Japan entered the 20th century with a clear victory over the Russian fleets at Port Arthur and Tsushima, ending the Russo-Japanese War in 1905. But while Japan had succeeded in becoming an industrial power by the early 20th century, it still was largely an agrarian nation, and its industrial capacity was limited. This meant that Japanese planners had to set priorities on allocating their manufacturing efforts to support the military. As will be seen, Japan's position as a new major naval power favoured the diversion of industrial effort and resource allocation toward the Navy, leaving the Army to settle for what it could obtain from the remainder of the country's military budget. This in turn affected the number and quality of most of Japan's non-naval weapons. In spite of Japan's limitations, her leaders were very much interested in improving her military capabilities and in the decades after WWI, Japan experimented with tank designs, purchasing a number of foreign tanks to study them and develop doctrines for using armour in warfare.
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