The Manchurian Crisis

From 1928 tensions in Manchuria steadily escalated, largely because the pro­Jiang warlord who controlled the region, Zhang Xueliang, tried to challenge Japanese influence by building railways in parallel to those owned by the SMR.

total war

A war that uses all resources at a state’s disposal including the complete mobilization of both the economy and society.

autarky

A policy that aims at achieving national economic self­sufficiency. It is commonly associated with the economic programmes espoused by Germany, Italy and Japan in the 1930s and 1940s.

Various reasons have been postulated to explain why the Kwantung Army precipitated the Manchurian Crisis in defiance of the civilian government in Tokyo and how it succeeded in redefining Japan's national agenda. In part, its actions can be seen as a reaction to Chinese provocations and a revival of Russian power in the region, and the fear that, over the long term, Japan's position in Manchuria would be steadily undermined. However, it is important to recognize that the seizure of Manchuria was just as much an act of expansion as one of defence.

One important motive behind the Kwantung Army's actions was the desire to seize the economic resources of the area in order to enhance Japan's ability to mobilize for total war.

the industrial and military capability to defeat its major potential enemies, the Soviet Union and the United States. In this the seizure of Manchuria with its coal and iron ore resources and its potential to become a major industrial producer was a vital preliminary step.

Events in Manchuria were also conditioned by domestic instability within Japan. One aspect of this was the growing division between the services and the government over the size of the armed forces. In 1930 the government made the imperial Japanese navy agree to the terms of the London Naval Treaty concern­ing quantitative limitation for cruisers. This led the army, which already in 1925 had suffered a cut of four divisions, to fear that at the forthcoming Geneva dis­armament conference it would be asked to accept further reductions in its strength. The army's actions in Manchuria can thus be seen as an attempt to justify its own existence and to use a sense of national crisis to increase its power over civilians.

Despite the Kwantung Army's considerable autonomy in military matters, it still did not in itself have the ability to defy the government and completely reconfigure Japanese external policy; that could only take place if its actions attracted broad domestic support. However, the economic conditions that existed in the early 1930s were such that the public was generally supportive of the Manchurian adventure. By 1931 Japan was feeling the full force of the world depression, which, owing to falling prices for rice and raw silk, hit rural areas particularly hard. Matters were not helped by the government's decision in January 1930 to return the yen to the gold standard in the hope that the discipline of exchange into gold would encourage long-term growth and competitiveness.

The economic distress naturally poisoned the political climate. Already the popularity of the political parties had been eroded as a result of a series of corruption scandals and the impression that the politicians only served the interests of the large Japanese industrial and trading combines, the zaibatsu. The Depression heightened this animosity, and led to ‘ultra-nationalists' rejecting the whole concept of party government and to a proliferation of nationalist societies offering solutions to the pressures engendered by modernization. To some of these groups, the answer to Japan's problems lay in a complete rejection of Western ideas and a return to national unity based upon traditional Japanese values. Others were drawn to the fascist model of development emanating from Italy and later Germany, showing how to use state planning and corporatism to achieve social stability and economic progress.

In this heated atmosphere, the actions of the Kwantung Army clearly struck a resonant chord, for the attempt to construct a new Manchuria at least seemed to provide a possible solution to Japan's economic crisis. To many in Japan the supposedly ‘virgin land' of Manchuria appeared as a ‘lifeline' which would rescue them from the trough of the Depression. To the business community it appeared as a new market for trade and investment, to the struggling agricultural community it offered new fertile pastures, and to intellectuals a laboratory for putting state

planning into practice. The media, in their desire for increased circulation, fuelled this wave of enthusiasm by lauding the achievements of the army and the idealism of the ‘Manchukuo’ experiment. Faced with this outpouring of emotion, the two major political parties, together with many other groups within Japan, including some of the socialist parties, trade unions and even women’s societies, were forced to accept the position of patriotic supporters of expansion.

Another aspect of the crisis that made it difficult for the ‘internationalists’ in Japan to control the situation was the reaction of China and the Powers to events in Manchuria. In 1931 the Nanjing government was still comparatively weak and had only nominal control over large areas of the country. It faced challenges to its authority from the remaining warlords, from discontented elements within the GMD, and most of all from the CCP, which controlled some rural areas in China, notably the Jiangxi Soviet. As China could not hope to win a war in this condition, Jiang decided to make internal reconstruction his priority, and therefore to follow a policy of ‘non-resistance’ towards Japan and to appeal to the League of Nations and the United States for assistance.

This did little to assist China, as the League’s ability to influence Japan was strictly limited. The problem was that, while the smaller states in the League engaged in enthusiastic rhetoric supporting China’s cause, the organization could only provide assistance in the shape of military or economic sanctions if the Great Power members, such as Britain, and non-members, such as the United States, were willing to act. This level of support was not, however, forthcoming. Both Britain and the United States were unprepared militarily, and the idea of introducing sanctions in the midst of a depression was not a viable political option. The League and the United States therefore did little more than register their disquiet. In January 1932 Washington announced that it would not recognize Japan’s fruits of aggression, while in February 1933 the League of Nations Assembly voted to adopt the Lytton Report, which, although criticizing Chinese provocations, declared that Japan’s actions were illegitimate and that the new state of Manchukuo was not an expression of popular self-determination.

The high level of criticism but lack of firm action by the international community played into the hands of the hard-liners in Tokyo, for it suggested that Japan could not rely on the outside world for a ‘just’ hearing.

The ‘internationalist’ party politicians and diplomats in Japan proved to be unable to counter or resist the arguments of the ultra-nationalists and, as a result, their influence began to be eclipsed. As a result of Manchuria and its own failed economic policies, in December 1931 the Minseito government, with Shidehara as foreign minister, fell from power and was replaced by a Seiyukai administra­tion led by Tsuyoshi Inukai. However, in an atmosphere of increasing political violence, Inukai also failed to appease the Right, and on 15 May 1932 was assassinated by a group of ultra-nationalist naval cadets. After Inukai’s death the emperor’s advisers judged that the political parties could no longer ensure stability and he therefore appointed a ‘national unity’ administration under Admiral Makoto Saito. From this point until 1945, although the Diet would continue to scrutinize legislation, there were to be no party governments. With the reduction of the influence of the party politicians, the army asserted itself as the dominant voice in government, and Japan moved towards an explicit rejection of the post­war order, including withdrawal from the League of Nations in March 1933 and the rejection of arms control.