His father was a police officer, but as his clan had supported the Tokugawa bakufu and then the Northern Alliance during the Boshin War of the Meiji Restoration, its members were shut out of higher government positions.

He served in the IJA 65th Infantry Regiment in Korea after its annexation by Japan in 1910, and in 1915, he passed the exams for admittance to the 30th class of the Army Staff College.

He hired several former officers from the German General Staff to tutor him, and by the time that he returned to Japan, he had formed a considerable background on military theory and doctrine.

[5] Ishiwara felt that the period of world conflict was fast approaching, and Japan, relying upon its vision of the kokutai and its sacred mission to "liberate" China, would lead a unified East Asia to defeat the West.

Ishiwara quickly realized that the confused political situation in northern China, along with Japan's already significant economic investments in the area, provided the Kwantung Army with a unique opportunity.

Ishiwara was appointed to the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff in 1935 as Chief of Operations, which gave him primary responsibility for articulating his vision for Japan's future.

The strike north view held that Japan should join with Manchukuo (the Japanese puppet state created out of occupied Manchuria in 1932) and China to form an "East Asian League", which would then prepare for and fight a war with the Soviet Union.

Ishiwara envisioned a one-party "national defense state" with a command economy in which political parties were abolished and venal politicians and greedy businessmen removed from power.

After Vice Chief of Staff Hajime Sugiyama pulled troops in from garrisons around Tokyo, Ishiwara was named Operations Officer of the Martial Law Headquarters.

Back in Japan, he began to analyze Soviet tactics at Nomonhan, where Japanese forces were defeated, proposing counter-strategies to be adopted by the Army.

After World War II, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers called upon Ishiwara as a witness for the defense in the International Military Tribunal for the Far East.

He displayed his old fire in front of the American prosecutor, arguing that U.S. President Harry S. Truman should be indicted for the mass bombing of Japanese civilians.

[8] Ishiwara claimed that it was the Americans who forced to Japan, which had been isolated until the 19th century, to open door and encouraged Japanese to learn about the aggression of Great Powers.