by Meira Chand
‘I’ve heard Manchuria talked about. I thought it was economic chat, about the need for their raw materials and markets for your products,’ Tilik replied. Hasegawa smiled and shook his head.
In the restaurant was a tank of live fish. Hasegawa leaned forward and discussed the merits of each creature intently with the cook. A crayfish was at last chosen and brought up in a short-handled net. It was laid twisting about on a block of wood. In a single movement the cook half flayed it as it writhed. It was placed on a plate before Hasegawa, garnished by a yellow flower. In spite of Hasegawa’s insistence, Tilik had declined the dish. Hasegawa began to eat, the creature still moving weakly before him. Tilik watched, sickened yet excited.
‘We need Manchuria, we cannot continue to grow without it,’ Hasegawa told him, wiping his mouth on a napkin, as he finished. ‘We also need it as a buffer state before Russia. Many people think Russia is our number one enemy, and we should Strike North and take Siberia. Others think we should Strike South at Western colonies in south-east Asia rather than first at Russia. There is a mystical prophecy that 1936 will be a turning point in Japanese history. To some it is the year to take China, and to others the year to take Siberia. Many people think if we Strike South it will end in a war with the United States. But they also must realise we can only successfully strike at Russia when we have at our disposal the manpower of Asia. Then it will be a proper war. The Asian races against the White race. In the future all war will be Racial War.’ Hasegawa’s eyes gleamed in animation. He turned to a plate of grilled chicken liver.
‘I remember the night Emperor Taisho died and the Crown Prince became the new Emperor,’ Hasegawa continued. ‘I was with Shumei Okawa and a crowd of young officers from the Emperor’s retinue. We were all drunk with celebration. Even then Okawa jumped up to drink a toast to the conquest of Manchuria. As we walked home we passed the Palace. In the moonlight we saw country folk praying for the new Emperor. We felt ecstatic, as if the conquest of Manchuria was already assured.’ Hasegawa had a faraway look in his eyes. Tilik shifted nervously. For the first time he grew fearful of the power around him. He sipped his beer, made a start with the chicken liver and let Hasegawa ramble.
‘Our people will spread and multiply across Asia. Those races we have conquered or shall conquer, will disappear eventually. The Koreans will be assimilated by us, the Chinese and Manchurians will be the victims of opium, the Russians ruined by vodka. The destiny of Japan has been outlined by the Gods. Asia could soon belong to us, if we take it carefully.’ Hasegawa stopped suddenly.
Tilik looked into his beer. These were the schemes of men to whom megalomania was plausible. He thought suddenly of Rash Bihari. The caution he exuded was a dull thing before Hasegawa’s charisma. Perhaps Rash Bihari was no more than an old man with scruples. Tilik could already see the reproof upon his face, and for a moment grew confused. Was Hasegawa a man to follow? He observed the empty shell of the crayfish, and felt a new twist of exhilaration. Hasegawa’s contemptuous eyelids flickered.
‘If you look at Japan on the map of the world, you will see our position is not without significance. We stand alone before the rest of Asia, advancing bravely into the Pacific towards America. At the same time we appear ready to defend Asia from attack. Geography has positioned us for a special destiny.’ Hasegawa finished the last of his beer and then turned abruptly to Tilik.
‘We will immediately be setting up our own administration in Mukden. Soon all Manchuria will be under our rule. Your cause serves our cause. A foreigner on the side of Japan, interested in Asian nationalism, has great use for us. In the new state we will need an ever more diligent intelligence. There is much you could do to help us that is impossible for a Japanese. For your own cause you would have extended territory, as I have explained to you.’
Tilik was taken aback. Hasegawa would not let him interrupt. ‘I am to go there myself, to assist in setting up the new administration. It is based on the principle of the unity of the five races living in Manchuria. Japanese, Koreans, Chinese, Mongols, and Manchus. I have been closely involved with the planning of this party structure. We have to guard against differences of ethnic opinion and anti-Japanese views. I have planned an anti-Western campaign which I feel will help unify people against a common enemy. If this could be spearheaded by a non-Japanese who is also an Asian, it would be a help. Will you do it?’
‘Yes,’ Tilik answered, all hesitation suddenly gone, his path clear at last before him.
It had happened as Hasegawa said: a bomb on a railway line, an attack on a garrison, the taking of the walled city of Mukden, and towns falling like dominoes along the track to Port Arthur. Mukden had been taken in a single night. By noon on 19th September the war was finished and Mukden under the Japanese flag.
‘We knew something was in the air,’ said Mr Ohara, translating a newspaper article for Tilik. They sat in rattan chairs on a narrow verandah. ‘If this had only happened earlier it might have saved me.’
‘How would it have saved you?’ Tilik enquired.
‘It might have brought new growth to my business, as it will now for many people. Without Toyama’s help we would have been bankrupt. He bailed me out, and persuaded our present company to take us over. Our name and face have both been saved.’ Ohara sighed. It was the first Tilik had heard of his story.
In turn, Ohara knew little of Tilik’s activities at the Black Dragon Society. The hours Tilik spent working in his room he assumed were in learning Japanese. He was not interested in India or its battle for freedom. He feared and respected Toyama, and repaid his obligation by installing Tilik in his home.
Everywhere parties of celebration for the conquest of Manchuria were in progress. Hasegawa called Tilik with an invitation to an elite geisha house in Tsukiji. There were a large number of guests, all important men. Mitsuru Toyama himself nodded to Tilik from afar. Hasegawa came to settle him in and introduced him also to the famous Colonel Hashimoto who, with Shumei Okawa, had masterminded so many plots.
A geisha plied Tilik with sake and attention. Small, low lacquer tables were arranged along three walls of the room. Tilik was seated alone in a humble position, at an end table near sliding doors. The noise was robust and the drinking heavy as the party became progressively bawdy. Men who were household names in the country did conjuring tricks or stood on their heads. There was a wheelbarrow race with the geisha as barrows, their bare legs protruding from kimono about the hips of drunken men. Tilik watched Mitsuru Toyama join in these antics, unabashed. This unloosed Toyama was as unnerving as the austere old man at Black Dragon Headquarters.
There, when Tilik had first met the great man, Toyama’s eyes had sent a coldness through him. Behind round spectacles they were sunken and flinty. A white beard straggled over his dark kimono. He had the look of a mystic, yet he was a famous fixer of death. His smile, it was said, could make a Prime Minister tremble. A strange force streamed from the grim old man.
Tilik remembered that meeting when, later, Toyama squatted down beside him, flushed by drink and abandon. But behind the high colour his eyes were the same, unmoving as a reptile.
‘You need a Japanese wife,’ Toyama announced in a jocular tone. ‘It will smooth your way in your work here and cement the ties between our countries. I shall arrange your marriage, just as I arranged the marriage of Rash Bihari. If I know anything, I know how to choose a woman,’ Toyama chuckled and spluttered.
It was Michiko Ohara whom Toyama had in mind as a wife for Tilik. With the identity revealed of his prospective bride, Tilik spent the day in a daze. Everything seemed suddenly heightened: the sun on the leaves in the garden, the sleek gleam of the crows on the telephone wire, whose grumbles now sounded harmonious.
‘This will finally free me of my obligation to Toyama. You mix in important circles, even if you are a foreigner. But you must give Michiko time, this marriage is not to her liking. She will come round to sensible thinking,’ Ohara explained, surprisingly anxious for the match.
&n
bsp; Such resignation did not encourage joyousness. Mrs Ohara hurried past on the stairs with a worried smile. There were sounds of hysteria from Michiko’s room. Trays of food were carried in and out to her, as to an invalid. In spite of the atmosphere, Tilik could not rid himself of buoyancy.
‘Time, give her time,’ Ohara counselled.
The year drew to a close. ‘I cannot wait for Michiko forever,’ Tilik pleaded.
He had orders from Hasegawa, who had already left for Manchuria, to follow as soon as possible. Not only Mukden, but all Manchuria was now under Japanese control. The world was not pleased with this aggression. The League of Nations appointed a Commission under Lord Lytton of Great Britain to enquire into the affair.
It was Toyama himself who brought about yet a further delay to the nuptials. No one at the Black Dragon Society was happy with the Lytton Commission, snooping about Manchuria. There was the smell of trouble ahead.
At the Society Headquarters Tilik listened to Shumei Okawa outline a campaign of anti-Lytton Commission agitation. Okawa’s intensity filled the room, and quickened the blood in Tilik. Okawa’s close-cropped hair and neat moustache emphasised the pent-up energy radiating from him. This energy brought converts as much as his ideals did.
‘The Western powers in the League of Nations will hear us. What right have they to interfere in our affairs in Asia? They themselves are colonists, with no right to investigate anything.’ People began to cheer.
‘You can help us,’ Okawa said afterwards to Tilik. ‘This is an excellent chance for you. We will arrange for you to speak at our gatherings. The thrust of your speeches I suggest should be the futility of countries represented on the Commission trying to solve a problem best settled by Asians amongst themselves. Tell them Lord Lytton is from a country that is holding India in bondage. Who could be more unsuitable to deal with the Manchurian problem?’
The next weeks were busy. Anti-Western, anti-Lytton Commission demonstrations were organised all over the country. Tilik was sent from town to town. His speech was the same and so often rehearsed that he spoke it with easy passion. His theme, Asia for Asians, went down well not only with right-wing organisations, but also with the unpolitical. As a non-Japanese he appeared to bring into stark relief an issue closer to heart than previously realised by many people.
The wedding finally took place at the end of February 1932. It was a quiet family affair on a cold morning at a Shinto shrine. Afterwards, Toyama himself made an appearance. Almost at once Tilik and his bride prepared to leave for Manchuria.
On 1st March, Manchuria became the Republic of Manchukuo, and Kang’te, or Henry Pu-Yi as he was known to the West, last Emperor of the deposed Ch’ing dynasty, was declared Regent to a fledgling puppet monarchy. On that day Tilik and Michiko began the long journey to their new future.
Michiko had come to terms with Toyama’s order. She was sullen but no longer distraught. At times she made a dutiful effort at conversation. For Tilik it was enough. He had patience and Manchukuo already appeared before him as a land of milk and honey.
4
Meetings in Manchuria
April 1937
Donald Addison ordered an egg and after an hour was served a whole roast chicken. Such things happened on the Trans-Siberian Railway. It was not easy to convey in pantomime the need for a soft boiled egg. He had, thank goodness, brought his own marmalade and some biscuits. The windows of the train were never opened, nor the bottles of wine on the tables in the dining car. Butter was finished as the journey began and tea spilt in his lap. He did not complain; he liked train journeys. Outside, the sun shone weakly on an empty land. Siberia was flecked with the dark, tapering shadows of trees. The evening was setting in. Soon the dark window offered nothing but the reflection of his own face. Tomorrow he would reach Manchouli, a village on the border of Russia and what had once been Manchuria before the Japanese invasion. Now Manchuria was renamed Manchukuo. From the border he would cross into a land where his father had never been.
Manchouli was an insignificant village, but the new flag of Manchukuo flew above the station building. Donald Addison disembarked from the Trans-Siberian Railway and was issued a visa for a country recognised only by Salvador and Japan. Now he had crossed the border he need no longer lie about his profession. In contrast to the Russians the Japanese liked reporters, especially those with superior credentials. ‘Correspondent for The Times’ carried its own introduction. The Japanese were anxious to be liked.
‘Please write good things about Manchukuo and Japanese people in your London newspaper,’ said the official who took him to collect his visa. The Lytton Commission’s report to the League of Nations on Japan’s occupation of Manchuria had not recommended acceptance of Manchukuo. The League had voted accordingly and Japan had withdrawn in protest. Since then its international image had suffered.
Donald boarded a train of the Chinese Eastern Railway and rattled on. The train was patrolled by armed guards. In the middle of nowhere they stopped for a wagon of dead Japanese soldiers, killed in a skirmish, to be coupled to the train. Suddenly, Japanese with guns were everywhere in the already crowded carriages, many of them wounded. They were grim-faced young men, far from home, without the smiles of the Manchouli officials.
Beyond the window barren plains stretched to a horizon of hills. Camels and herdsmen stared at the passing train. Flocks of wild duck wheeled up over the wastes of northern Manchuria. Donald gazed at the nothingness and was filled with euphoria. The journey through Russia had been impeded by thoughts of his father. It did not matter that twenty years lay between their visits. His father’s shadow still crossed the Russian steppes and darkened each Russian town; people remembered his name. John Addison’s book on the 1917 uprising was a classic for students of the era. For the first time since he left London, Donald felt free. His father’s eye had not rested on this land, his opinion had not weighed its future, or his tongue pronounced its slippery names. China could be his.
Few Westerners had as yet crossed the lines into Yenan, the blockaded Red area in north-west China, or met the rebel leader, the guerilla Mao Tse-tung. Little was known of the Communist movement as all news was forbidden by order of Chiang Kai-shek. What variety of Communists were these Chinese Reds? What kind of men were their leaders? What ideology gave them strength to endure battles, disease and death? Only Chiang Kai-shek’s hatred of the Reds was documented. His suppression was brutal. Students opposed to Japanese aggression, peasants, workers and intellectuals, risked all to join the Communist party and the Eighth Route Army in its struggle against Chiang Kai-shek’s dictatorship. Under Chiang thousands had been arrested, tortured and executed. To be a Communist sympathiser was a crime punishable by death. And yet, people still flocked to join the movement.
This was the secret agenda of Donald Addison’s journey. His book on Red China would equal his father’s on Red Russia. The only way to learn about the Reds was to get to their hideout, whatever the risk. Many had tried and failed. He stared out of the window at the barren land. For the first time in months excitement filled him. But immediately, as promised for The Times, he was to investigate the Japanese occupation of Manchuria.
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It seemed he had entered another world when at last he reached Harbin. It was a Russian town on a Chinese plain, its schizophrenia compounded by the shadow of the Japanese. Fear in the town was endemic; men with guns were everywhere. Soldiers and police patrolled, civilians armed themselves against attack and no foreigner walked alone.
‘You need a bodyguard, sir,’ the manager advised as Donald left the hotel. ‘Harbin was always a violent place but now, since the Japanese, words beggar all description.’
Donald nodded and walked out into the night. At the corner, as he had been told, a vagrant approached him and pleaded for alms. He met the man’s eyes and knew he had found his guide.
‘Go tomorrow to Hengtao. Book into the Railway Hotel. Amleto Vespa will see you there,’ the man informed him and turned away.
It took some hours to reach Hengtao. The Railway Hotel was a collection of disused coaches in a siding. He ate a late lunch in the dining car and walked back over the tracks to his coach to wait. He began to think the trail might be nothing but a wild goose chase. Why should the notorious Amleto Vespa risk meeting him?
Lennox Simpson had put him in touch with the right people in Harbin. Donald had written to Simpson before leaving London. He wanted a meeting with the Irregulars, the bands of White Russian ex-soldiers and officers who were clandestinely fighting the Japanese. Simpson had once edited the English language Harbin Herald. He had criticised the high-handed actions of the Japanese and his paper was ordered to cease publication. All the presses and type were confiscated and Simpson expelled from Manchukuo. He fled to Dairen and began proceedings for redress. Thinking of all this, Donald waited for Vespa without expectation; probably he would not come.
He had almost given up hope of Vespa appearing when at last the door opened. There was a rush of cold night air and the smell of men and damp wool coats. Vespa entered with several Russians, others with guns stood guard outside. The carriage was suddenly full. Vespa drew the blind down at the window as he introduced himself.
‘How d’you know Lennox?’ Vespa demanded, standing over him.
‘Through my father. When Lennox was expelled from Manchukuo my father was instrumental in getting his case presented in Parliament,’ Donald answered. Vespa nodded and sat down, pulling off a pair of torn woollen gloves.
‘It’s dangerous for me to see anyone like this,’ Vespa stared at Donald assessingly. ‘I work for Japanese Intelligence only because I have to. I have three children and a wife in bad health. If I do not do as they wish we would all be killed. They’ve told me this cold-bloodedly. They hold me to ransom by threatening my family. For their sake I swallow my feelings and obey. But their methods of subjugating Manchuria repulse me. I can take no more. I’ll answer any questions you want.’ Vespa then nodded in the direction of a bear-like man.
