39,327
edits
Katanas of the Rising Sun: Difference between revisions
m
Mass update links
m (Mass update links) |
m (Mass update links) |
||
Line 31:
* [[Badass Army|Badass Navy]] : The IJN. [[Badass Decay|Initially]].
** The Imperial Japanese Army almost counts as a [[Badass Army]] because it had such an incredible amount of pluck. But it had almost no sophistication or finesse unlike the Imperial Japanese Navy, and Allied troops tended to fairly commonly "give" several times better then what they "received" from the IJA. The reverse was true, however, for the vast bulk of the action it saw during the wars; most Chinese 'troops' were irregulars - that is to say, militiamen - and they were almost universally ill-equipped and ill-led, and even more poorly coordinated. An exception would be the Chinese Nationalists' 'German' divisions, which were largely wiped out at the Battle of Shanghai, and their Expeditionary Force in Burma, which was trained and equipped (and supplied, and led, and coordinated) to US Army standards.
* [[Better to Die Than Be Killed]]: Suicidal or near suicidal behavior in [[Despair Event Horizon|desperate circumstances]] actually had many examples in [[World War II]] among many belligerents; it was rare among Americans only because of their limited, and relatively 'comfortable;, involvement - exceptions like Torpedo Squadron Eight abound of course. It is very easy to dismiss this attitude as being uniquely Japanese; but to do so dismisses the universality of [[Honor Before Reason|desperation and self-sacrifice]]. Most war-time examples fell under [[Suicide
* [[Big Brother Instinct]]: Some Americans felt this toward the Chinese - they felt they had done a lot to prevent China from being carved up between the other Imperial powers, for instance, as a result of their 'Open Door' policy to China. Likewise the Japanese government promoted this kind of pan-Asian-solidarity as a post-facto means of legitimating their Asian Empire.
** The Japanese legitimately believed their propaganda. Tojo was crying during the formation of the East Asia Prosperity Sphere
Line 80:
* [[Four-Star Badass]] : Admiral Togo Heihachiro, victor of Tsushima (Russo-Japanese War), was the [[Folk Hero]] of the IJN. And with good reason. He led the IJN to victory where IJA had failed miserably.
** Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto: ambitious, politically adroit, intelligent, and with a gift for picking good subordinates, he was a prophet of air power and managed to reach nearly the pinnacle of his profession despite having advocated some extremely unpopular causes. Yet Yamamoto's strategic vision ultimately failed him; Pearl Harbor was a resounding victory but ensured that the United States would never seek a negotiated settlement and thereby cost Japan the war, while sending ''Shokaku'' and ''Zuikaku'' to support the Coral Sea operation cost Japan its margin of superiority in carriers and lead directly to the annihilation of First Air Fleet at Midway.
** Vice Admiral Jisaburo Ozawa. Regarded by his adversaries as the only competent Japanese carrier commander of the war, he was renowned in his own Navy for his intellect and his outspokenness; any mention of Ozawa will invariably quote one of his staff as saying he "[[Surrounded
* [[Insane Troll Logic]]: The Allies "forced" Japan to attack them by refusing to sell ''their own oil'' which Japan of course absolutely needed to sustain their brutal colonization of China.
** [[Insane Troll Logic]], or rather the realization of it, is the reason why the Japanese public grew to hate the military fairly quickly after the Battle of Saipan, when it became obvious even through the propaganda that Japan was in way over its head.
Line 104:
** Indeed, the Katanas also caused said officers to have a [[Highly-Conspicuous Uniform]] on the battlefield, and they often found themselves drawing fire from the American troops as a result.
* [[Useful Notes/The Laws and Customs of War|The Laws and Customs of War]]: Played straight and then subverted later. Interestingly the Japanese were complimented widely for their gracious adherence to this during the Russo-Japanese war. They did not have this reputation during [[World War II]].
* [[Last Stand]]: Banzai charges, which can be summed up as "there's no question that we're gonna die here, so let's [[Badass|do it awesomely]] [[Taking You
** As a practical matter, however, they were silliness of the first order; a massed assault was WWI stuff (and the sort of propagandized insanity that got people worked up to them belonged to wars hundreds of years older than that), and artillery and the machine gun had grown both more numerous and deadlier since their days of breaking such assaults on the Somme. The results were... [[Kill'Em All|predictable]], and the Japanese would have been better served by staying on the defensive.
* [[Karmic Death]]: The architects of the US firebombing campaign considered it a justified response to Japanese atrocities. After the war Japan was essentially a pre-Industrial Age wasteland with almost no cities still standing and came very close to mass famine as their transport system was in ruins.
Line 112:
* [[Made of Explodium]]: The "Long Lance" was a scarily good torpedo. But it got its range and speed from using pure oxygen (where other torps would have compressed air). A '''lot''' of destroyers (and several cruisers) were lost when their torpedoes exploded.
* [[Never Live It Down]]: In parts of East Asia, Japan's reputation can still come off like this and with some justifiable reason. [[Internet Backdraft|Let's just leave it at that.]]
* [[Off
* [[Older Than They Think]]: Japan's ambitions for a trans-Pacific empire date to 1798, when Honda Toshiaki, actually opposing British imperialism, said Japan should rule the entire Pacific Rim and relocate the capital to Kamchatka, because Kamchatka, being at the same latitude as London, [[What an Idiot!|would have the same climate]].
** 1798? Hah! Try *Two CENTURIES* earlier in 1592, when Hideyoshi [[First Sino Japanese War|first tried to force an alliance on]] [[Russo Japanese War|and then invaded Korea]] [[Second Sino
*** Another way of looking at the latter instance is that after Hideyoshi brought an end to the Sengoku Jidai, he needed some way to occupy the attention of all of his samurai and allied warlords while he focused on rebuilding the country. The solution? Send them off on a hopeless war of conquest that will likely get them all killed.
* [[Only Sane Man]]: Isoroku Yamamoto, mentioned above, seemed to be the only man in the country that thought an unprovoked attack on America might be a bad idea... at least in his diary. He's often portrayed as having openly protested or denounced it, but most of the quotes attributed to him may have actually been apocryphal. More recent scholarship suggests the Pearl Harbor attack may have actually originated with Yamamoto.
Line 130:
** Japan decided to build its air forces (both Navy and Army) around small numbers of truly exceptional pilots, rather than large numbers of pilots who were merely very good. It paid off well in the carrier battles of 1942, where Japanese pilots pressed home successful attacks against great odds. It also resulted in the effective destruction of Japanese airpower in 1943, as the prewar aviators went to places like Rabaul and Wewak from which they would never return. Imperial Japanese airpower had to be rebuilt from scratch afterwards.
** Saburo Sakai, noted IJN fighter ace, opined that "the Navy placed almost superstitious belief in the idea that brutality made better enlisted" and by all accounts the Army was worse. The use of physical punishment against an enlisted man was considered utterly normal.
* [[Taking You
** This was their plan in the event of an Allied invasion of the home islands. They pulled back as much troops and tanks as they could to Japan, drafted millions of citizens into militias (including elderly suicide bombers and schoolchildren with knives), commandeered all available boats and planes to use as kamikazes, and spread propaganda to convince their citizens to hold mass suicides. Had the invasion gone through, most estimates predict that it would've resulted in more American deaths than World War 2 and any other war they were involved in or would be involved in ''combined'', and about fifteen percent of Japan's population. Fortunately, the Soviet invasion and the atomic bombs made it unnecessary.
* [[Tank Goodness]]: The only major army of the Second World War to completely avert the trope. Japanese tanks were, in 1930, decent vehicles; underarmored and underarmed, but small and quite light (an important consideration when fighting in jungle terrain). Standards advanced rapidly however, and by 1944 when US M4 tanks met the Japanese Type 97 Chi-Ha, the US tanks could and did treat the Japanese models with the same sort of contempt a German Königstiger might have for their M4s.
Line 140:
* [[Underestimating Badassery]]: Both America and Japan did this to each other to some degree at the start of [[World War II]]. Indeed Japan's whole plan was based on the assumption that a nation of quiet, polite shopkeepers would never have the heart to put [[Honor Before Reason]] and would give up pretty quickly unlike a true [[Proud Warrior Race]].
** Khalkin Gol, where Japan learned you never, under ''any'' circumstances try to invade Russia, as they mostly achieved a [[Pyrrhic Victory]] the first time. The earlier Russo-Japanese War was indeed a fluke as the Russians claim. The Japanese ended up losing some 30,000 soldiers, almost twice as much as the Russians, and retreating.
* [[Unobtanium]]: America and [[The British Empire]] placed an embargo on oil and other resources to Japan before [[World War II|the war]] as they really didn't want it to be used by Japan to beat up China, where they had their own interests including the local [[Balance of Power]]. The Japanese could not carry on military operations without such things and withdrawing would [[Honor Before Reason|lose face]]. Thus they decided that they should attack Pearl Harbor, Singapore, the Phillipines, Burma, and Malaya, thinking a quick strike would and a quick "magnanimous" offer of peace would end the war. [[It Seemed Like a Good Idea At
* [[We Have Reserves]]: The Chinese attempted to use this strategy against Japan, but [[Curb Stomp Battle|it worked out very poorly]] against Japanese tanks, planes, mortars and machine guns. The Japanese themselves attempted to use this against the advanced armies of the United States and the British Commonwealth, which also ended in disaster for much the same reasons. Also, unlike China who could actually afford to replenish losses, Japan couldn't afford to have large amounts of troops killed. On paper, their empire had a very large population to draw from. In reality, they didn't have the food to feed them, the money to train them, or the ammo to equip them.
* [[World War II]] : One of the Imperial forces' two main wars. ''Not'' a sweeping victory for Japan.
| |||