“Worthy of Some Better Enemy?”: The British Estimate of the Imperial Japanese Army 1919-41, and the Fall of Singapore

Abstract

This article examines British assessments of the characteristics and quality of the Japanese Army between 1919-41, and their effect on the British debacle in Asia during 1941-42. It concludes that the estimates made by British observers in Japan and officially accepted by the war office were far more accurate than is usually recognized. Professional British analysts not only understood their enemy but often were sentimental Japanophiles. Their reports are a valuable source on the training, tactics and preparations of the Japanese Army between the wars. This article examines the process of observation, generalization, analysis and synthesis involved in estimation and the intellectual framework and images of Japan which shaped that process. It shows that these assessments were not dominated by racist ideology. Instead, forms of ethnocentrism and ideas of “national character” were the main cause for errors by the professionals, and these errors were not substantial. This article also demonstrates that another school of thought about the Japanese Army persisted among British officers, whose views were far less accurate than those of the professionals and far more influenced by vulgar racism. This article shows how it was that by 1941 this second school came to dominate the views of the Japanese Army held by British garrisons in Asia, but not by the war office. It discusses how far miscalculations of this kind contributed to the destruction of Britain’s empire in southeast Asia.