) and the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN). It’s tempting to think of this in western terms, as jovial and playful, good for morale. But saying they had a “rivalry” similar to the US army and navy (who play a yearly, hotly contested, football game against each other). We shouldn’t do that because this rivalry was much more serious and intense (and damaging). It was one of the worst cases of interservice rivalry in world history.
**Or in other words, “Why fight other countries’ militaries when you could fight your own?”.**
The issue came from both the IJN and the IJA both considering themselves to be the representatives of a new state in an old nation, the “true heir to the samurai ideals and the face of modern Japan” and the other to be “backward peasants whose job it is to support us and be subservient to us, and not complain abut this because that’s their job.” The army considered the navy to be their personal taxi and logistics train and “not real warriors”, while the navy considered the army to be dirty peasants who load their supplies and die in random fields because fuck you that’s why. t**he Japanese army had their own aircraft carriers and submarines, because they simply could not rely on the navy, and why the navy had its own soldiers and tanks and shit because they couldn’t rely on the army, and both had their own Air Forces.**
The period of Japanese politics prior to world war 2 is sometimes referred to as **”rulership by assassination”.**
This period was rife with radical groups of fascist young army and navy officers opposing Japan’s modernization and liberalizations, competing Army/Navy interests, and multiple Sub-splits between the officers that did and didn’t go to Staff College, (educated elitists thinking dirty peasant officers were bellow them) and even Intra-Service Splits within the army and Navy of those following General A vs General B, (the Kodoha/Toseiha Split) because fuck you. In this period, multiple coups went off and 2 prime ministers were assassinated. So it’s more Everyone going “fuck you” to everyone rather than just army/navy.
The first assassination was by a Civilian, but the more relvant stuff happened when the Army after launching a few failed Coups, made the infamous Pro Gamer Move of Staging a False-Flag Terrorist attack in Manchuria (the Mukden Incident) and Invaded China BY THEMSELVES, Yes, the **ARMY ON IT’S OWN invaded another country**, basically if the US Marine Corps ALONE Invaded Venezuela without telling POTUS/the DoD. And when the Prime Minister didn’t immediately recognize the Army’s invasion, A group of pro-war Army/Navy Radical assassinated the Prime Minister *AGAIN* for not supporting their invasion. And that led to ANOTHER Coup by radicals (Both army/navy) (the feb 26^(th) incident) that saw the Navy deploying an entire Fleet to Tokyo ready to Bombard their own capital to stop the coup and defend naval facilities, and that kinda got the Navy more favored by the Emperor due to their larger response.
The IJA mistrusted the IJN so much, they built their own aircraft carrier (glorified transport ship) rather than ask the IJN to deliver their aircraft
How did the IJA and IJN manage to find time to fight the Americans when they so clearly hated each other more?
Simple, they believed in “business before pleasure.”
To be fair, the Japanese Army’s transport branch (they didn’t have a proper logistics branch) was utterly garbage even before the first China war.
The soldiers in the transport branch were largely Burakumin (Japanese outcasts who were literally called non-human) and the lowest graduates of the officer academy went into transport. There was no respect to them from anyone, and they were often called, “useless porters” and subjected to endless harassment. In a lot of cases, as well, the soldiers in the transport branch were outright untrained.
The Navy was a lot better about this, but when the Army hates you and you can’t replace any lost ships, losing a war to the U.S. is inevitable. Also, as you can imagine, every war Japan ever fought was plagued with logistics issues and they were always on the brink of economic collapse. The Russo-Japanese war especially was a lucky win, because Russia just happened to be in slightly worse shape than they were.
This kind of backwards ass shit makes me wonder what they could have accomplished if they had been capable of pulling their heads out of their asses. Not that any kind of common sense reform would have been tolerated by that society.
I wonder if they hadn’t been so isolationist for so long if it would have been this bad. Societies in isolation always seem to adopt more and more self defeating cultural practices as time progresses. It’s like we need the cultural whetstone of cross culture competition to continuously grind down the rough edges.