9th Division (Imperial Japanese Army)

9th Division
9th Division HQ at Kanazawa, Japan
Active	1 October 1898 - 1945
Country	Empire of Japan
Branch	Imperial Japanese Army
Type	Infantry
Garrison/HQ	Kanazawa, Ishikawa, Japan
Nickname(s)	Warrior Division
Engagements	Russo-Japanese War Japanese intervention in Siberia Manchurian Incident Second Sino-Japanese War World War II

The 9th Division (第9師団, Dai-Kyū Shidan^?) was an infantry division in the Imperial Japanese Army. Its tsūshōgō code name was the Warrior Division (武兵団, Take-heidan^?) or 1515 or 1573. The 9th Division was one of six infantry divisions newly raised by the Imperial Japanese Army after the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895). Its troops were recruited primarily from communities in the Hokuriku region of Japan (Ishikawa, Toyama and Fukui, with its headquarters located within the grounds of Kanazawa Castle.

The division received its colors on 1 October 1898, and settled in Kanazawa Castle headquarters 29 November 1898.

The first commander of the 9th Division was Lieutenant General Ōshima Hisanao, who commanded the division as part of General Nogi Maresuke's Japanese Third Army in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. At the Siege of Port Arthur the division took massive casualties making repeated direct frontal assaults on fortified Russian positions, and lost all of its regimental commanders. Survivors were further mauled at the subsequent Battle of Mukden, and even the commander of the division’s field artillery regiment was a casualty.