- 著者
-
加藤 陽子
- 出版者
- 公益財団法人史学会
- 雑誌
- 史學雜誌 (ISSN:00182478)
- 巻号頁・発行日
- vol.96, no.8, pp.1257-1291, 1407-1408, 1987-08-20
Dai Hon'ei 大本営 (Imperial Military Headquarters) refers to the highest office organizing wartime military operations. This office was set up in the 1894 Sino-Japanese War, the Russo-Japanese War, and the War with China which extended into the Pacific War. This paper deals with Dai Hon'ei established at the beginning of the War with China in November, 1937. It has been said that the Dai Hon'ei was very much the same in function as its Russo-Japanese War counterpart, or that it was merely a kind of the General Staff Office whose function was reorganized to meet the demands the war. World War I, as the first total war in human history, however, must have greatly influenced Japanese military authorities and stimulated them to study seriously the war tactics and the wartime systems of the participating countories. We may therefore conclude that the Japanese military authorities took into consideration the results of this careful study when establishing the third Dai Hon'ei. Based on this assumption, this paper discusses the formation process and characteristics of the Dai Hon'ei during the Japan-China War. The first chapter discusses the great changes which took place in the Dai Hon'ei set up in the Japan-China War in comparison with its predecessors. At the time of establishment it increased the authority of such military administrative authorities as the army minister, the vice minister, the director and the chief of military affairs, and the military chief, vis-a-vis the supreme command authorities. The Dai Hon'ei's functional emphasis on the military administrative authorities theoretically should have caused the Prime Minister to be concerned with the Dai Hon'ei, since the army minister was also Minister of State. What leads us to believe that more emphasis was now being placed on the minltary administration is the recognition that in the case of total war the administration and the supreme command should not be separated, but unified in terms of policy and strategy. The second chapter examines the fact that the establishment of the Dai Hon'ei was not an isolated decision, but was made in relation with the Councillor System (Shangi-Sei 参議制), which was created by the government during roughly the same period, and was regarded as a cause of those government reforms which went as far as to totally revamp the cabinet system. Therefore it becomes clear that Konoe Fumimaro and the military authorities attemped to reform the government at the time of the establishment of the Dai Hon'ei, out of consideration that any dualism between state affiars and the military command would cause severe limitations on war mobilization efforts. While the move to the separate the Ministry of State from the Director of the Administrative Affairs was not realized, the successful establishment of the Sangi-Sei, was significant in empowering a minister without portfolio (Muninsho-Daijin-Sei 無任所大臣制). By including the unrealized cabinet reformation plan in the discussion, this paper emphsizes that the establishment of the Dai Hon'ei in the Japan-China War played a number of important roles not only in improving the capabilities for meeting the war demands, but also by being part of the reform plan for a wartime government system.