Hey guys before you listen to this one, do realize this is part 3 on a series about General Kanji Ishiwara, so if you have not already done so I would recommend listening to Part 1 & 2. 

This episode is General Kanji Ishiwara part 3: The gradual fall into War with China

I tried so hard this time to finish this up neatly in part 3 and utterly failed. I wrote pages and even deleted them to keep squeezing, but theres simply too much to the story. Part 3 will be focusing on the insane politics of the 1930’s and how Ishiwara tried to prevent war with China.

Its rather ironic that the man who was the chief instigator that ushering in the conquest of Manchuria was unable to impose his will when it came to molding Manchukuo. Now while Ishiwara Kanji was the operations officer given official responsibility over the planning and conduct of military operations to seize Manchuria, the arrangements for that new state, being political in nature, were not in his sphere of influence. Regardless, Ishiwara was extremely vocal about his opinions on how Manchukuo should develop and he heavily emphasized racial harmony. He continuously hammered his colleagues that the economic development of Manchukuo should reflect the spirit of racial cooperation. Ishiwara assumed the economic interests of Manchukuo would simply coincide with that of the Kwantung army, by definition both’s ultimate goals would be unity of Asia against the west. He was very wrong. Ishiwara was consumed by his theory of final war, everything he did was to prepare for it, thus his obsession of racial harmony was another part of the plan. 

In 1932 the self government guidance board was abolished in march, leaving its functions and regional organizations to be tossed into brand new bureaus of the new government of Manchukuo. An organization emerged in April called the (Kyowakai / Concordia Association). It was brought together by Yamaguchi Juji and Ozawa Kaisaku, and its purpose was to promote racial harmony and it was backed by members of the Kwantung army, notably Ishiwara, Itagaki and Katakura. The Kwantung army flooded money into the organization and it grew rapidly…well amongst the Japanese anyways. General Honjo was a bit weary about how much the organization might have in the political sphere of Manchukuo, he did not want to see it become an official political party, he preferred it remain in a educative role. By educative role, I of course mean, to be a propaganda arm of the Kwantung army to exert influence over Manchukuo without having real skin in the game. 

But to Ishiwara the Concordia Association was the logical means to unify the new nation, guiding its political destiny, to be blunt Ishiwara really saw it should have much more authority than his colleagues believed it should. Ishiwara complained in August of 1932, that Manchuria was a conglomerate of conflicting power centers such as the Kwantung army, the new Manchukuo government, the Kwantung government, the Mantetsu, consular office and so on. Under so many hats he believed Manchukuo would never become a truly unified modern state, and of course he was one of the few people that actually wanted it to be so. He began arguing the Kwantung army should turn over its political authority as soon as possible so “Japanese of high resolve should hasten to the great work of the Manchurian Concordia Association, for I am sure that we Japanese will be its leaders. In this way Manchukuo will not depend on political control from Japan, but will be an independent state, based on Japanese Manchurian cooperation. Guided by Japanese, it will be a mode of Sino-Japanese friendship, an indicator of the present trends of world civilization” Needless to say the Concordia Association made little headway with the Chinese and it began to annoy Japanese leaders. The association gradually was bent into a spiritless propaganda and intelligence arm of the IJA, staffed largely by elite Japanese working in the Manchukuo government. 

Ishiwara began using the Concordia Association to promote things such as: returning leased territories like the Railway zone, abolition of extraterritoriality, equalizing payment between the races working in Manchukuo, the kind of stuff that would promote racial harmony. Such advocacy as you can imagine deviated heavily with the Japanese military, and Ishiwara’s reputation would be hurt by this. The Kwantung Army staff began shifting dramatically, seeing Ishiwara isolated, aside from Itagaki and a few other followers being around. The upper brass as they say had had enough of the nuisance Concordia Association’s and gradually took control of it and made sure to stop the talk of concessions. In August of 1932 Ishiwara received a new assignment and it seems he was only too happy to leave Manchuria.

Ishiwara returned to Japan, disgusted with the turn of direction Manchuria was going, and believing he would be blamed for its future failures he submitted his resignation. But the IJA knew how popular Ishiwara was and how dangerous he could become so they rejected his resignation. Instead they gave him a military decoration. He was in a very strange spot now, for the youthful officers of the Kodoha faction loved Ishiwara, but the senior top brass of the IJA were extremely suspicious of him and lets just say he was kept under close watch.

Now with Ishiwara back in Japan he would get himself involved in a bit of a war between two factions. As many of you probably already know, the Japanese military of the late 1920s and early 1930’s saw the emergence of two factions: the Kodoha “imperial way” and Tosei “control” factions. The Kodoha sought what they called a “showa restoration” to give the emperor absolute power like the good olds days as they say. They were willing to even form a coup if necessary to make this happen. Another thing they believed was in the Hokushin-ron “northern strike” war plan. The idea behind this was that the USSR and communism as a whole was Japans largest threat and the IJA needed to invade the USSR. Now the Tosei faction believed in most of what the Kodoha did, but they differed on some issues. Number 1) they were not willing to perform a coup to usher in a showa restoration, no they thought they could work with the existing Zaibatsu elites and politicians to get things done. THe Kodoha hated the politicians and Zaibatsu to the point they wanted to murder them, so differing opinions. The Tosei also believed the next world war would require a total war strategy, to build up Japan to fight the USSR, but probably the US as well. They favored Nanshin-ron “the southern strike” policy, to target the resources of south east asia necessary to give Japan what it needed to be self sufficient. Another thing that separated these two factions, the Kodoha typically were younger officers.

Despite their differences, everyone in the Japanese military understood forceful expansion into Asia was going to happen and this meant collison with the USSR, America and Britain. Ishiwara’s first assignment back in Japan was a temporary duty with the foreign ministry, he was a member of the Japanese legation to the league of nations under Matsuoka Yosuke. The league of nations at this time was performing the Lytton Commission which was investigating the Macnhurian problem, ie: Japan invading Manchuria. Upon returning to Japan in summer of 1933, Ishiwara sought a regimental command, but found it difficult to acquire because of his troublemaker like history. Then General Prince Higashikuni Naruhiko who commanded the 2nd sendai division gave him command over the 4th infantry regiment. Ishiwara went to work training the men under him to counter the latest soviet infantry tactics and of course he lectured extensively about his final war theories. During this time rumors emerged that Ishiwara supported the Nanshin-ron strategy. Many of his old colleagues who supported Hokushin-ron demanded he explain himself and Ishiwara did. These rumors were actually false, it was not that Ishiwara favored the Nanshin-ron strategy, it was simply that he did not back all aspects of the Hokushin-ron strategy.

Ishiwara believed to challenge the USSR, first Japan needed an Asian union, which he thought would take probably 30 years to create. But to usher such an Asian union, first Manchukuo needed to be hammered out properly, something Ishiwara thought Japan was failing to do. Also Japan’s military strength was insufficient to overwhelm the multiple enemies before her, the war she would enter would be a protracted one. To win such a war she needed resources and allies, notably Manchukuo and China. To confront the USSR, Japan would need to subvert outer mongolia, but to confront the USA and Britain she would have to seize the Philippines, Singapore, Hong Kong and Guam. It was going to be a global clash.

Ishiwara was gravely concerned with how powerful the USSR was becoming in the early 1930s. In the 3 years since he had left Manchuria, the Soviet divisions in east asia had jumped from 8 to 14 by the end of 1935, while Japanese divisions in Manchuria were only 3. For aircraft the Soviets had 950 vs 220 for Japan. On top of that the Soviets had TB-5 long range bombers, capable of hitting Japan, but the Japanese had no comparable aircraft. A large reason for such build up’s were literally because Kodoha leaders were publicly threatening the Soviets such as Generals Sadao Araki. The Kodoha faction faced a lot of challenges as to how they could hope to face off against the USSR. They figured out three main principles needed to be overcome: 1) Japan had to prevent the USSR from being able to defeat its enemies to the west and east one at a time, Japan should seek diplomatic aims in this like allying with Germany. 2) A devastating blow was necessary to the USSR far east,