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Sun Yat-sen, China's liberal revolutionary
May 4, 1919 at Tiananmen Square
Yuan Shikai
After the disastrous Boxer Rebellion of 1900-01, the Empress Dowager, Cixi, and the young emperor, Zaitien, whom she dominated as regent, issued an edict blaming her own officials for China's weakness and for its domination by foreigners. Her edict proclaimed that China's method of government should change with the times and that China should learn more than just words and phrases from the nations that dominated it. Empress Cixi's government began encouraging students to study abroad, and it began educational reforms within China. Civil Service examinations were to test more than one's knowledge of classical literature. In 1902, the government joined the foreign missionaries and the progressive Chinese in another reform: a campaign against the foot binding of women. The royal government also ordered provincial governors to reorganize their armies. A new military academy was to be created in each province, and old-style military exams were to be abolished.
Royalty in China was Manchu - seen by most Chinese as a foreign people - and in 1902 the government attempted to improve its relations with its subjects by lifting a ban on marriages between Manchu males and Chinese females. In 1904 it opened some government positions to Chinese. It ended its policy of reserving Manchu manpower for military duty and of discouraging Manchu males from entering farming or commerce. And around 1905, the throne began talking about and preparing China for constitutional government.
China's merchants shared with the government the view that China should become a more wealthy and more powerful nation, and to advance their interests they formed associations and pushed for boycotts against foreign goods. Concerned about competition, the merchants lobbied against collusion between the Manchu government and foreign capitalists. They lobbied against foreigners in China regulating commerce, and they lobbied for the freedom of commerce from government controls.
As the government talked about reforms, unrest in China continued. By 1905 the number of Chinese students in Japan had risen to about 8,000, from about 280 in 1901. And many among China's growing student population joined those among the gentry who believed that one way to advance China quickly was to rid China of the Manchu monarchy. The monarchy tried to defend its authority by warning merchants and gentry against interfering in government affairs, and it told the students in Japan that they should concentrate on their studies and not concern themselves with politics or make speeches in public. Sovereignty, said the monarchy, belonged to the throne.
The monarchy also faced continued unrest among the peasantry - which was eighty percent of China's population. In various localities the peasants were suffering hardships, and sometimes famine. Since the Boxer Rebellion, small, isolated uprisings against local authorities had been attempted, which were easily crushed by the army of local governors.
A leading opponent of monarchical rule was Sun Yat-sen (Son Zhong Shan), the son of Christianized peasants. He had been educated in Honolulu Hawaii while under the care of an older brother. He graduated from of a Hong Kong medical school in 1894, and he was forced into exile in 1895 for having been a member of a secret society involved in revolutionary plots. Sun was earnest, and his earnestness led Chinese in his home town to drive him out of town for offending local deities. He began touring America and Europe to gain financial support from overseas Chinese and anyone else who would support his goals for China. Sun saw China as antiquated and as run by privileged mediocrities. He favored China becoming a strong world power and recovering territories it had lost to foreign powers. He wanted to see China advance in education and economically, including its agriculture and its communications and transportation systems. He wanted the elimination of the old feudalistic internal barriers to trade and only minimum restrictions for industry. These, he believed, would make China powerful enough to resist foreign domination.
In 1905, Sun arrived at the port of Yokohama, Japan (near Tokyo) and there he met with Chinese student leaders and formed an organization that was supposed to be a union of all secret societies dedicated to overthrowing the Manchu monarchy. He spoke of the need for unity among all who opposed Manchu rule, the need for a vanguard that led the masses, and the need for a "guided democracy" in China. Sun left Japan believing he had achieved a degree of unity among the student revolutionaries. But rather than unity, factionalism produced strident ideological debates among the student revolutionaries. They were united in their dislike for the Manchu monarchy and their view of Manchu attempts at reform as hypocritical efforts to strengthen the monarchy, but they were divided as how to proceed. Some among the Chinese students in Japan saw evil in modern capitalism and other western institutions. Some of them believed that what China lacked was identity as a nation, and they wanted a unified state that would give their fellow Chinese a sense of patriotism that would add meaning to their lives. Some other students leaned toward anarchism. They admired what they learned in Japan about Russia's student rebellion of decades before – Russia's Narodniks – whose tactics had been direct action, terrorism and assassination. A few wanted China to copy Western democracy, with checks and balances, federalism and the guarantee of human rights. A few favored exterminating all Manchus, whom they described as incapable of reform and an evil race.
Student revolutionaries returning to China often settled in the port cities dominated by the foreign powers, and there they remained disconnected from anything that could be called mainstream Chinese life. China's revolutionary intellectuals had little contact with the bulk of the population: the peasantry. And they were without contacts with grassroots labor struggles or contacts with reform groups who were becoming more vocal on specific issues such as anti-gambling, education or improved public works.
Sun Yat-sen established the headquarters of his revolutionary alliance outside China – in Hanoi – and his headquarters remained there during the half dozen or so rebellions that erupted in China in 1906 and 1907. Sun's organization had no contact with most of these rebellions, but in 1907 he organized the sending of supplies and men to a peasant uprising in the western part of Guangdong province, bolstering the rebel force from about five hundred to four thousand people. But within four months of its inception, the rebellion was crushed.
The Dowager Empress, Cixi, died in November 1908, at the age of 73, and she was succeeded by an infant, Pu-yi – China's last emperor – who was under the regency of a Manchu prince: Chun. On October 9, 1911, an accidental explosion in the city of Wuchang revealed a cache of weapons and a list of military officers who belonged to a secret revolutionary group (not associated with Sun's organization). To defend themselves following this exposure, the young officers revolted, and they had a power that Sun and his organization lacked. Enlisted men under them obeyed their commands, and military units sent against the rebel units turned against the Manchus and joined the rebellion. The rebel soldiers took over Wuchang, occupied the contiguous river cities of Hankow and Hanyang and proclaimed China a republic. The rebellion was in the vicinity of sixteen foreign warships anchored at Hankow. The rebels feared intervention by the foreign powers. They went out of their way not to disturb foreigners or foreign businesses in any way. And the British, who had feared a resurgence of Boxerism, were relieved and pleased.
The revolt of soldiers against Manchu rule was impressive enough that city after city declared against the Manchus. Without restraint, and with fear and some confidence, local militias, consisting in part of angry men from peasant families, destroyed police stations, cut telegraph lines, opened jails and looted warehouses. In several cities, Manchu garrisons were massacred. Here was spread of revolution that Sun had been hoping for, but although he was China best known revolutionary he had had nothing to do with creating it, and it was getting along quiet well without his help. The rising was more of a military coup than it was a rising among China's masses or intellectuals. And during the rising at Wuchang Sun had been in the United States.
Pu-yi's regent, Chun, tried to save Manchu rule by granting a constitution, but by the end of November (1911) most of China's provinces had proclaimed their independence – the exceptions being the province of Hunan and the province of Hebei (which includes Beijing). In Hebei province, the old general, Yuan Shikai (a Chinese rather than Manchu), held forth at the head of the emperor's foreign-trained armies. An opportunist, Yuan Shikai had backed the Empress Dowager when she had seized power in 1898. Respecting the power of the foreigners in China, Yuan Shikai had protected foreigners during the Boxer Rebellion. And now, during the uprising against the Manchus, Yuan Shikai sought to protect his power.
The rebel military commanders over-estimated the strength of Yuan's armies, and they believed that Yaun could continue to hold the support of the foreign powers. The rebel military commanders asked Yuan to betray the monarchy and join in an armistice with them – in order to avoid a destructive civil war. They offered Yuan the position of provisional president in a new republican government. Yuan accepted. This terrified the Manchu court, and the Manchu monarchy abdicated – ending millennia of monarchical rule in China. Chinese men were now cutting off their pigtails – pigtails being a symbol of obedience to the Manchu dynasty.
Yuan Shikai took office as provisional president of the republic on January 1, 1912, at Nanjing, and he still had control of his armies. It was not unlike Madero embracing Mexico's federal army after the overthrow of Díaz.
With the overthrow of the Manchus, Sun Yat-sen was able to return to China, where he was greeted as the elder statesman of the revolution. In China, Sun began discussing strategies with his "revolutionary alliance." In mid-year (1912), Sun attended the inauguration of a National People's Party, the Guomindang, and he was elected to its nine-man executive committee and elected the head of the party's executive committee. But he withdrew from both positions, satisfied with his status as elder statesman.
In 1912, Sun met with Yuan Shikai several times, Yuan receiving and entertaining Sun with demonstrations of great respect. Sun left these meetings praising Yuan, stating that Yuan wanted the same advancements for China as he. He stated that Yuan was "beyond suspicion," that Yuan deserved sympathy and that he was "a man of ability." He said that in order to govern the republic, one had to have new ideas, experience and old-fashioned methods and that President Yuan was "just the right man."
Expectations among those who had risen to the top of the republican revolution was that Yuan Shikai would share power with a prime minister and a parliament, the parliament consisting of five representatives from each province. This was the government that they designed and which established itself in Beijing. Yuan expressed his support for the government's rules limiting his power. Nominally he remained commander-in-chief of China's army and navy – while the army he controlled consisted of only 80,000 men. The remainder of China's armies were dispersed across China and under the control of various local leaders. And local elites still held power in the provinces.
The idealism of youthful students, meanwhile, was being expressed in agitation for more changes. And, by the end of 1912, Yuan Shikai was expressing his displeasure with what he described as the unruliness of students. He attacked those advocating equality for women, accusing them of undermining the family and therefore social order. He suppressed anarchists, whom he accused, with some justification, of preparing for social revolution. He was perplexed by the lack of revenues being collected from the provinces, and he was trying to bring the provinces under the authority of the central government's rules.
Conflict between Yuan Shikai and parliament intensified. Some members of parliament were members of Sun's Guomindang, and some Guomindang members spoke of their misgivings about remaining restrictions on freedom of speech and the press. At the end of January 1913, the Guomindang emerged victorious in parliamentary elections. A leading Guomindang politician, thirty-year-old Sung Chiao-jen, had been verbally attacking Yuan's policies and trying to organize a further reduction in Yuan's power, or even ousting Yuan from power. In March (just days after the assassination of Mexico's president, Madero), Song Chiao-jen was assassinated at the railway station in the city of Shanghai. A military advisor to Yuan was implicated in the plot, and Guomindang leaders linked Yuan Shikai with the murder. Those newspapers that supported the Guomindang began violent verbal attacks on Yuan. Sun Yat-sen was astounded, and he began turning against Yuan.
When the new parliament opened on April 8, Yuan Shikai did not attend, fearing assassination. Still receiving little in revenues from the provinces, his government was in desperate need of money if he was to have a showdown against his enemies. In April he received a large loan from a consortium of foreign banks, guided by their home governments – Britain, France, Russia, Germany, Japan – for the purpose of repaying debts owed the foreign powers. With this loan, Yuan agreed to accept foreign personnel into China's government and to allow a foreign staff to reorganize the administration of the government's salt monopoly, with revenues from the salt monopoly to guarantee the loan.
Sun and many other Chinese, including five military-governors and 300 members of parliament, objected to the loan. In wishing to remove Yuan from power, Sun and others concluded that parliamentary methods would not work. On May 2, Sun and his allies began trying to line up military governors in the provinces to oust Yuan by military force – to complete the military victory that would have made the revolution against the Manchus suit their hopes. Coincidentally, in the United States the administration of Woodrow Wilson recognized Yuan Shikai's regime – the first major power to do so.
With money from the foreign banks, Yuan Shikai bought the loyalty of provincial governors and their armies. And Yuan held a good grip on the civil and military bureaucracy in Beijing. To some Chinese, Yuan still appeared to favor reforms and good government. When Sun and his allies launched their military campaign against Yuan they lacked adequate military equipment and adequately trained troops. Their effort to capture the military arsenal in Shanghai failed. Their forces were overwhelmed by troops loyal to Yuan, and, in August, after only one month of fighting, Sun Yat-sen was again forced to flee China. He had failed at making revolution, but his past efforts kept him alive in the minds of many Chinese as their nation's leading revolutionary.
After defeating Sun Yat-sen, Yuan moved against all other opponents. He ousted members of parliament who had belonged to the Guomindang, and he banned the Guomindang, citing its association with Sun's uprising. He accused China's socialists of having contact with Russian anarchists and jeopardizing world peace, and his government banned China's Socialist Party. In March 1914, the remaining members of parliament were told to return to their homes, and the provincial assemblies were dissolved. In May, a new constitution was created, with Yuan Shikai's presidency having dictatorial powers. Yuan fortified press censorship. He made Chambers of Commerce more subservient to his rule. Mail was subject to surveillance, and informants and plainclothes agents of Yuan's government were hunting for dissenters.
Sun Yat-sen settled in Japan, and he began trying to sell Japan on arming and assisting the Guomindang forces against Yuan. This, he proposed, would earn Japan the undying gratitude of the Chinese people. He argued that a close alliance between China and Japan would be of enormous benefit to both countries. He offered unrestricted residence for the Japanese in China, a customs union and commercial dominance for Japan in China. And he compared the help that Japan would give to China with France's role in assisting the American Revolution and with England helping Spain overthrow Napoleon.
With the beginning of war in Europe that August, Japan saw an opportunity to extend its influence in China. And after taking over German held territory in Shandong province, Japanese forces began moving farther inland in China. In October 1914, they entered the major commercial city of Tsinan, 200 miles southeast of the Beijing. Nationalist sentiment in China rose against the Japanese. Yuan's government benefited much as Huerta had when President Wilson of the United States attacked Mexico at Veracruz.
In January 1915, Japan presented Yuan Shikai with its Twenty-one Demands: demands for mining and railway privileges; the demand that Japan should share in China's iron and steel industries; that China must promise not to cede or lease to a third power any harbor, bay or island along its coast; that China's central government accept Japanese military, finance and political advisers; that China allow police departments in major cities to be jointly administered by Japanese and Chinese; that China buy the bulk of its munitions from Japan; and that China provide Japan with properties for Japanese schools, hospitals and temples. Japan intended that the demands be secret, but the demands became news in China, and another wave of indignation swept across the land. Military officers pledged their firm opposition to what they described as Japan's invasion. And the United States and Britain protested against Japan's move, but to no avail.
Sun Yat-sen saw Japan's moves as a friendly advance, but he was being ignored by the Japanese. Yuan Shikai, meanwhile, saw resisting Japan as an invitation to war and disorder, and he saw disorder as a threat to his rule and his comfortable life-style. Yuan saw rage among the Chinese as more of a threat than Japan's moves, and he took steps to suppress it. He also tried negotiating with the Japanese. The Japanese agreed to postpone their involvement in China's government and joint authority in China's police departments. And on May 25, Yuan Shikai and the Japanese signed an agreement, with Yuan congratulating himself for saving China.
It was around this time that Yuan decided that his rule would be strengthened by his turning to China's tradition of thousands of years. He wished to legitimize his rule by making himself emperor – the creation of a Chinese monarchy rather than the hated Manchu monarchy that had been recently overthrown. As emperor, he believed, he could bring China greater unity. And in August 1915, he declared his intent.
The Chinese people were not happy over Yuan's response to Japan, and they responded to his move to make himself emperor as a joke. Also opposed to Yuan's move to declare himself emperor were Japan, Britain and Russia. Toward the end of 1915, Japan decided to overthrow Yuan Shikai and began funneling funds within China to opponents of Yuan – including Sun Yat-sen. An insurrection against Yuan broke out in Yunnan province, and the rebellion spread rapidly. One province after another declared its independence, and the Guomindang established a regime at Guangzhou (Canton).
In March 1916, Yuan abandoned his plans to become emperor. And toward the end of April he agreed to surrender all civil authority while retaining his formal position as President. The rebellions against him continued, and toward the end of May the populous province of Sichuan declared its independence. Yuan's failure and humiliation are said to have made him desperately ill, and on June 6, at the age of 56, he died.
China's military governors now had power free from the central government. They feared one another while none felt strong enough to unite China by military force. Because of their independence they were to be called warlords. Among them alliances formed. With Yuan out of the way, Sun Yat-sen was able to return to China and to settle in Shanghai, while his Guomindang established itself in the southern city of Guangzhou (Canton). By August 1916, Sun Yat-sen was again making speeches, trying to keep the idea of a new China alive.
In 1919, China's delegation to the Paris Peace Conference asked that all imperialist privileges in China be revoked, that Japan's "Twenty-One Demands" be abrogated and that Shandong Province be returned to the Chinese. The Chinese delegation was ignored, and when Chinese students learned of this they were outraged. It was now that China's May Fourth Movement erupted. In Beijing in the afternoon of May 4, over 3,000 students demonstrated at Tiananmen Square. The enraged students burned down the house of one of those they believed had participated in the sellout to Japan and invaded the home of another and beat him senseless. On May 5, students in Beijing went out on strike, and students elsewhere in China also struck. The center of the protest moved to Shanghai, where clerks and factory workers organized. Businessmen, trying to please, joined in supporting the students. Japanese. And workers in other cities joined in. The ruling clique in Beijing felt compelled to release students it had arrested and dismiss three unpopular government officials who had participated in "the sellout" to Japan. A boycott of Japanese goods was begun. Magazines sprang up supporting a new China, including one called The New Woman. The warlord regime in Beijing felt pressured to dismiss three officials who had participated in "the sellout" to Japan. The May Fourth Movement gave new life to revolution in China. It was a move away from support for Western liberalism and more toward nationalism and anti-imperialism.
The United States was not comfortable with the extension of Japanese power in East Asia, and it was not comfortable with the military treaty between Japan and Britain, which was soon due for renewal - the U.S. feeling that it was odd-nation out in the East. The United States was discomforted too by the naval arms race that had begun with Britain and Japan, and the U.S. government spoke of the need for an international conference to reduce naval expenditures. Britain was in no shape economically to pursue a naval arms race, and it favored such a conference.
An international conference was held in Washington D.C. in the winter of 1921-22, the Washington Naval Conference, attended by all European powers that held territory in the Pacific and Asia - Britain, France, the Netherlands and Portugal. Italy did not wish to be left out and sent a representative. China was represented by the warlord government at Beijing. Japan attended, its government believing that it was in no position economically to effectively compete in a naval arms race with the United States and Britain. But Japan insisted that it would not discuss any of its recent territorial gains.
At the conference, Japan was confronted with issues involving its treaty with China in 1915 (its Twenty-one Demands), and its position in Manchuria, China and Siberia. The United States moved that the sovereignty, independence, territorial and administrative integrity of China be maintained, that China be able to develop its own effective government and that an equal opportunity for commerce and industry be maintained for all nations in China. Britain and France agreed. And the Japanese, wishing to please, went along.
China's delegation agreed that China would not discriminate unfairly against any power concerning trade and economic matters, and it asked for the termination of foreign extra-territorial rights in China. It asked that China be allowed to make its own import-export laws. China asked for the abolition of foreign post offices, pointing out that foreign control of postal services in China deprived China of revenues. The conference agreed that foreign post offices would be abolished no later than January 1, 1923. The conference pressured Japan's delegation into agreeing to return to China control over the former German-held territory in Shandong Province. But the conference rejected tariff autonomy for China.
Japan resisted giving up its 1915 treaty with China. But under pressure from the other delegations it disavowed that portion of its treaty that in effect took sovereignty from the Chinese: military and financial advisors within China's government, the right of Japanese to own what lands it wanted in China, joint Japanese and Chinese control over police, China purchasing arms and supplies only from the Japanese, Japanese railway construction rights in China, and the power of Japan to approve or disapprove China's borrowing capital from abroad.
Japan's delegation also promised that Japan would withdraw its troops from Siberia - an occupation that was costing Japan more money than it was willing to spend and producing little if anything in return. And Japan agreed to withdraw its military forces from Kiachow Bay (on the southern side of the Shandong Peninsula) and from elsewhere in northern China. It agreed to share with the United States the right to establish and maintain cable and radio stations and residences on the island of Yap in the Caroline Islands. In return, the U.S. consented to Japan's mandate of the Pacific Islands north of the equator that had been granted Japan at Paris - thousands of islands that Japan could use as coaling, cable and radar stations and as naval bases. And the British and Americans agreed to build no naval bases west of Hawaii and north of Singapore. (Singapore is about 1,000 kilometers, or 625 miles, south and a little west of Saigon.)
Regarding the size of navies, the conference agreed that Japan was to have naval superiority in and around Japan and its territories, including Taiwan. Japan, it was agreed, would have only three big warships for every five for Britain and the United States. It was agreed that no one would keep aircraft carriers larger than 27,000 tons or that had guns with bores larger than eight-inches. The conference agreed that battleships and cruisers were to have guns with bores no larger than sixteen inches. But an agreement concerning submarines could not be reached.
The report from Washington of Japan agreeing to a smaller navy was greeted in Japan with indignation. Japan's Chief of the Naval Board, Commander Kato Kanji, was so upset that he described a war between the United States and Japan as having begun. The unpopularity of the treaty in Japan led to a loss of influence for Japan's Foreign Office, largely responsible for the treaty. Favor in Japan regarding foreign affairs shifted to the military, especially to its younger officers, who were zealous in their desire that Japan pursue its interests in Asia independent of agreements with Western powers.
Britain emerged from the Washington Naval Conference disturbed by Japan's demand concerning naval bases in the Pacific. This had given warning to the British that Japan was a potential enemy. Britain's treaty with Japan would have obliged it to go to war on the side of Japan should war break out between Japan and the United States. Britain decided not to renew its military treaty with Japan. The British hoped that the agreements signed with Japan at Washington would adequately replace the benefits that had accrued from its military alliance. This was fantasy. Britain's constraining influence upon the Japan would now diminish. Britain maintained its long-standing plan to build a first-class naval base at Singapore. And in Japan, those who were most aggressive in cheering the glory of Japan's power saw Western powers in the Pacific and Asia as increasing their potential as enemies.
A few Chinese were impressed by Lenin's opposition to imperialism and the Soviet Union's renunciation of tsarist incursions into Manchuria. And in Shanghai, in July 1921, two prominent leaders of the May Fourth Movement joined with ten others in founding China's Communist Party. And soon the Communist Party grew to fifty-seven.
Meanwhile, Sun Yat-sen remained in Shanghai. He had attempted to increase his power by allying himself with some landlords, but without success. His call for more national sovereignty for China benefited from the new activism of the May Fourth Movement. He was acquiring more attention, but he was frustrated by lack of support from Britain and frustrated by having won no support from the governments of the United States and France, and he described these two republics as representing the old model of republicanism and Russia as the new model.
Moscow's Communist International, the Comintern, told China's Communists that they should collaborate with Sun's Guomindang party. The Comintern criticized China's Communists for failing to associate with the masses and for studying Marx and Lenin as they had once studied Confucius - the Comintern believing in political activity and social action as in Marx's statement about changing the world rather than contemplating it. Moreover, Moscow saw Sun Yat-sen as China's leading anti-imperialist and that anti-imperialism was the target that would attract the greatest support in China. China's little Communist Party had its doubts about working with a non-communist group, but it went along with the Comintern and joined the Guomindang, agreeing to obey its rules and to act as individuals rather than as a block.
Sun Yat-sen was impressed by the willingness of the Communists to cooperate, and in January 1923 he and Moscow signed an agreement. The Russians promised Sun arms and advisors, and the Russians agreed that Chinese conditions did not require a Soviet style solution. Despite Sun's alliance with communists, he saw his goals for China as being attainable without class struggle. He continued to be feted by wealthy Chinese businessmen, who liked the idea of China regaining its sovereignty and not being at a disadvantage with foreign business concerns. And Sun was speaking at universities and describing Britain as a model of good government.
In November 1923, Sun was able to return to Canton, where he still had some support. He took power there, and with the help of Russian advisors and Russian money he began an academy for training military officers in modern warfare. The commandant of the academy was a young man named Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jieshi), a sincere nationalist and opponent of foreign controls in China. The academy's officer in charge of political education was a young Communist who had been educated in France: Zhou Enlai.
The Guomindang sent Chiang Kai-shek to Moscow for four months, and there Chiang gave a talk on Sun's work in China's revolution, a talk attended by Chinese Communist students. After the talk, young Communists peppered Chiang with disagreements, finding fault with his views on revolution and throwing questions at him, such as: did not Marx say this, and did not Russia's experience prove that. Chiang countered that his talk was not about Russia but about China and that they should learn more about their own country. And the students accused Chiang of errant nationalism - in other words, not being sufficiently internationalist.
When Chiang returned to Canton, he found the city swarming with Russian advisors. He wrote to a friend, describing "the Russian Party" as "lacking in sincerity" and that only about thirty percent of what the Russians said was believable. He described the Chinese students in Russia as having slandered Sun Yat-sen and wrote that the aim of the Communists was to take over China rather than cooperate with Sun's movement. What they call internationalism, he added, was nothing but German-style imperialism, and he lumped the Russians together with the English, the Americans, French and Japanese, describing them as imperialists all.
The Russians persuaded Sun to expel from the Guomindang some who had become critical of them. Chiang was not among those targeted, but Chiang suspected that soon he would be. Then he was distracted from his differences with the Communists as Sun's movement in Canton was attacked by a private army fighting on the side of merchants around the Canton who had grown hostile to the Guomindang. Chiang led the drive that defeated the merchants' army, while maintaining his position in good standing within the Guomindang and with Moscow's agents. And he continued working with Moscow's agent, Michael Borodin, in preparation for a military advance north that Sun Yat-sen had been planning - a war to unite China under Guomindang leadership.
On March 12, 1925, Sun Yat-sen died of cancer, and the Guomindang hailed Sun as a great national hero. Within the Guomindang, Sun's death created rivalry between moderates and leftists, but their differences became temporarily buried in nationalist fervor. Students and labor unionists were directing their energies against British and Japanese commercial interests in China and a boycott of British and Japanese goods. A strike for higher wages at a Japanese owned cotton mill in Shanghai resulted in the mill's management committing brutalities against strike supporters, and there, in May, British police fired on and killed demonstrators. In June, British troops used force to suppress a strike in Hankow and again fired upon demonstrators. Chinese hostility toward the British and Japanese escalated, and political activists tied up Hong Kong for months with boycotts and numerous strikes. Patriotic students flocked to the Guomindang and many into the Communist Party, China's Communist Party growing from around 500 at the end of 1924 to about 20,000 at the end of the year. Chiang Kai-shek was also swept up in the indignation against the British and Japanese. Momentarily he felt unity with the Communists against a common enemy, and he sent his son to Moscow to study military science.
In 1925, Chiang and the Guomindang army extended Guomindang authority north from around Canton into Jiangxi Province.Briefly that year, one of the earliest members of the Communist Party, Mao Zedong, now thirty-one, was in Hunan Province, just west of Jiangxi, observing peasant risings against their landlords. Here conditions were conducive to peasant revolt. Peasants were forced to pay their taxes years in advance, and they were paying high rents and were often in debt to landlords, who charged exorbitant interest rates.The average peasant in Hunan Province was having a hard time surviving.
A landlord army drove Mao out of Hunan, and back in Canton Mao spoke and wrote articles in support of peasant uprisings. Mao pointed out that the proletariat in China was a small minority and that without the peasantry the proletariat would not win their revolution. Rather than having found peasants in need of guidance from any Communist vanguard, Mao found their passionate vigilantism as models for revolution. The peasants, wrote Mao, were using "terror with fanfare," bringing their community together in "struggle" meetings in which community members accused individuals of wrong-doing and intimidating the accused into making confessions. Mao described communities of peasants as attacking "local bullies and bad gentry and the lawless landlords." These community sessions, wrote Mao, are a force which people either submit to or perish. Mao described these vigilante groups as the "sole organ of authority" in their community. Even a quarrel between a man and his wife, he wrote, are settled at community meetings. As a result, he added, "the privileges which the feudal landlords have enjoyed for thousands of years are being shattered to pieces." The peasants had accomplished "in a few months" wrote Mao, what Sun Yat-sen had failed to accomplished in his forty-year effort at revolution. A revolution, wrote Mao, is not the same as inviting people to dinner, painting a picture or doing fancy needlework. The peasants, he claimed, must use their maximum strength or they could never overthrow the deeply rooted authority of the landlords.
Mao had found his model for revolution in China. But Party leaders refused to publish his article in any Party literature, as they held to the Comintern position that calls for revolution in China were premature, that the peasants should not be encouraged to make revolution, that what was needed now was national unification and Communists not aggravating moderates in the Guomindang.
In the summer of 1926, the Guomindang's plans for the march north to unite China began. Communists and other activists began their work in advance of Chs rallies they called for the defeat of imperialists and landlords, and they told peasants to stop paying rent and debts. Some of them led assaults against foreign merchants. They bullied women into modernizing their hair length, in other words cutting their hair, and they ordered females to give up the practice of binding their feet. They broke Buddhist statues, and they spoke against Christian schools, churches and hospitals, describing these as imperialistic. They organized factory workers, encouraged demands on employers, and they led strikes and shut down factories.
Most warlord armies lacked training and enthusiasm, and in the face of a tremendous show of popular enthusiasm for the nationalist cause, many warlords made no fight against the Guomindang armies. And in places where Guomindang forces drove out warlords and their armies, common peasants were taking advantage of the absence of those armies to band together against those they saw as oppressors. And in the city of Changsha in Hunan Province, conservative people were alarmed at what they called the "terrible" developments in the countryside.
By November 1926, when Chiang and his army reached the Yangzi River, thirty-four warlords had allied themselves with the Guomindang - the warlords trying to preserve what they could of their power. Along the Yangzi River, the Guomindang army took control of the three neighboring cities of Hankow, Wuchang and Hangyang. And the Guomindang moved its capital to Hankow.
The Guomindang in Hankow was under the influence of Michael Borodin and leftists, while moderates within the Guomindang remained disturbed by the growing radicalism. A wave of strikes was bringing production in China to a standstill, while businessmen and landowners across China feared more disorder. Wealthy Chinese businessmen offered moderates within the Guomindang their support if they would rid the Guomindang of its Leftist radicals.
Guomindang forces under the influence of Leftists took over the British concession in the cities of Hankow and Kiukiang, while British and U. S. merchants and missionaries were being evacuated from areas held by the Guomindang. The British rushed troops to Shanghai to prevent there what had happened at Hankow and Kiukiang. Britain was determined to save British lives and property, but it decided that it had to come to terms with China's powerful nationalist movement and unification drive.In February, 1927, the British concluded an agreement with the Guomindang, transferring the British concession at Hankow to Chinese authority. Animosity in China toward Britain declined, and moderates within the Guomindang began hoping for more respectability and recognition by the other powers of the world.
In March 1927, Chiang's forces entered the city of Nanjing, on the Yangzi River, almost 200 miles west and slightly north of Shanghai. Rioters in Nanjing supporting the Guomindang takeover attacked foreign missions and consulates, looted foreign buildings and dwellings, robbed and killed several foreigners. Chiang believed that taking over the foreign concessions was going too far, and he was indignant over the looting and rioting. He was concerned about exciting foreign forces into taking action against the Guomindang, while British and U.S. gunboats on the Yangzi River were firing shells into Nanjing in an attempt to put an end to the rioting.
In Shanghai, labor unions under leftist leadership had risen in a general strike, in sympathy with the coming of the Guomindang army. In the Chinese section of the city, Leftists disarmed the police and drove out warlord troops. The international settlement in Shanghai was guarded by an international expeditionary force, but Chinese and foreign businessmen in Shanghai were agitated and afraid that the Chinese Leftists might try to seize their part of town.
Chiang troops arrived in Shanghai on March 12, while nearby European and United States warships were poised for action to protect property. Chiang's troops arrived on March 12 and took control of the Chinese section of the city, without touching foreigners or their possessions. And after a day or so, the foreigners living in Shanghai relaxed and began congratulating each other, and they congratulated Chiang Kai-shek for the control that he held over his men.
People of wealth decided that Chiang was an alternative to communist upheaval and confiscations. And Chiang needed money if he were to make himself a force against the Guomindang's left-wing. His son was still studying in Russia, but after soul searching and sleepless nights Chiang decided to reverse Sun Yat-sen's policy of working with the Communists. In Shanghai, he negotiated with bankers, capitalists and members of Shanghai's powerful mobsters - the Green Gang. And from various sources he received large donations of money.
Chiang made his big move on April 12. Communists and other leftists in Shanghai were rounded up and shot. Hundreds of union supporters and organizers were killed, and Zhou Enlai barely escaped. Chiang's troops machine-gunned peaceful demonstrators responding to the crackdown, killing three hundred. The dead and wounded were carried away, and those only wounded were buried with the dead.
The bloodbath was extended to other cities, including Canton, where Chiang's subordinates and supporters were in control. Chiang sent a directive to the Guomindang leadership in Hankow that all Communist propaganda must cease. Guomindang leadership in Hankow dismissed Chiang, called him a counter revolutionary and offered a reward against him, dead or alive. And Chiang retaliated by setting up a rival government in Nanjing.
In response to Chiang's move against China's Communists, the Comintern decided that vacillating members of the Guomindang's Central Committee should be replaced by peasant and working class leaders and that a revolutionary tribunal should be set up to liquidate those who maintained contact with Chiang. The directives from Moscow angered the non-Communist members of the Guomindang in Hankow. The Hankow Guomindang began its own purge of Communists. And, considering itself to be China's government, the Hankow Guomindang ordered Moscow's agents out of China, including Borodin. And the way was now open for reconciliation between the Wuhan Guomindang and Chiang.
The Communist Party of China was losing membership by death and defection. Stalin had believed that China's Communists working with the Guomindang would be most effective and serve the Soviet Union's interests more. Now that Chiang and others in the Guomindang were slaughtering Communists, Leftists and labor union activists, Stalin declared that "the scoundrels" had to be punished, and he blamed China's Communist Party leaders for the Party's failure in China. China's Communist Party purged itself of its discredited top leadership, but it did not have the power to punish those Stalin thought of as scoundrels. Trying to make good its effort at gaining power at the expense of the Guomindang, the Party attempted to grab control of some military units, and failed. Stalin had had a distorted notion of the balance of forces in China. The Communists were unable to reorganize the Guomindang.
A war between those who supported the Communists and those who supported the Guomindang lasted throughout the year. Mao was in Hunan and barely escaped execution at the hands of Guomindang forces. His wife, Yang Kaihui, was captured and beheaded. Soldiers were sent to dig up the graves of Mao's parents.
Mao found refuge along the border between Hunan and Jiangxi provinces - a hilly region covered with bamboo and pine, with pheasants, deer and tigers, and only a few remote villages in the valleys, where people grew rice and beans. Joining Mao there were about a thousand others who had fled the Guomindang's crackdown. And in other remote locations in central China other Communist refugees were gathering. Mao now favored creating a Red Army as well as organizing the peasantry into a force to take power. And, drawing from recent experiences, he constructed what was to be one of his maxims: that power comes from the barrel of a gun. This was in defiance of Stalin's views, but at this point the influence in China on which Stalin had spent millions of gold rubles had been reduced to nothing. The Communists working within the Guomindang had ended.
Meanwhile, in the autumn of 1927, during a hiatus in the march north, Chiang married into a wealthy Chinese family.His wife was Soong Meiling, who had been educated in the United States and was a sister of Sun Yat-sen's widow. She was a Methodist, and Chiang also became a Methodist, and he remained serene in the belief that he had not been excessive in his move against the Communists.
The hiatus in the march north ended in April, 1928. That month, Chiang moved his armies toward Beijing. Japan's interests in China were strongest in China's north, including Manchuria. The Japanese saw extensions of Guomindang rule into northern China as a threat, and just south of Beijing the Guomindang army clashed momentarily with a Japanese military force. Then the Guomindang armies drove on and captured Beijing in June. The Japanese forces were anti-Communist, but unknowingly they were laying the ground for Communist gains.
Like most other monarchs, the emperors of Japan were limited in their power. A Japanese emperor had others to please: powerful families, the court nobility, and, most importantly, men known as the Elder Statesmen (Genro). Japan's most powerful families - the Satsuma, Choshu, Tosa, Hizen and Higo - exercised power in the form of the Privy Council, which was a behind-the-scenes force that had done much in 1889 in creating Japan's Constitution. The Choshu family dominated the army, and the Satsuma family dominated the navy - both families exercised power in the name of the emperor. For centuries Japan's emperors had been revered by the public as the descendants of gods. But Japan's emperors had been little more than figureheads with ceremonial duties.
Japan's Constitution provided a parliament - the Diet - considered a gift from the emperor to the Japanese people. The emperor was supposed to have supreme authority over parliament while the day to day governing of the nation was in the hands of a premier or prime minister and his cabinet, who were not responsible to parliament but to the emperor. According to the Constitution, the emperor had command over the military and had the power to declare war, make peace and conclude treaties. But during crises it had been the Elder Statesmen who were making decisions for the nation and for the emperor. Japan was in effect like Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey and some other nations early in the century: still authoritarian and emerging into an era of reforms and change, with a lingering authoritarianism.
Japan's parliament had two houses: the House of Peers and the House of Representatives. The House of Representatives consisted of three hundred persons who, at the turn of the century, were elected by between two and three percent of the population - these two to three percent being males who paid a sufficient amount in taxes. Members of the House of Peers either belonged to the imperial family or were appointed by the Emperor. The House of Peers could veto legislation passed by the House of Representatives, but it had no authority over government officials, and its control over the budget was restricted. The power assigned to the House of Representatives was taxation - the people, it was imagined, taxing themselves - an unpleasant responsibility conveniently not attributed to the emperor or to Elder Statesmen. But in reality, in the early years of the century the House of Representatives was little more than a rubber stamp for the Elder Statesmen.
During Japan's war against Russia (in 1904-05) the government began taxing more people in order to pay for the war, and those who paid taxes felt entitled to a voice in public affairs, which resulted in the government giving more people the right to vote. Other folks could express their displeasure only by protest demonstrations or by riots.
And the Japanese occasionally rioted. One such riot took place at the conclusion of the war with Russia. Common folks were upset with the treaty brokered by Theodore Roosevelt ending that war. These common Japanese were not unlike the English during the Boer War, or the Germans who were more nationalistic and more insistent on victory than their government. The rioters believed that their nation had won a great military victory and that their nation's leaders had accepted an inadequate compensation for all the blood and money spent pursuing the war. The rioters burned the homes of government officials. They burned streetcars and police boxes, and they raided police stations. The government proclaimed martial law and dispatched several companies of infantrymen against the rioters. The government shut down all newspapers that were not reliably friendly to the government. And in an attempt to mollify public opinion, government officials, including the Home Minister and the Prime Minister, resigned. The riots ended with 471 policemen killed or wounded, 4,550 others dead or wounded, 38 homes and 10 Christian churches destroyed, and about 1,000 persons under arrest.
Japan, like other nations in the world, had been influenced by others, while some were opposed to all that was foreign. The Constitution was worshipped by Japan's chauvinists as a thoroughly Japanese document, but it had been a part of Japan's Westernization - a Westernization consciously acquired in the last half of the nineteenth century, after warships of Western powers had demonstrated to the Japanese the superior military might of the West, a Westernization that included industrialization, advocated by Japan's oligarchy of Elder Statesmen, who had wanted to make Japan as powerful as any of the Western powers.
Late in the nineteenth century, Japan's aristocracy wished Japan to join the community of powerful nations, so they modified their culture. In addition to creating a constitutional government and creating the appearance of Western legal and political institutions, they segregated the sexes in public bathhouses, accommodating Western - and Christian - sensitivities in the matter of nakedness. And Japan's elite tried to imitate the West in sophistication and gaiety. They imported wines of various kinds, champagne, whiskey, brandy, gin and beer. The aristocracy held dances every Sunday evening, mixing with Western diplomats and their families to develop social graces that involved dancing and polite card games. Some of these aristocratic Japanese advocated intermarriage with Westerners in order to improve the Japanese biologically - despite the comparative hairiness and big noses of Westerners that seemed strange to the Japanese. But maybe they admired the Westerner's height and straight legs - at least some Japanese not realizing that bow-legs were caused by the manner in which the Japanese carried infants on their backs and that height was at least partly a function of diet. It was an age of Social Darwinism and much thought was given to genetic biology - without much understanding of genetics.
With time, feelings of inferiority vis-à-vis Westerners diminished. The pride that is natural to all people remained, along with vestiges from the past that made Japan different from the West. Japan still had reverence for those martial virtues that were common during the Middle Ages in Japan and in Europe. From Japan's Meiji era beginning in 1868, the Japanese had developed a new moral system and a strong sense of loyalty to the group, and Japan had a Confucian devotion to family hierarchy. Even large businesses and Japan's military were family in orientation. A company's chief executive or a company commander in the army took the role of the responsible father, bestowing paternalistic benevolence on his subordinates.
In Japan's rural areas remnants of the past were especially strong, while with industrialization came numerous educated professionals: engineers, technicians and managers, educators, office workers and government employees. These city folks participated in a new culture that included newspapers, magazines, novels and non-fiction reading. City people acquired high school educations, and those who wanted to acquire professions attended universities. Japanese intellectuals were in contact with ideas that had been circulating in the West, including the humanities and science. In the 1920s Japan's city dwellers had Hollywood movies they could watch in large theaters. Western-style dancing was in vogue. Baseball, golf and tennis were popular. And by the mid-twenties many had radios or a phonograph.
Japan was the most industrially advanced nation in Asia. Like the United States, during World War I it had sold war supplies to the belligerents and had benefited economically from the war in Europe. Japans output of steel had almost doubled between 1913 to 1920. At the end of the war, Japan was manufacturing much of what it had been importing from Europe before the war. And Japan was supplying China, India and other Asian countries with manufactured goods.
Capitalists in Japan were not restricted in absorbing other businesses, and in Japan cartels had developed - in iron, steel, chemicals, textiles, paper, cement and foods. Many businessmen had become wealthy during the war, and these nouveau riche were extravagant in their spending and haughty. They antagonized poorer, over-worked people. and they antagonized those aristocrats who had been brought up on the traditions of discipline, restraint and asceticism.
Parliamentary politicians had become subservient to those with wealth. And, influenced by big business, they kept spending at a minimum by keeping military budgets low. Frugality was good business, and industrialists were also able to keep the wages of their workers low. The heads of corporations were like frugal fathers, doing what was good for the family. But occasionally the low wages they offered brought fits of tantrum, as it had during the war, when prices were rising and real wages declining. Desperate housewives demonstrated, and in the summer of 1918 riots spread to various cities. More than a hundred people were killed and 25,000 were arrested.
Seeing democracies as emerging from the war victorious and autocracies having fallen, Japan's urbanites and intellectuals were impressed with democracy. And a heightened respect for democracy and the liberal institutions of the United States and Great Britain brought an increase in agitation for universal manhood suffrage, - especially among university students. And the government responded, doubling the size of the electorate by extending the vote to the propertied middle class.
Factory workers were impressed by the power of labor unions in the West, and they increased their organizing and agitating for more pay and for the eight-hour day and forty-hour week. The number of labor unions in Japan was rising dramatically. Strikes and clashes with police became as common in Japan as they were in the West. To many working people in Japan's cities the government appeared to be for the rich. A socialist movement was growing, and in 1920 the Japanese had their first May Day demonstration. In its struggle against corporations, Japan's labor movement won some victories, including the eight-hour day for male workers, while women employed in factories continued to work twelve hours a day.
In 1920, Japanese feminists organized the New Women's Association and spoke out for equal opportunities for women, for the protection of the rights of mothers and children and for universal suffrage - without success. In Japan, married women were treated as minors by law. Marriage was a matter of master and servant. A married woman had no property and was easily divorced. Her departing husband was not required to provide for her livelihood, and he was able to keep the children. Women were seldom given a share in an inheritance if a son existed, the son receiving it instead. Few women were employed in business or the professions. In 1922, women would be granted the right to sponsor and listen to political speeches, but they continued to be prohibited from joining a political party.
The competition from abroad that had vanished during World War I, returned after the war. Exports declined and imports increased. Financiers had made too many unsound speculations and expansions, and some banks faltered. Following World War I, Japan experienced financial panic, widespread business paralysis and an upward spiral in prices. Unrest in Japan grew. The success of the Bolsheviks in Russia and the increase in agitation by Japanese labor was met in Japan with an increased hostility by those favoring the status quo or the old ways. In 1920 - before a Japanese Communist Party had been formed - those favoring the old ways aimed their hostility against socialists, whom they associated with Russia's Bolsheviks. And they attacked liberal trends, which they also labeled as Bolshevik. Traditionalists turned against Westernization, against night clubbing and jazz , against modern girls (translated as mogos) and modern boys (translated as mobos).
Patriotic societies were growing. One of these, the Doka Kai society dated back to 1913 and had been founded by university professors. Like Europe's emerging fascists, the patriotic societies opposed class struggle in favor of national unity. Some of them opposed the existence of parliament. Some of them opposed what they saw as the corrupting influence caused by money and industrial wealth. Most of them supported their nation's traditional religion and the belief that the emperor was godly and sacrosanct. They called themselves "chivalrous patriots." And some of them were willing to use physical intimidation against scholars, politicians or financiers who were friendly toward democracy. Some of them were willing to use violence to intimidate anyone they saw as willing to weaken the Constitution or disseminate "dangerous thoughts." They tended toward opposition to arms reduction and to dislike the agreements that Japan signed at the Washington Naval Conference. And they were suspicious of the League of Nations.
The interests of businessmen in keeping military budgets low clashed with the militarism revered by the patriotic societies. And for the sake of sales abroad, businessmen had an interest in hearts and minds - good will - rather then a use in military force, which was inclined to antagonize people against whom it was used. But businessmen were making less of an issue of good will abroad than they were of the benefits of power and rise in agitation by labor. In 1921, big business called in the army to break strikes. And some businessmen were beginning to favor rightist organizations that they had previously regarded as their enemy.
Japan's emperor since 1912 was Taisho, son of the great Emperor Meiji, and father of the future emperor, Hirohito. Hirohito had been brought up in the traditions of Japanese militarism. As a boy he had most admired his tutor, count Maresuke Nogi, an old soldier and the headmaster of a school for the sons of the aristocracy. Nogi taught Hirohito the traditional spirit of Bushido and the Way of the Samurai - Bushido being a feudal-military code of chivalry that valued honor above life. For Hirohito, Nogi embodied the spirit of Japanese religious faith, loyalty and bravery. His face and body bore traces of wounds from swords, arrows, bayonets, bullets and shrapnel. When Hirohito was twelve, and his grandfather, the great emperor Meiji, had died, Nogi, seeing himself as a servant to Meiji, killed his wife and himself. Impressions of Nogi as representative of the Japanese spirit remained with Hirohito, but in 1921, when Prince Hirohito was twenty-one, his travel to Europe introduced him to another, rival influence.
Hirohito visited England as the guest of England's royal family. Late in his life, Hirohito would describe his visit to England as the happiest time of his life. He felt freedom from all the rigors and stiffness of the court life that he had known in Japan. He was impressed by the relative informality of England's royal family. He felt that King George V was treating him like a son, and he observed the mixture of casual attitude and affection that the English people had for their king - rather than the awe that the Japanese had toward their emperor. And he observed the freedom that the British press had in publishing matters related to the royal family - a freedom that went as far as slander.
When Hirohito returned to Japan he tried to bring some of the casualness and informality back with him. He threw a party similar to a party that had been thrown by the Prince of Wales in Britain - which in Britain had caused a stir. At Hirohito's party was music, dancing and plenty of alcohol - the latter a gift to Hirohito when he was in Scotland. Hirohito remained stiff, but the others drank too much and expressed themselves with much gusto. The Elders around Hirohito were shocked, and during the following days they attacked Hirohito for behaving in a fashion unbecoming to the god-emperor that he was supposed to be. Prince Saionji, the most influential of the Genro, described Hirohito as filled with dangerous delusions of liberalism. The last thing Japan's Elders wanted on the throne was a human being instead a god.
Extremist support for tradition continued to impact politics. One month after Hirohito returned from Europe, a young railway worker assassinated the prime minister, Hara, just after Hara had boarded a train en route to Kyoto. The instigator of the assassination was Mitsuru Toyama, leader of the "bully boys" of the patriotic Black Dragon Society. Toyama had considered Hara too liberal - although Hara had used police against strikers, had had strike leaders arrested for subversive activities, had suppressed Japan's Socialist League, and had a professor dismissed for publishing an article on Kropotkin's anarchism. And the assassin had been convinced that Hara had "defiled the Constitution" by having taken over the job of Minister of Marine while the actual Minister of Marine was attending the Washington Naval Conference.
The assassin was tried and sentenced to a short time in jail, and Toyama was never tried. Then in March 1922 came another incident involving the Black Dragon Society. A member of that society blew himself up with a homemade bomb in front of the royal palace. He was protesting Hirohito having mixed with inferior foreign persons on terms of equality.
That same month, March 1922, Japan's Communist Party came into being, and almost simultaneously a League for the prevention of Communism was formed in Japan. Its members dedicated their life to Communism's eradication. They worked for separation of the labor movement from socialism. They lectured businessmen on the dangers of liberal policies. Occasionally members used violence against Leftists, especially against anarchists. And as supporters of the emperor, they sponsored Japan's first "Patriotic Day."
Japan, meanwhile, was climbing out of its recession - except for those industries such as ship building and coal, which had over-expanded during the war. Japan's troops were being withdrawn from Siberia, and despite the efforts of patriotic societies to instill a martial patriotism in the Japanese people, the army was at a low point in prestige. No longer were bright students aspiring to join the army or navy. And with a drop in their prestige, military officers began wearing civilian clothes when off duty.
On September 1, 1923, one of the biggest earthquakes in Japan's history struck Tokyo and surrounding areas, followed by rampaging flames that destroyed 694,000 homes. Around 106,000 persons died or disappeared, and 502,000 were injured. There were the usual acts of bravery, rescue and people doing what they could to help others, while during the first 48 hours most Japanese in the disaster area were stunned. Tokyo's parks were filled with burned, broken and bleeding bodies, and little was being done for these people as Tokyo had little in the way of medical rescue teams.
Roaming the city were hordes of people made homeless by the quake and the fires. They were without food, and they were without water as many wells had been destroyed. No leadership appeared to give people encouragement, help, direction or to allay fears. Newspapers at first were unable to print. And Tokyo and surrounding areas were cut off from the rest of Japan and the rest of the world.
Among those suffering in Tokyo were thousands of Koreans. Koreans had come to Japan in search of jobs, and social contacts between Koreans and Japanese had been limited. Many Japanese despised the Koreans, disliking the smell of their food and believing them to be inclined toward crime and other unwholesome habits. They thought of Koreans as belonging to an inferior race, and to them intermarriage between Koreans and Japanese was unthinkable.
Hordes of homeless Koreans were among those wandering the city without food or water. A rumor spread that Koreans were setting fires, looting and raping. The police accepted these rumors, and they spread a rumor of their own: that the Koreans were grouping to attack and take over the city. Newspapers that began publishing within a couple of days of the quake reported the rumors as fact. Stories spread too that the socialists were taking advantage of the chaos by starting riots. Groups of Japanese vigilantes organized - joined by some soldiers. They began wandering the streets looking for Korean young men, and upon finding them the vigilantes held mock trials. They forced their captives to their knees and beheaded them. They began seizing Koreans of all ages - males and females. They gave children they suspected of being Koreans a simple test of words that only native-born Japanese could pronounce correctly, and those who failed were clubbed to death. No effort was made by the police to stop the atrocities. Koreans killed in these actions were later to be estimated between 231 and 2,613. The Chinese Embassy in Tokyo estimated that between 160 and 170 Chinese were also killed.
Some police took advantage of the quake and fires to strike against people with dangerous ideas. Police swooped down on hundreds of labor leaders and known socialists, communists and anarchists - the anarchists once again suffering from the anarchy that they, in the abstract, admired. Over a thousand socialists were arrested. At one police station in Tokyo, nine leftists persisted in singing revolutionary songs. The military police were called in. They stabbed the nine to death and flung their bodies down a well. A captain of the gendarmerie, named Amakasu, strangled to death an anarchist leader, Osugi Sakae, his wife and six year-old nephew. The Communists, Socialist and anarchist movements in Japan had been decimated, and their publications ceased to exist.
Days passed before the Prince Regent, Hirohito, was allowed out of his Tokyo palace to put in an appearance before the city. In an army uniform, he rode through the city on horseback with a small escort. It was to be taken as an indication that the crisis was over and all was well again.
Months later, a disgruntled young anarchist who had vowed to avenge the death of Osugi fired a shot at Hirohito as the prince rode in a motorcade taking him to open Parliament. The shot hit one of Hirohito's attendants instead. The would be assassin, Namba Taisuke, was the son of a member of Parliament. He was tried and executed. His former teachers resigned in shame for having fostered such a heinous criminal, and his father resigned his seat in Parliament. The attempted assassination inspired a greater vigilance against "dangerous thoughts." And the government increased its surveillance over those believed to be involved in Leftist activities.
Agitation against Japanese immigration by Californians ended with the U.S. Congress passing a law excluding Japanese immigrants from the United States. Not many Japanese wanted to migrate to the United States, but some of Japan's newspapers denounced the law as a "grave insult" and as a "deliberate slap in the face." Some other Japanese newspapers denounced the law as "harsh, cruel and unjust" and a "glaring breach of international etiquette." Japan lodged a formal protest through its embassy in Washington, and the Japanese began a boycott of American goods. But soon the Japanese abandoned their boycott - after learning that it was hurting themselves.
Japan was borrowing money from the United States and elsewhere in the West for reconstruction after the earthquake, and in 1924 Japan began to prosper again, much of the prosperity dependent upon international trade. Americans, meanwhile, were investing in Japanese companies, and Japanese companies were creating combinations with American companies. General Electric combined with Shibaura Electric Works. Western Electric combined with Nippon Electric Light. Ford Motor set up a plant in Yokohama. And the Aluminum Company of America owned 60 percent of the shares of the Asia Aluminum Company.
Japan's trade with Taiwan, Korea, China and Manchuria remained significant for Japan, but Japan was becoming increasingly dependent on trade with the West. Japan's exports to the United States were growing most rapidly, Japan's silk industry benefiting from the prosperity that had returned to the United States. Textiles were becoming Japan's leading export, and the textile industry Japan's leading employer. Japan was also exporting china and porcelain, which it was manufacturing in line with western tastes. Japan was producing more iron and steel, and it was increasing its importation of materials needed for manufacturing - including scrap iron from the United States. And Japan needed to import more food.
The prosperity of the 1920s benefited political liberalism in Japan. Japan's work force was happier. In 1925 all males over twenty-five who were not indigent were given the right to vote, and in 1926 Japan created a National Health Insurance law. But another law was also passed, called the Peace Preservation Law, intended to mollify conservatives, particularly those in the House of Peers. The Peace Preservation Law made it illegal to advocate the abolishment of private property or the creation of a different political structure. And, as a compromise with Rightists, the Peace Preservation Law set up military training at universities and high schools. Meanwhile, more Rightist organizations emerged as a counter to the values of prosperity and industrialized society. One of these organizations was founded by Baron Hiranuma Kiichiro, vice president of the Privy Council, and his society sent representatives through Japan lecturing in favor of the revival of Japan's spiritual values.
Emperor Taisho, died late in the year of 1926, and a year later his son, Hirohito, ascended the throne. By then Japan's prosperity was in decline again. The Americans were buying less from Japan, especially in textiles. Some Japanese factories were closing. Unemployment was rising. Falling silk and rice prices hurt Japanese farmers, and starvation became a real threat to millions of people in Japan's rural areas. A banking crisis arose. Banks had been making unsound investments again, while production was outstripping the ability to consume. Thirty-one banks folded, with terrified depositors trying to withdraw their money.
A downturn in the economy raised fears of unrest and subversion, and the prime minister, Baron Tanaka Giichi, aggressively pursued a campaign against "dangerous thoughts." Eight socialists elected to the Diet were denied their seats. Some Communist Party leaders were sent to prison. Professors were dismissed from universities.
To counter the economic recession, Tanaka's government increased military expenditures and began to look for recourse in business with its empire abroad and with China. Some around the emperor, and Hirohito himself, continued to favor peace and cooperation with China, while Tanaka, the military, Privy Council, and many members of the House of Peers had decided that the policy of cooperation and non-intervention in China was too weak. Chiang Kai-shek's march northward toward Beijing was taking place, and Tanaka and his allies were concerned about Japan's position in northern China, in Beijing and Tianjin, where their puppet warlord, Zhang Zuolin had been ruling for years. They were also concerned about Chinese nationalist threats to Japan's interests in Manchuria, where Japan had industries and was acquiring oil, soybeans and other commodities.
Japan's military moved to overcome public opposition to intervention in China by claiming that three hundred Japanese residents in Shandong had been massacred. Actually, only thirteen Japanese in Shandong had been killed - people whom the Chinese believed were smuggling opium. Newspapers in Japan stirred public opinion into favoring intervention. Tanaka sent an additional division of soldiers to Shandong. The commander of Japanese troops in Shandong sent troops to the city of Tsinan to bloc the advance of Chiang's forces toward Beijing, and Japanese forces in Tsinan killed and injured thousands of residents there.
With Chiang Kai-shek winning recognition and making treaties with foreign powers other than Japan, Prime Minister Tanaka withdrew troops from the city of Tsinan, and he recognized Chiang Kai-shek and the Guomindang as the legitimate rule in China.
With Chiang Kai-shek and the Guomindang in power in Beijing, Zhang Zuolin withdrew his troops from that area into Manchuria (where his rule had originated). This displeased Japan's army command in Manchuria, who distrusted Zhang Zuolin. The army command in Manchuria wished to disarm Zhang Zuolin's army, but Prime Minister Tanaka saw such an attempt as foolish, and he refused the army permission. Instead, frustrated army officers in Manchuria hatched a plot to murder Zhang Zuolin. They believed that the death of Zhang would induce disturbances in Manchuria by Chinese, which Japan's army in Manchuria could respond to in a show of preserving peace and order, giving them an excuse to extend their authority into areas beyond what had been agreed to at the Washington Naval Conference. A railway car in which Zhang Zuolin was riding during his retreat to Manchuria was blown up. Zhang was killed, and the Japanese attributed the killing to Chinese nationalists.
The expected disturbances among the Chinese in Manchuria did not occur, but Japan's army moved as planned. Hirohito and those others who favored cooperation with China were upset. So too was the international community. Britain and France moved for sanctions against Japan based on Article 16 of the League of Nations. Prime Minister Tanaka was also upset, and he wished to have those responsible for Zhang's assassination court-martialed. Many in the army and in Parliament, including Tanaka supporters, opposed this. Knowledge that Zhang's assassination had been committed by army men was not published, and army leaders were successful in having the assassination treated as an internal army matter.
Tanaka held the institution of the emperor in great awe, and Hirohito granted him a meeting, at which Hirohito expressed displeasure with Tanaka's failure to punish the assassins. Tanaka responded by resigning, which disappointed Hirohito. Hirohito regretted having intervened, later blaming his action on his "youthful vigor." Hirohito retreated to the more passive role expected of him, deciding to remain neutral regarding the prime minister and his cabinet. He remained a figure of great awe and respect in Japan, and Japan's military remained an independent force, in favor of pursuing empire. The army's ranks were to be filled with young recruits from the countryside - ready and willing material for indoctrination about the evils of big city deviations from Japan's divine tradition.
Recommended Books
A Bitter Revolution, by Rana Mitter, Oxford University Press, 2005
Sun Yat-sen by Marie-Claire Bergère, Stanford University Press, 1994.
Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, chapters 1 ~ 4, by Herbert P. Bix, 2000.
China: a New History, by John King Fairbank and Merle Goldman, 1998.
Mao, a Life, by Philip Short, 2000.
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Japan and Emperor Hirohito, to 1936 
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