"Military Transformation: The Japanese Army during the 1920s and 1930s" by Dr. Edward Drea

Following World War I, the Imperial Japanese Army sought to modernize its weapons and equipment and transform its force structure. For almost two decades, the best and the brightest staff officers assigned to the War Ministry and General Staff grappled with transformation issues as they sought to create a modern force capable of protecting Japanese interests in Northeast Asia. The fundamental question revolved around how to prepare Japan for a future conflict that would require national, industrial, and military mobilization to fight and win a protracted war. Shifting political trends and Japan's weak industrial infrastructure limited the parameters for transformation. This resulted in fierce debates about Japan's future military strategy and diverse theories about total war in the offices of the Army General Staff and the War Ministry that set officer classmates against one another.
The Imperial Army's story of military transformation involves more than weapons procurement and acquisition policies. It was a twenty-year struggle for the soul of the Army. The officer education and promotion systems played central roles in the drama because these determined the choice assignments for future advancement and high command. Between the early 1920s and the mid-1930s, multiple transformative initiatives faltered until one brilliant but eccentric Army colonel seemed on the cusp of achieving the Army's goal of a national mobilization state.
Length: 66 Minutes
Lecture Date: March 16, 2011

[@jeffersonwright9275]

This is the most brilliantly presented paper on pre-WWII Japan I’ve ever had the pleasure of listening to. Bravo!

[@JohnsonPadder]

Fantastic presentation. Thank you.

[@SEOTeamBerlin]

very interesting lecture - BUT : it's extremely hard to understand acoustically for the phasing sound defects -- why don't you use a *proper sound system* to record this ?? even 9 years ago this would have been accessible at reasonable cost or even free

[@Doc_Tar]

Really fascinating lecture on how another nation backed its way into a world war.

[@lornespry]

An excellent presentation! Years ago, I moved to Japan to work. Subsequently I read some 19th and 20th century Japanese history written by Japanese scholars translated into English. I am very happy to have found this lecture, and I've just ordered his book on the subject to learn more about a very fascinating bit of history. His career, as well as his education at Sophia university in Tokyo are compelling.

[@nolanolivier6791]

I think i've read pretty much every book of Drea's i could get my hands on.

[@TheDavidlloydjones]

The guy is good!

[@007relliott]

Excellent lecture, love these high quality scholarly lectures!

[@Tupinamba77]

Most excellent and truly interesting presentation. My only argument is with the final conclusions. To me, what the presented study case shows is not so much the pitfalls of institutional transformation processes, but the frankly delusional strategic and political concepts of the Japanese military of the time, including the abstractly correct notion of modernization, but that was not realistic for Japan's general development level in the 30-40s. As one of the weaker Great Powers of the time, Japan did not have any conditions of facing any one of the other Asian/Pacific Great Powers alone, much less together. Their whole argument sounds like committing suicide to avoid being killed... As much as the envisaged military modernization makes sense on paper, you have to adapt the general concepts learnt from observing history and the conduct of the leading powers to your own national circumstances, and the best Japan could hope for would have been to keep their existing empire, maybe waging an isolated war against China alone, if that. The brilliant young professional staff officers understood the nature of the modern, total and highly mobile and technological war that was coming, but their conclusions were utterly voluntarist and ideological. You can not have a modern army without a modern economy and society. The "stubborn and resilient resistance" of the existent institutions and of the economic and civilian leaders was actually the right thing to do for the concrete reality and conditions of Japan. Preferentially keeping the country totally out of the war, as other weaker and more realistic right wing powers like Turkey and Spain did, and so avoiding their total destruction, conquest and occupation by the victors. What was already a reckless gambit by Germany was simply madness for the much weaker Japan.

[@amerigo88]

The die were cast in 1937 with the full invasion of China. By December of 1941, 100,000 Japanese had died in the Second Sino-Japanese War and there would be no withdrawal from China, even though the American-led boycott threatened the Japanese economy and its military due to the lack of petroleum. In retrospect, a lack of strategic insight was a serious problem for both the Japanese and German officer corps. Without a major navy, Germany could never conquer the British Empire and must strenuously avoid bringing the United States into its war to conquer continental Europe. Without sufficient factories or secure supply lines, Japan had no chance if it brought the United States into its war in East Asia.

[@TheDavidlloydjones]

@@amerigo88 "The die were cast in 1937..." One die. Two dice.

[@TheDavidlloydjones]

And they were cast well before 1937-- or not at all. The hubris of 105 might have been part of it, or the thefts of Versailles may have helped the insanity along. The gradual collapse of civilian government through the 1920s was no single roll of any dice, so the metaphor is really pretty useless.

[@TheDavidlloydjones]

Tupinamba, Excellent on all points. I'd add one not small one: the intellectual error of lebensraum and the seizure of resources. There's only one real resource, human intellect, and only one form of national productivity: productivity. "You can't mine coal with bayonets," as John L. Lewis told Harry Truman, but the Japanese military thought they could.

[@balabanasireti]

​@@TheDavidlloydjonesCalm down

[@craignedoff991]

👍✌🙏

[@TheDavidlloydjones]

By "Kuh-NAY" he means Cannae,. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cannae