The Kwantung Army let him die, and the Japanese prime minister let him live
The Japanese political contest behind Zhang Zuolin's death
On June 4, 1928, in Huanggutun, a train from Beijing was blown to pieces by explosives, and one of the blue steel carriages was particularly eye-catching, and sitting inside was Zhang Zuolin, the king of the northeast.
(Zhang Zuolin)
The imported steel carriages could not stop the power of the Japanese Kwantung Army's 200 kilograms of high explosives, and the King of tohoku was seriously injured. After barely hanging his breath to support himself back to the Shuai Mansion in Shenyang, he left Zhang Xueliang's last words and swallowed his breath, which is the famous Huanggutun incident in history. The Huanggutun incident led to three different events in the original historical process, one was the subsequent change of Zhang Xueliang to the northeast, which directly prompted Chiang Kai-shek to nominally unify the whole country and was of great significance to safeguarding national unity. The other was to accelerate the outbreak of the September 18 Incident, awaken the sense of crisis of some Chinese people to a certain extent, change the class contradictions that were mainly based on the struggle between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party at that time, and the Contradictions between China and Japan gradually became the mainstream. Finally, the Xi'an Incident led by Zhang Xueliang directly contributed to the formation of the second cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, and Zhang Xueliang was also placed under house arrest and completely faded out of the historical and political process.
(Zhang Zuolin was bombed by the special train)
In our history textbooks, Zhang Zuolin is described as being killed by the Japanese because he did not agree to the unequal demands of the Japanese. However, when we get rid of the fog of history and peel away the cocoon layer by layer, the truth does not seem to be so simple.
The time is set back to 1904, at the end of the Qing Dynasty, when the feudal empire was crumbling. The Russo-Japanese War was breaking out in the land of Longxing in the northeast of the Empire. At this time, the Qing government was an ostrich policy and strictly observed neutrality. At this time, Zhang Zuolin was a northeastern silk boy who had just been captured by the Kwantung Army and was preparing to execute him in the name of a Russian spy. At this time, the Japanese Lieutenant Staff Officer Yoshiichi Tanaka interceded with his superiors and saved Zhang Zuolin's life. More than twenty years later, the horse thief Zhang Zuolin became the king of the Northeast, and the lieutenant staff officer Yoshiichi Tanaka became the prime minister of Japan.
(Yoshiichi Tanaka)
It was this Yoshiichi Tanaka who presided over the conspiracy of the Eastern Conference and published the infamous "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 Song Fold", which opened the road of Japan's ambition to invade and occupy Northeast China. Its core idea is to separate the northeast from China as a special region of China.
Tanaka Yoshiichi's main method was to build a railway in the northeast and achieve control over the northeast, and this grandson was full of confidence in this. The confidence in Tanaka's heart stemmed from his life-saving grace and great assistance to Zhang Zuolin. The battle plans and military instructors of the First Zhifeng War in 1922 were written by The Japanese. In the Second Zhifeng War, Japan fully supported Zhang Zuolin in terms of military strength and financial resources, and sent Zhang Zuolin to the throne of Beijing in one fell swoop, and Zhang Zuolin reached the peak of his life and became the de facto ruler north of the Yangtze River. Even in the 1925 Guo Songling rebellion, if Japan had not urgently sent troops in Korea to assist Zhang Zuolin, the King of Northeast China would have died a long time ago. In this regard, Tanaka Yoshiichi even said wildly: Zhang Zuolin is like my brother!
To be fair, Zhang Zuolin is also a person who loves the northeast and loves the country, and he does not want the Japanese to expand infinitely in the northeast, but Zhang Zuolin's bottom line is that he loves the Zhang family more. The early stage of loving the northeast and loving the country was not to let the Zhang family be damaged. In the face of Japan's aggressive attitude, the King of Tohoku, who was surprised by the storm in Kannai, was forced into a corner like a cat in dodging and avoiding. On the night when state affairs and family affairs were indispensable, the king of the Northeast sighed, his heart was haggard, and his face was pale. One night, the figure in Chinese politics was nearly ten years old. The next day, the King of Tohoku, who appeared in front of the Japanese, was a completely out-of-the-box man, incoherent, stuttering, sluggish, and vague, and finally fully agreed to the Japanese conditions. And Tanaka also triumphantly said that he had reached the highest realm of a soldier who surrendered without a fight.
(Daisaku Kawamoto)
After the praying mantis cicada catcher Yellow Finch, this Yellow Finch is precisely from within Japan, that is, the Japanese Kwantung Army, which has always been resentful of the civilian official clique headed by Yoshiichi Tanaka. The Kwantung Army simply did not look at Tanaka Yoshiichi's puppet strategy, and they hoped to solve the Northeast problem in one step, kill Zhang Zuolin, and take advantage of the chaos to occupy the Northeast, of which the Shaozhuang faction led by Kawamoto Daisaku took direct action. Just after Zhang Zuolin and Yoshiichi Tanaka conspired to complete the agreement, on the way back from Beijing to Shenyang, they were blown into the sky by 200 kilograms of high explosives from the Kwantung Army's Kawamoto Dafu, and they cried out for their lives. Afterwards, Yoshiichi Tanaka, who was still immersed in the joy of success, was stunned on the spot when he got the news. Then he slapped his thigh, crying and screaming, scolding Kawamoto for doing bad things for the Empire, and he simply didn't understand the heart of a parent. Kawamoto also scolded Tanaka for betraying the military and the empire, and finally came to the emperor, who silently supported Kawamoto.
(9/18 Incident)
The 200 kilograms of explosives in the Huanggutun incident not only blew up Zhang Zuolin or collapsed the Tanaka Yoshiichi cabinet, but also the beginning of the Japanese Showa warlord clique on the stage of history. At this point, the Japanese military began to influence Japan's political work, which became a milestone event in the evolution of Japanese politics. After the fall of Tanaka, the imaginary all-round occupation of the northeast was quickly stabilized by Zhang Xueliang by changing the banner and changing the banner. Japan's desires were not satisfied, and three years later, the September 18 Incident completely opened the Pandora's box of Japanese aggression against China. The initiator of zhang Zuolin's bombing, Kawamoto Daisaku, was honored by Yan Xishan as a guest after the victory of the Anti-Japanese War to help fight against the People's Liberation Army. After the liberation of Shanxi, Kawamoto Daisaku was captured by the People's Liberation Army and died of illness in 1955 at the Taiyuan War Criminals Management Center.