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A rearmed Japan--myth or reality?
January 5, 1999
By Edward Neilan
Special to World Tribune.com
TOKYO--It is tempting for a journalist, after reading an absorbing and
fascinating new book with its portrayal of history's most stunning naval
buildup, to project into the future and to speculate "Might Japan do it
again, build a naval force that could match or surpass Western navies?"
After all, Japan's vest-pocket "navy" of today, known as the Maritime
Self-Defense Force, although restricted by inhibitions ranging from the
country's no-war constitution to various threads of public opinion, very
nearly equals in number of surface combatant ships the U.S. Seventh
Fleet aside from carriers.
If history is any guide, Japan could mount a respectable carrier force
within two or three years, sufficient to expand its already pronounced
advantage over all other navies in the Asia region, except that of the U.S.
This is one of the themes a reader might pursue from "KAIGUN:
Strategy, Tactics, and Technology in the Imperial Japanese Navy 1887-1941,
" by David C. Evans and Mark R. Peattie
( Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD, U.S.A., 610 pp, 1997, US$49.95.).
But upon visiting authors Evans and Peattie in the latter's Hoover
Institution office on the Stanford
University campus recently, it soon became apparent that they would not be
party to any such speculation.
"The old navy constituted a mighty fighting force," Peattie said, adding
"Whereas the tiny Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force plays a small role
in preserving the security of Japan's home waters."
For the English reader in search of the authentic history of the
Japanese Imperial Navy, it doesn't get any better than this. "Kaigun" is
the signature work, presenting much new material and analysis, on one of
history's greatest naval war machines.
The authors' meticulous research left them impressed:
"To have observed the Japanese battle line in column on maneuvers in
the northern Pacific during the inter war years, to have watched the clouds
of fighters and attack aircraft lift off the decks of six carriers into the
early morning of 7 December, or to have viewed the vast bulk of the super
battleship Yamato anchored in Truk lagoon early in the Pacific War, must
have been among the great spectacles in modern naval history. Never again
will Japanese naval power be so visually impressive."
Moreover, unlike the present JMSDF, the prewar navy was a truly
"imperial" force, projecting the aura of the emperor to expanded boundaries
in Asia into a true empire as well as being "emblematic of the rise of
Japan as a world power."
Yet for both Americans and Japanese, the authors claim, the overriding
aspect of the Japanese navy is its final defeat. "Indeed, it was not just
beaten by the US. Navy; it was annihilated."
For those scholars on both sides of the Pacific who study the Japanese
navy, "its ultimate defeat is the ineluctable fact in the assessment of
its capabilities, its combat performance and even its victories."
Stripped of academic niceties, it could be said the Japanese navy was
born to lose.
The book gives perspectives from a variety of viewpoints that will
mark it as a classic of the genre.
Where is the dividing line, when does the technical capability of an
economic superpower transform into the independent potential of a military
superpower?
In the case of Japan, the question is not as new nor as academic as
might be supposed.
Through 50 years of postwar alliance with the United States, Japanese
bureaucrats, politicians, industrialists, media commentators, academics and
coffee shop pundits have debated the advantages of kokusanka---the domestic
development and production of military weapons. The dispatch of
minesweepers to the Persian Gulf immediately after the end of the Gulf
War in 1991 was the first participation by the Japanese Self-Defense forces
in an international military operation.
The minesweepers were controversial at home and abroad, even though
they were wooden ships of a design rarely built elsewhere.
Japan's Maritime Self-Defense Force has 28 minesweepers, all made with
wooden hulls. Metal hulls of conventional ships attract submarines and
mines.
Two companies, Hitachi Zosen Corp. and NKK Corporation, build the
minesweepers. In recent years the companies have taken turns in
constructing the one minesweeper ordered ever year by the JMSDF.
Each shipbuilder keeps specialists on minesweeper construction on its
payroll, characteristic of the high costs of defense industry
specialization based on performance rather than budget.
It is said that a U.S. M-1 tank costs only one-third of its Japanese
counterpart, because Japan's policy of no overseas weapons sales rules out
mass production.
Japan's domestic defense industry is maintained so that it can keep the
import of defense equipment to a minimum.
But this example of "kokusanka" is said to have other motivation. Some
politicians have said that to be a "normal country," Japan must have the
ability--including weapons-- to defend its sovereignty.
Edward Neilan (eneilan@crisscross.com) is a veteran journalist, based in Tokyo, who covers East Asia and writes weekly for World Tribune.com.
January 5, 1999
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