The imperial Japanese navy and the constructed consciousness of a South Seas destiny, 1872-1921

Abstract

This article examines the important role played by the Japanese navy in both the creation and propagation of the ideology of southern advance in the Meiji and Taisho periods and suggests that parochial institutional concerns significantly influenced the navy's efforts to construct the notion of Japan's South Seas destiny. Both within and outside the government bureaucracy, the navy sought to increase interest in, and expansion into the South Seas in large part to facilitate naval expansion. Furthermore, this paper will illustrate that in conjunction with the navy's ideological efforts, its leaders were also willing to use traditional military means to secure territorial holdings in the Pacific, even if such actions were in direct contradiction to the civilian government's stated policy. However dissimilar the navy's sophisticated intellectual efforts and brazen military exploits were, each was motivated by a desire to strengthen the institutional and budgetary well-being of the navy.