Recruitment in the Imperial Japanese Navy

rdf:langString Recruitment in the Imperial Japanese Navy

rdf:langString The Imperial Japanese Navy was created in 1868, initially the officers and sailors who manned the new navy reflected the composition of the Meiji government's bureaucracy. Samurai who originated from the victorious coalition of south-western domains dominated the navy's small officer corps. These domains which had led the restoration, particularly Satsuma, also dominated the numbers of recruits sent to the new Naval Academy which had opened in October 1869. The leadership of the new navy later took steps to reform recruitment into the officer corps, and to establish the creation of a system of recruitment based on merit rather than on class or region. In 1871, the government announced that applicants would be accepted from the public at large and that entry would be based upon competitive examinations. Eventually, in the words of Arthur Marder, the Imperial Japanese Navy turned out officers of "unquestioned professional competence, fanatical courage, and extraordinary elan". The IJN molded among the ranks a standard of discipline, self-sacrifice, and devotion to duty that became the envy of all navies in the world. Japan's later victories at sea, one commentator has observed, "came as much from the training and morale of the average Japanese seaman as from the effectiveness of the navy's ships or the caliber of its guns".