The Way of the Heavenly Sword

The Japanese Army in the 1920's

Leonard A. Humphreys

• Éditeur: Stanford University Press
• Année: 1995
• ISBN:
  9780804765350
• Édition: 1
• Sujet: History
• Sous-sujet: Military & Maritime History

This text examines the history of the Japanese army in the 1920s. In this decade, the 'Meija military system' disintegrated and was replaced by a new 'Imperial Army System'. The Japanese victory over Russia in 1905 had changed the direction of Japanese military thought from almost total dependence on western rational military thinking to a more traditional reliance on morale as the preponderant factor for victory in combat. The author focuses on the intense and complex struggle which took place over leadership of the Army, the application of the principle of the primacy of morale, and the quite contradictory but obvious necessity for the army to modernize. This internal turmoil was intensified by a background of increasingly difficult economic circumstances, and the terrible effects of the great earthquake and fire of 1923. This crucial decade of Japanese history set the stage for the shattering events of the 1930s and 1940s.

1

The Background to Army Politics

The secret of victory or defeat lies in the spirit of the men and not in their weapons.

Rai San’yō, 1780-1832

The great imperial Japanese army review in Tokyo on the last day of April 1906 was a spectacle long remembered by the people of the capital. Eight months after the government signed the Treaty of Portsmouth, which ended the bloody conflict with Russia, the triumphant army gathered in final conclave to renew its pledge of service to the emperor and the nation, and to receive an expression of appreciation from the sovereign and the adulation of the people. The spontaneous and violent popular reaction against the treaty that had erupted in Tokyo and echoed in protests across the nation in September 1905 had spent itself on the civil government. There was no hint of resentment against the heroic generals and admirals or the brave soldiers and sailors whom they commanded. These were the days when people informally referred to Japan’s army with pride as the kokumin no guntai or kokugun, the people’s or nation’s army. The transition to kōgun, or emperor’s army, was not yet in motion.

On that fine spring day even the frightful losses of the war were forgotten for the moment as 30,000 soldiers formed ranks to receive imperial recognition for their sacrifice and gratitude for their victories. The Meiji emperor, in the 39th year of his eventful reign, personally inspected the host, and with battle-torn regimental flags flying gallantly, the troops passed their sovereign in review.

Japan had entered the war in 1904 with thirteen standing infantry divisions. Sizable contingents represented each of them that day in Tokyo. The four new regular infantry divisions, created in the midst of the fighting and still in service on the continent, were represented by their commanding generals and staffs. Separate cavalry, artillery, engineer, transport, and local reserve infantry units swelled the ranks to fill the expanse of the broad Aoyama parade ground.

A galaxy of successful generals, men whose names were by now familiar to every Japanese, stood before the officers and men in ranks. Marshal Oyama Iwao, Japan’s senior field general, who led the armies to victory in the war with China in 1895 as well as in the war with Russia, commanded the review. His brilliant wartime chief of staff Gen. Kodama Gentarō and the five stalwart commanding generals of the Manchurian and Yalu River field armies accompanied him to a position before the imperial reviewing stand.

When the marshal stepped forward to present the troops, the emperor spoke briefly to him in the formal language of the court: “We warmly celebrate here today our army’s triumphal return, and we perceive that military discipline remains vigorous and the ranks in good order. We deeply rejoice at this, and we will continue to rely on ye for ever more strenuous efforts to develop and advance the army of this imperial land.”¹

At the end of the formal portion of the day’s festivities, the troops paraded the thronged streets of the city to the cheers of the people. In effect, the Japanese army had performed its final duty of the Russo-Japanese War and could now turn its full attention to the immediate postwar tasks of appraisal, planning, and renewal.

National Army, Localized Leadership

To the Japanese nation the army was an army of the people, and indeed, the ranks were filled with young men from all over Japan with a satisfactory distribution on the basis of class and clan backgrounds. The conscription law of 1872 and subsequent adjustments had transformed the feudal clan forces of the Meiji Restoration wars, largely shizoku (samurai), into a national army by 1895. Yet a glance at the army’s leadership left no doubt that as late as 1906, 38 years after the restoration, the positions of authority were not distributed on any national basis.

The feudal clan, or han,² origins of the men who held the key positions in the army’s central headquarters are illustrative. Marshal Yamagata Aritomo of the Chōshū clan, twice prime minister of Japan and by far the most politically powerful man in the army, held sway as chief of the general staff throughout the war and only days before the review had relinquished that position to Gen. Kodama Gentarō, his protégé and fellow clansman. The army minister was Terauchi Masakata (often Masatake), another Chōshū protégé of Yamagata’s. Of Terauchi’s most powerful assistants, the vice minister and the chief of the bureau of military affairs, the former was one of the army minister’s close personal followers, the latter a Chōshū clansman.

The army field commanders, who fought the war in Manchuria and stood before the emperor on that spring day in 1906, included Oyama, Kuroki Tamemoto, Nozu Michikane, and Kawamura Sōroku of Satsuma, and Nogi Marusuke of Chōshū. Of the field army commanders only the talented Oku Yasukata stood outside the Satsuma-Chōshū (Satchō) circle. Chōshū and Satsuma dominated the army, but within this coalition the positions of real power clearly belonged to Yamagata and his Chōshū faction.

Four important fiefs of western Japan, Satsuma, Chōshū, Tosa, and Hizen, had joined to overthrow the feudal Tokugawa regime in 1868. The aim of the Satchōdohi alliance was to unify Japan and restore the nation to imperial rule in the face of the threat of Western imperialism. Satsuma and Chōshū, the stronger pair, provided a preponderance of the military manpower and leadership during the battles for imperial restoration.

Saigō Takamori, the Great Saigō, was the preeminent military leader of that day. As counselor to the Lord of Satsuma, he was responsible for the decision that brought the traditionally rival Satsuma and Chōshū han together for a joint struggle to displace the Tokugawa. Saigō led the victorious “loyalist” coalition forces east to Edo (Tokyo). When he spared the Tokugawa capital the agony of siege by persuading the shogun’s army to surrender without giving battle, the feat elevated him to hero status.

When the fighting ended, Saigō, piqued at his clan’s small share of the political spoils, retired to Satsuma taking his troops with him, but in 1870 the new government prevailed upon him to join it in order to lend an air of unity and credibility to the shaky han coalition in Tokyo that presumed to represent the emperor’s national authority.

Between 1870 and 1873, as an active and powerful figure in the emperor’s government, Saigō divided his time between military and civil duties. A busy man, he left the specifics of military organization and planning in the hands of an innovative young Chōshū general who had been eloquent in persuading Saigō to join the government for the good of the nation. Maj. Gen. Yamagata Aritomo had recently returned from Europe, where he studied Western military systems. Earlier, he had played a brave but relatively inconspicuous part in the battles of the restoration, in which he worked closely with the leading Chōshū military leader Ōmura Masujirō. Ōmura held a post equivalent to vice minister of military affairs immediately after the restoration, but assassins cut short his bureaucratic career in 1869. After a period of confusion, Yamagata, once assured of Saigō’s support and Satsuma’s participation in the urgent business of army development, accepted an appointment as the assistant vice minister of military affairs.³ From this post he turned to the task of building a national military force.

With Saigō’s cooperation Yamagata organized an imperial bodyguard, the Goshinpei, furnished with troops from the Satsuma, chōshū, and Tosa clans, each group preserving its separate identity within the whole. This was Japan’s first step toward the national army it so desperately needed to face the encroaching Westerners or the even more likely possibility of internal disturbance.

Saigō’s participation was essential in the next step to centralize government power, the dissolution of the han, or fiefs, into which Japan had been divided for centuries. In August 1871 the emperor abolished the han and redivided the country into administrative prefectures controlled from Tokyo. This structural reform opened the door to the formation of Japan’s first truly national military force, and Yamagata moved quickly to take advantage of the opportunity. In February 1872 the government authorized the establishment of a separate army and navy. Two months later the Goshinpei converted to the first imperial guard (konoe) unit, which Yamagata and then Saigō commanded. If one considers the perceived threat from foreign imperialists and the more present danger from all manner of native malcontents during the chaotic period immediately after the restoration, when the newly created imperial government faced the world and the nation without money, without military power, and indeed, without true nationwide authority, it is not surprising that a loyal military force was the most urgent priority.

In the meantime, with the great singleness of purpose for which he was noted, Yamagata fought and won the battle for a universal military conscription system. Conscription was an extremely delicate issue for a society struggling free of feudalism. Many restoration leaders of the shizoku class, including Saigō, resisted the idea of relinquishing the monopoly on military service that had provided the basis for their hereditary power. Most of the nation’s former samurai, already stripped of any political power they had enjoyed, feared the consequences of such a change to their own social and economic positions, and generally speaking, the usually inarticulate peasants also opposed conscription, for they could see no advantage in national military service for their sons. Saigō, a champion of shizoku privilege, must have agonized over the dilemma, but he tacitly accepted Yamagata’s proposal as the only way to form a truly national army, and a compromise version of Yamagata’s conscription plan went into effect in January 1873 under the slogan “All the people soldiers.”⁴

The cooperative spirit between the Satsuma and Chōshū military leaders for the greater good of the nation ended abruptly, however, when in October 1873 the impetuous Saigō, disagreeing once again with his colleagues on many policy issues, quit the government after an acrimonious dispute over Japan’s relations with Korea. Saigō’s resignation demonstrated the great ingrained strength of feudal loyalties, because many Satsuma men in the imperial guard deserted to follow Saigō back to their native fief (now redesignated Kagoshima Prefecture).

While Yamagata carefully constructed the new army step-by-step, adding schools and training facilities on French and then German models, Saigō opened an academy in remote southern Kyushu that soon became a focal point of shizoku opposition to the central authority. Having gradually legislated away shizoku privileges and reduced the class to equality with the common people as part of the modernizing process, the imperial government faced the outrage of many disgruntled samurai and had already used military force to suppress some minor uprisings. In February 1877 shizoku resentment exploded in the Satsuma Rebellion, which found Saigō, the hero of the restoration, the leader of a large-scale revolt against the very government he had fought to establish. The Satsuma Rebellion caught the remaining Satsuma men in the army in the same sort of dilemma as the one faced by officers from the southern United States at the outbreak of the American Civil War. A number of them left to cast their lot with Satsuma and Saigō. In the end, Yamagata’s drafted soldiers, mostly of peasant stock but largely led by officers of shizoku lineage, proved more than a match for Saigō’s warriors. In a seven-month campaign the new army defeated them, ending the samurai cause and Saigō’s life.

It is little wonder that, in a country divided for centuries into fiefs that limited geographic as well as social mobility, provincialism remained strong. Formal emancipation from the feudal system and exhortations to develop a sense of national identity did not change traditions and loyalties that had persisted for centuries. The Satsuma Rebellion is one outstanding example of provincial as well as shizoku class assertions from a han with proud and ancient traditions and a proportionally large and loyal samurai population.

Han loyalties powered Tokyo politics in the early post-restoration era, and political relationships in the military service were no different. Life in early Meiji military units must have been turbulent. Han chauvinism entered into every aspect of military life; no one ever forgot his own clan background, and neither Satsuma nor Chōshū braves were distinguished for their humility. Saigō once wrote that commanding the imperial guard was like bedding down with a bomb.

Ōmura Masujirō, the outstanding leader of Chōshū forces in the restoration, was an outspoken Chōshū chauvinist and particularly suspicious of Satsuma. Once in office, he showed open favoritism toward his own clansmen. When Yamagata succeeded Ōmura, his deep commitment to the imperial cause and his recognition of the need to centralize the government and modernize the nation forced him to give precedence to national concerns, but he never forgot his Chōshū ties, placing his greatest trust in the many able Chōshū clansmen who rallied round him. Saigō’s withdrawal from the government and his subsequent rebellion cast a shadow of suspicion over the many Satsuma men in the army who placed loyalty to the nation (or self-interest, perhaps) above the cause of Satsuma or the shizoku class. The upshot of Satsuma’s temporary and partial defection was to tip the balance of army internal political power in some immeasurable degree to Chōshū.⁵ Under Yamagata’s leadership Chōshū never yielded this political advantage. The strength of the Satsuma faction in the army officer corps should not be underestimated, however. After 1877 loyal Satsuma officers quickly regained their equilibrium and claimed a firm second place in the army behind Chōshū. They continued to compete with Chōshū men, who admitted their claim to recognition by awarding them a generous share of the rank, prestige, honors, and positions in the army structure while retaining ultimate control in their own hands. Chōshū was not so generous, however, in its treatment of officers outside this informal Satchō coalition.

In the Meiji era between 1873 and 1912, the emperor approved the promotion of 33 men to the rank of taishō (“full” general). Of them, 5 were members of the imperial family and can be effectively eliminated from any calculus assessing han power and influence. Eleven of the remaining 28 were from Chōshū, 9 from Satsuma, and 8 from all the rest of Japan (71 percent Satchō). Seven of these taishō were eventually elevated to the status of gensui, or field marshal. (The gensui remained on active duty and served on the emperor’s supreme military affairs council, gensuifu , for life. Three of these gensui were from Satsuma, and 3 were from Chōshū (86 percent Satchō); first among them was Yamagata Aritomo. In the same period the army promoted 153 officers to the rank of chūjō (lieutenant general). Thirty-six came from Chōshū, 25 from Satsuma, and 8 from Tosa (40 percent Satchō). Among shōshō (major generals) the disparity in numbers between Satchō and the rest of Japan is less pronounced. Thus, the discrimination against the promotion of non-Satchō officers rose with rank. In fairness, these figures are somewhat misleading because they do not reflect the progressive increase in the ratio of non-Satchō to Satchō officers as the opportunity to join the military forces opened to men from all over Japan. Among the older officers the proportion of Satchō men was higher, but this fact may have been lost on younger officers who saw only the continuing domination of the Satchō cliques as an obstacle to their own aspirations.

Yamagata’s Army and Civil Politics

After his success in the campaign against Saigō’s Satsuma rebels, Yamagata emerged as the real arbiter of army affairs. As he advanced in rank and in the emperor’s confidence, he became a mighty figure on the national political scene, serving in such civil capacities as home minister, minister of justice, prime minister, and privy councillor. The emperor appointed Yamagata a personal adviser, and when the powerful extraconstitutional body known as the genrō, or elder statesmen, formed, Yamagata was a leading figure in it, and in time its most powerful member. In spite of his importance as a national leader, Yamagata never loosened the tight grip on his army power base, and his interest in army affairs did not slacken until the waning days of his long life.

The fundam...