The Imperial Japanese Navy, 1868-1945 Quiz

Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts

1. Japan's Imperial Army was dominated for decades by men from the former feudal domain of Choshu. Men of which domain played a comparable role in the Navy leadership?

Answer: Satsuma

Satsuma was the largest and richest of the domains that brought about the imperial restoration in 1868. It also had the most powerful domain navy.

2. In its formative years, the Imperial Army followed first French and later German models. Which foreign navy did the Imperial Japanese Navy choose to pattern itself after?

Answer: British Navy

Satsuma began to forge ties with Britain even before the Meiji Restoration. As the world's leading naval power in the 19th century, Britain was the obvious model. Promising young officers such as the future admiral Togo Heihachiro were sent to study at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich.

3. Under the cabinet system that Japan adopted in 1885, who was the first man to hold the Navy portfolio? (His elder brother was much more famous.)

Answer: Saigo Tsugumichi

Saigo Tsugumichi (1843-1902) of Satsuma was Navy Minister from 22 December 1885 to 10 July 1886, in the first Ito cabinet. His brother Saigo Takamori was a key figure in the Meiji Restoration (1868) and leader of the Satsuma Rebellion (1877). Both Tsugumichi and the Satsuma-heavy Navy remained loyal during the Rebellion, though Tsugumichi commanded the Imperial Guard at that time rather than the Navy. He is widely regarded as the founding father of the modern Japanese Navy and became admiral of the fleet in 1898, although he did not have any background as a professional naval officer.

Oyama Iwao was an Army general who held the Navy portfolio from July 1886 to July 1887, showing the extent to which the IJA was regarded as the senior service at that time.

Enomoto Takeaki was Minister of Communications in the first Ito cabinet.

Katsu Kaishu (or Rintaro) was an important naval reformer in the last years of the Tokugawa shogunate.

4. The emblem of the Imperial Japanese Army was a star. What was the Navy's emblem?

Answer: anchor

In all seriousness, how many possible answers could there be? A trident? Conch shell? Sashimi?

The anchor was yellow on blue background for cap insignia and shoulder boards, with a red-on-blue variant for naval aviation (see plates V-VII in the U.S. War Department's "Handbook on Japanese Military Forces", reprinted by Louisiana State University Press in 1991). IJN mess ware included white bowls with blue anchor.

5. Verses by which early Japanese poet were adopted in 1880 as a ceremonial song for the Imperial Japanese Navy?

Answer: Otomo no Yakamochi

"When seagoing, we might become watery corpses,
mountain-going, corpses for the grasses to grow from.
Our wish is to die by our Sovereign's side
with no looking back."

(Translation by Hiroaki Sato, from his "Legends of the Samurai," p. 18)

The Otomo were a hereditary military clan whose duties included guarding the gates of the Imperial Palace. Yakamochi lived from around 716 to 785; his poem is no. 4049 in the great "Manyoshu" anthology.

6. Which admiral commanded the Japanese fleet at the Battle of the Yalu River (17 September 1894), the decisive naval engagement of the First Sino-Japanese War?

Answer: Ito Yuko

Admiral Ito Yuko (1843-1914) was a Satsuma man and Japan's "first full admiral to come up through the ranks as a sea officer." In 1894 he was the commander of the Combined Fleet. Admiral Kabayama was chief of the Navy General Staff at that time. See Donald Evans and Mark Peattie, "Kaigun" (Naval Institute Press, 1997), p. 40.

7. At the battle of Tsushima in 1905, Admiral Togo destroyed almost all of Russia's Baltic Fleet; only one cruiser and five destroyers managed to escape. What losses did the Japanese fleet suffer?

Answer: 3 torpedo boats

The battle was fought on May 27, 1905, with Admiral Togo Heihachiro commanding the Japanese fleet. Japanese casualties were under 1,000 killed and wounded, less than a tenth of the Russian casualties.

8. Early in 1914 the government of Prime Minister (and Admiral) Yamamoto Gonnohyoe was torpedoed by a procurement scandal. Which of these foreign firms, one whose agents had been showering largesse on the Japanese naval brass, has lent its name to the scandal that brought down the Yamamoto cabinet?

Answer: Siemens

The affair was exposed when a former employee of Siemens in Japan, a certain Carl Richter, was convicted by a German court of stealing documents from his employer for the purpose of extortion. Japanese investigators subsequently discovered that agents of Vickers had also been bribing naval personnel, but this episode is still known as "The Siemens Scandal." The most detailed account of it I've seen is in Charles Schencking, "Making Waves: Politics, Propaganda, and the Emergence of the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1868-1922" (Stanford University Press, 2005), pp. 187-199.

9. During World War I, the Japanese sent naval forces to assist their hard-pressed British ally in the Mediterranean.

Answer: True

After the Japanese snapped up Germany's Pacific colonies and Chinese concessions in 1914, there was no more fighting to be done anywhere close to home. In the spring of 1917, a Japanese squadron led by Admiral Sato Kozo arrived in the Mediterranean to assist with convoy escorts.

It consisted of the cruiser Akashi and eight destroyers. Later reinforced to 17 warships, the squadron was based at Malta until its return to Japan in the summer of 1919. See Timothy D. Saxon, "Anglo-Japanese Naval Cooperation, 1914-1918," in "Naval War College Review" (Winter 2000), pp. 62-92.

10. The Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 set the famous 5:5:3 ratio, assigning Japan a lower tonnage total for its capital ships than Britain and the United States. What was the attitude of two of Japan's most influential admirals, Kato Tomosaburo and Kato Kanji, toward this controversial treaty?

Answer: Tomosaburo supported it, Kanji opposed it

Kato Tomosaburo, then Navy Minister, believed the treaty was a good deal for Japan because it avoided a costly arms race, barred the United States from fortifying its bases in the Western Pacific, and effectively gave Japan naval superiority in home waters.

He was opposed by hard-line younger officers who rallied around Vice Admiral Kato Kanji, president of the Navy's staff college. For more details, see David Evans and Mark Peattie, "Kaigun" (Naval Institute Press, 1997), pp. 191-198.

11. In January 1932, Japanese naval landing forces were drawn into an undeclared war against Chinese Nationalist troops in a major seaport on the China coast. Which one?

Answer: Shanghai

The fighting dragged on until March, and tens of thousands of IJA soldiers (including the 9th Infantry Division, the 11th Infantry Division, and the 24th Mixed Brigade) had to be sent in to help the Navy men. For a very thorough account of the episode, see Donald Jordan, "China's Trial by Fire" (University of Michigan Press, 2001).

12. On February 26, 1936, young officers of the Imperial Japanese Army seized control of the administrative district in the heart of Tokyo in an attempt to overthrow the government and initiate a right-wing "Showa Restoration." How did the Imperial Navy brass respond to this?

Answer: They sent 40 warships into Tokyo Bay and trained their guns on the rebel positions

During the coup attempt, Army officers had murdered Admiral Saito Makoto, a former prime minister who was keeper of the imperial seal. They shot the emperor's Grand Chamberlain, Admiral Suzuki Kantaro, and left him for dead. They narrowly missed killing the incumbent prime minister, Admiral Okada Keisuke, who had to spend several days hiding in a closet in his official residence. Quite apart from the usual inter-service rivalries, the Navy leadership had good reason to be angry.

13. The IJA and the IJN did not do a very good job of sharing information with each other. When did the Navy notify Prime Minister Tojo Hideki, an Army general, of the defeat at Midway on June 4-7, 1942?

Answer: One month later

This information is taken from Ienaga Saburo's book "The Pacific War" (Random House, 1978), p. 39. Ienaga cites "Jidai no ichimen," a memoir by Tojo's foreign minister, Togo Shigenori, as his source.

The IJN lost four aircraft carriers at Midway.

14. Vice Admiral Onishi Takijiro, a naval aviator, is best known for what contribution to Japan's war effort in the Pacific?

Answer: Created the first "Special Attack" units (Kamikaze)

Vice Admiral Onishi took command of the First Air Fleet in the Philippines in October 1944. "In that capacity, he developed the concept of aerial suicide attacks on American warships and directed the first such attacks. He took up the position of vice chief of the Navy General Staff in May 1945, and on 15 August 1945, after hearing the emperor's surrender broadcast, committed ritual suicide." Evans and Peattie, "Kaigun," p. 531.

15. The prime minister at the time of Japan's decision to surrender in August 1945 was an admiral. Which one?

Answer: Suzuki Kantaro

Admiral Suzuki had been shot during the 1936 coup attempt in Tokyo. Admiral Yonai, himself a former prime minister, was Navy Minister in the Suzuki cabinet. Admiral Toyoda was chief of the Navy General Staff at the time. Admiral Nagano had headed the Navy General Staff earlier in the war.

Source: Author Guiguzi

This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor bloomsby before going online.
Any errors found in FunTrivia content are routinely corrected through our feedback system.

Like the companion quiz on the Imperial Japanese Army, this gives more attention to policies, politics, and people than to weapons and battles. Names are in Japanese order, family name first.

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