Japan underestimated changes in China, the world

BY HIROKI FUKUDA THE ASAHI SHIMBUN

I was sitting across from Li Zongyuan in a room at the Museum of the War of Chinese People's Resistance Against Japanese Aggression located in the suburbs of Beijing. I thought he was rather young to be the deputy director of the museum, so I asked his age and he replied that he was 37. I was surprised to learn that even the director was 47 years old, the same as me. People in their 30s and 40s are taking on important roles in preserving records and memories of the War of Resistance Against Japan that is known as the Second Sino-Japanese War in Japan, as well as in disseminating China's official view of that conflict.

A military scuffle near the Marco Polo Bridge in a Beijing suburb triggered the Second Shino-Japanese War.(HIROKI FUKUDA)

Fumimaro Konoe (1891-1945)

Chiang Kai-shek (1887-1975)

Perhaps that shouldn't be so surprising, given that 62 years have passed since the war ended. Still, I was expecting to see more elderly people. Clearly, generational changes are taking place in many areas across China. For example, two senior officials in their relatively young 50s have joined the ranks of top leaders at the recently held National Congress of the Communist Party of China.

The war was a battle to protect the Chinese people from Japan's lengthy invasion. For the international community, it was also aimed at achieving global peace. Li parroted the official Chinese line, but also went beyond stereotypical answers to my questions.

With reference to recent Japanese studies, I mentioned that it may become necessary to conduct research in China to dig up historical facts regarding the Chinese people who were mobilized to resist Japan. He agreed with me.

"(But) I wonder if there are such studies in China," he said. "If there are such publications in Japan, I would definitely like to read them." He didn't scoff at the idea, nor did he flatly accuse Japan. He didn't sprinkle his comments with irony, either.

What I had in mind was "Jugo no Chugoku Shakai" (Chinese Society on the Home Front) written by Yuji Sasagawa, professor of modern Chinese history at Saitama University, with other academics. The book focuses on the general mobilization of the Chinese side during the Second Sino-Japanese War, a part of history that has attracted little attention. It looks at historical data in detail, such as how people in rural communities were forced to become soldiers and how food was commandeered. The purpose of the book is to offer an unvarnished picture of the war in its entirety, based on historical evidence. I should add that the study is based on the premise that the war constituted an act of aggression against China by Japan.

Displays at the museum have been altered slightly since two years ago. In the past, the war was depicted as being waged solely by the Communist Party. Now, a small explanation about the contributions of the Kuomintang government army led by Chiang Kai-shek has been added. When Li was an elementary school student, he was taught that the Kuomintang army dragged its feet in the war against Japan. "That was not accurate," said Li. "The Kuomintang is now positively recognized for its active role."

New generation, new museum

Subtle changes are also evident at the Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders in Nanjing, formerly called Nanking. The facility has been expanded to accommodate new exhibits.

Sources involved in the project said there had been discussion about changing the name of the facility to Peace Memorial Hall. However, that suggestion was rejected on grounds it would be out of the question, given the fact that there are still people in Japan who deny that the Nanking Massacre happened.

The renovated hall opened this month, 70 years after the atrocity. The project tends to be seen as an attempt to fuel anti-Japanese sentiment, but I was told that the new exhibits are intended to place more emphasis on preventing war and promoting peace.

"It is important for both peoples to squarely look at the negative legacies and establish peaceful relations toward the future, and when that happens, I believe the name of the memorial hall will change," said Zhang Lianhong, a professor of history at Nanjing Normal University. Zhang is director of the university's Nanjing Massacre Research Center. He turned 40 just last year.

Generational changes are also evident in Chinese cities as well. As Beijing forges ahead for next year's Olympic Games, high-rises are sprouting across Nanjing, an ancient city with a population of about 7 million. Nanjing is traditionally known for its beautiful lakes and ponds and lush greenery. I wanted to don a face mask while walking around the city center because of the pervasive dust. Many Japanese companies have opened offices in the city, and 30 percent of tax revenues in Nanjing come from foreign firms.

Japan's tyranny exposed

When thinking about it, I realized that it was an utterly reckless war.

It started with a scuffle between Japanese and Chinese troops near the Marco Polo Bridge on July 7, 1937. The bridge is about a 40-minute drive from the center of Beijing, and the Museum of the War of Chinese People's Resistance Against Japanese Aggression is situated not far away. Nearby are small shops with walls decorated with pictures of Beijing Olympics mascots, creating an odd mixture of the past and the future.

There are still conflicting views as to who fired the first shot. What is certain is that the incident took place in China, and happened just after Imperial Japanese Army soldiers had finished night exercises. Since Japan intervened in the Boxer Rebellion along with Western powers in 1900, Tokyo had maintained a military presence in China.

Japan believed that China was not yet fully established as a country and that it would fall to its knees with one good blow. Japan was ahead of China in terms of modernization and kept widening the scope of the war, putting it on the path to eventual defeat. The Imperial Japanese Army embarked on the military adventure alone by taking advantage of Emperor Hirohito's supreme command authority. Even within the military, opinion was split about continuing with the military adventure. Its aims were short-sighted and lacked any strategy to gain ground militarily. There are many reasons why Japan failed, but the key factors are that Tokyo misjudged rising nationalism in China and developments in the international community.

Since Japan won the First Sino-Japanese War and the Russo-Japanese War, Tokyo had indulged its whims in China, including forcing the Twenty-One Demands upon the Chinese government, the Manchurian Incident, and the establishment of Manchukuo. In addition to Manchukuo, Japan was also planning to take control of five provinces surrounding the puppet state. This is when disdain for the Chinese people reached its peak in Japan following the First Sino-Japanese War.

It appears that Japan in those days did not give much consideration to the notion that there are limits to anyone's endurance. Japan looked down on the Chinese people as being backward, but they were not.

The currency system is a good example of this. Different systems existed in each region to support regional military groups, but they were integrated into a unified system with the help of Britain in an effort to modernize China.

The Xian Incident took place a year before the Second Sino-Japanese War broke out, forcing a cease-fire in the fierce civil war raging between Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang army and the Communist Party--even if their cooperation was mostly lip service under the slogan of rising up against Japanese aggression. The Kuomintang government had also introduced the military draft.

The war started near the Marco Polo Bridge and spread to Shanghai. China intended to open the world's eyes to Japan's tyranny through the battle that was waged in the cosmopolitan city. The anti-war Kellogg-Briand Pact was already in effect. At the same time, China's sovereignty had been affirmed by the Nine-Power Treaty (See Fact File 2). The international community was somehow moving toward the goal of avoiding war after slogging through the calamity of World War I. Although it was a late-comer to the imperial powers, Japan had signed both treaties. Even so, it was caught up in imperialist fervor.

When the war began, Fumimaro Konoe had just become prime minister and was popular nationwide. While he claimed to uphold a non-expansionist policy, he could not achieve anything. In the end, he reversed course and rubber-stamped the military's plans. He later wrote the following in his memoirs:

"Of course, the people in government were not aware that such an incident would occur at that time, nor was army headquarters. The event was due solely to machinations in the field." He went on to say, "All of China was plunged into war because of my own inability. The Japanese also suffered as a result of sending troops for no reason."

Japan sent troops "for no reason" as Konoe wrote. The Japanese army resorted to procuring supplies locally as the battlegrounds extended to Shanghai, Nanjing and Hankou. As the Japanese army advanced, the local people faced disaster. In Japan, I met a former soldier who was sent to fight in China, and visited an elderly citizen in Nanjing who survived the massacre. The more I hear such stories, the more the war seems to have been pandemonium. Yet, newspapers fanned the flames of nationalism on a daily basis by exalting the Imperial Japanese Army's advances. The public became intoxicated with the army's apparent successes.

There were some attempts in Japan to avoid a potential stalemate at the beginning of the war. For example, there was some effort to mediate peace through Germany's ambassador to China, Oskar Trautmann. But such efforts fell by the wayside amid a string of military victories that served to fuel deep-rooted optimism.

After the Japanese government announced that it would no longer deal with the Kuomintang government, there was no more room for any strategic approaches.

U.S.-China relations improve

When examining the Second Sino-Japanese War, it is depressing to learn how reckless Japan was. Yet, some people in Japan still justify the war. This sort of thinking in political circles remains a flash point between Japan and China to this day and is at the heart of the dispute about historical realities between the two countries.

Takeshi Noda, a Lower House member of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, is among a number of lawmakers who are concerned about the situation. For Asia, and particularly for China, "Japan's acts of aggression were obvious at least from the Twenty-One Demands," he said. Even if some Japanese have other perspectives, they should be verified in the field of academics, not politics, he said.

Issues about the past with China and South Korea that were rekindled when then Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi repeatedly visited war-related Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo appear to have finally settled down under the current administration headed by Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda. In the meantime, the previous administration of Shinzo Abe was criticized by the United States over Abe's remarks on the Imperial Japanese Army's use of so-called comfort women.

How will things develop in the future?

China is expanding rapidly with double-digit growth. The recent National Congress of the Communist Party established a new leadership for the next five years. Meanwhile, the presidential election in the United States in 2008 will determine a new government for the next four years. One of the leading candidates, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of the Democratic Party, clearly stated that U.S.-China ties would be the most important bilateral relationship for the United States in the 21st century. Japan has been experiencing political turmoil for some time and may face intensified "nationalism with a hint of frustration," according to Noda.

The somewhat relaxed atmosphere that I felt in Beijing and Nanjing did not seem to be merely the result of a change in generations alone. Chinese perspectives on the Second Sino-Japanese War will probably remain unwavering, yet Chinese do not try to make a particularly big deal out of it. The change in milieu is largely because China wants to avoid unnecessary irritations when rapid economic growth is generating distortions in its society. But most of all, China is a busy nation that is brimming with confidence.

This year, the expression "value-oriented diplomacy" popped up within the LDP. Yet, diplomacy is how to deal with countries that have different values. If it allows itself to be swayed by nationalism and makes wrong judgments again about a changing China and world, that would mean Japan did not learn any lessons from the war.

Fumimaro Konoe (1891-1945)

He served as prime minister three times between the Second Sino-Japanese War and Japan's surrender in World War II in 1945. He was the first son of Prince Atsumaro Konoe, and after serving as president of the House of Peers and other positions, he formed his first Cabinet in June 1937.

He expanded the front in the Second Sino-Japanese War that began immediately after that, and in January 1938, following the Nanking Massacre in December 1937, he announced that his Cabinet would no longer deal with the Kuomintang government, closing all avenues for peace. The same year he passed the National Mobilization Law to promote a controlled economy during the war, and released the second Konoe announcement of a New Order in East Asia. In his second Cabinet inaugurated in 1940, he organized the Taisei Yokusankai, or Imperial Rule Assistance Association, and signed the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy. In his third Cabinet, he failed in peace talks with the United States, which led to the resignation of his Cabinet.

After World War II, he was summoned by the occupation authorities and accused of being a Class-A war criminal. He committed suicide using poison shortly afterward.

Chiang Kai-shek (1887-1975)

He was born in China's Zhejiang province. His given name was Zhongzheng, and Kai-shek was a name he used after he reached adulthood. After studying in Japan, he took part in Sun Yat-sen's Xinhai Revolution.

Chiang became leader of the National Government in Nanjing and placed priority on a civil war with the Communist Party of China.

His justification was that domestic stability was essential before engaging in conflict with other countries. In December 1936, he was confined in Xian by Chang Hsueh-liang and others who demanded a halt to the civil war to fight against the Japanese in the so-called Xian Incident.

Partly through the intervention of Chou En-lai, a senior Communist Party official, Chiang accepted the demand and safely returned to Nanjing. He led Kuomintang government forces in battle against the Japanese forces along with the Communist Party. After Japan was defeated, Chiang was eventually forced to flee to Taiwan in 1949 when he lost the civil war with the Communist Party.

He served as the first president of the Republic of China until his death.

Fact File: Second Sino-Japanese War

The war was Japanese aggression against China. It started in July 1937 and lasted about eight years. The Marco Polo Bridge Incident in the suburbs of present-day Beijing touched off all-out war between the two countries that eventually developed into the Asia-Pacific War in 1941. The war ended with Japan's unconditional surrender and acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration in 1945.

During that period, Japanese troops in China peaked at about 1 million. Accurate numbers of deaths on both sides are not known, but it is believed that a total of about 450,000 Japanese soldiers died in China.

In China, the period from the Manchurian Incident in 1931 to 1945 is known as the War of Resistance Against Japan, and the government's official estimate of the number of Chinese deaths during that time is put at more than 35 million.

After establishing Manchukuo, Japan tried to eliminate the influence of the Kuomintang led by Chiang Kai-shek from five northern Chinese provinces near the southern part of the puppet state. Meanwhile, the Kuomintang and the Communist Party managed to arrange a cease-fire in their civil war so they could jointly resist Japan. When the Marco Polo Bridge Incident occurred, Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe's first Cabinet reversed its initial non-expansionist policy and decided to send additional forces at the military's behest, prompting China to implement widespread resistance. Japan initially called the conflict the North China Incident and later the China Incident. It did not officially declare war because it feared the application of the U.S. neutrality law that would prevent Japan from importing military supplies.

The battle for control of Shanghai raged in August. The Japanese forces won that struggle and advanced upon Nanjing, occupying the then Chinese capital on Dec. 13. That resulted in the Nanking Massacre. The indiscriminate killing of Chinese soldiers and civilians before and during the occupation resulted in countless deaths. Over the course of the war, the Japanese army was also involved in numerous atrocities, including the use of poison gas and biological warfare, experiments on human bodies, sexual coercion and random bombings.

China's Kuomintang government moved its capital from Nanjing to Chongqing and continued its resistance, while the Communist Party's Eighth Route Army also fought the Japanese military in guerrilla-style operations. Japan was criticized by the international community for its aggression that ignored the war-renouncing Kellogg-Briand Pact and the 1922 Nine-Power Treaty. However, Tokyo expanded the conflict in 1941 to engage in war with the United States and Britain.

Fact File: Nine-Power Treaty

The treaty was the result of the Washington Naval Conference that the United States organized in February 1922. Nine countries--the United States, Britain, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal, China and Japan--signed the treaty affirming the territorial integrity of China. They also agreed to respect its political independence and agreed to maintain open doors and equal opportunities to all nations, among other items. It was a promise not to pursue new rights and interests in China through the use of force, and was intended to keep Japanese advances in check. It also indicated changes in imperialistic attitudes among the Western powers.(IHT/Asahi: December 28,2007)