Japan Ground Tree Order: A Progression Framework

Japan’s ground tree is small and specialised, and players who judge it by the first three vehicles quit before it gets good. The tree has a clear turning point and a clear destination, and both are worth knowing before you spend a single research point.

The turning point is the Chi-Nu. Before it, Japanese mediums suffer from what the War Thunder Wiki describes plainly as underpowered guns or tiny calibre — vehicles that cannot answer their contemporaries. The Chi-Nu arrives with a 75 mm Type 3 cannon at BR 3.3, and suddenly one shot is enough.

The destination is the Type 90, and it is genuinely unlike anything else at its tier (more on why below).

The line that matters

Step	Vehicle	How you drive it
1	Chi-He	Move past it. Weak gun, thin armour, and no reason to linger
2	Chi-Nu (Rank III, BR 3.3)	The first real gun in the tree. Learn hull-down here
3	Chi-To	Better Protection and the same philosophy — bigger Chi-Nu, not a new playstyle
4	The Type 61 → Type 74 chain	Cold-war hulls. Faster, still thin, still punished for being seen first
5	Type 90 (Rank VI)	Autoloaded Rh-120. Top of the Japanese line

The research chain Chi-He → Chi-Nu → Chi-To means step 2 is unavoidable. Plan for it, and recognise that everything up to it is tuition rather than content.

The one Chi-Nu trick nobody tells you

The Chi-Nu carries 70 rounds by default. Take 30 or fewer.

This is not superstition about ammo cook-off generally — it is specific to this vehicle’s layout. With 30 rounds or fewer loaded, the turret is left clear of stowed ammunition, and a penetrating turret hit stops ending the fight. Japanese armour is thin enough that you will get hit; the question is whether the hit kills the vehicle or just the crew member.

Thirty rounds is also more than a battle usually demands from a vehicle whose Type 1 APHE carries 102 mm of penetration at 10 m and still 64 mm at 2,000 m. You will rarely wish you brought more, and you will frequently wish you had brought less.

Other Chi-Nu facts worth having before you queue: the hull sits at 50/25/20 mm and the turret at 50/25/25, it reloads in 7.8 seconds down to 6 with an aced crew, and it carries a five-man crew — enough bodies that single hits rarely end you if the ammunition is not sitting in the wrong place.

Why Type 90 is the reason to finish the line

The Type 90 pairs a licence-built Rheinmetall 120 mm L/44 with an autoloading mechanism, making it the only production vehicle to combine those two things. That combination changes the vehicle in three ways:

• Three crew members, as in Soviet autoloader tanks. A well-placed hit removes capability fast, and there is no loader to rotate in.
• A 1,500 hp Mitsubishi engine pushing just over 50 tonnes to 70 km/h forward and 32 km/h in reverse. That reverse figure is exceptional for a Western-designed MBT and worth exploiting to break contact.
• Composite protection covering only a limited frontal arc. Side armour stops small-calibre autocannon and fragments, nothing more. The practical instruction is direct: keep your front facing the enemy. Blowout panels protect against an ammunition cook-off the way an M1 Abrams does, but they are not substitutes for not being hit.

Played correctly the Type 90 is a fast, hard-punching vehicle that can disengage — completely different from how the same turret would behave in a four-crew NATO hull.

Common misjudgements

1. Quitting at Chi-He. The tree’s reputation comes from its opening vehicles, which really are weak. The Chi-Nu changes the tree.
2. Loading the full ammunition load. See above — it costs you matches.
3. Playing Type 90 like a Leopard. Three crew and a limited frontal arc mean angling and positioning matter more than raw gun performance.

Decision rules

• Reach the Chi-Nu before forming an opinion on Japan. Nothing earlier is representative.
• Carry minimal ammunition on Japanese mediums. Thin armour plus stowed rounds is the tree’s signature death.
• Keep hull-down work central. Japanese turret armour is better than Japanese hull armour.
• In Type 90, never let side armour see the fight — the 32 km/h reverse is your reset button, use it.

Keep every addition within one BR step using how BR decides your matches. If ground Japan is your first tree, weigh tree depth against newcomer friendliness in the nation choice framework, then build the garage as shown in your first ground lineup.