What was the public and military sentiment regarding the Washington Treaty (1922) in Japan?

by Rekipp

I am taking a chinese history class for fun, and in my texbooks I am reading two different opinions which are leaving me confused. Neither one really mentioned which kind of opinion it is (since they are focused on the chinese view), but I think there might be a difference between how it was received by the public, and how the military advisors received it?

One textbook said that while the terms for Japan seemed not very ideal and unequal, it was enough to ensure that Japan would have naval superiority despite being allowed to only have 3 tons of armored ships. Even though the US and Britian would get 5 tons, and Japan would have to go back on their 21 demands made in 1915

The other one mentioned in passing that unequal treatment on terms, along with stonewalling of imperialistic desires by the west (through this treaty, and the lytton report) led to heightened aggression by Japan, and caused Japan to leave the League of Nations.

I am curious to what degree each of these statements are true, and if there is important parts being left out from the Japanese perspective since my books are focused on chinese history.

Much like any other divisive issue, the Washington Naval treaties were extremely controversial in Japan. There were essentially three points of contention:

The "inequality" of the 5-5-3 arrangement. The Japanese felt that they were a great power equal to the US and the UK at least in theory. Thus the idea that they would get less ships than the US and UK seemed unfair to many Japanese naval personnel. However, this does not take into account that the US had to split its Navy into Atlantic and Pacific commitments (although the Panama Canal made this less of a problem) i.e. "a two-ocean navy" and the UK had to split it between Europe, India, and the Pacific, i.e. "a three-ocean navy." Japan only had "one ocean" to worry about, so arguably Japan would have force supremacy in her only region (essentially, 1.5-1-3).

The second argument was that Japan should not even stoop to this sort of level, that they should be allowed to build as much as they wanted. Several senior naval officials opposed this, including Yamamoto, on the grounds that US industry was far superior to Japan, and that they would surely be able to produce far more ships than Japan could without limits (which, as the later war showed, was quite accurate).

The last point had to do with the fact that US codebreakers were able to determine what the minimum ratio that Japan would accept was, and thus drove them to that point. Because of this relatively low valuation, there was much resentment by what became known as the Fleet Faction that those who supported the Treaty (the Treaty Faction) may have betrayed Japan's interests.

In terms of overall impact on the rise of militarism in Japan, it was certainly a major contributing factor in radicalizing elements of the Navy. But it was only one of a series of events that led to the anti-Western and strongly pro-military government to take power and begin the War in the Pacific. Rather than the event itself, it was the pattern that the event fell into that was more of a determining factor.