Influence of Alfred Thayer Mahan on Japanese Maritime Strategy

The Imperial Japanese Navy’s (IJN) resurgence during the Meiji Restoration was challenged by the absence of maritime capability and an equivalent strategic underpinning. In turn, the IJN reached out to Western navies to develop its capability and establish its maritime moorings. The musings of Alfred Thayer Mahan served to fill this void. The IJN studied Mahan’s tenets and became particularly fixated on certain ideas which fuelled their tactics and hardened their war plans. Leading into the Second World War, the IJN remained oblivious to self-evident triggers for change, and its deep-seated doctrinal rigidity precluded questioning of the conceptions of Mahan, eventually underwriting their defeat in the Second World War.

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