Bgile wrote:
Perhaps you can tell us what that is. If I've heard of it/them I don't remember it ... ok, I looked it up.
Zaibatsus are major business clusters... Most zaibatsu's integrated 1 bank, 1 brand, 1 retailer, 1 (or more) suppliers of raw material, and so on, so that the entire business chain could be coordinated as a whole. Matsushita, IIRC, was one such cluster.
Japanese companies relied heavily on exports to the US (pretty much the way China today depends on them) and they antagonized the early militaristic expansion of the empire (1930s) because it was bad for business. In time, most of the decision factors came under the influence of the zaibatsus, and thus much of the war had been directed not by armchair generals, but by directors and managers...
The decisive blow given by the zaibatsus to the militaristic aristocracy
was the second world war, which cleansed society of much of the influence the army had over it (many leaders died, while achieving mostly nothing for the country) AND paved the way towards the Holy Grail of Japanese business - state level partnership with the USA, which supplied money, technology and knowledge to the great Japanese holdings.
It was a fact very well known in pre-war Japan that the USA's industrial capability and overall military might was incomparable to that of their own country. The decision to attack the USA was thus completely out of touch with reality, its only aim being to consolidate business power (a derivate of fascist power in fact) in Japanese society...
If you;ll look into it, you;ll see that the Emperor was "on leave" for most of the war, thus his influence was dim.
There are many, many other things to say about this...