Sea Control - Sea Control 289 - Naval Culture in Athens and Imperial Japan with Kunika Kakuta

Episode Date: October 31, 2021

Links1. “The Thucydides Trap: Are the U.S. and China Headed for War?” by Graham Allison, The Atlantic, September, 24, 2015.2. Seapower States: Maritime Culture, Continental Empires and the Conflict that Made the Modern World, by Andrew Lambert, Yale University Press, 2018.

Hey folks, Jared here. Today, Walker Mills hosts guest Kunika Kakuta, a PhD student in the War Studies Department at King's College London. She'll be discussing her dissertation comparing naval culture and politics in 5th century Athens and Imperial Japan. This episode was edited and produced by William McQuiston. We recently conducted our SimSec Forum for Authors and Readers in conjunction with the Center for Naval Analysis. You should be able to find a link on our main website and see a few of our great contributors presenting their work as well as answering audience questions. Finally, I want to take the opportunity to recommend our partners in the SimSec Podcast Network, The Bilge Pumps. You can find Alex, Jamie, Drack, and a pile of

iron brew bottles wherever you download your podcasts. On that note, I'll turn it over to Kimber's men. You're listening to Sea Control, hosted by the Center for International Maritime Security. Welcome back aboard the Sea Control Podcast from the Center for International and Maritime Security. Today, we're talking with soon-to-be Dr. Kunika Kakura, who is a PhD student at the War Studies Department at King's College London. Today, we're going to be talking about her dissertation on the impact of political institutions on navies in 5th century Athens in Imperial Japan. Kunika, welcome aboard. Can you introduce yourself a bit more formally to our listeners? Sure. Hello, everyone. My name is Kunika Kakura. I've recently submitted my thesis

back in March, and I passed my PhD viva in June. So I'm currently just finishing up my corrections for my thesis, but I'm going to be soon Doctor of War. And again, Walker, thank you so much for inviting me today to talk about my thesis. This is very exciting. We're happy to have you, Doctor of War. I didn't realize that's what they called the PhD graduates from the King's program. I think I just decided it sounds much more cooler, so that's why I just decided it's going to do it though. And again, before we start, I'd like to remind our listeners that the opinions presented here are solely our own and should not be taken as representative of any of the institutions that we're associated with. So Kunika, you've chose these two case studies

to compare in your dissertation. Can you give us a little bit of background on what they are? And then specifically, why did you choose these two cases? Sure. So I actually read BA in, rather than war studies, I did classics and my master's was in ancient history. So my background is significantly a train I'm trained in ancient Greek and Greek historiography and this was actually one of the topics I did in my undergraduate and I also did it for my MA and my interest has always been what is the relationship of navy with the Athenian naval empire or I think classists don't like the word empire for this but naval hegemony in the Peloponnesian war so that was my dissertation topic and I chose to do comparison in Imperial Japan partially this was a little bit

of a vanity project personally but also at the same time I'm Japanese by birth and I've always been fascinated with the Imperial Japanese Navy and its sort of political development and it was sort of a one of the shower thoughts I really had and thought what can I do can I compare these two and it was a little bit of a tweaking around trying to figure out exactly what I can compare and then when I've actually came down to it was let's look at SIPA identity what actually what it actually is to adopt one and why did it work for classical Athens why didn't it work in Imperial Japan and that was basically how this project came about and then I found Professor Andrew Lambert who is my primary supervisor and has worked also on a really interesting book on sea power state

and he actually said this would this would be interesting yeah I'll be your supervisor so this is how i started my projects essentially so yeah that's how i came to it um and so can you tell us a little bit about maybe give us some context for what was going on in fifth century athens and in imperial japan for for some of our listeners that aren't quite as familiar with those with the history yeah sure absolutely so for the classical athenian side um athens basically just basically won the persian war and athens is slowly building up its navy or fleet and at this point athens have also created this sort of island networks around the aegean of network of islands which they've used as essentially just sort of you know their naval bases and they they also install

democracy on these sort of states which were originally just an allies but eventually this had kind of more become subjugation of the allies rather than actual you know equal relationship but Athens is building its naval power and in 431 BC a war breaks out between Sparta and Athens I'm sure some people are familiar with Graham Allison's concept of society's trap which I'm not going to go into right now but that's basically the background and I was looking at the development of Athenian naval finance in my one of my chapters I look at how actually the impacts of democratic revolution in 508 507 bc by christianese what impact that sort of uh introduction of democracy and involvement of the masses into politics meant and why this this could be turning to seapower

um culture and seapower state and with the empire of japan completely opposite end and everyone goes this is really crazy thing to compare but what i looked up was the uh major restoration particularly the Meiji era and I was looking at how Japan actually tried to avert the well western threat as it were from whether that's a rival of Commodore Perry or the British or the Dutch basically I was looking at how the Japanese leaders responded to that sort of external threat and see how they actually decided to gather their naval forces so I wanted to basically compare what's the response to a political threat how did they respond to these sort of changes what outcome did they make and so both in pro japan and classical athens responses we've got we are basically we're

at a national emergency and how are we going to respond to it and their response was making a sort of essentially modernizing itself in pro japan classical athens was basically turning completely to see for their strategy and their politics and he was basically very much looking off okay so they responded to threats now what happens and in pro japan gone to the very different direction because it's got this competition between the army and navy so navy really struggles to establish itself initially and struggles to basically assert its identity so I was looking at how these actually changes and I was trying to challenge this idea of a political service for the imperial Japanese navy and Athens gets sort of criticized for being a naval mob rule

so I was trying to challenge the idea of these ones actually sort of you know mob rule or they were silent they were actively trying to respond to some kind of political and strategic challenges So that's what sort of significant thing I was focusing on in my thesis. Did you find that these two cases were pretty congruent? Like you could ask kind of the same questions of both historical cases, or did you have to kind of tailor some of the questions you were asking in the research methods you were using to the different cases? So that's a really interesting question, because I think with the difficulty that I've had

was basically, how do we define Navy? and obviously for classical Athens I wouldn't actually use the term navy and that was something that I got picked up in my fiber as well that it's actually more it's better to use the term fleet and so there were sort of a couple of odd questions I did have to change in terms of approaches because I wasn't trying to actually go through you know chronological development of the navy or anything like that so there were sort of questions of okay these are two different political systems one's a direct democracy and the other one's constitutional monarchy how do these actually fit into the development of naval identity so the questions I was asking was honestly always exactly

the same but the concept was how the sort of political what's the political institutions what are their roles within the development of naval identity so in that sense the overall bigger question has remained the same throughout but there are sort of occasions where I had to tailor a little bit in terms of i'm not asking the same question about sort of well saying navy was for instance uh so i think talking about sort of political identity of imperial japanese navy i wasn't trying to actually apply ask the same questions of why why when athens gets sort of you know mob rule attached to it the imperial japanese navy doesn't i wasn't asking exactly the same questions so there are some chapters have slightly different questions but the overall approach is

what is the role of political institution in the development of naval identity and development of naval forces so I think I don't think I end up changing too much adaptation but it was very much difficult to actually make sure that I don't go into full-on classics mode or where you know I'm analysing the nitty-grittiness of what this Greek word actually mean I do actually use Greek throughout my thesis but I do often have to justify why I'm actually specifically using this term rather than over the other and it's been quite tricky working in essentially writing in English but dealing with ancient Greek and in Japanese so I think that was my main challenges. is what kind of sources were you were you looking at i mean i know you mentioned finance with the

greek fleet or the greek navy you know so how are you kind of just of what are you using when when you're interrogating the kind of identity of sea power sure um so significantly i for the greek side i've used a lot on this i've used a lot of thucydides because he's the sort of dominant an account on the history of Peloponnesian war so Thucydides was a significant chunk of that featured in my thesis I occasionally did turn to sort of fourth century Athenian sources because they talk about navy as an institution more often so I often end up looking at so Demosthenes or I often had to look at Xenophon so a lot of literary sources and I did a little bit of inscription works I did a little bit of epigraphies which I've also done training during my MA so I can

actually basically i'm looking up old stones and inscriptions and see what actually they have a thing called athenian tribute list and i'm looking at sort of what allies gave how much money in this year that sort of thing so it was looking at sort of that kind of um primary sources and obviously there's obviously you always have a secondary sources that people have already been working on these and it's telephonician war has been studied quite widely so obviously a lot of secondary sources in both in English and German and French so it was quite varied and on the Japanese side a lot of the sources were either using info Japanese constitution so I could access that through the diet and other ones I've used a lot was people's diaries and sort of people's

memorandums and that sort of thing which were available at the National Diet Library in Japan so a lot of archival work for the Japanese side but otherwise also there have been sort of collective volumes on the history of the imperial japanese navy that's been sort of gathered together over the course of years so looking at sort of that kind of collective volumes the history of the imperial japanese navy or um the other ones actually looking at the all naval ministries sort of fiscal reports that sort of thing so it's a lot of different kind of sources there and sometimes it was overwhelming for the japanese side where you just have way too much to cover and sometimes i just have to go nope i'm not looking at these anymore i'm just going to stop

here so yeah that was the sort of the one of the most difficult one i've had and then with the Athenian side it's like well we don't have anything on this what do we do so it's going to be you know a lot of sort of guesswork sometimes but on a basis of you know lots of scattered evidences it's been interesting uh looking for resources when you're doing these two sort of comparison yeah I feel like I would get kind of whiplash going back and forth with the different material and in the different time periods and everything what conclusions I mean did you come to? What was the, you know, what did you ultimately see? And kind of how did you respond to these questions that you initially were asking? Also, the overall question was, what's the role of

political institutions and development of SIPA identity? And a significant thing I focused towards the end of my thesis was, on Athenian side, it was the oligarchic coup of 411 BC, which is when Athens actually installed a temporal sort of oligarchic institutions in trying to get more money from Persia because they were really struggling at this point they've literally just failed their expedition against Sicily they're basically broke in a way and they're trying to remain a sea power and the key is having lots of money because navy is expensive to maintain so Athens temporarily installs an oligarchic institutions in 411 BC to get more money from Persia and at this point that was a very short-lived and it does go back to democracy

but what happens at that point is that they lose this identity of what is to be a sea power state and at that point they are on the path of decline and so that was a significant thing i've also i picked up also in imperial japan too i mean imperial japan financially struggled after russo-japanese war so the whole of the debate on navy is how do we get more military appropriation for naval expansion and they have this ongoing inter-service rivalry with the imperial japanese army who are focused on a very different thing they want to go into China that's what they're interested in so there's a conflict of interest in the in the imperial Japanese side and then that's why it essentially brings them down and the fact that they can never agree on

overall grand strategy they essentially had two two facing ones the one was looking into continent the other one was looking into maritime or naval expansion and it just didn't really work out so at the end my biggest conclusion was that political dichotomy implies discord and I think that's essentially what happens with classical Athens it just loses the purpose of what is to be a sea power and then with the imperial Japan in 1920s it briefly turns into sort of pacific and tries to have a more maritime expansion and more focus on trade but at the same time it never really won the political battle with the imperial Japanese army in terms of where are we going to focus and i think it's that key battle sort of that political battles that both services had

was significant contributing factors to the decline that they are about to go down in 1930s and you know during the pacific war so i think that was the key conclusion that i i took away from my thesis at the end do you think that there's lessons or or what kind of lessons could we draw for for leaders navy and civilian leaders or practitioners today i i mean is the lesson in you know how does the state maintain its its sea power identity if these are two cases where it was lost that's a really quite difficult question you know i never really thought of that um i think one other thing i picked up is also uh role of politicians individual politicians and both in imperial japan and classical athens particularly the army leaders in imperial

japan classical athens some are sort of what a greek term would be retores or retors so politicians is probably the closest translations and strategos so the commanders often who took both roles when they put their personal interest first over the state's interest that's when things starts going wrong because they basically are pursuing their own excellence and that means it's very selfish self-centered in a way that all they care is what they want to do what's not good for the state and i think there's a significant argument i could make out of of imperial japan that how army essentially just focused on their own needs not what was going on around them and it was very much about preserving the conservative oligarchy oligarchic rule and that's what they

were worried about not actually what imperial japan sort of position was in international order in 1920s or even 30s so I think it's always for the modern sort of contemporary lessons you could take away is that never put your own interest ahead of state interest because that might actively ruin a state identity or state politics and things can go wrong and I think you could probably see the modern powers even now that they are politicians who put their interest first and some people would agree with it but not all of them would and sometimes that can and take us states into a very dodgy path and i think that would be the significant lessons that perhaps uh what my thesis can offer to modern politicians practitioners or naval leaders that

don't put your personal interests first and i think always consider what's actually have a bigger picture of what actually is important and what's going to be beneficial to your state or or service or institution. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, kind of making sure that the CPower identity is linked to, you know, a grand strategy, I think they would say at King's instead of kind of short and personal goals. Did you feel kind of researching either of these cases that there was a level of inevitability? I mean, I know sometimes like when I'm reading the history, you feel like you're watching people make decisions that are not in their own interest, or sometimes that you see them making decisions and you kind of know it was inevitable you know

they they couldn't have turned the tide and i don't know if if you know you felt either of those when you were doing this research i think when i was particularly the imperial japanese side was an interesting one the naval leaders are trying so hard to have this parliamentary democracy they've actually got political sort of parties to support their naval expansions but then they get brought down by essentially the naval scandals because they took bribery and that sort of thing when you sort of see you go oh that you know you are it was going so well they were actually actively working extremely hard to maintain this good relationship with politics because the inclusive politics is key to actually have a successful sea power

and also having a vocal position whether that there'll be landed elites usually in this case and with the imperial japan that balance just never really existed and so you could actually tell that even after the modernization and when they've centralized their naval fleets and finances and everything else under sort of major government you just could tell that this wasn't actually going to work eventually and then when it did look like they could have actually turned imperial japan into more sea power state looking it fails because armies just always will come back in and say we are more interested in China or expanding into China having a territorial empire and you could just see things going wrong in about even in sort of in a world war one where

they have two different grand strategies that one is looking southward advanced and the other one's going for north northward advanced and you're just sort of thinking what are you doing this is not they weren't capable of doing that they couldn't fight to you know to frontier wars and they were trying to do it so I think it was overstretching your finances and overstretching your capability and underestimating yourself as well I think that's a significant sort of red alarm that you could see when I was looking at and same thing with classical Athens that when they actually said we are going to conquer Sicily because it's an island and because of their all of their allies were islands they sort of have this expectation of all islands must be conquered they must be under

her own power and Athens could never conquer Sicily it was too big for them and I think it's that sort of hubristic expansionist strategy just never works when you are relying on asymmetric advantage because sea powers are by default they are weak so I think that and you know they when they actually misbalance that then things will just go wrong and I think that's something you could actually see happening and you're like ah this is great yeah wow i like as you're as you're saying this i'm just going through so many maybe i'm reaching here but but all these you know parallels in the contemporary uh security environment for for the united states and i think kind of the the question we'll end on is if you could add another case study if you had one

you know an opportunity to you know i'm not asking you to go back right you spent several years on this but like if you know what what else would you add what other sea power case is is particularly appealing that that maybe you'll look at in the future oh that's a really good question so I mean I think a lot of people say why don't you do it with Britain and that is actually probably not a bad one to do given the fact that Britain was a sea power and so I guess actually having a proper sea power state and comparing Athens would be fun but then I feel like Professor lambert's already done it in his seapower states books it's not going to be original but it would be more interesting to actually take more contemporary approach and let's say bring in

um let's say contemporary japan japan today is significantly more have a sort of seapower esque outlook that i could actually bring that in and then just sort of compare that but at the same time i think this this thesis is nowhere near finished let alone i'm currently doing my corrections but also another thing is I stopped in 1931 so I didn't actually go into the Manchuria incident or Marco Polo Bridge incident and all of that so I think I actually if I were going to do this again or edit it a little bit further I would actually include 1930s where things actively properly go wrong and how this actually got there because you could actually see a lot of alarm bells going on in World War I the way you could tell this is why Japan went into war in 1930s

And so I think rather than adding another state, I would actually look at Impro Japan in 1930s and maybe trying to take it up to 1941, which I originally did plan to, but then just realized this is way too big. And so I think that's what I would do, or maybe contemporary Japan, who knows. But I would say definitely focus on 1930s further and much more focus on significantly on the economic side of it. We're getting close to out of time for today. But before we go, I'd like to ask, you know, what you're working on now, besides if you have time for anything, you know, besides the corrections and then where our listeners can find you online and kind of if there's anything that that we're going to see from you in the next little while. sure um i'm not planning on working or anything i i would like a little bit of break first after phd phd has been ups ups and downs so many ups and downs and pandemic really did not help towards the end and i think i would just like i have a little bit of break

first but definitely that i would be going into more 30s research and expanding a little bit more into actual pacific war theater and but i don't know when that's going to be i'm actually going to be starting full-time work um i'm actually going to be working for medical school so i'm going to be a doctor of war in a bunch of um medical school sitting so that's going to be interesting but so i think at the moment it's a bit of a break for me but i do have a twitter account which i do need to actually tweet more often but um you can find me at kk underscore naval underscore 94 or just type my name and I will come up and occasionally you might see a picture of my cats that's more likely what I'll be posting sometimes but otherwise yeah I think

I would continue with this research but this research is going to be a much more long-term project rather than short-term I think. Well thank you again for coming I'd like to thank my guest Kunuka Kakura for joining us today and talking about her PhD thesis on naval culture and sea Power Identity in 5th Century Athens in Imperial Japan. Take care. A potter, oh, and a potter, gin, oh. Why, hey, put it in the alley. A potter, wine, both white and red, oh. Put it on the shimbo now.

So help me, Bob, I'm putting it in the alley. Why, hey, put it in the alley. Help me, Bob, I'm putting it in the alley. Put it on the shimbo now.