What was Japan's endgame for China?

What was Japan's endgame for China?

Was it aiming for annexation? Did it want to divy it up into puppet states? Did it want to conquer the whole thing or just the eastern half? What was it expecting post-war?

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>WW2 Era Japan
>Endgame

There really wasn't one. It was more of a series of opportunistic moves carried out, as often to seize power vis a vis other members of the Japanese government as it was for any strategic purpose to Japan as a whole.

Long term planning wasn't really something that they did.

Could the Japanese not destroy that large pocket in Eastern China?

I know nothing about this part of the war so please educate me

That region was all junglish subtropic environment where guerilla peasants could fuck up the japs when they tried to leave the cities.

Wow now that I look at it japs didn't even control that much land

Source:
usma.edu/history/SiteAssets/SitePages/Chinese Civil War/ChineseCivilWar04.gif
usma.edu/history/SiteAssets/SitePages/Chinese Civil War/ChineseCivilWar05.gif

...You are joking?

Hideyoshi was aiming to "introduce Japanese customs and values in china" and "bestow upon China the benefit of Japanese Imperial rule." The endgame was going to be a unified East Asia under Hideyoshi himself, who would rule from Korea. He wanted the Japanese emperor enthroned in Beijing and one of Japan's imperial princes to rule the Japanese mainland. It was mostly just for his own personal glory (he was an old man who had only ever known fighting and was hungry for a legacy), however, having just unified his own nation he also saw the opportunity in sending his Daimyo off to war to keep them busy and not nipping at his heels for rulership of Japan.

Toyotomi? Or some other guy? Because toyotomi didn't control anything off Japan

Not really, no.

Yes Toyotomi, and he actually controlled almost the entirety of Korea for the first year of the Imjin war and maintained control of the southern provinces even longer than that. If not for Yi-Sun-Sin, the invention of the turtle ship, and Hideyoshi's death Korea very well may have been partitioned in two 300 years early.

I'm unfamiliar on their Asian policy, but the plan for conquering the Pacific was to

1. Deliver a huge blow against the USA navy

2. Get into strategic locations before the USA navy could rebuild

3. Hope the USA gets too tired

4. Hope the USA offers a White Peace and a Peace Treaty

Yep, the Japanese leaders believed that in a democratic republic the people would very quickly lose taste for war and vote to end it, especially if they were on the back foot. However, the Americans were more than willing to adopt certain autocratic policies to win the war, from the Draft to electing Roosevelt for 4 terms, ignoring the precedent made by other presidents, and their willingness to just intern Japanese citizens.

Create a new Ottoman empire

I'm not even joking, Turkey broke all ties with Japan after it was proved that they were working together with Ottoman sympathizers to create a puppet state ruled by them in West China.

IJA gains were mostly officers being opportunistic to gain promotions and political power and a lot of the major stuff they did was not sanctioned by the Japanese government until it was done to prevent diplomatic fallout.
See the Mukden Incident and the border conflicts with the USSR.

Nope

No. WW2 Japan had Government by coup and fait accompli. No one more powerful than a Colonel planned to invade Manchuria.

How could a military so disorganized have so much success?

By going up against the KMT army, which was even more disorganized, more corrupt, and less equipped

The tanaka memorial would be something to read regarding Japanese end goals circa WW2.

>Attack country in the middle of a civil war between a rebel army and a loose collection of warlords under a corrupt Republic.
Also
>Attack Western powers fucking busy being BTFO in Europe to care about colonial peripheries.

China wasnt a full state when you look at maps

China was 'ruled' by the KMT, but they only had control over parts of China, the rest of the country was run by warlord cliques and communists

Chang-Kai-Shek nearly wiped out all of the KMT's enemies but he was kidnapped before he was about to finish off Mao's forces, by his own generals because they were more worried about the Japanese invasion than the Warlords/Commies

The KMT's national army was horrendously inefficient, and barely equipped. IIRC they were using tanketts supplied by the British and French that could be penetrated with HMG fire

>IIRC they were using tanketts supplied by the British and French that could be penetrated with HMG fire
So were the Japs.
The difference was that the Japs were much better equipped and supplied than the NRA. The only NRA troops that were nearly as well equipped as well as the Japs were Chiang's elite divisions that got wiped out around Shanghai.

were Jap tanks that shit? I thought they were crap but not THAT bad

>Attack Western powers fucking busy being BTFO in Europe to care about colonial peripheries.
If fucking only they were smart enough just to attack the Dutch East Indies and just stop, no attacking America or Britain. Just taking the oil fields and calling it even.

The Chi-Ha was okay for an early war tank, but it was shit compared to what everyone else was fielding at the time.

Britain conquered Tibet on a fucking whim and amid bickering over logistics:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_expedition_to_Tibet
De Genouilly also laid the foundations for French Indochina by taking cities left and right whenever it looked doable, though he was eventually replaced because he kept overextending himself and generally pissing off the entire region.

The Great Game was like a comedy skit.

The Ha-go light tank, one of the most mass produced Japanese tanks can be penetrated by a Browning M2 at close range.
The NRA had different tanks from different warlords with anything from Renault FTs to Vickers 6 tons to M2/M3 light tanks.
The biggest difference was that the Japanese were better supplied, organized and can replace losses which forced Chiang to keep a lot of his best equipment in reserve as he couldn't replace all his losses.

Surely Pearl Harbor was sanctioned though? Nagumo didn't just tell the IJN, "I'm going to borrow a few aircraft carriers for the weekend. I promise to bring them back in one piece. Don't wait up on me"... did he?

The endless threads about Militarist Japan here reminds me of the unending streams of Chinese Civil War media in China.

Onto the topic of hand, I'm not sure myself. The main aim was to grab some easy land such as Manchuria for resources. Japan would have assigned some territories to the 'Reorganised KMT Government.' Mengjiang and Manchukuo would have been independent puppets

That itself was planned but there was some comedy that went into the entire plan as well. Admiral Yamato threatened to resign unless the General Staff gave the green light.

I thought Yamamoto didn't want war with the US.

not him but as I understand he said that he could fight an effective war for around a year and after that his resources wouldnt allow for an effective campaign so, read into that what you will

They didn't even fight an effective war for 3 months.

This look like a bunch of warlords in a "single" army. Like the China.

Is there any plausible scenario where the Japaanese don't declare war on the US, or was it always far too tempting for the militarists to not to take the bait?

They had 700,000 troops stationed there when, between the two bombs, Russia came in and massacred them all, so I suspect they were planning to use it as a staging ground and just take the rest later. These were just the easiest bits to take and the ones most crucial for taking the rest. (Save the Yellow River.)

And yeah, Japan thought America wouldn't go to war over it. Ironically, they probably woulda been right, if they hadn't bombed Pearl Harbor. America was finding a hard time caring about yellow on yellow violence and the taking of various distant ally's colonial property - but bombing American navy boys prompted an immediate KTFO reaction. (Which, purportedly, some of the Japs who had actually been to America warned about.)

Imperial Japan would probably still be a thing if they hadn't bombed Pearl Harbor or allied with Hitler.

>America was finding a hard time caring about yellow on yellow violence and the taking of various distant ally's colonial property
To be fair though, America in the 30s and 40s was oddly concerned about the Chinese. More-so over them than many European peoples.

The USA were effectively embargoing Japan after their expansion into the Pacific, and had stopped selling them oil.
Japan had to either break the embargo with a war, or see their empire collapse

Thing is the Japanese were right but it was gamble and luck wasn't on their side. Towards the end of the conflict war exhaustion was high in the US, there were riots over material shortages and race riots. The American public was ready for peace but Washington pushed for the continuation of the war.

>Imperial Japan would probably still be a thing if they hadn't bombed Pearl Harbor or allied with Hitler.
You're a retard. Japan was literally forced into attacking the USA due to the American oil embargo. if they did not, as you suggest, their empire would have collapsed.

Please read up on history before you post on the history board.

>apan was literally forced into attacking the USA due to the American oil embargo. if they did not, as you suggest, their empire would have collapsed.


Or, (and follow me on this, it's complicated), they attack the DEI, which is where the oil they were using to sustain their empire during the Pacific war, and ignore the U.S.

TA FUCKING DA!

Do you think Japan was really dumb enough to not think up of that strategy? Do you not realize that WAS their strategy? Do you not realize they were prevented from practically executing that because of a giant US military base (the Philippines) being in the way?

>Do you think Japan was really dumb enough to not think up of that strategy?


Quite honestly, yes. Japan was fucking dumb in the time period, and it's probably inaccurate to refer to a "Japan" as a unified black box making decisions within the national interest, what with all the fractured command.

>Do you not realize that WAS their strategy?

No, their strategy was to bloody the U.S.'s nose a bit, in the hope that this would make the conquest of the places they actually wanted easier, because they figured the Americans didn't have the stomach for war. Trying to prevent them from entering in the war, or altering the circumstances of that war's start (it's way different if you're dying to defend a dutch colony which already had low level revolt against their overlords than it is to get back at those treacherous nips who performed a cowardly sneak attack), was not part of said strategy.

> Do you not realize they were prevented from practically executing that because of a giant US military base (the Philippines) being in the way?

Do you have any fucking idea what you're talking about? The Philippines, at the outset of the Pacific war, had about 100 bombers and 0 capital ships stationed to it. The invasion of the DEI was conducted simultaneously with the invasion of the Philippines, and was over much more quickly. There was nothing the Philippines forces could do to stop the attack, and that's assuming that the U.S. actually goes to war over it.

End-game was absorbation and unification of China - full or restoration of Chinese empire as vassal of Japan. It was supported by most of Chinese population - except few British, American and Soviet colloborants.

> It was supported by most of Chinese population - except few British, American and Soviet colloborants
And the millions they killed, I'm assuming.

When the chips are down, people will drop their ideals in a heartbeat. This is just human nature.

I bet if we got into a total war right now we'd engage in some barbarism that would have been unthinkable a year before. It's like a flip switches in people's minds.

Pearl Harbor was sanctioned, but that was more of a reaction to the clusterfuck they had got themselves trapped in than anything else. Pearl Harbor was the result of the Japanese government realizing that they had effectively "forced" themselves into a war with America because
>Kwantung Army got their shit slapped so hard at Khalkhin Gol that even thinking about Siberia was off-limits
>IJA invaded French Indochina on its own initiative, causing Japan to get hit with heavy sanctions

5.5 millions total dead (inluding non-killed) - miserable figure for whole China. Also, Japs lost about 300000.

>End-game was absorbation and unification of China - full or restoration of Chinese empire as vassal of Japan. It was supported by most of Chinese population - except few British, American and Soviet colloborants.
>It was supported by most of Chinese population

Meanwhile, in 1920s China.
>"X WARLORD IS A JAP COLLABORATOR. HERE, PROOFS."
>Support for that guy drops overnight.

>Japan was literally forced into attacking the USA due to the American oil embargo
Nobody forced them to invade French Indochina. Literally all they had to do was keep their shit together any the embargo would never have happened.

Are you only counting military dead? Because even the lowest estimates go way, way fucking higher than 5.5 million killed in the second Sino-Japanese war.

>Japan was literally forced into attacking the USA due to the American oil embargo

Holy fuck I feel bad for weaboos.

At the start, there literally was no endgame. They pretty much blundered into the war, and it wasn't until they were heavily embroiled in it that anyone really thought about how they were going to "win."

Japan ended up establishing a puppet government led by former KMT leader Wang Jingwei during the war, and that really was the closest they came to a definitive endgame - creating a puppet government in China like they had in Manchuria

>most Chinese supported the Japanese
We alternate history now

What?

5.5 was standart figure for decades.
Meme about 30 millions appeared about 2005 as Chinese pretension to be main winner of WWII.
Proove me wrong. Japanese army was miserable to occupy something outside of Manchuria. Most of provinces were converted after pro-Japanese coups.

>5.5 was standart figure for decades.

You are REALLY going to have to back up this claim.

>prove me wrong
Not how it works dumbfuck. You made the claim.

>2100115

>5.5 was standart figure for decades.

No, it wasn't.

>Meme about 30 millions appeared about 2005 as Chinese pretension to be main winner of WWII.

Bullshit.

hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP3.HTM#

hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.TAB3.1.GIF

I fucking hate weebs

It wasn't so much "taking the bait" as it was "Shit guys if he do something we will have nothing to supply anyone with"
The options to break the embargo were to leave china(which Japan was not going to do), or force it to end with a quick war mostly composed of decisive naval victories for Japan.

Japan confiscated property of Western settlements and gave it to Chinese republic.
The whole conception of Japanese agression is wrong. Either triple agression of USSR, USA and Japan or struggle of 3 "people regimes" incuding pro-Japanese.

>The whole conception of Japanese agression is wrong
u foking wot m8

>The options to break the embargo were to leave china(which Japan was not going to do), or force it to end with a quick war mostly composed of decisive naval victories for Japan.

And one of those options turned out to be infinitely better.

>The whole conception of Japanese agression is wrong.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mukden_Incident
>The Mukden Incident, or Manchurian Incident, was a staged event engineered by Japanese military personnel as a pretext for the Japanese invasion in 1931 of northeastern China, known as Manchuria.[1][2][3]

>The whole conception of Japanese aggression is wrong.

>The whole conception of Japanese agression is wrong. Either triple agression of USSR, USA and Japan or struggle of 3 "people regimes" incuding pro-Japanese.

What it feels like to chew weeb gum

>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Manchuria
>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Volunteer_Group

kek

Not an argument

Or... you know... Japan could have just ended the war in China.

don't you get it user? They had a right to China as a natural sphere of influence and the Americans were just trying to Jew them out of their equal place in the world

>The whole conception of Japanese agression is wrong.

LOOK AT HIM
LOOK AT HIM AND LAUGH

Such as yours. China of 1930-1940 was in hard crysis, its even hard to name it "civil war" because it was set of independent states ("provinces") with permanent coups and conflicts.
You can say about "japanese agressors" or "soviet-american liberators", but its game of words. Superpowers were glad to conquer these weak lands, and their intervention gradially unite China into 3 states - Japanese, American and Soviet. Try to google >>>detailed

>symbolic garrisons

>over 4 million Japanese troops deployed to China
>over a million Japanese casualties

>Because Japanese influence was based not on direct invasion and occupation but on loyal and strong leaders of most of Chinese states ("provinces") and symbolic garrisons in biggest cities.

I honestly am not sure if you are baiting or not

>over 4 million Japanese troops deployed to
Including Manchuria and Taiwan. Try to know numbers outside these regions.
>>over a million Japanese casualties
Up to 480000 dead. During 8 years.

casualties != dead

but even half a million dead is still pretty huge and isn't something that happens when you only have a "token garrison"

>Up to 480000 dead. During 8 years.
>only the dead are casualties

Are you able to read?

Compare 60000 corpses per year and total Chinese population. Japanese operations were miserable and not decisive, major part of army were spent to Manchuria. Japane could not establish influencce over 70+% of Chinese population without majority of followers. Thats why details of Chinese theater are hiding- no normal maps, no continues reports, just shouts about "evil japs".

hold up

is someone trying to claim that the Japanese invasion of China wasn't really an invasion

yes. yes they are

or perhaps rather more accurately, they're claiming that Japan was really just helping friendly Chinese governors/warlords and only doing "token" fighting/occupying/killing/dying themselves.

I won't argue that Chinese puppets weren't perhaps the main method the Japanese used to establish control, but to paint the entire picture as a Chinese internal affair with minimal Japanese presence is asinine. Yes, the Chinese were, to put it mildly, fighting among themselves, but the Japanese invasion of China was still a very real thing.

I have a question? Regardless of what may have been happening in southern China, are we not counting Manchuria as Japanese occupied/a Japanese invasion, or are we not counting it as part of China, or what?

Im trying to imply common standarts of discussion. There was internal conflict of 3 factions with intervention of 3 related superpowers. Japan was defeated and claimed as agressor, but USA and USSR also were sending their troops which were killing opponents. Japanese involvement were successive - up to major part of China - it is explained as massive total invasion and occupation. I state that it wasnt massive because of size of Japanese army and Chinese demography.
Nice quastion. Most of figures about "occupants" including garrisons of Manchuria, which was vassal of Japan.

right, it was a vassal, after Japan invaded it and set up a puppet government. I'm saying that even if we accept that elsewhere in China Japan actually played a fairly minor role and it was really Chinese warlords/factions vs each other (and post war the story was morphed into "no it was a Japanese invasion that destroyed everything" to unify the people again) wouldn't Manchuria still count as a rather direct Japanese invasion/occupation of China? They were even recruiting Japanese colonists for Manchuria.

China was decentrilised country with fluent borders such as Holy Roman empire. Current borders of China are random - Mongolia was seized by Russia, Vietnam by France, Korea by USSR and USA. By other way - China could be completely divided between colonial empires.
Japane offered unification of whole Far East of Yellow race under Japanese aegis. Sort of current European Union of white race. It was rather attractive and anti-Japanese resistence wasnt intensive.
Plan was failed by USSR and USA.

>Number of Japanese troops in China
>Roughly 4 million

>Number of U.S. troops in China
>About 2,000

>Number of Soviet troops in China
>About 10,000.

Oh yeah, it was an internal conflict with external support and not an invasion [/sarcasm]

>By other way - China could be completely divided between colonial empires.
Every major power wanted to prevent the division of China before WW2 due to fears of dominance of China by another power. The only time a serious division proposal was put out was during the Chinese Civil War after Japan was defeated to have Northern Communist China to the North of the Yangtze river and a KMT government south of the Yangtze River.
>Japane offered unification of whole Far East of Yellow race under Japanese aegis. Sort of current European Union of white race.
Except that both the CPC and the KMT were trying to reunify China. Why would China want to become a Japanese colony when they wouldn't be colonized otherwise and were on the path to industrialization until Japan went in and ruined everything.
> It was rather attractive and anti-Japanese resistence wasnt intensive.
The only people who weren't anti-Japanese were the warlords who were Japanese puppets. There was a reason why Japan only controlled cities and couldn't set foot in the countryside even with all the collaborator troops.

Abe plsgo

I wouldn't take him too seriously, I think I recognize him from a few other threads.

If you try to refute his bizarre claims for too long he'll start accusing you of being Chinese.

>Except that both the CPC and the KMT were trying to reunify China. Why would China want to become a Japanese colony when they wouldn't be colonized otherwise and were on the path to industrialization until Japan went in and ruined everything.
Difference was between Commi shame and losses, protectorate by USA (also not bad case - South Korea x20) or unification with yellow brothers. Racial motives are irrational, but strong. Japan had similar culture, it was easy to create united nation of Far East. I highly doubt about colonial exploitation by Japan, removing of dialects is common practise (Italy, Germany, France).

Or they can reunify themselves like they have done and get Japan to fuck off. There is literally ZERO reason for China to want to be colonized or be a puppet by Japan because China was on the path to modernization and its efforts were supported by everyone but Japan as everyone else wanted a large and reliable trading partner.

>Racial motives are irrational, but strong.
Given Sino-Japanese relations since the late 18th century, I don't see much evidence of any will by the Chinese to get close the Japanese.

As far as the Chinese were concerned the Japanese were just another outside nation imposing unequal treaties on her:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-One_Demands

>removing of dialects is common practise
Japanese and Chinese aren't even from the same family of languages.

*late 19th Century

I thought Veeky Forums's other boards were weeb but this takes it to a whole new level.

Japan + China could be much stronger than current PRC. Stronger and richer than USSR and USA.
Japan hadnt important foreign relations before 1850. Japanese expansion toward China was possible because "Chinese Imperial family" was same leader of China as current secretar of UN is leader of Earth.
>Japanese and Chinese aren't even from the same family of languages.
China had more than 20 different languages. They are gradually dissapearing during Commi power. Common state could also had one main languge.

>Japan + China could be much stronger than current PRC. Stronger and richer than USSR and USA.
Except it wouldn't.
Post war Chinese war industry started from very little from the factories Chiang relocated from the Yangtze delta. The PRC got a head start from the USSR which helped them build a basic industry. When Deng liberalized the economy, it was built with US capital.

Japan's postwar economy was also built with US capital and was much stronger than it was pre-war.

If anything, China would be stronger than it is right now if Japan didn't come in and fuck everything up.

I forgot to add that both USSR and USA invested a lot more than Japan could have invested into China with its relatively small economy.

In the broad sweep of history China has been much stronger (economically, militarily, and culturally) than Japan. So it seems more natural that Japan should be a part of the Chinese Empire.

They could stop using Japanese, and take up Mandarin, and Hanzi to replace all those crazy squiggles.

Japan had its chance to unite East Asia, and they fucked up. Give China a chance at creating the Co-Prosperity Sphere.

General sentiment against the Japanese was very sour after the First Sino-Japanese War, and it only got worse after WW1, and the concessions that Japan gained by coercion.

By the time the 30s and 40s rolled around, Japan was the greatest threat to Chinese sovereignty, and by a the largest degree the Japanese were not welcome in China at all.

>Japan + China could be much stronger than current PRC. Stronger and richer than USSR and USA.
[citation needed]

>Common state could also had one main languge.
The Chinese languages follow very similar grammatical rules compared to Japanese. In fact, they are all SVO as opposed to SOV for Japanese and have none of that dumb particle bullshit.

In Hong Kong, a tiny city compared to the population of the rest of China, Cantonese still dominates despite requiring English in all official communications for 100+ years. Why would Japanese be welcomed in China more than English was in Hong Kong?

>unification with yellow brothers
Did these brothers have a war any time recently? Oh wait, there was a First Sino-Japanese War.
>it was easy to create united nation of Far East
I bet Tibet and Vietnam would love to join the PRC just like Korea loves the Japanese Empire now. After all, they are all them yellow people.