High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! This article deals with the history of tanks of the Japanese Army. The First World War established the validity of the tank concept. After the war, many nations needed to have tanks, but only a few had the industrial resources to design and build them. During and after World War I, Britain and France were the intellectual leaders in tank design, with other countries generally following and adopting their designs. Japan took interest in tanks and procured some of the foreign designs, and then went to build its own. The designs built were light tanks which Japan used in China in the mid 1930s against opposing infantry in campaigns in Manchuria and elsewhere in China, as the Chinese National Revolutionary Army had only three tank battalions consisting of Vickers export tanks, German PzKpfw I light tanks, and Italian CV33 tankettes to oppose them. Because of the Imperial Japanese Army emphasis on the infantry at the expense of all other branches, armored vehicle development and fielding suffered as a result; a shift to designs with heavier armor and larger guns to fight against the larger tanks of the Allies came too late for the Japanese to field superior tanks on the battlefield.