Japans Struggle With Internation

Ian Nish

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136155673
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

This a study of the Manchurian and Shanghai crises, the first serious confrontation between Japan and the world community. The Manchurian crisis was one of the major international crises of the period between World Wars I and II. For Britain and America, it bred a new distrust of Japanese long-term national objectives. It also brought home to all concerned the weaknesses of the League of Nations and the other instruments of collective security which had been devised to deal with problems of the Pacific Ocean area. The first focus of this study is on how one of the international bodies of the time, the League of Nations, attempted to cope with the emergency that broke out in the east in September 1931. The second focus is on the clash of attitudes in Japanese politics. The period covered by the Manchurian crisis was the point when civilian government in Japan was seriously challenged for the first time in the 20th century. The book offers a fresh account of the crisis, making use of new materials, in Japanese and in English, which have become available and which have been drawn upon for this work. These throw new light on the struggles both within Japan and among League enthusiasts to ensure that Japan, the Asian-state which was at once most stable and economically most successful, should not end up in isolation.

1 The Mukden Incident and After

Appropriately it was an explosion on the Japanese-owned railway which sparked off the Manchurian incident. The League of Nations’ team of investigators who heard both the Japanese and Chinese versions of events and carried out an examination of the spot some six months after the event reported as follows:

An explosion undoubtedly occurred on or near the [South Manchurian] railroad between 10 and 10.30 p.m. on September 18th, but the damage, if any, to the railroad did not in fact prevent the punctual arrival of the south-bound train from Changchun, and was not in itself sufficient to justify military action. The military operations of the Japanese troops during this night … cannot be regarded as measures of legitimate self-defence. In saying this, the Commission does not exclude the hypothesis that the officers on the spot may have thought they were acting in self- defence.¹

The Japanese version was that the explosion had been caused by Chinese troops from the Northern Barracks outside Mukden. A Japanese patrol in the area of the explosion called for reinforcements, and the Shimamoto battalion attacked and captured the barracks by 6 a.m. on the morning of 19 September with the loss of two Japanese privates. By the same time the walled city of Mukden had been attacked and captured. The Chinese version was that the attacks had been unprovoked since they had not been implicated in any bomb plot. Indeed Marshal Chang Hsueh-liang had issued instructions on 6 September, when relations with Japan were becoming tense, that ‘no matter how the Japanese may challenge us, we must be extremely patient and never resort to force, so as to avoid any conflict whatever. You are instructed to issue, secretly and immediately, orders to all officers, calling their attention to this point.’² In view of this policy of non-resistance, it came as a complete surprise that the Northern Barracks were attacked and it was clear evidence of the detailed preplanning which the Kuantung army had devoted to this operation.

The agents of the Foreign Ministry tried to abort the operation. On 18 September consul-general Hayashi Kyūjirō was sufficiently worried to send a message warning the new commander- in-chief, General Honjō, to exercise extreme vigilance about plotting by some of his officers. For the rest of the day he was absent for the wake of a friend, his place being taken by the consul, Morishima Mori to. Morishima heard the news of the ‘explosion’ from the Special Service Agency (Kikan) and, in the absence of the commander-in-chief, sought out those in charge in Port Arthur, far to the south. He appealed for steps to be taken for a peaceful settlement and questioned the right of those left in Mukden to take action in the absence of the army commander. The military men felt that Morishima was challenging the sacrosanct military doctrine of dokudan senkō, the army’s right of independent decision in an emergency. One of the officers drew his sword on the consul to reinforce the message. On his return to duty, consul-general Hayashi again appealed to the army to stop their operations; but the military would not tolerate interference.³

In three damaging reports to the Foreign Ministry on 19 September, Hayashi explained his role. He had told Colonel Itagaki that the Chinese were committed to a policy of total non-resis- tance and asked him not to extend the incident unnecessarily and to rely on diplomatic channels to resolve the issue. But Itagaki had responded by telephone that, since the Chinese army had’ attacked the Japanese, the army’s policy was to deal effectively with it. Hayashi told Tokyo that information from various quarters suggested that the policy was to take positive action immediately at all points along the South Manchurian Railway. He invited the president of the railway to take appropriate steps and the government in Tokyo to stop the army’s actions. He concluded that, all in all, the present incident had been a preplanned action on the part of the military.⁴

Divided Japanese opinions

As the difference of view between Japanese officials in Manchuria has indicated, Japan’s relation with Manchuria was a complex and many-sided one. There were at least four authorities involved: those of the Liaotung leased territory, which had been a Japanese responsibility since 1905; the management of the South Manchurian Railway, which had been created by Japan out of the Russian railway networks since the Russo-Japanese war; the Kuantung army and, associated with it, the SMR railway police, a semi-military force; and the diplomats posted throughout Manchuria and China, most particularly the consul-general in Mukden. The constituents in the so-called ‘Quadruple Administration’ tended to take different views of what Japan called ‘her Manchurian problem’. To simplify these views is to distort them but we may try to isolate three strands of thought.

First, there was the thinking of the leaders of the Kuantung army. A large section of them and of their supporters in Tokyo military circles had by 1931 grown so tired of their dealings with Chang Hsueh-liang that they favoured a policy equivalent to annexation. This group was much influenced by the thinking of Colonel Ishiwara Kanji, the clever but conspiratorial staff officer. In advocating annexation, he stated simply:

when the military preparations are completed we do not need to go to great lengths to find the motive or occasion; all we need to do is pick the time and then proclaim to the world our absorption of Manchuria the way we proclaimed the annexation of Korea.⁶

Ishiwara believed that Japan should go her own way, even if that way was known to be anathema to international opinion. In 1931 he felt there should be no further delay since the happenings on the international stage seemed to indicate that there would be no outside interference. Soviet Russia had her hands full with the five-year plan; Britain, France and the League of Nations were powerless; the United States was still recovering from the Depression. After his lengthy stay in Germany in the twenties, Ishiwara knew the world well and did not fear its intervention.

Ishiwara may have disparaged the need for finding a motive, but in practice he tried hard to find justifications for emergency action. In the first place, the Japanese latched on to the plight of the 800,000 Koreans resident in Manchuria who enjoyed Japanese nationality. The Chinese were inclined to see them as a Trojan horse, carrying the vanguard of a Japanese penetration in Manchuria. They therefore made it difficult for Korean residents to become naturalized or to purchase or lease agricultural land. The issue came to a head in the Wanpaoshan affair of June 1931. Wanpaoshan was a village 18 miles north of Changchun where land was sub-let to Korean farmers. The Koreans became embroiled in a dispute with their Chinese neighbours over irrigation channels. The Chinese attacked the Koreans and the Japanese consular police opened fire on the Chinese until they withdrew. In sympathy with this there were anti-Chinese riots throughout Korea; but these only served to stimulate the anti- Japanese boycott throughout China afresh. Trivial in itself, this affair raised a number of difficult racial issues.⁷

Another small issue that was exploited by those who wanted to justify a positive solution in Manchuria was the case of Captain Nakamura. Travelling incognito as an agricultural expert, Nakamura was detained near Taonan in the western section of the Chinese Eastern railway. Around 27 June he was shot by Chinese, either police or soldiers. Since the captain was an intelligence officer, it was inopportune to publish the details and this was not done until 17 August. The Manchurian Youth League tried to highlight the incident by holding a memorial service for Nakamura in Mukden ten days later. Meanwhile pressure was put on the Chinese to conduct a proper investigation and offer an apology, admitting their guilt. After further investigation, the Chinese admitted on 12 September that their soldiers had been responsible for the shooting and would be tried. The Kuantung army questioned the sincerity of the Chinese in punishing a senior official. In some desperation, consul-general Hayashi warned the Chinese to do something positive to prevent the army from taking action into their own hands. The diplomats were satisfied that reconciliation was possible; the army was sceptical.⁸

The middle-ranking officers of the Kuantung army were anxious to exploit these disputes in order to win over military opinion in Tokyo, which was divided in structure and thinking. In structure there was the differentiation between the General Staff and the War Ministry; in thinking on Manchuria there were differences of approach. In June an attempt had been made to join together the various threads by preparing an acceptable policy statement ‘Manshū mondai kaiketsu hōsaku’ [policy for solving the problem of Manchuria]:

1. Through close liaison with the Foreign Ministry, we should try to resolve the anti-Japanese policies of the Chang government in Manchuria; and the central army authorities should try to maintain appropriate controls in order to ensure that the Kuantung’s army’s conduct remains cautious; 2. if, despite the above endeavours, we see an increase in anti- Japanese actions, we may have to resort eventually to military action; 3. in settling the Manchurian problem, it is absolutely essential to get understanding both at home and abroad. The war minister through the cabinet should endeavour to inform each minister of the situation on the ground; … 5. the Military Affairs department of the War Ministry and the Intelligence department of G.H.Q. will, through close liaison with the appropriate sections of the Foreign Ministry, notify to relevant powers the real facts about the anti-Japanese movement being conducted in Manchuria so that, if it becomes necessary for us to take military steps against it, foreign countries would understand our decision and would not embark on hostile countermeasures … ⁹

The memorandum concluded that it would take one year to seek the understanding in Japan and overseas, that is, it would take until the spring of 1932. The essence of the thinking of the General Staff and the War Ministry was one of caution and deliberation. Their general attitude was one of co-operation with the Foreign Ministry in looking for international understanding and of suspicion towards the impetuous Kuantung army officers. Moreover there was a low perception of crisis, in marked contrast to the gradually increasing screams of emergency which were coming from Manchuria.

The civilian group – the civilians in the government, the court and the Foreign Ministry – again differed in degree. The Kuantung army and the army high command were probably not far apart on the long-term objective of ‘positive action’; they differed over timing and respect for international sensitivities. The cabinet was divided and weak following the death of Prime Minister Hamaguchi as a result of the assassination attempt in 1930. Wak-atsuki, an experienced minister, succeeded on 14 April, but his authority was weakened. Too many compromises had been made in the past: the assassins of Chang Tso-lin had virtually gone unpunished; the navy had used the Privy Council to embarrass the government over the London naval treaty of 1930; and the autonomy of the supreme command had in effect been admitted. The parties of the 1930s were as much riven by factions as the parties of the period succeeding World War II have been. All in all, it would have been difficult to expect a sustained period of strong civilian leadership.

The Tokyo government was determined to uphold its treaty rights in the leased territory of Kuantung and the railway zones and defend the position of Koreans living in the Three Eastern Provinces. It shared with those in Manchuria a sense of frustration over the many unsettled land cases and found Chang Hsueh-liang difficult to deal with. When it referred disputes to the Chang authorities, they tended to pass them to Nanking, even though it was generally acknowledged that the writ of Nanking did not in reality run in Manchuria. Unlike the advocates of a ‘positive policy’, the Tokyo government was ready to persevere.

The Wakatsuki ministry pursued a dual strategy which proceeded in parallel right down to the Mukden incident. On the one hand, Foreign Minister Shidehara had been working for some time through his diplomats on the spot for a settlement of the more serious disputes. In his memoirs, consul-general Hayashi records that substantial progress was being made in these negotiations in Mukden, especially over the Nakamura affair. But the activities of the consuls were subverted by the army and their mediation ended in failure. Meanwhile the South Manchurian Railway was trying to solve its long-standing disputes.¹⁰

Constructive Dialogues

The new commander-in-chief, General Honjō Shigeru, reached Mukden on 10 September 1931. While inspecting his new bailli- wick, he thanked Hayashi for his help in solving the Nakamura incident. This favourable outcome was probably due to the Chinese fear (shared by Hayashi) about what the Kuantung army might do if it were not resolved. It was less easy, even with goodwill on both sides, to resolve the long-running railway dispute diplomatically. In essence, the dispute went back to the statement that China

engages, for the purpose of protecting the interests of the South Manchuria Railway, not to construct, prior to the recovery by it of the said railway, any main line in the neighbourhood of and parallel to that railway or any branch line which might be prejudicial to [its] interests.¹¹

This engagement was not part of the Sino-Japanese treaty of December 1905 but was to be found in the record of the peace conference on 4 December of that year. Whether it could be regarded as a binding commitment had never been tested in law; for a quarter of a century Chinese and Japanese had taken diametrically opposing views of it. In practice the Chinese had built a substantial rail network, both with the help of Japanese loans and from their own resources. They were trying to route all freight over Chinese-controlled lines leading to the Chinese port of Yingkou (Nyuchuang), thus creating an effective rail monopoly. In consequence a railway tariff war developed in 1929–30. The railway friction, which had strong political and strategic overtones, came to a head in January 1931, when Kimura Eiichi, a director of the South Manchuria Railway, asked Chang Hsueh-liang to open negotiations on a joint understanding. Chang was amenable and appointed a negotiating committee but there were problems of jurisdiction between Chang and the Nanking government, which had very strong ‘revolutionary diplomatic’ views. The so-called ‘Kimura-Kao negotiations’ stumbled on, with a certain amount of goodwill at the railway level in search of reconciliation. But the attitude of Nanking on the Chinese side and of the Kuantung army on the Japanese side caused delays. The result was that the railway conference for which elaborate plans had been made, was never convened.¹²

Foreign minister Shidehara was also encouraging the efforts of Shigemitsu Mamoru. Shigemitsu had been acting minister in China since 1929 and, after the completion of extra-territoriality negotiations, he was finally accepted as minister plenipotentiary in August 1931. In spite of Tokyo’s aversion to Nanking’s revolutionary diplomacy, Shigemitsu managed to develop good working relations with some of the KMT officials. He developed his contacts especially with T. V. Soong (Sung Tzu-wen) who held the finance portfolio and was related to Chiang Kai-shek by marriage. Partly out of mutual trust and partly out of fear of what the impetuous officers of the Kuantung army might do, the two wanted to negotiate. To that end they travelled to Peking and then to Dairen in August and drew up a plan for dealing with the Manchurian problem. While Soong tried to persuade Chang in Peking to take a less pugnacious line, Shigemitsu sought compromises in Dairen. They seemed to be making progress towards a peaceful settlement. Another set of negotiations was planned for 20 September with the blessing of the Foreign Ministry. But it was aborted by the Mukden incident.

The other prong of the Wakatsuki dual strategy was to restrain the military in Manchuria. Consul-general Hayashi in Mukden had reported both the actions of the army and its rumoured intentions. When this was circulated, the Elder Statesman, Prince Saionji, insisted that the army and navy ministers should be called before the emperor and questioned about discipline in the services. The result of the emperor’s admonition of General Minami, the war minister, was that a group of officers met on 14 September and, after reviewing the advice of the Kuantung army, decided that the officers in Manchuria would have to be curbed. Major-general Tatekawa Yoshitsugu, who was respected by the Kuantung leadership, was to be sent to Mukden by way of Korea, bearing a message calling for caution and discretion. What Tatekawa’s genuine sentiments were cannot be known; but the purpose of his mission of patience and restraint leaked out in Mukden and may have induced the impetuous officers there to steal a march before Tatekawa’s arrival, due to take place on 18th. Thus, the second prong of the Tokyo strategy was subverted.¹³

Mukden and Beyond

China’s response over the Nakamura incident was muddled and played into the hands of the Japanese activists.

The Japanese announced the ‘atrocity’ on 17 August and called for negotiations. They put pressure on at three points – Mukden, Peking and Nanking – with all the suspicions that existed between them. It was perhaps a mistake for the head of the Foreign Ministry, Wong Chien-ting, initially to sta...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• Chapter 1. The Mukden Incident and After
• Chapter 2. Towards an International Commission, November-December 1931
• Chapter 3. Problems, Foreign and Domestic
• Chapter 4. The Creation of Manchukuo
• Chapter 5. The Shanghai Crisis, January-March 1932
• Chapter 6. Arrival of the Lytton Commission
• Chapter 7. Lytton in Manchuria
• Chapter 8. Hiatus in Tokyo and Peking, May-June 1932
• Chapter 9. Rush for Recognition of Manchukuo
• Chapter 10. The Lytton Report and Japan
• Chapter 11. Crisis at Christmas
• Chapter 12. The Assembly Resolves, January-February 1933
• Chapter 13. Climax and Aftermath
• Chapter 14. Some Concluding Thoughts
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index