Reasons for Japan in China
Posted: Fri Mar 25, 2011 6:58 am
I have always had questions of why the Japanese persisted in China. By this, I don't mean what happened. I know the history. Japanese Army officers were basically out of control and manufactured incidents to justify escalating their involvement in China. When some in the government raised objections, low level officers even resorted to assassination to intimidate the dissenters. Like I said, I know the history but I don't know why they did this.
Normally, you go to war to gain some objectives. You might want resources or "lebensraum". You might attack preemptively to shortstop some future potential problem. You might want revenge for some past defeat or grievance. You might make an attack as a first step to facilitate the next attack on someone else. I'll discuss each separately but none really seem to apply.
They already had Manchuria, Korea, and Formosa. Manchuria was useful for minerals and lebensraum. Korea provided food and forced labor. Formosa's (Taiwan) primary asset was its strategic location. The rest of China offered nothing more. Also, it was impossible to "digest". It was like a guppy trying to swallow a whale; the difference in populations was just too immense. Japan couldn't garrison all of China; if they took some new area, they had to uncover some other area. The Chinese military leaders were so corrupt/incompetent and their troops were so untrained/ill-equipped that Japanese forces could move whereever they wanted. However, other Chinese forces then flowed into the vacuum produced when the Japanese moved. China was basically a sinkhole for the majority of the Japanese Army's manpower.
China wasn't a future threat. If the Japanese left, China would splinter into a civil war. Even with the Japanese as a common enemy, the various factions still fought and hoarded weapons for the eventual civil war that everyone knew was coming.
There was no revenge factor; Japan had won all of the wars between the two nations. The only Japanese grievance was with the Western powers which were reluctant to share Chinese concessions with Japan. This, however, wasn't a reason to go to war. The Chinese market was large but not lucrative; the immense population was more than offset by their poverty.
Finally, China wasn't a stepping stone to somewhere else. China was a deadend. If you wanted to start a "Greater Southeast Asia Co-Prosperty Sphere", you should start somewhere else, somewhere with the resources but without the problems.
Thus, I can't find any reason to persist in China when it eventually meant going to war against the US. The only explanation seems to be "saving face". Once they were embroiled in China, they just couldn't bring themselves to later abandon it. Instead, they kept pouring forces into the sinkhole.
An example of the problem is perhaps illustrative. A long time ago, I was involved in the design of a board game about the Pacific war. We intended to start one of scenarios in the early 1930s. Unfortunately, we couldn't get the playtesters to escalate the action in China, there just was no reason to do so. Unless we "cheated" and provided resource centers in China where none really existed to provide an artificial incentive, the playtesters would deescalate rather than escalate. Our other option was even more artificial; a special case rule that forced them to do what we wanted. The same sort of problem occurred in later scenarios. Unless we made a special rule prohibiting it, playtesters playing Japan in the December 1941 scenario did the following. They pulled their forces from China and used them to reinforce their forces elsewhere, especially in Burma. This usually allowed them to conquer India, sometimes even if Great Britain abandoned the Mediterranean to move forces back to India. Saving face didn't matter to the playtesters, rational play to them meant exiting China.
Does anyone have any other explanation for the seemingly irrational obsession with remaining in China besides merely saving face?
Normally, you go to war to gain some objectives. You might want resources or "lebensraum". You might attack preemptively to shortstop some future potential problem. You might want revenge for some past defeat or grievance. You might make an attack as a first step to facilitate the next attack on someone else. I'll discuss each separately but none really seem to apply.
They already had Manchuria, Korea, and Formosa. Manchuria was useful for minerals and lebensraum. Korea provided food and forced labor. Formosa's (Taiwan) primary asset was its strategic location. The rest of China offered nothing more. Also, it was impossible to "digest". It was like a guppy trying to swallow a whale; the difference in populations was just too immense. Japan couldn't garrison all of China; if they took some new area, they had to uncover some other area. The Chinese military leaders were so corrupt/incompetent and their troops were so untrained/ill-equipped that Japanese forces could move whereever they wanted. However, other Chinese forces then flowed into the vacuum produced when the Japanese moved. China was basically a sinkhole for the majority of the Japanese Army's manpower.
China wasn't a future threat. If the Japanese left, China would splinter into a civil war. Even with the Japanese as a common enemy, the various factions still fought and hoarded weapons for the eventual civil war that everyone knew was coming.
There was no revenge factor; Japan had won all of the wars between the two nations. The only Japanese grievance was with the Western powers which were reluctant to share Chinese concessions with Japan. This, however, wasn't a reason to go to war. The Chinese market was large but not lucrative; the immense population was more than offset by their poverty.
Finally, China wasn't a stepping stone to somewhere else. China was a deadend. If you wanted to start a "Greater Southeast Asia Co-Prosperty Sphere", you should start somewhere else, somewhere with the resources but without the problems.
Thus, I can't find any reason to persist in China when it eventually meant going to war against the US. The only explanation seems to be "saving face". Once they were embroiled in China, they just couldn't bring themselves to later abandon it. Instead, they kept pouring forces into the sinkhole.
An example of the problem is perhaps illustrative. A long time ago, I was involved in the design of a board game about the Pacific war. We intended to start one of scenarios in the early 1930s. Unfortunately, we couldn't get the playtesters to escalate the action in China, there just was no reason to do so. Unless we "cheated" and provided resource centers in China where none really existed to provide an artificial incentive, the playtesters would deescalate rather than escalate. Our other option was even more artificial; a special case rule that forced them to do what we wanted. The same sort of problem occurred in later scenarios. Unless we made a special rule prohibiting it, playtesters playing Japan in the December 1941 scenario did the following. They pulled their forces from China and used them to reinforce their forces elsewhere, especially in Burma. This usually allowed them to conquer India, sometimes even if Great Britain abandoned the Mediterranean to move forces back to India. Saving face didn't matter to the playtesters, rational play to them meant exiting China.
Does anyone have any other explanation for the seemingly irrational obsession with remaining in China besides merely saving face?