More than eighty years have passed since the War of Resistance Against Japan, and although we have won victories, we have won a crushing victory, and if we want to avoid the recurrence of tragedies, we must examine this period of history, the so-called knowledge of oneself and the other, in order to be able to survive a hundred battles. We should carefully study the "Japan" that launched the war, so that we can stand in an invincible position.
But when studying a country, the most taboo thing is emotional observation. Japan, which launched the war of aggression against China, did not suddenly suffer from a crazy belligerent infectious disease, but from the Meiji era onwards, a series of historical evolutions made the country go to war. Even the history of Japan before Meiji implied the gene of military outrage. Before discussing this history that has shaken Asia, we must first consider two very important terms.
That is, the "imperial army" and the "commanding power".
Who owns the army?
First, let's see if the concept of "imperial army" is correct.
If, in terms of historical facts, the word "Imperial Army" has never become an official name in Japan. Generally before or during the war, the Japanese army called itself the "National Army" or the "Imperial Army". In Japanese films, their characters also call themselves "Imperial Soldiers". The term "imperial army" mostly appears in mainland anti-war films and various inspiring works of the people.
As early as their Heian period (794-1185), Emperor Huanwu abolished the "national army" and replaced it with the so-called "kenji system". The samurai that we later saw in the disputes between the Japanese nobles and even the imperial family were actually a kind of private soldier rather than a national force. From the kamakura period (1185-1333) at the end of the twelfth century to the end of the Edo period (1603-1868), japan was dominated by samurai except during the Brief Reign of Emperor Go-Daigo during the Jianmu New Deal (1333-1336). In other words, for seven hundred years, Japan did not have his own direct army, and was positioned as a symbolic existence that did not actually intervene in political practice.
After the Meiji Restoration, the Tokugawa shogunate collapsed and entered the era of the so-called emperor's pro-government. However, the collapse of the shogunate was brought down by powerful clans such as Satsuma and Choshu, using the emperor as a spiritual symbol and using their own financial and military strength. Therefore, at the beginning of the Meiji era, the emperor did not even have a direct subordinate soldier. It was not until the powerful clans such as Satsuma and Choshu "offered" the private soldiers of their vassals to the imperial court as "imperial soldiers" that the emperor regained his direct army after a gap of more than seven hundred years, that is, the "imperial army" in a broad sense.
Later, Japan formulated the Constitution of the Empire of Japan, modeled on Prussia, and made the emperor the holder of imperial sovereignty. But in fact, Japan continues the tradition of the emperor as a noble presence who does not express his opinion directly on politics unless he has to. The so-called Imperial Army, in fact, is also composed of satsuma-led navy and Choshu-led army. Under the Imperial Japanese Constitution, the Japanese army called itself the "Imperial Army" and the "Imperial Navy". Therefore, Japan used this army to meet the crucial Sino-Japanese War, the Russo-Japanese War.
The Meiji Restoration was a chemical change that occurred within Japan under the pressure of the great powers. After the Restoration, Japan's biggest problem was how to avoid the advance of the great powers, and it became one of the great powers itself. Thus the Korean Peninsula and the northeast of the mainland became Japan's greatest source of delusions of persecution; fear of the weakness of Korea and the Qing Dynasty would cause Russia to move south, and Japan was only a few feet away from the Tsushima Strait, prompting Japan to gamble on national fortunes and fight these two fiercely won wars. Sima Liaotaro even exaggerated the description that the entire Meiji era was an era of preparation for the Russo-Japanese War.
After the Russo-Japanese War, Japan ushered in the good times of World War I and the ensuing post-war economic panic (1929-1933). At this time, the young and strong officers who had not yet been sent to the battlefield in the Russo-Japanese War began to rise, and the Imperial Army also began to face two major problems: the first was that officers from non-"official" origins (the various clans that were enemies of the shogunate in the late shogunate era) were dissatisfied with the long-term occupation of important military positions by gatekeepers such as Satsuma and Choshu; the second was that because of economic panic, the people in the countryside began to starve to death and "sell their daughters" and hoped for national reform. These two problems are finally summarized by the emergence of the "Imperial Dao Sect".
The term "Imperial Army" comes from the ideas of the spiritual leaders of the Imperial Daoist officers, Suchao Araki and Masazaki Issaburo. On the one hand, the Imperial Daoists advocated the legitimacy of the direct ownership of the army to the Emperor against the gatekeepers of the military such as Satsuma and Choshu, believing that the tragic situation in Japan at that time was caused by the political and military domination of the new privileged class, and that the only way out for Japan was the "Showa Restoration" and the "Kiyō-kun side".
The struggle between the Imperial Daoist faction and the hegemonic faction
The rise of the Imperial Taoist faction also divided the opinion of the Japanese military, and the opposing factions in the military were called "unification factions". In the end, the imperial Taoist ideas broke out completely with the famous military coup "February 26 Incident" (1936).
However, this military coup d'état, which called for "adultery on the side of the Qing Dynasty", failed because of Emperor Showa's rare public statement of support for the return of soldiers. As a result, the Imperial Daoist faction also lost power and was suppressed by the command faction in the military, and the core figure of the Imperial Daoist faction, Sadao Araki, was also delegated and placed in the reserve, and it was not until 1939 that Araki was able to serve as the Minister of Education of the Konoe Cabinet to promote "Imperial Education".
However, another of the Imperial Daoist sect's ideas of "breaking the clan valve" was realized. Later, although the Japanese military was ruled by the imperial faction, whether it was the imperial faction or the unification faction, they were still consistent in the direction of turning the "army of Satsuma and Choshu" into the "army of the emperor".
But why is it the "emperor's" and not the "imperial" army? In fact, you only need to observe the important people in the military during this period to get the answer.
Whether it is the Imperial Daoist faction or the unification faction, there are a large number of figures from the "Old Thief Army Domain". Sadao Araki, Ishihara, Okamura Ninji, Yamamoto Isoroku, and even the later prime minister and representative of the unification faction, Hideki Tojo, all came from the area of the thief army that supported the shogunate side since the end of the shogunate. The driving force behind the overthrow of the shogunate in the late shogunate era was the "Emperor's Thought", and as a result, these satsuma and the thieves of the privileged class in Choshu, who wanted to break the idea of the emperor, claimed that the way they existed was "in fact, we are more respectful of the emperor than Sasha". Although the later rulers who came to power did not carry the emperor as a humanoid tablet like the imperial taoists, their economic exclusion, protectionist policies, and totalism were not far from the imperialists' ideas, and similar lines also made Japan a militaristic emerging power.
The Specter that Pushes Japanese Militarism – "Commander-in-Chiefship"
Writing here, I also tell you a little story.
As mentioned earlier, more than 700 years ago, Emperor Daigo's New Deal of Building Arms was a brief time when the emperor had a direct army. At that time, one of the heroes who assisted Emperor Daigo in overthrowing the Kamakura shogunate was the "Great Nan Gong" who was used by the government as a model figure for loyal subjects during the later militarism period, Namgi Masanari. This famous general, who was good at defeating the crowd, when the samurai leader Ashikaga Zunshi, who was the enemy of the emperor, approached Kyoto, and offered the emperor a victory strategy to lure the enemy deep into Kyoto and annihilate them after luring the Ashikaga army into Kyoto. However, this victorious strategy was rejected by the nobles who had no military common sense as "losing the face of the officers and the army", so that the famous general attacked with despair and no chance of victory and died in a fierce battle.
This is the tragic end of the ancestors of the imperial army more than 700 years ago.
If you push history back to the death of Masanari Nanki, you will find that the term "imperial army" is full of "resentment" of Japanese soldiers for hundreds of years about the status of the "national army". Speaking of resentment, we have to mention the specter that pushes Japan's militarism - "commanding power".
There are seventeen articles in the Constitution of the Empire of Japan concerning the Emperor. The third of these, "The Emperor is Sacred and Inviolable," illustrates the uniqueness of Japan's status as emperor. In the part of the emperor's power, Article 4 clearly stipulates that "the emperor, as the head of the country, shall exercise the power of rule in accordance with the provisions of this Constitution." However, those who know a little about Japan know that the operation of Japanese state administration was carried out by the Meiji elders under the emperor in the Meiji era, and the era after Meiji was also operated by civilian officials and military personnel of the "imperial subjects".
A large part of the so-called "sacred and inviolable" status of the emperor is maintained by the emperor as the supreme symbol, rather than by actual participation in decision-making. Even Emperor Meiji, who is considered the most political in Japanese history, rarely spoke or made a real decision at the "Imperial Council" where the final decision of the country was made.
With the exception of a few occasions when the russo-Japanese War was decided, Emperor Meiji did not speak even on occasions that decided the fate of the country, shortly after his initial ascension to the throne, and on occasions when the decision was made on whether to completely crush shogun Tokugawa Keiki.' The Emperor Showa, who was involved in World War II, recited a royal peace song only at the imperial council at the time of the war against the United States, and the other two imperial council speeches were decisions to accept the Potsdam Proclamation and unconditional surrender.
So, why did the Pacific War break out during the relatively normal-sounding Emperor Showa era? Is Emperor Showa's responsibility for the war still debated in Japan to this day, but is it really only because of the unconditional servility of the Japanese to the emperor? This is why the "commanding power" in the Constitution of the Empire of Japan has been defined by many Japanese scholars as the "ghost of the Empire".
The so-called command is the legal basis, which comes from Article 11 of the Constitution, "The Emperor Commands the Army and Navy" and Article 12 "The Emperor Formulates the Establishment and Standing Quota of the Army and Navy". Comparing these two articles with the previous fourth article, it is known that the imperial constitution separates the military from the ruling power of the state, and because of the position of the emperor's head of state, he is of course the supreme commander of the army and navy, so the concept of "commanding power" in the military has arisen in contrast to the "right to rule" in article 4.
But as Stated in Article 12 of the Imperial Constitution, since the Emperor is not a military expert, it is absolutely impossible to personally formulate military rules like an all-knowing and all-powerful dictator in a Northeast Asian country. Thus, just as the Cabinet of Ministers, headed by the Diet and the Prime Minister, the Emperor of the Cabinet exercised the right to rule, the military "command" was naturally exercised by the head of the military, when the Japanese Army was the chief of staff and the Navy was the head of the Military Command, who carried out the tasks of the auxiliary and actually carried out the tasks of the auxiliary bow, and when there was a major decision, the head of the military asked the emperor for the holy will; but if we added the tradition of the Japanese emperor "ruling but not ruling" and not expressing his opinion on the upper stage as shown by the third article, the commanding power was under the leadership of the military department." The possibility of "independence rampage" is obvious.
Ghost of the Empire: Rampaging Military Commander-in-Chief
So why did the Meiji elders set up such a dangerous constitutional framework?
Because of the PeonySha Incident in meiji 7 (1874), yamagata Aritomo, the supreme power of the Japanese army, felt that the army could not be fully controlled by the new government, and after the "Southwest War" in the Meiji decade (1877) collapsed the main samurai class during the restoration, the establishment of the general staff headquarters in meiji eleven (1878) formally established the command, and the Japanese army and navy officially became "the army directly under the emperor" in spirit. Ito Hirobumi and other Meiji elders specially separated the command from the ruling power, which was also a guarantee that the government could still maintain military power in the name of the emperor after the civil rights faction that was highly powerful at that time or the political forces of the old shogunate that remained seized power.
But this kind of insurance soon gave Ito Hirobumi and other participants in the formulation of the constitution a bitter fruit. During Ito's Second Cabinet, which began in August 1892, Japan clashed militarily with the Qing Empire. At that time, it was very worried that the war with the great powers would drag down the small Country of Japan, Itō Hirobumi and others decided to send troops in a cabinet meeting, but only one brigade of 2,000 people was sent to protect the safety and retreat of the Japanese diaspora; but the deputy chief of the Army Staff Headquarters at the time, Kawakami Motoroku, known as the "treasure of the army", believed that as long as it was a short-term decisive battle, Japan had a chance of winning the war. So the General Staff Headquarters concealed Ito Hirobumi and sent an army of 8,000 men.
Ito's policy was to avoid large-scale conflicts as much as possible, so it sent troops to a minimum, but the General Staff Headquarters ignored cabinet policy and sent the largest number of troops to prepare for a short-term decisive battle. When Ito Hirobumi scolded Kawakami Furoku after learning about it, Kawakami's answer was simple and clear:
The usual strength of a brigade is two thousand people. But the mixed brigades formed during the war were eight thousand men.
Ito Hirobumi severely rebuked Kawakami for cheating the Prime Minister. Kawakami replied lightly:
The Decision to Send Troops has been made by the Cabinet meeting, and you have also made a ruling. But once it was decided to send troops, everything was the responsibility of the chief of the general staff. Let's take care of the number of troops sent.
Dumb and speechless, Ito Hirobumi found himself gripped by the commander-in-chief he had created with one hand.
In the era of the Sino-Japanese War and the Russo-Japanese War, the Meiji fathers used their own weapons and talents to use the right of command and the right of domination to the extreme in the name of the emperor. However, the Russo-Japanese War, which broke through the glasses of the Western powers and won a small victory over the "Zero World War", made Japan lose its mind on a "national scale" -- obviously it was the war and diplomatic means that made Japan, a small country, fight to the death in exchange for a "relative victory", but the Japanese people assumed that Japan was already a "great power", and even after the news of the end of the Japanese-Russian mediation and the lack of compensation reached the country, a large-scale riot broke out in Hibiya Park.
When rampage becomes tradition
After the Sino-Japanese War and the Russo-Japanese War, Japan finally had the title of "great power". The biggest decoration on this shell is the benefits of the War seized by the Empire of Japan in the northeast of the mainland. The two major wars before the Pacific War established the nationalization of the Imperial Army and Navy, which at that time also meant the status of the imperial army of "direct subordination of the emperor"; under this premise, "we cannot give up the benefits of the blood of His Majesty's sages" became the greatest justice, and to maintain this justice, the Japanese military department needed its means to play directly to the emperor without being constrained by the right to rule. But under the emperor's tradition of maintaining the symbol of sanctity by non-intervention and non-intervention, the commander-in-chief began to show signs of violence. The "commander-in-chief problem" triggered by the London Naval Contraction Conference also officially announced the official appearance of the imperial ghost.
As mentioned above, the early Showa era was also an era of sluggish panic in which countries competed to protect their economies. This atmosphere of the times also increased the spread of the idea of the Imperial Japanese Army and the delusion of opening up new horizons through the benefits of the mainland. Militarists, through their allegiance to the emperor, rationalized their military means of frenzied expansion. The concept of command has contributed to the "tradition" of the Kwantung Army and mainland soldiers sending troops without listening to political command. The collective hysteria in Japan caused by these two elements weaves the unrealistic crazy delusion of the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere."
As mentioned at the beginning, if we do not even understand the enemy, if we study the Japanese militarism of the 40s with a fierce emotion, or blindly emphasize the responsibility of Emperor Showa as a war criminal as head of state, without exploring the reasons and background of these crazy delusions, then our so-called historical research may also form a new misunderstanding and an infinite circle of mutual hatred.
If you want the history of a country, you must not only understand the history of the past, but also the history of the present. Finally, I would like to recommend "Japan and its Historical Shackles", which only accounts for about half of the history of the past, and is more about the analysis of the current Japanese economy, politics and culture. From the time I was born in China, I dare not say that I have such a perfect understanding of China as the author said about Japan, but the author stands in the perspective of an outsider and clearly sees where the historical shackles of a nation are, which will shape the past, achieve the present, and affect the future.
He brings the facts hidden in the darkness to the surface, and even comments and analyzes. The author's tone is relatively smooth, the whole book is very logical, and it is read in one go. The author's attitude is also more subtle, it seems to be from the perspective of history to calmly narrate, in fact, it is to praise instead of scolding, I believe that readers who are more interested in Japanese history can appreciate the fun ↓↓↓
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