Making Waves: Politics, Propaganda, and the Emergence of the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1868-1922 (review)

This book opens with a challenging thesis: The Imperial Japanese Navy "massaged the newly developing erogenous zones of the Japanese body politic more successfully than almost any other organization" between 1868 and 1918. It did so to transform itself from a motley collection of ships into the third most powerful navy in the world. But it also "strengthened or at least further legitimated parliamentary democracy, demonstrated the potential political effectiveness of mass propaganda and pageantry, fostered nationalism, and enlarged Japan's empire toward the South Seas in perception as well as reality" (pp. 3–4). By doing well for itself, the Imperial Japanese Navy helped create the modern Japanese state.

How did it do so? Most historians point first to the navy's spectacular victories over China and Russia, triumphs that demonstrated its power and enhanced its popularity, as the primary reasons for its amazing growth. Mark Peattie and David Evans in their now-classic Kaigun (1997) credit rapid mastery of new technologies and shrewd tactical and strategic planning for the navy's success in battle and growth over time. Schencking reverses the cause and effect dynamic, arguing that the admirals' shrewd navigation of the treacherous waters of politics at home got them the ships and men that guaranteed their triumphs at sea. In the 1870s and 1880s they pieced together a fleet from local forces, won independence from the army, and then squeezed funds for sporadic growth out of oligarchic cabinets. In the 1890s Admiral Yamamoto Gombei who would guide the navy for the next quarter century, realized that the institution of constitutional, parliamentary government changed everything. He made common cause with the Seiyukai party, which sought to end army-dominated oligarchic cabinets, and the politicians in return supported ongoing naval modernization and expansion.

Beyond that, the navy broadened its own political base. It reached out to the public with pageantry and postcards that celebrated its victories and ship launchings. It built local political support by base development programs. By shifting ship construction from public to private yards, it accelerated the development of a naval-industrial-political complex. Corruption in letting shipbuilding contracts tarnished its reputation and toppled Admiral Yamamoto's cabinet. But by 1918 the navy and the Seiyukai got what they wanted: funding for Japan's largest-ever fleet expansion program approved by a Seiyukai-controlled cabinet and Diet.

Such a brief summary cannot do full justice to Schencking's argument, research, and presentation. In person and method, he is truly an international naval historian. He holds degrees from Western Washington, Hawaii, and Cambridge Universities and currently teaches at the University of Melbourne. He exploits diaries of second-level Japanese naval and political leaders that neither I forty years ago nor Evans and Peattie more recently, had available. He uses American and British archives and secondary literature on the German Navy to contextualize Japanese naval growth internationally and to clarify what is distinctive about the Japanese admirals' behavior. Schencking transforms the often mind-numbing detail of Japanese political maneuvering into fascinating narrative. And he brackets it with crystal clear synopses of his arguments.

The result is a book that should "make waves," not just among naval historians or those who focus on modern Japan. Anyone interested in the dynamics of arms races or the Pacific origins of World War II or even the early twentieth century world more generally can read it with great profit. "Banzai!" for a superb work by a rising star in the historical firmament.