Japan’s Bakuryo Decision Makers

From Japan, 1941: Countdown to Infamy, by Eri Hotta (Vintage, 2013), pp. 178-180: [Foreign Minister] Matsuoka … was wrongly convinced of a swift German victory over the Soviet Union (as were many others, including some in Britain and the United States), but he was now rightly worried about the risk of a severe Anglo-American retaliation should Japan decide to occupy even more of France’s colonial territory. That would unduly advertise Japan’s greater ambition in the region, sending up a flare in Washington. The question of whether to strike north (the Soviet Union) or go south became the focus of Tokyo’s policy deliberations in late June 1941. The institutional forces and mechanisms that enabled such a debate would have a lasting impact on Tokyo’s policy formulation in the following months. Broadly, Japan’s strategic outline was set by the Imperial General Headquarters, the highest organ of the high command of the Army and Navy General Staffs. The general staffs initiated strategic…