Why were they such a huge power compared to the neighbours in the beginning of ww2?
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Which neighbours could theoretically challenge their might?
China had just been through civil war and still had a lot of tumult going on.
Most of the other Asian countries were British colonies – India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh etc.
Japan was next highest in population, had an educated workforce, and a militaristic leadership that wanted to become more powerful and join the European countries as a colonial power.
In fact, Japan not being a powerful military would have been more surprising.
China was having a civil war, the British Empire was fighting a small war in Europe, the Soviets were fighting a small war in Europe, France had just been invaded, the Netherlands had just been invaded, they’d already taken Korea, and America was still isolationist.
That about covers all their neighbours.
It wasn’t that Japan was strong, everyone else was week or distracted.
Japan had made themselves a global player after the Meji Restoration and was on par with regards to their Navy with their Pacific peers like USA/UK/France/Russia. The Soviet Union had essentially moved most of their attention and focus to the European side of their country, especially with all of the nastiness going on with Stalin’s rise to power, the purges, etc.
What you get is the only westernized nation in that area that both has the might and the will to project beyond their own borders. They leveraged things like the Qing dynasty collapse to get footholds on the mainland and use their naval power to project their will onto several islands (including Taiwan). Their involvement in World War 2 was a culmination of events that predated Hitler for sure.
Add into that the Japanese way of doing things, combined with the new ideas of Nationalism, backed up by years of fighting each other and repelling foreign foes, and you get a very militaristic country that needs an outlet. Hence, they became very strong. However, a lot of that strength was propped up by American oil and gas for their Navy. One thing people don’t tend to remember about Pearl Harbor, is that it was one of something like 25 operations they started at the same time. Including seizure of the Philippines and moving into Dutch Indonesia in an attempt to secure another source of oil and gas because they were effectively cutting the cord with the USA. They also struck some serious blows with Pearl Harbor, and enjoyed quite a bit of time as the preeminent Naval power in the Pacific. The USA wouldn’t respond at Guadalcanal for over 8 months, and even that was at the far border of Imperial Japan’s claimed territories. It’s like if somebody had struck back at the US by invading Alaska or Hawaii.
The Dan Carlin Podcast (Hardcore History) series ‘Supernova in the East’ is a long slog, but goes pretty deep into explaining this.
The TL;DR is that war is often a battle of attrition, Japan punched way above it’s weight class by creating the largest front of any war, ever (The entire pacific ocean) and it’s military was full of fanatical patriots that were a lot more comfortable with the horrors of the campaign, like not having any rations to live off of, or eventually, being suicide pilots.
While the conditions of the pacific theatre were horrific for GIs, the backbone of the American war effort was it’s robust industry and fuel supplies at home. IE, sink an American aircraft carrier, and 2 more replace it.
Long and very complicated story short, the Perry expedition in the 1850s that forcibly opened Japan to the West made Japan as a whole realize that isolation wasn’t going to work. Japan had also seen Western powers walk all over and/or colonize various Asian countries and had no desire to join them.
Cue decades and decades of modernization and Westernization in an attempt to “sit at the big boys table”, so to speak. By 1904 they were capable of taking on a major European power (Russia), and they only kept expanding from there.
I mean they weren’t a huge power, they lost the war after all. But I understand what you mean – the Japanese were significantly more industrialized and organized than, say, China at the time of the war. The reasons for this have to do with events in the 19th century.
In 1853 an American expedition arrived in Japan and convinced the Japanese government – with just a little teensy threat of war – to end their policy of isolationism and sign a trade treaty that would open their ports to the US and other countries. This was a huge shock to the samurai class who had become pretty complacent with the situation over 200 years of peace and isolation. Suddenly Japan was under threat of invasion and the Japanese understood that the only way to survive would be to massively spend on defense, learn to use western weapons, and modernize as fast as possible. This was not uncontroversial, of course, but luckily for the Japanese there was a class of young Samurai like [fukuzawa yukichi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukuzawa_Yukichi) who, while they had very little actual contact with foreigners, had had an interest in foreign languages and importing foreign books for some time. This relatively educated class was well-situated in Japanese society to get cracking on the modernization, importing western technologies and implementing them as fast as possible.
Now, this process did basically tank the Japanese economy and piss everyone off. The conservatives took it out on foreigners, whom they began attacking in the streets. Meanwhile the other half of the country wants to modernize, and spend even more money they don’t have on guns and steam engines. One thing leads to another and soon enough the country is on the edge of civil war. This is really the critical moment in 19th century history for Japan. It could have ended in unending civil war for decades, but instead the war was luckily very short, and the modernizers were able to seize power, force out the old government, and “restore” emperor Meiji to full power. The Meiji government proved to be pretty capable and immediately set about reforming the government, taxation system, education system, military… practically everything. Because, again, they figured the only way to survive against the threat of invasion by a colonial power was to become a colonial power themselves.
So to that end they went to war with China, taking control of Korea and Taiwan, with they promptly plundered. That conquest brought them into conflict with Russia, and to the surprise of pretty much everyone at the time, they won, thanks to some actually very good tactics and use of modern technology and also the Russian empire being bad at everything in the 19th century. By this point the Europeans and the US couldn’t really ignore them so they said yeah sure Japan I guess you’re an empire too and they even got to technically be an ally in WW1 and come to the peace conference and everything, even while their government became even more militaristic and authoritarian at home
Japan spent a few centuries in isolation, not having a care about the outside world. Then the outside world literally blasted their way into Japan in the 19th century and forced them into the modern age, and Japan realized how *woefully* behind they were and set forth to remedy that.
For the next several decades, Japan, at the Emperor’s direction, sought to modernize. The culture of Japan at the time is what is *really* important, here; the *Emperor* wanted it to be this way, so naturally everybody complied (with the exception of the Satsuma Rebellion, but that’s a relatively minor detail). With the entire population automatically on board with the change in the way society operates, it isn’t much of a surprise that they went from isolated backwater to full-blown military power in a few decades.
I can at least speak about aviation on this front.
There was a long period of time where their technically inferior planes were insanely effective. They were all in on maneuverability and turning radius. The infamous “Zero” could outturn anyone in the skies.
With wings still made of paper it didn’t matter how much bigger the american guns were if they couldn’t hit them.
Believe it or not it was the tactics that cost the americans in the skies. It was until a group of pilots NOT flying under the rules of american pilots that things changed.
For an american pilot, you could be *court martialed* for “running from a fight.” That is to say, you had to engage in a dogfight with the superior turn radius of the japanese planes. A group of volunteer pilots squared off with the japanese while using older allied equipment. They scored many victories. While the americans were getting spanked in the skies, how was this ragtag group of volunteers pulling it off?
See the volunteer pilots figured out they cannot outturn the japanese planes, so they didn’t try. Instead they would take advantage of the fact that they were faster. They did the equivalent of hit and run in the skies. Instead of hanging around for 1 v 1 dogfight you stay as high and fast as possible. The japanese pilots could do nothing but defend. Bleed energy until completely helpless at lower altitude.
As soon as the Japanese enemies updated their outdated doctrine from WW1, the tides turned.
Now all the biggest guns and engines didnt matter if you couldn’t score victories. Air superiority is important. In this specific area the japanese had the better planes for turn-fighting… and it took almost 2 years for people to figure out that you didn’t have to play by those rules of dogfighting.
Their navy, a war spread over a large area of mainly islands, they had carriers and well drilled pilots and crews, their only real opposition was the royal navy detachment out of Singapore and some Australian navy ships initially
Speed, momentum and brutality go a long way, but they weren’t actually that strong as regards reserves or long term planning. Way over extended in the end. If they hadn’t attacked pearl harbor they might have been able to take some of the islands and hold onto them
It’s not that, in my opinion, that the Japanese military was so strong for a country it’s size but that the rest of the world was so weak, by intent.
Japan had been in a war and conquest economy since 1931 and was prepared as it could be for war in 1941 with skilled practiced, fanatically dedicated officers at every level
BUT, it’s military was dependant on foreign sources for oil and the general staff knew that it needed a fast sharp knock out blow to America and the European powers or to accept a peace that isolated them to the home islands and giving up the territories (Korea and Manchuria especially) they were exploiting to enrich themselves.
They felt that they had to start a war with the colonial powers and knew that they couldn’t survive a war of attrition with the US especially so the only via strategy was acting more powerful and frightening than you are and trying to negotiate a favorable peace.
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