Abstract
It is commonly believed that because many military officers in Japan were brought up in farming families, this attribute was related to “the principle of basing the countryʼs economy on agriculture” and that this was the cause of the reckless behavior of the Imperial Army. Moreover it has been said that differences between the attributes of military officers and bureaucrats of other ministries led to serious conflict in the Showa Era. However, this opinion overlooks an important viewpoint, namely, the existence among officers of graduates of the army cadet schools.
The purpose of this paper is to reexamine this popular opinion, especially through a comparative analysis of two groups in military officer society, looking at the discrepancy between the graduates of the cadet schools and those of middle schools, from three angles, (1) the selection of officers, (2) their academic records, and (3) their promotions. We then discuss the Armyʼs actions in the Showa Era.
The social attributes of the two groups forming the officer corps of the Imperial Army were not similar to each other. The cadet school graduates found their base in the new middle class in terms of social stratum, and came from urban areas. On the other hand, the middle school graduates were firmly connected with the old middle class and with non-urban districts. The attributes of the former were closer to those of Imperial University students in this sense.
In general, the cadet school group performed better academically than the middle school group at the Military Academy. The upper layer in the academic ranking was mainly occupied by this group, while on the contrary, the middle school group was concentrated in the lower layer. As this gap was directly reflected in the chance of gaining entrance into the Military Staff College, which was a gateway to elite officer positions, honor graduates at both the Academy and the College were nearly monopolized by the cadet school graduates.
Within the Army, the academic records (at the Academy and the College) had a major influence on officersʼ promotions. In other words, these two factors were correlated. Consequently, the middle school graduates tended to be cornered into retirement earlier than the cadet school graduates. Further, it was natural that members of this group had a much better chance of gaining key posts in the Ministry of War, Office of Army General Staff, and Inspectorate General of Military Training, as compared with the middle school group.
Therefore, most of these high-ranking officers came from the new middle class. Their social background was roughly equivalent to that of high officials (from other ministries).
These findings show that officers from the old middle class had less power and influence than is commonly assumed, and that most of them were just passive onlookers of the movement toward militarism. Officers from the new middle class played the leading role in the Showa-era Army, which was started under the “emergence of supreme command” and “self-awareness of professionalism.”
