The Manchurian Incident
In October 1928 Lt. Col. Ishiwara Kanji became the operations officer on the Kwantung Army staff, due partly to Kōmoto’s recommendation. After Kōmoto’s relief in mid-1929, Lt. Col. Itagaki Seishirō replaced him as the senior-ranking staff officer in the headquarters. Ishiwara and Itagaki had known each other since their cadet days at the Sendai regional military preparatory academy and were the perfect combination of brilliant planner and man of action. Working with other midlevel staff officers assigned to the Kwantung Army, the two became the ringleaders of a conspiracy to seize Manchuria and create a Japanese-controlled puppet state.
Beginning in the spring of 1929, Ishiwara sponsored a series of covert reconnaissance forays to identify key facilities throughout Manchuria. He simultaneously devised new tactics to compensate for the overwhelming numerical advantage enjoyed by the forces loyal to Zhang Xueliang, the murdered Zhang’s son and an implacable enemy of Japan. The centerpiece of Ishiwara’s design was the rapid destruction of Zhang’s Mukden headquarters and nerve center with a hard-hitting demonstration of shock and awe. Itagaki and Ishiwara coordinated with sympathetic officers assigned to the neighboring Korea Army and military authorities in Tokyo to insure their support. Col. Nagata Tetsuzan, chief of the war ministry’s military affairs section, for instance, arranged for the delivery of heavy siege artillery that Ishiwara needed to destroy the Mukden barracks compound. In short, army officials at several echelons were involved in the conspiracy.13
There was a sense in army circles that Japan faced a national emergency demanding an extraordinary response that party politicians were incapable of providing because they were captives of narrow partisan interests.14 A changing international order, rising Chinese nationalism, and Soviet communism threatened Japanese interests abroad while inept and timid political leadership thwarted reform at home, being unable to deal with the crushing effects of the global depression, resolve economic inequities, or forge a strong foreign policy.
Lt. Col. Hashimoto Kingorō, the Russia section chief on the general staff, appealed to these frustrations when he organized the Cherry Society (Sakura-kai) in October 1930, a highly politicized group restricted to graduates of the staff college below the rank of colonel who were assigned to the war ministry or general staff. Within a year the Cherry Society had enrolled about 100 activist officers and advocated radical political reforms, by force if necessary, to establish a military-style government.
Hashimoto learned in January 1931 from the vice chief of staff that War Minister Ugaki, whose political ambitions were well known, also was receptive to a military government, and he took this revelation as a green light for a coup d’état. Hashimoto financed his coup with secret army funds that paid civilian right-wing extremists like Ōkawa Shūmei to assemble a mob to surround the Diet. When legislators summoned the army to suppress the demonstrations, the troops would instead seize the Diet. Several high-ranking army officers would enter the building, announce that the nation had lost faith in the party politicians, and demand their wholesale resignations. Ugaki would then receive an imperial command to form a government. After Hashimoto discussed the gist of the plan with several senior officers on January 13, Maj. Gen. Koiso warned him that public opinion would not tolerate a military coup and that the army would not back large-scale, disorderly demonstrations.15
In early February 1931 opposition Seiyūkai members assailed the ruling Minseitō Party over its proposed budget and denounced the London Naval Treaty (signed May 1930) for imperiling national security. The uproar in the Diet escalated from pushing and shoving to fistfights between rival party members as opponents hurled insults, ashtrays, and nameplates across the aisle. The spectacle confirmed Hashimoto’s visceral distaste for the parties and politicians and convinced him to act.16
Soon afterward Ōkawa Shūmei, a right-wing ideologue and self-promoter, approached Ugaki regarding a possible coup and freely interpreted the war minister’s ambiguous and evasive remarks as indicating support. Ugaki, however, realized that he could ride to the premiership legitimately as the leader of a political party and quickly lost whatever interest he may have had in a coup. Several other senior officers expressed second thoughts about the conspiracy, which collapsed by early March. Although Hashimoto’s plan was melodramatic and unrealistic, senior army leaders had seriously considered an armed insurrection and went unpunished, a fact not lost on other radical officers at home or abroad.17
Meanwhile, Ishiwara and Itagaki demanded immediate action in Manchuria. Influential officers in Tokyo were sympathetic but wanted to postpone any action for one year to allow themselves time to prepare public opinion and the army for the takeover. During a June reconnaissance, however, Chinese warlord troops apprehended a Kwantung Army captain dressed in mufti and promptly executed him as a spy.
Lengthy newspaper editorials and sensationalized coverage of the execution and a subsequent clash between Chinese and Korean squatters near the Manchurian-Korean border brought the Manchurian issue to the forefront of public consciousness during the summer of 1931. At the annual division commander’s conference held on August 4, the new war minister, Gen. Minami Jirō, created an uproar in the press when he announced his intention to resolve the Manchurian problem; the army in turn asserted that Minami had the right to voice his opinion publicly on military matters to prevent opportunistic politicians and armchair strategists from confusing its soldiers. Around this time Seiyūkai member Matsuoka Yōsuke declared in the Diet that Manchuria was Japan’s lifeline, a phrase that gained widespread popular appeal.18
By late summer, Ishiwara’s and Itagaki’s sympathizers in the Kwantung Army, the war ministry, and general staff knew the outline of their plot and, in some cases, specific details. Although Tokyo advised discretion, the newly assigned commander of the Kwantung Army, Lt. Gen. Honjō Shigeru, and the commander of the Korea Army, Lt. Gen. Hayashi Senjūrō, both promised unhesitating support in case of emergency. Itagaki also developed a network of activists among South Manchurian Railroad officials and Japanese rōnin (civilian adventurers) in Manchuria. Early in September rumors reached the court that the Kwantung Army was up to something, and Hirohito warned Minami to pay attention to the army’s tendency to resort to unilateral action to forge national policy.19
On September 18, 1931, a bomb planted by Japanese agents exploded on the tracks of the South Manchurian Railway just outside Mukden. The Kwantung Army blamed the attack on Chinese bandits, and well-rehearsed Japanese infantrymen quickly overran the Mukden barracks and seized the city. Provocateurs paid by Itagaki and Ishiwara fomented demonstrations in other cities to justify expanded intervention. The army leadership in Tokyo was conflicted, on the one hand refusing to dispatch reinforcements to Manchuria and on the other agreeing to bring down the cabinet if it interfered with current operations in Manchuria. The general staff ultimately rationalized the Manchurian fait accompli on the grounds that rejecting it would harm army morale and diminish public confidence in the army.20 The Korea Army sent reinforcements on September 21 by invoking the right of field initiative to move forces across the border into Manchuria without an imperial command. Hirohito authorized the action retroactively the next day while cautioning his chief army aide-de-camp that the army had to exercise greater restraint.21
Couching aggression in terms of self-defense, the Kwantung Army overran most of southern and central Manchuria within two weeks, partly due to Ishiwara’s innovative mobile tactics but mainly because Zhang Xueliang, following Chiang Kai-shek’s orders, chose to preserve his army by not resisting the better-armed and -organized Japanese. Chiang in turn sought relief from the League of Nations to make the Japanese withdraw from Manchuria.22
The Manchurian Incident and the subsequent Japanese takeover of Manchuria, completed in early 1932, radically altered the military-strategic equation in northeast Asia. The conquest provoked undying Chinese hostility, increased the Soviet military presence in northeast Asia, and alienated the United States
. Almost overnight the Kwantung Army had to defend an ill-defined 3,000-mile border against a militarily resurgent Soviet Red Army. It also assumed constabulary, occupation, and nation-building roles in Manchuria when it created a puppet regime; exploited natural resources; developed heavy industry; and conducted counterguerrilla operations against warlord troops, Communist insurgents, and roving bandit gangs.
Domestic emergencies and foreign crises made simplistic solutions like unilateral military action seem like attractive remedies to complex problems; the army had acted decisively, unlike the craven diplomats or partisan politicians, to resolve the Manchurian crisis, reassert Japan’s continental interests, and restore Japanese pride. Within the army Ishiwara and Itagaki were heroes.
The October Incident
Lt. Col. Hashimoto had learned of the Mukden conspiracy in June 1931 when a Kwantung Army staff officer approached him for money to finance the plot. Hashimoto promised funding and a coup d’état to overthrow the cabinet should it refuse to support the army’s actions. In early August he alerted several Cherry Society members that the Kwantung Army would strike in Manchuria around mid-September and that he, with the backing of the general staff, would simultaneously lead a coup d’état to install a military government.23
Hashimoto’s sponsor was Maj. Gen. Tatekawa Yoshitsugu, newly appointed general staff first department (operations) chief, who wielded disproportionate influence because of the weakness of his two immediate superiors, an alcoholic chief of staff and a vice chief tainted by involvement in the March Incident. He encouraged Hashimoto’s belief that the imminent events in Manchuria offered the chance to establish a military government.24
Hashimoto’s latest scheme was far more violent than the March conspiracy. Army units would attack the Diet, murder the prime minister, occupy the Metropolitan Police Headquarters, and surround the war ministry and general staff offices. Gen. Araki would form a cabinet with Hashimoto as home minister controlling the police, Tatekawa the foreign minister, and Ōkawa the finance minister. Hashimoto again relied on Ōkawa to marshal civilian support, but he also used Kita Ikki, a right-wing nationalist theoretician, to solicit additional help from company-grade army officers assigned to various Tokyo units. Mid-October was the target date, but no one prepared specific plans for an uprising.
Hashimoto and his coterie boasted openly about their grandiose schemes while they partied at expensive Tokyo restaurants and geisha houses. Unsurprisingly, rumors of an army coup reached the court in early October, and word of the plot even appeared in the newspapers. General officers then rebuked Tatekawa, who in turn ordered Hashimoto on October 16 to end his plotting. Two days later the military police arrested the ringleaders. Hashimoto received twenty days confinement to quarters; the others were confined to quarters for a few days and then transferred from Tokyo.25
Details of the October Incident were common knowledge among junior officers stationed in Tokyo and the radicalized young officers from all over the country who had converged on the capital in anticipation of the uprising. These young lieutenants and captains, who viewed themselves as sincere patriots, were disgusted at the spectacle of Hashimoto and Ōkawa lavishing yen on geisha parties while the farming villages suffered from poverty and starvation. Disillusioned with Hashimoto, they gravitated to Kita, mesmerized by his theories of a military coup that would establish direct imperial rule and renovate Japan. They gradually established an amorphous, army-wide network of activists and sympathizers whose program would establish direct imperial rule, eliminate rapacious capitalism, and suppress dangerous left-wing ideologies.26
In early December 1931 the Minseitō cabinet resigned, unable to restrain the army’s expansion into northern Manchuria, unprepared to deal effectively with the continuing effects of the worldwide Great Depression, and incapable of resolving deep rifts within the party. Inukai Ki, leader of the minority Seiyūkai, became prime minister and scheduled a general election for February 20, 1932. He chose the charismatic Araki for his war minister in hopes of using the popular general to curb army extremism.27 By this time several factions within the army were competing for control of the institution and the nation.
Ugaki’s followers represented the Chōshū faction whereas Araki’s anti-Chōshū group was composed of One Evening Society members. There were also diehard Cherry Society adherents and a radical contingent of junior officers. They all shared an aversion to party cabinet government, a commitment to strengthened national security, and a desire for domestic reform, as they defined these goals, respectively. They differed on the ends and means, and their internecine struggles for the soul of the army provoked murderous blood-feuds.
The First Shanghai Incident
Inukai spent his first weeks in office confronted by one international crisis after another. The previous November the Council of the League of Nations had demanded that Japanese troops withdraw from Manchuria, and on January 7, 1932, U.S. Secretary of State Henry Stimson announced that his country would not recognize any changes in Manchuria. Undeterred, in late January 1932 the Kwantung Army occupied northern Manchuria, ignoring the increasing international criticism.28 Chinese boycotts of Japanese goods had followed the Manchurian Incident and were particularly effective in Shanghai, the center of western and Japanese trade and investment in China. Boisterous anti-Japanese demonstrations and protests complemented the ruinous boycott and played into the hands of the Kwantung Army.
In October 1931 Itagaki had summoned Maj. Tanaka Ryūkichi, the assistant military attaché at the Shanghai consulate, to Mukden and ordered him to stir up more trouble in Shanghai to distract western attention from Japanese actions in Manchuria. To incite disturbances in Shanghai, Tanaka used a secret army slush fund to hire agent provocateurs, including five Japanese members of a militant Buddhist sect. The five marched into a Chinese factory district in Shanghai on January 18, 1932, loudly chanting sutras and banging on drums. Provoked Chinese workers attacked the proselytizing procession, killing two Japanese and badly injuring the others. Hotheads in Shanghai’s large Japanese community demanded revenge.29
Accusations, vigilantism, and anti-Japanese demonstrations that threatened to spin out of control prompted the imperial navy to put a special landing force ashore to protect Japanese lives and interests in the city. The naval infantrymen soon clashed with Chinese troops and, heavily outnumbered, called for army reinforcements on January 31. The general staff ordered a mixed brigade to Shanghai where it was surprised to encounter the highly motivated, well-disciplined, and German-trained Chinese veterans of the Nineteenth Route Army. These violently anti-Japanese soldiers from Guangzhou (Canton) in South China spearheaded the resistance to the latest Japanese aggression.30
The general staff estimated that the Shanghai disorders, like previous outbursts, would be settled in a few days. But the tenacious Chinese defenders took advantage of the numerous creeks and channels that intersected the area north of Shanghai to slow the Japanese attackers. To overcome the unexpectedly tough resistance, the army hurriedly deployed the 9th Division, which also anticipated a short campaign and departed without drawing its full allotment of ammunition, heavy weapons, and equipment.31
Contemptuous of the Chinese, the 9th Division’s commander launched two bullheaded frontal assaults that failed to dislodge the well-entrenched defenders but suffered substantial casualties. One battalion commander reported that his unit was on the verge of annihilation, but his regimental commander ordered the attack to continue for the sake of the regiment’s honor.32 Artillery shells were quickly depleted, and without their standard equipment infantrymen had to jury-rig weapons to breach Chinese strongholds. In one attack, three soldiers wrapped explosive charges in bamboo matting, lit a fuse to the primer, and, carrying a live bomb, rushed the enemy position. It exploded prematurely, killing them.33
Eager for good news from the botched campaign, the press marketed the episode as an intentional act of self-sacrifice to achieve the unit’s objectives. It was the epitome of Japanese
martial valor and transmogrified the three soldiers into war gods guarding the nation. The bakudan sanyūshi (the three brave soldiers who became human bombs) story resonated with the Japanese public. Fueled by sensational and incessant press coverage, it stirred nationalism and patriotism and launched a spontaneous flow of donations to the soldiers’ families. Newspaper descriptions of the human bombs recalled their famous human-bullet ancestors during the Russo-Japanese War to conjure up powerful images that connected glorious tradition with current operations. The two largest national newspapers sponsored poetry contests to commemorate the heroes and received more than 200,000 entries.34 It seemed that the public was spellbound by the three soldiers’ self-sacrifice for the sake of the nation.
The emotional sensationalism shielded the army from criticism of its incompetence that had needlessly wasted soldiers’ lives. Instead, army leaders capitalized on the public frenzy by announcing that the three soldiers had deliberately sacrificed themselves to enable their comrades to capture the position. (A straightforward account in the army’s official history recorded that when the men reached the Chinese barbed wire there was a loud explosion and they were killed.) Furthermore, the battalion commander never ordered a suicide attack. Thirty-six soldiers volunteered for the assault and were organized into twelve assault parties. Eight were killed, but the others survived the engagement. It seems that the three soldiers’ act captured the popular imagination because they were ordinary young men whose unquestioning obedience to orders demonstrated a devotion to duty previously reserved for warriors but now open to all citizens.35
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