Roots of Samurai Rage and Fear VII
Manchuria
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There were several events and phenomena in Japan’s history that supplied ample fuel to a simmering fire that seemed to have been burning in the minds of much of the military and naval leadership of Japan before 1941. While much of Japan was quietly intent on merely surviving, the dominant social group in the archipelago was constantly trying to either stay in charge or justify having been in charge. This essay is one of several that visit the most important elements of samurai rage against the West and their own subjects, and their constant fear of being overthrown or even contradicted. As shown by the various “insults” and momentous events in Japan over the centuries, the formation of movements and societies and the ensuing incidents happened all too easily. Too, Japan and the Japanese were apparently masters at holding a grudge.
Roots of Japan’s Rage: Manchuria
By 1920, China was in an advanced state of disintegration. By early 1928, the Soviet-dominated Kuomintang’s (KMT) Northern Expedition had defeated most of the warlords in Manchuria, and the Nationalist government was once again in a position to exert control over the area. This was a situation most dire for Japan, especially since the Soviets had already installed puppet governments in Outer Mongolia and Tannu Tuva.
When the Nationalists started moving again on 21 April 1928, Hikosuke Fukuda ordered the Kwantung Army's 6th Division into Jinan—contrary to instructions from Tokyo to avoid confrontation—as the Northern Faction troops moved out and the Nationalists moved in. On 3 May, a confrontation took place and resulted in the (to this day unexplained) deaths of 12 Japanese, breaking the previous quietness. On 7 May, Hikosuke issued an ultimatum that was certain to be refused (and was) and later mutilated and slaughtered Chinese peace negotiators. By 11 May, the Japanese were on the offensive against the unprepared Chinese, pushing them out of Jinan and inflicting over seven thousand military and two thousand civilian casualties. Chiang-Kai-Shek withdrew his Chinese troops from the area and later wrote that he feared Japan was becoming his worst enemy.
The Fengtian Clique was a warlord faction that wrested control of most of Manchuria from the Nationalists, with Kwantung Army support. But after 1923, the leading warlord in Manchuria, Zhang Zuolin, was inviting British and American investors, which had been only Japanese before. After the Kanto Earthquake and the Showa Financial Crisis in 1923, this was alarming not just to the Kwantung Army and the South Manchuria Railway Company, but also to Tokyo.
On the night of 3 June 1928, Daisaku Komoto, Kaneo Tomiya, and Fujii Sadatoshi—junior Kwantung Army officers who decided that Zhang would be better dead—planted a bomb under a bridge that Zhang would cross in a train near Huanggutun. In the early morning hours of 4 June, the bomb went off, demolishing the bridge and train and fatally injuring Zhang and several others. However, the Kwantung Army didn’t seize the opportunity to mobilize and occupy more of Manchuria, even though they had been preparing another Fengtian Clique senior general for the role.
Worse, Zhang’s son, Zhang Xueliang, quickly emerged as a leader of the warlord faction and reached an “accommodation” with the Nationalists to leave him in power in Manchuria, which considerably weakened Japan’s political position there. To add insult to injury, the Showa publicly criticized Prime Minister Tanaka Giichi (who resigned) for his inability to bring the perpetrators to justice, though privately he understood. If the Kwantung Army wanted an excuse to take over Manchuria, or anywhere else, they needed to improve the coordination of their insubordination.
They didn’t have long to wait. One of human history’s more blatant national exploitations of individual insubordination unfolded in September 1931, called the Manchurian Incident (Manshu-jihen) by the Japanese and the Mukden Incident by the Chinese. Earlier in the year, Chinese leaders had met in Nanking (Nanjing) and agreed to assert more control over Manchuria. In the same vein, Tokyo dispatched Tatekawa Yoshitsugu to ensure that the Kwantung Army didn’t provoke another incident, like the Huanggutun Incident. But Tatekawa wasn’t interested in preventing the Kwantung Army from doing anything at all. When two junior officers, Itagaki Seishiro and Ishiwara Kanji, set a relatively harmless charge under a span of South Manchurian Railway track no one cared about and set it off on 18 September 1931, Tatekawa was fast asleep after imbibing far too much liquor for a senior officer in his position charged with such responsibility.
Though a train passed over the damaged section without difficulty just minutes after the explosion, the Japanese propaganda machine cranked out stories blaming a nearby warlord garrison. To protect Japanese interests, Honjō Shigeru (a disciple of Araki Sadao) and his Kwantung Army invaded Manchuria. Honjō did not trouble himself to ask Tokyo or anyone else for instructions, permission or blessings for his actions.
Chiang didn’t much care at the time because Zhang Xueliang controlled Manchuria, who, though on good terms with the rest of China, was still an independent warlord answering to whoever backed him, and that was Japan. Liaoning Province, the part of Manchuria that the Japanese first occupied, declared itself independent from China. As the Kwantung Army spread out, there were battles for provincial capitals and for arms depots, but mostly the occupation was fairly peaceful until November, when a battle raged over Tsitsihar and its environs from mid-October to 19 November. When regular troops from Japan appeared in Manchuria, the Kwantung Army realized it had gambled correctly.
Merely taking over Manchuria and proclaiming it an independent kingdom did not mean that the Chinese merely said “OK” and went about their business. From the first hours of the occupation, Manchuria was a hotbed of resistance to both the Japanese and to the Manchukuo puppet government in Mukden.
There were several kinds of Chinese resistance organizations, some more dangerous and organized than others. Manchuria had been in a state of turmoil since the Boxer Rebellion, controlled by whichever warlord was on top at the moment. The warlords faced opposition from citizen militia groups, also known as “plain-clothes militias” because they didn’t wear uniforms. However, these groups were more of a nuisance than a serious threat. Quasi-religious peasant brotherhoods like the Red Spear Society (centered on Harbin) and the Big Swords Society (along the Korean border) were more organized and dangerous. Then there were the bandits, of which there were countless thousands in Manchuria with no particular organization, whose sole intent was survival. Many of these guerillas had been soldiers under Zhang Xueliang, and thus often had equipment and training equal to the Japanese.
Anti-Japanese forces destroyed bridges and attacked trains soon after the formation of Manchukuo. In the spring of 1932, the Kwantung Army started dealing with them. The Japanese planned pacification operations well in the early stages, but were only partially effective because of the poor training and equipment of the Manchukuo Imperial Army units. A more fundamental problem was that irregular warfare was simply not in the samurai playbook. The IJA lacked the equipment and training to chase guerrillas into the hills, valleys, and forests, although they could defeat any force that stood in one place and fought like soldiers. In due course, the Manchukuo Army would shoulder most of the security responsibilities in Manchuria, but it would never be capable of fighting on its own.
The anti-Japanese forces were always suffering from poor logistics, and the longer the Kwantung Army stayed in the field, the weaker their opponents became. By the end of February 1933, the Japanese had destroyed or driven into the Soviet Union most of the major forces they could understand and fight. In 1931, the Chinese communists began organizing small guerilla units bent mostly on proselytizing among the peasants. By 1934, the communists were forming their “Route” armies (which were based in provinces along the South Manchurian Railroad), and by 1936 were seriously disrupting Japanese and Manchukuo communications. But, like the other anti-Japanese armies, logistics eventually weakened the Reds to a point where retreat into China or the Soviet Union was the only way to keep any part of their forces together.
The samurai, unable to finish the conquest of Manchuria according to their rules, simmered…
Why The Samurai Lost Japan: A Study Of Miscalculation And Folly
Ambition can be pernicious, as the samurai discovered in Manchuria, and would later find out in China and the Pacific. Just how dangerous it was is the subject of the book.
And Finally...
On 7 February:
1917: The US passenger steamer SS California is torpedoed by U-85 off Ireland; 41 of the 205 people on board are killed, The sinking, close on the heels of the torpedoing of SS Housatonic days earlier and immediately after the US broke off diplomatic relations with Germany, spurred the US even closer to war.
1983: Elizabeth “Libby” Dole becomes Secretary of Transportation in Washington, DC. The wife of Senator Bob Dole, Secretary Dole technically became the first American woman to command combat troops, as at the time the US Coast Guard was under the Department of Transportation.
And today is NATIONAL PERIODIC TABLE DAY, commemorating this day in 1865 when John Newland published his paper, Law of Octaves, in England’s Chemical News, an early riff on what we now call the Periodic Table. Now you know when it started.
This fills in a lot of blanks concerning what I (don't) know about Asia between the two wars.