page_title: Imperial Japanese Army
section_title: Conflict with China
hierarchical_section_title: Imperial Japanese Army / Conflict with China
caption_attribution_description: English: Imperial Japanese Army's landing craft carrier "Shinshū Maru", the worldwide first of its kind.
context_page_description: The Imperial Japanese Army was the official ground-based armed force of the Empire of Japan from 1868 to 1945. It was controlled by the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff Office and the Ministry of the Army, both of which were nominally subordinate to the Emperor of Japan as supreme commander of the army and the Imperial Japanese Navy. Later an Inspectorate General of Aviation became the third agency with oversight of the army. During wartime or national emergencies, the nominal command functions of the emperor would be centralized in an Imperial General Headquarters, an ad-hoc body consisting of the chief and vice chief of the Army General Staff, the Minister of the Army, the chief and vice chief of the Naval General Staff, the Inspector General of Aviation, and the Inspector General of Military Training.
context_section_description: In 1931, the Imperial Japanese Army had an overall strength of 198,880 officers and men, organized into 17 divisions.
  The Manchurian incident, as it became known in Japan, was a pretended sabotage of a local Japanese-owned railway, an attack staged by Japan but blamed on Chinese dissidents. Action by the military, largely independent of the civilian leadership, led to the invasion of Manchuria in 1931 and, later, to the Second Sino-Japanese War, in 1937. As war approached, the Imperial Army's influence with the Emperor waned and the influence of the Imperial Japanese Navy increased. Nevertheless, by 1938 the Army had been expanded to 34 divisions.
caption: IJA amphibious assault ship Shinshū Maru, the world's first landing craft carrier ship to be designed as such.
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