Could Japan afford naval parity with Britain and America?

Could Japan's economy support naval parity with the United States and Britain?

No: parity would have been financially ruinous and demanded industrial capacity Japan did not yet possess, though a more generous treaty ratio was feasible.

A carefully structured treaty program might have made a 10:7 position affordable by slowing the construction Japan already intended to complete. One-for-one parity with Britain or the United States would instead have pushed Japanese finances toward bankruptcy. Money was only part of the constraint, because the yards and supporting industries required for a parity fleet did not yet exist at the necessary scale. Japan would first have to finance that industrial expansion and then pay to build, crew, maintain, and operate the larger navy.