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The Imperial Japanese Navy

Chapter 1: PREFACE
By Fred T. Jane
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About This Book

The author surveys the development of Japanese naval forces from their earliest origins through rapid modern expansion, recounting earlier conflicts and the fleet’s contemporary organization. The narrative interleaves historical episodes with technical and institutional analysis: shipbuilding programmes, dockyards and harbours, armament and engineering (guns, torpedoes, armour, engines and boilers), and detailed descriptions of individual warships. Personnel matters receive extended treatment, including entry, training, pay, uniforms, mess arrangements, and character of officers and ratings. Numerous illustrations and appendices compile official reports, ship lists, and explanatory glossaries, while comparative observations relate foreign practices to domestic naval policy and capabilities.

PREFACE

This book is uniform with my similar book on the Russian Navy, and is designed to have an exactly similar scope; that is to say, it traces the Japanese Navy from the earliest period up to the time of the outbreak of the war with Russia in February, 1904. It then deals with the dockyards of Japan, the armament and equipment of her Fleet, with her personnel, both officers and men, and finally with all those side issues and semi-political questions which have brought the modern Japanese Fleet into existence and governed the Japanese building programme. In an Appendix, certain matters that may seem to demand detailed attention are dealt with separately.

In preparing this book for the press—a task that I began so long ago as the year 1900—I have received the most kind and willing assistance of a great many personal friends in the Fleet of “Britain’s ally.” To them I would express my most cordial thanks. Especially would I mention my indebtedness in various—I might say innumerable—ways to Admirals Yamamoto Gombey, Dewa, Kamimura, Ito, and Ijuin; Captains Yamada, Uchida, Kawashima, and Kashiwabara; Commanders Kuroi, Takarabé, Hirose, Takeshita, Yamanaka; Lieut.-Commanders Nomaguchi, Hideshima, Sato, Horiuchi; Staff-Paymaster Minuma; Lieutenants Ishikawa, Yamamoto, Yamagi, Fukura, Matsui, Sasaki; Engineer-Lieutenant Kimura; Chief-Constructor Matsuo; Constructor Kondo; and a great many others—all personal friends, to whose suggestions it is due that I came to write this book at all.

I am neither pro-Japanese nor pro-Russian. As I write, disaster is thick upon the Russian Fleet, and to many close friends in it go those sympathies which, had things been the other way about, would have gone as surely to the Japanese Fleet. To write this book without bias has been my special aim; and in view of the enthusiastic admiration which the Japanese Fleet is now evoking in the Anglo-Saxon world, I have especially tried not to be blind to such defects as the Japanese Navy may exhibit. This, however, is obvious in the body of the book, and needs no mention here, any more than reference is required in this Preface to the courage and skill which Japanese sailors have shown.

Portions of some of the chapters have, in some form or other, appeared in the Engineer, Daily Chronicle, Daily Mail, Fortnightly Review, Collier’s Weekly, or Forum. To the editors of these papers I desire to make the usual acknowledgments,

F. T. J.

Portsmouth.
  1904.