Return to great power competition : Imperial Japan's rejection of the Washington System

This chapter has traced the public relations campaign Japan's Imperial Navy waged throughout the era of naval arms limitation. It has found that the public relations campaign began, following the Washington Conference of 1921-22, as a proxy debate in which well-connected journalists and commentators voiced the view of the Imperial Navy's treaty and fleet factions. The Imperial Navy lost control of the public debate in the aftermath of the London Conference of 1930 and then the Manchurian Incident of 1931. It sought to regain control from mid 1933 by injecting its own voice into the public debate, and the Navy Ministry's public relations office became a prolific publisher of booklets and pamphlets. Throughout, the information was remarkably complete, and it accurately captured the thinking of uninformed navy officers. In this way, naval publications provide a vehicle for studying the Imperial Navy's rejection of the Washington system.