Updated Sunday 15 May, 2011 12:18 PM

The Lion and the Rising Sun: the British-Japanese War of 1930

By: Betty Ormond Problem

Professor Problem is not known for her military-historical research – her previous books were on the Japanese royal family – but her research into the life of Emperor Meiji equipped her to discover facts about the war of 1930 that have remained in the royal archives since the war ended in 1935. The Japanese reluctance to open their records until 1970 – and then only to selected researchers – has prevented non-Anglo-centric research. Professor Problem has in fact produced the first book in that niche.

The origins of the war, according to the British view, happened when an ongoing crisis across the British Empire led to an attempt by Japanese militarists to supply arms to one of the princely states in India. The growing Sino-Japanese collision was worrying the Japanese high command enough to send supplies to Indian nationalists, as the British were pressuring the Japanese to abandon China. This discovery of the weapons led to war.

Professor Problem, however, maintains that the war began because of Japanese politicians scenting an opportunity. Knowing that if the British were having problems in India, they conspired to supply a revolution with all the guns they could use, devastating in the largely unarmed region of India. In addition, they gave sanctuary to a number of Indian nationalists; hoping to use them as cats-paws. Once the British discovered the weapons and cut contacts with Japan, the resulting economic trouble in Japan led to threats, counter-threats, and finally an attack on the half-built fortress of Singapore.

The book is weakest when it comes to the course of the war itself. (A better outline can be found in The Far-Eastern War, by Cozort.) Professor Problem details the naval attack on Singapore before discussing the long and brutal war in Burma and Siam/Thailand. She, unfortunately, adopts the revisionist claim that the Japanese did not push into India through Burma due to a belief that the Indians were better off under British rule. In fact, the logistics of the situation made more than token raids impossible. The Battle of Imphall was a very minor battle by any standards.

Professor Problem discusses in some detail the events that led up to the Battle of Australia. The Japanese high command never realised that the British were reading their codes, allowing them to concentrate their battleships at the precise place to ambush the Japanese fleet. Although the Japanese commander, Admiral Yamamoto, managed to escape the battle, the British force broke the Japanese battle line.

In similar terms, she also discusses the short-lived invasion of India. While a small Japanese force was able to raid Ceylon and land in Calcutta, they simply did not possess the logistics required to make their gains permanent. More flexible attitudes towards the Indian nationalists who flocked to meet them might have made up for their shortcomings, but brutally executing Ghandi and his allies eliminated any possibility of a Japanese Raj. Re-establishing British rule proved to be easy, although the future of India remained in doubt.

Professor Problem ignores altogether the French involvement in the war, when the Japanese seized Indochina. While the Japanese did offer the French payment, the French were uninterested. After the war ended, the Japanese withdrew from Indochina, leaving it in the hands of nationalist forces.

The Japanese decision to sue for peace after the failures in Australia and India came as a shock to the British. Professor Problem makes it clear that the Japanese court had decided to see what terms they could get, while the British wanted the war to end. Peace came rapidly; the British recovered their lost territory (and got the Dutch East Indies), the Japanese were quietly given a free hand in China. While fire-eaters on both sides attacked the treaty, the general populations were more than willing to accept the peace.

Professor Problem discusses the aftermath of the war in some detail. Japanese forces burnt their way into China and slowly gobbled up much of the nation. The absence of British, American or Russian support slowly allowed the Japanese to take much of China in a series of puppet states. The British, meanwhile, sighed a treaty with Nazi Germany, leading to the German conquest of the Soviet Union in 1940-42.

In sum, this is a valuable addition to the literature on the war. Professor Problem deserves credit for the writing.

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