[ Panels by World Area Main Menu ]
[ View the Timetable of Panels ]
The Manchurian Crisis at 75 – New Interpretations
Organizer: Erik W. Esselstrom, The University of Vermont
Chair: Robert J. Perrins, Acadia University, Canada
Discussant: Yoshihisa Tak Matsusaka, Wellesley College
As the 2007 AAS meeting coincides with the 75th anniversary of the establishment of Manchukuo in March 1932, we offer a variety of timely new views on the broader Manchurian crisis initiated by Japan’s invasion of China’s northeast provinces on 18 September 1931. Historians have long cited this episode of reckless unilateralism by ultranationalist officers in the Kwantung Army as a key turning point at which Japanese continental policy took a dangerous turn to the right, leading ultimately to the cataclysmic conflicts of the Second World War in Asia. These papers, however, complicate that simplistic and over-determined characterization, offering alternative explanations for the nature and course of Japanese expansionism in northeast Asia. Bill Sewell explores systemic crises within networks of Japanese institutions in Manchuria during the late 1920s to offer a more localized explanation behind the move toward formal colonial conquest. Emer O’Dwyer then shows in her study how a powerful Mantetsu labor union advocated empire along “democratic” lines in opposition to military autocracy. Erik Esselstrom reveals the anti-leftist security operations of Japanese consular police forces in China to contend that the allegedly liberal diplomacy of the 1920s was not necessarily confounded by military adventurism. Rustin Gates then examines the career of diplomat Uchida Yasuya to unearth the late Meiji and Taisho era roots of Japanese colonial impulses in Manchuria and thus reframe the broad chronology of interwar diplomacy. Yoshihisa Matsusaka, author of The Making of Japanese Manchuria, 1904-1932, will provide comments to inform the general discussion.
Reorienting the Manchurian Incident
Bill Sewell, St. Mary's University, Canada
Textbooks typically relate that the Manchurian Incident was an aggressive response to the rise of militant Chinese nationalism, Japanese political infighting, an assertive Soviet Union, and economic uncertainty brought on by the Great Depression. While not incorrect, all of these factors had more to do with events outside of Manchuria than inside. This paper explores dynamics internal to Manchuria in the years preceding the Manchurian Incident in an effort to show that the Japanese network of colonial holdings and spheres of influence there was rapidly disintegrating, and that what emerged after the Manchurian Incident had as much, if not more, to do with local rather than global events. In examining the dilemmas faced by local military, diplomatic and economic institutions, it becomes clear that the construction of Manchukuo can also be understood as an attempt to create a systemic solution to Japan’s local Manchurian predicament.
Re-periodizing a “Low Dishonest Decade”: The Crisis of Democratic Imperialism in 1930s Japanese
Emer O Dwyer, Harvard University
This paper questions the usefulness of considering 1931 as a major turning point in Japanese control of Manchuria. Undeniably, the date is decisive in extending the boundaries of empire and the reach of aggressive imperialism. However, the September 18 Incident did little to resolve the questions surrounding imperial administration. Employees of the South Manchurian Railway (“Mantetsu”) anticipated the continued pre-eminence of their company in “managing Manchuria” once a post-conquest peace had been achieved. However, as the 1932 establishment of Manchukuo brought into sharp focus the transition from civilian to military rule, Mantetsu employees and Kwantung Army staff clashed over just how Japan’s continental empire ought to be run. The “Mantetsu Reorganization Problem” of autumn 1933 serves as the paper’s focus. Revelations that Kwantung Army officers conducted secret negotiations with Mantetsu’s Directors regarding the company’s dismantling caused huge protests among employees. At issue was the duty of citizens to protect and govern their empire. Here then was a turning point. Mantetsu’s Japanese employees had supported the military takeover of the Northeast in 1931. Two years later, employee opinion held that the army had overstepped its bounds by entering the political and economic realms. Focus on this incident allows for a re-periodization of imperial history that concentrates on what changed, and what did not in the 1930s. The fundamental conflict between Japanese imperialism and the Chinese people remained unchanged. It was the underlying conflicts within Japanese imperialism that developed and expanded throughout the decade, providing for multiple turning points, not just one.
Foreign Ministry “Thought Police” and Ideological Security during the Manchurian Crisis
Erik W. Esselstrom, The University of Vermont
A common explanation for civilian cooperation with the Japanese military during 1931-32 suggests that politicians in Tokyo, confounded by a military fait accompli, had little choice but to acquiesce to Army interests. Failure to do so would reveal to the world that Japan’s civilian government had almost no ability to reign in its own military forces in the field. This paper posits an explanation for military-civilian cooperation rooted instead in the political security imperatives shared by both sides. Foreign Ministry (Gaimusho) police forces in treaty port China and the contested Manchurian frontier had been engaged in anti-communist surveillance and suppression campaigns for at least a decade before the military escalation of 1931. The Army’s move to seize outright control over Manchuria in September of that year then provided Japanese consular, colonial, and metropolitan police forces with justification to escalate their own war on Japanese socialists and Korean nationalists. In exploring the intensification of transnational thought policing in Shanghai, Tokyo, and Manchuria that accompanied the military actions of 1931-32, it is possible to see this era as much more than simply a foreign relations flashpoint stoked by the wild imaginings of Ishiwara Kanji and his ultranationalist cronies. Far from being a tragic high-jacking of Japanese diplomacy by rogue elements of the Japanese power elite, the Manchurian crisis facilitated an integration of civilian and military interests that had been taking shape since as early as 1920. The broader implications of this conclusion can help us begin to reframe the entire chronology of interwar Japanese imperialism.
The “Manchuria Problem”: Uchida Yasuya and Japanese Manchuria Policy
Rustin B. Gates, Harvard University
In contrast to the conventional understanding that the founding of Manchukuo marked the beginning of Japanese imperial expansion and militarism, this paper argues that the events of the early 1930s should be viewed as the culmination of over two decades of Japanese efforts at solving the “Manchuria problem.” Instead of looking forward to the Asia-Pacific War, we should look backward to Japanese foreign policy in the late Meiji and Taisho eras to understand the nature of the Manchurian Incident. In doing so, we see that, along with cooperation with the Western powers, securing and maintaining the Japanese empire's foothold on the continent in Manchuria was the defining policy of prewar Japanese international relations. To support the above contentions, this paper examines Japanese diplomat Uchida Yasuya's twenty-five years of work to protect Japan's position in Manchuria. Uchida not only influenced policy from his positions in the field—first as Minster to China during the Russo-Japanese War and then as President of the South Manchuria Railway during the Manchurian Incident—he also formulated Japan's Manchuria policy as Foreign Minister in parts of the three successive decades (1911-12, 1918-23, and 1932-33). Uchida's case presents evidence that the Manchurian crisis was not the first domino to fall in a tumbling pattern that eventually led to Pearl Harbor. Far from being the beginning of Japanese aggression in Asia, the crisis in fact represents the end—the last domino—of Japanese efforts to solve the “Manchuria problem.”