Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan

by Herbert P. Bix

  This policy shift came when army headquarters in Tokyo was trying to restrain the colonial army from invading northern Manchuria, risking a clash with Soviet forces. On November 5 Hirohito made a partial, special delegation of his authority to Chief of the General Staff Kanaya, allowing him to decide on “small matters” concerning troop operations and tactics. During the next three weeks, while the Kwantung Army moved by rail through northern Manchuria, Kanaya used that special authority on five separate occasions to check actions by the field army.20

  Meanwhile, at the urging of U.S. Secretary of State Stimson, the League council had invoked the Kellogg-Briand Pact against both China and Japan. Over the objection of the Japanese delegate, the council then passed a moral resolution setting a time limit of November 16 for Japan to withdraw its troops from the occupied areas.21 Foreign criticism of the aggression mounted, and the Japanese public, led on by the press, radio, entertainment industry, and the Imperial Military Reservists Association, rallied to the Kwantung Army and denounced both China and the West. When Uchida Ksai, president of the South Manchurian Railway Company, came to Tokyo to promote the establishment of a new Chinese regime in Manchuria in accordance with the ideas of the Kwantung Army, crowds greeted him enthusiastically.

  Faced with the Kwantung Army’s deep distrust of party government and its inflexible determination to bring both northern Manchuria and Inner Mongolia under Japanese control, the senior generals in Tokyo yielded to the wishes of their subordinates and withdrew their support for a southern Manchuria regime. While the emperor was participating in grand maneuvers at Kumamoto, the Kwantung Army penetrated the population centers in north Manchuria. Then, suddenly, after a week of offensive operations, the main force entrained for the south and moved toward Chinchou, far from the railway zone, where about 115,000 Chinese troops were based.22

  Emperor Hirohito now acted decisively through Chief of Staff Kanaya and Army Minister Minami, stopping the field army from launching a ground attack on Chinchou, though only for a short period of time. Nevertheless, when the high command in Tokyo endorsed the Kwantung Army’s idea of establishing “independent” Chinese regimes in all three provinces of Manchuria so that Japanese forces could be positioned in the north to block any future Soviet invasion, neither the emperor nor the court group raised objections. On November 23, Shidehara sent a mendacious message to the Associated Press of New York, placing responsibility not only for starting the incident but also for the occupation of Tsitsihar and Harbin in north Manchuria squarely on the Chinese. “Japanese troops were not in the railway zone as ornaments,” he declared. “When the Chinese attacked, they could not but perform the duty for which they were there—namely, to repel the attack and prevent its repetition.”23

  With the Chinchou affair weathered for the time being, the attention of the court group shifted to a political crisis at home. In March 1931, and again in October, radical officers on the General Staff, members of Col. Hashimoto Kingor’s secret Cherry Blossom Society, had decided to simplify their problems by overthrowing the government.24 Hashimoto’s March plans were discovered; the conspirators were arrested. When Baron Harada learned of the March incident, he concluded that the Manchurian crisis was “the opening act of an army coup d’état,” which “has made some military officers firmly believe that because they succeeded in Manchuria, they will succeed at home.”25 When the army tried to cover up the October plot, Nara, Suzuki, and Chief of Staff Kanaya reported the incident to the emperor. On November 2 Nara gave Hirohito a more comprehensive written report.26 But neither Hirohito nor any of his senior generals demanded punishment for the conspirators, who as a consequence were treated leniently: they were let out of detention and their crimes quickly forgotten.

  The October conspiracy and Hirohito’s weak response to it undermined the Wakatsuki cabinet’s effort to control the army. As for the court group, they were now persuaded that nothing in Manchuria could be so important as preventing a domestic crisis that could bring down the monarchy and the entire Meiji political system. More particularly the October affair initiated open factional conflict between two groups of Army Staff College graduates. One, the Imperial Way faction, or Kodo-ha, comprised Gens. Araki Sadao, Mazaki Jinzabur, and Obata Toshishir and the “young officers” who supported them. Contemporaries labeled their opponents—a much more amorphous grouping—the Control faction, or Tsei-ha, and included within it Gens. Nagata Tetsuzan, Hayashi Senjur, Tj Hideki, and others of high rank, plus their young-officer supporters. Both groups aimed to establish “military dictatorship” under the emperor and promote aggression abroad. The Kodo-ha would use a coup d’état to achieve that aim. The Tsei-ha, though not averse to assassination and intimidation, leaned more toward legal reform of the government.

  In terms of strategic doctrine the Kodo-ha considered the Soviet Union to be Japan’s main enemy. They emphasized military and national “spirit” over material force, a principle that had become army doctrine after the Russo-Japanese War. The Tsei-ha, on the other hand, gave priority to military modernization and the establishment of a “national defense state,” a term borrowed from Nazi Germany. Tsei-ha officers were aware that modern war had become a confrontation between whole societies requiring calculations of total national power. War against both the United States and the Soviet Union would require the technological upgrading of the army and navy, the modernization of industry, and the spiritual mobilization of the entire Japanese nation.27

  As the Manchurian Incident unfolded, the conflict between these two loose groupings, which differed mainly over means, not ends, intensified and became a permanent feature of Japanese politics throughout the 1930s.

  I

  It is fair to say that through 1931 Hirohito had less ruled than presided over his people, and that his performance had been dilatory, inconsistent, and self-contradictory. He had asserted his authority at petty moments; at more serious ones, he had caved in to insubordinate army officers. More aware of Japan’s economic dependency on the West than the staff officers who had engineered the Manchurian Incident, he had worried about diplomatic isolation and economic sanctions, but never once said, publicly or privately, that the Manchurian action of the army had been wrong. Instead, with excessive tolerance, he ratified each expansion of the action while pampering and refusing to punish senior officers who had committed criminal acts of insubordination. For young officers throughout the army and navy, the message went out that the emperor’s main concern was success; obedience to the central command in Tokyo was secondary. Signaling to the plotters and advocates of a “Shwa restoration” that his priorities were not always those of his advisers, Hirohito made further acts of military insubordination more likely—a consequence he certainly did not intend.

  Prime Minister Wakatsuki resigned on December 11, 1931. He had failed to control the army, to contain the Depression, and, most vitally, to maintain the backing of the court group. The Manchurian Incident now entered a second stage. The court officials conferred and decided that the more chauvinistic Seiykai, then a minority party in both the Diet and the prefectural assemblies, should form the next cabinet. Inukai Tsuyoshi, president of the Seiykai, had sided with the opponents of the London Naval Treaty in 1930 and later had affirmed the legitimacy of the Manchurian Incident. He had also publicly rejected the League of Nations’ recommendations on Manchuria and declared (in a phrase that recurs throughout the whole history of twentieth-century Japanese diplomacy) that Japan should “escape from the diplomacy of apology” and develop a “new, more autonomous road.”28

  Aware of Inukai’s indulgence of the military regarding Manchuria, the court group instructed Saionji to discuss with him the terms of his appointment, which were to include avoidance of any radical changes in either foreign or domestic economic policy. This Saionji did, late on the afternoon of December 12, after having conferred with Makino, Suzuki, Ichiki, and the emperor. Four days later Inukai secured Hirohito’s permission for a cabinet composed of discordant factions, w
ith Mori Tsutomu as chief secretary, Lieutenant General Araki as army minister, and the more liberal Takahashi as finance minister.29

  On becoming prime minister Inukai immediately ended Japan’s two-year adherence to the gold-standard exchange system on which the free flow of commodities and loan capital had been based during much of the 1920s. With this action Japan joined Britain and other powers that had begun to pursue divergent—and defensive—economic recovery policies that undermined international trust. Next Inukai requested the emperor’s permission to dispatch two battalions to Tientsin and a brigade to Manchuria, where since early December Kwantung Army troops had been massing for a ground assault on Chinchou. On December 23, as Hirohito was instructing Inukai, then serving as his foreign minister, “to adopt a policy of not attacking Chinchou” and “to maintain international trust,” the Kwantung Army moved on the city.30 The United States, Britain, and France warned Japan that its actions contravened the Nine-Power Treaty. On December 27 Nara noted that the emperor had again cautioned Inukai about “the impact that the Chinchou incident is having on international affairs.”31 Nevertheless the Kwantung Army proceeded to occupy Chinchou, worsening the strain in Japanese-American relations.

  Once the Rising Sun Flag flew over occupied Chinchou, however, Hirohito put aside his misgivings. On January 4, 1932, he took the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of Meiji’s Imperial Rescript to Soldiers and Sailors to issue his own rescript calling on all military men to meditate on its meaning—in effect, a very mild admonition. Four days later, perhaps on the recommendation of Prince Kan’in, he issued an imperial rescript that praised the insubordinate Kwantung Army for having fought courageously in “self-defense” against Chinese “bandits” and for having “strengthened the authority of the emperor’s army [kgun].” Widely disseminated nationwide through the radio and the newspapers, the rescript quieted dissent and nudged people toward war.32 Needless to say it did nothing to support Inukai’s efforts to restore discipline in the army.

  Moreover, over the next few years Hirohito granted awards and promotions to approximately three thousand military and civil officials for meritorious service in connection with the Manchurian war and the Shanghai Incident, both of which were tremendously popular at home, and the opposite abroad. Kwantung Army Commander Honj, Army Minister Araki, and Navy Minister Osumi Mineo were awarded the title of baron.33 Hirohito’s public support of the army’s campaign in Manchuria fits right in with his failure to punish them even when they disobeyed orders.

  Between late January and March 1932, the Japan-China conflict spread to Shanghai, and condemnation of Japan continued to grow in the West. When a puppet Manchukuo government under Pu Yi, the last Ch’ing Dynasty emperor (from 1908 to 1912), was established, Inukai deliberately withheld recognition from the new state. Heading a divided party cabinet, he governed with the help of the privy council and relied on emergency imperial edicts and emergency financial measures that flouted the Diet’s budgetary authority.34 Even after his Seiykai Party had won overwhelmingly in the February general election, Inukai still faced intense opposition in his efforts to maintain the status quo at home as the court had instructed him to do. Right-wing extremists and terrorists repeatedly assailed him verbally, while the leading reformer in his own party, Mori, sought to break up the party system itself and ally with the military to create a new, more authoritarian political order.

  Early in Inukai’s tenure the army underscored its ties to the imperial bloodline by promoting Prince Kan’in, the senior member of the (extended) imperial family, to chief of the Army General Staff, thereby also eliminating from the high command General Kanaya, a key member of the Ugaki faction. The navy responded by bringing to the fore, as Chief of the Navy General Staff, Prince Fushimi, who had recently led a purge of supporters of the London Naval Treaty. The advancement of these two hard-liners signified a decline in the authority of the service ministers. The rival services could now use their respective princely “authority figures” to influence the emperor and to control their forces on the Asian continent.35

  During the five-month life of the Inukai cabinet, Hirohito became a publicly active, voluntary participant in the incident, which he had definitely not been at its start. His main priorities at the beginning of 1932 were to maintain the throne’s independence from the political parties but not from the suddenly popular military, while mobilizing public support for the Manchurian operation. He also wanted to ensure continuity of both government policy and top personnel. Consequently, when a Korean nationalist tried to assassinate him as he was returning in his horse-drawn carriage from a military review (the Sakuradamon incident of January 8), the emperor insisted that the cabinet stay on rather than resign en masse, as would have been customary.36 At that time Inukai had held power for less than a month. So Hirohito downplayed the seriousness of the incident and avoided any direct, public expression of his private feelings about terrorism, as Kido advised. An indirect, further downplay was provided by press reports that he had bestowed “an imperial gift of three and a half kilograms of carrots” to two horses injured in the bomb-throwing attack.37

  Meanwhile the Japanese takeover of Manchuria and Inner Mongolia continued without meeting military opposition from either China or the Soviet Union. On December 31, 1931, the Soviet government, deeply disturbed by Japanese aggression in the vicinity of the Soviet Far East, where the border with northern Manchuria was ill defined, offered Japan a nonaggression pact. Hirohito’s reaction to the Soviet offer (or if he even knew of it) is not known, but the Inukai cabinet simply ignored it. Formal Japanese rejection came a year later in December of 1932. Nevertheless Stalin kept the offer of a pact open until late 1933, by which time he judged the Japanese threat to have subsided temporarily.38

  On February 16, 1932, the Kwantung Army command convened a meeting in Mukden of leading Chinese collaborators to establish a Northeast Administrative Committee. The next day that committee declared the independence of the new state of Manchuria.39 On March 1 Manchukuo was formally proclaimed. The Kwantung command, confident that the Inukai cabinet would implement the army’s policies, pressed Tokyo to recognize the new state immediately. Eleven days later the Inukai cabinet did endorse separating Manchuria and Inner Mongolia from China and setting up an “independent” state; on the all-important question of legal recognition of the new entity, however, Inukai delayed.

  On this matter Inukai was at odds with the military; his chief secretary, Mori; and those in the Foreign Ministry who were prepared to put the obligation to Manchukuo above all other international duties and alignments. And while Inukai struggled to contain the radical faction in the army, he was not happy with Japan’s worsening relationship with the United States, on which it depended for markets, technology, capital, and raw materials.

  The administration of U.S. President Herbert Hoover hardened its view of Japan right after Inukai approved the army’s occupation of Chinchou. Secretary of State Stimson then took a fateful step that determined American policy toward Japan for the remainder of the 1930s. On January 7, 1932, he ratcheted up the pressure by sending formal notes to Japan and China declaring that the U.S. government could not recognize the legality of any political change in Manchuria if it was made by force from Japan.

  II

  The effectiveness of Stimson’s nonrecognition principle depended entirely on whether the Hoover administration was willing and able to force Japan to give up Manchuria. When, three weeks later, the Sino-Japanese conflict spread to Shanghai, where the Chinese had organized a highly successful boycott of Japanese goods, and Britain and the United States had important commercial interests, Washington could do little more than protest faintly. Even when Stimson implied, in a public letter to the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on February 23, 1932, that the United States might start rebuilding its fleet if Japan continued to violate the open-door principles in China, Tokyo ignored the threat.40 As the emperor and the Inukai cabinet well knew, with the Great Depres
sion worsening, neither Washington nor London was prepared to do anything very serious about Manchuria.

  Tensions in Shanghai had begun after Japanese residents took umbrage at a Chinese newspaper article, on January 9, decrying the failure of the assassination attempt on the Shwa emperor. Nine days later army Maj. Tanaka Rykichi, hoping to divert foreign attention from the army’s operations in northern Manchuria, instigated an attack by a Chinese mob on a group of Japanese Nichiren priests.41 The Imperial Navy found this incident a tempting chance to demonstrate its prowess to the army. The Shanghai fleet was quickly reinforced and on January 28, 1932, marines under Rear Adm. Shiozawa Kichi went ashore and that night challenged China’s Nineteenth Route Army—a 33,500-man force stationed in the vicinity of the International Settlement, which ran along the waterfront. In the ensuing battle the Chinese gave the Japanese marines a good thrashing.42 Unable to retrieve the situation despite reinforcements from the fleet, the navy had to call on the army for help. Inukai secured the emperor’s permission to order troops to Shanghai. But the Chinese army still held firm and again inflicted heavy losses. The high command in Tokyo then organized a full-fledged Shanghai Expeditionary Force under General Shirakawa and reinforced it with two full divisions.43 Intense fighting ensued; the Chinese finally fell back, and Japan was able to announce a face-saving cease-fire, followed by an armistice, negotiated with British participation on May 5, 1932, which also ended the Chinese boycott.

  The Shanghai Incident should have awakened Hirohito to the recklessness and aggressiveness of his senior admirals—the very officers he and the court group regarded as sophisticated, cosmopolitan men of the world. Driven by service rivalry, they had deliberately sought a confrontation with Chinese forces in the heartland of China, knowing that problems with the United States and Britain were sure to result. Equally important, this incident was an unlearned lesson for both military services. Neither army nor navy drew any new conclusions from the heavy losses they incurred in this first large battle with a modern Chinese army. They continued as before—utterly contemptuous of the Chinese military and people, whom they saw as a rabble of ignorant, hungry peasants, lacking racial or national consciousness, that could easily be vanquished by one really hard blow.44 Hirohito himself may have held that view privately. But the emperor was more aware than his commanders of Japan’s vulnerability to economic blockade. Going out of his way, he told Shirakawa to settle the Shanghai fighting quickly and return to Japan.45 At Shanghai, Hirohito acted decisively to control events; in rural Manchuria, on the other hand, he was pleased to watch passively as his empire expanded.