The Second World War was the first source of war in Europe, and at the same time as the new source was formed, a source of war also appeared in Asia in the east, and this source was Japan.
Shortly after the outbreak of World War I, Japan declared war on Germany in August 1914 under the pretext of alliance with Britain in order to seize Germany's rights and interests in Shandong, China, and the German islands in the South Pacific. During the Great War, Japanese monopoly capital swelled dramatically. However, in the early post-war period, the aggressive policy of Japanese militarism was attacked one after another.
Abroad, on March 1, 1919, the "Trinity" movement against Japanese colonial rule and demanded national independence broke out in Korea; on May 4, 1919, the anti-imperialist and anti-feudal May Fourth Movement broke out in China, which frustrated Japan's plan to occupy the Shandong Peninsula; and in October 1922, the Japanese army invading Siberia was forced to withdraw.
Domestically, after the "rice riot" of 1918, from 1919 to 1922, the Japanese workers' and peasants' movement continued to rise and fall, and workers of large enterprises such as the famous Kawasaki Shipyard and mitsubishi Shipyard Hachiman Iron and Steel Plant held strikes one after another. From 1920 to 1921, Japan experienced an economic crisis, and the gross industrial output value fell by 19.5%. Before the crisis broke out, the Great Kanto Earthquake struck on September 1, 1923, killing and unaccounting for 140,000 people, 3.4 million victims, and 10 billion yen in economic losses.
Diplomatically, at the Paris Peace Conference, Japan failed to get all its wishes; at the Washington Conference held in late 1921 and early 1922, Japan was forced to accept the so-called "open door to China" principle of the United States, and on the issue of limiting naval armaments, the capital ships were developed according to the ratio of 5:5:3 between the United States: Britain: and Japan. The Versailles-Washington system guaranteed the superiority of Britain, the United States, and France, and relatively suppressed Japan. Of course, Japan was not convinced, and was quite dissatisfied with the United States and Britain.
In a difficult situation at home and abroad, Japan's rulers were forced to seek a temporary compromise. In June 1924, the newly elected Foreign Minister, Kishiro Motohara, put forward the slogan of "coordinated diplomacy". The so-called "coordination" is mainly to seek a temporary compromise with the United States and Britain, and to win the economic support of the United States and Britain to meet the urgent need. After shouting for some time for "coordinated diplomacy," in April 1927, Yoshinori Tanaka, the head of the fascist warlords, became prime minister and foreign minister, and "Motohara diplomacy" was replaced by "Tanaka diplomacy."
The so-called "Tanaka diplomacy" means stepping up aggression against China by force and competing with the United States and Britain for hegemony in the Pacific region. Yoshiichi Tanaka's rise to power marked the victory of the Japanese fascist forces. As the Japanese ruling clique struggled to emerge from its post-war predicament, fascist forces began to multiply. Some of the early Fascists in Japan were militarists who had been engaged in aggressive activities in China for many years.
In 1919, the first fascist organization appeared in Japan, the Juzan Society. The two main leaders of the society, one named Ōkawa Zhouming, who was originally the head of the "Mantetsu" East Asian Economic Survey Bureau; the other named Bei Yihui, who was in Shanghai when the May Fourth Movement broke out in China, witnessed the revolutionary struggle of the Chinese people against imperialism and feudalism, and in a panic he drafted a "State Transformation Act", which was called "the holy code of Japanese fascism".
Kita lamented that Japan was "facing the predicament it has always faced", and in order to get out of the predicament, it is necessary to "understand the gospel of the sword", that is, to rely on force to "transform" Japan, to impose dictatorial rule at home, and to annex China, Southeast Asia, India and Siberia externally, so that Japan will hold the "bull's ear of the world federation". As soon as the "National Transformation Act" came out, the militarists in the Japanese government and opposition unanimously applauded. The State Transformation Act was quickly widely circulated in the military and was supported by the fascist young and strong factions in the military. Ōkawa Shumei, for his part, openly declared that "Providence intends to elect Japan as the warrior of Asia."
Japan differed from Germany and Italy in that it did not begin with a unified fascist party. From the establishment of the first fascist organization, the "Yucun Society", to 1929, 125 fascist groups appeared in Japan, such as the "Kokumoto Society", "Xingdi Society", "Tianjian Party", "Shilinzhuang", "Yiyuhui", and so on; in 1930, fascist groups such as the "Yukai" appeared. The Japanese fascist organization is characterized by the monopoly chaebol as its backstage, while the military department is its foundation and backbone. Many senior generals personally organized, led, or joined fascist groups. For example, the head of the "Kunigamisha" is Akiichiro Hiranuma, whose members are Togo Heihachirō Araki Sadao and Matsui Ishigen Ugaki, and the main members of the "Ichigokai" are Hideki Tojo and Seishiro Okamura.
These fascist organizations have all gone all out to advocate the "national spirit" of "nationalism" to "unify" Japan and to practice "thorough Great Japanism" so that the "Japanese spirit can be used to make the Japanese spirit mighty" throughout the world. The Japanese fascist forces are becoming more and more powerful, and they have even influenced domestic and foreign policies. In June and July 1927, Tanaka presided over an "Eastern Conference" attended by officials from the Army, Navy, and Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The main content of the meeting was presented to the Emperor of Japan in the form of the Prime Minister's Recital, which is known as the Tanaka Recital. It explicitly expresses the aggressive ambitions of Japanese militarism, in which it is written: "If you want to conquer China, you must first conquer 'Manchuria and Mongolia'; if you want to conquer the world, you must first conquer China." ”
"Tanaka Sonata" can be said to be a general program of aggression of Japanese imperialism. After taking the stage, various fascist groups such as the "Cymbals" stepped up their efforts to advocate public opinion on the dictatorship of fascism, clamoring to emulate Germany and Italy, implement the "one country, one party system" and "armament first doctrine," speed up the "transformation" of "weak" Japan, and "establish a strong government." To this end, they have repeatedly created incidents that have shaken Japan and abroad, or committed suicide by cutting their stomachs, assassinating senior government officials, or launching coups d'état, with the aim of exerting pressure on the authorities and society and accelerating the process of fascism.
In November 1930, members of the fascist group "Patriot Society" stabbed Prime Minister Yuki Hamaguchi. In March 1931, the "Sakurakai", with the support of army leader Ukasei Ugaki, plotted a coup d'état and was later aborted due to infighting. On May 15, 1932, a small group of fascist young soldiers attacked the Prime Minister's residence and the Metropolitan Police Department, killing Prime Minister Inuyasha and demanding the establishment of a military cabinet. Although the coup did not all succeed, the newly formed cabinet was further fascistized.
Since then, fascist forces have further expanded, and by February 1936, there were more than 350 fascist groups in Japan. On February 26 of that year, more than 1,400 young soldiers of the fascist imperial Taoist faction in the military launched a coup d'état, killing the Minister of the Interior, the Minister of Tibet, the Director of Education, and many others, occupying the Army Province, the Metropolitan Police Department, and other key military and political organs, implementing the "military advice," and demanding the establishment of a "military government."
Although the direct target of the "soldiers" was not successful due to differences of opinion among the warlords, on the day of the coup, the ruling clique with the unification faction as the core could not wait to issue a martial law order to "prevent the activities of the red elements" and immediately reorganized the cabinet, with Hiroshi Hirota, who is close to the military, as prime minister, forming a new cabinet with the fascist warlord as the core. At this point, the military ministry actually controlled the cabinet, thus establishing the Japanese fascist regime.
After the establishment of the Hirota Cabinet, under the pretext of calming down the incident, it adopted a series of measures aimed at strengthening the fascist dictatorship, such as promulgating the so-called "Law on the Protection and Surveillance of Ideological Prisoners" and the "Law on the Temporary Suppression of Dangerous Documents," and establishing a meeting of the five phases (Prime Minister, Minister of Land, Minister of The Sea, Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Minister of Tibet) to strengthen the direct control of the Military Ministry over the government. On August 7, 1936, the Five-Phase Conference adopted a "Basic Outline of National Policy", which blatantly stated that Japan's "fundamental national policy is to expand to the South China Sea while ensuring the position of the empire on the East Asian continent with the close cooperation of foreign defense."
This "basic national policy" further concretizes the Tanaka Sonata, which combines the "mainland policy" and the "maritime policy" of Japanese militarism and is a "blueprint" for the all-round aggression and expansion of China to destroy China, launch a Pacific War, and monopolize the Asia-Pacific region. Since then, Japan has accelerated the pace of aggression. Step by step, the Japanese fascist warlords controlled the government and expanded the war of aggression against China step by step.
The cradle of the Asian war was formed. Coupled with the rise to power of German-Italian fascism and the formation of the cradle of war in Europe, the shadow of the Second World War was approaching, and people still remembered the disasters brought about by the First World War.
The new seeds of war sown by the "Versailles-Washington system" were accelerated by the outbreak of an unprecedentedly acute and profound capitalist world economic crisis in 1929. While cultivating fascist forces, Japanese militarism hastened the steps of aggression in order to get rid of the crisis. The first step in the program of aggression drawn up in accordance with the Tanaka Recital was to invade and occupy northeast China.
epilogue
In order to create an excuse for human invasion, in July 1931, the Japanese instructed the traitor Hao Yongde to forcibly occupy the mintian of Wanbao Mountain in Jilin Province, which aroused the anger of the local people and clashed with the Japanese army. The Japanese aggressors then created public opinion on the "Manchurian-Mongolian crisis." A wave of unrest, another wave in August of the same year: Japan used the so-called "Missing Captain Nakamura" incident to "protest" to the Chinese government, mobilized troops, prepared to attack China, and incited war fanaticism at home. The situation in northeast China deteriorated dramatically, and soon after the eight-year War of Resistance began.
References: Hideki Tojo, The Transformation of the Japanese Warlords