ABSTRACT
From 1907 to 1940, Japan’s naval strategy was essentially based on a plan of ‘interception and attrition’. Following the Washington Conference, the Japanese Navy’s mission was to secure command of the Western Pacific, and as Japan’s strategy became more offensive, the location of the planned ‘decisive battle’, the next Tsushima, moved further and further east, the conditions for success having been set by preliminary operations. Yet the force ratios originally set for what was still a defensive strategy had scarcely changed.
