Populist Nationalism in Pre-War Japan: A Biography of Nakano Seigo by Leslie R Oates

Author:Leslie R Oates [Oates, Leslie R]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Ethnic Studies, Political Ideologies, Social Science, Reference, Political Science, Nationalism & Patriotism, Regional Studies, General
ISBN: 9781136917189
Google: WEIiEAAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 17583493
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2010-10-18T00:00:00+00:00

Relations with the military

As already noted, Nakano’s approach to elements of the military had begun in the few years preceding the Manchurian Incident. Previously he had always opposed military intervention in politics as a flagrant expression of clan oligarchy but, through such contacts as Araki and Nagata, he had become aware of the rise of new elements in the armed forces. When these then precipitated the Manchurian Incident, which to him seemed the breakthrough needed both in the international situation and in the internal stalemate faced by party politics, he drew very close to them. His manoeuvres for a coalition cabinet were linked with military circles and, even after this failure, he worked energetically for the recognition of Manchukuo, also evidently in close collaboration with them.

One example relates to a visit to Japan in mid-1932 by the Manchukuo secretary of communications, Ting Chien-hsiu, his former fellow student at Waseda, with whom he had made his first visit to the mainland. Besides giving a press conference urging recognition, at which his Japanese advisers conspicuously supplied all the answers, Ting visited Nakano’s home and gave him the greater part of ¥100000 with which he had been entrusted to promote the cause of Manchukuo in Japan.86

Soon afterwards another such visit was made by the Manchukuo government’s secretary-general, Komai Tokuz, who had originally been sent by War Vice-Minister Koiso to set up a civilian political division in the Kwantung Army and had risen spectacularly in the new regime under army patronage. At a reception held to welcome him, Nakano denounced reported moves to have him replaced from Japan which, he claimed, would lead to Manchukuo’s becoming a refuge for worn-out bureaucrats who would undo the successes of the young officers and adventurers who had established the state. He also warned against a ‘weak policy of conciliating the Chinese’ (an allusion to the late Inukai’s peace moves), which would lead to no better results than Shidehara had achieved. In the same month he called in the Diet for a declaration of resoluteness in support of Manchukuo, which was in fact soon afterwards recognised.

At the same time, Nakano hardly wished to become a mere client of the armed forces and regularly made statements qualifying his identification with them. He would, for example, as noted earlier, deny that rearmament was a sound basis for industrialisation, or seek to demonstrate that he was no mere flatterer of the armed forces by recalling his attacks on General Tanaka for ‘mistaken thinking and avoidance of responsibility’. As already indicated, he hoped to achieve a symbiosis between the military and his conception of a civilian national movement—a stand encouraged by Araki’s slogan of the ‘unity of soldiers and farmers’. On the one hand, he could encourage the labour movement to look to the military as an agent of social reform, unique in the world, while on the other he could speak of the Supreme Command as integrated into a comprehensive national movement.

One controversial issue involving the military on which he took

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