A building holiday affected navies with different industrial capacities unevenly. Britain and the United States could expand construction more readily when restrictions ended, whereas Japan depended more heavily on keeping its own construction moving. Permission to build several ships would therefore address part of Japan's dissatisfaction with the treaty system. The proposed compromise still leaves room for understated displacement figures, including a hypothetical 40,000-ton ship declared as 35,000 tons.
Notable Point · 2:04:48-2:05:38
Why a construction holiday disadvantaged Japan
Japan's weaker ability to expand production quickly gave it an industrial reason to prefer limited, continuing battleship construction.