JAPAN: Fissiparous Tendencies

(See front cover)

The Japanese Government is building a simple, square-towered Parliament not far from the low, buff-colored wooden Imperial Palace. The Diet and House of Peers meet at present in a low, dingy frame building, which “looks like an orphan asylum,” according to Japanese correspondents. To this Imperial orphanage went the peers of Japan last week, some in grey silk kimonos, more in frock coats and high button shoes, to sit on stiff benches behind wooden desks and listen to a speech actually addressed to the entire world: an explanation by Foreign Minister Count Yasuya Uchida of his country’s foreign policy. Most cautiously, most meticulously was the speech prepared.

Three weeks ago U. S. Secretary of State Stimson addressed the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, referring to his efforts in January 1932 to stop the Japanese invasion of Manchuria. Said Statesman Stimson:

“The power of the Briand-Kellogg Treaty cannot be adequately appraised unless it is assumed that behind it rests the combined weight of the opinion of the entire world. . . . The American Government’s . . . refusal to recognize the fruits of aggression might be of comparatively little moment to the aggressor. But when the entire group of civilized nations took their stand beside the positionof the American Government, the situation was revealed in its true sense. Moral disapproval, when it becomes the disapproval of the whole world, takes on a significance hitherto unknown in international law.”

Last week the League of Nations’ commission to Manchuria under Lord Lytton was still in China finishing its voluminous report on the invasion, preparatory to taking it to Geneva. No official announcementwas made but every one felt sure that the report would hold Japan guilty of aggression. The Japanese Government had not the slightest intention of modifying its Manchurian policy one iota but it was burningly anxious to know just how far the U. S. and Europe would back their “moral indignation.” European reports were reassuring. British editors were as indignant as those in the U. S. but British statesmen kept very silent, anxious not to endanger their friendly relations with Japan. So did the French. French citizens have money invested in the Chinese Eastern Railway, which they are anxious to sell to Japan. In the U. S. the complete text of the Stimson speech was cabled to Japan. Smiling little Ambassador Katsuji Debuchi was called home “on vacation,” to give a report on public opinion in the U. S. On his way to Tokyo with his thin, attractive wife and son last week he stopped in San Francisco long enough to have a farewell party with every Japanese consul west of the Rockies. What they said was apparently reassuring. A few hours later Foreign Minister Uchida made his speech to the world.

Recognition. Before he had been speaking 60 seconds two facts were glaringly evident: 1) Japan is ready to give formal recognition to her puppet state of Manchoukuo immediately, and 2) she will take no back talk from the League of Nations. These prime points were made with all the suavity of which Count Uchida is capable and the introduction of a word new to newspaper headlines: fissiparous.Said Japan’s Foreign Minister:

“There are those in other countries who do not fully comprehend the attitude of Japan toward China nor the measures she has taken. . . . Although Japan has been the chief victim of the abnormal state of affairs in China, other countries have also suffered intolerable indignities. At the same time it is admitted by those conversant with actual conditions in China that no remedy can be effected by having recourse either to the covenant of the League of Nations or to any other organ of what may be termed ‘machinery of peace.’ In fact, it has been the practice of the powers, as has been demonstrated on innumerable occasions, to repair or prevent injuries to their important rights and interests in China by direct application of force without relying upon those instruments of peace. . . .

“There are those who argue as though the action of Japan were a violation of the Kellogg-Briand anti-war pact. But such contention has no foundation in fact. . . . The anti-war pact does not put restraint upon the exercise of the right of self-defense.

“. . . The independence of Manchoukuo has been achieved through the spontaneous will of Manchurians and should be regarded as a consequence of a fissiparous* movement in China, and that recognition by Japan of the new State thus created cannot violate the stipulations of the Nine-Power Treaty.

“. . . It appears that in certain quarters a planis being considered to reach a solution . . . by investing China proper in one form or another with authority over Manchuria. . . . The People of Japan can never consent to a solution of that kind.”

Suez to Kamchatka? There were two still more drastic ideas which Foreign Minister Uchida did not voice in his formal address but which other Japanese, nearly as potent politically, called to the world’s attention. For a fortnight foreign correspondents had heard rumors that Count Uchida was about to formulate a “Japanese Monroe Doctrine.” claiming the right to protect all Asia “from Suez to Kamchatka,” except American & European possessions, from Western aggression, and that the originator to be cited for this idea was none other than the late great Theodore Roosevelt. Editors wereunable to find any trace of such a doctrine in T. R.’s writings or biographies.

Last week gentle, white-haired Viscount Kentaro Kaneko, Harvard 1878, Privy Councilor of Japan, came forward with an articlee in Contemporary Japan to explain that he was the person to whom President Roosevelt had suggested a Japanese Monroe Doctrine. The Viscount said it had occurred during a rocking chair conversation at Sagamore Hill in 1905 while Russian and Japanese delegates were negotiating the Treaty of Portsmouth which ended the Russo-Japanese War. He explained that it has never before been published because he had promised President Roosevelt not to do so while the latter remained in office or afterward except by special arrangement. T. R. went hunting in Africa, then returned to start the Progressive Party. Then came the War—they never got around to it.

“After a lapse of 28 years,” wrote Viscount Kaneko, “I do not pretend to repeat the exact wordof the President, but their substance made an ineffaceable impression which can never be forgotten as long as I live:

” ‘All the Asiatic nations are now faced with the urgent necessity of adjusting themselves to the present age. Japan should be their natural leader in that process and their protector during the transition stage much as the United States assumed the leadership of the American Continent many years ago. . . .

” ‘If Japan will proclaim such an Asiatic Monroe Doctrine I will support her with all my power either during my Presidency or after its expiration.’ ”

Back to Asia. The idea having been thus pedigreed (and U. S. observers admitted that it sounded very much like the ideas that used to emerge from the Oyster Bay rocking chair during the early years of the century), it was carried one step further last week by swart, smiling mustachioed Kaku Mori, leader of the younger faction of the chauvinistic Seiyukai Party. Mr. Mori is not now a Cabinet member. He could and did speak so freely to the Diet that a frightened cable censor hastily mangled the last part of his address while it was being sent to the U. S.:

“Our national policy is, thus, that of a Far Eastern Monroe Doctrine. The League of Nations is not necessary to Japan. We have no occasion to poke our nose into Europe’s affairs. We should concentrate our efforts on the stabilization of Asia. . . . ‘Back to Asia’ is the watchword of our party. We may be forced to quit the League and China may renew hercampaign against us. We must prepare for repetition of the Shanghai affair, and it is impossible to expect improvement in our relations with the United States; they are likely to become worse. . . . Extraordinary measures, in which the army and the politicians cooperate, are needed.”

“What do you mean by extraordinary measures?” asked a Diet voice.

“If necessary. . . .” Whatever Party Leader Mori thought was necessary remained a secret on the floor of the Japanese censor’s office.

Araki. Censors were less alert in the case of Lieut.-General Sadao Araki, Japan’s dry, spry little Minister of War, translations of whose article for Kaikosha, the Army Club magazine, reached the U. S. last week:

“The countries of eastern Asia are objects of oppression by the white people. This fact is undeniable and imperial Japan should no longer let their impudence gounpunished. . . . The United States loudly professes to champion righteousness and humanity, but what can you think when you review its policy toward Cuba, Panama, Nicaragua and other Latin American nations? Nowhere in the society of nations do we find the pacific spirit which we call Japanese ‘kultur.’ We must shake our fist in their faces.”

What Japan would say should Patrick Jay Hurley write such an article for the Army & Navy Journal, U. S. citizens could only guess. Uchida. Count Yasuya Uchida, the man who kept all this boiling by his historic “fissiparous” speech in the Diet, is a gracious, grey-haired gentleman of 67 who dresses exquisitely, is very fond of a cup of hot sake (rice whisky), has a fine collection of Chinese silk paintings and likes to sing old Japanese utai (folk ballads) in the garden of his home with a group of cronies. Only to patriotic Chinese do his black-socked feet in their peg-bottom sandalslook like cloven hooves.

Count Uchida is not and never has been a roaring militarist. In internal politics he is known as a great conciliator. Time & again he has been pushed into important offices because of his ability to smooth things over. A graduate of the Tokyo Imperial University, he was Ambassador to Washington from 1909 to 1911, Ambassador to Russia during the World War. In two separate Japanese crises he became temporary Prime Minister. He was created successively a Baron, Viscount and Count and served on the Privy Councilfrom 1924 to 1929. In 1928 he signed the Briand-Kellogg pact for Japan. In 1931 just before the Manchurian question became acute he was appointed president of the South Manchuria Railway. Japanese regarded the appointment as an effort to lift that all-important job above party politics.

Outmoded Ethics. Before accusing Count Uchida of threatening the peace of the world, his critics should remember Japan’s position—an overpopulated, earthquake-ridden string of islands faced with grave unemployment and a rickety currency, with little chance of squeezing her citizens through the immigration restrictions of the West. Hundreds of thousands of Japanese believe that rich, undeveloped Manchuria is their only hope of salvation. When Count Uchida was born, what Japan is doing now would not have excited protest. When Count Uchida was nine years old, the Prime Minister of Britain was a brilliant, dapper Jew, Benjamin Disraeli, later Earl of Beaconsfield, who preached exactly the same sort of utilitarian imperialism, made his Queen Empress of India, bought the Suez Canal to develop Britain’s oriental trade and to protect her Manchoukuo: Egypt. Disraeli was just as convinced as any Japanese today that his country must be master of the East.

Disraeli would have had to applaud the agility with which Count Uchida has made use of China’s convenient “fissiparous tendencies” to divide and rule. He would have applauded the creation of Manchoukuo, an officially independent state whose advantages to Japan as a colony outweigh the responsibilities. But international ethics have advanced since the death of the pomaded Earl. The right of self-determination for any people, even one with fissiparous tendencies, is one that the average citizen of most countries believes in heartily. Even Count Uchida put forward as chief excuse for the invasion of Manchuria the idea that what they were really doing was helping a suppressed people,the Manchurians, revolt against Chinese authority.

As if in answer to this, the day General Nobuyoshi Muto arrived in Mukden last week to take over his duties as Japanese Commander-in-Chief and special ambassador to Manchoukuo, Chinese guerrillas staged a desperate anti-Japanese raid. Machine guns and tanks banged away all night. The raiders succeeded in setting fire to the great Mukden arsenal three times and destroyed several planes at the airport. With the dawn they vanished. Japanese bombers zoomed off in pursuit.

Farmers. Real occasion for the special Diet session at which the momentous Uchida speech was made, was to draft a relief program for Japanese farmers who cannot sell their produce, who must pay twice the taxes of city merchants and whose suicide rate has doubled since 1931. At present Japanese prices, a Japanese housewife can buy 41 Ib. of ripe, juicy tomatoes for 10¢.

*By fission: reproduction by spontaneous division of a cell into two parts, each of which grows into a complete organism. Many bacteria are fissiparous.