pointed interim prime minister. Takahashi had served with distinction in
several key positions in which he had resolved complicated prob lems in the
economy and government finance, but he had neither the skill nor the in-
terest in po liti cal bargaining. Whereas Hara had known the strengths, weak-
nesses, and the needs of all the members of his party in the Diet, Taka-
hashi could not even remember their names.
On September 1, 1923, Tokyo and Yokohama were struck by a major
earthquake that in terms of death and destruction ranks as one of the worst
natu ral disasters in human history. More than 100,000 died and 500,000
homes were destroyed. Recovery efforts occupied Japan for years. The na-
tion’s economy, already suffering from a postwar depression, fell into a fur-
ther slump, requiring further economic retrenchment and resulting in debts
that weighed on the government bud get for the remainder of the de cade.
. 219 .
china and japan
In dramatic contrast to the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami of 2011,
when the Japa nese people amazed the world with their self- control and dis-
cipline, after the 1923 earthquake panicked gangs of young Japa nese vigi-
lantes attacked and murdered thousands of Korean residents. The massacre
seems to have been sparked by false rumors of a Korean revolt, and the ram-
page forced the government to declare martial law. The event stands as
another black mark on Japan’s relations with its Asian neighbors.
Fi nally, after three years of coping with economic and natu ral disasters,
in 1924 a “ Grand Co ali tion” of three major po liti cal parties in the Diet joined
forces to support the appointment of Kato Takaaki as prime minister. Partly
in an effort to overcome his reputation as the author of the Twenty- One
Demands, Kato appointed Shidehara Kijuro as his foreign minister. Shi-
dehara, after his role at the Washington Conference and his tenure as am-
bassador to the United States, was to continue the foreign policies started
in the Hara administration—an approach that became known as “Shide-
hara diplomacy.” In his first speech in the Diet, Shidehara declared: “Japan
will not interfere with China’s domestic politics. Japan will not take any ac-
tion that ignores the legitimate positions of China. At the same time, we in
Japan believe China will not take any action that ignores the legitimate po-
sitions of Japan.” After taking office, Shidehara immediately contacted
Wellington Koo, who was guiding foreign policy in Beijing. He explained
his policy of noninterference, to which Koo replied, in En glish: “In the
spirit of Sino- Japanese friendship, the Chinese government will do its best
to protect Japan’s interests.”
Shidehara was the first career diplomat to be appointed foreign min-
ister. He was not a politician, and in the prewar period he had never run
for po liti cal office. Later, immediately after World War II, he would serve
briefly as prime minister and would have a key influence on Article 9, de-
nouncing the use of war, in Japan’s postwar Constitution. Both Shidehara
and Prime Minister Kato were married to daughters of Iwasaki Yataro, the
founder of the Mitsubishi Zaibatsu, so they were brothers- in- law and
were well connected in the business community. Perhaps for this reason,
Shidehara usually couched his China policy in terms of business inter-
ests, stating that Japan sought markets in China, not territory.
For military policy, the impor tant member of the Kato cabinet was the
minister of the army, General Ugaki Kazushige. Just as Shidehara repre-
. 220 .
Po liti cal Disorder and the Road to War, 1911–1937
sented a new era of diplomacy, Ugaki came to represent a new era of mili-
tary policy. His view of military strategy was heavi ly affected by World
War I. Ugaki, who had served two terms as military attaché in Germany
and was an expert on German military princi ples, had been shocked to see
Germany’s defeat. He also observed that Japan had missed a full genera-
tion of military technology. The lesson Ugaki took away from World War
I was the concept of “total war,” meaning the military and civilian indus-
tries should both be mobilized on a nationwide scale.
Because Ugaki knew that money was tight, his first move as army min-
ister was to decrease the army by four divisions. This policy, the Ugaki gun-
shuku (Ugaki disarmament), led to a reduction of 34,000 soldiers. The idea
was to use the savings from this troop reduction to begin investing in
modern military equipment. The reduction in the number of posts was ex-
tremely unpop u lar within the army, and over time it helped fuel the growth
of radical, insubordinate factions.
Ugaki called Shidehara’s policy of noninterference naïve, mainly because
he knew that in northern China the local Japa nese military units were
heavi ly involved with the Chinese warlords, mainly to protect Japan’s inter-
ests in Manchuria. For Ugaki, Manchuria was vital to his total- war strategy,
which required Japan to be self- sufficient in iron ore and coal. Over time,
he saw Manchuria as impor tant to the build-up of heavy industry, such as
the Anshan steel mills and, eventually, factories for manufacturing trucks
and army vehicles with the steel from Anshan. Ugaki’s position is clearly
stated in an entry in his diary at the time: “Regardless of what anyone may
say, we absolutely cannot concede our existing position in Manchuria . . .
[and] there is no chance that we will consider such matters as a revision of
the Twenty- One Demands, the retrocession of the Leased Territories, or
the return of the Mantetsu.”
No foreign policy was more impor tant to Japan than its policy toward
China. But after the deaths of Yamagata and Hara, the divisions between
the China policies of the Foreign Ministry and the military became in-
creasingly pronounced. Shidehara’s policy of noninterference, which was
in line with the Washington Conference framework, was easily ignored by
the military. At the same time, a split occurred in the army. From the time
of Meiji, the responsibility for supervising army affairs had been divided
between the Ministry of the Army and the General Staff Headquarters.
. 221 .
china and japan
Technically, the heads of both of these departments reported separately
to the emperor. When Yamagata was alive, he and his disciples had bridged
this division, but now that he was gone the only link in the army’s divided
chain of command was the emperor. Army troops stationed in China, such
as the Kwantung Army and the garrison forces, reported to the General
Staff Headquarters, not to the Ministry of the Army, and their orders
came from a chain of command that was not linked to the cabinet. The
inability of the Ministry of the Army to control developments in Man-
churia would soon bring prob lems.
Disorder in the Yangtze Delta and Growing
Chinese Nationalism
Even though China was deeply fragmented in the early 1920s, Sun Yat- sen,
much to the surprise of many, a
nd with the backing of Soviet strongmen,
was beginning to build a following. In November 1921, after exile in Japan
and two years spent hiding out in Shanghai, Sun returned to Guangzhou,
where he linked up with a local warlord in an effort to establish a power
base. This alliance proved to be unstable, so Sun, using Guangzhou as his
base, struck an alliance with Stalin and the Soviet Comintern. Stalin saw
more hope in Sun than in the fledgling Chinese Communist Party, so
he sent Mikhail Borodin to help or ga nize the Guomin dang and also to
help set up the Huangpu (Whampoa) Military Acad emy to train officers
who would form the core of a national army that might unify China. The
commandant of the military acad emy was Chiang Kai- shek, who would
later become Sun Yat- sen’s successor, and one of the po liti cal commissars
at the acad emy was Zhou Enlai (see Biographies of Key Figures), who, as
a Communist, would become Chiang’s po liti cal enemy. Sun’s alliance with
the Soviets was anathema to most of his Japa nese supporters, and in No-
vember 1924 Sun made a desperate trip to Japan where, in a famous speech
in Kobe, he tried to make a claim for pan- Asianism, a theme that had al-
ways resonated with his Japa nese friends in the past, but this time he tried
to make the case that the Soviets were really Asians and stood with China
and Japan against the Western imperialists. Sun’s Japa nese supporters were
mainly entrepreneurs and Asian nationalists who tended to be anti-
. 222 .
Po liti cal Disorder and the Road to War, 1911–1937
Bolshevik, so this new policy had no appeal. More impor tant, most of
Japan’s top military leaders were strongly anti- Communist, and they began
to see the Guomin dang, then allied with the Communists, as a potential
threat.
In 1925 Sun went to Beijing, where he hoped to forge an alliance with
the northern warlords, but on the trip he fell ill. He was diagnosed with
cancer and he died shortly thereafter. The Guomin dang splintered into sev-
eral factions. Chiang Kai- shek became the leader of one of the strongest
factions because of his control of the army.
Labor unrest began to become an issue in the factories of Shanghai. The
first major strike took place in a Japanese- owned mill in February 1925 as a
protest against the firing of forty Chinese workers who were suspected of
being union organizers. Within weeks, the movement spread and more than
50,000 workers in Shanghai were on strike. Some of the strikes were re-
ported to have been or ga nized by the Communist Party, a rumor that con-
firmed the fear held by both Japa nese and British employers that proletarian
movements would come to China. In 1925 at least three Japa nese man ag ers
were killed by strikers, and on May 15, a Chinese striker named Gu Zheng-
hong was shot by a police officer at a Japa nese mill.
On May 30, a group of demonstrators, including many students, gath-
ered at a police station on the main shopping street, Nanjing Road, in
Shanghai’s International Settlement to protest the killing of Gu Zhenghong
and also the arrest of some of the Chinese strikers. The British captain of
the station, who should have been on duty, was at the nearby racetrack. A
skeleton crew of British, Sikh, and Chinese police officers confronted the
crowd of demonstrators, and at one point one of them fired his pistol di-
rectly into the crowd. With that, the other officers started firing, resulting
in four deaths and many injuries. The shooting set off rioting all over
Shanghai, mainly directed against the British.
In the anti- imperialism movement, the date of this confrontation,
May 30, became a symbol inspiring Chinese patriotism. Mikhail Borodin,
the Soviet adviser to the Guomin dang, regarded the May Thirtieth Inci-
dent as a “gift” from the gods. Even today, a May Thirtieth monument stands
in People’s Park in Shanghai, not far from the police station where the inci-
dent occurred.
. 223 .
china and japan
Two years later, in April 1927, Chiang Kai- shek suddenly started to purge
the Communists from the Guomin dang, and he embarked on what became
known as the Northern Expedition— a military campaign to take over
Nanjing and, eventually, Beijing. Knowing that there might be trou ble,
the British sent a fleet of heavy cruisers and destroyers to Nanjing. When
Chiang’s troops entered the city, retreating members of the Beiyang Army
started attacking the ships and foreign consulates in the city. This sparked
riots, mainly aimed at foreigners. The British panicked and requested that
Shidehara commit more Japa nese troops to the fighting. Normally Shide-
hara would have tried to cooperate with the British, but in this case he felt
that an increase in the Japa nese military force would only make the situa-
tion worse, and he suspected the incidents were being carried out by Com-
munist agents who were trying to damage Chiang Kai- shek’s image with
the foreign community. He thus committed only a bare minimum of 300
soldiers to protect Japa nese citizens in Nanjing and encouraged the British
to use restraint.
Even though the vio lence was directed mostly at the British, a few Japa-
nese citizens were injured. Photojournalism had become popu lar in Japan,
and full- page photos of Japa nese women and children being menaced by
the Chinese were common in the Japa nese press. Thus, just as the May 1925
incidents aroused Chinese passions when the British shot into the crowd
in Shanghai, the 1927 riots in Nanjing aroused anti- Chinese passions in
Japan. Shidehara diplomacy became another name for being “weak on
China.”
Tanaka Giichi, a retired general and chairman of the Seiyukai, the op-
position party, was appointed prime minister of Japan in April 1927. Tanaka
dissolved the Diet in January 1928 and called for the first election under the
new universal manhood suffrage law. Tanaka ran a vigorous campaign op-
posing Shidehara’s weak China policy. Voter turnout was high, and Tanaka’s
party won a majority of the seats in the Diet, partly because of Tanaka’s talk
of “getting tough on China.” Although Tanaka was from a diff er ent po liti cal
party than the Kato cabinet, he had worked closely with General Ugaki on
the strategy to modernize the military, and his army minister, General Shi-
rakawa, was Ugaki’s classmate and close friend. So when Tanaka became
prime minister, the basic military policy toward China, particularly the
policy to defend Japan’s rights in the north, did not change.
. 224 .
Po liti cal Disorder and the Road to War, 1911–1937
Tanaka Giichi, Chiang Kai- shek, and the Failure in Ji’nan
In December 1927 Chiang Kai- shek went to Japan and met with Tanaka
Giichi. He was about to restart his Northern Expedition to occupy Beijing
in his effort to unify a large portion of China for the first time since 1911.
He wanted Japan’s cooperation for the expedition, and since it would take
him through Shandong, he particularly wanted to avoid a conflict with the
Japa nese troops
there. At the time, Beijing was under the control of Zhang
Zuolin, the warlord from Manchuria who was working with the Japa nese,
and Chiang hoped the Japa nese would help get Zhang to go back to Man-
churia. Another purpose of Chiang’s trip to Japan was to meet Soong Mei-
ling, then in Japan with her mother, and propose marriage.
Chiang Kai- shek was accompanied on his trip to Japan by his longtime
ally Zhang Qun. The two had been close friends since they were students
together in Japan in 1908, and they had worked closely ever since. Zhang
Qun had served as mayor of Shanghai, foreign minister, and premier. Later,
when Chiang fled to Taiwan, Zhang would serve as his secretary in the of-
fice of the president. Chiang Kai- shek could speak some Japa nese, but
Zhang Qun was fluent and was particularly helpful in matters that involved
the Japa nese. During their visit to Japan, they met with an impressive list
of influential friends, including Inukai Tsuyoshi, later prime minister;
Shibusawa Eiichi, an influential business leader; Yamamoto Jotaro, a Mitsui
executive and later president of Mantetsu; Uchida Ryohei, a right- wing pan-
Asianist; and Nagaoka Gaishi, author of the 1909 classic military manual
and division commander of the Thirteenth Division, in which Chiang Kai-
shek had served in 1910.
The meeting between Chiang and Tanaka took place at Tanaka’s home
and lasted for two hours. Only four people were pre sent: Chiang, Zhang,
Tanaka, and Major General Sato Yasunosuke, a China specialist who had
already been giving Tanaka daily briefings on Chinese affairs. Tanaka was
pleased to hear of the pro gress toward unification and the purge of the Com-
munists. However, he encouraged Chiang to consolidate his position in
the south before moving toward the north, advice that Chiang did not heed.
Chiang was aware that Japa nese troops were located in Shandong prov-
ince (in Qingdao and Ji’nan), and he wanted to avoid a repeat of the mas-
sive conflict between China and the foreign community that took place in
. 225 .
china and japan
Nanjing in April 1927. Chiang assured Tanaka that his troops would do
more to protect Japa nese lives and property when they passed through
Shandong than they had done in Nanjing.
At the time, there were some 2,000 Japa nese residents living in Ji’nan.
China and Japan Page 35
