The Pacific War grew out of Japan’s China War
renewed in 1937. It was essentially the future of
China that four years later led Japan to war with
the US. The decision for war was taken in Tokyo
in September 1941 because the US was seen
as the enemy unalterably opposed to Japan’s
concept of its right to a dominant role in China
and eastern Asia. The only chance for peace was
a change in the course of American policy as per-
ceived by the Japanese, and this did not happen.
The Japanese leaders believed that the choice
before them was to fulfil the task of conquest or
to acquiesce in Japan’s national decline.
But the course of events that led to war was
not so straightforward when looked at in depth,
and raises fascinating questions. Was the Japanese
perception of US policy correct? Britain and the
US, moreover, were not the only two strong
Western powers with interests in eastern Asia.
From the beginning of Japan’s expansion in
China, the only country capable of challenging
Japan’s army on land, with an army of millions,
other than Nationalist China, was Russia. At the
time, in the mid-1930s, the Japanese military
asked themselves whether Japan’s empire could
ever be completely safe without first removing the
potential Russian threat. Should therefore a war
against its northern neighbour precede the efforts
to control China? Indeed, might an alliance with
China against the Soviet Union be possible? And
if the Soviet Union was to be fought, or checked
from interfering in Japan’s China policy, then
might not Europe help?Such a view corresponded with the traditions
of Japanese foreign policy. From 1902 until its
dissolution at the Washington Conference two
decades later, Japan had enjoyed the support of
the Anglo-Japanese alliance. In the new condi-
tions of the 1930s, Hitler’s Germany was the
obvious counterweight to Bolshevik Russia. The
history of German–Japanese relations from 1936,
when Japan first joined the Anti-Comintern Pact,
to the close of the Second World War is another
important theme.
The roots of the conflict lie in the militaristic-
spiritual values that Japanese education incul-
cated. During the 1930s these values were
translated into politics by the small group of mil-
itary, naval and political leaders who exercised
power. They now controlled a highly centralised
bureaucratic state, having reversed the earlier
broadening of political participation which had
taken place during the so-called era of Taisho
‘democracy’ of the 1920s. Men like Prince
Konoe, prime minister in 1937–9 and 1940–1,
believed that Japan had a right to achieve equal-
ity with other great powers. Unlike the US and
the British Empire, Japan lacked the necessary
resources within its own tightly packed islands to
fulfil the role of a great power. It was a have-not
nation, so some Japanese argued, claiming only
the opportunity for prosperity and strength to
which its advanced culture, civilisation and capac-
ity for modern technical development entitled it.
For Konoe’s foreign minister, Matsuoko, Japan’s
international conduct was also a question of(^1) Chapter 23
THE CHINA WAR AND THE ORIGINS OF
THE PACIFIC WAR, 1937–41