Inter-War Period: Militarism in Japan

Militarism in Japan

Why the army became so powerful

Japan had become a modern power fast. It beat Russia in 1904–05 and took over the South Manchuria Railway lease. But it had few raw materials of its own, so it depended on trade.

• Background (economy): after the First World War, Europe took back its export markets. Then the Great Depression of 1929 hit. Silk exports to America collapsed, and village families who lived on silk were ruined.
• Hurt pride: at the 1919 peace talks, Western powers turned down Japan’s proposal for racial equality. Many Japanese felt the West would never treat them as equals.
• Weak politicians: people saw party leaders as corrupt and tied to big business. Taisho democracy, the short spell of party governments and wider voting in the 1910s and 1920s (the reign of Emperor Taisho, 1912–26), weakened, and the army promised strength and land.
• Army power: young officers began killing leaders who stood in their way. Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi was shot on 15 May 1932, and young officers tried a coup on 26 February 1936. After this, the military dominated cabinets.
• A distracted world: Britain and France were tired after the war, and the USA was keeping away from world affairs. Nobody was ready to stop Japan.

Manchuria, 1931: the first big step

Manchuria, in north-east China, had coal, iron and farmland. Japan wanted it badly.

• Mukden Incident (18 September 1931): a small blast hit the Japanese-owned railway near Mukden (now Shenyang). Officers of the Kwantung Army, the Japanese army unit posted in Manchuria to guard Japan’s railway there, had set it off themselves and blamed the Chinese. The army then overran Manchuria, without the cabinet’s approval.
• Manchukuo (1932): Japan set up a puppet state: a “country” that looks independent but is really run by another power, the way someone else pulls a puppet’s strings. Puyi, the last Qing emperor of China, was its figurehead ruler.
• Lytton Report (1932): the League sent a team under Lord Lytton. It refused to accept Manchukuo as a real state.
• Japan left the League (1933): when the League adopted the report, Japan walked out. The USA, under the Stimson Doctrine, also refused to recognise Manchukuo, but nobody used force.

The lesson the dictators drew was simple: the League could talk, but it couldn’t act.

From Manchuria to world war

The big picture

Japan, Italy and Germany were the three “have-not” powers. Each felt the post-1919 order had cheated it, and each set out to overturn it: Japan in Manchuria (1931), Italy in Abyssinia (1935) and Germany in the Rhineland (1936). The League failed against all three, and that failure opened the road to 1939.

Why it matters for India

• Japan’s slogan of “Asia for Asians” attracted some Indian nationalists who wanted the British out.
• Subhas Chandra Bose led the Indian National Army (INA) with Japanese support from 1943. On 30 December 1943 he hoisted the Indian flag at Port Blair, in the Andamans, which Japan had occupied.
• The battles of Imphal and Kohima (1944) stopped the Japanese and INA push into India.

What UPSC asks

For Prelims, learn the chain of years: Mukden 1931, Manchukuo 1932, leaving the League 1933, war with China 1937. A sequence or match-the-pair question is the usual form. For Mains, use Japan as one of the three examples when you explain why the League of Nations failed and what caused the Second World War.