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I don't know if it was that deeply irrational, I mean beyond the decision to initiate a war with the United States in the first place. At the start of the war

I don't know if it was that deeply irrational, I mean beyond the decision to initiate a war with the United States in the first place. At the start of the war it wasn't clear that carrier-based air power would be able to effectively suppress ground-based air power. The prevailing theory was that carriers were too fragile to do this. The US Army and elements of the Navy with surface warship backgrounds believed this, too. That turned out to be super wrong, and the Americans won much faster than expected by cutting off and bypassing Japanese strongholds (Rabaul, Formosa) and keeping their airfields impotent with regular carrier raids. If those hadn't been the case, the Japanese strategy of seizing "unsinkable aircraft carriers" would appear to make more sense in retrospect. The thinking was that an initial crippling blow to the fleet plus the cost of clawing these back would be too much for the US. Wrong, and in fact many of the Japanese brass thought it was wrong. But irrational would imply that there wasn't a theory, and there was a theory.

pfdietz 4y ago
The big mistakes were: starting a war with your largest trading partner, allying with countries that could not make up the trade difference, and assuming the country attacked would just give up rather than exploit its factor of ~6 advantage in production capability. Attacking Pearl Harbor, in particular, was a lethal mistake. The "sneak attack" guaranteed the US would be filled with a thirst for vengeance. Japan might have done better by simply bypassing US possessions (including the Philippines) and going after European colonial areas to the south. The US only won much faster than expected if one didn't understand how quickly war production ramped up. All that really mattered was that the US was going to do that. And, having done that, the US would just swamp anything Japan could do.
- ethbr0 4y ago
  Invading China?
  - pfdietz 4y ago
    That was a mistake, but not such a spectacularly fatal one. However, it does illustrate the underlying irrational process by which Japan drifted into the wider war. The decision to go to war in China wasn't the product of deliberate reasoning at the top, but was the result of actions of lower ranked hotheads in the Army.
    - ethbr0 4y ago
      I mean, that's quite a populous and geographically large nation to start a land war with. Understandably, the Japanese military was much better industrialized and equipped, but at some point bodies also count.

pfdietz 4y ago

The big mistakes were: starting a war with your largest trading partner, allying with countries that could not make up the trade difference, and assuming the country attacked would just give up rather than exploit its factor of ~6 advantage in production capability. Attacking Pearl Harbor, in particular, was a lethal mistake. The "sneak attack" guaranteed the US would be filled with a thirst for vengeance. Japan might have done better by simply bypassing US possessions (including the Philippines) and going after European colonial areas to the south. The US only won much faster than expected if one didn't understand how quickly war production ramped up. All that really mattered was that the US was going to do that. And, having done that, the US would just swamp anything Japan could do.

ethbr0 4y ago
Invading China?
- pfdietz 4y ago
  That was a mistake, but not such a spectacularly fatal one. However, it does illustrate the underlying irrational process by which Japan drifted into the wider war. The decision to go to war in China wasn't the product of deliberate reasoning at the top, but was the result of actions of lower ranked hotheads in the Army.
  - ethbr0 4y ago
    I mean, that's quite a populous and geographically large nation to start a land war with. Understandably, the Japanese military was much better industrialized and equipped, but at some point bodies also count.