Apart from Tsushima, it seems Japan has a very poor record when in comes to naval warfare...

Apart from Tsushima, it seems Japan has a very poor record when in comes to naval warfare. They were completly defeated by Korea in the Imjin war, and their fleet was destroyed by the Americans. Considering Japan is an archipelago, why did they fail to develop a strong naval tradition?

Wasn't Japan was the largest naval powers on the first half of the 20th century? The problem came in that they often foes with better equipment and a bigger navy like America and sometimes poor commanders. I'd say Japan had a fairly formidable navy for the most part back then.

Considering Japan had only 71 years to develop a national navy and its officer corps before WW2, I'd say they did incredibly well

Let's not go overboard. They were pretty much terrible during WW2.

Japanese overestimated themselves with Imjin war. They thought they could take on China by taking out Korea first. They forgot about China reinforcing Korea.

This is what happens when they are an island territory and they have just unified. They still dont accurately understand the size of China

> They were completly defeated by Korea in the Imjin war

Japan managed to destroy the entire Northern Forces in a couple of battles and paved their way through to the Yalu river basin. They fucked up in failing to subjugate the provinces in which Korea produced their largest grain, as well as keeping the reserves and under-estimating the Korean civilians. Irregular armies (Monks, Nobles and Civilians) rose up left and right and bogged down reinforcements, reserves and food transports.

Japan had penetrated and taken over the peninsula with great success and withstood sieges from both Ming and Joseon collaborations but failed to take the areas which were funding the war which eventually got them starved out.

Even with Toyotomi's sheer brilliance he failed to ever set a foot upon the Jurchen lands and died of old age which led to the Japanese withdrawal of their forces.

The Imjin wars is another example of a militaristically superior power being defeated by their own incompetence and falling to a much weaker nation; like many other examples in history.

What did he mean by this?

That's arguably understandable. China might be huge, but it can be conquered if the conditions are met (weakened dynasty, peasants revolting). But I can't understand how they managed to keep getting defeated by Korea on sea.

Because the Korean ships had cannons

Imjin war saw only about 400 Japanese ships total.

China has that much to spare on one of their cities alone.

>China might be huge, but it can be conquered if the conditions are met (weakened dynasty, peasants revolting).
Hideyoshi's forces wasn't suited for governing,they proved unable to co opt the pre-existing power structure and failed to subjugate the rebellious Korean populace.

The Japanese lagged behind in artillery,navy,cavalry and logistics which would have doomed their Ming invasion.

But that's the thing, why were the Japanese ships not properly equipped?

The Imperial Navy had an impeccable track record actually.

The issue was, they let it go to their heads.

Because they won all the time, they sat on their laurels just months into WW2 thinking they didn't need to do anything differently. Midway was the ultimate climax of this laziness: an excellent Japanese fleet with expert sailors, captains, and pilots was lost catastrophically because their commanders simply did not give a fuck about maintaining their edge; they simply assumed by fact of existing they would win the battle and did not conduct it in a manner conducive to victory.

They didn't learn any of the little lessons they should have along the way, because bumps in the road that didn't lead to defeat were not considered important.

Failed to find the British fleet in the Indian Ocean because their recon was crap? Well, we bombed the shit out of Ceylon and didn't lose almost anything so we still won, nothing to be learned.

American submarines prowling the sealanes from the very start of the war? Well, their subs are old and have crap torpedoes; they'll obviously never get better ones, so we don't have to do anything about it.

Can't strangle American garrisons because your subs are off trying to find enemy carriers rather than sinking merchant vessels? Well that doesn't matter because we sunk the Wasp and we can easily kill their troops anyway so it doesn't matter if they get reinforcements.

Imagine somebody who is really good at boxing and they're famous locally for being the best boxer in the town and they constantly win local competitions, but then they leave and enters an international boxing competition against all the other best boxers and he ends up losing really hard? That's basically what happened to Japan.

>Apart from Tsushima
Yeah, let's conveniently ignore one of the most impressive naval victories in history
>their fleet was destroyed by the Americans
Well, of course it was, even the higher-ups in the IJN knew they simply couldn't match the US ability to produce more ships.
Individual ships in the IJN tended to be at least equal, and often superior, to their western counterparts. Unfortunately, they weren't able to produce many of them, and despite their foresight when it came to naval aviation, they clung to the doctrine of decisive battle for too long.
All in all, I'd say the IJN has a mixed record. I do believe they did exceptionally well in WW2, all things considered : they almost always won any "fair fights" with the USN, when they had a similar battle lineup and/or when the USN didn't crack their communications. The battle of Savo Island is a pretty good example.
But when you're facing an enemy that outnumbers and outguns you more than ten to one, like the IJN did later in the war, of course they couldn't do much.

What counts as a fair fight exactly?

I mean, the closest I can think of is the Coral Sea and the Eastern Solomons, which involved essentially equal numbers of aircraft. They won the Coral Sea, but lost the Eastern Solomons. Santa Cruz was a Pyrrhic victory that prevented them from continuing to provide reliable air cover over Guadalcanal, allowing the Americans to decimate their transports. They won Savo Island as you said; they won Tassafaronga with only destroyers; yet they lost the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal despite having more ships, notably cruisers, which the Americans were lacking.

They did quite well in the early war.

>Feudal Japanese """"naval"""" combat

Also Japan isn't an archipelago the same way the Philippines or Indonesia was, who had to rely on being excellent seamen to survive. Japs were pretty much landlubbers really, as evidenced with their very agrarian civilization.

In contrast, the only reason why continental Asians like China and Korea excelled in seamanship was because of the Maritime Trade that the two needed to protect their shit from pirates.

Contd.

I mean look at this. Nips are the size of the fucking east coast and then some.

Because Japan had been totally isolated to the world save a few brief instances compared to China being Japan lite in that regard.

Japan was late to the naval game so their navy was a hastily assembled bunch of merchantmen, they did have a plan to rent 2 Portuguese galleons which would have given them a better chance but they never ended up doing it

You know, as much as Japs were shit at naval warfare, they did produce very good ships. It was common for them to reach the Korean Navy with their Sekibunes and suicide vessels and engage in CQC