Cythereal posted:

It's a common subject in history books that cover the internal dynamics of Imperial Japan - Shattered Sword is one example and is virtually required reading if you're interested in the Pacific War in general. I don't know if there's any dedicated books on the subject, but the Military History thread over in A/T would be a good place to ask.

Imperial Japan was dysfunctional to say the least, and it's leadership doubly so. On a purely strategic level, the IJA and IJN were known to lie to each other about their capabilities as political chips - the IJA, for example, vetoed the IJN's interest in a full invasion of Australia by claiming that they simply didn't have the manpower such a campaign would demand, even though in fact they did. The Navy on the other hand said the requisite sealift capacity simply wasn't there for the IJA's preferred idea of expanding into Southeast Asia. And this was the IJA and IJN at their most civil. One of the major reasons Admiral Yamamoto spent much of the war at sea, rather than in Japan to run things from headquarters, was the very real fear that the Army would assassinate him. Officers from both services were killed by the other, and the IJA explicitly targeted civilian populations with Navy-relevant skills (like shipyard workers) for drafting to keep them from the Navy.