the importance of planes in a future war, he focused particularly on aircraft
production.
When radicals in the Japa nese Army killed several members of the Japa-
nese cabinet in an attempted coup on February 26, 1936, Ishiwara, who was
immediately notified, rushed to the military police headquarters, where he
played a major role in organ izing the government response and mobilizing
the troops to put down the rebellion. At a meeting at the headquarters,
when many officials were reluctant to send in troops to crush the rebellion,
Ishiwara said: “The army will wait until noon of February 28. Then it will
begin its assault to crush the rebellion.” Ishiwara gave specific orders re-
garding what should be done, and by force of his personality, not his posi-
tion, his orders were followed. Yet many of those who took part in the at-
tempted coup earlier had been among his followers.
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Though Ishiwara played a central role in the Manchurian Incident in
1931, by 1937 he was vehemently opposed to expanding the war south of
Manchuria into China. He believed that Japan should focus on building up
its economy to prepare for a pos si ble war with either the Soviet Union or
the United States. In 1937 Ishiwara felt that Chinese nationalism was much
stronger than it had been in 1931, and hence he was prepared to cooperate
with Chiang Kai- shek.
After the July 7 Marco Polo Bridge Incident in 1937 that set off the China
War, Ishiwara, who at the time was stationed at the military headquarters
in Ichigaya, urged restraint. In August, when Chiang sent his troops to
Shanghai, Ishiwara felt that Japan should withdraw both its troops and its
civilians to avoid an all- out clash with China.
To refrain from becoming involved in a major confrontation with China,
Ishiwara said that Prime Minister Konoe Fumimaro should go to China
to negotiate with Chiang Kai- shek, but after some consideration, Konoe
de cided against it. Nevertheless, Ishiwara continued to speak out against
the China War, even though he had already lost the support of his former
colleagues, whom he publicly criticized for their moral corruption. In Sep-
tember 1937 he was removed from the General Staff. That fall Ishiwara re-
turned to Manchuria as vice chief of staff of the Kwantung Army. Critical
of the prerogatives enjoyed by Kwantung Army officials, he promoted ra-
cial equality. But by late 1938, his acerbic personality and his criticism of his
colleagues had alienated him from other leaders in Manchuria, so he ar-
ranged to return to Japan.
Back in Tokyo in 1938, Ishiwara advocated forming a federation of equal
Asian nations. On March 1, 1941, he officially retired, whereupon he became
a lecturer at Ritsumeikan University. He regarded the Pacific War as a di-
sastrous error and even criticized himself for not having done more to stop
its escalation. He also privately criticized the attack on Pearl Harbor, and
he predicted Japan would lose the war because it had not done enough to
strengthen its economic base to match that of the United States. After
leaving the military, Ishiwara had serious doubts about the path Japan was
pursuing, but his accounts were not always consistent. He lacked his former
confidence and became dispirited. In September 1942 he resigned from
Ritsumeikan University and returned to his home area in Yamagata. After
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Biographies of Key Figures
the war he was called before the International Military Tribunal. Because
he was ill, the tribunal allowed him to be tried in Yamagata, where he was
purged but not punished. Ishiwara Kanji died on August 18, 1949.
For further reading, see Mark R. Peattie, Ishiwara Kanji and Japan's
Confrontation with the West (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,
1975).
Ito Hirobumi, 1841–1909
As head of the Privy Council that drafted Japan’s 1888–1889 Constitution,
the first prime minister under the new Constitution, and the leading ad-
viser to Emperor Meiji, Ito Hirobumi was the single most impor tant ar-
chitect of the Meiji reforms. He not only helped shape Japan’s po liti cal struc-
ture but also served as prime minister four times, from 1885 to 1888, 1892 to
1896, for six months in 1898, and from 1900 to 1901. Fluent in En glish even
before the Meiji Restoration, Ito played a key role in Meiji- period negotia-
tions with Western, Chinese, Korean, and Rus sian representatives. In
Japan he was known for his wise strategic judgment about the nation’s long-
term interests and his moderate views about foreign policy, but in China
he was regarded as a symbol of the harsh mea sures imposed on China at
the end of the Sino- Japanese War. In Korea he was hated for imposing Japa-
nese rule, and the Korean assassin An Chung- gun who ultimately shot
him in Harbin in 1909 has been celebrated as a great national hero. Ito’s
father was born on a farm but he was adopted by a samurai. Like other sam-
urai of the Choshu domain who played key roles during the Meiji period,
Ito attended the informal village school of Yoshida Shoin, a dedicated
teacher who was obsessed with any and all military threats to Japan and
was ready to go anywhere to learn more about military issues.
In 1863, even before the Meiji Restoration, Ito was selected as a prom-
ising youth to go to England to study En glish and naval science. In 1870, he
was sent to the United States to study currency systems, and on his return
he became director of the Japa nese government’s Tax Division. He took part
in the Iwakura Mission, 1871–1873, after which he was appointed minister of
public works. In 1881 he became a leading advocate of developing a constitu-
tion in Japan. In preparation, he spent eigh teen months in Germany studying
under leading constitutional scholars. While working on the new constitu-
tion, Ito also wrote a draft of the Imperial House hold Law, which provided
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Biographies of Key Figures
land and funding to the imperial house hold so that it could maintain its
economic in de pen dence from the government. In 1885, when a modern cab-
inet system was introduced in the national government, Ito became Japan’s
first prime minister. The Japa nese Constitution entered into effect in 1889,
and in the following year Japan elected members to its first Diet.
In 1893 the Japa nese Diet, Asia’s first parliament, opened debate on an
issue that Japan considered of great importance— revocation of the unequal
treaties. As prime minister in 1894, Ito, with Foreign Minister Mutsu Mun-
emitsu, succeeded in convincing England to abolish extraterritoriality in
Japan. On several occasions Ito was Japan’s key negotiator with China’s Li
Hongzhang on Sino- Japanese issues, including the Treaty of Shimonoseki
in 1895 at the end of the Sino- Japanese War.
Ito believed that many party politicians were motivated by mere selfish
interests and were incapable of dealing objectively with the overall needs
of the country. He believed in a parliamentary system that allowed politi-
cians t
o express diff er ent views, but he was unwilling to grant them power
to make decisions. He had more re spect for bureaucrats, whom he consid-
ered to be more committed than politicians to overall national interests. But
he believed in po liti cal parties as a way to express diff er ent views, and from
1900 to 1903 he attempted to establish his own po liti cal party to support
the government. But he soon abandoned party politics to focus on issues
that he considered to be in the interest of the country over the long run.
In 1901 Ito went to Rus sia, where he proposed the idea of giving Rus sia
a dominant role in influencing policies in Manchuria; in exchange, Rus sia
would grant Japan dominance over policies in Korea. The Rus sians did not
agree, however, and three years later the Russo- Japanese War broke out.
Japan’s victory in that war gave it the control over Korean foreign policy
that Ito had sought.
From 1906 to 1909 Ito was Japan’s resident- general in Korea, where he
negotiated the details of Korea’s status as a Japa nese protectorate. In Japan
he was regarded as a moderate who hoped to compromise with China and
Korea to retain their goodwill. However, as a government spokesman, he
represented Japan’s expanding ambitions. When he was killed in Harbin in
1909, the Chinese as well as the Koreans cheered his assassination. In Japan,
the assassination strengthened support for strict Japa nese rule after Korea
was annexed in 1910.
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Biographies of Key Figures
For further reading, see Albert M. Craig, Choshu in the Meiji Restoration
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1961); Okazaki Hisahiko,
From Uraga to San Francisco: A Century of Japa nese Diplomacy, 1853–1952
(Tokyo: Japan Echo, 2007); Takii Kazuhiro, Ito Hirobumi: Japan’s First
Prime Minister and Father of the Meiji Constitution, trans. Takechi Manabu
(Abingdon, U.K.: Routledge, 2014).
Jiang Baili, 1882–1938
A Chinese military strategist, educator, and essayist, Jiang Baili had a deep
understanding of Japan. One of the first Chinese students to study in Japan,
Jiang graduated first in his class from Japan’s Military Officers Acad emy in
1906. After additional studies in Germany, he returned to China to become
president of the Baoding Military Acad emy during the presidency of Yuan
Shikai. As early as 1923 Jiang could foresee a coming Chinese conflict with
Japan, and he proposed a strategy of “long re sis tance,” which he believed
would enable China to prevail after a Japa nese invasion.
Jiang was born in a town near Hangzhou in Zhejiang province as part
of an extended family of prosperous landlords and scholars. His father was
one of nineteen children, but because he had been born deformed, he was
sent away from the family to be raised in a local temple. Jiang’s mother, a
self- educated orphan, devoted her life to the education of her precocious
son. Jiang had read the four classical Confucian texts by the age of four, and
he had particularly enjoyed reading heroic classics, such as Water Margin
and Romance of the Three Kingdoms. He lived a cultured life in a large family,
enjoying music, poetry, calligraphy, and the traditional arts.
At the time of the Sino- Japanese War, when Jiang was twelve years old,
he had already begun to take an interest in current events. He and his friends
read all the newspapers they could find, even though the papers would ar-
rive in his village one or two months late. He attended a school that later
became Hangzhou University and then, in 1901, he joined one of the first
groups of Chinese students to study in Japan. Several months after his
arrival in Japan, he met Liang Qichao and became a part- time editor for
one of Liang’s journals.
Like Liang Qichao and many other Chinese students, Jiang read Japa-
nese writers such as Fukuzawa Yukichi. Jiang was a prolific essayist, and he
wrote many essays on the evolution of nationalism in Eu rope and Japan.
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Biographies of Key Figures
For Jiang, Japan was the only country in Asia where nationalism had taken
root. But he also noted that the nationalism described by Fukuzawa and
other Japa nese writers was influenced by Herbert Spencer, who wrote about
the survival of the fittest and was prone to support national expansionism
against weaker countries.
At the military acad emy in Japan, Jiang’s fellow students included many
who would become se nior officers in the Japa nese Army, including Doihara
Kenji, a famous mastermind of Japan’s strategy in northern China; Oka-
mura Yasuji, general of the Northern China Expeditionary Army at the
time of Japan’s surrender in 1945; Itagaki Seijiro, a partner of Ishiwara Kanji
in planning the invasion of Manchuria in 1931; and Nagata Tetsuzan, who
graduated first in his class one year before Jiang. Jiang made frequent trips
back and forth to Japan in the 1920s and 1930s, and he usually met with his
former fellow students. In an essay about the 1935 assassination of a re-
spected friend, General Nagata Tetsuzan, Jiang warned his Japa nese col-
leagues that ju nior officers in Japan had become so disobedient that Japan
was no longer capable of developing a coherent military strategy.
When Jiang was head of the Baoding Military Acad emy under Yuan
Shikai, he grew extremely frustrated with the spread of corruption, partic-
ularly in the appointment of military officers and the se lection of students
at the acad emy, and also with the lack of higher- level support for his school,
and he attempted suicide in front of an assembly of cadets. Luckily, the bullet
he fired missed his heart and he was nursed back to health in a Japa nese
hospital near Beijing. The Japa nese nurse who cared for him, Sato Yato, told
him that he should study gaman (forbearance). He and the nurse fell in love
and married, and they became an especially devoted couple.
Like many Chinese students who studied in Japan, Jiang admired the
Japa nese, but at the same time he felt that Japan and China would clash at
some point in the future. After a trip with Liang Qichao to Eu rope, where
he analyzed the battles between Germany and France during World War
I, he returned to China to focus on analyzing Japan’s military capabilities
and devising strategies in case war should break out between China and
Japan. In 1929 Chiang Kai- shek had Jiang arrested because one of Jiang’s
former students had rebelled against Chiang. Jiang spent two years in prison,
unsure if he would even survive. His wife and daughters visited him daily.
In prison, Jiang spent his time listening to recordings of Beethoven and
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Biographies of Key Figures
Wagner, copying Buddhist sutras, and reading classical Chinese stories to
his daughters. He was released in 1931 in time to return to Japan before the
invasion of Manchuria.
Late in 1937, after the Japa nese had invaded China, Jiang wrote a book
entitled The Japa nese: A Foreigner’s Analy sis, which describes Japan’s
strengths and weaknesses. In it, he spells out his views on how the Chinese
could defeat the Japa nese through patient, long- term re sis tance. His book
became a bestseller and it is still available in Chinese. Jiang was called on to
give speeches that described his strategy of resisting the Japanese. On a
speaking tour in November 1938, he died of a heart attack.
For further reading, see Lu Yan, Re- understanding Japan: Chinese Per-
spectives, 1895–1945 (Honolulu: Association for Asian Studies and Univer-
sity of Hawai’i Press, 2004).
Li Hongzhang, 1823–1901
An extraordinarily talented official who enjoyed striking success, Li Hong-
zhang was a scholar, general, po liti cal leader, and man ag er of foreign rela-
tions. Standing over six feet tall, brimming with confidence, Li had the broad
perspective to realize how far behind China was, and he also had support
from the higher levels of government, enabling him to introduce the Self-
Strengthening Movement to promote China’s industrialization and mili-
tary development. At a time when many top Chinese leaders had no clear
vision for how to guide foreign policy, Li Hongzhang continued to study
foreign policy and to dominate foreign- policy decision making from 1870
to 1895, when he was branded as a traitor.
Li Hongzhang passed the jinshi degree, the highest- level imperial exam,
at the unusually young age of twenty- four, earning the third highest score
among 4,000 exam takers. Although he was a well- trained Confucian
scholar, a skilled calligrapher and poet, and was welcomed by scholars, by
the time he passed the examinations Li had de cided that he wanted to ac-
complish something in the real world so he gave up his scholarly pursuits.
Even before completing his examinations, Li became an apprentice to
Zeng Guofan, the most respected po liti cal and military leader of the era,
renowned for fighting and defeating the Taiping. Li’s father had passed
the examinations in the same group as Zeng. Zeng assigned Li to return to
his native province of Anhui to or ga nize and lead the local militia to fight
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Biographies of Key Figures
the Taiping. Zeng was impressed with reports of Li’s successes and invited
Li to serve on his personal staff. Within months, Zeng made Li his chief
secretary. Beginning in 1859 and for more than three years, Li was respon-
sible for drafting the documents and letters that Zeng Guofan sent to Bei-
China and Japan Page 67
