"Hmph, your navy only has the advantage because of funding. Our army soldiers are treated like livestock—the best they get to eat is coarse grain. You people do nothing but enjoy yourselves every day. Never mind the issue of naval equipment; if your meals were the same as the army's, we wouldn't be targeting your navy like this!"
Though that was what they said, the real dispute between the army and navy was still over power within the government. The army's predecessor had been the Satsuma Domain, while the navy's predecessor had been the Choshu Domain. Ancient Japan had been much like the Warring States era, with different states constantly attacking one another. The Satsuma Domain and Choshu Domain had been important forces behind Japan's Meiji Restoration. They had joined forces to deal with the more powerful shogunate, but after forming the new government, their old contradictions remained.
Moreover, the Japanese Emperor did not want his subordinates to be overly united either. Japan had the soil for revolution; if they learned from France and sent their monarch to the guillotine, the imperial family would be left sitting on the griddle. Thus, as the supreme ruler, the Emperor instead hoped his subordinates would not unite, and preferably fight until they were black and blue.
Japan's army-navy conflict also involved a contest between the British and German models of statehood. Naturally, the Imperial Japanese Army followed the German path, because Germany, like Japan before it, had once been fragmented. Both were late-developing nations, and Germany's inspirational rise against France was something the Japanese deeply admired.
The Imperial Japanese Navy's model needed no explanation—it naturally studied Britain, the world's number one, copying every aspect of the British Navy, to an almost fanatical degree.
Take the Etajima Naval Academy, for example. Even the bricks