After formulating the "Outline of Basic National Policy" and the "Outline for Handling the Current Situation in Accordance with the Evolution of the World Situation," the entire Japanese country suddenly seemed to have shaken off its long-standing shackles, and the entire national apparatus was overloaded. However, Emperor Hirohito and other high-ranking officials in Japan's military and political leadership knew that this was only a superficial phenomenon, and that the seemingly rosy situation was only the product of a compromise within the Showa warlord clique.

There are many problems in Japan, and in addition to the economic crisis, the political crisis in Japan is also serious. The contradictions between the military department and the government, as well as between the army and the navy, are the most prominent. In Japan, like all constitutional monarchies, the government agency that exercises state power is the cabinet, and the most powerful minister is the prime minister, which is directly translated according to the Japanese kana, and we are used to calling the prime minister, the minister of the army as the minister of land, and the minister of the navy as the minister of the sea.

However, after the Meiji Restoration, Japan explicitly withdrew state power from the shogunate to the emperor, which was also a major feature of the Meiji Restoration. There is very little and shallow knowledge about this point to outsiders, only that Japan has reformed into a constitutional monarchy. But in fact, the emperor dominates the country's strategic guiding ideology, and he says he will do whatever he wants. The Cabinet simply carried out his advice. Nowhere was this more evident than during the Meiji period, when the Meiji Emperor's position in Japanese history was as important as that of the Tang Emperor and Song Zu in the hearts of the Chinese, which also made the emperor's power reach its peak during the Meiji period.

After Meiji's death, the ailing Taisho Emperor due to physical reasons. Therefore, the vast majority of the power was handed over to the cabinet, which also made the power of the cabinet gradually increase, and Japan gradually entered a period of civilian politicians dominated politics, and the power of the emperor was slowly weakened.

In the Showa period, Hirohito succeeded his eldest brother to the throne. However, although Hirohito looks stupid, but this guy's heart is extremely cunning and insidious, in order to regain power in the hands of the cabinet, Hirohito's relationship with the army has entered a white heat, and the Japanese army is called the "Imperial Army".

As a consequence of this, the ownership of the military gradually moved away from the government and closer to the emperor. The army is also becoming more and more independent. Hirohito was constantly approaching the young Zhuang officers who had radical ideas and opportunistic ideas in the army. It is expected that the government will be freed from the government through the independence of the army. At the same time, Hirohito was constantly shaping the mythical status of the supremacy of the "emperor" and paralyzing the common people.

After the Russo-Japanese War, Japan established the Kwantung Army in China, and theoretically the Kwantung Army was a special unit. Not subordinate to the Cabinet Government War Department. Directly subordinate to the Emperor. Become the Emperor's private army. This is also the greatest reliance on why the Kwantung Army dared to ignore the government's opposition and wantonly provoke the September 18 Incident.

For a long time, the military ministry and the cabinet have been engaged in a power game. And the emperor is the biggest head of the army. As a matter of fact, the September 18 Incident was not something that the Japanese government could have created, but was created by some ambitious guys in the Kwantung Army who figured out the emperor's intentions behind the government's back. The government simply acquiesced in the development of events, and of course, they did not have the authority to manage the Kwantung Army. Later, there were two mutinies in Japan, and finally the civilian politicians of the cabinet were completely cleared out of the political arena, and the cabinet was completely controlled by the military department, and some extremists in the military department, such as Terauchi Shouyi, Binshan Moto, Ishihara Waner, Itagaki Seishiro, Umezu Mijiro and others.

Although these people are very bad, they are all fanatical loyal patriots, and they have always faithfully carried out the emperor's orders. Therefore, it makes sense that many countries that suffered from Japanese aggression after the war, including the Chinese, demanded that Emperor Hirohito be severely punished, because the emperor was actually Japan's biggest war criminal, but the United States forgave him for various reasons.

The contradiction between the Japanese army and navy is also extremely acute, and this contradiction originated during the Meiji Restoration, when the main forces supporting the Meiji Restoration were the Satsuma and Nagasu domains, such as Okubo Ritsu, Saigo Takamori, Ito Hirobumi, and Yama Prefecture Aritomo, all of whom came from the Satsuma and Nagasu domains. And the basis for the establishment of a new army after the beginning of the Japanese Restoration was called from Satsuma and Nagasu, with Satsuma becoming the navy and Nagasu becoming the army. In the early days of the Meiji Restoration, Japan had no parliament and no constitution, and it was completely feudal politics. The Satsuma Domain and the Nagasu Domain each had their own troops and controlled the political situation in Japan. The army and navy became tools of various factions. After successfully seizing state power and eliminating the shogunate, two major factions were soon formed in Japan, and they were constantly at odds with each other.

The second was that the Japanese Navy learned from the British, and the Japanese Army first learned from France, and then changed to Germany after the Franco-Prussian War. That's why the Japanese army and navy are divided, because that's how Western teachers are. Before learning from Germany's creation of the General Staff and the establishment of the Cabinet and the Ministry of Defense to become the highest organ of the country's armed forces, the army and navy of Western countries were respectively the War Department and the Navy Department in the Cabinet, and the monarchy was managed by the Minister of War and the Minister of the Navy and was directly responsible to the highest organ of power.

Japan has also learned this set, and because the development of the navy and the army consume resources, and the navy and the army represent the interests of different feudal lords, there are many contradictions in the competition for development resources, such as steel and oil. As a result, the weapons of the army and navy can no longer be produced in the same workshop, and must be produced separately in the army supervisor workshop and the navy supervisor workshop. But the biggest advantage of this is that even if one branch betrays the interests of the warlord chaebol, there is another branch of the army that has enough strength to suppress it.

For example, during the 226 Incident, the army mutinied, and the Japanese marines shouted the slogan of avenging the navy's predecessors and obeyed the emperor's orders to quickly quell the rebellion. Even in order not to form the third largest military group, Japan does not set up an independent air force, the Japanese army and navy are divided into army aviation and naval aviation, and the Japanese navy's marines are not weaker than the ground forces of the army, and even the airborne troops that are mostly subordinate to the army in various countries, and Japan not only has airborne troops in the army, but also naval airborne troops.

As a matter of fact, purely from the perspective of coordinated operations, any branch of the Japanese army and navy belongs to an alternative all-round service, and it can completely accomplish most combat missions within its own service.

However, the Americans are also in this system, and the reason why the Americans were able to win was entirely because the US Army and Navy were able to sit down and negotiate the interests of various branches of the military, while the Japanese Army and Navy basically never sat down to talk, but always wanted to stab each other in the back.

The reason why the appearance is quite good now, and the form of cooperation between the two countries is still quite gratifying, is entirely because the Japanese emperor has done a lot of mediation in the center, temporarily putting aside the contradictions between the government and the military department and within the army, and everyone is bent on development. In addition, the brilliance created by the German army in Europe made the entire Japanese interest group envious, so the big guys had the possibility of cooperation.

After temporarily shelving the differences and contradictions, the Showa warlord clique headed by the base camp in Japan began to strengthen the management of domestic political parties and other political groups, and practiced strong politics, and for a time some anti-war groups and progressives were persecuted and even assassinated. Public opinion throughout Japan was surprisingly unanimous, all glorifying the government and the military, and propaganda newspapers and cartoons glorifying the war were scattered throughout Japanese towns.

At the same time, the media in Japan also completely turned their back on their social mission and vigorously welcomed the needs of the legal fascist war, ignoring the huge crisis hidden under the gorgeous surface of Japan at this time, and hyped up the success of the "Greater East Asia War" and justified the war. In order to preach the so-called "Japanese spirit" and maintain the militaristic image of the Japanese government, Japanese broadcasters have completely ignored the essential requirements of news truthfulness and even vigorously propagated the argument that the spirit can defeat death in battle.

It can be seen from a series of performances, such as the Japanese media's concerted service to the fascist domestic and foreign policies and their efforts to boast of the "successive victories" of the Japanese "Imperial Army," that it has played an important role in creating public opinion on the war and in instilling in the Japanese people a blind sense of war, and has become a force that cannot be ignored when waging war.

At the same time, the Japanese government seized the opportunity to vigorously propagate the theory of the conquest of China and the government's Greater East Asia in Asia, mobilized the Japanese people extensively, and also revised and promulgated the "National General Mobilization Law" in 38 years, which together with the previously promulgated "Temporary Fund Adjustment Law" and the "Law on Temporary Measures for Import and Export of Commodities, etc.", are called the "Three Wartime Laws", and the promulgation of these three laws is aimed at strengthening the state's intervention in the economy and putting it on the track of wartime.

Among them, the "National General Mobilization Law" was the core of Japan's wartime statist control legislation, which placed science and technology, culture and education, news reporting, industry, transportation, finance and trade under the control of the government. Subsequently, the Japanese government promulgated various control laws and regulations in accordance with this law, bringing all aspects of national life under the scope of national control.

At the same time, the Japanese Government began to hoard a large number of ships and warships, and a large number of the navy's main warships were included in the government's military expenditure budget, actively strengthening the navy's combat effectiveness.

In addition, with the support of the cabinet and the military department, the Japanese government began to actively contact the Soviet Union, and after more than half a month of secret negotiations, the two sides finally formally signed the "Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Treaty" on May 13, 1940.

According to the content of the treaty, the signatory parties promise to maintain peaceful and friendly relations and respect each other's territorial integrity and inviolability. In the event of a hostile conflict between a signatory party and one or more third parties, the other party to the treaty will remain neutral for the entire duration of the conflict. This Treaty shall enter into force on the date of ratification by both parties and shall remain in force for a period of five years. If neither of the parties to the treaty fails to declare the treaty invalid one year before its expiration, it is deemed to be automatically extended for a further five years.

With this combination of blows, the Japanese government not only quickly resolved the domestic crisis temporarily, but also concentrated all its domestic forces and actively prepared for a possible larger-scale war. (To be continued......)