Asian Current

Japan Sweeps toward Empire

If one may paraphrase a famous saying of Karl Marx; “a spectre is haunting East Asia: the spectre of Japan.” From icy Komsomolsk, eastern terminus of Russia’s new strategic railway in Eastern Siberia, to humidly tropical Singapore, where Great Britain has built up a Far Eastern Gibraltar in the shape of a powerful naval and air base, on what was formerly a jungle swamp, Japan is the primary object of political, military, and naval apprehensions and calculations.

Japan’s drive for expansion on the Asiatic mainland began when a mysterious bomb exploded on the line of the South Manchuria Railway outside of Mukden on the night of September 18, 1931. The bomb did very little damage, but its reverberations were heard around the world. For, using this incident as a pretext, the Japanese Army, flouting the feeble remonstrance’s of civilian officials at home and the equally impotent protests of the League of Nations, carried out a complete occupation of Manchuria. This brought under Japan’s effective control an area more than three times as great as that of Japan proper and thrust forward the military frontier to the Soviet boundary on the Amur River.

Since that time incidents of forward movement have alternated with periods of relative calm. But the drive shows no signs of coming to a definite end, even though it may slacken in momentum from time to time in response to a stiffening of actual or potential obstacles. It would be a bold observer who would venture to predict how the Japanese Empire may appear on a map published in 1945 or 1950.

Every recent year has had its milestone on Japan’s road to empire. In 1933 it was the slicing off of Jehol, with its old Chinese imperial palaces, its coal, and its strategic mountain passes, from the main body of China and its incorporation in Manchoukuo. In 1934 there was the Amau Statement, with its warning that Japan was assuming a veto power in regard to foreign “political” loans to China.

The year 1935 witnessed the elimination of the last vestige of the traditional Russian influence in North Manchuria through the transfer by purchase of the Soviet share of ownership of the Chinese Eastern Railway to Manchoukuo. It was also marked by a series of maneuvers, on the part of the Japanese military authorities in China, calculated to undermine the authority of the central government at Nanking over the seventy-five million inhabitants of the five provinces of North China. The culmination of these maneuvers was the setting up, with very obvious Japanese military connivance and sympathy, of a puppet regime headed by Yin Ju-keng in the eastern districts of North China.

Early in 1936 irregular forces, emerging from Manchoukuo drove out the Chinese troops and militia and established a pro-Japanese regime in the large, sparsely populated province of Chahar, which is believed to be rich in undeveloped iron resources. Mr. Koki Hirota, in his capacity as Foreign Minister, put forward three points as essential prerequisites of Sino-Japanese understanding. These points were cooperation between China and Japan in suppressing Communism; recognition of Manchoukuo by China, and the cessation by China of all unfriendly actions in relation to Japan and of the policy of “playing off a third power against Japan.” The first and third of these points were capable of elastic interpretation; they might be stretched to the point of asserting for Japan the right to supervise China’s foreign relations and to send Japanese troops into any part of China where Communist forces might be operating.

Two other important events in the establishment of an informal Japanese hegemony in North China were the substantial increase of the Japanese garrison in the Peiping Tientsin area and the inflow of smuggled goods, largely of Japanese origin, as a result of the paralysis of the authority of the Chinese customs inspectors and the free hand which was given to Japanese and Korean smugglers.

The further forward step which was so clearly foreshadowed by the previous process of wedge like penetration of North China occurred in the summer of 1937. A nocturnal clash between Japanese and Chinese troops at Lukowkiao, near Peiping, was followed by several other conflicts, in which each side accused the other of being the aggressor. The Japanese Government rushed in additional troops; and on July 28 and 29 large-scale military operations, accompanied by an extensive use of air bombing, drove the ill-equipped local Chinese troops from Peiping and Tientsin. While the situation is still fluid at the moment of writing, all the omens seem to point to the setting up in the Peiping-Tientsin area of a regime that will be thoroughly compliant with Japanese demands.

Quite in line with the policy of expansion on land was the denunciation by the Japanese Government of the Washington Naval Treaty and the refusal to conclude any new naval agreement except on a basis of parity with the United States and Great Britain. The 5-5-3 ratio which had been considered adequate for Japan’s security in 1922 was regarded as no longer satisfactory by the growing Empire of 1936.

Anyone who has been attending the press conferences at the Tokyo Ministry of Foreign Affairs and who has been in contact with representative Japanese officials and publicists could not fail to notice the intense unwillingness to assume any restraining obligations regarding future Japanese actions, especially in China. Japan has withdrawn from the League of Nations, and the Japanese press makes no secret of its belief that the Nine-Power Treaty concluded at Washington, which stipulates “respect for the sovereignty, the independence and the territorial and administrative integrity of China,” and provides for communication between the nine powers with major interests in the Pacific in the event of any situation which may involve the application of this treaty, is a dead letter.

Questioned on one occasion as to the Japanese attitude in the event that the Nine-Power Treaty should be invoked in connection with some disputed point between Japan and China, Mr. Eiji Amau, the well-known spokesman of the Japanese Foreign Office, significantly replied: “The world is moving and the treaties are standing still.” He added that China, anyway, had never carried out its obligations under that treaty.