why is Japan's industry so weak?

[mdw1985]

Does Japan really start with only 15 military factories, 10 dockyards and 6 free civilian factories? Why is it that weak industrially?

Edit: even italy is stronger with 19 mil, 11 dy, 12 civ

 

[amalric de g.]

The IC numbers are not the final ones. The game isn´t even in Beta stage, so they will likely change for all countries.

 

[Caesar15]

Well they have more than 6 factories.. so we don't really know how weak or strong their industry is if we don't know total civilian factories.

 

[Zaku]

UK has 14 military factories and 19 dockyards in 1936, so it seems more or less fine in that regard.
As for civilian IC we don't know how much Japan actually has, we just know that the player has 6 free factories.

 

[Karimas]

Its a major. Maybe weaker on start than Italy, but maybe they can become strong much faster trough the decisions.

 

[Gotomtom]

Japan historically lacked heavy industry, also remember a lot of its ships where build by the UK. The lack of heavy industry is related to the lack of natural resources, which in turn is the entire reason for being imperialistic. Many cannons for instance where bought from Germany.

Point is Japan has a huge army with many soldiers, but not a very strong industry, it should be able to produce the small arms and support weapons, and a few heavy weapons like tanks and large artillery. However again Japan relied on numbers and smaller weapons. and of course air force. Industry wise it probably should be one of the weakest majors. Also remember that Japan will be going up against Asian armies for a good portion of the game who will have barely any industry, this is where Japanese power will truly shine, against "western" great powers, Japan never truly stood a chance, both due to their doctrine and due to their industry lacking in capacity.

Aside from the historical aspect, if there is any hoi3 in this I would expect an industrial efficiency, allowing axis nations to start with high efficiency due to laws would give them valuable early game boosts, simulating the industrial build up that the democracies, and USSR had to go through.

 

[Antediluvian Monster]

Japan historically lacked heavy industry, also remember a lot of its ships where build by the UK. The lack of heavy industry is related to the lack of natural resources, which in turn is the entire reason for being imperialistic. Many cannons for instance where bought from Germany.

That's nice overview, but relevant for Russo-Japanese War, not Second World War.

Japanese artillery in this period was built in Japan and the Kongo was among the last British built ships in service, itself dated and somewhat second rate by WW2. Japan was able to design and build it's own heavy warships and siege artillery even before WW1.

 

[LordOfWar16]

Just to be clear, that numbers on top are the idle factories, not the total factories. Japan probably has more civilian factories than that, but has that amount not in use at the moment.

That said, Japan wasnt an industrial mega power by any means and lacked alot of resources, especially oil. That was basicly the reason for their imperalism and the annexation of Manchukou, which was an resource rich industrial region, but the USA cut off most of their oil imports with the embargo.

Just as germany or basicly any nation in the game you have to build up your industry over the course of the game. No nation in the game starts with an huge industry, while countries like the US might start with more civilian factories of course, they start with practically no military factories.

 

[Cynical Dreamer]

Agree with previous posts. Japan was one of the least industrialised major nations at the time, and had huge difficulties equipping it's massive military. The industrialization of Japan only really picked off in the 1950's, when Japanese capital was imported back from it's oversea colonies and invested in light industry to supply the US and Japan with cheap alternatives to western imported clothes, shoes ect. A Japan in the same league industry wise as the US, the USSR, Germany or even Britain and France would be massively a-historical, at least in my opinion.

 

[Gotomtom]

Yes Japan did have heavy industries, that is very correct, they just didn't have many. As such it is still valid for WW2 and not limited to pre-WW1. They did build a few Yamato class SBB's/SCV's, obviously they had heavy industries. They where also capable of building medium bombers and fair amount of planes and they did have a few automobile factories. Again though this is in too little quantities compared to other majors.

To give you an example the USSR had tons of heavy industry, they still had to rely on US and UK tanks and equipment. Having to buy equipment does not mean they couldn't build any themselves. It simply means what they where producing wasn't enough. In the case of Japan, again I have to stress they didn't need to rely on heavy industry because no one around them could match them... except the USA.

Japan should have enough factories to build the required upkeep for its army and a little extra, it should have a few dockyards to be able to build a navy strong enough to gain dominance, a dominance which the USA should be able to break. After that it is up to the player to fix Japan and get its true potential... if you can secure the resources to do so.

on a last note, specify artillery. Because I do believe I mention they where capable of producing their own (forgive me if i did not), they just tended to stick to smaller arty, 1 because their industry was better suited for it and 2, more importantly the terrain across Asia was more suited, lots of mountains and jungle areas, along with lesser infrastructure would mean heavy guns would be a bother and not very useful.

A player should thus be just fine in keeping its army going with less factories, if the player forgoes some fancy big equipment. With dockyards and military factories separated I see no reason why Japan in hoi4 can not build big ships. If hoi4 has practicals like hoi3 then certainly their capabilities in the small arms, airforce and certainly the navy branch should be decent to good.

 

[Gotomtom]

on a side note, look at that manpower, that is where Japan will truly shine, a huge MP pool, unlike China, these guy's will actually have guns instead of swords and spears or muskets from long past ages. An for what it is worth they will also have some actual training with said weapons and highly motivated officers, even if a bit suicidal.

 

[LordOfWar16]

on a side note, look at that manpower, that is where Japan will truly shine, a huge MP pool, unlike China, these guy's will actually have guns instead of swords and spears or muskets from long past ages. An for what it is worth they will also have some actual training with said weapons and highly motivated officers, even if a bit suicidal.

And that is probably not even the best recruitment policy. Japan is probably one of the nations that can literaly cherrypick its soilders and still field an big army. If everything goes south (and you have enough guns) you can literaly overrun your enemy.

I mean, lets say Japan has limited Conscription in 1936 and switches to Extensive Conscription, that is still an 10% jump in recruitable population. Service by requirement would give you 20% more, all Adults 30% and Scraping the Barrel even 40% more recruitable population compared to Limited Conscription. That will hurt your industry of course, since less people in factories mean less factory output of course.

Another benefit of an very large population is that your industrial potential is very high of course. More people mean more factories that can be supported.

 

[Sharp163]

Does Japan really start with only 15 military factories, 10 dockyards and 6 free civilian factories? Why is it that weak industrially?View attachment 153454

Edit: even italy is stronger with 19 mil, 11 dy, 12 civ

They are probably still balancing the game, since it is still unfinished

Besides, it is still only 1936 in that screenshot

 

[Axe99]

What Antediluvian said about the IJN - other than the Kongo, there were a handful of coastal defence ships that were training ships by that stage, but the vast, vast majority of the IJN vessels that served in the 1936-46 period were home made. In terms of naval strength, Japan built 1.8 million tonnes of warships that are covered by HoI4 and served between 1936-46, compared with 1.6 million in Germany, 0.8 million in Italy, 0.5 in the USSR, 3.1 in the UK and 5.0 in the US (note that the US built 14.8 million tons of fighting vessels in total, and produced something like three times that of the UK, but if we just look at what HoI4 covers in discrete ships it's a lot closer), and these figures including vessels built before 1936 (as we're talking about Japan's industrial strength here, so pre-1936 counts as well) they look a lot closer to the UK in shipbuilding strength than they should).

From what I can see, on 1 Jan 1936, my best guess for what Japan should be building (not counting reconstructions because HoI4 probably doesn't, noting that for DDs and SSs the numbers are a bit of a guess, as I don't have the precise figures, but they should be close):

- 2-5 CVs (the variation is because one is a transport ship while under construction and two are seaplane carriers - so not covered by HoI4 - but were converted into the CVs Shoho, Chitose and Chiyoda after the game starts - I've no idea how HoI4 treats these).

- 2 CAs (Tone class)

- 2 'big' CLs in the Mogama class

- 11-15 or so DDs (10 Shiratsuyu class, 1-5 Asashio class, I don't have the exact dates for them on me)

- 6-7 SSs (1-2 KD6a class, 2 KD6b, 2 J3 class, 1 K5 class).

Just some numbers for perspective, apologies for any mistakes and not suggesting HoI4 has to hit naval production perfectly. Ten dockyards does seem a little low for this, but I remember looking up the same data for the UK and Germany, and Germany in particular had pretty low dockyard numbers for what it was building at the time (from memory, Germany was building more ships in terms of tonnage than the UK at game start, it was only in 1937 that the UK put the foot down and shot ahead on naval production).

 

[SchwarzKatze]

Japan historically lacked heavy industry, also remember a lot of its ships where build by the UK.

False. The last UK built ship was Kongō, and that's before WWI

The lack of heavy industry is related to the lack of natural resources, which in turn is the entire reason for being imperialistic.

Also false by 1936. Japan already had Korea and Manchuria for their needs, and invasion of most SEA besides French Indochina where the goal was to cut lend lease happened after Pearl Harbor. If there's that much need you would've seen Japanese taking Dutch East Indies when Netherlands fall, but they didn't.

And consider 8-8 fleet program in the '20s. They're able to get most of those ship under construction before the treaty was signed. There's no shortage of materials even without Manchuria.

And Manchuria provided so much that Kwantung Army went effectively independent in several occations.

Point is Japan has a huge army with many soldiers, but not a very strong industry, it should be able to produce the small arms and support weapons, and a few heavy weapons like tanks and large artillery. However again Japan relied on numbers and smaller weapons. and of course air force. Industry wise it probably should be one of the weakest majors. Also remember that Japan will be going up against Asian armies for a good portion of the game who will have barely any industry, this is where Japanese power will truly shine, against "western" great powers, Japan never truly stood a chance, both due to their doctrine and due to their industry lacking in capacity.

There's simply no place for those heavy army toys. China had dirt poor logistics and your heavy armor would end up with no fuel or stuck in mud, and the same is true for SEA and the tropical islands. And jungles provide excellent cover for infantry infiltration and Yamashita knew that.

 

[77Hawk77]

Japan should probably have a pretty good amount of regular factories, considering their 3-6 million strong land army for most of the war.

 

[mdw1985]

If Japan's industry is that weak, but it has a big army, then it would be interesting,

1st How much industry China has
2nd How much industry Indonesia has
3rd How much resources the above have

 

[Zoob]

Just to be clear, that numbers on top are the idle factories, not the total factories.

 

[shri]

Japan was an Industrial power in the WW2 era and bigger than Italy but smaller than France, so ideally it should be at-least 1/2 factories more than Italy and 2/3 less than France but have more production efficiency and more manpower and better laws and bonus so that it can utilise its limited factory base better than France and be actually able to punch at the level of the UK (which it historically did).
Maybe the "Persona of the Emperor" or some such "Research decision" or starting Bonus can apply giving Japan better usability of its existing factory base.
As already written, Korea and Manchuria puppets meant the Japanese were nearly self sufficient in Coal, Iron Ore, Steel, but sorely lacked Oil and Rubber (the reason for grabbing South East Asia). Also pre-War JAPAN needs to have very good starting relations with the USA so that it can buy Oil from USA.

 

[Centerbe]

Does Japan really start with only 15 military factories, 10 dockyards and 6 free civilian factories? Why is it that weak industrially?

industrial setup its not the final one......