Hello, the episode you're about to listen to is part of a multi-part series introducing an overview

of Japanese history.

This is a repeat of one of the original projects the History of Japan podcast was built on,

and is intended to serve as an update and supplement to these original works.

After 10 years, my hope is to return to this approach and to do it a little bit better,

given the skills that I have improved in the intervening years.

If you haven't been doing so already, you should listen to these episodes sequentially,

starting with episode 501.

Without any further ado, enjoy the episode.

Hello and welcome to the History of Japan podcast, episode 535, The Road to Disaster.

In the last 80-odd years, a lot of ink has been spilled trying to explain why Japan ended up at war with, well, basically, all of its neighbors.

And frankly, it's a pretty compelling question. Even if you just isolate the Pacific War between Japan and the Western allies,

the Japanese were pretty obviously and evidently outgunned in every measurable respect.

From GDP to output of war-critical materials like steel, oil, and rubber, to pretty much anything

you can think of, the Allies had somewhere between an 8-1-1 to 10-to-1 advantage, and that's

not even factoring in the 15-year quagmire of the war in China.

So why do something that was, so obviously, to put it rather indelicately, very stupid?

Well, as I've said, a lot of time and energy was put into that very question, which is, of course, deceptively simple.

The reality is quite a bit more complicated than my straightforward phrasing would indicate. And to be clear, my hope is to give you a general idea of the answer to that question over the course of the next 30-odd minutes.

Why did Japan join World War II on the Axis side? That said, there's no way I'm

going to cover everything, and this is mostly going to be about the descent towards war, not the war itself,

for reasons we will get into. So, let's get to it. And probably the single most important factor

...