Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (65 page)

Early in Inukai's tenure the army underscored its ties to the impe
rial 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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.

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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.
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As the emperor and the Inukai cabinet well knew, with the Great Depression 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 Sh
wa emperor. Nine days later army Maj. Tanaka Ry
kichi, 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.
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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 K
ichi 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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.

At Shanghai, both during and after the fighting, Japanese officers and enlisted men alike exemplified the pathological effects of the post–1905 battlefield doctrine of never surrendering. Captured by the Chinese in February 1932, Capt. Kuga Noboru was returned to Japan in a prisoner exchange; he committed suicide to atone for his capture.
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Praised for his martial spirit by Army Minister Araki, Kuga was later enshrined at Yasukuni. From this time on, officers who survived capture were often openly pressured to commit sui
cide. A plethora of books, movies, and stage dramas glorified the “human bombs” and “human bullets” who gave their lives on the Shanghai front. These tales heightened the popularity of the army at home, while also reinforcing its mystique abroad.
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Disagreements within the Inukai cabinet worsened after the first engagement at Shanghai. In trying to limit troop deployments and operations at Shanghai, Inukai could rely on backing only from the emperor—who was unwilling to discipline his uniformed officers despite the disruption of normal political life they were causing. While fighting raged at Shanghai, war fever in Japan deepened; public criticism of Seiy
kai cabinet policies mounted. Not surprisingly “direct action” suddenly went too far—and became terrorism. Two prominent business leaders—Inoue Junnosuke, former finance minister in the Wakatsuki cabinet, and Baron Dan Takuma, director of the Mitsui
zaibatsu
—were assassinated on February 9 and March 5, respectively. Their killers were civilian members of a secret band the press labeled the “Blood Pledge Corps.” While these murders were under investigation, Inukai pressed the army and navy not to expand operations in the Shanghai area. He also sought Prince Kan'in's support for dismissing about thirty officers to restore discipline. Such was the situation when another clap of terrorist thunder ended Inukai's own life and precipitated the start of a fundamental transformation in Japanese politics.

On May 15, 1932, young naval officers murdered Inukai in his office, and two other groups of would-be (army, navy, and civilian) assassins threw bombs at the headquarters of the Seiy
kai Party, the Bank of Japan, the Metropolitan Police Office, and, most significantly, the official residence of Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal Makino. Demanding abrogation of the London Naval Treaty, they “distributed leaflets calling for the purification of the court entourage.”
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