Beyond a one-note decisive-battle doctrine

Kantai Kessen, the decisive battle, was an endpoint within Japanese doctrine rather than its complete operating logic. Before that battle, distance, logistics, submarines, and carrier strikes were expected to wear down a stronger advancing fleet. The voyage of Russia's Second and Third Pacific Squadrons before Tsushima supplied a historical model: distance and restricted access to coal weakened a fleet before combat. Shokaku embodied interception-attrition operations through the speed and aircraft needed for repeated attacks. Its large air group also translated the Japanese preference for powerful ships and guns into carrier form, where aircraft were the ship's principal striking weapon.