Introduction
The Adventurers forever and always win. A society in which adventurers do not win is ruined and fossilized.
Mutsu Munemitsu, foreign minister of Japan, 1892–1896Footnote 1
The rapid rise of Japan as an international power was one of the most important driving forces in the history of modern East Asia and had significant ramifications worldwide, both as a source of inspiration and a symbol of cruel aggression. Japan's military victory over Russia in 1905, for example, inspired national movements all over Asia and Africa.Footnote 2 However, despite serving for a while as a beacon for anti-colonial struggles, Japan was quick to acquire colonies of its own in Taiwan (1895), Korea (1910), and the Mariana Islands (1919), as well as a hodgepodge of leased territories, concessions, and client regimes in mainland China. It was this ‘informal empire’ in China that brought Japan into confrontation with the Chinese national movement.Footnote 3 A small conflict near Beijing in 1937 led to an all-out war between the two countries, accompanied by Japanese massacres, mass rapes, and other crimes against humanity. In 1941, the war between Japan and China expanded into a conflict with the United States and its allies. In its wake, the Japanese empire was dismantled and the country was occupied by the Allied Powers. The legacies of the Pacific War still haunt East Asia to this day. Therefore, it is little surprise that Japanese imperialism was, and has remained, a central subject of popular and scholarly attention.
Some scholars have seen the constant expansion of the Japanese empire as a long-term plan to conquer new territories, hatched in the highest organs of the state.Footnote 4 Others, however, have taken a different view, looking instead at Japanese imperialism as a grassroots, bottom-up process. Not only did imperial expansion enjoy relatively robust support among a large number of Japanese citizens, but many people at the grassroots level pushed forward the process of conquest. Settlers, merchants, academics, journalists, colonial experts, and even Marxists who opposed imperialism pro forma, made active contributions to imperialist ventures on the continent.Footnote 5
One group of imperial grassroots actors were the so-called ‘continental adventurers’ (tairiku rōnin). These people, typically young men in their twenties and thirties, had been travelling to Korea, Manchuria, and mainland China since the early 1880s, first in a trickle and then in significant numbers. They moved around, often employed by the army as part-time translators, spies, and special operatives. The continental adventurers, and the patriotic societies to which they belonged, have been studied as prime movers of Japanese imperial expansion. However, the existing accounts fail to present a convincing model of the mechanism that made their activities effective.Footnote 6 The goal of this article is to fill this gap.
This mechanism, which I shall call hereafter ‘the military-adventurous complex’, was a lobby of officers, continental adventurers, businessmen, politicians, criminal elements, as well as Chinese, Manchurian, and Mongolian revolutionaries. The interests of these contingents were unique but nevertheless intertwining. Despite its decentralized character, the military-adventurous complex had a significant impact on foreign policy over an extended period. Below, we shall explore the contours, structure, and modus operandi of that complex, its ambivalent relationship with the Japanese state, as well as several examples of its operations in the early twentieth century.Footnote 7 Finally, we shall dwell on the ramifications of the complex on the development of Japanese imperialism.
Continental adventurers in the frontiers of the empire
The continental adventurers had a distinct identity, interrelated but separate from that of Japanese settlers, soldiers, and bureaucrats who operated in the same areas of China and Manchuria. Unlike the settlers, they usually had no fixed abode. Instead they wandered about on the lookout for excitement and opportunities to make money. Many took jobs that required constant travel: clothes and book peddling, pimping, the trafficking of women, opium dealing, journalism, highway robbery, and freelance spying. Some worked part time for the Japanese state, but unlike soldiers, bureaucrats, and diplomats they were independent or semi-independent agents, driven by their own political, ideological, and personal agendas.Footnote 8
The Japanese term ‘tairiku rōnin’, roughly translated as ‘continental adventurers’, was coined by journalists and observers in the late nineteenth century. Prior to the Meiji Restoration of 1868 (the revolution that created the modern Japanese state), rōnin (literally: men of the waves) were defined as samurai who had left their liege lords, absconded from service and lived as adventurers, mercenaries, or robbers. In the context of late nineteenth-century Japan, the same term was metaphorically applied to individuals who pursued a life of patriotic adventure on the Asian continent. In fact, the continental adventurers were one of several groups of people who felt marginalized during the swift process of modernization that followed the Meiji Restoration.Footnote 9 Unwilling or unable to develop mundane careers in an industrializing society, they left their families and other responsibilities behind, looking for opportunities at the frontiers of Japan's growing empire abroad.Footnote 10
Haku Masumi, an adventurer who later became a brigand leader in Manchuria, frankly admitted that he could do nothing useful in Japan: ‘Taking my strong body as my only asset, I journeyed to the wider world,’ he said.Footnote 11 Despite dreaming of ‘doing great things’, many adventurers adopted a wild, dissolute lifestyle, soaked in alcohol and purchased ‘love’ from the pleasure quarters. Miyazaki Torazō (Tōten), one of the most celebrated continental adventurers, wrote in his memoirs that ‘without sake that dream of mine would have come to nothing. Truly, my dream and sake were inseparable. That's right. Sake was my best friend.’Footnote 12
Most continental adventurers espoused ideals such as loyalty to the emperor, bellicose nationalism, and readiness to sacrifice themselves for Japan's overseas interests. These lofty ideals were accompanied by the ideology of Pan-Asianism, which had become increasingly popular in Japan since the mid-Meiji era. Japanese Pan-Asianists believed that Japan's historical mission was to replicate the Meiji Restoration abroad, in China, Korea, and beyond. Working with Chinese, Korean, and other Asian revolutionaries, they sought to eliminate traditional Asian regimes, such as the Qing dynasty in China and the Choson dynasty in Korea, which they deemed to be resistant to reform and hostile to Japan. Pan-Asian ideologues believed that ‘friendlier’ regimes in these Asian countries would accept Japanese tutelage and contribute to a joint effort to drive Western colonialism out of the continent.Footnote 13
Viewing China through romantic, heroic, and moralizing lenses, the continental adventurers tended to see reality in black and white, as a fight of heroes against villains.Footnote 14 However, in many cases, their idealism was tinged with cynicism. Late Qing China was a tottering regime and after the revolution of 1911, it was replaced with a failed state, replete with warlords, rebels, and banditry. For anyone who held idealistic Pan-Asian views, such a chaotic reality had to result in disillusionment. Just like other Japanese activists in China, many adventurers quickly came to believe that brute force was the only way to achieve anything in such a country. And yet, Japanese power politics was interpreted by the adventurers and their supporters as a sublime effort, made for the sake of East Asian peace and prosperity.Footnote 15 To make things worse, it was difficult to find a Chinese national leader who would agree with the vision the adventurers espoused. True, many Chinese revolutionaries cooperated with the adventurers when in exile. But even if such people ever came to power, they could hardly be expected to concede Manchuria to Japan or to accept Japanese ‘tutelage’. The moralistic, self-righteous mentality of the adventurers led them to perceive this as an ungrateful betrayal, further increasing their readiness to use violence in order to achieve their goals.Footnote 16
As far as internal Japanese politics went, the views of the continental adventurers contained a certain paradox. They wanted to replicate the Japanese precedent of the Meiji Restoration on the continent, but believed that the Restoration had been derailed and distorted in Japan itself. Miyazaki Tōten wrote in his memoirs that all of his schoolmates wanted cushy government jobs, but for him ‘officials and administrators were robbers or criminals’.Footnote 17
Miyazaki and his friends saw themselves as the reincarnation of the shishi (warriors of high aspirations)—samurai assassins and guerrilla fighters—who had struggled for the restoration in the 1860s, prior to its alleged corruption by the leaders of the government. Many people in Meiji Japan adored the shishi as freedom fighters, a cult especially strong in the patriotic societies, which were ultra-nationalist organizations based in the Kyushu prefectures of Fukuoka and Kumamoto. For many samurai in these regions, the government's reluctance to offend foreign powers by expanding the Japanese empire into China and Korea was a national outrage. In such a climate, the memory of the shishi inspired patriotic rebellions, such as the uprisings of Etō Shimpei (1774) and Saigō Takamori (1877).
After these rebellions were quashed, some of the sympathizers wanted to resume opposition to the government's policy through safer routes. If they could not overthrow the government or change its timid foreign policy by coercion, at least they could challenge it by organizing and supporting the independent, patriotic sorties of Japanese civilian adventurers in Korea, China, and Manchuria. The Genyōsha (Society of the Narrow Sea), established by former samurai associated with Saigō’s rebellion, was the most important patriotic organization developed for that purpose. Using the shishi and the defeated rebels of the 1870s as ideal exemplars of patriotic defiance, they trained, financed, and supported the first wave of continental adventurers. These activities were financed by mining enterprises in Fukuoka, owned and managed by Tōyama Mitsuru, founder and leader of the Genyōsha. Tōyama also had a web of connections with other wealthy businessmen, bankers, and financiers who generously supported the activities of the Genyōsha and its successor societies. Their motives might have been a mix of ideological sympathy and more material interests, as imperial expansion could open vast markets for Japanese products on the continent.Footnote 18
Already by the early 1880s, the Genyōsha had begun to dispatch adventurers to the Qing empire. In 1884 this migration, so far relatively insignificant, gathered momentum due to the Sino-French War. When the war ended in Chinese defeat the following year, many supporters of continental expansion in Japan, within and outside the patriotic societies, saw both danger and opportunity. The Western powers could further encroach on China and thereby imperil Japanese interests. Yet China's weakness, proved by the failed war with France, gave Japan openings on the mainland. It created demand for spies, operatives, and other agents who could make contacts in China, gather information on the country, and facilitate Japanese economic and military expansion. That demand induced the Genyōsha to send continental adventurers to Chinese shores. Originally an oppositional organization, the Genyōsha did not hesitate to cooperate with the army and other state agencies, as long as this cooperation promoted the cause of imperial expansion.Footnote 19
An early example of the cooperation between adventurers and the army was the spy ring established by Lieutenant Arao Sei. Arao, who reached China in 1884, teamed up with a businessman named Kishida Ginkō, a pharmaceutical entrepreneur and a pioneer of modern Japanese journalism. Kishida managed a chain of pharmacies in China, which became popular among locals due to an especially effective eye ointment. Arao opened a branch of Kishida's pharmacy in the city of Hankou, and recruited a few dozen continental adventurers to serve as roving drug peddlers. His shop, named Rakuzendō (Hall of Virtuous Delights), was in fact a front for a spying activities. Arao's spies, all of them adventurers, were ordered to cover their own expenses through peddling. They were dispatched to many Chinese provinces to collect intelligence and form local ties with brigands, tribal leaders, and local notables who might be useful in the future. The information obtained by these spies, summarized by Arao in a lengthy report, was duly sent to the General Staff, in time to be of service to the army during the first Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895).Footnote 20 The trinity of army officers, adventurers, and business interests would be an enduring characteristic of the military-adventurous complex.
Despite Arao's efforts, Japanese freelance espionage in China was relatively haphazard and small scale during the 1880s. At that time, intelligence functions were scattered between various departments of the General Staff, and both collection and analysis lacked focus. During the Russo-Japanese War, the army lacked up-to-date intelligence on the enemy, with grave operational ramifications. As part of the lessons learned from that war, the General Staff reorganized in 1908, establishing a specialized intelligence department.Footnote 21 This department closely cooperated with adventurers as an essential part of its modus operandi.
The outsourcing of clandestine activity and the consolidation of the military-adventurous complex
In 1908, and in a certain sense until the 1930s, Japanese imperialism was still an experimental process. Successive cabinets were torn by conflicting pressures. On the one hand, the Western powers, with whom it was important to maintain good relations, viewed Japanese expansion in China with suspicion. On the other hand, parts of the press, large segments of public opinion, the patriotic societies, and many opposition parties often pushed for more of it, and accused the government of being ‘weak-kneed’ in the face of foreign bullying. The army, and sometimes also the navy, also called for a bolder and more assertive continental policy. The army leadership frequently sought to probe options for further expansion, but was also anxious to avoid accountability due to its delicate relationship with the government and the need for diplomatic caution. These constraints resulted in a complicated system of outsourcing and delegation of authority. After its establishment in 1908, the Intelligence Department of the General Staff dispatched a coterie of officers to different parts of China. These operatives, known as the ‘China experts’ (Shina-tsū), spied, managed special operations, and worked with various Chinese revolutionaries and warlords.Footnote 22
Thus, a multilayered system of deniability was created. As the army often operated independently of the government, the latter could always reverse course if a certain scheme did not work.Footnote 23 Whenever the chief of the General Staff, his deputy, the head of the Intelligence Department, or his China staffers wanted to investigate the feasibility of a politically sensitive plot, they usually did so through one or more of the China experts in the field. In some cases, the experts did not know what their colleagues were doing, so the army chiefs could use them to probe contradictory plots, then deny knowledge if something went wrong. The China experts, continuing the tradition of Arao Sei, collaborated with businessmen and adventurers, posing as peddlers. ‘It is very bad to put active duty officers on the front,’ wrote General Fukushima Yasumasa, vice chief of the General Staff, to one of his subordinates in spring 1912, ‘they should operate on the backstage . . . [and delegate the work] to merchants.’Footnote 24 As the army could always wash its hands of civilian adventurers, this gave the system yet another means to deny accountability when needed. At times, this system of deniability was consciously adoped—that is, the higher echelons devised a formal policy, but secretly expected the China experts to behave otherwise in order to provide more reckless options. In other cases, the lower echelons acted in defiance of their superiors’ wishes. Even in such cases, however, the ability of the higher echelons to disavow responsibility reduced their incentive to forcibly stop such disobedient behaviour.
The General Staff and the China experts outsourced much of their work to continental adventurers for an additional reason: the army did not have enough intelligence cadres to achieve self-sufficiency. Intelligence was rarely a top priority for the General Staff and was barely touched upon in the military education system. It was also neglected by the army's foreign advisers, who were more interested in tactics, operational doctrine, and other fundamental questions of force formation.Footnote 25 Thus the job of a China expert or an intelligence specialist was not a prestigious one and many bright officers preferred to go elsewhere.Footnote 26 As many adventurers were fluent in Chinese languages and customs, and were sometimes indistinguishable from the locals, they were ideally positioned to serve as an additional workforce in the field.Footnote 27
The ability of the continental adventurers and their allies, the China experts, to influence policymaking benefited from their position as a source of information for the higher echelons, but also from their cooperation with politicians, journalists, and businessmen. Companies such as Mitsubishi, Mitsui, and the Ōkura Concern were very interested in the Chinese market beyond the Japanese zones of control. The chaos in China offered immense opportunities for profit, and these firms were happy to extend loans and arm Chinese belligerents on all sides. The Ōkura Concern, headed by the self-made business magnet Baron Ōkura Kihachirō, was especially important in this context, and the fingerprints of its representatives were to be seen in shady arms deals all over China. In the north of the country, where Baron Ōkura was always trying to extend his holdings in the mining and railway sectors, there was hardly a local contender for power, conservative or revolutionary who did not receive loans or weapons from Ōkura's companies at some point or another. These investments and loans—half an economic enterprise, half a clandestine venture to extend Japanese influence on the continent, and which were ultimately unprofitable—were kept a closely guarded secret. Gradually, the Ōkura Concern became the most prominent sponsor of adventurers, who served as forwarding agents for its affiliated companies. In return, Ōkura financed them, using his excellent connections with Japanese bureaucrats and politicians of all stripes to provide protection and political support.Footnote 28
The South Manchuria Railway Company, which was a dominant presence in Japanese-controlled areas of these territories, also cooperated with adventurers. It employed some, and its officials and managers were often bribed to allow the smuggling of goods, drugs, and weapons on its trains.Footnote 29 Meanwhile, back in the Japanese home islands, Pan-Asian politicians, parliamentarians, and leaders of patriotic societies such as the Kokuryūkai (an offshoot of the Genyōsha, which eventually became a successor society), gave political backing to the other elements of the complex. They were able to fundraise for them, lobby for their cause, mediate between them and relevant businessmen, apply pressure on the cabinet, and use ruffians to terrorize opponents. The China experts and their allies had connections with politicians and bureaucrats in high places, who could feed them classified information on the government's policy. Journalists, with information supplied by the China experts, also helped to influence public opinion.Footnote 30
At the far end of the complex, the continental adventurers were also connected with a bustling menagerie of Japanese and Chinese criminal groups. In Japan, the patriotic societies were closely enmeshed with local criminal organizations, who would loan them armed thugs for campaigns of political intimidation.Footnote 31 Adventurers often presented for-profit criminality as an act of patriotism. One even claimed, with a straight face, that the trafficking of women was an extension of Japanese economic power to the continent.Footnote 32 The British journalist Hugh Byas, who had good first-hand knowledge of the patriotic societies, famously wrote that they were ‘only one third of the iceberg that shows above water; below, in the depths, a whole underworld of criminals hunted their prey under a mask of patriotism’. In fact, Byas misrepresented these connections, which were not hidden but rather open and public.Footnote 33 In Manchuria, Inner Mongolia, and mainland China, the continental adventurers and the army were similarly tied to local brigand gangs. During the Russo-Japanese War, the army outsourced spying and special operations to such gangs, and employed some of them on a part-time basis in the years thereafter.Footnote 34
By 1911, brigands were already a pervasive phenomenon in many parts of China, but especially in Manchuria and Inner Mongolia. These formations, usually up to several hundred men strong, were disciplined gangs of land-deprived peasants and herders, professional highwaymen, and former soldiers.Footnote 35 The line between Chinese bandits and Japanese adventurers, many of whom were active as robbers and opium dealers, was very difficult to draw.Footnote 36 In November 1911, the Chinese government complained that three Japanese, most probably adventurers, were co-leading organized gangs of brigands in Manchuria. These gangs, according to the Chinese reports, were lodged in hotels that belonged to the South Manchurian Railway Company.Footnote 37 Five years later, Scandinavian missionaries in Inner Mongolia complained that brigand gangs which kidnapped locals and travellers for ransom were co-led by Russians and Japanese criminals.Footnote 38 In 1917, a Japanese consul in Chichihar, northern Manchuria, reported that the adventurers were so embedded in such gangs, that they [the adventurers] would be ‘lost’ if they were forced to evacuate China too quickly.Footnote 39 One Japanese gang leader blended so perfectly in the local criminal scene that virtually everyone, except a few people in the General Staff, believed that he was Chinese.Footnote 40 A report sent to the Japanese cabinet in 1925 specified that Chinese brigand bands were often formed of Japanese adventurers.Footnote 41
Notwithstanding its shared ideology, the complex was not a unified body, nor did it have cohesive leadership. Yet its various components did have a symbiotic relationship. The politicians and the officers backed the adventurers and the brigands, who served as a tool to implement their expansionist visions. The patriotic societies in Japan lobbied alongside the politicians, and often used violence against rivals of the complex. Businessmen gave funds, arms, and logistical support, in return for additional opportunities for deals with Chinese power-holders, mediated by adventurers. All components of the complex benefited from the lucrative opium trafficking trade, the profits from which were constantly streamed to various organs of the army, businessmen, officials, and election campaigns of friendly politicians. And in times of crisis, each component struggled to protect the others.Footnote 42
The first Manchu-Mongolian independence movement, 1912
The year 1911 was a pivotal one in modern Chinese and Japanese history, as well as in the history of the military-adventurous complex. As a result of the revolution that started in October that year, the ruling Qing dynasty collapsed, bringing the ancient Chinese monarchy to an end. Yuan Shikai, the Qing dynasty's last prime minister, convinced the emperor to abdicate on 12 February 1912 and consequently made a deal with the revolutionary leader Sun Yat-sen: China would become a republic, but Yuan would assume the presidency instead of Sun.Footnote 43 However, before long, the two sides began to squabble and eventually to fight one another. Japan had to decide whether to interfere and, if so, whom to support, in order to preserve and even expand its privileges in Manchuria and other parts of China.
Prime Minister Saionji Kinmochi and his foreign minister Uchida Yasuya decided to cautiously support President Yuan in order to preserve stability. Representatives of the military-adventurous complex, however, actively worked against this policy. Just like some foreign observers, they believed that Manchuria was ‘like a ripe apple, ready to fall in the hands of Russia and Japan whenever they shake the tree’.Footnote 44 Kawashima Naniwa, one of the most famous continental adventurers, argued forcefully that China had to be divided into its ‘natural components’. Many adventurers supported Sun Yat-sen, who promised to give control of Manchuria to Japan, but Kawashima never trusted the Republican leader. The south, in which Kawashima was never interested, could be ruled by the likes of Sun, but Manchuria and Inner Mongolia had to be given to Manchu and Mongol aristocrats. Since 1911, Kawashima had constantly used his connections in the patriotic societies and the General Staff to advocate for a Manchurian client state under Japanese tutelage.Footnote 45
A natural place to lobby was the intelligence department of the General Staff, where the complex had its highest influence. On 9 January 1912, Major General Utsunomiya Tarō, the chief of the department, met Mori Kaku, a businessman from Mitsui and a lifelong ally of the complex, who convinced him to fund the Republican revolutionaries. Shortly afterwards, Utsunomiya was also contacted by Kawashima Naniwa and several China experts, who agreed that Japan should use the opportunity to take Manchuria from China.Footnote 46 Utsunomiya's position was not accepted by the cabinet, so he turned to the adventurers to see whether they could effect a fait accompli on the ground without holding himself accountable.Footnote 47 Troops were put on standby to occupy Manchurian cities if circumstances allowed.Footnote 48
Emboldened by the support from the General Staff, Kawashima launched the so-called ‘First Manchu-Mongolian Independence Movement’. In late January 1912, he and his men smuggled Prince Su, a pro-Japanese member of the Qing royal family, out of Beijing and into the Japanese-controlled ‘Kwantung Leased Territory’. Su, a long-standing ally of Kawashima, was supposed to serve as a royal figurehead of a separatist Manchu-Mongol rebellion against President Yuan Shikai; at the same time, Inner Mongolia would be handed over to pro-Japanese local aristocrats. These two puppet regimes would then give further concessions and privileges to Japan in their respective territories.Footnote 49
Using their intricate web of connections, Kawashima and his group of continental adventurers made alliances with gangs of Chinese and Japanese brigands all over Manchuria and Inner Mongolia. They were financed by the Ōkura Concern, which agreed to support the Manchurian rebels in return for securities in the form of mines. Kawashima and his accomplices channelled these funds and arms to their Manchurian and Mongolian clients.Footnote 50 The highwayman Haku Masumi, also known as the ‘heavenly demon’, proposed that his mixed Japanese-Chinese gang would smuggle the weapons provided by Ōkura to the Mongol armies.Footnote 51 Three China military experts were unofficially dispatched to train and arm the Manchu-Mongol rebels and brigands.Footnote 52
Kawashima, a private citizen, signed a contract with his Mongol and Manchu allies on behalf of Japan with the full knowledge and approval of the General Staff.Footnote 53 The government in Tokyo was not consulted beforehand, and the plotters hoped to compel its agreement once there was a fait accompli. In early February 1912, the Japanese envoy in Beijing, Ijūin Hikokichi, got wind of certain components of the plan, especially the arming and training of the Mongol princes, and guessed that some sort of uprising was afoot. Neverthelesss, he was oblivious to the specific details of the plot, and his diary documents his pervading feeling of helplessness. The envoy suspected that Japanese hands were involved in political plots, brigand attacks, and independent initiatives of all sorts, but he could not be entirely sure. He guessed (wrongly) that the Foreign Ministry had been manipulated by the army to approve the plan for a Mongolian uprising, and lamented the chaotic decision-making process—he was not even certain about the precise policy of his own ministry.Footnote 54 The consul in Mukden, too, complained to Foreign Minister Uchida that Kawashima and his military allies were plotting in Manchuria behind his back, even attempting to escape the surveillance of the Japanese police.Footnote 55
Uchida was furious, and his views were shared by Prime Minister Saionji. On 20 February, the cabinet decided to maintain strict neutrality in China, except in the event of a direct threat to Japanese interests.Footnote 56 Uchida vetoed the ‘Manchu–Mongolian Independence Movement’ and applied strong pressure on the General Staff to comply. Consequently, General Fukushima Yasumasa, vice chief of the General Staff, reluctantly ordered the adventurers to abort all planning. Prime Minister Saionji spoke personally with the Kwantung governor general in order to ensure compliance with the government's policy.Footnote 57
The army, however, was keen to maintain the infrastructure with a view to a possible uprising in the future. As Fukushima wrote to Major Taga Muneyuki, one of the China experts who worked with the Mongol rebels, ‘this is not the right timing . . . so our weapons and gunpowder should be stored. I believe it would be best to wait for a future opportunity.’Footnote 58 Taga and his colleagues continued to train the Mongol soldiers, possibly with the financial help of the Ōkura, Mitsui, and Mitsubishi concerns.Footnote 59 They also maintained the connection with the local Chinese underworld. On 1 April, Taga recommended arranging brigand attacks in the area to justify the existence of Mongol militias for ‘self-defence’.Footnote 60 The Foreign Ministry and the General Staff agreed to assume the payment of the funds promised to the Mongol princes by Ōkura. As the Foreign Ministry did not have enough cash, part of the sum was taken from the General Staff's secret fund, a special account for sensitive operations.Footnote 61
Resilience and resistance: the complex against the Yamamoto cabinet
From February 1913 to April 1914, the military-adventurous complex had to face the hostile cabinet of Admiral Yamamoto Gonnohyōe. That cabinet was formed with the support of the navy and the Seiyūkai Party, which had just emerged from a vicious dispute with the army.Footnote 62 In 1913, senior navy officers joined the Foreign Ministry's diplomats to protest against the activities of land army officers and their adventurer allies. The commander of the South China Fleet cautioned against assisting northern Chinese rebels, and recommended that his minister maintain an ‘appropriate distance’ from reckless adventurers.Footnote 63
Prime Minister Yamamoto and Foreign Minister Makino Nobuaki led the policy of non-intervention in the internal Chinese strife. In particular, they refused to help the anti-Yuan uprising (the second revolution) that gathered steam in the summer of 1913 and broke out in July that year. However, the complex ignored that policy altogether. Adventurers and China experts persistently launched new initiatives in different parts of China, skirmished with the Chinese police, and tried to procure weapons for brigands and revolutionaries. On 18 July, the Chinese chambers of commerce strongly protested to the Japanese envoy in Beijing and warned that an anti-Japanese commercial boycott was imminent. Three days later, the American envoy reported that 40 Japanese officers had actively aided rebels in South China.Footnote 64
On 22 July, Prime Minister Yamamoto reprimanded the army and decided on a series of countermeasures. He sent a special emissary to enforce the government's decrees on the local officers, forbade adventurers from procuring weapons for Chinese belligerents, and ordered the budget of the army in southern China to be cut so as to stop all plotting.Footnote 65 When, however, Yamamoto suggested the withdrawal and replacement of unruly China experts with ‘upright’ (i.e. obedient) people, Army Minister Kususe objected. There was no use, he said, in having obedient but stupid China experts in the field. Home Minister Hara Kei, usually a critic of the army, supported Kususe and the matter was not pursued.Footnote 66
In accordance with the cabinet's decision, the Japanese consuls in China sent a strict warning to adventurers to stop interfering in the Chinese civil war. If they violated this order, the Ministry warned, in a statement that followed, they could not expect government protection.Footnote 67 Abe Moritarō, a senior Foreign Ministry official, suggested that all independent initiatives by adventurers, spies, and military officers in China should be forbidden, and that foreign policy should be unified under the exclusive control of the Ministry. As the military-adventurous complex's modus operandi was based on such independent initiatives, Abe's suggestion was a serious blow to the entire complex.Footnote 68
On 5 September 1913, two assassins stabbed Abe to death, accusing him of defeatist policies, corruption, and disregarding the will of the people.Footnote 69 One of the assassins disembowelled himself on a map of China, in such a way as to soak Mongolia and Manchuria with his blood. He and his friend were influenced by a continental adventurer, one of Kawashima Naniwa's accomplices.Footnote 70 Nevertheless, Foreign Minister Makino did not bow to the complex and did not allow it to dictate Japan's China policy: ‘No matter what the adventurers say,’ he declared in a cabinet meeting in early October, ‘the interests of the country remain the same.’Footnote 71
In late summer and autumn 1913, though, there were several different incidents in which Japanese officers, suspected of subversion or espionage, were arrested in China. The leaders of patriotic societies such as the Kokuryūkai, organized mass rallies to fan the flames against the government's ‘weak-kneed’ policy in face of such incidents.Footnote 72 In these meetings, patriotic society leaders and famous adventurers gave inflammatory speeches against the government. In October, a major corruption scandal broke out in the navy. The civilian arms of the military-adventurous complex—celebrity adventurers, patriotic societies, and Pan-Asian politicians—played a major part in the public campaign and violent mass demonstrations that finally brought down the Yamamoto cabinet.Footnote 73
The complex on the offensive: plots under the Ōkuma cabinet
Prime Minister Ōkuma Shigenobu, Yamamoto Gonnohyōe's successor, believed in a more assertive Chinese policy. Ishii Kikujirō, his foreign minister from October 1915, lacked experience and was known to be under the influence of General Tanaka Giichi, the charismatic vice-chief of the General Staff.Footnote 74 Tanaka, who had a rich background in intelligence and special operations, worked for years with adventurers, China military experts, brigand gangs, and other elements of the military-adventurous complex.Footnote 75 ‘If we implement our policy in mere reaction to the changing circumstances in China,’ Tanaka wrote to one of his officers, ‘we will not be able to reach our goal. Rather, I believe that we should actively create [the right] circumstances.’Footnote 76 In late 1915, without the knowledge of the Foreign Ministry, Tanaka secretly ordered three China military experts to foment resistance and assist anti-Yuan rebels in Manchuria and South China. The goal was to pressurize Yuan into asking for Japanese aid in return for additional concessions.Footnote 77 As usual in such cases, many of these officers used adventurers to do their dirty work.Footnote 78
However, when Yuan failed to behave as Tanaka expected, moving instead to crush the revolutionaries without Japanese aid, the China experts encouraged Tanaka to change the plan and to increase assistance to the revolutionaries in order to overthrow Yuan altogether. The network of officers and adventurers, who already supplied funds and arms to brigands and revolutionaries in both the north and south, made this plan feasible. Tanaka was convinced, and started to pressure the government as early as 21 February.Footnote 79 A noisy lobbying campaign by the patriotic societies, Pan-Asian politicians, and other supporters of the complex in mainland Japan further increased the pressure on the Ōkuma cabinet to work for the overthrow of Yuan. Three of Ōkuma's cabinet ministers, all members of the Pan-Asian Kokumintō party, had strong ties with continental adventurers and advocated their positions to the government.Footnote 80 Hotheads from the patriotic societies, who believed that Ōkuma was too hesitant, unsuccessfully tried to dispatch the prime minister with a bomb.Footnote 81
Already by late January, Ōkuma had summoned the business magnet Ōkura Kihachirō, leader of the Ōkura Concern and one of the major figures in the military-adventurous complex, and asked him to finance clandestine activities in China—that is, to fund both northern and southern revolutionaries. A few days later, Ōkura met Kawashima Naniwa to arrange the transfer of funds to Prince Su and his Manchurian separatists.Footnote 82 On 7 March, probably as a result of General Tanaka's pressure, the cabinet decided to actively work to overthrow Yuan. In order to reach that goal, Ōkuma and his ministers agreed to ‘silently approve’ the initiatives of the continental adventurers.Footnote 83 Consequently, the Kwantung General Government gave a secret order to all Japanese diplomats and policemen not to interfere with the activities of the adventurers.Footnote 84 Tanaka and his intelligence chief Major General Fukuda Masatarō dispatched trusted officers to aid the adventurers and supply them with arms, money, warehouses for equipment, information, and advice.Footnote 85
The second Manchu-Mongolian independence movement, 1916
Another actor who joined the fray at this point was the Mongol brigand leader Babojab, who had been leading a local gang since the days of the Russo-Japanese War.Footnote 86 Originally, he sided with the local Mongol population against unpopular Chinese settlers, and therefore gained a reputation as a type of Robin Hood local hero. After Outer Mongolia declared independence from China in December 1911, Babojab's gang joined the new state's army and actively worked to liberate Inner Mongolia. In June 1915, however, the government of Outer Mongolia signed a Russian-brokered peace agreement with President Yuan Shikai. The Chinese recognized Outer Mongolian autonomy, in return for recognition of Beijing's direct rule in Inner Mongolia. As a result, Babojab lost his political backing and resorted to strong-arm extortion of the local population, which further eroded his local support. And at the same time, President Yuan dispatched military contingents to suppress him.Footnote 87 Therefore, it was little wonder that Babojab felt inclined to cooperate with the Japanese.Footnote 88
Also in June 1915, Babojab contacted a continental adventurer named Miyasato Yoshimi, the owner of a small Japanese restaurant in Hailar. Responding to Babojab's request, Miyasato arranged a trip to Japan for two Mongol emissaries, who asked the Tokyo authorities for weapons and money. When the Japanese government refused, the two Mongols promptly approached adventurers, activists in patriotic societies, and other representatives of the military-adventurous complex.Footnote 89 The complex was able to approach the General Staff and the Foreign Ministry. As a result, two officers and one diplomat were dispatched to Inner Mongolia to meet with Miyasato and Babojab's men. The diplomat did not think highly of either of them, but believed that with some training the Mongols could be useful to Japan.Footnote 90
Kawashima Naniwa was quickly brought into the picture and integrated the Mongol scheme into his larger Manchurian plan. The goal of the plan was to use Babojab's army (of 6,000 men), Japanese reservists, and adventurers, along with gangs of Chinese brigands, to take over Manchuria, Inner Mongolia, and parts of northern China, in order to establish a Manchu-Mongol kingdom under a revived Qing dynasty, led by Kawashima's old ally Prince Su.Footnote 91 The scheme was partly financed by Prince Su, partly by the Ōkura Concern, as well as by other sympathetic Japanese businessmen like Iwasaki Hisaya, the president of Mitsubishi. Again, Prince Su offered his sponsors securities in the form of mines, forests, and pasturelands.Footnote 92 Ever careful, Generals Fukuda and Tanaka refrained from giving formal approval to the plan. Instead, they signalled to their officers on the ground to support the adventurers without waiting for orders.Footnote 93
Consuls in Manchuria complained to the Foreign Ministry that the adventurers roamed the entire territory, ignored the consulates’ authority, engaged with Chinese criminals, and robbed the local population at will. According to a Russian estimate, the gangs had 30,000 members. These were mostly Chinese, but probably included some Mongolians and Japanese. They were not united under one leader and many of them launched independent criminal operations.Footnote 94 Such criminality also took place in the Kwantung Leased Territory, which was under direct Japanese control, and gang members were often assisted or quietly tolerated by the Japanese police. The consul general in Mukden and his colleagues repeatedly warned that if the adventurers were not restrained, their activity might cause great harm to Japanese foreign policy. Moreover, the adventurers smuggled ammunition and bombs to Babojab through Russian territory. Such schemes, if discovered, were likely to cause international complications. Worried by such prospects, Foreign Minister Ishii ordered the prevention of excesses and cautioned Kawashima Naniwa to restrain his own men. The consuls, however, continued to complain throughout the spring, a clear indication that no effective measures had been taken.Footnote 95
To add to the complication, in early April the Foreign Ministry and the General Staff tried to convince Zhang Zuolin, the strongest warlord in Manchuria, to join the rebellion against President Yuan and declare Manchurian independence. The failed attempts by some of Kawashima's adventurers, officers, and related business elements to assassinate Zhang in May did not sit well with this policy.Footnote 96 As a result, Zhang demanded that the Japanese government clamp down on the adventurers, as a clear condition for further cooperation.Footnote 97 In mid-April, the General Staff ordered the officers on the ground to delay the uprising and to await further orders. These instructions, however, were formulated in an equivocal way. And, un addition, junior officers in the Japanese Army were sometimes expected to act on their own in order to absolve their superiors from responsibility.Footnote 98
Then, on 6 June, President Yuan Shikai passed away. His death changed the Chinese political map. In a series of meetings convened by the Foreign Ministry, the government decided to abandon the plans for Manchu-Mongolian independence. Instead, they decided to back Li Yuanhong, Yuan's successor in Beijing, while simultaneously supporting Sun Yat-sen in the South and Zhang Zuolin in Manchuria. Li, Zhang, as well as the Russians, had repeatedly asked the Japanese government to restrain the adventurers.Footnote 99 This time the commanders of the army agreed. In July, the General Staff gave orders to quell Manchurian separatists in areas under Japanese control.Footnote 100
At the end of July, Kawashima's partner Ishimoto Kantarō, a veteran adventurer, politician, and opium tycoon, launched a last-ditch offensive.Footnote 101 In league with several dozen Japanese adventurers and more than 200 Chinese brigands, he planned to stage a series of terror attacks in Changchun and occupy the city in order to help Babojab's advance. A local Japanese military unit armed and supplied the insurgents. When the Japanese consul resisted, the adventurers threatened him with bombs. Consequently, the consulate pressured the army to confiscate all weapons. Lieutenant General Tanaka, strongly suspecting that the Kwantung General Government had secretly approved the plan, sent them an urgent order to stop such insurgencies without delay.Footnote 102
Eventually the adventurers agreed to disperse, but only after the army and the government agreed to partly reimburse their soldiers. In addition, the army assured them that the government might order another rebellion in due time, so as to ‘give them hope for the future’. Meanwhile, their weapons would be stored by the Kwantung General Government.Footnote 103 All of the adventurers’ hopes were dashed in October when Babojab fell in battle and his beaten armies returned to Inner Mongolia. The government dispatched special emissaries, some of them retired adventurers, in order to convince Kawashima Naniwa to abort the Manchurian plan. Kawashima, Prince Su, and their men reluctantly agreed, only after much cajoling, pressure, and government promises for continued financial support.Footnote 104
Hara Kei, now a leading figure in the opposition to Ōkuma's cabinet, wrote in his diary that the Foreign Ministry utilized the adventurers when they were useful, then tossed them aside when they were not.Footnote 105 Indeed, Generals Tanaka and Fukuda assured the government that the General Staff ‘had no concern’ with the adventurers. They assured Prime Minister Ōkuma that if ordered to do so, they could promptly disband Kawashima's gang. However, that was for show, part of the usual scheme of deniability, as both Tanaka and Fukuda knew well that no one had any intention of eliminating the adventurers altogether. Indeed, at the same meeting, Ōkuma himself said that disbanding the gangs immediately would be rash and impractical.Footnote 106 As one of the consuls in Manchuria implied in his communique to the foreign minister, it would be imprudent to cut all connections with the Mongolian brigand gangs, because Japan might need them in the future. The army too tried to drag its feet about the evacuation of some adventurers who cooperated in mapping projects in northern Manchuria and Inner Mongolia.Footnote 107 They could not be removed because their activities, knowledge, and local ties extended Japan's manoeuvrability in the chaotic environment of northern China.
Cooperation comes into the open—the assassination of Zhang Zuolin
During the 1920s, and especially in the second half of the decade, a new generation of China military experts emerged, with an ever-increasing influence on Japan's China policy. These men, mostly young officers, spent their careers playing the games of Chinese politics, advising warlords, collaborating with adventurers, and conducting special operations of a political nature. They were all products of the military-adventurous complex. In fact, veteran adventurers, like Kawashima Naniwa, were directly involved in their training.Footnote 108 This kind of schooling and field experience produced independent-minded officers, well used to political involvement. Having spent their early military careers in the brutal realms of warlordism, they shared the same explosive brew of self-righteousness and cynicism characteristic of the adventurers. Accordingly, they believed that the only way to advance the righteous cause of Japan in China was by brute force.
The most infamous representative of this group was Colonel Kōmoto Daisaku, China expert and a Kwantung Army senior staff officer, who successfully plotted the assassination of the Manchurian warlord Zhang Zuolin. Zhang was an ally of Japan, but from 1926 relations between him and the empire soured.Footnote 109 The Japanese prime minister, former General Tanaka Giichi, still believed that Zhang was Japan's best bet, and strove to control him with a combination of threats, promises, and diplomatic pressure.Footnote 110 Kōmoto and his friends, impatient and indifferent to the political and diplomatic manoeuvres taking place in Tokyo, decided to kill Zhang anyway by blowing up his train with a bomb, in a violent display of disobedience.Footnote 111
Kōmoto, an officer who specialized in intelligence, spying, and special operations, had a long history of associating with continental adventurers. He was a hybrid type: a uniformed soldier with the unruly mentality of an adventurer. Like many adventurers, he despised the Japanese government and high command—indeed, the very notion of military discipline.Footnote 112 Prior to Zhang's assassination, Kōmoto made it very clear that he would press on regardless of orders.Footnote 113 His plan was to use Zhang's assassination, and the ensuing political chaos, as an excuse to call for reinforcements, take over Manchuria, and establish a puppet state under the tutelage of the Kwantung Army. In this regard, Kōmoto's plots can be considered as a third enactment of Kawashima Naniwa's Manchu-Mongolian Independence Movement.
As in previous operations of that sort, cooperation with continental adventurers was crucial in order to reduce the army's accountability. Through a middleman, Kōmoto contacted a gang of adventurers with strong ties to the Chinese underworld. One of them, a Japanese brigand leader, arranged small bomb attacks along the Manchurian Eastern Railway to generate a feeling of chaos and justify an eventual Japanese takeover of the territory.Footnote 114 Another key partner was a Chinese pimp, who worked part time as a spy for the army secret service. Through this pimp, Kōmoto hired three Chinese morphine addicts, who were brought to the assassination scene and bayoneted to death.Footnote 115 Some hand grenades were planted in their pockets, along with letters of confession (composed by the adventurers) that incriminated the southern revolutionaries in Zhang's assassination.Footnote 116 On 4 June 1928, Kōmoto's team set off a bomb at a railway location near Mukden, the Manchurian capital, precisely at the time when Zhang's luxurious train was passing by. The warlord, who had escaped Kawashima's assassination attempt 12 years before, was not so lucky this time. Gravely wounded, he died shortly afterwards.Footnote 117
Kōmoto failed to provoke a wider operation and facilitate the occupation of Manchuria, mainly because he neglected to coordinate his plan with more senior commanders who could move troops, or to plan the movement of such troops in advance.Footnote 118 The assassination, however, had important political ramifications. Prime Minister Tanaka, who had collaborated with the complex during the first and second ‘independence movements’, had a very different view in 1928. As a prime minister, he was dismayed by the flouting of his own authority, especially as he was just about to reach a settlement with Zhang before Kōmoto assassinated him. Therefore, Tanaka decided to punish Kōmoto and the other perpetrators. However, he faced almost unanimous resistance in the government, the army high command, and almost all segments of the military-adventurous complex. Even officers and officials who despised Kōmoto and deplored his plan were not ready to humiliate the army or to expose the military-adventurous complex. Railway Minister Ogawa Heikichi, a key politician in the ruling party and a veteran patron of the continental adventurers, was afraid that if Kōmoto was prosecuted, the army's honour might be stained, the government might fall, and, even worse, ‘officers and adventurers’ would assassinate senior politicians.Footnote 119
Mori Kaku, another key Seiyūkai leader, also contributed to the whitewashing of the event by implicating a small number of continental adventurers, who were more than ready to bear the guilt. Mori himself was a typical product of the military-adventurous complex: a former Mitsui businessman with China experience, he had worked for years with continental adventurers to promote Pan-Asian goals intertwined with commercial interests.Footnote 120 Charged by Prime Minister Tanaka to investigate the incident, Mori's committee pushed forward a false story, arguing that Kōmoto only reluctantly cooperated with a group of Chinese and Japanese adventurers who had plotted the assassination of Zhang independently.Footnote 121 Ironically, Prime Minister Tanaka became the eventual victim of the complex he had formerly supported. His attempts to prosecute Kōmoto isolated him within his own party, destroyed his prestige in the army, and finally precipitated the downfall of his cabinet.Footnote 122
The Manchurian Incident and the metamorphosis of the military-adventurous complex
Manchuria was eventually occupied by the Japanese Army three years later. In September 1931, a group of officers in the Kwantung Army, which comprised the Japanese garrison force in southern Manchuria, staged a provocation and took over the entire territory against explicit orders, in a lightning operation which later became known as the ‘Manchurian Incident’ or ‘Mukden Incident’.Footnote 123 Allies in the General Staff gave the plotters inside information and Pan-Asian politicians offered enthusiastic support.Footnote 124 Adventurers, too, played their part. Led by a man named Amakasu Masahiko, a deposed officer turned adventurer, they tossed bombs at the Japanese consulate in Harbin, thus giving the army an excuse to take over northern Manchuria in order to ‘restore order’.Footnote 125
Unlike the ‘independence movements’ of the 1910s, the Manchurian Incident was planned and launched by army officers, with continental adventurers and other elements of the complex playing a minor supporting role. And yet, Colonels Ishiwara Kanji and Itagaki Seishirō, the officers who had orchestrated the Manchurian Incident, adopted many of the behavioural patterns previously associated with continental adventurers: unruliness, strong belief in their own righteousness, and contempt towards any leader who dared to restrain schemes of imperial expansion. When faced with resistance by the government and the General Staff, they openly threatened to shed their Japanese citizenship and occupy Manchuria as stateless adventurers.Footnote 126 No disciplinary measures were taken against them.Footnote 127
Such patterns of behaviour did not stop even after Manchuria was occupied and given over to a Japanese-controlled puppet regime. In 1936, mid-level officers led by Colonel Mutō Akira and the intelligence specialist Doihara Kenji instigated a ‘Mongolian Independence Movement’. In so doing they re-enacted the Manchurian Incident of 1931.Footnote 128 Ishihara Kanji, the architect of the previous incident and now the operations chief at the General Staff, tried to stop the new encroachment. In a rare display of awareness of historical irony, he was told by Mutō, his direct subordinate, that ‘my current behaviour is similar to yours during the Manchurian Incident. I am surprised to hear such things from you now.’Footnote 129 And all the while, from 1931 to the abortive coup d’état of February 1936, other officers assassinated statesmen and generals from rival factions or those who dared to oppose unbridled territorial expansion in China. After February 1936, the army took over national policy, warning that if the civilian government tried to resist, such violent incidents might reoccur.Footnote 130
The adventurers themselves gradually became redundant. When the Japanese Army took control of Manchuria, it had no further use for these agents of chaos. Some of them continued to work as army agents and mediators who convinced Chinese gangs to emigrate out of Japanese-controlled territories. Others maintained their involvement in opium trafficking, worked in the South Manchurian Railway company, or blended in with the Japanese settler population.Footnote 131 Their historical role was over. From the 1880s, the army had used adventurers to gather intelligence and conduct special operations. In the 1930s, its officers had finally absorbed the complex and turned its adventurous behaviour into national policy.
Conclusion
The military-adventurous complex was an enduring network of individuals and institutions who played an important role in Japanese imperial politics up to the 1930s. The actors in this network were officers, mainly intelligence, special operations, and China specialists; continental adventurers; businessmen; Pan-Asian politicians; activists in patriotic societies; criminal elements; Chinese revolutionaries, and Manchu-Mongol separatists.
Over the years, the complex proved to be highly resilient to attacks from rivals and critics in mainland Japan. First, it had numerous allies in the army, the Japanese political world, and the press. Second, too many people at all levels had a finger in the pie of corruption, and a stake in the revenues of opium trafficking, a key activity of the complex. From a less cynical standpoint, Pan-Asian ideology always had a significant following among the Japanese elites and general public. And, finally, the complex was able to use highly effective political lobbying, massive public campaigns, and even assassination and terror against its rivals. Indeed, even after the painful setbacks of 1912, 1916, and 1928, nobody tried to dismantle the complex altogether. In 1913, Prime Minister Yamamoto Gonnohyōe made a serious attempt to curb its activities, but these achievements were reversed as soon as he stepped down from power. Even Aoki Norizumi, the troublesome China expert whom Yamamoto attempted to remove from the scene, soon resurfaced as governor of Port Arthur in Manchuria and then as an officer in the General Staff. Footnote 132
The complex was also retained because of its usefulness in the Chinese theatre. Divided between warlords and other power brokers, China in the 1910s and 1920s was an extremely chaotic arena that attracted attention from many foreign powers. This chaotic environment encouraged plots by spies and informal agents from myriad nationalities, used by governments who could always disavow responsibility. As Japan's interests and territorial aspirations in China were more ambitious than those of other powers, it had a bigger incentive to use informal agents in order to probe imperialist schemes and bail out when things went wrong.
The endurance of the military-adventurous complex had several important ramifications. First of all, it encouraged a skewed decision-making process.Footnote 133 When the American envoy to Beijing wondered whether there was some kind of a plot behind the cobweb of contradictory Japanese actions in Manchuria and China in 1912, he demonstrated how unable he was to comprehend the level of chaos reigning in the empire.Footnote 134 In late spring and early summer of 1916—the waning days of the Second Manchu-Mongolian Independence Movement—even Lieutenant General Tanaka admitted that Japanese policy in China was haphazard and contradictory, ‘trying to catch two hares at once and ending up with none’.Footnote 135 Hara Kei wrote in his diary that the influence of the continental adventurers, the China experts, and their allies distorted the decision-making process in the entire system. Their intimate ties to General Staff officers, journalists, businessmen, bureaucrats, and politicians created alternative, decentralized, and informal channels of decision-making. The result was a hodgepodge of uncoordinated conspiracies and ‘petty plots’. The agents who planned them, each with his own narrow point of view, often did not think about their long-term repercussions, nor did they bother to coordinate them with the Foreign Ministry's official policy.Footnote 136 Even Kawashima Naniwa complained bitterly about the private, uncoordinated plotting of different agents on the ground. Chaos reigned not only outside, but also inside the military adventurous-complex.Footnote 137
As Japanese civilians, the adventurers enjoyed rights of extraterritoriality in China and therefore they did not have to pay a price for their misdeeds. And every time an adventurer or officer got into trouble due to a crime, plot, or spying operation, the government was always pressured to come to their rescue in order to uphold national honour. Sometimes, this protection even extended to the complex's Chinese and Mongol allies, implicating Japan even further.Footnote 138 The plots hatched by members of the complex were often half-baked, but their lack of accountability always tempted them to try again, until they finally succeeded in September 1931.
In this chaotic environment, it was difficult to stop independent plots by military men, empowering the most adventurous and disobedient elements in the officer corps. Adventurers were always present on the scene, so these officers always had ready partners for reckless initiatives. Even worse, many of these officers adopted the unruly mentality and culture of the adventurers they constantly worked with. The disdain for the established authority of officers such as Ishiwara Kanji, Kōmoto Daisaku, and many of Kawashima Naniwa's military partners, as well as their predilection for independent initiatives, were natural expressions of this mentality.
Andrew Levidis, a historian from the University of Cambridge, has recently found new documents, including neglected private diaries, indicating that the fear of independent action by rogue officers played a large part in the decision of the government and the General Staff to extend the second Sino-Japanese War. When war broke out after the Marco Polo Incident of 7 July 1937, the government and the General Staff took several measures that escalated the conflict, including bringing reinforcements to the Shanghai front and refusing to negotiate with the Chinese Nationalist government. This decision, according to Levidis, was motivated in part by the fear of Prime Minister Konoe Fumimaro and officers in the General Staff that if the war with China ended too early, their rivals in the army would use their operational discretion to transfer military units to the north and provoke a war with the Soviet Union. As Prime Minister Konoe and the General Staff believed that Japan was not ready to fight with the Soviet Union, the extension of the war in China was seen as the lesser of two evils. These efforts were futile: in 1939, the Kwantung Army attacked the Soviet Union without permission, leading to the famous border war of Nomohan (Khalkin-Gol).Footnote 139
The spectre of independent military operations, one of the consequences of the military-adventurous complex's decades of activity, was a constant cloud hovering over the ruling elites, and radicalized foreign policy. Even when no actual independent action was taking place, it was always a possibility that policymakers had to take into account, as evidenced in their decision to extend the war in China in order to avoid an unauthorized attack on the Soviet Union. However, as so often before, Japanese leaders could not control the genie they unleashed from the bottle. As the Imperial Army failed to reach clear victory in China, the conflict dragged on, and finally pushed Japan into a disastrous world war with the United States. Japan ended this war as an occupied and impoverished country, its army gone, and its empire dismantled. The military-adventurous complex, which was intended to serve the army and the empire, was one of the factors that hastened their downfall.
