The ‘Fascism Minimum’ Hypothesis and the Case of Thai Politics in the Second World War Years

Comparative politics, Inter-ethnic relations, International Relations, Politics, Regional History

Authoritarian regimes modelled on Italian Fascism and German Nazism in the interwar period were conspicuous in Europe, but by no means confined to that continent. Asia had its share of emerging political movements and regimes that were attracted to the clarion call of Euro-fascism and the German Nazi phenomena in particular. The nationalist Kuomintang in China had its New Life Movement and the Blue Shirt Society. There was the militaristic, ultranationalist Shōwa Statism associated with the Empire of Japan. In Syria the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, formed with the aim of restoring Syrian independence from its colonial master France, borrowed its ideas and symbols from Nazi ideology.

Another Asian country in the 1930s that was inspired by the Euro-fascist movement to venture down the right-wing authoritarian path was Thailand. Army officer Plaek Phibunsongkhram, better known as Phibun (or alternately transliterated, Pibul), rode to power on the back of his domination of the military faction of the People’s Party (Khana Ratsadon), becoming prime minister of Siam in 1938. Phibun, one of the most controversial figures in Thailand’s turbulent, coup-prone political history, consolidated his power by establishing a de facto dictatorship during the Second World War. Whether Phibun or his regime was fascist has been a topic of debate by scholars. But before we look at whether the fascist tag sticks to the Thai kingdom in the period of the Phibun ascendancy (1938–1944), we need to hit on a working definition as to what is meant when we refer to a political organisation or movement as “fascist”.

Thailand, WWII

This is far from a straightforward task given the complexity of the concept of fascism, one not helped by the fact that “fascist” is a catch-all word in everyday speech for spontaneously describing in a pejorative fashion any individual or organisation which vexes us even for a fleeting moment. The term is so loaded and problematic that a universally acceptable definition remains elusive…as historian and political theorist Roger Griffin notes, “with the possible exception of ‘ideology’, there can be no term in the human sciences which has generated more conflicting theories about its basic definition than ‘fascism’” [Roger Griffin, ‘Staging the Nation’s Rebirth. The Politics and Aesthetics of Performance in the Context of Fascist Studies’, Library of Social Sciences, (1996), www.libraryofsocialsciences.com]. A broad and simple answer might be that fascism is a totalitarian entity – defining “totalitarianism” as an extreme form of authoritarian rule where the state has complete control over its citizens, using coercion to suppress individual freedoms𝟙. The problem with “totalitarianism” is that it can be applied equally to either extremity of the political spectrum – the far right, fascist regimes like the Nazis and the Italian Fascists, and to systems on the far left, ie, to the Marxist communist regimes of the Soviet Union and Red China, and to contemporary North Korea under the Kim dynasty.

The Third Reich propagandising a supposed führer and Nazi connexion to a heroic Teutonic medieval imperial past

Reductionist heuristics: A short search through the pages of Google will quickly confirm the nigh-on impossible challenge of pinning down a broad consensus as to an acceptable definition of this hyper-complex term. So perhaps enumerating the essential elements or characteristics that constitute fascism might prove a more fruitful exercise? I am somewhat taken by Griffin’s approach to the definition conundrum, seeking to identify “what all permutations of fascism have in common – what he terms the “fascist minimum”, reducing the slippery concept to its bare essentials. Griffin actually condenses his take on “fascism” to a single basic sentence, viz. “a genus of political ideology whose mythical core in its various permutations is a palingenetic form of populist ultra-nationalism” (‘Staging the Nation’s Rebirth’). This brief statement requires some fleshing out. Griffin identifies three elements that are central to the ideology of fascism: the first is the idea of palingenesis (national revival) which all genuine fascist movements carry in their baggage. This entails the perpetuation of a utopian urban myth which exalts “the regenerative national community which is destined to rise up from the ashes of a decadent society”𝟚. Through emphasising the societal decadence of the status quo (the second idea), the fascist can isolate and vilify the supposed enemies of society (eg, Jews, communists, Gypsies). The evoking of this palingenetic myth allowed fascist movements to attract large masses of voters who have lost faith in traditional parties and religion with their glittering promises. The third element, populist ultra-nationalism, “arises from seeing modern nation-states as living organisms which are directly akin to physical people because they can decay, grow, and die, and additionally, they can experience rebirth” [‘Ultranationalism’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]. This palingenetic– ultranationalism fusion is what distinguishes Griffin’s “true fascism” from para-fascism and other authoritarian, nationalist ideologies [Roger Griffin, The Nature of Fascism (1991)].

A fascist or para-fascist checklist?: There are other characteristics evident in the praxis of fascist organisations and movements, including an opposition to or emasculation of parliamentary democracy; the leader’s cult of personality𝟛; (a revolutionary movement with a) belief in a natural hierarchical social order; an inordinately dominant or influential role played by the military in the state’s governance and in society as a whole; victimhood, suppression of targeted minorities in society (be it ethnic or religious); anti-communism; the all-powerful, all-seeing party as the vanguard of the fascist movement; a “cult of action for action’s sake” (Umberto Eco)…the square peg here is that these characteristics are not the exclusive domain of fascism or fascist politics as they feature in far-right authoritarian rulerships and sometimes in communist ones as well𝟜.

✑ ✑

Pridi (left) and Phibun (source: warfarehistorynetwork.com)

If we turn now to look at Thailand at the end of the 1930s we see that Phibun consolidated his position as prime minister before embarking on the road to dictatorship. Moving quickly to neutralise political opponents, he had his chief army rival Phraya Song’s supporters eliminated and Phraya himself exiled, while curtailing the already restricted royal power. Parliament was reduced to a rubber stamp chamber, press censorship was rigorously imposed. With other parties outlawed, the principal opposition Phibun faced came from within his ruling People’s Party in the form of Pridi Phanomyong (Banomyong) who headed up the civilian faction of the party. Phibun expressed admiration for the major right-extremist powers, Nazi German, Fascist Italy and the Empire of Japan. Militarisation of Thai society was a major focus for Phibun, borrowing extensively from the fascist template he copied the Nazi Jugend (Hitler Youth) with his Thai youth organisations, Yuwachon for boys and Yuwanari for girls. Phibun also relied on propagandist techniques through his right-hand man Wichit Wathakan who acted as party ideologue and propagandist to the extent that he was known in some circles as the “Pocket Goebbels” [REYNOLDS, E. B. (2004). PHIBUN SONGKHRAM AND THAI NATIONALISM IN THE FASCIST ERA. European Journal of East Asian Studies3(1), 99–134. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23615170].

Phibunsongkhram: Phibun’s eponymous province

Phibun in power projected the image of a “charismatic national savour”, presenting himself as the Thai people’s one great hope to lift the country out of the straitjacket of its weak and subordinate global position and achieve modernisation and a strong national position. And he built a form of personality cult for himself…pictures of himself were ubiquitous; awarding himself a raft of high offices and titles (including field marshal of the army). Another manifestation of this was how the Thai people celebrated Phibun’s birthday as the nation’s phunam (leader), venerated his auspicious birth-colour (green) and his birth sign, etc (Reynolds). Phibun even named a province after himself, comprising Cambodian territory wrestled from the French.

Prime Minister Phibun in 1948 (photo: Jack Birns/Life Photo Collection)

”Thaification”, Phibun’s territorial expansion ambitions: Was Griffin’s core “palingenetic myth” an element of Phibun’s political ideology for Thailand? Phibun and those other Thais who espoused nationalist sentiments subscribed to a genuine belief in Thai exceptionalism which derived from the pride of Siam having been the only state in Southeast Asia to have retained its independence in the wave of European colonisation of the region, an exceptionalism which Thais presented as a heroic tale in promoting nationalism. The Thai situation seems however to lack a homegrown urban myth in which the phoenix of national revival arises out of a state of decadence, instead the prevailing ideology had an irredentist component which has been called Pan-Thaiism. [‘Thaification: from ethnicity to nationality”, Marcus Tao Mox Lim, Identity Hunters, 05-Dec-2020, www.identityhunters.org].

Name changing ceremony Bangkok, 1939: Affixing of the royal seal by the crown prince (source: Life)

Ditching “Siam” for “Thailand”: Phibun pursued an expansionist foreign policy by which he hoped to reunite ethnically-related peoples under a “greater Thai race-based nation” (Tao Mox Lim). The name change from Siam to Thailand in 1939 had a dual function for Phibun – an intent to modernise the country and the creation of a new national identity𝟝. The name “Thailand” (Prathet Thai) symbolised a departure from the multi-ethnic identity of Siam, a device to assimilate other ethnic minorities (including the Chinese, a very significant minority in Siam𝟞) into a new construct, a national (homogenised) Thai identity – what Tao Mox Lim calls a “reimagining of a ‘Thai race’”. This was all a precondition to Phibun’s irredentist aspirations, allowing him to stake a claim on lost territories, mainly in French Indochina (Reynolds).  

Under Phibun’s heavy authoritarian hand democratic rights and freedoms were restricted and the populace subjected to a series of cultural mandates dictating the modes of dress and behaviour to be adopted. The earlier pluralism of Thai society was squashed but the degree of coercive control over aspects of citizens’ lives never got close to the Orwellian “big brother” levels in totalitarian regimes in Nazi Germany and in some Cold War Eastern Block countries. Phibun did not secure a totalitarian hold over the Thai population during his six-year long regime𝟟 and Thailand didn’t experience the ideological journey of national destruction/rebirth process as prescribed by Griffin.

Thailand, the most coup-prone sovereign state in the world (photo: Agence France-Press via Getty Images)

The unravelling of a SE Asian dictator: As autocratic as Phibun was in running the country, the elephant in the room was his wartime relationship with Japan. Having steered Thailand to a neutral stance in the world war, he switched positions, committing to an alliance with the Japanese under the Greater East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere in the hope of realising his long-held goal of Thai territorial expansion. Unfortunately, the alliance proved to be very unequal and heavily in Japan’s favour. The Japanese with its occupying forces in Thailand wouldn’t allow the Thai army to participate in its invasion of Burma and the Thais were forced to hand back the limited territorial concessions it received from France at the war’s end. By 1944 Phibun—with Japan’s military fortunes on the slide and seen as its increasingly unpopular collaborator—was forced out of the prime ministership in which some describe as a parliamentary coup masterminded by his rival Pridi [‘The Fall of the Phibun Government, 1944’, Benjamin A. Batson, www.thesiamsociety.org].

𝟙 as Mussolini summed up the function of totalitario…”all within the state, none outside the state, none against the state“

𝟚 having sold the masses on the notion of the regenerative national community utopia, the masses convinced of its efficacy must (unquestioningly) follow its creator, the (fascist) leader, sowing the seeds for the leadership cult to develop

𝟛 ample examples exist of leaders who were not fascists who cultivated a personality cult, eg, authoritarian populist Juan Peron and communist supremo Stalin

𝟜 it’s quite plausible for authoritarian regimes to practice even extreme fascist tactics, but this of itself doesn’t necessarily make the political system a fascist one

𝟝 the word “Thai” means “free” in the Tai tongue (thus “land of the free”) which resonates with the idea of the country never having been colonised

𝟞 Phibun’s imposition of the Central Thai language on all citizens promoted Thai ethnocentricity after 1939, which together with the introduction of harsh laws had the outcome of lessening the inordinate economic impact of the Chinese community (Reynolds)

𝟟 Phibun in his second stint as PM (1948–57) was preoccupied with “trying to reinvent himself as a democrat” (Reynolds) and surviving several coup attempts before his ultimate removal and exile to Japan

A Near Miss in Tokyo: The Would-Be Assassination of a Hollywood Screen Icon

Military history, National politics, Performing arts, Popular Culture

One of the many enduring urban myths that used to float around about celebrated Hollywood actor and director Charlie Chaplin was that he once entered a “Charlie Chaplin Look-alike Contest” – and lost! [Charlie Chaplin allegedly entered a Chaplin look-alike contest and lost’, (Domagoj Valjak), The Vintage News, 05-Jan-2017, www.thevintagenews.com].

Given the gravity of the Hollywood silent star’s experiences on a 1932 visit to Japan – a close brush with mortality – the “Little Tramp’ may have wished in hindsight that he was similarly unrecognisable on that particular perilous occasion in Tokyo.

This bizarre as it sounds episode took place during a heightened period of political tensions in Depression-hit Japan. The incumbent Japanese prime minister Inukai Tsuyoshi, a fan of Chaplin, invited him to Japan. Unfortunately, this occurred at a time that certain far-right cells in the Japanese military were plotting to assassinate PM Inukai and cause an international incident.

PM InukaiThe group of young reactionary officers from the Japanese Imperial Navy – including Kiyoshi Koga, one of the ringleaders – sensed an opportunity in Chaplin’s impending visit to double their intended impact (chaos, anxiety and upheaval within mainstream Nihonjin society). The conspirators’❈ purpose was straightforward – to weaken the fabric of Japanese democracy and the rule of law culminating in the supplanting of the status quo civilian national government by a military one [‘May 15 Incident’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].

Why Chaplin?

At his trial Koga, responding to the prosecutor’s question, explained why the plan was to include Chaplin in the ‘hit’: “Chaplin is a popular figure in the United States and the darling of the capitalist class. We believed that killing him would cause a war with America, and thus we could kill two birds with a single stone” [‘No laughing matter’, (Shibley Nabhan), The Japan Times, 15-May-2005, www.japantimes.co.jp].

Why Inukai?

The perpetrators’ intent was to railroad the civilian regime in Japan, but Inukai had especially earned the ire of the clique because of his opposition to the military interventions in Manchuria and elsewhere, and it’s manipulation of the decision-making functions in the kyabinetto (キャビネット) (Japanese cabinet). The centre-right politician was planning to negotiate the Manchurian situation with the Chinese government and halt all further Japanese military activities in China – all anathema to the ultra-right militarists [‘Inukai Tsuyoshi, Prime Minister of Japan’, Britannia, www.britannia.com].

The coup attempt

Eleven young naval officers were chosen to carry out the “double strike” (known as the May 15 Incident or the ‘5.15 Incident’). They were thwarted from completing their assignment of taking out the second of their targets, owing to Charlie Chaplin’s own sudden about-face…once in Tokyo the film star lost interest in attending the reception to be held in his honour at the Japanese PM’s official residence and skipped it, instead he went to a sumo wrestling match with Inukai’s son (known as ‘Inukai Ken’), a pastime much more to his liking – this 11th hour change of mind probably saved the Hollywood cinema icon’s life!

The assassins on arrival at the prime minister’s residence or Sōri Kōtei (総理公邸)◙ (which was alarmingly short on security) duly liquidated incumbent PM Inukai as planned. The cadre of ultra-right extremists rounded out the night of terror by attacking the residence of the head of the Rikken Seiyūkai Party and tossing grenades into the Mitsubishi Bank’s Tokyo headquarters.

Chaplin meeting with the mayor of Tokyo on his trip

The Aftermath

The ensuing trial of the perpetrators was marked by a wave of public sympathy for the accused✙. Many believed that the young assassins’ actions admirably embodied the nativist Yamato (大和) spirit of Japan [‘May 15 Incident’, loc.cit.]. In such a politically charged environment, the assassins were handed extremely light sentences. The incident and its feeble handling by the establishment served to encourage conservative elements of the military to further excesses, eg, the February 26 Incident (1936), a failed putsch by a radical faction of the army with the same aim of installing a military government in Japan.

The developments in Japan in the 1930s, the isolated violent incidents by maverick cadres within the military and the incursions into Manchuria and beyond, set Japan on a path to the eventual dissolution of all political parties and the establishment of a military junta in 1940, and thus on a path to war.

Footnote: Chaplin, much later, from the sanctity of his memoirs, wrote light-heartedly of the incident: “I can imagine the assassins having carried out their plan, then discovering that I was not an American, but an Englishman – ‘Oh, so sorry!'” [Nabhan, loc.cit.].

PostScript: Japan, a dangerous environment for politicians

Assassination has been a constant in Japanese politics, a recurring feature in the nation’s political landscape. In the same year as Inukai was shot, there were two other political assassinations in Japan perpetrated by the League of Blood (the casualties a former finance minister and the head of the Mitsui Group corporation). The victims of extremist fringe violence in Japan include prime ministers or former prime ministers Prince Itō, Hara Takashi and Viscounts Saitō Makoto and Takahashi Korekiyo (these last two assassinated in the February 26 Incident). The pattern continued into the postwar era…two Japanese politicians were killed in 1960, and again in the 2000s some provincial politicians have been assassinated (these most recent killings have however tended to be the work of yakuza crime organisations).

┳┳┳┳┳┳┳┳┳┳┳┳┳┳┳┳┳┳┳┳┳┳┳

❈ comprising the naval officers’ cell, some cadets of the Japanese Imperial Army and civilian members of the ultra-nationalist League of Blood

◙ in 2013 Shinzō Abe after regaining the prime ministership refused to move into the same presidential residence that Inukai was assassinated in, though he denied he was motivated by superstition [‘Japanese prime minister fails to move back into ‘haunted’ residence’, (Justin McCurry), The Guardian, 19-Aug-2013, www.theguardian.com]

✙ 350,000 signatures in blood were received, petitioning the court for lenient sentences for the eleven

Manchukuo: An Instrument of Imperial Expansion for the Puppet-masters of Japan

Comparative politics, Economic history, Inter-ethnic relations, International Relations, Military history, Political geography, Regional History

In 1931 the Manchurian component of the Japanese Imperial Army faked the sabotage of the Southern Manchurian Railroad (which was controlled by the Japanese themselves) near Mukden (present day Shenyang). The Japanese military, playing the victim, alleged it was the work of Chinese dissidents, and used the so-called Mukden Incident to launch a full-scale invasion of Manchuria✴.

Kwantung Garrison troops in Shenyang, 1931

The military onslaught from Japan’s Kwantung Army (formerly Garrison) [関東軍, Kantogun] (AKA the Guandong Army) met with determined if largely ineffective resistance…the Chinese were under-prepared, under-equipped and not as technologically advanced militarily as the Japanese, but their defensive efforts were also undermined by Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek who ordered the local warlord Zhang Xue-liang to hold back on resisting the Japanese invaders. The reason – Chang had fixed on a strategy that prioritised gaining control over the rest of the China in the civil war against Mao’s Chinese communists [‘Mukden Incident’, Encyclopaedia Britannia, (John Swift), www.britannia.com]. The Japanese military successes were followed by the creation of a Japanese “puppet state”, Manchukuoꆤ, in Manchuria in April 1932 (comprising China’s Northeast and Inner Mongolia).

Background to Manchukuo: Japanese “special interests’

Japan had pursued an aggressively interventionist policy in the region for decades before Manchukuo. Victorious wars against a diminishing Chinese empire (First Sino-Japanese War, 1894-95) and Tsarist Russia (Russo-Japanese War 1904-05) emboldened Japan’s ambitions. Japan’s spoils of war after defeating the Russians included the extension of its economic sphere of influence to southern Manchuria. Moving into ports, mines, hotels and other businesses and its takeover of Russian railroads, brought with it a big influx of Japanese settlers [‘Manchukuo’, Wikipedia, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/].

Even prior to Manchukuo’s creation, Japan had been conceded a portion of Chinese territory in the southern Liaoning Peninsula which included Dalian (renamed Darien by the Japanese). Known as the Kwantung Leased Territory, it remained in Japanese hands until 1945.

Manchukuo’s capital was Hsinking [Xīnjīng: (literally ‘new capital’)] (today reverted to its original name, Chángchūn) in Jilin province. In 1945 at the end of WWII the capital was moved to nearby Tonghua. Hsinking had the status of a “special city” under the Manchurian state, as did Harbin.

Puppet statehood

The Manchukuo state established by the Japanese militarists was initially a republic but in 1934 it was changed to a one-party constitutional monarchy, the so-called Empire of (Greater) Manchuria. The Japanese dredged up the former boy-emperor Pu Yi (last Chinese emperor of the Qing Dynasty) to be the titular figurehead of the ’empire’. Executive power of the Manchukuo government purportedly resided with the prime ministers (Zheng Xiaoxu 1932-35 and Zhang Jinghui 1935-45). The Manchukuo PM held authority under an authoritarianpersonalist dictatorship, but this was more perception than substance as real power lay firmly with the Japanese☯️.

“Emperor of Manchukuo” (Model display of puppet emperor in palace museum)

Kwantung Army, a rogue element

The Kwantung◘ Army, the arm of the Japanese Imperial Army in Manchuria, functioned as something of a rogue element, habitually acting independently of the Japanese government and the Army General Staff in Tokyo which struggled to rein it in. The Mukden Incident (see above) and the Huanggutun Incident (see below) are two such instances of their rogue activities. Service in the Kwantung Garrison, which had its headquarters in the Manchukuo capital Hsinking, was a recognised path for promotion in the Japanese high command…instrumental chiefs of staff Seishirō Itagaki and Hideki Tōjō were both beneficiaries of this [ibid].

Hsinking: Kwantung Army HQs

Highly politicised, the Kwantung Army adopted an extra-military role for itself in Manchuria, eg, the commanding officer of the Kwantung Army was also Manchukuo ambassador to Japan and held an extraordinary power of veto – even over the Emperor of Japan! [ibid.].

‘Race’-based stratification

Japan peopled the sparsely populated parts of Manchuria with Japanese migrants who sat atop a social pyramid with other ethnic groups in the region stratified under the Japanese. Rationing of essential foodstuffs (including rice, wheat and sugar) was administered in accordance with this racial hierarchy. The Japanese-dominated colony of more than 30 million has been characterised as more “an Auschwitz state or a concentration-camp statethan merely a “puppet state” [Yamamuro Shin’ichi, quoted in Smith, Norman. “Disguising Resistance in Manchukuo: Feminism as Anti-Colonialism in the Collected Works of Zhu Ti.” The International History Review, vol. 28, no. 3, 2006, pp. 515–536. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40111222].

Japanese dominated Manchuria was indeed a police state, one of the most brutal in an (interwar) era of totalitarian excesses. The Manchukuo regime unleashed a systematic campaign of terror and intimidation against the local Russian and Chinese populations (including arrests without trial, “thought crimes”, organised riots and other forms of subjugation) [‘Manchuria’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].

Artillery unit of Fengtian Clique

Resistance to Japanese domination

After the establishment of Manchukuo and the ineffective performance of the Fengtian (Liaoning) Army against the Japanese war machine, various Chinese militias were formed to carry on the resistance. The main forces comprised Anti-Japanese Volunteer Armies, backed by the KMT Nationalists and led by famous general Ma Zhanshan. Other resistance to the Japanese in the Northeast came from Communist-organised guerrilla units. The anti-Japanese militias’ campaigns, which included harrying and terrorising the Kwantung Army, lasted ten years until the Japanese Army and Airforce finally pacified Manchuria in 1942.

The brunt of the early Chinese fight-back against Japan’s imperial expansion was borne by these warlord militias and volunteer armies, but after Chiang Kai-shek was talked round to a truce with the communists and a united front against Japan in 1937 (in effect postponing the civil war to the conclusion of WWII), the Republic of China (ROC) army engaged directly with the Kwantung Army (Battles of Shanhai Pass, Rehe, Beiping-Tianjin, 2nd Battle of Héběi, Chahar Campaign, etc).

ROC flag (>1928) 中華民國 Chunghwa Minkuo

1937: Second Sino-Japanese War

After colonising Manchuria, the Japanese military used it as a base to invade the rest of China. In 1937 the eruption of fighting between Chinese and Japanese troops near Peking (Marco Polo Bridge Incident) led to full-scale war. Antony Beevor [The Second World War, (2012)] marks this episode as being effectively the start of the Second World War (some historians date it’s origins earlier, from the Mukden Incident in 1931).

Marco Polo Bridge (Photo: The China Guide)

Siberian sideshow

Eventually the Kwantung Army, unchecked by Tokyo, overreached itself by invading Siberia, provoking the USSR into an undeclared war and several border conflicts and battles in the late 1930s. The clashes culminated in the decimation of Japanese 6th Army at the Battle of Khalkhin Gol in August 1939 [‘The Forgotten Soviet-Japanese War of 1939’, The Diplomat, (Stuart D Coleman), 28-Aug-2012, www.thediplomat.com].

1930s Tokyo ‘spin’

The Japanese came under attack in the West for establishing a harsh, totalitarian regime in Manchuria. Attempts were made to deflect the criticism by portraying the interventions in China’s northeast as a positive contribution to the restoration of regional order. Apologists for Japan, pointing to the pattern of internecine conflicts between warlords, communist insurgency and general chaotic conditions in the rest of China in the first third of the 20th century, argued that Manchuria in the same period had, courtesy of Japanese involvement, enjoyed “peace and order, progress and prosperity, (making) great strides in commercial and industrial development” [Saito, Hirosi. “A Japanese View of the Manchurian Situation.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 165 (1933): 159-66. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1018175].

Manzhouguo passport

Japanese spin imbued the Manchukuo regime with a pseudo-legitimacy that was almost mythic: “the ‘Manchus’ followed the ‘kingly way’ (王道 wangdao) of harmony, prosperity, and peace under the benevolent guidance and protection of imperial Japan” [Review of Sovereignty and Authenticity: Manchukuo and the East Asian Modern, (Prasenjit Duara), by John J. Stephan, The International History Review,Vol. 26, No. 1 (Mar., 2004), pp. 181-182. Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40110486]❅.

Myth-busting Manchukuo

Reconnecting with this, Japanese historians in the postwar period, tried to justify the horrors committed by the occupying Japanese army, characterising the incursion in Manchuria and Inner Mongolia as an act of ‘liberation’, prompted by motives which were ‘enlightened’. Recent research by Shin’ichi Yamamuro leads the Japanese academic to posit a view of the Manchukuo occupation that challenges the mainstream Japanese one. Yamamuro debunks the theory that right-wing Japanese military and civilian authorities were supposedly imbued with the idealism of wanting to construct a “paradise in earth” in China’s three northern provinces [Manchuria Under Japanese Dominion, (Shin’ichi Yamamuro, translated by Joshua A. Fogel), 2006; Bill Sewell. “Review of Yamamuro Shin’ichi. Manchuria under Japanese Dominion. Translated by Joshua A. Fogel. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006,” H-US-Japan Reviews, March, 2007. URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=265211196449094].

Scope of the membership of the Greater EACP Sphere

“Greater Co-operation” – code for Japanese expansion and economic domination

In 1940 Japan incorporated its Manchurian client-state into the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere (GEACS). The purported aim of GEACS was that it would be an economically self-sufficient “bloc of Asian nations led by Japan and free of Western powers”. In reality, this veneer of Pan-Asian idealism (regime motto: “five races under one union”) was a front for the Japanese militarists and nationalists to expand south and west and advance its domination of Asia [‘Manchukuo’, Wiki, loc.cit.].

A prized economic asset

Manchukuo (and the Inner Mongolia territory) was incorporated into both the Japanese war machine and the national economy. Rich in natural resources (especially coal and iron), under the Japanese Manchuria became an industrial powerhouse. Japanese citizens, who had been hard hit by the Great Depression, were enthusiastic in their support for the army’s intervention in Manchurian territory right through the period of Japanese occupancy [ibid.].

August 1945: D-day for the Japanese puppet states

August 9, 1945, the day after the second atomic bomb was dropped on Japan, the Soviet Red Army and the Mongolian Army invaded Manchuria and Inner Mongolia, which was to be the final campaign of the Second World War. In a swift operation (Manchzhurskaya Strategicheskaya Nastupatelnaya Operatsiya), Manchukuo, Mengjiang and Japanese (northern) Korea were all liberated, thus culminating in the break-up of the Japanese empire. Manchuria and Inner Mongolia were returned to China, and the Soviets set about orchestrating a communist takeover of North Korea…meanwhile Korea south of the 38th Parallel was occupied by US forces [‘Soviet invasion of Manchuria’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].

Victorious Soviet soldiers in Harbin Photo: https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/

Footnote: ‘Manchuria’ as a geographic descriptor was first used by the Japanese in the 1600s and later adopted by Westerners in China…the Chinese themselves these days are less inclined to use the term ‘Manchuria’, preferring to describe this part of China simply as Dongbei (东北), the Northeast).

Manchurian malfeasance – for the record: these days the once imperial “puppet palace” of Manchukuo is a history museum – a reminder to Chinese and the very occasional 外国人 (foreign) visitor alike of the aberrant and abhorrent regime imposed on North-East China during the interwar period of the 20th century. Manchukuo (State of Manchuria) comprising northeastern China and part of Inner Mongolia Area: approx 1.19 million km Pop (est) 1940: 30-35 million Ethnic Mix: Han Chinese (majority), Manchus, Mongols, Huis, Koreans, Japanese, Belorussians (minorities)

⥰⥰⥰⥰⥰⥰⥰⥰⥰⥰⥰⥰⥰⥰⥰⥰⥰⥰⥰⥰⥰⥰

✴ in 1932 an independent inquiry with US participation, the Lytton Commission (Ritton Hōkokusho), found that both parties were at fault for the incident. In its Report which led to exposure of the Japanese duplicity, it condemned Japan for its aggression (albeit conceding it had “special interests” in the region), while also criticising China for inflaming anti-Japanese sentiments…the League of Nations subsequently demanded that Japan vacate Manchuria, Japan’s response was to give notice to withdraw unilaterally from the League (effective 1935) [‘Lytton Report’, (United States History), www.u-s-history.com]

✪ Zhang’s father, Marshal Zhang Zuolin, also a Manchurian warlord, had been assassinated by the Japanese Kwantung military in 1928, in an episode in Shenyang known as the Huanggutun incident. Zhang senior was one of the most powerful warlords in the Warlord Era, which saw local military cliques carve out territorial strongholds in different parts of China

Manzhouguo in Chinese

the Chinese expression for Manchukuo is 虚假帝国 (the “false empire”)

☯️ Zheng, a royalist and close collaborator of Pu Yi, had hoped that Manchukuo would become a springboard for the restoration of Qing rule in China, aims not shared by the Japanese who pressured him to resign in 1935 [‘Zheng Xiaoxu’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]. His successor Zhang Jinghui was even more of a powerless figurehead, content to allow advisors from the Kwantung Army run the state, earning Zhang the unflattering sobriquet of the “Tofu prime minister” [‘Zhang Jinghui’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]

◘ Kwantung means “east of Shanhaiguan”, ie, Manchuria

the Kwantung military also maintained a peninsula naval base at Ryojun (Port Arthur)

the charismatic general started fighting against the Japanese, was then induced to swap over to the Japanese side and finally switched back to the cause of Chinese resistance

❅ Stephan summarises Manchukuo as “a producer of beans, bandits and bunk” with the ‘kingly way’ grandiloquence falling under the third of these attributes

💮ᕕ💮ᕕ💮ᕕ💮ᕕ💮ᕕ💮ᕕ💮