Military of Japan

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The **Armed Forces of the State of Japan** were the military services of the human nation of the State of Japan. Prior to 1924, when Japan was known as the Empire of Japan, its military forces were called the **Armed Forces of the Empire of Japan**.

After the Meiji Restoration in 1868, Japan rapidly modernised its military with the assistance of the United States and European nations as part of the country's program of industrialisation. Japan's military soon became the most technologically advanced in Asia. The Imperial Japanese military's sophisticated equipment and tactics enabled Japan to decisively defeat China in the 1894-95 Sino-Japanese War, despite the Chinese military's larger size.

In 1904 Japan inflicted a decisive military defeat against the conventional forces of the Russian Empire in the Russo-Japanese War, including the almost complete destruction of Russia's Pacific navy. Although the Russian Empire was able to force Japan to withdraw its troops from the southern part of Sakhalin Island by threatening to launch strategic rocket attacks against Japanese population centres, the war was still considered to be a victory for Japan as the Russian Empire lost any meaningful influence over China and Korea.

In 1914, Japan entered the Great War in an alliance with Great Britain. Britain had agreed that Japan could take control of the Pacific territories of the German Empire if it assisted Britain in securing the sea lanes in the Western Pacific and Indian Oceans against the Imperial German Navy. Japanese forces rapidly took control of the German-held city of Tsingtao in China, as well as the Mariana, Caroline and Marshall Islands in Micronesia. The German Empire used orbital weapons platforms to destroy the Japanese capital of Tokyo in 1916 in retaliation for Japan's cooperation with Britain in the war.

Although the immediate post-Great War years were still challenging for Japan, the country escaped the massive casualties, widespread destruction and civil unrest that Europe experienced during the same period. Although the passage of the Yasuhito Constitution in 1924 greatly limited the influence of the Japanese military establishment in national politics, the destruction and fragmentation of many of the European great powers after the war left Japan with arguably the second most-powerful military in the world in the immediate post-Great War years, after the United States.

The deployment of an American-led League of Nations intervention force to China in 1923 led to a war scare in Japan, with Japan deploying reinforcements to its territories in China and Korea.

In 1956, Japan became the second nation after the United States to test a nuclear weapon. In 1959, Japan also became the second nation after the United States to successfully test a spacecraft powered by a gravity drive. Japan developed gravity drive-powered and nuclear-armed space warships, building one of the human world's most powerful and technologically advanced space forces.

Along with the space forces of the United States and the Soviet Union, as one of humankind's most powerful space military forces at the time, the Japanese Naval Space Force was instrumental in preventing the Cramori Empire from inflicting a total defeat against human forces during the Empire's opening attack against the Sol System in 1976. Japanese Naval Space Force ships and Japanese-flagged civilian space vessels were then used to transport ground forces of the Japanese Army and other human ground forces to Mars to engage Cramori invasion forces and evacuate human survivors from the planet.

In 2155, with the replacement of human national governments with the Human Federation, the Japanese Armed Forces ceased to exist as an independent military force. The resources of the Japanese military were integrated into the newly-established Human Federation Defence Force.

## Japanese Army

The Japanese Army was the principal land warfare force of Japan. From 1895, much of the Japanese Army was stationed in China and Korea to defend the Empire of Japan's territorial holdings in those areas. Much of the army's time was spent conducting counter-insurgency operations against Chinese and Korean partisan groups. As most Japanese Army units regularly operated from Japanese Navy ships and airships for the purpose of securing beachheads and airheads, the early 20th century Japanese Army's equipment, such as its artillery pieces and tanks, were designed to be small and mobile for easier transportation. However, the Japanese Army did develop some super-heavy tanks or "landships" which were stationed permanently at Japanese military bases in China and Korea. These super-heavy tanks were intended to counter the overwhelming numbers of Chinese infantry that the Japanese Army expected to face in the event of a second war against China.

Japan developed the gravity drive in 1959, becoming only the second country to do so after the United States. The Japanese Army developed and manufactured several types of small gravity drive-propelled scout and attack vehicles during the 1960s, which were intended to replace light tanks and reconnaissance vehicles. Like other nations, Japan still saw a use for retaining some heavy and super-heavy tanks due to their heavier armour and lower profile than small gravity drive craft.

From 1962, after Japan developed thermonuclear weapons that could be miniaturized, the Japanese Army began to equip its forces with battlefield nuclear artillery rockets and nuclear artillery shells. These would allow the Japanese Army to counter an attack by the numerically superior ground forces of the Soviet Union or China.

When the Sol-Cramori War began in 1976, the Japanese Army regularly deployed troops and equipment aboard Japanese Naval Space Force and Japanese civilian spaceships, as well as the spaceships of other nations, to fight against the forces of the Cramori Empire on other planets and in distant star systems.

In 1986 the Japanese Army withdrew from Taiwan, the Penghu Islands, and mainland China and Korea.

In the 1990s the Japanese Army began to field its first directed-energy weapons. These were reverse-engineered from Cramori Empire equipment captured on Mars; the first-generation weapons, which were large and cumbersome, were mounted on trailers, tracked and wheeled armoured platforms, and gravity drive-propelled vehicles.

In 2000, Japan became the first human nation to field walkers. Like the first directed-energy weapons, the first generation of Japanese Army walkers were reverse-engineered from Cramori military walkers captured from the battlefields of Mars. Walkers had several advantages over gravity drive craft in battle, the most significant being that they were found to be far less vulnerable to hits from directed-energy weapons.

In the mid-2000s, the Japanese Army began to replace traditional semi-automatic rifles and general purpose machine guns with directed-energy pulse rifles developed with Europan assistance.

During the 2010s, the Japanese Army began deploying vehicle-mounted force field generators to protect formations of ground units. By the 2030s force field generators were small enough to be worn by individual human soldiers.

### Japanese Army Air Force

The Japanese Army Air Force (JAAF) was formed at the same time as the Japanese Army. It was intended to operate bombers to target enemy ground forces, fighter aircraft to shoot down hostile aircraft and airships, and artillery spotting and photo reconnaissance aircraft in support of Army ground forces.

Although the JAAF played a role in Japan's victory in the 1894-95 Sino-Japanese War, the Army's air arm would play a much more important role in the 1904 Russo-Japanese War. JAAF bombers were instrumental in Japan's decisive attack against Russia's Pacific Fleet base at Port Arthur, operating in conjunction with Japanese Navy carrier aircraft. Japan's participation in the Great War again saw JAAF bombers deployed against German military installations in China.

The JAAF continued to use Great War-era propeller-driven fighter and bomber aircraft until the late 1950s, when they were replaced by a variety of different types of multirole combat aircraft powered by gravity drives.

From 1956, after Japan became the human world's second nuclear weapons state, the JAAF became the primary operator of Japan's land-based strategic nuclear arsenal. These weapons would eventually come to include silo-based gravity drive-propelled nuclear cruise missiles. The Japanese Navy eventually operated Japan's space-based and sea-based nuclear weapons.

## Japanese Navy

Owing to the country's status as a Pacific archipelago nation, Japan invested heavily in a modern navy soon after the Meiji Restoration. The Japanese Navy was the most well-resourced branch of the Japanese military. By the early 20th century it had a large and sophisticated fleet of steam-powered aircraft carriers, warships, submarines and airships, all of which were designed and constructed by Japanese shipyards.

In the 1904 Russo-Japanese War, the Japanese Naval Air Force (JNAF) launched the first carrier airstrike in human history, using carrier-launched fighters and dive bombers to attack Russia's Pacific naval base at Port Arthur in China. These aerial bombings were accompanied by rocket attacks on Russian military facilities which were launched by Japanese submarines. The Japanese Navy used battleships and attack submarines to inflict a decisive defeat against Russia's Pacific naval fleet.

In the Great War, the Japanese Navy was involved in carrier aircraft and submarine-launched rocket attacks against German military bases in China. Operating in conjunction with the British Royal Navy, the Japanese Navy used ocean-going attack submarines, aircraft carrier task groups and airships to sink Imperial German Navy ships in the Western Pacific and Indian Oceans, playing an important role in allowing Allied shipping to freely operate across global sea lanes.

The Japanese Navy lost few warships compared with other nations during the Great War, and as a result at the end of the conflict Japan was left with the second-largest human navy by tonnage next to the United States. As the post-Great War global economic depression took hold in the early 1920s, the Japanese government announced plans to reduce the size of the navy. These plans were put on hold in 1923, when the deployment of a U.S.-led League of Nations intervention force to China led to Japanese concerns of a war with the United States.

In the early 1960s, after Japan developed the gravity drive, the Japanese Navy received several new gravity drive-propelled transport airships. These airships were primarily intended to transport rapid strike groups of Japanese Army troops and armoured vehicles to different parts of the globe within a matter of hours, and then act as mobile command centres and fire support batteries once the ground forces had been deployed. During the 1960s, Japan constructed a new generation of naval ships which used gravity drives for rapid propulsion and which were armed with gravity drive-propelled, nuclear warhead-equipped missiles.

From 1969, the Japanese Navy began constructing a fleet of four deterrent submarines. These submarines used gravity drives for propulsion, nuclear reactors to power electrical and life support systems, and were armed with gravity drive-propelled cruise missiles equipped with nuclear warheads.

There was limited investment in the Japanese "sea navy" after the start of the Sol-Cramori War in 1976, with most funding shifting to the Naval Space Force. Japanese naval vessels and naval airships were progressively upgraded with missiles and, eventually, directed-energy weapons that could be fired from the sea at targets in space, as part of a final line of defence for Earth against a Cramori projectile attack.

### Japanese Naval Space Force

The Japanese Naval Space Force (JNSF) was established in 1912 as an arm of the Japanese Navy to operate Japan's fleet of *Kawachi*-class orbital weapons platforms, which had been constructed with technical assistance from Great Britain. The Empire of Japan had launched a total of three orbital weapons platforms by the end of the Great War in 1916. In 1916, Japanese military commanders ordered the stations to begin firing on several German cities that had not yet been attacked by British, French or Russian orbital strikes, in retaliation for a German orbital weapon attack on Tokyo.

Japan began constructing its first generation of military spaceships in the late 1940s for the purpose of patrolling interplanetary supply routes between Earth and Japan's newly-established colonies on Mars and Venus. This initial generation of space warships was powered by liquid-fueled engines and armed with crude kinetic penetrator weapons.

After Japan developed nuclear weapons in 1956, the JNSF began commissioning a new generation of nuclear-armed deterrent space battlestations called the *Yamato* class. Equipped with nuclear reactors to power their on-board life support and electrical systems, the *Yamato*-class was the most heavily-armed space weapon that had been constructed by any human nation at that point.

After Japan became the second nation after the United States to test a gravity drive-powered spacecraft, a new generation of gravity drive-powered space cruisers called the *Takao* class was constructed for the JNAF from the early 1960s.

In 1973 Japan tested a spacecraft powered by a second-generation gravity drive. This made Japan the second nation after the United States to successfully fly a spacecraft capable of reaching relativistic speeds. Initially, Japan primarily made use of second-generation gravity drives to construct high-speed civilian transport and research spacecraft before shifting to the construction of second-generation gravity drives for military use. By 1976, the JNAF had commissioned a single *Kongō*-class space battlecruiser and had several more under construction. In the mid-1970s, the *Kongō*-class was the only type of military spaceship that could match the speed of the United States' frontline military spacecraft.

The JNAF played a decisive role in repelling the Cramori Empire's opening attack against the Sol System in 1976. The JNAF space battlecruiser *Kongō*, being powered by a second-generation gravity drive, was one of the only human military spaceships other than those of the United States and the Soviet Union that was fast enough to intercept the Cramori worldship fleet when it first arrived in the Sol System. *Kongō* was destroyed in the battle after launching a barrage of nuclear weapons at several ships in the Cramori fleet. Several uncrewed projectiles believed to be carrying pure fusion weapons and biological contaminants were then launched by the Cramori fleet in the direction of Earth; the Japanese *Yamato*-class space battlestation *Musashi*, which had secretly been refitted with an experimental nuclear-pumped laser weapon powered by a second nuclear reactor, used her maneuvering thrusters to tilt away from the surface of the Earth toward outer space in order to target her laser at the projectiles. The laser was fired and successfully destroyed several of the Cramori projectiles, potentially saving billions of human lives. However, the radiation emitted by the untested experimental laser caused the entire crew of the *Musashi* to develop radiation sickness, which claimed the lives of all of the station's crew members within a few years of the engagement. The sacrifice of the crew of the *Musashi* became an enduring story of courage in Japan and in the human world.

With nuclear weapons and pure fusion weapons failing to work against the Cramori worldships, JNAF military pilots commandeered high-speed Japanese civilian ships powered by second-generation gravity drives and rammed them at realitivistic speeds into the ships of the Cramori fleet, along with American space pilots. These actions were successful in bringing down the shields of the worldships, allowing the fleet to be destroyed by surviving human military vessels.

After the Cramori worldship fleet in the Sol System had been destroyed, the Japanese government requisitioned many Japanese civilian space transport ships for use by the JNAF to transport ground forces of the Japanese Army and other human military forces to fight the remnants of the Cramori military on Mars.

Although the JNAF was surpassed in size by the space navies of the United Commonwealth and China in the early 21st century, it nonetheless remained an important element of humanity's military resistance against the Cramori Empire in the Allied-Cramori War. The JNAF acquired faster-than-light spaceflight capability when Japan tested an experimental spacecraft powered by a kugelblitz drive in 2005. At its height during the war against the Cramori, the JNAF operated a fleet of more than 50 interstellar space warships at one time.

#### State of Japan Naval Space Force inventory in 1976

At the start of the Sol-Cramori War in 1976, the State of Japan Naval Space Force possessed the following ships and space stations:

##### Space warships

* 1 *Kongō*-class battlecruiser (built since 1973, at least 5 more planned) - heavy battlecruiser powered by second-generation gravity drive, armed with thermonuclear weapons. Nuclear reactor used for electrical generation and life support systems.
* 12 *Takao*-class cruisers (built 1960-1973) - cruiser powered by first-generation gravity drive, originally armed with atomic weapons but all refitted with thermonuclear weapon armament. Nuclear reactors used for electrical generation and life support systems. 6 due to be retired and replaced by additional *Kongō*-class battlecruisers; the remaining 6 may be refitted with second-generation gravity drives.

##### Orbital weapons platforms

* 8 *Yamato*-class space battlestations (built from 1956) - seven armed with thermonuclear weapons. One, *Musashi*, refitted with an experimental nuclear-pumped laser. All used nuclear reactors for electrical generation and life support systems; *Musashi* had an additional reactor to power her on-board laser weapon.