| Publication |
2014.
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| Summary/Abstract |
In the literature on the Japanese postwar rearmament, the loss of credibility of the Imperial armed forces prompted the Japan Self-Defence Forces to distance themselves from that institutional lineage and to define and display their own image. Underpinning this was the notion that the Imperial Army and Navy were publicly regarded as organisations that could no longer offer relevant professional models. This article reviews that assumption, investigating the early postwar naval narrative as it became popularised by journalist and historian It? Masanori. It suggests that the postwar rejection of the imperial military past did not affect the Imperial Army and Navy equally. The reputation of the Imperial Navy as a professional organisation was not eradicated from postwar public memory. A distinguished correspondent and an internationally renowned writer, It? dedicated his work to shape the early postwar naval narrative, defining the virtues that made the navy a symbol of the nation's own journey into modernity. In so doing, he joined the public debate on rearmament and argued for the standards of the Imperial Navy to find their way into the professional ethos of the new armed forces
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