A report on Empire of Japan, Imperial Japanese Navy, Imperial Japanese Army and World War II

The ensign of the Imperial Japanese Army

The League of Nations assembly, held in Geneva, Switzerland, 1930

The Empire of Japan at its peak in 1942:
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Ukiyo-E, depicting the retreat of shogunate forces in front of the Imperial Army (Kangun). Yodo Castle is shown in the background.

Adolf Hitler at a German Nazi political rally in Nuremberg, August 1933

The Naval Battle of Hakodate, May 1869; in the foreground, and of the Imperial Japanese Navy

A 16th-century Japanese "Atakebune" coastal naval war vessel, bearing the symbol of the Tokugawa Clan.

The Koishikawa Arsenal in Tokyo, inaugurated in 1871, soon after the Meiji restoration.

Benito Mussolini inspecting troops during the Italo-Ethiopian War, 1935

No. 6 Odaiba battery, one of the original Edo-era battery islands. These batteries are defensive structures built to withstand naval intrusions.

Prince Aritomo Yamagata, a field marshal in the Imperial Japanese Army and twice Prime Minister of Japan. He was one of the main architects of the military foundations of early modern Japan. Yamagata Aritomo can be seen as the father of Japanese militarism.

The bombing of Guernica in 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, sparked fears abroad in Europe that the next war would be based on bombing of cities with very high civilian casualties.

Prominent members of the Iwakura mission. Left to right: Kido Takayoshi, Yamaguchi Masuka, Iwakura Tomomi, Itō Hirobumi, Ōkubo Toshimichi

The Naval Battle of Hakodate, May 1869; in the foreground, wooden paddle steamer warship and ironclad warship of the Imperial Japanese Navy

Barrack of the Imperial Guard, circa 1940

Japanese Imperial Army soldiers during the Battle of Shanghai, 1937

Emperor Meiji, the 122nd emperor of Japan

The ironclad Fusō, between 1878 and 1891

Marquis Nozu Michitsura, a field marshal in the early Imperial Japanese Army. He was appointed as chief of staff of the Imperial Guard (Japan) in 1874.

Red Army artillery unit during the Battle of Lake Khasan, 1938

Marquis Jutoku Saigo, a general in the early Imperial Japanese Army. He is the nephew of Saigō Takamori, the leader of Satsuma Rebellion of 1877. Many of the rebels were incorporated into the Imperial Army after the failure of the armed uprising.

Chamberlain, Daladier, Hitler, Mussolini, and Ciano pictured just before signing the Munich Agreement, 29 September 1938

Interior of the Japanese Parliament, showing the Prime Minister speaking addressing the House of Peers, 1915

Marshal-Admiral Marquis Saigo Tsugumichi commanded Japanese expeditionary forces as a lieutenant-general in the Taiwan expedition.

Commander-in-chief Saigō Tsugumichi (sitting at the center) pictured with leaders of the Seqalu tribe.

German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop (right) and the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, after signing the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, 23 August 1939

Prince Aritomo Yamagata, who was twice Prime Minister of Japan. He was one of the main architects of the military and political foundations of early modern Japan.

The British-built steam ironclad warship was the flagship of the Imperial Japanese Navy until 1881.

Count Nogi Maresuke, a general in the Imperial Japanese Army and the third governor of Taiwan

Soldiers of the German Wehrmacht tearing down the border crossing into Poland, 1 September 1939

Baron Masuda Tarokaja, a member of the House of Peers (Kazoku). His father, Baron Masuda Takashi, was responsible for transforming Mitsui into a zaibatsu.

The French-built protected cruiser Matsushima, the flagship of the IJN at the Battle of the Yalu River (1894)

Type 13(Top) & Type 22(bottom) Murata rifle. Murata rifle was the first indigenously produced Japanese service rifle adopted in 1880.

Soldiers of the Polish Army during the defence of Poland, September 1939

The Tokyo Industrial Exhibition, 1907 (Mitsubishi pavilion and Exhibition halls)

The protected cruiser Hashidate, built domestically at the arsenal of Yokosuka

Japanese troops during the Sino-Japanese War

Finnish machine gun nest aimed at Soviet Red Army positions during the Winter War, February 1940

Marunouchi District in 1920, looking towards the Imperial Palace

Count Akiyama Yoshifuru, served as a cavalry regimental commander in the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895. In the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, he led his troops against the Cossack cavalry divisions of the Imperial Russian Army.

German advance into Belgium and Northern France, 10 May-4 June 1940, swept past the Maginot Line (shown in dark red)

The Chinese Beiyang Fleet ironclad battleship Zhenyuan captured by IJN in 1895.

Prince Katsura Tarō, three times Prime Minister of Japan. Katsura was the Vice-Minister of War during the period. He commanded the IJA 3rd Division under his mentor, Field Marshal Yamagata Aritomo, during the First Sino-Japanese War.

London seen from St. Paul's Cathedral after the German Blitz, 29 December 1940

Thomas Blake Glover was a Scottish merchant in Bakumatsu and received Japan's second highest order from Emperor Meiji in recognition of his contributions to Japan's industrialization.

Type 30 rifle was the standard infantry rifle of the Imperial Japanese Army from 1897 to 1905.

Soldiers of the British Commonwealth forces from the Australian Army's 9th Division during the Siege of Tobruk; North African Campaign, September 1941

Prince Katsura Tarō, thrice Prime Minister and the Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal of Japan. Katsura commanded the IJA 3rd Division under his mentor, Field Marshal Yamagata Aritomo, during the First Sino-Japanese War.

The pre-dreadnought battleship Mikasa, among the most powerful battleships of her time, in 1905, was one of the six battleships ordered as part of the program.

Ōshima Ken'ichi, Minister of War during the period

German Panzer III of the Afrika Korps advancing across the North African desert, April-May 1941

Map of the Japanese Empire in 1895. This map was issued shortly after the Japanese invasion of Taiwan and is consequently one of the first Japanese maps to include Taiwan as a possession of Imperial Japan.

Marshal-Admiral Viscount Inoue Yoshika, 1900

Japanese riflemen during the Russo-Japanese War

European theatre of World War II animation map, 1939–1945 – Red: Western Allies and the Soviet Union after 1941; Green: Soviet Union before 1941; Blue: Axis powers

Marquess Komura Jutaro, 1911. Komura became Minister for Foreign Affairs under the first Katsura administration, and signed the Boxer Protocol on behalf of Japan.

The Type 38 rifle was adopted by the Imperial Japanese Army in 1905

German soldiers during the invasion of the Soviet Union by the Axis powers, 1941

French illustration of a Japanese assault on entrenched Russian troops during the Russo-Japanese War

Port Arthur viewed from the Top of Gold Hill, after capitulation in 1905. From left wrecks of Russian pre-dreadnought battleships Peresvet, Poltava, Retvizan, Pobeda and the protected cruiser Pallada

Commanding Officers and Chiefs of Staff of the Allied Military Mission to Siberia, Vladivostok during the Allied Intervention

Soviet civilians leaving destroyed houses after a German bombardment during the Battle of Leningrad, 10 December 1942

Holland 1-class submarine, the first Japanese navy submarine, purchased during the Russo Japanese War

IJA amphibious assault ship Shinshū Maru, the world's first landing craft carrier ship to be designed as such.

Japanese soldiers entering Hong Kong, 8 December 1941

Count Tadasu Hayashi was the resident minister to the United Kingdom. While serving in London from 1900, he worked to successfully conclude the Anglo-Japanese Alliance and signed on behalf of the government of Japan on January 30, 1902.

The semi-dreadnought battleship Satsuma, the first ship in the world to be designed and laid down as an "all-big-gun" battleship

Army uniforms between 1941 and 1945 (US Army poster)

The USS Arizona (BB-39) was a total loss in the Japanese surprise air attack on the American Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, Sunday 7 December 1941.

Port Arthur viewed from the Top of Gold Hill, after its capitulation in 1905. From left are the wrecks of Russian pre-dreadnought battleships Peresvet, Poltava, Retvizan, Pobeda and the protected cruisers Pallada

US President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British PM Winston Churchill seated at the Casablanca Conference, January 1943

Emperor Taishō, the 123rd emperor of Japan

Type 97 Chi-Ha, the most widely produced Japanese medium tank of World War II

Map of Japanese military advances through mid-1942

Topographic map of the Empire of Japan in November, 1918

The seaplane carrier conducted the world's first sea-launched air raids in September 1914.

US Marines during the Guadalcanal Campaign, in the Pacific theatre, 1942

Native Micronesian constables of Truk Island, circa 1930. Truk became a possession of the Empire of Japan under a mandate from the League of Nations following Germany's defeat in World War I.

Yokosuka Naval Arsenal immediately after the Great Kantō earthquake of 1923

Indonesian child recruits being trained by Japanese officers as human shield, 1945

Red Army soldiers on the counterattack during the Battle of Stalingrad, February 1943

Photograph shows the super-dreadnought battleship Nagato, between ca. 1920 and ca. 1925

Many thousands of Indonesian were taken away as forced labourers (romusha) for Japanese military projects, including the Burma-Siam and Saketi-Bayah railways, and suffered or died as a result of ill-treatment and starvation. Pictured is an internment camp in Jakarta, c. 1945

American 8th Air Force Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bombing raid on the Focke-Wulf factory in Germany, 9 October 1943

Groundbreaking ceremony of Ginza Line, the oldest subway line in Asia, 1925. Front row, right to left: Rudolf Briske, Noritsugu Hayakawa, Furuichi Kōi, Ryutaro Nomura.

Disposition of the Imperial Japanese Army in Japan at the time of its capitulation, 18 August 1945

U.S. Navy SBD-5 scout plane flying patrol over USS Washington (BB-56) and USS Lexington (CV-16) during the Gilbert and Marshall Islands campaign, 1943

Count Itagaki Taisuke is credited as being the first Japanese party leader and an important force for liberalism in Meiji Japan.

The planned Tosa-class battleship Tosa being prepared for scuttling at Kure on 31 January 1925.

Red Army troops in a counter-offensive on German positions at the Battle of Kursk, July 1943

Count Katō Komei, the 14th Prime Minister of Japan from June 11, 1924, until his death on January 28, 1926

Captain Sempill showing a Sparrowhawk fighter to Admiral Tōgō Heihachirō, 1921

Ruins of the Benedictine monastery, during the Battle of Monte Cassino, Italian Campaign, May 1944

Emperor Shōwa during an Army inspection on January 8, 1938

, the world's first purpose built aircraft carrier, completed in 1922

IJA Taiwanese soldier in Philippines during World War II

American troops approaching Omaha Beach during the invasion of Normandy on D-Day, 6 June 1944

Tokyo Kaikan was requisitioned as the meeting place for members of the Imperial Rule Assistance Association (Taisei Yokusankai) in the early days.

IJN super-dreadnought battleships Yamashiro, Fusō, and battlecruiser Haruna, Tokyo Bay, 1930s

German SS soldiers from the Dirlewanger Brigade, tasked with suppressing the Warsaw Uprising against Nazi occupation, August 1944

Type 91 Aerial Torpedo on IJN aircraft carrier Akagi flight deck.

General Douglas MacArthur returns to the Philippines during the Battle of Leyte, 20 October 1944

Rebel troops assembling at police headquarters during the February 26 Incident

IJN Yamato-class Battleships Yamato and Musashi moored in Truk Lagoon, in 1943

Yalta Conference held in February 1945, with Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin

A bank run during the Shōwa financial crisis, March 1927

IJN Ha-101 class submarines Ha-105, Ha-106 and Ha-109 designed as transport submarines to resupply isolated island garrisons, 1945.

Ruins of the Reichstag in Berlin, 3 June 1945.

Aft view of the flight deck of the IJN aircraft carrier from the island, 19 October 1945

Atomic bombing of Nagasaki on 9 August 1945.

Political map of the Asia-Pacific region, 1939

IJN Aircraft carrier Ibuki under dismantling operation at Sasebo Naval Arsenal. October 1946

Ruins of Warsaw in 1945, after the deliberate destruction of the city by the occupying German forces

Japanese troops entering Shenyang, Northeast China during the Mukden Incident, 1931

Replica of the Japanese-built 1613 galleon San Juan Bautista, in Ishinomaki

Defendants at the Nuremberg trials, where the Allied forces prosecuted prominent members of the political, military, judicial and economic leadership of Nazi Germany for crimes against humanity

The Japanese occupation of Peiping (Beijing) in China, on August 13, 1937. Japanese troops are shown passing from Peiping into the Tartar City through Zhengyangmen, the main gate leading onward to the palaces in the Forbidden City.

A Chinese illustration of a Red seal ship.

Post-war border changes in Central Europe and creation of the Communist Eastern Bloc

IJN Special Naval Landing Forces armed with the Type 11 Light Machine Gun during the Battle of Shanghai, 1937

The sailing frigate Shōhei Maru (1854) was built from Dutch technical drawings.

David Ben-Gurion proclaiming the Israeli Declaration of Independence at the Independence Hall, 14 May 1948

Signing ceremony for the Axis Powers Tripartite Pact

The screw-driven steam corvette {{Ship|Japanese warship|Kanrin Maru||2}}, Japan's first screw-driven steam warship, 1857

Founding ceremony of the Hakkō ichiu (All the world under one roof) monument in 1940

The gunboat Chiyoda, was Japan's first domestically built steam warship. It was completed in May 1866.<ref>Jentschura p. 113</ref>

Bodies of Chinese civilians killed by the Imperial Japanese Army during the Nanking Massacre in December 1937

A map of the Japanese advance from 1937 to 1942

The French-built ironclad warship Kōtetsu (ex-CSS Stonewall), Japan's first modern ironclad, 1869

Schutzstaffel (SS) female camp guards removing prisoners' bodies from lorries and carrying them to a mass grave, inside the German Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, 1945

Victorious Japanese troops march through the city center of Singapore following the city's capture in February 1942 (Photo from the Imperial War Museum)

The warship of Yamada Nagamasa (1590–1630), a merchant and soldier who traveled to Ayutthaya (Thailand)

Prisoner identity photograph taken by the German SS of a Polish Catholic girl who died in Auschwitz. Approximately 230,000 children were held prisoner and used in forced labour and Nazi medical experiments.

Imperial Japanese Army paratroopers are landing during the Battle of Palembang, February 13, 1942.

Polish civilians wearing blindfolds photographed just before their execution by German soldiers in Palmiry forest, 1940

A model representing the attack by dive bombers from USS Yorktown (CV-5) and USS Enterprise (CV-6) on the Japanese aircraft carriers, and in the morning of June 4, 1942, during the Battle of Midway

Soviet partisans hanged by the German army. The Russian Academy of Sciences reported in 1995 civilian victims in the Soviet Union at German hands totalled 13.7 million dead, twenty percent of the 68 million persons in the occupied Soviet Union.

Group of Type 2 Ka-Mi tanks on board of 2nd class transporter of the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1944–1945

B-29 Superfortress strategic bombers on the Boeing assembly line in Wichita, Kansas, 1944

The rebuilt battlecruiser sank at her moorings in the naval base of Kure on July 24 during a series of bombings.

A V-2 rocket launched from a fixed site in Peenemünde, 21 June 1943

The Japanese archipelago and the Korean Peninsula in 1945 (National Geographic)

Nuclear Gadget being raised to the top of the detonation "shot tower", at Alamogordo Bombing Range; Trinity nuclear test, New Mexico, July 1945

A drawing depicting a speech in the Imperial Japanese Diet on November 1, 1945, the end of the Second World War. In the foreground there are several Allied soldiers watching the proceedings from the back of the balcony.

From left to right: Marshal Admiral Heihachirō Tōgō (1848–1934), Field Marshal Oku Yasukata (1847–1930), Marshal Admiral Yoshika Inoue (1845–1929), Field Marshal Kageaki Kawamura (1850–1926), at the unveiling ceremony of bronze statue of Field Marshal Iwao Ōyama

Population density map of the Empire of Japan (1920).

Population density map of the Empire of Japan (1940).

The Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN; Kyūjitai: 大日本帝國海軍 Shinjitai: 大日本帝国海軍 'Navy of the Greater Japanese Empire', or 日本海軍 Nippon Kaigun, 'Japanese Navy') was the navy of the Empire of Japan from 1868 to 1945, when it was dissolved following Japan's surrender in World War II.

- Imperial Japanese Navy

The Imperial Japanese Army (大日本帝国陸軍) was the official ground-based armed force of the Empire of Japan from 1868 to 1945.

- Imperial Japanese Army

It was controlled by the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff Office and the Ministry of the Army, both of which were nominally subordinate to the Emperor of Japan as supreme commander of the army and the Imperial Japanese Navy.

- Imperial Japanese Army

Economic and political turmoil in the 1920s, including the Great Depression, led to the rise of militarism, nationalism and totalitarianism as embodied in the Showa Statism ideology, eventually culminating in Japan's membership in the Axis alliance and the conquest of a large part of the Asia-Pacific in World War II.

- Empire of Japan

In 1947, with American involvement, a new constitution was enacted, officially bringing the Empire of Japan to an end, and Japan's Imperial Army was replaced with the Japan Self-Defense Forces.

- Empire of Japan

From late 1939 to early 1941, in a series of campaigns and treaties, Germany conquered or controlled much of continental Europe, and formed the Axis alliance with Italy and Japan (along with other countries later on).

- World War II

During 1944 and 1945, Japan suffered reversals in mainland Asia, while the Allies crippled the Japanese Navy and captured key western Pacific islands.

- World War II

In 1874, the Taiwan expedition was the first foray abroad of the new Imperial Japanese Navy and Army after the Mudan Incident of 1871, however the navy served largely as a transport force.

- Imperial Japanese Navy

Of the total, 20,300 were Imperial Japanese Army troops of the 5th Infantry Division under Lt. General Yamaguchi Motoomi; the remainder were 540 naval rikusentai (marines) from the Imperial Japanese Navy.

- Empire of Japan

At the beginning of the Second World War, most of the Japanese Army (27 divisions) was stationed in China.

- Imperial Japanese Army

In the years before World War II, the IJN began to structure itself specifically to fight the United States.

- Imperial Japanese Navy

The Imperial Japanese Army used a variety of such weapons during its invasion and occupation of China (see Unit 731) and in early conflicts against the Soviets.

- World War II

1 related topic with Alpha

(clockwise from top left)Imperial Japanese Navy landing force in military gas masks in the Battle of Shanghai

Japanese Type 92 heavy machine gunners during Operation Ichi-Go

Victims of the Nanjing Massacre on the shore of the Qinhuai River

Chinese machine gun nest in the Battle of Wuhan

Japanese aircraft during the bombing of Chongqing

Chinese Expeditionary Force marching in India

Second Sino-Japanese War

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Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, Allied Commander-in-Chief in the China theatre from 1942 to 1945

Japanese troops entering Shenyang during the Mukden Incident

A baby sits in the remains of a Shanghai train station on 'Bloody Saturday', 1937

Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek announced the Kuomintang policy of resistance against Japan at Lushan on 10 July 1937, three days after the Marco Polo Bridge Incident.

Japanese landing near Shanghai, November 1937

Japanese troops in the ruins of Shanghai

Soviet embassy in Nanjing is being burned down by arson on 1 January 1938.

A Chinese POW about to be beheaded by a Japanese officer with a shin gunto

National Revolutionary Army soldiers during the 1938 Yellow River flood

Map showing the extent of Japanese occupation in 1941 (in red)

Theaters (military operational regions) of the Chinese National Revolutionary Army from late 1938 to early 1940

Wang Jingwei and officers of the Collaborationist Chinese Army

Chinese soldiers in house-to-house fighting in the Battle of Taierzhuang, March–April 1938

National Revolutionary Army soldiers march to the front in 1939.

Eighth Route Army Commander Zhu De with a KMT "Blue Sky, White Sun" emblem cap

115th Division of the Eighth Route Army Lieutenant General (NRA rank) Lin Biao in NRA uniform

War declaration against Japan by the Chongqing Nationalist Government on 9 December 1941

Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and his wife Madame Chiang with Lieutenant General Joseph Stilwell in 1942, Burma

A United States poster from the United China Relief organization advocating aid to China.

Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill met at the Cairo Conference in 1943 during World War II.

I-16 with Chinese insignia. The I-16 was the main fighter plane used by the Chinese Air Force and Soviet volunteers.

Flying Tigers Commander Claire Lee Chennault

A "blood chit" issued to American Volunteer Group pilots requesting all Chinese to offer rescue and protection

Free Thai, American and Chinese military officers in China during the war

The India–China airlift delivered approximately 650,000 tons of materiel to China at a cost of 1,659 men and 594 aircraft.

French colonial troops retreating to the Chinese border after the Japanese coup d'état in March 1945

WWII victory parade at Chongqing on 3 September 1945

Japanese troops surrendering to the Chinese

The Chinese return to Liuzhou in July 1945.

China War of Resistance Against Japan Memorial Museum on the site where the Marco Polo Bridge Incident took place

The Taiwan Strait and the island of Taiwan

Casualties of a mass panic during a June 1941 Japanese bombing of Chongqing. More than 5,000 civilians died during the first two days of air raids in 1939.

Japanese war crime against a Chinese POW

Japanese Special Naval Landing Forces with gas masks and rubber gloves during a chemical attack near Chapei in the Battle of Shanghai

Chinese suicide bomber putting on an explosive vest made out of Model 24 hand grenades to use in an attack on Japanese tanks at the Battle of Taierzhuang

The Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) was a military conflict that was primarily waged between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan.

The war made up the Chinese theater of the wider Pacific Theater of the Second World War.

In the three days from 14 August through 16, 1937, the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) sent many sorties of the then-advanced long-ranged G3M medium-heavy land-based bombers and assorted carrier-based aircraft with the expectation of destroying the Chinese Air Force.

The Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) ultimately committed over 200,000 troops, along with numerous naval vessels and aircraft, to capture the city.