Naval War College Review Volume 59 Article 18 Number 3 Summer

2006 Making Waves: Politics, Propaganda, and the Emergenceof the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1868–1922, S. C. M. Paine.

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Recommended Citation Paine., S. C. M. (2006) "Making Waves: Politics, Propaganda, and the Emergenceof the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1868–1922,," Naval War College Review: Vol. 59 : No. 3 , Article 18. Available at: https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-review/vol59/iss3/18

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Paine.: Making Waves: Politics, Propaganda, and the Emergenceof the Imper BOOK REVIEWS 155

defense were functionalists, and Eisen- of the Japanese political system and the hower viewed their primary role as one evolution of both interservice rivalries of keeping the Pentagon programs and civil-military relations in the de- within the budget, which was important cades preceding World War II. He bases for carrying out his conservative fiscal his history on an impressive reading of goals. On strategic matters, Eisenhower Japanese and English-language primary dealt directly with the chairman of the and secondary sources to produce a Joint Chiefs of Staff and thus usurped story with political implications far be- an important portion of the secretary of yond the history of one service. defense’s role. He respected his secre- When the Meiji reformers took power taries as businessmen but in effect in- in 1868, their minimal naval forces sisted on being his own secretary of were part of their land forces. In 1871, defense. over the objections of the army, the Thematic throughout this collection is a Military Ministry was subdivided into focus on Asia and Europe. By stressing two ministries, army and navy. In order Eisenhower’s response to grand strategy, to secure funding to create a modern relations with Moscow, the interrela- fleet, the navy soon allied with the Sat- tionship of politico-military-industrial suma clans, while clans from ChÇshÇ and techno-scientific affairs, and trou- were already allied with the army. ble spots in Eastern Europe, the Middle Together these clans brought the Meiji East, and Asia, the book ignores the reformers to power. The opening of the twenty-first-century challenges posed Diet in 1890 brought fears among the for contemporary U.S. defense and for- clans that democracy would erode their eign policy in the Southern Hemi- power. Therefore, they solidified their sphere—Africa and Latin America. ties with the army and navy. Thus For the sophisticated and knowledge- highly politicized interservice rivalries able scholar, Forging the Shield likely were inherent in the Japanese political contains little new information, but it system. will prove valuable to defense policy Initial Diets were hostile to military and military history students needing funding. War with China in 1894–95, exposure to the Eisenhower era. however, transformed the public per- ception of the navy from a financial DOUGLAS KINNARD author of President Eisenhower burden into a service vital to Japan’s and Strategy Management national security and domestic prosper- ity. This, combined with the large war indemnity from China, produced mas- sive naval budgetary increases. The na- val mission expanded from defense of Schencking, J. Charles. Making Waves: Politics, the home islands to command of the Propaganda, and the Emergence of the Imperial sea and defense of the empire. The Japanese Navy, 1868–1922. Stanford, Calif.: Stan- navy continued to press for a combat ford Univ. Press, 2005. 283pp. $57.95 mission independent of the army, Charles Schencking, in charting Japan’s which retained responsibility for na- creation of the world’s third-largest tional defense and command over navy by 1922, illuminates the workings naval forces in wartime. Interservice

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156 NAVAL WARNaval COLLEGE War REVIEW College Review, Vol. 59 [2006], No. 3, Art. 18

rivalries intensified. The navy assidu- Japanese political system and for future ously cultivated popular support Japanese military strategy. among politicians, journalists, disen- S. C. M. PAINE franchised former samurai, and entre- Strategy and Policy Department preneurs who dreamed of an empire in Naval War College the South Seas. The navy used World War I to seize German colonies and implement its “southward advance” strategy for ex- panding the empire in the Pacific re- Black, Jeremy. The British Seaborne Em- gion. The war also transformed Japan pire. New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, from a debtor into a creditor nation. 2004. 420pp. $40 These changed circumstances finally al- Jeremy Black deliberately titled his book lowed a Seiyãkai-navy alliance to deliver to link it with two classics, works that greatly increased postwar naval bud- every maritime historian knows: C. R. gets. Previously, the naval budget had Boxer’s The Dutch Seaborne Empire occasionally exceeded the army budget, (1965) and J. H. Parry’s The Spanish but from 1917 to 1922 it did so consis- Seaborne Empire (1966). The planned tently and massively. volume in that series that would have In response to those who believe that provided an overview of the British Japan’s military muzzled its civil leaders Empire was never completed, although in World War II and that this accounts nearly twenty years later D. B. Quinn for Japan’s rampage through the Pa- and A. N. Ryan filled the gap for the cific, Schencking’s book shows that the early phase with their England’s Sea political parties had always worked Empire, 1550–1642 (1983). Black’s con- closely with the military and that, con- tribution shows a significantly different versely, the military had always been approach as well as a much broader and deeply involved in politics. This meant more nuanced view of the general theme. ever-deepening interservice rivalries, Jeremy Black is a prolific writer who and also incomplete and incompatible has become widely known for his war plans that would spell disaster for broad, sweeping histories of British for- Japan and much of Asia and the Pacific eign policy in the eighteenth century in World War II. and of the history of European and For nonspecialists, additional allusions world warfare, as well as for his insight- to political and budgetary issues beyond ful studies of maps and cartography. He naval appropriations would have put is fully experienced and eminently well the subject of the book into a broader qualified to attempt a broad-based context. Nevertheless, Schencking pro- study such as this. vides one of the best descriptions of the Although Black’s title suggests a general inner workings of the Japanese political history of the British Empire, his de- system that I have ever read. It details the tailed focus is not on the earliest period creation of the modern Japanese navy, the but on the three hundred years from civil-military politics necessary for its de- the Union of Scotland and England in velopment, the consequent army-navy 1707 to the present. To provide linkages, rivalries, and the implications for the

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