On 18 September 1931, a small number of Japanese and Chinese soldiers clashed outside of Fengtien (Mukden) in southern Manchuria – an event which soon developed into what was to be a long, drawn-out, intermittent war between China and Japan. Over ten years later, on 7 December 1941, Japanese air, naval, and land forces attacked American, British, and Dutch possessions throughout Asia and the Pacific. It marked the beginning of Japan’s war against the combined forces of China, America, Britain, the Netherlands and, ultimately, France and the Soviet Union.
How did a war between two Asian countries develop into one in which a single nation was pitted against a multinational coalition? Clearly, from Japan’s perspective the development signalled a failure to prevent the formation of such a coalition; on the other hand, for China it was a culmination of its efforts to create an international force to isolate and punish Japan. Why did the Western powers, which stood by while Japanese forces overran Manchuria in 1931, end up by coming to China’s assistance ten years later even at the risk of war with Japan?
These are among the central questions as one considers the origins of the Second World War in the Asian-Pacific region. The Second World War actually consisted of two wars, one in Europe and the Atlantic, and the other in Asia and the Pacific. The two theatres were, for the most part, distinct; battles fought and bombings carried out in one were little linked to those in the other. However, while it is quite possible to discuss the origins of the European war without paying much attention to Asian factors, the obverse is not the case. European powers were deeply involved in the Asian-Pacific region and played an important role in transforming the Chinese–Japanese conflict into a multinational one. Moreover, the United States, which too was of little relevance to the immediate causes of the European war, steadily developed into a major Asian-Pacific power so that its position would have a direct bearing on the course of the Chinese–Japanese War. The Asian-Pacific region, then, was an arena of more extensive global rivalry than Europe, and this fact should always be kept in mind as one discusses the origins of the Pacific war. Still, in 1931 it might have seemed that the region was isolated from the rest of the world, and that Japan could engage in its acts of aggression without fearing a collective reprisal. Why it was able to do so at the beginning of the decade, whereas ten years later it would be confronted by a multinational coalition, provides the framework for this book.
JAPAN’S CHALLENGE TO THE WASHINGTON CONFERENCE SYSTEM
Japan had not always been an international loner. On the contrary, the country’s leadership and national opinion had emphasized the cardinal importance of establishing Japan as a respected member of the community of advanced powers. And in the 1920s it had enjoyed such a status. The treaties it signed during the Washington Conference (1921–22) symbolized it. In one – the naval disarmament treaty – Japan was recognized as one of the three foremost powers; together with the United States and Britain, the nation would seek to maintain an arms equilibrium in the world and contribute to stabilizing the Asian-Pacific region. Another treaty, signed by these three plus France, provided for a mechanism whereby they would consult with one another whenever the stability was threatened. Most important, the nine-power treaty (signed by Japan, the United States, Britain, France, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Portugal, and China) established the principle of international co-operation in China. Eight signatories were to cooperate with respect to the ninth, China, to uphold the latter’s independence and integrity, maintain the principle of equal opportunity, and to provide an environment for the development of a stable government. Japan was a full-fledged member of the new treaty regime, which historians have called the Washington Conference system.1 Since much of the story of the 1930s revolves around Japan’s challenge to these treaties, it is well at the outset to examine what was involved in the regime.
The term ‘the Washington Conference system’, or ‘the Washington system’ for short, was not in current use in the 1920s, nor was it subsequently recognized as a well-defined legal concept. None the less, immediately after the conference there was much talk of ‘the spirit of the Washington Conference’, and a country’s behaviour in Asia tended to be judged in terms of whether it furthered or undermined that spirit. As such it connoted more a state of mind than an explicit mechanism; it expressed the powers’ willingness to co-operate with one another in maintaining stability in the region and assisting China’s gradual transformation as a modern state. It was viewed as an alternative to their unilateral policies or exclusive alliances and ententes aimed at particularistic objectives. Instead, the Washington system indicated a concept of multinational consultation and co-operation in the interest of regional stability. By the same token, this spirit was essentially gradualist and reformist, not radical or revolutionary. It was opposed to a rapid and wholesale transformation of Asian international relations, such as was being advocated by the Communist International and by an increasing number of Chinese nationalists. Rather, the Washington powers would stress an evolutionary process of change so as to ensure peace, order, and stability.
In that sense, there was a system of international affairs defined by the Washington treaties, for a system implies some status quo, a mechanism for maintaining stability against radical change. The status quo was envisaged by the Washington powers not as a freeze but as a regime of co-operation among them in the interest of gradualism. As such, it was part of the postwar framework of international affairs that had been formulated in the Covenant of the League of Nations and reaffirmed through such other arrangements as the Locarno treaty of 1925 and the pact of Paris of 1928. The former stabilized relations among Britain, France, and Germany, while the latter, signed by most countries, enunciated the principle that they should not resort to force for settling international disputes. The Washington treaties were thus part of an evolving structure that embraced the entire world.
Moreover, there was an economic system that underlay the structure. All the Washington signatories were linked to one another through their acceptance of the gold standard. More precisely called ‘the gold exchange standard’, the mechanism called upon nations to accept gold as the medium of international economic transactions, to link their currencies to gold, and to maintain the principle of currency convertibility. Through such devices, it was believed that commercial activities across national boundaries would be carried out smoothly for the benefit of all. The gold-currency nations accounted for the bulk of the world’s trade and investment, so that the Washington system was synonymous with and sustained by the gold regime. Since the majority of these countries were advanced capitalist economies, it is possible to characterize the Washington Conference system as capitalist internationalism, or even as a new form of imperialism.
Certainly, the Washington Conference did not eliminate empires. Most of the treaty signatories continued to maintain colonies, and some of them had even added new ones after the First World War. At the same time, however, they pledged themselves not to undertake further expansion at the expense of China. Instead, they would co-operate to restore to it a measure of independence so that in time it would emerge as a stabilizing factor in its own right. For this reason, China was a key to the successful functioning of the new system. Unlike the old imperialism, it would call upon the advanced colonial powers to work together to encourage an evolutionary transformation of that country. At the same time, China must also co-operate in the task so that it would become a full-fledged member of the community of Washington powers.
Till the late 1920s, the system worked by and large to bring order and stability to the Asian-Pacific region. There were few overtly unilateral acts by a Washington signatory, and the powers continued their mutual consultation as they sought to revise the old treaties with China. The latter, on its part, had come steadily to seek to realize its aspirations in co-operation with, rather than defiance of, the Washington powers. To be sure, Chinese Nationalists were initially adamantly opposed to the Washington Conference treaties, viewing them as a device for perpetuating foreign control. However, with their military and political successes, they emerged as the new leaders of the country, and with them there came a willingness to modify some of the radical rhetoric. After 1928, when they established a central government in Nanking under Chiang Kai-shek, they had to concentrate on domestic unification and economic development, tasks which necessitated foreign capital and technology, as well as a respite in international crises that would drain resources away from much-needed projects at home. Between 1928 and 1931, they achieved some significant gains. Nanking’s political control was more extended than at any time since the end of the Manchu dynasty in 1912. The country’s infrastructure – roads, bridges, telephone and telegraph networks – was being constructed through imported capital, mostly American. A modern system of education was producing the next generation’s élites. The volume of China’s foreign trade increased steadily, as did customs receipts. Reforms of internal tax and currency systems, again with the aid of foreign experts, were gradually putting an end to the fiscal chaos that had plagued the country for decades.2
The Chinese leadership at this time was thus not seeking to do away with the existing international order, but to integrate their country into it as a full-fledged member. China would persist in its efforts to regain its sovereign rights and to develop itself as a modern state, but these objectives were not incompatible with the co-operative framework of the Washington treaties. In fact, it could be argued that the Washington system was serving as an effective instrument for obtaining foreign support for Chinese development. The United States, Britain, Japan and others one by one recognized the Nanking regime, signed new treaties for tariff revision, and began negotiations for an ultimate abrogation of extra-territoriality, the traditional symbol of China’s second-class status. Although these negotiations dragged on, by 1931 differences between China and the powers had narrowed considerably, so that a full restoration of jurisdictional authority to Chinese courts seemed to be a matter of time. It was at that juncture that the Japanese army struck, not only to oppose further concessions to Chinese nationalism, but ultimately to redefine the international system itself.
The revolt against the Washington Conference system may, paradoxically, be viewed as evidence that the system had steadily become strengthened; those opposed to it would have to resort to drastic measures to undermine it. Within the framework of the Washington treaties, the powers had by and large succeeded in stabilizing their mutual relations, putting a premium on economic rather than military issues as they dealt with one another, and co-opting Chinese nationalism by integrating the country step by step into a global economic order. This very success drove some forces in Japan – army and navy officers, right-wing organizations, nativist intellectuals – to desperation. They saw nothing but disaster in an international system that was steadily making concessions to China and in a global economic order that linked the nation’s well-being so intimately to fluctuations in trade balances and rates of exchange. They accused the Japanese leadership of having created a situation where the nation’s destiny appeared to depend more and more on the goodwill of the powers and of China. Unless something were done, Japan would soon be completely at the mercy of these outside forces. Japan’s anti-internationalists saw only one solution: to reverse the trend in national policy by forcefully removing the country’s leadership committed to internationalism, and to act in China in defiance of the Washington treaties. They judged that the early 1930s was the time to carry out such tasks, perhaps the last possible chance to do so.
The precise timing for action was a matter of some deliberation. But in many ways the year 1931 appeared the right moment.3 For one thing, the government’s commitment to the existing international order had begun to encounter widespread domestic opposition. In 1930 Japan under the cabinet of Hamaguchi Osachi had signed a new naval disarmament treaty in London. The treaty covered ‘auxiliary craft’ such as light cruisers and submarines which had been excluded from the provisions of the Washington naval treaty, and limited the total sizes of these ships that Japan, Britain, and the United States were allowed to possess. The new treaty established the allowable tonnages in the ratio of 6.975 for Japan and 10 for the other two. This was a higher ratio for Japan than the 6 to 10 formula for capital ships adopted by the Washington treaty, but it split the Japanese navy. Those who supported the government’s acceptance of the new ratio (the ‘treaty faction’) confronted the adamant opposition of the ‘fleet faction’, determined to wage a public campaign against the treaty. The latter made it a constitutional issue, accusing the civilian government of having violated the emperor’s ‘right of supreme command’, according to which the military presumably had direct access to the emperor as his advisers on command problems. Although no such case had been made after the Washington Conference, now the naval activists believed the public would be more receptive to this type of argument.
They judged the public mood and political climate of the country quite accurately. In 1925 Japan had instituted a universal manhood suffrage, and the political parties had become sensitive to changing moods and diverse interests of the population. Although the bulk of the newly enfranchised public may have understood or cared little for international affairs, it appears that it paid attention to and was fascinated by the kind of argument put forth by the navy’s antigovernment minority and its sympathizers. This receptivity reflected the economic situation, for the coming of the age of mass politics coincided with the world economic crisis that began with the Wall Street crash of October 1929.4 Although its effects in Japan were not as severe as those in the United States or Germany, in 1930 Japanese unemployment reached 1 million, while farm prices (particularly rice and silks) fell to the lowest point in years. Tenant farmers, unable to make their rent payments, sold their daughters into prostitution, and their sons were encouraged to move to Korea or Manchuria. Particularly hard-hit was Japan’s export trade, of which more than 30 per cent consisted of silks. The worldwide recession drastically reduced silk exports and created huge balance of trade deficits.
Like most other countries at this time, the Japanese government sought to cope with the situation through monetary measures. In those pre-Keynesian days, monetarism provided orthodoxy. What determined prices, it was argued, was the amount of liquidity, which in turn depended on the gold reserve in a country’s possession. As trade declined and exports fell, the gold reserve would dwindle, necessitating a tight money policy, presumably because such a policy would serve to reduce demand and ultimately balance trade. But it inevitably involved declining purchasing power and consequent unemployment. Whereas the monetarists believed these were temporary phenomena, those who suffered from the economic crisis thought otherwise, and demanded that something be done by their leaders to alleviate the situation. It is most likely that the Japanese public, even without understanding the niceties of economic theory, was now more receptive to anti-governmental propaganda and agitation because of the crisis. When the Hamaguchi cabinet decided, at the late hour of November 1929, to go back on the gold standard at an artificially high rate of exchange, it immediately condemned itself as a government of élites insensitive to popular suffering.
Japanese politics was thus at a point where anti-governmental agitation could go a long way, threatening the existing domestic order and the foreign policy built on it. A clear indication of this was the assassination of Prime Minister Hamaguchi by a right-wing terrorist in November 1930, barely a month after the ratification of the London disarmament treaty. The assassin was given sympathetic treatment in the press and in supportive mass rallies as a true patriot, selflessly trying to purge the country of a politician committed to unworkable solutions. The incident encouraged similar acts, so that between 1930 and 1936 several other leaders, those identified with the internationalism of the 1920s, would be murdered. Even more serious, the passivity of the political and business élites in the face of such terrorism abetted the movement of military officers and right-wing intellectuals to ‘restructure the nation’. The movement became more than a matter of ideology when a group of army officers organized a secret society (the Cherry Blossom Society) in 1930, dedicated to ‘the restructuring of the nation even through the use of force’. The conspiracy was aimed at reorienting the country away from its infatuation with Western liberalism and capitalism, towards an embracement of the unique qualities of the country. In particular, the conspirators were determined to put an end to the élite’s internationalist diplomacy which they believed had subordinated the country to the dictates of capitalist powers. What they visualized was a break with this pro-Western phase of the nation’s history and the establishment of a military dictatorship more attuned to its traditional spirit.5
The Cherry Blossom Society planned to stage a coup d’état in March 1931, but the plot was nipped in the bud as some army leaders refused to go along at this time. Nevertheless, the incident indicated how far some radicals were willing to go to put an end to the existing world, both domestic and external.
Such background explains the timing of 1931, why that year must have seemed particularly auspicious for those who had chafed under what they considered undue constraints of foreign policy and domestic politics over a legitimate assertion of national rights. A group of Kwantung Army officers, led by Ishiwara Kanji and Itagaki Seishirō, judged that the moment was ripe for bold action. Unless it were taken, they feared that the powers would continue to give in to China’s demands, and Japan’s position become more and more untenable. The thing to do, they reasoned, was not to seek to preserve Japanese interests within the existing system of co-operation with the Western powers, but to act unilaterally and entrench Japanese power once and for all in Manchuria. Since such action would be opposed by Tokyo’s civilian regime, the latter too would have to be eliminated if necessary. Actually, the conspirators may have felt they could count on enough support at home, for throughout 1931 public opinion and party politics were turning against the cabinet of Wakatsuki Reijirō–who had succeeded Hamaguchi after the latter’s assassination–for its reliance on international co-operation to limit the demands of Chinese nationalism. The Seiyūkai, the major opposition party, intensified its attacks on the Minseitō cabinet, denouncing the latter’s ‘weak-kneed’ diplomacy and calling for a fundamental solution of the ‘Manchurian–Mongolian problem’, a euphemism for use of force. To add fuel to the agitation, representatives of the Manchurian Youth League returned to Japan and held a series of public meetings to call for a determined effort to cope with the Chinese assault on Japanese rights.6
Judging that they would succeed if they acted boldly, the conspirators carried out their plan in September. It involved an attack on South Manchuria Railway tracks some 5 miles north of Mukden. It took place on the night of 18 September. The perpetrators of the attack were officers and troops of the Kwantung Army, acting under orders from Ishiwara and Itagaki. As they used explosives to destroy 2 to 3 feet of rail, the action ignited a much larger-scale assault on Chinese forces, also stationed in Mukden. Under the pretext that Chinese had attacked the South Manchuria Railway, a company of Japanese troops marched in and opened fire at Chinese forces. War was on. It was only after these initial moves that the commander-in-chief of the Kwantung Army, Honjō Shigeru, was notified of what was happening. General Honjō, on his own, approved the conspirators’ moves and ordered military action against Chinese troops and garrisons, not just in Mukden but elsewhere in Manchuria. As he telegraphed the supreme command in Tokyo, the time was ripe for the Kwantung Army ‘to act boldly and assume responsibility for law and order throughout Manchuria’.7 Within a day, both Mukden and Changchun (the northern terminus of the South Manchuria Railway) had been seized by Japanese troops.
In retrospect, it is entirely clear that the Mukden incident was the first serious challenge to the postwar international system in the Asian-Pacific region as exemplified by the Washington Conference treaties. An act of defiance on the part of a determined minority challenged that system and the domestic leadership that sustained it, and ultimately brought about the demise of both. In 1931 few understood the issues clearly, but there was general recognition that the future stability of the region depended on the degree to which the Washington system survived the challenge. If Japanese and Chinese forces could restore the status quo of 18 September, or if the two governments as well as others could somehow accommodate the new developments into the existing treaty framework, then the challenge might possibly be contained. If not, the conspirators’ determination to establish an alternative regime of international affairs might succeed.
Cabinet meetings in Tokyo immediately following the crisis revealed that the restoration of the status quo was unobtainable. Although, at a meeting held on 19 September, the principle of ‘non-extension’ of hostilities was agreed to, this was a vague formula, and the army virtually ignored it. High officials of the General Staff, some of whom had been privy to the conspiracy, were determined to seize the opportunity for ‘the achievement of our ultimate purpose’. The ‘ultimate purpose’ here may not have meant control over the whole of Manchuria, but it certainly implied the assertion of Japanese rights in the area. From the military’s point of view, it would be out of the question to go back to the status quo before 18 September. If the cabinet should insist on such a policy, army leaders agreed, then they would withdraw their support from it and ‘would be totally unconcerned even if the government should be overthrown as a result’.8
How could civilian supremacy still have been preserved? It would have taken determined efforts by individuals and groups committed to the existing framework of domestic politics and foreign policy. Unfortunately, there were not enough of them. One could cite several obvious examples: the emperor and court circles, civilian diplomats and bureaucrats, some party leaders, business executives, and intellectuals. They were not, however, unified in opposition to the military, and only a few of them were convinced of the need to preserve the status quo at home and abroad.
The emperor apparently conveyed his preference for a non-extension of hostilities to Prime Minister Wakatsuki on 23 September, but by that time the cabinet had already given ex post facto approval to the crossing of the Yalu by a detachment of Japanese forces in Korea to reinforce the Kwantung Army. Japanese diplomats in China were extremely annoyed at such a course of events, and they appealed to their chief, Foreign Minister Shidehara Kijūrō, to put an end to military unilateralism. Shidehara, unfortunately, found himself more and more isolated. Few of his civilian colleagues in the cabinet would come to his rescue as he fought a losing battle for putting an end to the crisis. This was both because the bureaucrats had been trained not to meddle in strategic decisions, and also because not a few of them welcomed the military’s bold strike to cut the Gordian knot in Manchuria. Undoubtedly they were affected by the prevailing climate of Japanese politics in which foreign policy had become a partisan issue. The opposition party, Seiyūkai, early declared its support for the Kwantung Army and was calling on the government to back up the latter’s attempt to deal sternly with Chinese infringements on the nation’s rights.
The situation was abetted by mass journalism. Newspapers and radio stations immediately grasped the potential of the Manchurian incident for reaching out to the mass public and expanding their readership/audience. From the very beginning, special bulletins were printed and broadcast, describing in colourful fashion how brave Japanese soldiers had meted out justice to Chinese ‘aggressors’. (The Kwantung Army conspiracy was known only to a handful, and all official announcements accused the Chinese of having blown up the railway.) Newsreels were coming into existence, and already on 21 September the Asahi news showed a film about the occupation of the city of Mukden by Japanese soldiers. Sensationalist headlines inflamed public opinion.9 Reading such accounts, and seeing propaganda films, the Japanese would certainly have formed an extremely simplistic idea of what was happening, a fact that the government could not ignore. But the sensationalist nature of the press coverage also indicates the readiness on the part of Japanese journalists to take official propaganda at its face value and willingly endorse a unilateral use of force. This in turn may be linked to the intellectual climate of the time. Some of the country’s leading intellectuals had sensed a crisis of Japanese politics even before 1931. They believed that neither Western-style parliamentary democracy nor capitalist internationalism had helped create a stable, prosperous nation. The masses, they argued, were as impoverished and alienated as ever, and there was a prevailing atmosphere of malaise. Several leading intellectuals responded to this perceived crisis by turning to communism, socialism, or to fascism and right-wing dictatorship.10 Although as yet a minority view, such thinking undoubtedly contributed to a favourable reception for bold military action like the Mukden takeover.
Even the most enthusiastic supporters of the Kwantung Army, however, were not necessarily advocating a revolutionary diplomacy, aimed at completely uprooting the existing framework of international affairs. Although this was what worried Foreign Minister Shidehara and his colleagues, at first only a few called for such action. In fact, the press, politicians, and intellectuals justified military action in Manchuria as a ‘punishment’ of Chinese intransigence, implying that they did not view the incident as undermining the Washington system; on the contrary, they argued that Japan was contributing to its strengthening by dealing decisively with Chinese lawlessness and irresponsible attacks on treaty rights. The civilian government, too, chose to present the Manchurian affair in such a framework, assuring the powers that what was involved was essentially police action in support, rather than violation, of the nine-power treaty and other provisions.11
Such a stance was extremely difficult to maintain in view of the widening of Japanese military operations; and it did not take long before Japan would be accused of having violated the nine-power treaty. Moreover, Japanese diplomacy at the outset was ineffectual; if its aim were to convince the powers that the nation was acting on behalf of the Washington system, Japan should have taken the initiative to communicate with the treaty signatories to appeal for their support and understanding. Instead, Tokyo at first decided to insist on a bilateral settlement of the dispute with China. The cabinet early instructed the Foreign Ministry to commence talks with the Chinese government with a view to terminating the hostilities. From Japan’s standpoint, of course, no settlement would be acceptable that did not guarantee the rights of Japanese residents in Manchuria to engage in business. It was assumed that the Kwantung Army would continue to occupy cities to ensure this end. Somehow it was believed that the Chinese would accept these terms and that a quick settlement between the two countries along these lines would prevent the incident from developing into an international crisis. The powers, in the meantime, would endorse such a settlement as being for the benefit of all foreigners in Manchuria.12
Here was the first of a series of miscalculations by Japan that were to bring about its steady isolation in world affairs. By choosing to deal directly with China instead of putting the affair in the framework of multinational co-operation, Japan was belying its own professions of internationalism. China, on the other hand, seized the opportunity to present itself as a responsible member of the international community that had been wronged. From the very beginning, China’s leaders presented the Mukden incident as Japan’s assault on peace, civilization, and international morality. As Chiang Kai-shek noted in a speech to Kuomintang officials on 22 September, Japan had violated ‘international morality, the League Covenant, and the [1928] treaty outlawing war’. General Jung Ch’in, chief of the General Staff, insisted in his report on the Manchurian collision that China was defending international order against Japan’s lawless act; it was against international law to seize another country’s territory just because a nation lacked natural resources, or to call a neighbouring land a ‘line of national defence’, as the Japanese were terming Manchuria. Such being the case, the Chinese were confident that ‘world public opinion’ would condemn Japan’s barbarism and censure its violation of ‘international public justice’.13 They would never consent to dealing bilaterally with Japan, for that would play into the latter’s hands and be tantamount to accepting the Japanese contention that the incident was a minor affair involving their treaty rights.
Thus from the very beginning China identified itself with international law and order and sought its salvation through the support of other nations and of world public opinion. A country which, throughout most of the 1920s, had been divided, unstable, and revolutionary, challenging the existing order of international affairs, was almost overnight transforming itself into a champion of peace and order, pitting itself against another which hitherto had been solidly incorporated into the established system but which could now be accused of having defied it. This way of presenting the crisis was not only brilliant propaganda; it also reflected the Kuomintang leadership’s conscious decision to work with and through other powers to compel Japan to give up its aggression. Although Chiang Kai-shek recognized that ultimately – perhaps in ten years’ time – the Chinese might have to fight, for the time being it was best to trust in world pressures, especially the League of Nations, to restrain Japan. China was far from being unified; in fact, the Nationalists were in the middle of a campaign against Communists, and, moreover, there had been devastating floods in the northern provinces, resulting in acute food shortages. Under the circumstances, Chiang declared in October, the best way to save the nation was through ‘peaceful unification’ of the country. The Chinese should first concentrate on political unity and economic development, and then take on Japan, relying in the meantime on the world at large to punish Japan.14 Specifically, Chinese diplomats abroad were instructed to apprise their host governments of the Japanese aggression, and the League of Nations was asked to convene an emergency meeting of the Council. (China had just been elected to the Council as one of the non-permanent members; Japan was a permanent member.)
Unfortunately for China, the international system with which it so strongly identified and to which it turned for help, was itself going through a major crisis of another sort: the beginning of the world depression. Those powers that had constructed and preserved the international system – advanced industrial economies – were in the midst of a severe crisis. Between 1929 and 1931 industrial production, employment, commodity prices, purchasing power – all such indices of economic health, had plummeted, with national incomes cut to nearly one-half in the United States, Germany, and elsewhere. The situation severely affected their economic interactions, and thus the world economy as a whole. Domestic crises led these countries to institute protectionist measures to reduce imports, restrict shipments of gold, and control foreign exchange transactions, all such measures tending to undermine the gold standard and the principle of convertibility on which world trade and investment activities had been based. By the autumn of 1931, only France and the United States, among the major powers, still maintained the gold standard, but they were practising trade protectionism and were unwilling to help more severely affected countries. At such a time, only a concerted effort by capitalist countries would have brought about the restoration of confidence and led to restabilization, but international co-operation was extremely hard to achieve when it was seen by domestic constituents – labourers, farmers, the unemployed – as detrimental to their own interests. Governments would have to cater to their demands before undertaking serious negotiation for restoration of a world economic framework.
International co-operation, in other words, had already begun to break down when the Manchurian incident broke out. In retrospect, it is clear that the latter did in the political arena what the Depression accomplished in the economic, namely, to discredit internationalism – particularly of the kind that had prevailed during the 1920s. Nations that assembled at Geneva to consider the Chinese protests were participants in this drama. It was ironic that just at the time when China became a more self-conscious participant in the world order, the whole framework was collapsing.
It was collapsing, but was not yet dead. In fact, the Manchurian crisis and China’s urgent appeals to world public opinion catapulted the powers to serious action, to see if they could somehow preserve the system. If they could help restore the peace in Manchuria, they would not only succeed in reconciling two Asian nations but would contribute to strengthening the peace mechanism. Confidence in internationalism would be renewed, and China would emerge as a conservative force in Asian affairs, while Japan would remain in the community of nations. Thus the stakes were extremely high.
Both the United States and Britain showed a strong interest in exploring such a possibility. Although the former was not a member of the League of Nations, it kept in close touch with the nations represented at the Council, which held several meetings following the Mukden incident in response to China’s request. To the latter’s disappointment, however, the Council at first failed to adopt any drastic measures to sanction Japan, instead adjourning on 30 September after exhorting the two countries not to worsen the situation in Manchuria. The lack of strong action in support of China reflected the views of officials in Washington and London that it would be best to let the Japanese settle the incident with a minimum of outside interference, to see if this really was a case involving a minor dispute over treaty rights. In other words, Tokyo’s civilian government, which was insisting on such a construction, should be given a chance to act on that basis. For this reason, neither Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson nor Foreign Secretary John Simon was willing at that time to condemn Japan’s military action as a violation of the pact of Paris. To do so would be to accept China’s contentions and to take the latter’s side. Before October, the United States and Britain were reluctant to take that step, but hoped that the civilian leaders in Tokyo would adopt measures to restore the status quo so as to confirm Japan’s commitment to the existing system of international affairs.15
Initially, the Soviet Union may have been the only outside power seriously concerned with the implications of the Manchurian incident for Asian international order. To be sure, it had never been party to the Washington system, and had in fact sought to undermine it by encouraging China’s radical nationalism. By the early 1930s, however, Soviet foreign policy had become more open to participation in international affairs as carried on by capitalist countries. In 1928 Moscow had signed the pact outlawing war, and with the first five-year plan under way, Joseph Stalin and his advisers had begun stressing the need for global stability. Their view of the League of Nations, which they had denounced as a tool of bourgeois imperialism, was changing, and they were particularly interested in improving relations with the United States. In the meantime, relations with China had deteriorated after 1929, when the Chinese had sought to take over the Soviet-operated Chinese Eastern Railway. Diplomatic ties between the two countries had been severed. Under the circumstances, Soviet policy needed to be reoriented, away from an identification with revolutionary forces in Asia to an emphasis on safeguarding the country’s security and position in the region. How this was to be done was not yet clear, but from the very beginning Soviet officials expressed concern over the possible spread of Japanese military operations to northern Manchuria, affecting the safety of the railway and Soviet nationals. During the first few weeks, however, the Soviet government was satisfied with Tokyo’s assurances that no extension of hostilities was being contemplated.16
At that time, therefore, there was a chance that the Manchurian incident could be limited to small-scale fighting between Japanese and Chinese forces, without the involvement of outside powers. To that extent, Japan’s military conspirators had chosen the correct timing; both the civilian officials and outside governments were willing to view the event as manageable within the existing treaty framework. They would condone military action as an unfortunate but understandable aberration, which might even lead to the strengthening of the Washington system by clarifying the nature of Japanese rights and Chinese obligations in Manchuria.
Developments in October, however, soon belied such expectations. The Kwantung Army had been encouraged by the failure of the League and the Western powers to respond more positively to China’s pleas for support, and judged the opportunity was ripe for acting further to separate Manchuria from the rest of China. Not being satisfied with merely protecting Japan’s treaty rights, the military decided to enlarge spheres of action, to turn the whole of Manchuria and even Inner Mongolia into a war zone so as to establish their control and expel Chinese forces. As a step in that direction, several airplanes took off from Mukden on 8 October to bomb the city of Chinchow, at the south-western corner of Manchuria bordering on China proper. From then on, there was no containing the war; the Chinchow bombing was followed by other operations throughout Manchuria, clearly aimed at detaching the ‘north-eastern provinces’ from China.
It was then that the League and the powers finally invoked the 1928 pact to denounce Japan’s violation of its spirit. When the League Council resumed its meeting on 14 October, the atmosphere had changed drastically. China was now clearly a victim of lawlessness, and by the same token a champion of international law and order, whereas Japan was put in the position of having to defend aggressive military action. For the first time, the United States became actively involved by sending Consul-General Prentis Gilbert to attend the Council meetings. It was symbolic that America was thus identifying itself with the League and what it stood for, thus explicitly joining China’s new cause. The result was a Council resolution, with Japan alone opposing, to call on the Japanese army to return to the position it had held prior to 18 September. This resolution, voted on in late October, marked a clear beginning of Japan’s ostracization in the world community. It is surprising how fast Japan’s international position was collapsing. Already in early November, high officials in Washington were considering sanctions. Although nothing came of this, the willingness of President Herbert Hoover, Secretary of State Stimson, Secretary of War Patrick J. Hurley, and others even to contemplate sanctions against Japan indicates that in their view the latter was clearly undermining the postwar framework of international affairs. As Stimson told the Japanese ambassador in Washington, Japan was in violation of both the nine-power treaty and the pact of Paris, a position that would be maintained by the United States throughout the decade.17 Since these two treaties had symbolized the regime of international co-operation in the 1920s, to consider Japan as defecting from it was a serious matter.
Stimson was still hopeful that Tokyo’s civilian leaders would recognize the gravity of the situation and finally succeed in reining in the military. International pressure on Japan, he felt, should prevent it from further wrecking the system. He was encouraged, therefore, when the Japanese government proposed the establishment of a League commission of inquiry to be dispatched to Manchuria. Such a proposal seemed to indicate Japanese sensitivity about world opinion and interest in staying in the League framework.18 The United States encouraged China to agree to such a scheme, and thus, in early December, the League Council resolved to send a commission of inquiry to investigate the causes of the war and to recommend a settlement. Japan and China both supported this solution, thus enabling the Council to achieve unanimity for the first time since September. The commission of inquiry was to be headed by Lord Lytton of Britain, and to consist of representatives from four other countries (the United States, France, Germany, and Italy). A show of support for the League, the agreement was the last occasion for such unanimity. The Japanese expected the commission to look into Chinese attacks on the treaty rights, whereas the Chinese hoped it would condemn Japanese acts. In either case, there was some hope that it would provide just the sort of compromise that all powers desperately wanted in order to preserve international order.
But that was not to be. Within days of the establishment of the commission of inquiry, the Wakatsuki cabinet fell, and Inukai Tsuyoshi became prime minister. Shidehara left his post as foreign minister, never to return to public life until after the Second World War. It is interesting to note that towards the end of his tenure in office, Shidehara had begun to realize that a return to the status quo in Manchuria was untenable. Domestic forces were applauding Kwantung Army action, and to punish the latter would merely fuel the former and create a grave crisis. As he told Japanese emissaries overseas in November, ‘to suppress unnecessarily radical national opinion could play into the hands of the extremists, and bring about an explosion of anti-Chinese sentiment at home, inviting a dangerous situation’.19 Realizing this, Shidehara sought to save domestic stability by prevailing upon the powers to agree at least to some faits accomplis in Manchuria. Even such an effort, however, was doomed to failure, since the establishment of an independent Manchuria, on which the army was working, went far beyond acceptable bounds.
The separation of China’s north-eastern provinces as an independent entity under Japanese control was a goal that Kwantung Army activists, Japanese nationalistic groups in Manchuria, and their supporters at home had long advocated. The movement had been contained successfully before 1931, but once the Kwantung Army resorted to military action with impunity, it was a foregone conclusion that the next goal would be to establish a pro-Japanese regime in the region. As the conspirators, in particular Ishiwara, envisaged it, Manchuria would be a self-sufficient haven of stability and prosperity, free from national egoisms and from radicalism. For some it would even be a region where all people – at least all those who inhabited it – could work together in peace. The implication here was that Japan would undertake an act of self-aggrandizement for a new definition of stability.
That definition, of course, was quite destabilizing in the context of post-1919 internationalism. The goal of self-sufficiency would imply an interest in creating an autarkic empire in the area, less linked to the rest of the world than earlier. In the long run, the search for self-sufficiency was as great a challenge to the international system as the use of force in Manchuria, but in that regard Japanese action was not unique. Other countries, too, were undermining the regime of economic internationalism through unilateral measures to protect domestic markets and enhance competitive advantages. Economic autonomy was also being practised; Germany and Austria, for instance, were just then seeking to establish a customs league, while Britain was going ahead with a scheme for imperial preferences in tariff matters. What was unique about Japanese behaviour at this time was that it coupled its military unilateralism with aspirations for economic regionalism so that East Asia would be effectively separated from the rest of the world.
Even so, it is interesting to note that the Japanese government steadfastly refused to denounce the Washington Conference system explicitly. Despite all the obvious acts of aggression in Manchuria and infringement on Chinese sovereignty, Tokyo chose to profess its adherence to the nine-power treaty. This became clear when Secretary of State Stimson issued a statement in January 1932 that the United States government ‘did not intend to recognize’ any treaty or agreement that Japan might impose on China which ‘may be brought about by means contrary to the covenants and obligations of the Pact of Paris’ and which affected Chinese sovereignty or the principle of the Open Door. The statement was sent to all co-signatories of the nine-power treaty, indicating an interest on America’s part to do its share in upholding the Washington system by branding Japan a violator. The Japanese government, however, responded by denying that any violation of the treaties had occurred. The nation still adhered to the Open Door and other principles of the Washington agreements. However, it insisted, China was now even more divided and unstable than it had been in 1921–22, so that in implementing the treaty provisions, Japan would have to take these changed circumstances into consideration. In other words, the military action in Manchuria did not affect the country’s adherence to the existing framework of international affairs.20
China, of course, denounced such an assertion, its Foreign Office spokesman sarcastically pointing out that it was Japan that was divided and unstable; its government had utterly failed to control the military.21 Still, initially the other signatories of the nine-power treaty were reluctant to go as far as the United States in condemning Japan. Britain merely expressed its satisfaction at Japanese professions of treaty observation, as did other countries such as France, Italy, and Belgium. They were not ready to confront Japan as a group. Their governments were preoccupied by more urgent issues closer to home and chose to accept the Japanese contention that the basic structure of Asian international affairs remained intact.
The situation became much more alarming from the powers’ point of view when Japanese and Chinese forces fought skirmishes in Shanghai in late January and early February 1932. The so-called Shanghai incident was an extension of the Manchurian crisis in that it pitted Japanese residents and military in coastal China, eager for more action to follow up the successes in Manchuria, against Chinese politicians, students, and radicals who were engaged in an organized movement to protest against Japanese aggression. Here, however, Japan was much more sensitive to international opinion and took care to consult with the powers, in particular the United States, Britain, and France, to ensure the protection of their nationals in Shanghai. The powers, on their part, were eager to keep in touch with one another so as to bring the incident to a speedy conclusion. China, as expected, appealed to the League of Nations. Satō Naotake, the chief Japanese delegate, argued that China was not ‘an organized state’ and therefore that Japan was trying to restore law and order there so that the powers could enjoy their rights. But the other nations’ representatives were not very sympathetic, and Satō sensed Japan’s ‘complete isolation in world public opinion’.22
This was a self-inflicted wound, which became even more damaging when, on 1 March, the new government of Manchukuo was established. A product of Kwantung Army initiatives, it was presented to the world as an expression of the local population’s right of self-determination. That way, even such an egregious violation of China’s territorial and administrative integrity could, Tokyo reasoned, be made compatible with the Washington treaties. But Japanese officials themselves betrayed the spirit of those treaties when they refused to refer the question of Manchukuo’s status to international arbitration or consultation, instead taking unilateral steps to recognize the new puppet regime, which came on 15 September. That fatal decision was made a week before the Lytton commission returned to Geneva and submitted its report to the League of Nations. The report condemned Japanese military action as unjustifiable but also called on China to respect Japanese and other foreign rights. The recommendations were approved by all members of the League Council except Japan.
By then, Japanese politics had entered a new phase. The assassination of Prime Minister Inukai on 15 May, 1932 by a group of terrorist officers, had brought down party government in Japan; it had been preceded by the murder of two financial leaders who had been closely identified with the economic internationalism of the 1920s. These terrorist acts were designed to establish a domestic order commensurate with a new foreign policy in which Japan’s control over Manchuria would occupy a central position. In such circumstances, it was not surprising that the Japanese government would become decidedly less interested in trying to retain the goodwill of the Western powers. Nevertheless, Tokyo did not choose to repudiate the existing treaties. It still continued to insist that the independence of Manchukuo and Japan’s recognition of it did not violate the nine-power treaty, since the nation had merely exercised the right of self-defence to protect its interests in a country which had no responsible government, and responded favourably to an expression of the indigenous population’s movement for self-determination. By using such an argument, Japan was hopeful of gaining the sympathy, if not the support, of the Washington powers.23
The unanimous vote at the League Council accepting the Lytton commission’s report belied such expectations. For by the autumn of 1932 the Western powers had stiffened their attitude, having been exasperated by Japan’s long series of unilateral acts. Not only the United States, which continued to reiterate the non-recognition doctrine, but Britain, France, and others were more critical of Japan and more willing to take the latter to task for its violation of the nine-power treaty. It was, therefore, a foregone conclusion that they would endorse the findings and recommendations of the Lytton commission, which in turn implied ostracization of Japan. As it became clear that its assurances that it had never violated the treaties would not be taken seriously, Japan chose to withdraw from the League of Nations. The fiction that despite the events in Manchuria and Shanghai Japan was still an upholder of the postwar framework of international affairs no longer worked, and the time had come to recognize frankly that no power accepted such an explanation. To remain in the League meant giving up an independent Manchuria, and the leaders in Tokyo judged that the latter objective was worth the price of forfeiting the former.
This did not mean, however, that there was an anti-Japanese coalition forming in the world that would support China’s struggle against Japan. This remained the goal of Chinese leaders. The Nationalist government, it is true, faced serious domestic opposition to its policy of turning to the League and world opinion for help. Nationalistic groups wanted more positive action and sought to mobilize the country for anti-Japanese boycotts and other movements. Under pressure from them, Chiang Kai-shek had to resign and leave the government temporarily, between December 1931 and January 1932. The Communists, on their part, endorsed radical nationalism, and from their stronghold in Juichin, Kiangsi Province, declared war on Japan in April. This was a challenge to Chiang’s restored leadership, and he mobilized 500,000 troops to try to encircle and crush the Communists. In the meantime, he was hopeful that the powers would stop Japan’s wanton assault on the Washington system. It is interesting to note that by 1932 ‘the spirit of the Washington Conference’ had become a Chinese way of reminding the powers of their obligation to punish Japan; as a Kuomintang declaration noted in March, China was fighting for the principle that treaties must be observed, for otherwise there would be no peace in the world. A meeting of concerned citizens issued a statement in April that the Washington Conference had established peace in the Asian-Pacific region which, however, was again being threatened, and there was a danger that the crisis could lead to a second world war. The most important thing now was to coalesce nations which ‘preserve justice and treat China equally’.24
Despite such hopes, the powers would not go beyond criticizing Japan and endorsing the recommendations of the Lytton commission. Both Washington and London were satisfied with these steps, somehow hoping that ultimately the Japanese would see the light and mend their ways. In the meantime, neither the United States nor Britain was prepared to employ anti-Japanese sanctions to help China. The year 1932 was one of transition in American politics, with public attention focused on the competition for votes between President Hoover and the Democratic Party’s candidate, Franklin D. Roosevelt. They did not disagree on policy towards Japan; actually, during the campaign they said little about the Asian crisis. Far more pressing, to them and to their supporters, were domestic recovery measures and, as far as foreign affairs were concerned, the questions of European debts and disarmament. For the European powers were just then holding a disarmament conference to see if they could preserve the Locarno framework of a stable relationship among Britain, France, and Germany. Much depended on the willingness of the United States to help uphold the status quo, which in turn would necessitate a satisfactory settlement of the debt and reparations question. With opposition parties and even the government in Germany calling for revision of the Versailles treaty that had stipulated the payment of reparations and restricted German armament, the future of the Locarno regime was increasingly uncertain. It had not yet broken down, nor was there a strong sentiment that the whole structure of the postwar peace settlement was in jeopardy. But there no longer was confidence that there would be sufficient co-operativeness among the Western powers to maintain the system. In such a situation, they could not bring themselves to agree on a collective approach to strengthen the League efforts to punish Japan.
Neither would the Soviet Union, which stood outside both the League and the Washington treaty structure, act alone to restrain Japan. Moscow did not discourage the Chinese Communists – or Japanese Communists for that matter – from launching a mass movement opposed to Japanese imperialism. The Comintern’s May 1932 thesis defined the Manchurian incident as Japan’s war of aggression against China which heightened contradictions among imperialists and increased chances of another world war.25 But the thesis stressed the importance of Japan’s internal transformation, to bring about a bourgeois revolution which would lead to a socialist revolution and eliminate the reactionary emperor system, rather than the formation of an international coalition against Japanese imperialism. Moscow’s leaders apparently judged that the West was unlikely to develop such a coalition, and probably feared that the latter might even acquiesce in the Japanese conquest of Manchuria as a desirable step towards weakening the Soviet Union. Deciding that their country was in no position to take on Japan single-handed, they chose to concentrate on avoiding trouble. Specifically, Soviet authorities allowed Japanese troops to use the Chinese Eastern Railway and intimated their willingness to sell the railway to Japan. The Soviet government even suggested the conclusion of a non-aggression treaty between the two countries. (At one point it indicated a readiness to conclude a similar agreement with the state of Manchukuo, which of course would have meant recognizing the puppet government.) Thus at a time when other countries, above all China, were eschewing the bilateral approach, the Soviet Union was willing to try it, if only as a temporary expedient, so as not to precipitate a crisis which might play into the hands of the imperialists.26
In some such fashion, Japan was getting away with its unilateral aggression without inviting a hostile coalition other than the League’s censure. As Chinese spokesmen lamented frequently, the Japanese had chosen the right moment when Western countries were in disarray because of the economic crisis, and when China itself suffered from internal rebellions and natural disasters. Nevertheless, Japan’s acts impressed the other governments as the first open defiance of the Washington system, and that reaction would define their responses to subsequent developments in the Asian-Pacific region. It was far from clear in 1932, however, how far the structure of international affairs established after the First World War had crumbled, or whether somehow the Manchurian incident could be accommodated into it as a minor but not a fatal infringement. Much would depend on the next set of decisions the Japanese would make, and on the powers’ interpretations of them. Most fundamental would be the question of the degree to which Japan and the powers, despite what had happened in China, would work together in the area. If they did so, that would befuddle the thinking of Chinese and Russians who confidently spoke of an eventual world war; if not, such an eventuality would come much closer.
A key question of Asian-Pacific affairs during the years following Japan’s withdrawal from the League of Nations, which became official in March 1933, was the extent to which the Japanese would still continue to act unilaterally or, on the contrary, show some willingness to return to a policy of co-operation with the Washington powers. This was a question as much of Japan’s external relations as of internal affairs, for party politics had succumbed to an increasing role of the military in decision-making, so that there was always the risk of ‘dual diplomacy’, civilian officials pursuing one set of policies and being contradicted by military actions.
For a while after 1933, however, both civilians and military were interested in consolidating the gains in Manchuria and avoiding further complications with other countries. The Japanese military had absorbed an enormous chunk of Chinese territory, and in the process forced a redefinition of domestic politics in Japan. These were enough victories for the time being, and they wanted to digest and enjoy what they had obtained. The first step in this direction was the Tangku truce of May 1933, signed between the Kwantung Army and Chinese Nationalist commanders. It provided for the two sides to cease the use of force and to honour the status quo, defined in terms of the existing lines of battle. The lines were drawn roughly along the Great Wall, separating Manchukuo from the rest of China. Moreover, south of the wall, there was to be created a demilitarized zone, an area of neutrality that would ensure that Chinese forces would not threaten Japan’s new position in Inner Mongolia and the three north-eastern provinces which comprised Manchukuo. Thus the truce was tantamount to a semi-permanent detachment of the area north of China proper, and to the Nationalists’ tacit recognition of Japanese presence in Manchuria.
The Nationalists chose to accept such humiliating terms rather than continue their resistance, reasoning that the Tangku truce was purely a military agreement, not a diplomatic document which recognized the puppet regime of Manchukuo. That was absolutely unacceptable, but given military inadequacies along the Great Wall, the need to forestall the establishment of Japanese-supported separatist regimes in north China, and the ongoing campaign against Communist forces, the Nationalist leaders reluctantly approved the truce. Moreover, as one of them, Huang Fu, told Chiang Kai-shek, it was all very well to talk of international support, but the powers were not helping China; ‘our national disaster is due to our mistaken faith in obtaining international assistance’. The Chinese were still counting on such support; as will be noted, a high official had been dispatched to Washington and London to seek financial aid. Nevertheless, unless Japanese forces overran the Peking–Tientsin region and assaulted foreign interests, which appeared unlikely, the powers could not be expected to intervene. Therefore, if the Japanese were willing to sign a cease-fire and withdraw their forces to areas north of the Great Wall, this would enable China to ‘stabilize north China, have some rest, and solidify the foundations of the nation and the party’, as General Ho Ying-ch’in stated.27
The cessation of military hostilities gave the civilian government in Tokyo an opportunity to take stock of what had happened since 1931 and redefine the country’s foreign policy. The task fell primarily to Hirota Kōki, the diplomat who had served as ambassador to the Soviet Union till he was named foreign minister in September 1933. He clearly recognized the need to put an end to the military’s unilateral initiatives, and to assure the powers that no further extension of the war was contemplated. Diplomacy, rather than military action, would henceforth take precedence. But that did not mean a return to the pre-1931 situation. Hirota and his cabinet colleagues accepted the faits accomplis, especially the independence of Manchukuo, and sought to stabilize Japan’s foreign affairs on that basis. This, they reasoned, could be done without rejecting the Washington treaties outright. In other words, they were interested in re-establishing the framework of international cooperation, outside the League to be sure, but through a modified Washington system.
A good idea of what the Japanese government envisaged can be seen in a series of statements issued by the Foreign Ministry in the spring of 1934. Amō Eijirō, its spokesman, first stated at a press conference in April that Japan expected the Western powers to accept the changed circumstances of Asian affairs, and that henceforth the nation would not look favourably upon Western political and economic activities in China. It was, Amō continued, Japan’s ‘mission’ to maintain the peace and order in East Asia. He was paraphrasing one of Foreign Minister Hirota’s instructions to the Japanese minister in Nanking, and Vice Foreign Minister Shigemitsu Mamoru had also expressed similar ideas.28 As the latter wrote, Japan could not tolerate China’s turning to Western countries for help against the new status quo; the nation would be prepared to reject such interference. The Amō statement, then, was inherently a serious challenge to the Washington system which had been built on the principle of multinational co-operation in China. For that reason it was dubbed an Asian Monroe Doctrine by its critics and supporters alike. At that time, however, neither the Foreign Ministry nor the Japanese military were willing to risk alienating the powers by acting in accordance with such a doctrine. Hirota’s idea was primarily that Japan should make China and the Western powers recognize the nation’s enhanced position in Asia without openly calling into question the validity of the existing treaties. Thus when the United States and Britain expressed misgivings about the gist of the Amō statement, Tokyo quickly assured them that it had no intention of infringing on the rights of Western nations in China. Still, Japanese officials were hopeful that they would consider Japan as the power with the primary responsibility for the protection of their rights in China.
Thus instead of the kind of international co-operation envisaged at the Washington Conference, the Japanese were asserting their position as the most influential in Chinese affairs and trying to have other countries accept that primacy. There would be ‘co-operation’ on that basis. But they would refuse to co-operate with other countries or with the League in helping China undertake economic recovery and fiscal reforms. As will be noted, several such schemes were being put forth, but Japan would not take part because that would imply its acceptance of the older idea of co-operation. For that very reason, the Chinese would be eager to involve as many countries as possible in their national affairs.
In the meantime, Japan tried to extend the new diplomacy to Pacific and naval affairs. In the belief that the United States might accept a new equilibrium in the Pacific reflective of Japan’s enhanced position in East Asia, Hirota proposed a two-power agreement to redefine the status quo in the ocean. The two nations, he declared, would never risk a violent clash so long as the boundaries of their respective spheres of influence were clearly drawn. Since Japan was preponderant in the western Pacific and America in the eastern, it made sense for them to recognize the fact and pledge not to infringe on each other’s area of predominance. Nothing came of the proposal as the United States was adamantly opposed to such a bilateral arrangement, viewing it as yet another assault on the Washington system. But the idea would not die; its echoes were to be heard throughout the 1930s, all the way up to the eve of the war. It indicated the growing popularity of the view in Japan that it should be possible to preserve the peace in the Pacific if only the United States recognized the new status quo in Asia. By the same token, the latter would refuse such a blatant departure from the multinational agreements that had defined the peace since the 1920s.
The same thinking was behind Japan’s insistence on ‘parity’ among the navies of Japan, the United States, and Britain. For Tokyo’s naval leaders who were adamant on this issue, parity was a symbol; they had welcomed the army’s victories in Manchuria and asserted that in order to protect the newly won position on the continent, it was essential for the country to have a navy that was at least equal to that of the United States. As the navy minister remarked in October 1933, in order to ‘reject resolutely’ American interference in East Asia, it would be necessary to build up naval strength beyond the limits imposed by the disarmament treaties.29 The Japanese cabinet, on the other hand, did not initially want an outright denunciation of the treaties. Prime Minister Okada Keisuke – appointed in July 1934 – was a retired admiral who had accepted the Washington system and had the support of most of his cabinet colleagues. They pinned their hopes on the preliminary naval talks that were carried on in London throughout 1934 for a new naval agreement. If a new treaty could be negotiated, the framework of co-operation among the powers could be preserved. But the navy was adamant on parity, and the United States was equally insistent on retention of the existing naval ratios. The result was Tokyo’s decision, in December 1934, to abrogate the Washington naval treaty. Nevertheless, at that time only a handful of officials in Tokyo were calling for an outright rejection of the whole Washington system and for a definition of an entirely new framework of national policy.
At least until 1936, no such departure seemed justified. That was in part because other countries, too, were on the whole reluctant to pursue a new approach to Asian-Pacific affairs to check Japan. The Chinese, for one thing, showed some readiness to stabilize the bilateral relationship with Japan on the basis of the Tangku truce. Not that there was no disagreement among Chinese leaders and public opinion; they were divided between those who were anxious to have a respite in the struggle against Japanese imperialism, and those who were determined to continue it. The Nanking regime under Chiang Kai-shek was built on a subtle balance between the two, the first group represented by Wang Ching-wei and the second by T. V. Soong. The latter, Chiang’s brother-in-law and finance minister, sought to bolster up China’s position vis-à-vis Japan’s by obtaining the support of the West and the League of Nations. He visited America and Europe in 1933 to seek loans, technical assistance, and, most important, an international corporation consisting of the major powers except Japan, to provide China with funds for economic development.30 He was only partially successful, however, as the powers were unwilling to punish Japan further by aligning themselves so explicitly with China. Soong’s loss of influence was revealed when he was dismissed as finance minister in October. Most of Chiang’s aides urged more cautious dealings with Japan at that time, arguing that too strenuous a concentration on the anti-Japanese struggle would drain resources away from domestic needs, particularly the pacification of the country through eliminating the Communist threat. Chiang and his supporters tended to view anti-Japanese forces as radicals interested in challenging the authority of the Nanking government. Arguing that the Chinese had sufficiently demonstrated their self-respect during 1931–33, and in view of the apparent unwillingness of the West to unite in support of China, they concluded that the best strategy for the time being was to concentrate on developing what lay outside Japanese control.
Their assessment of the international situation was realistic, for in the years immediately following the Tangku truce there prevailed an atmosphere of uncertainty in Western capitals concerning the structure and orientation of Asian-Pacific affairs. The picture became especially fluid after the accession of Adolf Hitler to power in January 1933. He had openly called for revision of the Versailles peace structure, and as soon as he became the new German chancellor he took steps to undermine part of it by withdrawing from the Geneva disarmament conference and denouncing the existing restrictions on German armament. Like the Japanese revisionists, he took the country out of the League of Nations and instituted domestic measures to lesser the influence of those committed to or identified with the postwar order.
Hitler’s Germany was less expansionist than Japan, at least for the time being. Its immediate aim was to regain some of the territory in central Europe it had lost in 1919, not to add more land. Hitler was, however, keenly interested in restoring Germany’s position in Asia, not through joining the Washington system from which it had been excluded, but through unilateral initiatives in approaching China and Japan. Because of the changed conditions in the area, Hitler and his aides judged an aggressive East Asian policy would serve to weaken the position of the United States, Britain, or France in their commitment to the Washington system, and thus indirectly contribute to damaging the Versailles peace structure. It would also strengthen Germany’s position vis-à-vis the Soviet Union; while the two nations that had been excluded from both the Versailles and the Washington treaties had often acted together, they had become progressively estranged, particularly in view of the intense hostility between Nazis and Communists in Germany. The clandestine military co-operation between the two countries, which they had secretly undertaken in defiance of Versailles, came to an end in 1933.
It was more difficult, however, to define precisely how best to enhance the country’s power in Asia. Hitler and some party officials wanted to encourage Japanese alienation from the West by offering to recognize the state of Manchukuo, while the Foreign Office was strongly opposed to such a step, fearing it would prematurely isolate Germany in world affairs. Instead, most civilian diplomats as well as the professional military favoured a policy of close relations with China because the latter offered much-needed raw materials as well as a market for German arms and consumer products.31 For several years after 1933, this latter view prevailed, and Germany undertook ambitious programmes for expanding trade with China and, more important, providing it with aircraft and aviation experts. Such programmes were incompatible with a policy of befriending Japan, and thus Germany was emerging as China’s close partner in Asia. For the Chinese, however, German support was not an unmixed blessing, for other Western powers, as well as Japan, would take exception to the growing German influence in Chinese affairs. Nevertheless, in the period following the Tangku truce, Germany appeared to be more willing than others in offering assistance even at the risk of annoying Japan, and that was the important thing. Chiang Kai-shek repeatedly urged Germany to send General Hans von Seeckt, former chief of the German army command, to China as military adviser, and the appointment materialized over strong Japanese objections. In a sense, Germany was the one country willing to defy openly Japanese wishes, as exemplified by the Amō statement, that no foreign powers come to the aid of China. And yet, German willingness to help China’s strengthening did not mean it would be ready to co-operate with China against Japan. Hitler’s professed proclivity for Japan would not tolerate it, and besides, German policy in Asia was not designed for reinforcing the existing treaty system. For that reason, China could not completely count on Germany alone in its struggle against Japanese imperialism. It would still need Anglo-American assistance.
Here the picture was not very bright. In London, officials were becoming strongly influenced by their view of the interrelatedness between Asian and European affairs. Their policy towards the Chinese–Japanese conflict would hinge to a large extent on the state of British–German affairs. If, for instance, Germany’s threat to European stability increased, it would become necessary to recall much of the navy from Asian waters to areas closer home, making it difficult to take a firm stand towards Japan. If, on the other hand, Britain succeeded in maintaining an equilibrium vis-à-vis Germany in Europe, it would stand a better chance of playing an active role in Asia. For these reasons, a cardinal effort by the government of Stanley Baldwin, who headed the cabinet during 1935–37, was oriented towards averting an open crisis in Europe. British strategy was two-pronged. One, the so-called Stresa front, sought to check Germany by means of an agreement among Britain, France, and Italy to preserve the European status quo. The second, a naval agreement with Germany (1935), succeeded in having Hitler agree to keep German naval strength at 35 per cent of British. Both these instruments went beyond the Versailles treaty and indicated a desperate attempt by London to avert an international crisis. The treaty system was not yet buried, but it was modified to preserve the peace, thus undermining the confidence of nations in the durability of the postwar structure of international affairs.
In Asia, too, Britain was willing to come to terms with the new realities. After the League’s failure to press Japan to return to the pre-1931 status quo, London no longer sought a solution through the world organization, and instead tried to see if conditions on the Asian continent could be stabilized through some other arrangements. British officials toyed with various possibilities throughout 1933 and 1934: a rapprochement with the Soviet Union in order to restrain Japan, cooperation with the United States, unilateral moves to strengthen naval defences in Asia, initiatives to assist China’s economic development, and ‘a permanent friendship with Japan’ (in the words of Neville Chamberlain, the chancellor of the exchequer).32 This last alternative, which Chamberlain pushed with vigour, even envisaged recognition of Manchukuo. While no such step was approved by his cabinet colleagues, discussion of this and other options indicated a serious search for a fresh approach. Just as they were willing to go beyond the Versailles settlement to conciliate Germany, London’s officials were contemplating some new mechanism for preserving the peace in Asia. They were not advocating a departure from the structure of the Washington system; they periodically reminded the Japanese that the nine-power treaty was still in effect. However, Britain would be interested in devising means for ensuring greater stability. And at this time the strategy of working closely with the Soviet Union or the United States against Japan seemed less realistic than that of improving relations with the latter so as to obtain its compliance with stabilizing conditions in China. Out of such deliberations came the mission of Frederick Leith-Ross who, as will be noted, was to contribute to strengthening China’s position economically and politically.
The United States, in the meantime, was under the leadership of a new president, Franklin D. Roosevelt. Unlike his predecessor, he was not committed to any specific system of international relations. At the London Economic Conference (1933), he showed a willingness to give up the principle of international co-operation to preserve the gold standard in favour of a more flexible policy that would enable the nation to act unilaterally to regulate the price of gold and the rates of exchange between American and other currencies. Roosevelt was determined to focus on domestic recovery and showed little inclination for becoming bogged down in international issues. He would deal pragmatically with issues as they arose, without necessarily tying their solution into a larger framework. This does not mean that he was indifferent to the fate of the League of Nations or the Washington system; but in comparison with Hoover he was less interested in preserving these formal structures.
His pragmatism and initial indifference to developing a cohesive framework for American foreign affairs were reflected in the policies of the Roosevelt administration towards East Asia. They were not so much policies as ad hoc decisions that did not add up to a clear statement. For instance, the president supported the Tydings–McDuffy Act of 1934 which promised independence to the Philippines in twelve years. Such a decision implied uncertainty regarding America’s military position in the western Pacific, and the War Department was inclined to write off that region as falling within Japan’s sphere of power. Neither Roosevelt nor the Navy Department was willing to go that far, and they pushed with vigour a naval construction programme within treaty limits. The Vinson–Trammell Act of 1934, authorizing just such a policy, was an important first step. Washington also insisted on maintaining the existing treaty ratios, rejecting Japan’s demands for parity. As Admiral William H. Standley, chief of naval operations, pointed out, if the United States were to preserve the international system based on the nine-power treaty and the Paris pact, it was imperative to retain a requisite naval strength in the Pacific as specified in the agreements.33 The contradictory positions of Japan and the United States on this point led to a stalemate at the preliminary naval disarmament conference in London throughout 1934 and 1935. Although their failure to come to terms on the parity question was certain to doom the existing naval agreements, thus destroying one corner of the treaty structure, American authorities preferred such an outcome, laying the onus on Japan, to approving a modified system in which Japanese power would be strengthened. In the meantime, the State Department responded negatively to the Japanese suggestion for a Pacific agreement to recognize their respective spheres of influence, contending that such a step was contrary to the Washington understanding. In other words, the Roosevelt administration’s policies towards Pacific questions showed neither a determined effort to preserve the Washington system nor a strong interest in replacing it with something else. The government was much less concerned with international co-operation than with bilateral issues with Japan which would be dealt with primarily in terms of the perceived needs and interests of the nation.
Much the same tendency can be detected in Roosevelt’s approach to the China question. He was by and large willing to leave the new realities alone in Manchuria. While he followed Hoover’s policy of not recognizing the state of Manchukuo, he did not want to challenge Japan’s position directly. State Department officials had become deeply disillusioned by the failure of the co-operative, internationalist diplomacy to restrain Japan and to uphold the Washington system, and some of them now advocated recognizing the new status quo to preserve what was left of that system. So long as American rights and interests were not openly threatened, and the Japanese kept insisting that they were still honouring the principle of the Open Door in Manchuria, it seemed best to restabilize the situation by restoring some framework of co-operation with Japan and other Washington powers. The president, however, was not very interested in such a scheme, and instead wanted to see if a new stability could be worked out through an approach to the Soviet Union. The recognition of the revolutionary regime in Moscow in November 1933 was a product of many forces, but one significant factor was a perception shared by the two capitals that an American–Russian rapprochement might serve to check Japan. While by no means an explicit understanding to that effect, the recognition episode revealed Roosevelt’s willingness to go outside the existing framework of treaties and agreements and to experiment with something new.
The administration’s lack of concern with a comprehensive approach to foreign policy also characterized its policy in China. On one hand, there was continued sympathy with the plight of the Nanking government and an interest in helping its economic recovery measures. An instance of this was a loan of 1933, totalling a credit of $50 million from the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, which was to enable the Chinese to purchase American cotton and wheat. It was, however, an isolated event, less part of a systematic approach to helping China and more a product of domestic and Congressional pressures to dispose of surpluses. These same pressures severely tested American–Chinese relations when Congress enacted a Silver Purchase Act in 1934, authorizing the Treasury Department to buy silver at rates higher than those prevailing in the world market. Quantities of silver drained out of China as a result, some through Japanese hands, so that the country’s silver reserves dropped from some 602 million yuan in April 1934 to 288 million yuan in November 1935, when it was forced off the silver-based currency system.34 Nanking’s efforts at economic rehabilitation were derailed, and the ability to consolidate its position undermined. This was clearly not a friendly act on the part of the United States, and Chinese officials had desperately tried to dissuade Washington from carrying out the silver purchase policy, but the Roosevelt administration had no overall China strategy in terms of which to cope with the situation. Although this was the very time that Britain was considering an offer of aid to China to help its fiscal modernization, and although silver purchases conflicted with such a project, there was no interest in Washington to co-ordinate policies with London.
Under these circumstances, China could not count on a systematic, co-operative policy on the part of the Western powers as it sought to cope with Japan’s entrenched position in Manchuria. That position was being willy-nilly confirmed by the absence of a comprehensive collective response. The upshot was a new stability, not exactly an alternative to the Washington treaty system but a modified version of it. There was no consensus as to what the modification consisted of, or how the modified status quo was to be sustained, and for that very reason each power felt free to pursue its own policies irrespective of those of the others. At least no country wanted an open conflict, so that there was a chance that a new framework might in time emerge.
In July 1935 the seventh Comintern congress convened in Moscow. There a new thesis was adopted: the establishment of a global front against fascism. Characterizing international conditions as a struggle between fascism and anti-fascism, the delegates called on all peoples and countries to establish a popular front against the forces of fascism, defined as dictatorships trying to save capitalism from collapse through a repartitioning of the world. Nazi Germany and militarist Japan were identified as the main forces for aggression and war, so that the Comintern declaration was a call for an alliance of all countries, both in the West and elsewhere, against them. Within each country, the Comintern directed the Communists to co-operate with workers, peasants, urban middle classes, intelligentsia, and non-Fascist political parties to fight fascism. It was not, to be sure, a formal call by the Soviet Union for a global alliance, nor a specific proposal for coping with Germany and Japan. Still, coupled with the Franco–Soviet treaty of alliance that was being negotiated at the same time, the Comintern congress marked the return of Russia to the international community as a supporter of order and peace, not as an isolated advocate of revolution and radicalism. Just as Japan and Germany had begun distancing themselves from the existing treaty frameworks, the Soviet Union was joining them from the opposite direction. But the Comintern thesis indicated an interest in adding to, if not replacing, the Washington and Versailles systems through the establishment of a global popular front which would have the effect of fortifying the former through the participation of the Soviet Union as well as colonial populations struggling against Fascist imperialism. Most important, the Soviet initiative provided some conceptual clarity to a world situation that had been characterized by uncertainty and contradictions. By defining international conditions in dichotomous terms, it sought to cut through the maze of conflicting ideas and policies simultaneously being pursued by the powers, and to urge them to align themselves against violators of the status quo.
The new Soviet approach implied a reversal of the cautious policy towards Japanese aggression which it had pursued after the Mukden incident. Moscow had not interfered with Japanese military operations in Manchuria, and in China it had continued to encourage Communist resistance to the Nationalist regime in Nanking. But the Soviet leadership clearly was worried about the implications of the strengthened Japanese position in the Asian-Pacific region, and began a process of preparing for a possible conflict with Japan. In December 1932 Moscow extended recognition to Nanking; in late 1933 the Soviet Union was recognized by the United States; and in 1934 the Soviet Union entered the League of Nations. In the meantime, while Moscow went through with its sale of the Chinese Eastern Railway to Japan – a formal agreement was signed in Tokyo in February 1934 – it began an active programme of strengthening its defences in the Asian-Pacific region. Along the Manchurian-Siberian border airfields were constructed and four-engine bombers placed there; trenches were dug and scaffolds built; and the Pacific fleet was reinforced by submarines. The second five-year plan, started in 1933, emphasized the building of factories and urban communities in eastern Siberia.35 All these steps were watched closely by the Japanese, and instances of border collision steadily increased. The Comintern thesis against fascism and imperialism did not mean that the Soviet high command expected a war with Japan or Germany in the near future, but it apparently judged that identifying these countries as the main threat to peace would persuade enough other capitalist countries to take note of the Soviet Union’s potential value as an ally and to prod them to take measures against the Fascists.
If these were the Soviet hopes, they were not fulfilled, at least not immediately. Neither London nor Washington was interested in so explicitly opposing themselves to Germany and Japan. For the time being, the two governments would continue to try to stabilize international affairs by working with, not against, these powers. This was revealed when, during the Italian invasion of Ethiopia (1935–37), both Britain and the United States co-operated with the League in imposing economic sanctions on the former, but refused to go further for fear that alienating Italy from the West would only encourage Germany and Japan to come to its defence, thus pitting the three Fascist states against the rest of the world. This the Anglo-American nations wanted to avoid, for it would deal a fatal blow to the treaty structure. For the same reason, they did not accept Moscow’s call for an anti-Fascist coalition. Even France, despite its alliance with the Soviet Union and although a popular front government came into existence in 1936, was unwilling to punish Italy so severely that the latter might be pushed towards Germany. When, in March 1936, German troops occupied the Rhineland in violation of the Versailles and Locarno agreements, the Western powers stood by, preferring to believe that this was a minor modification of, and not a deadly challenge to, the international system. The same was true of the Spanish Civil War which broke out in July 1936. It provided a test case for the feasibility of a popular front, anti-Fascist strategy, but Britain, France, and the United States were satisfied with the establishment of a non-intervention committee, an organisation that would coalesce all interested countries in a joint pledge to desist from interference in Spain. The proposal was seen as a way of preserving some semblance of international order, but for that very reason its utter failure was to undermine the structure.
In the meantime, in East Asia Britain continued its effort to restabilize Chinese affairs through economic assistance within the framework of co-operation with Japan. The sending of an economic mission headed by Frederick Leith-Ross exemplified this approach. The mission, designed to contribute to those objectives, reached Japan in September 1935, just after the adjournment of the Comintern congress, and then moved to China, to remain there for several months. Leith-Ross’s basic idea, for which he had the support of some high officials in London, was to co-operate with Japan in extending a loan to China, which would help bring order to China’s financial situation at a time when it had been thrown into chaos by the American silver purchase policy.36 In return for such aid, the Chinese might, he believed, be persuaded to extend at least de facto recognition to Manchukuo. This scheme, which he presented to Foreign Minister Hirota and other officials in Tokyo, was a bold attempt to confirm the framework of co-operative diplomacy while explicitly recognizing some significant modification of the Washington system. It was based on the assumption that Japan had not entirely left, nor had the intention of leaving, the system, and that China and other powers would be willing to accept the new status quo. Thus the Leith-Ross mission had more in common with Britain’s ongoing European diplomacy, in which it was ready to come to terms with German and Italian revisionism so long as it could be kept within bounds, than with the Soviet-initiated call for an explicitly anti-Fascist coalition. Faced with such choices, there was no hesitation to opt for the first.
This was a big gamble, but one that provided Japan with an excellent opportunity to avoid international isolation. By agreeing to co-operate with Leith-Ross, Hirota could have encouraged Britain, and through it possibly the United States, to work with Japan, instead of following the Soviet lead in the strategy of the popular front. But Japanese policy did not favour such an approach. Instead, it focused on strengthening bilateral ties between Japan and China in order to stabilize their relations. One expression of this was Tokyo’s decision to raise its Nanking legation to the status of embassy. A symbolic move, the decision was meant to convey to the Nationalist leadership Japan’s interest in preserving the status quo. Another was Hirota’s eagerness for a diplomatic settlement of outstanding differences between the two countries. Throughout 1935 negotiations were held in Tokyo and Nanking to see if the governments could not improve their relations on the basis of some fundamental principles. While nothing came of these negotiations, since there was an unbridgeable gap between Japan’s insistence on Chinese acquiescence in Manchurian independence and China’s demand for Japanese adherence to the treaties, they at least were meant as a gesture of goodwill on the part of Japan, indicating its intention not to encroach upon Chinese sovereignty south of the Great Wall, and its hope that China would reciprocate by not turning to the West for help. Under the circumstances, it was perhaps inevitable that Leith-Ross should have encountered only lukewarm responses from Japanese officials. His scheme for a regime of British–Japanese co-operation in China ran counter to the prevailing policy in Tokyo.
Even if Hirota had wanted to be more encouraging to the British mission, moreover, he would have run into strong opposition on the part of the Japanese military. It is true that the military did not speak with one voice. The army was seriously divided at this time over the issue of strategic preparedness. One group, represented by General Araki Sadao (war minister during 1933–35), insisted that everything be geared towards the goal of an effective military build-up against the Soviet Union. Extremely anti-Communist in ideology, this group was particularly alarmed over the implications of the new Comintern offensive and Soviet military reinforcements in Siberia, and argued that all considerations must be subordinated to preparing the nation militarily to fight a war with the Soviet Union which was expected to come within a few years, if not sooner. Another group, however, was more interested in ‘total mobilization’. The idea was to mobilize the nation’s political, economic, and intellectual resources, not only the armed forces, in preparation for war – war in general, not just a specific war with the Soviet Union. Strongly influenced by what they perceived to be the worldwide trend towards such mobilization, this group, centring around Nagata Tetsuzan (head of the military affairs bureau of the War Ministry till his assassination by an officer belonging to the first faction in August 1935), wanted to work together with civilian officials, scholars, and even businessmen to create a condition of effective preparedness. Compared with the first group, the latter was more ‘scientific’ and less ideologically anti-Communist. The struggle between the two factions reached a climax on 26 February 1936, when about 1,400 troops led by young army officers belonging to the first faction staged a coup, assassinating several cabinet ministers and seizing the War Ministry, the General Staff, and other governmental buildings. The uprising, however, was quickly suppressed and its ringleaders tried, paving the way for what was to be a long reign by the total mobilization group. Its control over military affairs ensured the army’s undisputed influence, and it is this phenomenon which is often implied by the term ‘Japanese fascism’.
Despite such factionalism, the two groups were essentially in agreement regarding Japanese policy towards China in the mid-1930s. This was because both recognized the importance of consolidating Japan’s hold on Manchuria and Inner Mongolia and of avoiding a major crisis with the Nanking regime. To that extent military thinking was in line with the government’s interest in a rapprochement with China. At the same time, however, the Japanese army on the continent, especially the so-called Tientsin Army (stationed in accordance with the Boxer protocol of 1901 to safeguard the communication links between Peking and the sea), was intent upon removing sources of anti-Japanese activities in north China by setting up separatist regimes in the area. They were not exactly replicas of Manchukuo, but they enjoyed a degree of autonomy south of the Great Wall, as a buffer between Manchuria and Kuomintang-controlled China. These moves were opposed by some military leaders, notably Ishiwara Kanji, one of the architects of the Mukden incident, who came to the view that in the interest of total mobilization Japan’s position in north China should be retrenched and the irritation in Japanese–Chinese relations thereby reduced. Disagreement on the problem had the effect of halting Japan’s advances in north China, but the military were virtually unanimous in rejecting the idea of Japanese co-operation with the Anglo-American nations in Asia, and so Hirota could have done little else than give a cool reception to the Leith-Ross mission.
Discouraged but determined to go through with part of his scheme, Leith-Ross worked energetically in China to help its economic rehabilitation and currency reform. Chinese officials were trying to restabilize the currency situation after it had been upset by America’s silver purchase policy, and the only way to do so would be to demonetize silver and to issue a new currency not linked to the metal. In order to take such steps, it would of course be necessary for foreign banks and governments to accept the new currency and to surrender their silver reserves in exchange. Britain strongly backed up these measures on the recommendation of Leith-Ross, and thus by November 1935 the Chinese government had been able to initiate a currency reform, entailing the linking of the new fapi notes to the pound sterling. Here was an instance where Britain succeeded in strengthening its position in China without identifying itself with the Soviet-led popular front strategy, and without Japanese concurrence. In that sense, British successes did little to resuscitate the moribund Washington system, or to replace it with a radically new alternative.
American policy was much less active than Britain’s. Washington was annoyed by Moscow’s initiative to establish an anti-Fascist coalition and took little official cognizance of it. The United States government was not interested in joining the Soviet Union to punish Germany and Japan. Nor was it ready for a new diplomatic move of its own. Throughout most of 1935–36, President Roosevelt evinced no serious inclination to deal boldly with Asian affairs. He would not accept Japanese contentions for a new status quo in China or their demands for naval parity. When a formal disarmament conference opened in London in 1935, neither Tokyo’s nor Washington’s position had changed on this issue, and so the conference adjourned indefinitely in January 1936, indicating that the earlier naval agreements had now lapsed, and that the United States, Britain, and Japan would no longer be bound by them. Even so, the Roosevelt administration was not yet willing to restructure the basis of American policy in the Asian-Pacific region.
It was left up to Japan in 1936 to determine the future of the Washington system. The assassinations in February brought about a change in Tokyo’s leadership, and Hirota was named prime minister. He remained as foreign minister till April, when a professional diplomat, Arita Hachirō, succeeded him. Together, Hirota and Arita did much to contribute to the progressive weakening and virtual demise of the Washington treaties. One of them, the naval agreement, had already been abrogated, but the Hirota cabinet was also willing to disregard, if not openly repudiate, the nine-power agreement. In March the Foreign Ministry decided that henceforth Japan would avoid making an explicit commitment to observing the treaty but would aim at its de facto nullification. While it would not be prudent to take unilateral steps to abrogate the treaty, the nation would no longer pay lip-service to it.37 Thus by 1936 it could be said that as far as Japan was concerned, any pretence that it was still acting within the Washington framework was all but gone. Instead, Japan would define a new basis for its policies. It was no coincidence that the government and the military in Tokyo deliberated on policy alternatives in mid-1936, an effort that resulted in the drafting of two key documents, ‘The fundamentals of national policy’ and ‘Foreign policy guidelines’, in August. The documents, which were approved by cabinet ministers, called for three basic objectives: maintenance of the nation’s position on the Asian continent, resistance to Soviet ambitions, and expansion into the South Seas.38
The idea of expanding into the South Seas – the European colonial areas of South-East Asia and the south-western Pacific – was as yet only a vague aspiration, but in 1936 it was written into a statement of national objectives because of two developments: the triumph of the total mobilization faction within the army, and the abrogation of the naval treaties. For the former, preparedness for a possible conflict with the Soviet Union so as to remove its threat remained the army’s main concern, but the total mobilization school saw it as only a part of the massive national effort to establish Japanese power in Asia. To that extent it overlapped with the navy’s emphasis on preparedness against the United States and Britain, now that the naval agreement had lapsed. The army and the navy disagreed as to which came first – war with the Soviet Union or with the Anglo-American powers – but for the first time the military adopted a defence policy which named the United States, the Soviet Union, China, and Britain as hypothetical enemies. It was not that Japan necessarily intended to go to war against all four simultaneously, although that was what would actually come to pass, but these guidelines indicated a willingness to make a clear break with the Washington framework and adopt an ambitious goal to establish Japan’s superior position in the Asian-Pacific region.
As if to confirm such thinking, Tokyo entered into an anti-Comintern pact with Germany in November. Ostensibly a response to the Comintern’s call for an anti-Fascist front, it provided for co-operation between the two countries against Communist subversion. But a secret protocol attached to the pact specifically referred to the Soviet Union and specified that in case one of the signatories became involved in a war with that country, the other would refrain from assisting the latter. Even more important, the anti-Comintern pact, signed just a month after the formation of the Berlin–Rome Axis (an agreement between Hitler and Mussolini to co-operate in European affairs), signalled Japan’s readiness to associate itself with revisionist powers in Europe. That had significant implications not only for Japanese relations with the Soviet Union but also with the United States and Britain. Japan was definitely alienating itself from the Washington powers.
No sooner had Japan begun reorienting its foreign affairs, than an event took place that seriously challenged the basis of the new policy. That was the Sian incident of December 1936, involving the capture of Chiang Kai-shek in the vicinity of the ancient capital of Sian by the forces loyal to the former Manchurian warlord, Chang Hsüeh-liang. Chiang had been engaged in a campaign against the Communists, who had recently completed their ‘long march’ out of their south-eastern stronghold. The Communists, following the Comintern’s new policy, were calling for an end to the civil war and the establishment of a united front against Japanese aggression. The Manchurian general had fallen under their influence, and he promised to release Chiang in return for the latter’s pledge to accept the united front strategy. Chiang could have refused if the Communist minority had been the only faction insisting on a struggle against Japan, but by the end of 1936 Chinese opinion had become much more adamantly anti-Japanese. For one thing, economic reform measures, undertaken through the advice of the Leith-Ross mission, were achieving notable successes, with the new currency widely accepted as legal tender. Militarily, German advisers were laying the basis for a modern Chinese air force; at the beginning of 1937, their head official estimated that the military balance between China and Japan was steadily moving in the former’s favour.39 In the political realm, those who advocated an accommodation with Japan had been subjects of growing criticism, as evidenced by an attempted assassination of Wang Ching-wei in November 1935, and by the establishment of a separatist regime in Canton opposed to the government’s policy towards Japan. Some prominent Nationalist leaders, most notably T. V. Soong, regained their influence in proportion as the Chinese economy showed signs of a revival. Even those close to Chiang Kai-shek were buoyed up by the success of Leith-Ross reforms, and questioned the wisdom or the need to maintain buffer regimes in north China. They argued that China would not be whole until those regimes were removed and brought under Nanking’s control.
The Sian incident took place against this background, and it was a foregone conclusion that nationalistic opinion would force Chiang Kai-shek to accept Chang’s terms for ending his captivity. The Nationalist leader returned to Nanking, pledging to end his anti-Communist campaign and to concentrate his resources on a policy of resistance to Japanese imperialism. After the turn of the year 1937, the Nationalist government and press began reflecting this new attitude, while the Communists responded by incorporating their military units into the Nationalist army. Both factions spoke the language of the united front, thus making China one of the first countries to subscribe to the Comintern’s call for a global coalition.
Such developments forced the Japanese leaders to reconsider their policy objectives. Although they had just adopted a series of guidelines, the idea that Japan might find itself in war with China, the Soviet Union, America, and Britain had not yet become fixed as the definition of national strategy, and at the beginning of 1937 some civilian and military officials determined that the time had come to reorient Japan’s China policy before it was too late. The General Staff, for instance, was willing to stop encouraging separatist movements in north China. The buffer governments in the area had not worked, and had only strengthened Chinese nationalism. It would not be possible for Japan to prevent Nationalist reunification of China proper unless it were prepared to go to war, and the General Staff judged such a war should be avoided.
The military’s search for a new policy was welcomed by the civilian government. In January the Hirota cabinet fell and was replaced by that of Hayashi Senjūrō, former war minister. While it proved to be short-lived – it resigned at the end of May – the new prime minister’s appointment of Satō Naotake as foreign minister was significant, for the latter, a professional diplomat who had till then been ambassador to France, was known to be an opponent of the Hirota–Arita approach. Whereas his predecessors had emphasized Japan’s special position in China and the need to reduce Western influence from the continent, Satō strongly believed that Japan’s salvation lay in an open international economic system in which the nation would promote industrialization and export trade. Japan’s acute population problem should be solved, he had asserted, not by resettling a surplus population elsewhere, but by industrialization, which in turn necessitated an unlimited access to the world’s raw materials and markets. An open economic system, moreover, depended on close co-operation and consultation among nations, and thus it was essential for Japan to promote a policy of international co-operation.40
These views were diametrically opposed to the neo-mercantilistic perceptions of the Japanese military and civilians who had promoted an autarkic empire, and the fact that a diplomat with such ideas should have been appointed foreign minister reflected the prevailing atmosphere of the time. There was a feeling that although Japan had achieved swift successes in Manchuria, that alone had not solved much. On the contrary, it had alienated Chinese opinion and isolated the country in the world. If Japan were unwilling to push the autarkic policy to its limits and risk total international ostracization, then a fresh approach might be desirable. Fully aware that the military, too, were eager for a new policy, Satō pushed for Japan’s acceptance of a unified China under the Nationalists. He knew he could do little about Manchuria, but at least in China proper Japan should give up the policy of trying to detach the northern provinces. Such views were adopted as official policy at a meeting of the four cabinet ministers (ministers of foreign affairs, finance, war, and the navy) in April. They agreed that henceforth Japanese policy in north China should be primarily economic, no longer aiming at a political separation of the area from the rest of China.41 Such a policy was a clear retreat from the grandiose scheme of 1936.
In the meantime, Satō was eager to resume a policy of economic interdependence. During his short tenure in office, he repeatedly and publicly expressed the theme that Japan’s survival depended on ‘restoration of international commercial freedom and the opening of resources’. World peace would be attained only if the powers recognized these principles and accorded Japan access to raw materials and markets. It so happened that just at this time the League of Nations was sponsoring a conference on access to raw materials. It had established a seventeen-nation committee including, it is interesting to note, Japan, and the committee held a total of three meetings in Geneva.42 While little came of it immediately, many of the ideas expressed at these meetings would ultimately find their way into official doctrines promulgated by the United Nations during and after the Second World War. In other words, Satō’s thinking was reflective of one strand of international opinion at that time, when governments were desperately trying to avoid war and to rescue the world from the morass of excessive economic nationalism.
Most unfortunately, the new diplomacy never had a chance to succeed. For one thing, the cabinet of General Hayashi was extremely unpopular as it contained no ministers representing any of the political parties. More seriously, its willingness to reorient China policy alarmed those in the army who refused to reconcile themselves to the new approach. They were convinced that the policy would merely play into China’s hands and weaken Japan’s position on the continent. To desist from promoting the separation of north China was particularly galling to the Tientsin Army that had been behind the scheme to set up buffer regimes. Its officers were convinced that if the trends in Chinese politics and Japanese policy continued, the nation would sooner or later be compelled to give up its special position in north China, and possibly even Manchuria. For them, there was only one plausible response: to resist Nationalist revanchism and to try to strengthen Japan’s hold on north China.
Given such thinking on the part of the Tientsin Army, it should have been incumbent on Tokyo’s civilian and military leaders to promote with vigour their new approach to China. Perhaps if the Hayashi cabinet had stayed in power, or if Foreign Minister Satō had remained in office, the situation might have been different. But Hayashi resigned in June, and Prince Konoe Fumimaro was appointed prime minister. This proved to be a fatal choice. He had been president of the House of Peers, and was best known as an ideologue of Japanese revisionism. He had consistently argued, even during the 1920s, that the League covenant, the nine-power treaty, and the pact of Paris had all defined an international system on the basis of the status quo, which tended to freeze national boundaries and, more important, did nothing to alter the fundamentally inequitable distribution of natural resources. Richly endowed nations such as the United States and the British empire had every reason to support the status quo, but for a country like Japan it spelled perpetual poverty and injustice. ‘We must overcome the principles of peace based on the maintenance of the status quo’, Konoe had written, ‘and work out new principles of international peace from our own perspective.’ Whereas officials like Satō believed that the problem of the unequal distribution of resources could best be dealt with through multilateral trade and industrialization, for Konoe something more fundamental was needed. Thus he wholeheartedly supported military action in Manchuria as a necessary step towards making available the area’s rich resources to Japan.43
The assumption of office by such an imperialist, coming just at a time when Japan was trying to reorient its China policy, was extremely significant. Opponents of the Hayashi-Satō approach must have been encouraged by Konoe’s coming to power, and by his statement as prime minister that there was in the world a conflict between ‘have’ and ‘have-not’ nations, and that international justice ultimately required redistribution of the globe’s resources and land. Although such a goal was unobtainable for the present, Japan, as a ‘have-not’ country, must secure for itself ‘the right of survival’. In the absence of an overall international system of justice, Japan’s continental policy was fully justified. Such a statement, combined with Konoe’s appointment of Hirota as foreign minister, virtually nullified the effect of the Hayashi cabinet’s new China policy; Hirota, as will be recalled, had, both as foreign minister and prime minister, pushed for forging close bilateral ties between Japan and China in order to reduce Western influence on the continent. The return to the Foreign Ministry of such an official was extremely inauspicious for an improved relationship between Japan and China. Konoe and Hirota, perhaps more than any other civilians, were to confirm Japan’s tragic isolation in world affairs.
REFERENCES AND NOTES
1. See Akira Iriye, After Imperialism: The Search for a New Order in the Far East, 1921–1931 (Cambridge, Mass. 1965).
2. See Lloyd E. Eastman, The Abortive Revolution: China under Nationalist Rule, 1927–1937 (Cambridge, Mass. 1964).
3. For a recent survey of the background of the 1931 crisis, see Akira Iriye, ‘Japanese aggression and China’s international position’, Cambridge History of China, vol. 13 (Cambridge 1986).
4. On the impact of the word economic crisis on Japanese policy and politics, see Iriye, After Imperialism, Ch. 9.
5. Ibid., pp. 284–5.
6. Usui Katsumi, Manshū jihen (The Manchurian incident; Tokyo 1974) p. 24.
7. Ibid., pp. 41–5.
8. Ibid., pp. 48–9.
9. Ikei Masaru, ‘1930-nendai no mass media’ (Mass media in the 1930s) in Miwa Kimitada (ed.), Saikō Taiheiyō sensō zen’ya (The prelude to the Pacific war reconsidered; Tokyo 1981), p. 179.
10. See Miles Fletcher, The Search for a New Order: Intellectuals and Fascism in Prewar Japan (Chapel Hill 1982).
11. Usui, Manshū jihen, p. 55.
12. Ibid., p. 71.
13. Chung-hua Min-kuochung-yao chih-liao ch’u-pien: tui-Ju kang-chan shih-chi (Important historical documents of the Chinese republic: the period of the anti-Japanese war; Taipei n.d.), 1.1: 262–85.
14. Ibid., p. 277.
15. Ibid., pp. 282–3.
16. Foreign Ministry, Nis-So kōshō-shi (History of Japanese–Soviet negotiations; Tokyo 1942), p. 239.
17. Usui Katsumi, ‘Alternative paths: Konoe Fumimaro and Satō Naotake’ (unpublished essay, 1985).
18. Justus D. Doenecke, When the Wicked Rise: American Opinion-Makers and the Manchurian Crisis of 1931–1933 (Lewisburg, Pa. 1984), p. 34.
19. Usui, Manshū jihen, p. 127.
20. Nihon gaikō bunsho (Japanese diplomatic documents): Manshū jihen (the Manchurian incident; Tokyo 1979), 2.2: 12–13.
21. Ibid., p. 14.
22. Usui, Manshū jihen, p. 183.
23. Usui, ‘Alternative paths’.
24. Chung-hua Min-kuo, 1.1: 431–42.
25. Shinobu Seizaburō, (ed.), Nihon gaikō-shi (A history of Japanese diplomacy; Tokyo 1974), 2: 384.
26. Nis-So kōshō-shi, pp. 241–4, 286–91.
27. Chung-hua Min-kuo, 1.1: 644, 651–2.
28. Hosoya Chihiro et al. (eds), Nichi-Bei kankeishi (A history of Japanese-American relations; Tokyo 1971), 1: 122–4.
29. Ibid., 2: 111.
30. Stephen Lyon Endicott, Diplomacy and Enterprise: British China Policy, 1933–37 (Vancouver 1975), p. 35.
31. John P. Fox, Germany and the Far Eastern Crisis, 1931–1938 (Oxford 1982), pp. 38–53. See also William C. Kirby, Germany and Republican China (Stanford 1984), Ch. 5.
32. Endicott, Diplomacy, p. 72.
33. Dorothy Borg and Shumpei Okamoto (eds), Pearl Harbor as History: Japanese–American Relations, 1931–1941 (New York 1973), pp. 201–10.
34. Eastman, Abortive Revolution, p. 189.
35. Hayashi Saburō, Kantōgun to Kyokutō Sorengun (The Kwantung Army and the Soviet Far Eastern Army; Tokyo 1974), pp. 62–74.
36. Endicott, Diplomacy, pp. 103–10.
37. Usui, ‘Alternative paths’.
38. Gendaishi shiryō (Documents on contemporary history; Tokyo 1964), 8: 354–62.
39. Fox, Germany, p. 211.
40. For an assessment of Satō’s foreign policy, see Kurihara Ken et al, Satō Naotake no menboku (The real worth of Satō Naotake; Tokyo 1981).
41. Shinobu, Nihon gaikō-shi, 2: 410–11.
42. Usui, ‘Alternative paths’.
43. Ibid.