Kantai kessen

The Decisive Battle Doctrine (艦隊決戦, Kantai Kessen; "naval fleet decisive battle"^?) was a naval strategy adopted by the Imperial Japanese Navy following the Russo-Japanese War. It called on the use of a strong battleship force, which would at a single stroke destroy an invading fleet as it approached Japan after suffering losses through attrition as it penetrated Japanese perimeter defenses.

The decisive victory of the Japanese fleet over the Imperial Russian Navy at the Battle of Tsushima in the Russo-Japanese War had validated the doctrine in the eyes of the Imperial Japanese Navy General Staff, and future naval procurement and deployment was centered on refinements of the "decisive victory", or kantai kessen doctrine.

Opposition to this doctrine grew in the 1930s, as advocates of the new submarine and naval aviation technologies foresaw that the concept of the line of battle between opposing battleships fleets had been rendered obsolete. However, conservative supporters of kantai kessen, such as Admiral Osami Nagano, dominated within the senior staff of the Japanese Navy and the kantai kessen concept remained the primary Japanese naval strategy into the Pacific War.

The senior officer class of the Imperial Japanese Navy was heavily influenced by the works of Alfred Thayer Mahan, whose works (including The Influence of Seapower Upon History,1660-1783, published in 1890) were required reading at the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy and Naval Staff College.

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