Shipyard selection and unused Japanese capacity

Japan made greater wartime use of capable yards outside its usual preferred group. One proposed explanation for their earlier underuse concerns family connections and Buddhist ownership. That explanation remains tentative: its adequacy as the deciding cause is explicitly doubted. The comparison with Britain includes a Treasury policy of paying yards to close, even as available yards were being used more intensively. American yard expansion supplies a different response to construction demand. These examples frame shipbuilding capacity as something affected by institutional choices as well as the physical existence of suitable yards.