The army has been hammering incessantly on the theme of protecting rights and interests in Manchuria and is constantly recounting the details of [the murder by Chinese of a Japanese army captain in] the Nakamura Incident. As they are stirring up a sense of enmity toward China in dark corners and in the open sunlight we suddenly hear the unfortunate news of the clash between Chinese and Japanese troops. And we may expect, momentarily, the startling announcement of war between the two, like a sudden thunderclap in a clear blue sky. The question is—has the Incident gone that far?90
Although the editor of the Fukui nipp was remonstrated by the military police for the paper's imputation of a military conspiracy, the article went to press and people read it just the same.
Ishibashi Tanzan, editor of the influential economic journal Ty keizai shinp and long-time advocate of a “little Japan” foreign policy, also used his journal to argue that Japan should “abandon special rights and interests in Manchuria” (Manm hkiron) throughout the early months of the Manchurian Incident. Just as he had criticized military action in China in the past, in the fall of 1931 he spoke out against “the completely mistaken” idea that the “country will die without Manchuria,” arguing that there was no “profit in turning China and the Western powers into Japan's enemies.” Observing that the “military action was contrary to the intent or the liking of the cabinet,” Ishibashi suggested that the situation in Manchuria posed no real “national threat” and denounced the army for flaunting “the authority of the cabinet.”91
Although opposition to the occupation was strongly voiced in the Ty keizai shinp and elsewhere, such sentiments stood little chance of penetrating the storm of pro-military reports unleashed by radio and the national press. In the end, the voice of opposition was not silenced by government repression; it was drowned out by the mainstream news media. This, then, was the third dimension of imperial jingoism. Propaganda and censorship are usually regarded as instruments of the state, used to shape and control public opinion. Imperial jingoism, however, is the product of unofficial propaganda and private self-censorship. In Japan's case, imperial jingoism was responsive to government direction, but never perfectly controlled by it. Driven more directly by the opportunities for technological and commercial advance at a time when the national crisis stimulated demand for Manchurian-theme products, the mass media promoted the war on its own volition and in its own interests.
DEFEND THE MANCHURIAN LIFELINE!
The war boom of 1931–1933 constituted a critical period in the ideological construction of empire. On the first anniversary of the Manchurian Incident, the chief of staff of the 3d Division, Colonel Inuzuka Hiroshi, observed how much things had changed since the beginning of the war. “At first there were quite a few Japanese who judged the army as if it were on trial. Consciousness of Manchuria was nil.”92 Yet within six months it had become all-consuming. Manchuria became a “lifeline” for which no sacrifice was too great.
The path from indifference and ignorance to nationalistic obsession was trod, for many ordinary Japanese, by skimming the daily news, listening to popular songs, or reading favorite magazines. The self-appointed educators in the mass media took to their task with enthusiasm, setting forth a popular catechism on “why we fight.” This catechism explained the concurrent events in Manchuria within a framework of imperial ideology that was, by 1931, well developed. And yet the action in Manchuria was undeniably a departure from policies pursued in the 1920s. New conditions demanded new explanations. Thus the imperial myth making of the early 1930s assimilated fresh elements into old stories, reconstructing imperial ideology to make room for Manchukuo.
The first response to the popular catechism on “why we fight” became the battle cry of the Manchurian Incident: Mamore Mansh seimeisen! (Defend the Manchurian lifeline!). The term lifeline was coined by diplomat and Seiy
This sense of dependence on Manchuria had grown on Japanese in the course of a twenty-five-year proprietorship. By 1931, Mantetsu and the Kwantung Leased Territory, like Taiwan and Korea, were regarded as part of Japan. Such proprietary feelings carried with them a whole complex of Japanese attitudes toward their empire. From the beginnings of empire in the Meiji period, Japanese had come to look upon the empire as part of their national identity. Japan was, after all, imperial Japan. From the same period, moreover, Japanese had been taught that their national survival depended on the possession of an empire, that Japan had expanded in self-defense. As the rise of organized Chinese nationalism seemed to imperil Japan's hold over Manchuria, the threat was understood in this broader context. Yet lifeline was a new term applied to Manchuria. As such, it spoke to a recently developed sense of embattlement in the Northeast. The term's popular appeal also reflected the newfound importance Japanese accorded something they had previously taken for granted. Thus, images of the Manchurian lifeline in the mass media drew on a new sense of connectedness between the ordinary citizen and this faraway place on the map. The connection was drawn in personal terms both historic and immediate, resurrecting memories of the Russo-Japanese War—also fought on Manchurian soil—and tapping the anxieties of a people in severe economic distress.
Memories of the Russo-Japanese War confused the war's aims with its subsequent peace settlement. Coming back into currency, the old slogan about the “payment of 100,000 lives and a billion yen in blood and treasure for Manchuria” implied that Japan had fought Russia in 1904 over Manchuria. As a writer for the popular magazine le no hikari (The Light of the Home) expressed it, “Japan fought both the Sino-Japanese and the Russo-Japanese wars, buried 100,000 souls in the Manchurian plain, and risked the fate of the nation to gain the rights and interests we now hold in Manchuria. These are the victory prizes [kessh] won with the priceless blood and sweat of the Japanese race.”94 Forgetting that it was in fact the struggle for control over Korea that had precipitated the war and that Japan had gained its Korean colony as a result of the victory, Japanese in the 1930s somehow felt that Manchuria comprised the sole compensation for this past sacrifice, immeasurable in both personal and national terms.
By any reckoning, the Russo-Japanese War was a costly and painful experience, and it cut much deeper than the nation's first imperial war with China. The soldiers that were mobilized numbered 1,088,996, almost five times the number that fought in the Sino-Japanese War; another 945,395 went to the front in noncombat roles. The war left 81,455 dead (six times the Sino-Japanese War) and 381,313 wounded. At 1.8 billion yen, it was nine times as expensive, and costs were offset with heavy borrowing in foreign and domestic financial markets and a host of new taxes.95 These sacrifices were repaid with a stunning victory over one of the world's great powers. To Japanese at the time, this victory turned their country into a great nation (taikoku) and signaled Japan's “advance into the ranks of the world powers.” But as Carol Gluck notes, the war was also viewed in terms of the “humiliating peace” that followed.96 When the government accepted terms that fell far short of what people were led to expect, their sense of disappointment and betrayal was expressed in urban rioting against the peace treaty in 1905. The bitterness that accompanied the aftermath of war, the postwar depression, the war debt, the return of war-mutilated men, and the emptiness left by those who did not come back all bequeathed to public memory a sense of ill usage and uncompensated sacrifice. In the war fever of 1931, both the triumph of the victory and the bitterness of the peace were projected onto the Manchurian lifeline.
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