Why History Matters: The Legacy of the Imperial Navy and the Making of Japan’s Post-war Defence Policy’

Speaker: Alessio Patalano

 

This paper is about how history is remembered, memorialised, and displayed for the purpose of national defence. It focuses on how the legacy of the Imperial Navy lived on in the post-war Japan Maritime Self-Defence Force (JMSDF), informing its strategic thinking and working as a military organisation. This paper sets forth a rather controversial argument. It argues that, contrary to common academic views, the ability of the JMSDF in articulating its roles as a tool of statecraft within a national maritime strategy rested on its ability to re-examine the imperial experience and the wartime defeat. Indeed, the paper contends that the post-war navy cannot be understood outside the context of its process of interaction with the imperial past. This interaction between past and present informed matters of ethos and organisational culture; it shaped approaches to service strategy and national policy; it offered relevant doctrinal concepts and principles to maximise ship designs; it guided the development of public relations and professional education. This papers focuses on one particular dimension of this complex process, the development of naval policy. It tells the story of how, throughout a period of sixty years, the post-war navy met the challenges of rearmament and modernisation to create a modern naval force that today stands as one of the pillars of the country’s security policy. Indeed, in the making of the post-war naval policy, the Imperial Navy provided the mortar and the blueprints.

 

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