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China Incident—that is, completing the conquest of China, an ambition that was jeopardized by a growing scarcity of strategic materials, especially oil. Because Japan’s traditional source of oil—the United States—was increasingly unreliable, Japanese leaders convinced themselves that it was necessary to move southward to the oil-rich Dutch East Indies and British Malaya. In August 1936, the government formally adopted a document entitled “Fundamental Principles of National Policy,” which established the goal of becoming “in name and in fact a stabilizing power for assuring peace in East Asia, thereby ultimately contributing to the peace and welfare of humanity.” The Japanese presented this to the Americans as a kind of Japanese Monroe Doctrine, though in practice it signaled their intent to dominate East Asia and the western Pacific. To prepare for wars in two directions, both the Army and Navy were to be expanded. For the Army this meant more active divisions; for the Navy it meant formal abandonment of the Washington Naval Arms Limitation Treaty. The Imperial Japanese Navy had long resented this agreement, which restricted the Japanese to a battleship force only 60 percent as large as that of either Britain or the United States. Its abandonment now made possible the construction of a new and greatly enlarged fleet, including new battleships and aircraft carriers. 6

    The rivalry in the Army between the
T ō seiha
and the
K ō d ō ha
was mirrored in the Navy by competition between the so-called treaty faction and the fleet faction. Members of the latter embraced two ideas almost as articles of faith. The first was that the United States was Japan’s logical, even inevitable, enemy; and the second was that because war with America was inevitable, it was essential for Japan to maintain a battle force that was at least 70 percent as large as the American battle force. Many officers believed that the 60 percent ratio imposed on them by the Washington Treaty was not onlya national insult but also undermined Japan’s security, and even her sovereignty. So widespread was this view among junior and middle-grade officers that some admirals feared that taking a contrary position would incite mutiny. The emperor himself worried that the Navy would “no longer be able to control its officers” and was “jeopardizing vital diplomatic issues for the sake of placating subordinate officers.” 7
    Because the British and Americans did not build their own navies up to the limits imposed on them by the 1922 treaty, Japan was able to maintain her fleet at a level that was roughly 70 percent that of the United States Navy despite the treaty. It was evident, though, that if the Americans did suddenly decide to expand their Navy to the treaty limits, any serious effort to match that expansion would bankrupt Japan. Therefore, members of the fleet faction sought to overcome America’s quantitative advantage by focusing on quality—that is, by building ships of such size and power that they could outrange or overwhelm American battleships. They supported the secret construction of four Yamato-class battleships, which, at 73,000 tons each when fully equipped, would be more than twice as big as the largest American battleship. The project was hugely expensive and commanded a disproportionate share of the national budget, but it allowed the champions of the fleet faction to argue that they had an answer to America’s numerical and industrial superiority.
    Yamamoto was skeptical. Speaking to a class of air cadets in 1934, he compared battleships to the expensive artwork that wealthy Japanese families displayed in their living rooms: they had no particular function, he said, except to serve as “decorations.” Yamamoto’s rivals in the fleet faction were infuriated. They hadn’t forgotten that he had been a delegate to two naval arms limitation conferences, and his two tours as Japan’s naval attaché in Washington made him