The Imperial Japanese Navy

by Fred T. Jane

It is a legend in our navy that the first English word learnt by a Japanese is always Damn! but I have only once heard a Japanese use it. His own language is singularly defective in swear words. Japanese learn English very rapidly, and soon grow to speak it remarkably well. After a year, or less, in England they acquire not merely a mastery of the English, but also a far more difficult thing for a foreigner—a mastery of our slang. Ability to pick this up argues a singularly quick brain, as dictionaries are of no avail here. It is characteristic of them, too, to set about it with a serious thoroughness, essentially Japanese. Recently a sub-lieutenant, not long from the Far East, who had learnt school English out there, took to studying a novel of mine, “The Port Guard Ship,” a book that deals solely with social naval life, and so is loaded to the muzzle with current naval slang and phraseology. Every time I met this sub. he used to haul a notebook from his pocket, and reel off a list of slang and, possibly, now and again, profanities culled from its pages, the exact import of each of which I had to explain! In consequence that sub. is now able to join in any conversation without difficulty, or without the talk having to be suited for him. The Frenchman’s dilemmas over such expressions as “Look out!” do not bother him at all. In fine, he knows “English as she is spoke,” by virtue of adopting a method.

Curiously enough, Japanese never learn to write English so well as they speak it—thus reversing the condition of all other foreigners. Their caligraphy is fine and bold always, but the phraseology as invariably formal. Possibly it is due to the etiquette of letter-writing in their own country that their letters here almost always begin with a “Thank you for your kind letter,” and continue formal all through.

Mentally, the Japanese is adaptive, not originative. If one is explaining anything to a Japanese, he will have seized on the idea and absorbed it while a European is still struggling with the externals of it. Japanese invention has extended to a small quickfirer and a water-tube boiler, but in both cases the invention is merely a change of some existing mechanism. Even so, neither is of great moment; their abilities do not lie in that direction at all. If an entirely new system of naval tactics is ever evolved, it will not be by a Japanese; like their British confrères, they shine better at practical work than in the regions of theory.

They are not, however, devoid of views. Every Japanese gives time to thinking of the future, and were any lieutenant suddenly made into an admiral, I fancy that he would acquit himself quite as well as if he had reached his rank by orthodox gradations. He is apt to fail now and again at his present task from this trait, which is in many ways his chief defect, and one that may lead to trouble in war. It is sometimes dangerous to reason before proceeding to obey. A Japanese tends to do this. It is details that they think about. For instance, I once got a Japanese officer to give me his views on the conduct of a naval war. They are worth quoting in extenso, because naval opinions invariably run more or less in grooves.

His primary detail was strategical, and referred to the Press. “I shall have no correspondents with my fleet when I am an admiral in war,” said he. “If they insist on coming, directly we get out to sea I shall set them all adrift in a boat. If they do their duty to their papers they are a hindrance to me; if they do not they are no good at all.”

Detail number two referred to his fleet. “I shall hoist the signal, ’No ship is to surrender; if beaten, it must sink.‘ If any ship hoists the white flag, the rest of my ships will open fire on it till it sinks.”

I shall watch this officer’s career with interest if ever he commands a war fleet in the future, for he will go far; every detail was similarly thought out. I fancy every Japanese who stands any prospect of being an admiral in the future does the same, though the matter is not one upon which they talk at all readily to a stranger.

It is also, however, their weakest point, this fondness for thinking of the future. Too often they think of it unduly, and to the detriment of the present. Not invariably, of course, still there is, I fancy, a fair sprinkling of lieutenants who devote as much or more thought to an admiral’s duty twenty years hence than to lieutenant work of to-day. It is not, primarily, a bad thing so much as a good thing overdone; but that is a Japanese naval characteristic all through. They are always in more danger of overdoing a good thing than anything else. Curiously enough, this tendency to think for the admiral does not lead to any great evil in the way of an undue corresponding tendency to be critical.

On the other hand, a Japanese naval officer never underrates his own abilities. Every junior officer feels in his inmost soul that he is fully as capable and as fully able to do anything as his senior. None of them suffer from false modesty. On the whole, this, within due bounds, is by no means a defect; self-confidence is a fine thing for begetting ability; but, as before stated, they are prone to overdo many good things. Some of them, doubtless, overdo the confidence in their own abilities.