bureaucrats and villagers in japan: "shimin" and the crisis of the early 1930s

Bureaucrats and Villagers in Japan: "Shimin" and the Crisis of the Early 1930sAuthor(s): Sandra WilsonSource: Social Science Japan Journal, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Apr., 1998), pp. 121-140Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30209242 .

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Social Science Japan Journal Vol. I, No. I, pp 121-140 1998

Bureaucrats and Villagers in Japan: Shimin and the Crisis of the Early 1930s* Sandra WILSON/Murdoch University, Perth

Bureaucrats have often been held responsible for collaborating with the military in the 1930s and 1940s to encourage ultranationalism and steer Japan towards war Similarly, villagers have been portrayed as the backbone of'Japanese fascism'.This paper suggests that, for the early 1930s at least, such views not only distort the picture of the Japanese countryside, but also overemphasize the coherence of the elites.Through an examination of the journal Shimin, which was produced largely by Home Ministry bureaucrats and directed at village leaders, it is shown that Home Ministry bureaucrats did not universally adopt the military viewpoint, particularly in relation to Japan's invasion of Manchuria and subsequent events.Though they were certainly nationalistic, they continued to direct moderate views of foreign policy to the countryside, while retaining their traditional emphasis on the importance of co-operation and conciliation in village life.Thus, in marked contrast to the sorts of views being directed by the army towards the countryside through the magazine le no Hikari, they reserved their enthusiasm, not for Manchuria or for the military's agenda, but for the government's economic revitalization movement.The material examined here suggests the complexity of the relationship between bureaucrats and the military in the 1930s, and raises questions about the place usually accorded to the early part of the decade in analyses of Japanese fascism'.

In historical accounts of pre-war Japan it sometimes seems as though the military needed only the Manchurian Incident to set it on the path to overseas expansion and domestic political power.1 As the New York Times journalist Otto Tolischus wrote in 1943, 'The "Manchuria Incident" put the military in the driver's seat'. He added that the events of 18 September 1931 also 'made the country war-minded again, discredited any Diet opposition, [and] created numerous fanatical and Fascist groups of gunmen led by Army officers' (Tolischus 1943: 59). More recent analyses too have often treated the Manchurian Incident as the key event in putting the military in power and igniting fascism among the people.2

Such arguments tend not only to assume that the military itself was united in its goals from at least 1931 onwards, but also that the army was able to impose its will on all other groups, or perhaps that other groups shared the army's goals. Two groups in particular tend to be regarded as crucial players in supporting military aims and promoting nationalism: villagers and bureaucrats. If the role of villagers is typically seen as passive (Wilson 1997), that of bureaucrats is not. For Maruyama Masao, for example, certain bureaucratic groups between 1931 and 1936 'played no small part in preparing for the dominance of fascism from above in [the period 1936-1945]' (Maruyama 1969: 32). Robert

*Throughout this paper, Japanese names appear in the order of family name first, followed by given name.

1. Draft versions of this paper were presented to the Institute of Social Science, University of Tokyo in December 1992 and to the Annual Meeting of the [US] Association for Asian Studies, Boston, March 1994. I would like to thank members of both audiences for their comments and criticism.

2. See, for example, John M. Maki (1961: 62-63) and Ben-Ami Shillony (1981: 1). The general tenor of Shillony's book belies the sweeping claims about the significance of the Manchurian Incident made on p. 1.

a Institute of Social Science, University ofTokyo 1998



122 Sandra WILSON

J. Spaulding (1971) attributed much responsibility to bureaucrats for the creation of 'Japanese fascism', and Sheldon Garon has also pointed to 'the central role of the civilian bureaucracy in framing the authoritarian programs that would dominate Japan's home front from the early 1930s to 1945', and the role of bureaucrats in the development of Japanese ultranationalism from 1931 onwards (Garon 1987: 188, 200).

'Japanese fascism' was undoubtedly driven by bureaucrats as well as the military, as Maruyama and later writers assert. It is also true that the perceived crisis of the early 1930s was crucial in shaping the events leading to full-scale war. The Manchurian Incident certainly was a key event in some senses: for example, it strengthened the army's position domestically in the medium term. It is not true, however, that the idea of control of Manchuria held immediate appeal for all elites, or that the Kwantung Army was immediately able to impose its agenda on others. I have argued elsewhere that in some villages at least there was considerable ambivalence and fluidity in political opinion in the early 1930s, and that rural support for overseas expansion was neither automatic nor taken for granted by the army itself (Wilson 1997). By the same token, it will be shown here that there was also fragmentation among the elites. If those below were not passive, undifferentiated agents of fascism, neither can those above be regarded as monolithic in their responses to the economic, military, diplomatic and social problems of the early 1930s.

This paper approaches these issues through an examination of the journal Shimin (The People), produced monthly by the national H6tokukai, directed at village elites and dominated by bureaucrats. The focus of attention is the journal's attitude to Manchuria and the Manchurian Incident, since the crisis over Manchuria has so often been considered as the foundation for the main political and military developments leading to war in Asia and the Pacific. It will be shown that in fact a certain coolness concerning Manchuria was being communicated to village leaders in the early 1930s, especially in comparison with propaganda about the 'Manchurian paradise' emanating from the army and the mainstream urban press. The material presented here suggests that notions of a united and unequivocal Japanese response to the Manchurian Incident are misplaced. More broadly, it prompts a re-evaluation of the period 1931-1933 in the development of 'Japanese fascism', particularly in terms of the links between bureaucrats and the military, and indicates the need for a more differentiated conception not only of society but also of the state in the 1930s if we are to begin to understand the relationship between the two in this complex period.

I. Shimin and the H6tokukai Shimin was the organ of the Central H6tokukai (Chfi6 H6tokukai), or Society for the Repayment of Virtue. Local H6tokukai had been established in the late Tokugawa and early Meiji periods by landlords wanting to promote technical improvements among farmers as well as honesty, diligence and communal co-operation. They proclaimed the teachings of the agrarian moralist Ninomiya Sontoku (1787-1856), who preached these same virtues. In 1906 the Home Ministry, recognizing the potential value of the H6tokukai, drew the local groups into a national association, the Central H6tokukai (Sakata 1972). The new national association can be considered as one of several government-sponsored groups with strong bureaucratic links, including the Ky6chokai (Harmon- ization Society, founded 1919) and the agricultural co-operatives, which sought to forestall the perceived negative social consequences of rapid industrialization.

The Central H6tokukai produced the first issue of Shimin in 1906, on Ninomiya's birthday, 23 April. Ten thousand copies of the first issue were printed, and thereafter 3,000 copies of each issue. Sales figures reached 12,000 or 13,000 by January 1910, resulting partly from official



Bureaucrats and Villagers in Japan: Shimin and the Crisis of the Early 1930s 123

encouragement of readership; they dropped to 8,000 by 1914, and probably recovered to exceed 10,000 again around 1921, though precise figures are not known (Sakata 1972: 4, 13-14). The

magazine ran until September 1944, and was also revived for a time after the war. The members of the Central H6tokukai were chiefly bureaucrats (especially from the Home,

Education and Agriculture Ministries), businessmen, university professors and other intellectuals, and social workers (shakai jigyoka). Home Ministry bureaucrats, particularly from the Local Affairs Bureau (Chih6kyoku), increased their influence within the Central H6tokukai as time went on. From the beginning, Home Ministry bureaucrats were also the most important single group of contributors to Shimin, with the addition of Education and Agriculture Ministry officials (Sakata 1972: 5).

In the early 1930s, a striking proportion of contributors to Shimin were still associated with the same few ministries. They included very senior officials such as vice-ministers and heads of bureaus, as well as current and former Home, Education and Agriculture Ministers. A large number of contributors were either Home Ministry officials or had been in the past. Regional heads of Home

Ministry departments (bucho) often contributed, in keeping with the magazine's emphasis on local affairs. Officials of the rank of clerk (fimukan) and secretary (shokikan) also wrote articles and reports. Writers who appear under other affiliations-as Members of the House of Peers, for example-often turn out on closer inspection to be former Home Ministry officials. The next largest group of writers in Shimin in this period is probably university academics.

A number of the writers in Shimin in the early 1930s were officials who would later be identified as 'shin-kanryo' (new bureaucrats) or 'kakushin kanryo' (reform bureaucrats): that is, bureaucrats committed to a change in the status quo through ideological means or state control of the economy or both, with the goal of increasing the nation's spiritual and military strength (Spaulding 1971:

60). Those represented in Shimin included the Finance Ministry's Aoki Kazuo, later Vice-Chief of the Manchurian Affairs Bureau (Tai-Man Jimukyoku), Vice-Chief and later Chief of the Cabinet

Planning Board (Kikakuin), State Minister and first Minister for Greater East Asia in the T6j6 Cabinet, and post-war Member of the Upper House; Matsumoto Gaku, head of the Home Ministry's Police Bureau and leading member of the Kokuikai (National Mainstay Society); Got6 Fumio, formerly an official of the Home Ministry, then Agriculture Minister and later Home Minister, and generally acknowledged as the first leader of the 'new bureaucrats'; and Kishi Nobusuke, then of the

Agriculture and Commerce Ministry, later Vice-Chief of the Manchukuo Industrial Bureau

(Manshikoku Sangy6bu), Vice-Minister of Commerce and Industry, Minister in the Tojo Cabinet and post-war Prime Minister. Articles in Shimin by such writers in the early 1930s already revealed some of the attitudes and concerns which later came to be associated with the 'new bureaucrats':

certainly, calls for change of the existing order through non-revolutionary means, criticism of party politics without a rejection of the establishment, advocacy of stringent economic and social controls and so on were not uncommon in the journal's pages between 1930 and 1933. On the other hand, 'new bureaucrats' are also known for their association with the military, but Shimin provides very limited evidence of positive bureaucratic support for military goals in the early 1930s, as will be shown below.

Shimin had a marked didactic style. Elections received particular attention, not surprisingly given that Home Ministry officials were responsible for administering them, and like the later 'new bureaucrats', a number of contributors to Shimin stressed the importance of informed and careful voting and the necessity to choose the 'right' people for public life. For example, an article close in spirit to the concerns of the Election Purification Campaign of 1935-1936 appeared in April 1933, urging voters to use their votes effectively in the prefectural elections of that year. It was written by



124 Sandra WILSON

Yasui Eiji, then head of the Local Affairs Bureau (Chih6kyoku) of the Home Ministry, later Minister for Education and Home Minister. Yasui asserted that local politics must not simply be dominated by influential figures or party politics, maintaining that in the current crisis, the prefectural elections held particular significance. Voters had a heavy responsibility to elect the sort of people required by the nation at such a time: that is, the sort of people who would be able to deal with the pressing circumstances in which Japan now found itself. Yasui asserted the necessity for a 'rebuilding and

replenishment' of domestic politics, including local administration, in order to 'demonstrate even further the significance of the imperial army's actions in Manchuria and Mongolia'. In this way he

sought to place the local elections in the context of Japan's international situation and of the

perceived crisis of the early 1930s. He went on to draw a further link between the behavior of voters and 'true municipal autonomy' (shin no shichoson jichi), and thus also with economic revitalization (keizai kisei), for which true local autonomy was a prerequisite. Yasui ended with a call to voters to

reject 'those who desire power, those who lead a parasitic existence, and party-political egoists', and to seek out those who would earnestly work for the public good (Yasui April 1933: 1-3; see also, for example, Kawarada February 1932: 1-4; Hasama August 1931: 25-32).

Other writers were equally didactic on such subjects as 'social movements', seeking to explain to readers what they were, why they had arisen and why the state needed to control them (see, for

example, Tanaka May 1932: 33-38; Inoue J6z6 May 1932: 39-43). The most didactic of all were

undoubtedly the numerous articles expounding the virtues of hotokushugi, Ninomiya's doctrine that the blessings received from Heaven, parents and so on must be repaid through the practice of virtue.

From its inception, Shimin sought above all to encourage the spirit of co-operation in rural Japan, and it clearly promoted in the countryside the same sort of vision of a harmonious and organic community described in relation to industrial labor by W. Dean Kinzley (1991) and Sheldon Garon

(1987). Articles were, from the beginning, based on the premise that good order in Japan's villages was under threat from poverty and from the tensions created by social movements and increasing differentiation between rich and poor. Shimin articles expressed the belief that hotokushugi and the Hotoku societies held the key to rural rehabilitation, and that for the strength of the national economy it was essential that hotokushugi spread to all villages. Hdtokushugi itself was commonly distilled into the formula of 'harmony between ethics and economics': such a balance was deemed necessary if the nation were to achieve wealth and success (Sakata 1972: 6-7). The Local Improve- ment Movement (chiho kairyo undo) and the Imperial Rescript of 1908 (Boshin Sh6sho), drafted by the Home Minister and enshrining the virtues of hard work, thrift and co-operation as the basis for

Japan's development as a world power, show that the aims of the Central H6tokukai had also become

government policy by the end of the Meiji period. In turn, the Central Hdtokukai and Shimin promoted the Local Improvement Movement throughout rural areas (Sakata 1972: 9; Pyle 1973: 61).

The intended audience of Shimin writers was clearly the local elite, as is evident not only from the content of some articles-for instance, those giving detailed instructions for the administration of local polling booths-but also from the style of the magazine as a whole. Some other rural publications at the time provided furigana (phonetic readings of Chinese characters) to assist readers: for example, le no Hikari (Light of the Home), the best-selling monthly magazine which was produced by the agricultural co-operative movement for a different level of rural readership and is discussed below, and at least some of the surviving newspapers produced in Nagano Prefecture by the local young men's associations (seinendan). Ella Lury Wiswell's 1935-1936 data from Suye village in Kyushu suggest how necessary this was: in Suye, most old men had some knowledge of the phonetic syllabaries, but all the women over 50 years of age were functionally illiterate, and younger women were often barely literate. Many could not read Chinese characters at all. In one particularly ironic




example, women at a meeting of the National Defense Women's Association (Kokub6 Fujinkai) had to have the characters for keizai kosei (economic revitalization) explained to them, as well as the

general concept. Many could not read the list of resolutions which had supposedly been passed at the meeting before being distributed in written form (Smith and Wiswell 1982: 10-11, 24-26). Shimin articles, however, contain no furigana (which raises the question of just how comprehens- ible they were, even to such people as village heads). Unlike le no Hikari, Shimin contains virtually no straightforward reporting of news rather than comment; there are no pictures or photographs and no articles designed as entertainment. The different sections of the magazine have titles like 'Editorial' (ronsetsu), 'Research and Data' (kenkyu oyobi shiryo) and 'Lectures' (koza).

It has been said that the most enthusiastic readers of Shimin were most likely heads of districts

(gun), heads of towns and villages and other local officials. Readers probably also included school- teachers, members of youth groups, priests and monks, local landlords. After the first 2 years of

publication, the magazine was apparently used as a speedy route by which the views of the Home, Education, Agriculture and other Ministries could be communicated to the countryside. Shimin was used to explain in more detail policies which had already been notified through the usual bureaucratic channels, and to provide examples of the policies in practice. Thus, the magazine could be of considerable practical value to those responsible for regional administration (Sakata 1972: 14-15). At the same time, the fact that bureaucrats perceived a need to communicate with local government officials in this way perhaps indicates their consciousness that the integration of villagers, even village leaders, into national structures had not yet reached the desired level.

2. The'Crisis' of the Early 1930s Writers in Shimin agreed with the virtually universal view that Japan was facing a 'stalemate'

(ikizumari) or 'crisis' (kokunan, hijoji) in the early 1930s. The crisis, all commentators agreed, was not only an economic one: it also encompassed such issues as Japan's position in China and, after the Manchurian Incident, Japan's relations with the Western powers; the state of domestic politics; and the 'thought problem' (shiso mondai). said to be rampant among Japanese youth. Much attention during the 'crisis' centered on the villages. As Kenneth Pyle has pointed out, Japan's villages had been considered since the late Meiji period to be particularly vulnerable to the stresses of an industrializing society (Pyle 1974: 161). In the early 1930s this perception seemed to be confirmed as the consequences of a high level of farm household debt, a drastic fall in prices for agricultural products and a series of poor harvests became all too evident.

Though Shimin paid most attention to the economic dimension of the crisis, in principle it was conceived of in the broadest possible terms: Japan's difficulties extended from economics to diplomacy to domestic politics to the mentality of the people themselves, as shown by the emergence of the 'thought problem'. In fact, 'national life (kokumin seikatsu) is deadlocked in every direction', as the Home Minister, Baron Yamamoto Tatsuo, wrote in October 1932 (Yamamoto 1932: 6).

It was usual to describe Japan's difficulties as 'unprecedented' (mizo) in an effort to persuade readers of the gravity of the nation's circumstances. Occasionally, however, a writer would make the opposite point: Japan's current problems were not unprecedented, and the nation had always sur- vived previous difficulties. The purpose of this argument was generally to stress the glories of the nation's past and of the indomitable Japanese spirit (for example, Mizumachi May 1933: 1). In one article, a comparison was made between current national circumstances and those of the late Tokugawa period. The conclusion was that conditions had been more serious in the earlier period, in terms of depleted Shogunate finances, the foreign threat, an instability in national opinion and so



126 Sandra WILSON

on. It appears that the main purpose of the comparison was to point out that the problems faced in Ninomiya Sontoku's time were even greater than those of the present. If hotokushugi were applicable to the problems of the late Tokugawa period, then it was certainly applicable to the Sh6wa depression (Sasai August 1933: 4-13).

Shimin writers of course referred to the international context of the economic depression. More broadly, however, and hardly surprisingly, in view of the emphasis on hotokushugi, they tended to attribute Japan's national 'crisis' to fundamentally spiritual or ethical causes. The origin of Japan's troubles was the increase in selfishness (rikoshin), according to Baron Ichiki Kitokuro, former Education Minister and former Home Minister, and soon to be President of the Dai Nippon Hbtokusha (June 1933: 4). Similarly, for the philosopher Oshima Masanori, a change in spiritual attitude on the part of all the people had to come first among all possible solutions to the current difficulties. The basic cause of Japan's problems, he wrote, was that corrupt politics, a weak economy and other aspects of national life were hampering the spirit of self-government and co- operation (jichi kyjdo no seishin) among the people (Oshima January 1933: 23-26).

In their diagnosis of Japan's problems as fundamentally spiritual in nature, Shimin writers were expressing a view that was not uncommon elsewhere. One of the plethora of meanings of 'hijoji' (crisis) in the press in general involved a condemnation of the previous decade or longer as a time when the Japanese people had 'lost their way' by pursuing Western fads amid a new affluence. Some included Marxism among the 'Western fads', thus relating the 'thought problem' to this collective loss of purpose. Army Minister Araki Sadao, for example, proclaimed in a 1933 film that the Japanese had become spiritually and materially 'vulgar', and infatuated with all things European (Pritchard and Zaide 1981: 3, 159; see also Uchikawa 1973: 231-252, 253-255). Shimin writers did not speak of affluence or infatuation with the West, but they did share with Araki and others the conviction that the mentality of the people was the basic problem.

3. Shimin, Manchuria and the League of Nations Like the Home Ministry, the army was concerned in the early 1930s to present its views directly to the countryside. One channel through which it often did so was the widely circulated magazine le no Hikari (Light of the Home), mentioned above. With sales figures of over 500,000 by December 1933, le no Hikari was a far more popular publication than Shimin, and was pitched at a broader level of rural readership. Throughout the Manchurian crisis it presented views of Manchuria which either emanated from, or were sympathetic to, those of the army. Thus le no Hikari provides a counterpoint-and one aimed squarely at a rural audience-to the opinions expressed by bureaucrats and others in Shimin. In le no Hikari and elsewhere the army presented itself as the solution to the national crisis in

which Japan found itself. Hence it directed attention at least partly beyond Japan's borders: to the army's own glorious deeds in Manchuria and Shanghai, to the inspiration this provided for a renewal of domestic life within Japan, and to the material benefits which would supposedly accrue from Japanese control of Manchuria. Writers in Shimin, however, almost invariably looked inward, point- ing to supposed solutions within the nation, within the village and within the individual human heart. In short, they remained more interested in the discourse of the harmonious community than the discourse of expansion.

Thus, writers in Shimin held up examples of co-operation and conciliation in villages as represent- ing the possibility of recovery from the depression. After September 1932 the same theme was subsumed in their energetic support of the newly announced economic revitalization movement




(keizai kosei undo), the plan to rationalize and improve village life by providing financial aid for specific projects in selected 'model villages' which from that time provided a major focus of government strategy for combating the depression, along with more concrete measures such as public works projects, price stabilization and attacks on rural indebtedness. Throughout the whole period, the example of Ninomiya Sontoku was trumpeted in the pages of Shimin.

Shimin did not contradict the official line on Manchuria; nor did it entirely ignore events there, especially when there were matters concerning bureaucrats rather than only soldiers to comment upon. In fact the journal published a few articles of quite orthodox tone on Manchuria. Its first piece on the Manchurian Incident, for example, would not have been out of place in the strident Ie no Hikari. Written by Akaike Atsushi (December 1931: 1-8), Member of the House of Peers and formerly of the Home Ministry, it began with the standard argument that Manchuria and Mongolia should be and had been regarded as separate from the rest of China. China's current role in the

region, Akaike declared, was similar to Japan's role in Micronesia (Nan'y6): that is, Chinese filled official posts in Manchuria and Mongolia just as Japanese officials went to Micronesia, but in neither case did this imply permanent occupation. Akaike went on to stress the disorder of China proper since 1911 and the misery of its people, and to contrast this with the 'peaceful paradise' that had been created under Japanese auspices in Manchuria since 1928. He lamented the supposed viola- tions of Japan's legitimate rights and interests in the region, concluded that the basic reason the Manchurian Incident had occurred was Chinese contempt for Japan (bu-Nichi), and stressed the necessity of destroying this contempt utterly.

In the same issue of Shimin, Aoki Kazuo, then Secretary (shokikan) in the Finance Ministry, continued the theme of Manchuria's remarkable economic development under Japanese tutelage (Aoki December 1931: 9-13). In short, the prosperity of the region today was due to Japan, according to Aoki. He criticized the Chinese for trying to drive Japanese influence from Manchuria by ignoring Japan's treaty rights and mistreating Koreans, maintaining that such depredations were the funda- mental causes of the Manchurian Incident. His article ended with an attack on the 'ridiculous' state of the economy and the monetary system in Manchuria. Robert J. Spaulding has suggested that Aoki, a 'prominent revisionist bureaucrat' later to serve as Vice-Chief of the Manchurian Affairs Bureau (Tai-Man Jimukyoku), was subject to considerable army pressure during his career (Spaulding 1971: 69-73). Such pressure would certainly explain the stance he took in this article. In any event, Aoki is the major exception to the general rule that future 'new bureaucrats' writing in Shimin between 1931 and 1933 did not actively endorse the priorities set by the military in their articles.

No further articles on Manchuria appeared until a brief comment in March 1932 by Baron Kikuchi Takeo, an army officer whose political outlook is shown by the fact that he was later to be involved in the attack on Minobe Tatsukichi's constitutional theories (Kikuchi March 1932: 14-15). The following month, Akaike Atsushi returned with an article to mark the announcement of the 'birth of Manchukuo' (Akaike April 1932: 1-7). Significantly, in view of the fact that the armed anti- Japanese movement in Manchuria was at its height around the middle of 1932 (see Lee 1983: 129), Akaike stressed the need to consolidate peace and order in the 'new nation'. It was what the Chinese longed for, he wrote: the Chinese desire for a peaceful life was exactly like the English longing for freedom, the French longing for equality, the German longing for rights. Legal and cultural reforms must wait until good order, stable government and economic control had been established. If peace and order came to Manchukuo, Akaike concluded, the state of world affairs would suddenly change, human life would take a radical turn and 'history would shine brilliantly'. To make this happen was not only Japan's duty but also its great mission in terms of the cultural history of the world.



128 Sandra WILSON

Despite these contributions by Akaike Atsushi and a handful of others, the general attitude of Shimin towards Manchuria must be classified as fairly cool. At a time when the mainstream press and other publications covered events in Manchuria in every issue and at great length, and when other rural readers were continually presented with 'beautiful stories' (bidan) glorifying soldiers and civilians in Manchuria and with jingoistic assertions of Japan's rights and interests there, Shimin devoted little space to the subject. The articles mentioned represent almost the magazine's entire coverage of Manchuria up until mid-1932. Four or five more articles, generally descriptive rather than polit- ically oriented, appeared between then and the end of 1933. For example, Nakagawa Nozomu, formerly a Home Ministry official, described his visit to Manchuria as Deputy President of the Japan Red Cross (Nakagawa April 1933: 46-49), and Aoki Kazuo, now head of the Finance Ministry's Foreign Exchange Control Department, returned to report with satisfaction on the great progress that had been made on the Manchurian monetary system (Aoki November 1933: 20-29). There was no other substantial treatment of issues relating to Manchuria, apart from two articles on the League of Nations and some comment on emigration, which will be discussed below. There was very little attempt to justify Japan's actions in Manchuria, and several articles on other subjects implied or pointed directly to the cost to Japan of the Manchurian Incident and of the 'new nation', Manchukuo (see, for example, Yahagi July 1932: 46; Tachibana January 1933: 42; Aoki May 1933: 16). Conversely, benefits to Japan were rarely mentioned. Most strikingly, there is almost no mention in Shimin of the otherwise ubiquitous phrase,

'Manchuria, Japan's life-line (seimeisen)'. This is a conspicuous omission by comparison with le no Hikari, where reference to 'Japan's life-line' appeared in almost all of the numerous news items, fea- ture articles and reports about Manchuria between mid-1931 and the end of 1933 (see Wilson 1989: Chapter 5). Similarly, Shimin did not report on the patriotic donation campaign which received so much coverage in the daily newspapers and elsewhere; nor did it make constant reference to the 'bandits' in Manchuria who were the chief justification for continued Japanese military action there.

In short, Shimin may not have contradicted the standard line on Manchuria, but neither did it show much enthusiasm for the subject. Perhaps this was partly because credit and responsibility for events in Manchuria at this stage so clearly belonged to the military rather than civilian bureaucrats; at the same time, unlike the urban mainstream press, Shimin did not rely on sensationalist war articles for its sales. In two specific areas Shimin was particularly cautious, especially by comparison with the mainstream press: on the issue of Japanese emigration to Manchuria and on the question of withdrawal from the League of Nations.

Since the 1920s it had been government policy to encourage rural emigration, chiefly to Brazil, as one solution to the 'population problem'. Emigration to Manchuria had been possible since 1915, but a lack of farmers willing to leave Japan, plus harassment by local people in Manchuria, had ensured that numbers remained low. Many bureaucrats and scholars, in any case, considered that successful emigration of ordinary farmers from Japan to Manchuria was not feasible, particularly in view of the competition such farmers would face from cheaper Chinese and Korean labor. After September 1931, however, the Kwantung Army was anxious to promote the idea of the farmer- soldier in order to consolidate and preserve its gains in Manchuria against the incursions of the 'bandits', as it termed all anti-Japanese forces, and it managed to attract a certain amount of support for this project. Bureaucrats were by no means immune: some in the Ministry of Overseas Affairs were converted to an emphasis on Manchurian emigration, and in 1932 the Ministry put up a plan for the sponsored emigration of 6,000 people. Finance Minister Takahashi Korekiyo rejected this proposal, however, and the first group of sponsored emigrants, which left Japan in October 1932, numbered fewer than 500 (Wilson 1995: 252-264).




le no Hikari took up the cause of promoting emigration to Manchuria, at least initially. In March 1932, for example, readers were told by a representative from the Agricultural Co-operative Associa- tion that Manchuria was the supreme solution to Japan's population problem ('Moshi', March 1932: 38). Two months later, Nasu Hiroshi, Professor of Agriculture at Tokyo Imperial University, argued strongly in Ie no Hikari that it was essential for large numbers of settlers to go to Manchuria so that Japan could maintain its hard-won rights and interests there. He also considered it doubtful that Japan would otherwise be able to support its population over the next few decades (Nasu May 1932: 47-51).

Shimin, by contrast, published an article around the same time which was very discouraging about the prospects for Japanese emigration to Manchuria. Yanai Hisao, Japanese Consul in Mukden and formerly stationed in Brazil, argued that Brazil was preferable (Yanai June 1932: 32-37). Life for farmers in Brazil was arduous, he wrote, but Japan had had considerable experience of settlement there, from which future emigrants could benefit. On the other hand, the Japanese had no usable experience of settlement in Manchuria at all, since previous immigrants had always lived under the pro- tection of Japanese administration, either in the Kwantung Leased Territory or the South Manchurian Railway zone, where law and order and cultural facilities existed at virtually the same level as in Japan. Those who emigrated from that point on to other parts of Manchuria would face danger from 'bandits', and in some cases would find a complete lack of cultural facilities. Difficult as life was in Brazil, settlers there hardly ever faced threats to life and property, according to Yanai.

K6riyama Satoru, a bureau head in the Ministry of Overseas Affairs, also warned in Shimin against emigration to Manchuria (March 1932: 8-13; see also Horikiri August 1931: 22-24). He strongly advocated emigration in general-but not to Manchuria-as the best solution, from the point of view of the individual, to the current stalemate (ikizumari) in the villages. The ideal emigrants, according to him, were farmers from T6hoku and Hokkaid6 who were suffering from the effects of the previous year's crop failure. He cautioned against emigration for patriotic motives, arguing that settlers had to be driven above all by the desire to build a better life for themselves. As for destination, he recommended South America, especially Brazil. Suitable places for settlement of reasonable numbers of emigrants had not yet been identified in Micronesia; and Manchuria as a destination for Japanese farmers was, according to K&riyama, an 'unfinished article' (miseihin). In Brazil, however, Japanese emigrants could draw on the experience of the 120,000 who had gone before them, and it was in Brazil that the farmers now suffering in Hokkaid6 and T6hoku would find their golden opportunity. Both Yanai and K6riyama, then, in contradistinction to the Kwantung Army's line and that of some of their colleagues in the Ministry of Overseas Affairs, endorsed the earlier bureaucratic and scholarly consensus that if emigration was useful at all, it should be to Brazil.

Another writer, who had recently visited Manchuria, repeated the reservations about prospects in Manchuria that had been expressed by experts since the 1920s. In principle, he considered emigration of Japanese farmers to Manchuria highly desirable, both to provide an outlet for surplus population and to promote the industrial development of Manchukuo. He doubted, however, whether Japanese settlers could compete with the natives of Manchuria, with their low standard of living and abundant labor supply. Japanese settlement in Manchuria so far, he pointed out, had been a complete failure. There were, however, good prospects for success for Japanese who went with plenty of capital and established large farms employing Koreans or 'Manchurians'. If ordinary farmers and workers were to be sent as emigrants for the sake of Manchurian development, he proposed sending Koreans as the ideal solution. They could compete with the 'Manchurians', he said, with every prospect of success, meaning that their standard of living was sufficiently low (Hiraga February 1933: 55-58).



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Only two writers in Shimin advocated Japanese emigration to Manchuria unequivocally. An agricultural expert endorsed the 'soldier-settler' ideal promoted by the army and its sympathizers: healthy, young and disciplined settlers were necessary, he wrote, to bring peace to bandit-ridden Manchuria (Sat6 May 1932: 12-17). In January 1933 (pp. 1-15) Yahagi Eiz6, Emeritus Professor of Economics at Tokyo Imperial University and a director of the H6tokukai, wrote in support of emigration to Manchuria to alleviate overpopulation at home, though he confused the issue by stat- ing simultaneously that 'our large population' was an economic asset which, in a planned economy on the Italian fascist model, would help to eliminate class conflict, preserve Japan's new international position, and, within 50 years, allow Japan to surpass the USA economically.

It is doubtless a mark of the degree to which Shimin reflected bureaucratic rather than contempor- ary military opinion that, with the two exceptions noted above, it stood aside from the campaign to promote emigration to Manchuria, and in fact actively discouraged it on occasion. On withdrawal from the League of Nations, too, Shimin took a very moderate stance which again reflected bureaucratic views: this time, those of the mainstream of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in particular.

Shimin published two articles in May 1933 about withdrawal from the League, which had been formally notified 2 months earlier.3 The first was a summary of a radio broadcast by Matsuda Michikazu, head of the Foreign Ministry's Treaty Bureau, formerly head of Japan's League of Nations Secretariat, and an authority on international law and diplomacy (Matsuda May 1933: 8-12). The second was by Aoki Kazuo, Secretary in the Ministry of Finance (May 1933: 13-21), who had written an uncompromising article on the Manchurian Incident 18 months earlier. Both stated firmly that Japan's disagreement with the League concerned the Sino-Japanese dispute only, and did not preclude co-operation with the League on many other matters, including the International Labor Conference, the Disarmament Conference, the World Economic Conference and a variety of social welfare initiatives. This was also the essence of the Foreign Ministry approach to League withdrawal by early 1933: according to Inoue Toshikazu's analysis (1994: 12-59), the Foreign Ministry did not intend, even when advocating withdrawal, that Japan should depart from co-operative diplomacy or abandon its role in international affairs (also Ogata Sadako 1969: 49-50). Thus in his radio broadcast Matsuda outlined the reasons for Japan's departure from the League-

basically, the League's failure to understand the justice of Japan's case-but asserted that Japan certainly did not disavow the true spirit of the League. He urged not only that Japan continue to be involved in international conferences and other projects, but more generally that it should strive to maintain close (shinko) relations with the powers. It was a clear warning against international isolation, as well as an assertion that League withdrawal did not necessarily make isolation inevitable. Aoki's article made the same general point and went on to address the possibility of an economic boycott of Japan by Western countries, which at that time was feared in Japan. In a remarkably moderate, far from alarmist manner he expressed the view that such a boycott would not occur, because a severance of economic relations would injure Japan's trade partners as well. He concluded that it was unlikely that Japan would be put under great pressure from Western countries over the Manchurian issue, which held little importance for foreign countries, though government and people must be prepared to face the worst if it came.

3. For earlier articles on the League, see Ogata Torao (June-December 1931), a six-part article providing much detail on the League's purposes, structure, functioning, membership, etc., in a context of support for the League and for a positive Japanese role in it; Matsuda (February 1932: 5-22), which outlines the League response to the Manchurian Incident with very little evaluative comment aside from general support for Japan's case; Kadowaki (December 1932: 17-31), which picks up where Matsuda left off and continues in the same vein.




It is most interesting that Aoki should write such a soothing article, in view of his comparative stridency on the subject of Manchuria and the Manchurian Incident itself, as described above. The apparent contradiction should probably be interpreted as a sign of a basic orientation towards the Western powers and desire to placate them on the one hand, and a contempt for and willingness to exploit China on the other. Such a bifurcation was familiar enough in diplomatic and intellectual circles at the time.

4. The Economic Revitalization Movement Shimin's comparative realism on the subject of Manchuria contrasts markedly with the style of its enthusiastic promotion of the economic revitalization movement of September 1932 onwards. le no Hikari, too, stressed self-help as a major strategy for coping with the depression, as is only to be expected in a magazine produced by the agricultural co-operative movement. However, it also represented Manchuria, the 'new paradise', as the all-encompassing remedy for the all-encompassing crisis. Shimin, on the other hand, thought little of Manchuria's potential, but continued aggressively to promote the 'culture of harmony' which Kinzley shows to have been a 'normative value' among pre-war Japanese elites (1991: 147-150), and to find the expression of that spirit within Japan: specifically, in the economic revitalization movement.

The economic revitalization movement was a campaign developed by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, based on an existing program that had been operating in Hyogo Prefecture for 5 years, and launched nationally in September 1932. It did not mark a new departure but rather represented an extension of previous national policies as well as of autonomous local and regional efforts to improve standards of living in the villages. Specifically, the campaign aimed to increase produc- tion, expand the agricultural co-operatives, restrict spending, and so on. Its distinctive features were a program of village-level economic and management planning; a heavy moral emphasis on co- operation within the village; and the system of designating 'model villages' on an annual basis to receive financial aid, thus encouraging competition among villages. The campaign continued until 1941 (Kerry Smith 1994; Kase 1983: 154-155).

Support of the movement was perhaps inevitable given the journal's links with the Agriculture and Home Ministries, its earlier support for the Local Improvement Movement and its general orientation. Throughout the magazine's history, the virtue of co-operation had been a prominent theme. It was now easily incorporated into support for the economic revitalization movement-a movement aimed at rescuing villages from the effects of the depression, the project probably closest to the hearts of Home Ministry bureaucrats in the early 1930s. Economic revitalization had an added advantage in that bureaucrats would bear the prime responsibility for its implementation and take credit for any success. Success in turn would require effective communication with local elites, and Shimin provided one important channel for such communication.

In general, articles on economic revitalization in this first period of the campaign were vague in the extreme, often employing confused and rambling rhetoric. The only clear message was that people must rely on themselves and each other rather than the government. Without self-reliance and co-operation among the people, government funds could have no more than a temporary effect (Tomita October 1932: 14); a demand for more government spending would only increase the burden on this generation and the next (Kajiwara December 1932: 5); individual effort was necessary so that the resources of the state would not be depleted by relief measures at a time when Manchukuo was costing Japan 200 million yen per year, when it was necessary to put some money aside in case war eventuated, and when expenditure had risen in any case because of the depression



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(Mizumachi May 1933: 3-5). There were only very occasional admissions in Shimin of the limita- tions of individual effort and local co-operation in the face of a crisis of the magnitude of the Great Depression.

Though there were some reports of self-reliance and co-operation in action in specific places, most articles contained little that was concrete, no doubt partly because the campaign was still very new. In the few cases where specific examples were presented, they emphasized efforts to repay debts (see, for example, 'K6sei no Ichiro', October 1932: 36-66). The major elements of articles on economic revitalization amounted to an assertion that a renewal of national life was necessary to break through the stalemate, a warning against relying on government handouts, an emphasis on the spiritual side of revitalization, a rosy sketch of the likely results of successful revitalization, a disquisition on the greatness of Ninomiya and a great deal of enthusiasm. At the beginning of Shimin's special issue on economic revitalization in October 1932, a summary was provided of a radio broadcast by the Home Minister, Baron Yamamoto Tatsuo (pp. 5-8). He listed four remedies for the national 'stalemate': firstly, the renewal (koshin) of national life, involving the creation of a new culture based on co-

operation and national unity; secondly, a growth in the spirit of self-reliance (firiki kosei), meaning that the people would not rely on the government alone; thirdly, the rationalization of economic life, involving a reduction in consumption and the implementation of rational economic planning; fourthly, the maximization of the individual's contribution to serving the public good. Most articles in Shimin on economic revitalization in this period were approximately as vague. By August 1933, Agriculture Minister Got6 Fumio was reporting, after a tour of a dozen or so towns and villages in as many prefectures which had been designated under the revitalization program, that things were progressing very well so far (pp. 1-3). Despite many comments on the success of the movement in these places, however, he still gave no actual examples at all of revitalization in action.

The means may have been hazy but the end result of economic revitalization was not in doubt. Thus in March 1933 a Shimin article, based on a lecture given 4 months earlier to 1,200 school pupils in Morioka (Murata Uichiro March 1933: 65-66), evoked an image of the idealized past in order to address the problems of the present and to go forward confidently:

At present we are facing a great ordeal [the hijoji]. If we can find a way out of these difficulties, a bright, open new paradise (meiro kaikatsu no shintenchi) will appear. It will be the beginning of a new era. The reins of the Tokugawa government were returned to the emperor, who began to rule directly; civilization advanced; and the brilliance of the Meiji Restoration unfolded. In the same way, if we break through the difficulties that now beset us, the new paradise of the Sh6wa Restoration will open up before us. Thus, at this moment, the government has enthusiastically commenced the great movement for national revitalization (kokumin kosei dai undo). Each prefecture, having understood the government's wishes, is devoting itself to the revitalization movement.

Many other writers in Shimin showed similar levels of enthusiasm for the economic revitalization movement, even if they did not go so far as to link it with a Sh6wa Restoration.

Just as the national crisis was said to touch all areas of society, politics and economics, so too must revitalization reach every area of national life, according to writers in Shimin. It was a global solution to a global problem. There were calls for a revitalization not only of the villages but also of politics, education, business and other areas. And it had to be accomplished by the whole nation, not just implemented from the top by the country's leaders.

For many writers, the revitalization movement represented an opportunity for the people of Japan to show their mettle. There is a suggestive contrast here with army propaganda. In the 1933 film Hij4ji Nippon (Japan in Crisis), Army Minister Araki Sadao, after his comments, noted above, about




the Japanese people 'losing their way', went on to say that the Manchurian Incident had 'vividly revealed' the 'true character of Japan' through the 'splendid actions of the Imperial troops fighting in extreme cold, or in scorched fields under a burning sun' and also, at home, through 'the nation- wide zeal for the encouragement of the soldiers, a story that cannot be told without tears'. Thus the

Japanese people had 'after a long interval, resumed their consciousness of being Japanese' (Pritchard and Zaide 1981: 3,163-164; 3,170). Articles in le no Hikari similarly claimed that the Manchurian and Shanghai Incidents had again called forth the lost spirit of the Japanese (yamato damashii), which was displayed not only by soldiers at the front, but also by the people who were patriotically battling crises at home (see, for example, Kamata October 1932: 20-21; Ogasawara March 1932: 22-23; 'Nippon no Gunjin': 64-76; 'Manshu Jihen ni yotte': 176-177).

Shimin writers would have had little sympathy for Araki's view of the importance of the Manchurian Incident in revealing the 'true character of Japan'. Their own evaluation of the importance of self-reliance, however, was at times startlingly similar in its insistence that the Japanese people possessed unique attributes. One writer declared that the spirit of the people, which excelled that of other nations, would ensure that some day through firiki kosei Japan could expect a bright future (Kawashima January 1933: 21). As we have seen, another writer anticipated 'the new paradise of the Shiwa Restoration' as a result of the revitalization movement (Murata Uichiro March 1933: 65-66). Yamamoto Tatsuo was confident that through the revitalization movement the Japanese people would show the spirit that had made them a great race (Yamamoto October 1932: 8). Mizumachi Kesaroku, too, thought that the national crisis provided a perfect opportunity to show 'our greatest treasure', the spirit handed down by the ancestors (Mizumachi May 1933: 1-2); and Goto Fumio was confident that the economic revitalization movement would not only rehabilitate the villages but would lay the spiritual basis for the recovery of the whole nation from its current difficulties (Got6 August 1933: 3). Through this movement Japan would be saved.

Thus, both the army and the bureaucrats represented in Shimin appealed to nationalistic feeling, and both, at least in public pronouncements, expected or observed a resurgence of 'Japanese spirit' during the crisis of the early 1930s. However, where le no Hikari found 'Japanese spirit' at the

battle-front, Shimin's pronouncements on the glories of the race appear in the context of overcom- ing difficulties at home in a spirit of self-reliance and endurance. Nationalism, then, was not the preserve of the military; nor, at this stage, did it necessarily imply acceptance of the army's agenda.

The contrast is shown quite clearly by the 'beautiful stories' (bidan) chosen by each group. The army had many, but the archetypal one was the story of the 'three human bullets' (nikudan san'yu-shi) or 'three human bombs'. In February 1932, three soldiers of an engineering regiment from Kyiishii were reported to have died heroic deaths in Shanghai when they charged into a

seemingly impregnable Chinese position with a large amount of explosive strapped to their bodies. In fact, the three soldiers were accidentally killed by a short fuse on a charge they set, and an intelli-

gence officer seized the opportunity to fabricate a more heroic version of events (Ienaga 1978: 102; Ikei 1981: 174). The story as reported captured the imagination of the nation, inspiring many films, as well as plays, songs, revues, kabuki dramas and puppet shows. le no Hikari's main contribution to the phenomenon was an article entitled 'The Death of the Three Brave Warriors that Shook the World'. It was subtitled 'The Flower of Yamato Damashii Planted in the Hearts of 80,000,000 Subjects' ('Sekai' April 1932: 66-69).

Shimin, significantly, did not mention the 'three human bullets'. It published no war bidan except in one article about civilians and the Manchurian Incident (Kojo June 1932: 38-42). However, Shimin had its own 'beautiful stories' to tell of hard-working young men committed to improvements in agriculture and of whole villages exhibiting successful co-operation between landlords and



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tenants. Thus a passage beginning in this way appeared in a 1933 report on the activities of the

young men's association in the village of Atago in Iwate Prefecture:

The inclination towards hard work (funto) of Kikuchi Ichiro, one of the members [of the young men's association], is truly admirable. He turned twenty only this year, but he has a gentle nature, is diligent, eager to study and very innovative in his work. He is a keen reader of daily newspapers and magazines and is

always going to classes and lectures. At present he is registered at the citizenship training school (komin gakko), where he has a good record of attendance and is an example to others.

Kikuchi Ichiro and the many others said to resemble him in the Atago young men's association were

particularly committed to improvements in agriculture and, of course, to economic revitalization and the collective good of the village (Murata Ikeru March 1933: 52-54).

Shimin writers were not sufficiently blatant to use the label 'bidan', as le no Hikari freely did. However, the inspirational story or 'practical example' was as useful in the cause of economic revitalization as anywhere else. Kikuchi Ichiro's many virtues are in fact remarkably reminiscent of

Ninomiya Sontoku himself, and for Shimin writers, Ninomiya was the richest source of all for

improving stories, and a perfect fit for the economic revitalization movement. Not only had he

espoused the appropriate principles of honesty, diligence, thrift and yielding to others, but, as Agri- culture Minister Got6 Fumio pointed out in a lecture commemorating Ninomiya's birth (June 1933: 8-14), his major work had included revitalizing villages in difficulty, households which were

bankrupt and domains in poverty. As Got6 also took care to note, Ninomiya placed particular emphasis on individual effort: or, in Goto's words, he always dealt with the ruined human heart (sabiretaru kokoro) before the ruined village or household. This was a very useful concept for officials anxious to discourage expectations of government assistance during the depression.

Elsewhere, examples from Ninomiya's life were used to illustrate the desirability of individual effort and other themes (for example, Mizumachi May 1933: 5-7). Another type of inspirational story featured whole villages: in May and June of 1931, for example, there was a long series of reports from villages in different prefectures illustrating successful co-operation and conciliation between landlords and tenants ('Jinushi Kosakunin' May 1931: 53-62; 'Jinushi Kosakunin' June 1931: 35-62). They were always areas that had experienced a distressing period of landlord-tenant confrontation, caused, it was said, by economic difficulties. Appropriate compromises were made on both sides and thus a lasting peace was apparently established.

The economic revitalization movement in fact amounted to very little in its initial stages. It was hardly to be expected that a movement so heavily based on a spiritual or ethical element and so lack-

ing in appropriate funding could have had a noticeable impact in the face of a disastrous international depression. Just as the army's vision of Manchuria as the panacea for Japan's ills fell far short of being realized, the bureaucrats' vision of a national revival based on the economic rehabilitation movement had little connection with reality, especially in the years 1932-1936. It is doubtless a measure of the elusiveness of internal cures for the depression that one of the major solutions proposed during the crisis of the early 1930s by a group of officials actually responsible for administering the nation-officials who did not lack realism when assessing the prospects of Manchuria- should have assumed so much of the air of a fantasy.

5. Conclusions The question of how many people read and understood articles of the complexity of those in Shimin, or heard those views second-hand, is a difficult one: 10,000 or even 20,000 copies spread




through Japan's 10,000 or 12,000 villages is not a large number, and since many village officials had not been educated past primary-school level, they must have struggled without the assistance of furigana to read the magazine. Where Shimin does have demonstrable significance is in the analysis of the Japanese state in the period in which, according to Maruyama Masao, 'the question of fascism was brought to the attention of the nation' (1969: 30).

Firstly, it is clear that the state was not speaking with one voice, even to the countryside, which Richard Smethurst (1974) has portrayed as the army's creature by this point. If the army had won over the countryside, which is very doubtful, it had not yet persuaded other elements of the Japanese state to full and active support of its agenda in Manchuria, and consequently, moderate opinions-that the benefits of Manchuria for Japan should not be over-rated, that Japan must remain a member of the international community-were still being directed at village elites, alongside more strident views of Japan's situation in the early 1930s. Significant sections of officialdom were not yet ready to attempt to mobilize the people into support for the army's plans for Manchuria, or for an autonomous foreign policy at the expense of relations with the West.

Such a view when applied to Japan in the 1930s challenges the notion of a state that had embarked on an unequivocal course of external aggression, taking its people with it, and of the Japanese government as already decisively under the sway of the more radical elements of the army. Relations among the military, the civilian bureaucracy and the political parties were in fact complex, and, like the Nazi state, the Japanese state was far from a 'rationally organized modern Leviathan' (Geyer 1987: 57). Often the different groups were critical and unsupportive of each other. Party politics was criticized within the pages of Shimin and elsewhere; in the 1933-1934 budget the Finance Minister, Takahashi Korekiyo, 'forced the military ministers to take much less than they demanded' ('Business Leaders' 1932); and so on. There were, of course, important areas of agreement as well. All asserted that Japan was in crisis and that drastic steps were called for. There was substantial overlap among all groups in the rhetoric used to describe and deplore the crisis and in predictions of the rosy outcomes of united effort to overcome it: as we have seen, the concept of a 'Sh6wa Restoration' could be embraced even by those who did not have military means in mind. As for counter-measures, the common ground was the economic revitalization movement, which political parties, bureaucrats and army spokesmen could all endorse, though with differing emphasis and degrees of enthusiasm.

To suggest simply that military and civilian views differed is misleading, however, and threatens a return to one of the earliest and least sophisticated, but most enduring, analyses of the Japanese state in the 1930s, in which aggressive army officers overcome well-intentioned but weak civilian elites. In fact the Japanese state, again resembling the Nazi state, consisted of 'a mosaic of conflicting authorities' (Carr 1987: 69). The military, bureaucracy and political parties were all internally factionalized, and the different groupings in turn had their allies and opponents elsewhere. A second point highlighted by the evidence in Shimin is that, in particular, the relationship between bureaucrats and the military was very complex, and that it was not in the period of the Manchurian crisis, but rather later, that the most significant links were forged.

There were certainly bureaucrats who perceived the Manchurian crisis as an ideal opportunity to begin restructuring Japanese society, and some factions played an explicit and early role in supporting the army. For example, one hard-line group within the Foreign Ministry, whose prominent members included Shiratori Toshio, actively supported the Kwantung Army's invasion of Manchuria from the start, even though the Ministry overall was much more cautious; and as we have noted, there were influential bureaucrats in the Ministry for Overseas Affairs who supported Manchurian emigration from an early point. Nevertheless it is significant that Shimin did not on the whole endorse the army's actions in Manchuria or Japan's withdrawal from the League of Nations. On one level



136 Sandra WILSON

the journal's relative silence on these matters can be explained by factional politics: the Army Minister between 1931 and 1934 was General Araki Sadao, who was opposed by the future 'new bureaucrats' who were so influential in Shimin.

The 'new bureaucrats' grew closer to the army after 1934 when the anti-Araki or tisei (control) faction was dominant, but they had little inclination to applaud the army's actions in the earlier period. Perhaps, as bureaucrats, they had little taste for radical action of a disruptive nature in any case: not only did Shimin fail to endorse the Manchurian Incident with any conviction, it also declined to report on the 15 May 1932 Incident, unlike le no Hikari, which with other organs of the press covered the trials of the offenders sympathetically. In the early 1930s Shimin remained faithful to its traditional emphasis on village self-sufficiency and co-operation, and most concerned with solving the rural crisis through such internal, gradualist means. Neither expanding into Manchuria nor violently overthrowing the state was seen as the way to improve the lot of the villages. It was the economic revitalization movement which represented the hopes and preferred methods of most bureaucrats concerned with domestic affairs.

With the dominance of the control faction after 1934 and the stabilization of the military situation in Manchuria came a greater emphasis from within the army as elsewhere on campaigns of national integration within Japan. At the same time, the power of the 'new bureaucrats' themselves increased when six of them, including Got6, were given influential posts by the Okada Cabinet in 1934 (Spaulding 1971: 65). Campaigns for national integration and mobilization were most congenial to the 'new bureaucrats' and others associated with Shimin in that they switched the focus of national effort to domestic life and a restructuring of Japanese society, and were highly compatible with

h6tokushugi and with older campaigns like the economic revitalization movement. Indeed, Shimin paid considerable attention (not all of it uncritical) to campaigns for national integration in the mid- and late 1930s, particularly the Election Purification Movement of 1935-1936 and the National Spiritual Mobilization Movement of 1937 onwards, while at the same time maintaining its traditional focus on local and regional concerns and providing regular reports of virtuous villages strug- gling against the odds. On the other hand, in 1936 it conspicuously failed to comment on the attempted coup perpetrated on 26 February by Araki's Kodi (imperial way) faction.

A third, more specific point to emerge from an examination of Shimin alongside other materials is that for the elites, Manchuria was not the transcendent issue it sometimes seems. Not all members of the elites, even some of the 'new bureaucrats' who later collaborated with the military, were con- vinced of the need to control Manchuria at this point. The different arms of the state were certainly trying to mobilize villagers in the early 1930s, but beyond a common emphasis on self-reliance and co-operation, there was not always agreement on the goal of that mobilization. In particular, Manchuria was not necessarily perceived as the issue that would unify the nation. It was not even an issue that was sufficiently compelling to overcome existing rivalries within the elites.

It should be remembered that it was not only Home Ministry bureaucrats and others writing in Shimin who failed to enthuse about Manchuria at this point. The Wakatsuki Minseito Cabinet wanted initially to restrain the Kwantung Army from escalating the Manchurian Incident, and in early 1932 Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi and others sought to delay Japanese recognition of Manchukuo. Big business, too, in December 1932 incurred the wrath of the Chief of Staff of the Kwantung Army, Lieutenant-General Koiso Kuniaki, for its reluctance 'to take part in the development of Manchuria' through investment ('Financiers' Apathy' 1932).

Fourthly, an examination of Shimin shows that there was no consistent view in the early 1930s of what constituted the essence of the nation, even if the concept of 'national essence' itself was generally accepted. Sheldon Garon has observed that in this period the Home Ministry 'emerged at




the head of a massive bureaucratic drive to apply indigenous solutions or the "Japanese spirit" to domestic problems' (1987: 200). Such interest in 'Japanese spirit' is clearly evident in Shimin. Between 1931 and 1933, however, there were competing visions of what constituted the 'Japanese spirit'. All were nationalistic, but there was more than one brand of nationalism. Through Ie no Hikari and Shimin, rural readers were presented with two different visions of yamato damashii, one centering at least partly on expansion abroad and one resolutely focused on the local. Writers in Shimin showed very little interest in the military's version of 'Japanese spirit'.

In several ways, then, the materials examined here raise questions about the place usually accorded to the period of the early 1930s in analyses of 'Japanese fascism', and the role of bureaucrats in that context. It is undoubtedly true that bureaucrats played a major part in restructuring Japanese society and the Japanese state in the 1930s and beyond. Yet Shimin, a forum dominated by bureaucrats and particularly influenced by the powerful Home Ministry, did not jump on the Manchurian band- wagon in the early part of the decade or favor other radical solutions to the perceived crisis of that time. It did not see its readers' interests as synonymous with those of the military and most of its contributors apparently did not perceive the Manchurian Incident as a key event.

If the Manchurian Incident and the attempted coups of 15 May 1932 and 26 February 1936 are interpreted as milestones in Japanese fascism, then it is striking that the majority of the bureaucrats represented in Shimin did not want to associate themselves with any of them. It was rather through campaigns like the Election Purification movement of 1935-1936 and the National Spiritual Mobil- ization movement of 1937 onwards, in which the army played a prominent role, that Shimin became increasingly implicated in the restructuring of Japanese society in concert with the military. Thus the evidence presented here suggests that it was not spectacular events like the invasion of Manchuria which performed an integrating function among the different institutions and factions that made up the Japanese state; indeed, significant sections of officialdom remained unmoved by such external events. Rather, a comparative quieting of the external situation after 1933, a heightened emphasis on incorporationist campaigns requiring gradualist means and significant bureaucratic input from 1935 onwards, and changes in the balance of power within the military provided the environment in which military and bureaucratic interests, at least, became increasingly interwoven.

This certainly does not mean that the Manchurian Incident was in fact unimportant or that the early 1930s should be seen as irrelevant to 'Japanese fascism'. The events of that period raised the army's profile, delivered 'Manchukuo' into its hands and facilitated an increased repression of political dissent within Japan. An examination of Shimin does suggest, however, that the connection between the events of the early 1930s and the development of increasingly authoritarian, militarist and arguably fascist social and political structures is more complex than is sometimes imagined; that the situation was more fluid than is often acknowledged, containing the possibility of outcomes other than those which did in fact occur; and that if the Manchurian Incident is a milestone in Japanese fascism then that is an interpretation which rests heavily on hindsight.

References Shimin Articles Akaike, Atsushi. December 1931. 'Waga Manshu Jihen-kan' (My View of the Manchurian Incident): 1-7.

. April 1932. 'Manshiikoku ni tsuite' (About Manchukuo): 1-7.

Aoki, Kazuo. December 1931. 'Keizaijo yori Mitaru Manshi' (Manchuria from the Economic Point of View): 9-13.

. May 1933. 'Sekai Keizai no Genjo to Renmei Dattaigo ni okeru Wagakuni no Chii' (The Current Condition of the World Economy and Japan's Status after Withdrawing from the League): 13-21.



138 Sandra WILSON

-. November 1933. 'Manshuikoku Zaisei Heisei no Kakuritsu' (The Establishment of Manchukuo's Fiscal and Monetary Systems): 20-29.

Got6, Fumio. June 1933. 'Sekai ni Hokoru beki Warera no Ninomiya O' (Our Venerable Ninomiya, of Whom We Should Boast to the World): 8-14.

. August 1933. 'K6sei-tojo no Noson o Mite' (Looking at Villages on the Way to Rehabilitation): 1-3.

Hasama, Shigeru (Naimu Shokikan). August 1931. 'Fukenkai-giin S6senkyo e no Hansei' (Reconsidering the Prefectural General Election): 25-32.

Hiraga, Makoto. February 1933. 'Shin Manshlikoku no Reimei' (Dawn of the New Manchuria): 55-58.

Horikiri, Zenjir6 (Takumu Jikan; formerly of Home Ministry). August 1931. 'Ishokumin narabi ni Takushoku Jigyo: Chishiki Kaikyuf no Shitsugy6 Taisaku toshite Shisetsu Subeki Jik6' (Emigrants and the Task of Colonisation: Facilities That Should be Set up to Relieve Unemployment in the Intellectual Class): 22-24.

Ichiki, Kitokur6. June 1933. 'Jikyoku Kyfikyfi to H6tokushugi' (Relief of the Current State of Affairs and H6tokushugi): 1-7.

Inoue, J6zi (Professor, Nihon Daigaku) May 1932. 'Shakai Kaizen' (Improving Society): 39-43.

'Jinushi Kosakunin Kaiwa Ky6ch6 no Jirei' (Examples of Harmony and Co-operation between Landlords and Tenants) (4 articles). May 1931: 53-62.

'Jinushi Kosakunin Kaiwa Ky6ch6 no Jirei' (Examples of Harmony and Co-operation between Landlords and Tenants) (8 articles). June 1931: 35-62.

Kadowaki, Hidemitsu (Gaimu Jikan). December 1932. 'Kokusai Renmei ni okeru Nisshi Jiken T6gi no Keika' (The Progress of Discussions at the League of Nations about the Sino-Japanese Incident): 17-31.

Kajiwara, Nakaji. December 1932. 'Jiriki Kosei to Shokogy6' (Rehabilitation through Self-reliance and Commerce and Industry): 1-10.

Kawarada, Kakichi (Vice-Minister, Home Ministry). February 1932. 'S6senkyo ni Chokumenshite' (Facing the General Elections): 1-4.

Kawashima, Shintar6 (Tokumei Zenken K6shi, League of Nations). January 1933. 'Sekai Daifukeiki to Jiriki K6sei' (The Great World Depression and Rehabilitation through Self-reliance): 16-21.

Kikuchi, Takeo. March 1932.'Tai-Manm6 Shokan' (Thoughts on Manchuria/Mongolia): 14-15.

Koj6, Kazuhide. June 1932. 'Manshu Jihen ni okeru Kokumin Koen ni Oyoboshita Idainaru Katei no Chikara' (The Great Power of the Home Which Made Itself Felt in the National Support of the Manchurian Incident): 38-42.

Kariyama, Satoru. March 1932. 'N6son Kyfisaisaku toshite no Kaigai Imin' (Overseas Emigration as a Remedy for the Villages): 8-13.

'K6sei no Ichiro o Tadoru Muramura' (Villages on the Road to Revitalization) (4 articles). October 1932: 36-66.

Matsuda, Michikazu. February 1932. 'Manshu Jihen to Kokusai Renmei oyobi sonota to no Kankei' (The Manchurian Incident and its Relation to the League of Nations etc.): 5-22.

. May 1933. 'Kokusai Renmei Dattai Tsfikokugo no Nippon' (Japan after Notification of Withdrawal from the League of Nations): 8-12.

Mizumachi, Kesaroku (Privy Councilor). May 1933. 'Jirilki K6sei to H6toku Shisa' (Rehabilitation through Self-reliance and the Philosophy of Hdtoku): 1-7 (summary of a radio lecture broadcast on 27 April).

Murata, Ikeru. March 1933. 'Iwate-ken Atago-mura Seinendan no Katsuyaku' (The Activities of the Young Men's Association in Atago Village, Iwate Prefecture): 52-54.

Murata, Uichir6. March 1933. 'Kokumin Kosei to H6tokushugi' (National Revitalization and Hitokushugi): 65-81 (lecture originally given on 16 November 1932 at a course on kokumin kosei attended by pupils from various local schools).

Nakagawa, Nozomu. April 1933. 'Shin Manshfkoku no Insho' (Impressions of the New Manchukuo): 46-49.

Ogata, Torao. (June 1931-December 1931, 6 parts). 'Kokusai Renmei no Hanashi' (Concerning the League of Nations).

Oshima, Masanori. January 1933. 'Kokumin K6sei Und6 no Hongi' (The Underlying Principles of the National Revitalization Movement): 22-28. (Originally published in a collection of lectures).

Sasai, Shintar6 (Deputy President of Dai Nippon Hftokusha). August 1933. 'Hatokushiki Hij6ji Kyfsai Hosaku (1)' (Plans for Mutual Aid in the Crisis that Accord with H6toku (1)): 4-13 (Summary of a lecture given at a meeting in support of firiki kosei undo sponsored by the Chof H6tokukai).




Sat6, Kanji. (Nbgaku hakushi). May 1932. 'Manm6 ni okeru Shokumin no N6-keitai ni tsuite' (Concerning the Form of Colonial Agriculture in Manchuria/Mongolia): 12-17.

Tachibana, Shun'ichi. (Sh6k6 Shokikan). January 1933. 'Chuish6 K6gy6 to Jiriki Kasei' (Medium and Small Industry and Rehabilitation through Self-reliance): 38-42.

Tanaka, Sh6kichi. (Naimu Jikan) May 1932. 'Shis6 Keisatsu ni tsuite' (Concerning the Thought Police): 33-38.

Tomita, Aijir6 (Shakaikyoku, Shakaibuch6). October 1932. 'Kokumin K6sei Und6 no Gaikan' (An Outline of the National Revitalization Movement): 12-14. (This article was part of a special issue devoted to kokumin kosei).

Yahagi, Eiz6. July 1932. 'Beikoku Taisaku to Zaisei no Kiso' (Rice Policy and the Foundations of Government Finance): 46-48 (part of a Noson Taisaku Zadankai).

. January 1933. 'Kyokoku Itchi no Shin Keizai Seisaku' (The New Economic Policy to be Pursued through National Unity): 1-15.

Yamamoto, Tatsuo. October 1932. 'Jikyoku ni Kangami no Jikaku Funki o Nozomu' (The Desirability of an Awakening of Consciousness of the Current Situation): 5-8.

Yanai, Hisao. June 1932. 'Burajiru Imin to Manm6 Imin' (Emigration to Brazil and Emigration to

Manchuria/Mongolia): 32-37.

Yasui, Eiji. April 1933. 'Shichasonkai-giin S6senkyo ni Chokumenshite' (Facing the General Elections of Members of Local Assemblies): 1-3 (Article dated 27 March 1933).

le no Hikari Articles Kamata, Eikichi. October 1932. 'Sangy6teki Aikokushin' (Industrial Patriotism): 20-21.

'Manshii Jihen ni yotte Nihon wa Koredake no Shakaku o Eta: Araki Rikush6 Goshinka no Rinkaku' (Japan Has Gained All This through the Manchurian Incident: An Outline of Army Minister Araki's Lecture in the Imperial Presence). October 1933: 176.

'Moshi Nihon ga Keizai Fiisa o Saretara?' (If Japan Should be Economically Blockaded?) (Zadankai). March 1932: 34-39.

Nasu, Hiroshi. May 1932. 'Shfidan N6gy6 Imin o Seik6saseyo' (Make Collective Agricultural Immigration a Success): 48-51.

'Nippon no Gunjin Seishin o Kataru Kai' (A Conference to Talk about Japan's Military Spirit). October 1933: 64-76.

Ogasawara, Naganari. March 1932. 'Ko ni Keireisuru Oya' (Parents Who Salute Their Children): 22-23.

'Sekai o Shingaiseshimeta Bakudan San'yfishi no Shi: Hassenman no Kokumin no Mune ni Uetsuketa Yamato Damashii no Seika' (The Death of the Three Brave Warriors that Shook the World: The Flower of Yamato Damashii Planted in the Hearts of 80,000,000 Subjects). April 1932: 66-69.

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Ienaga, Sabur3. 1978. The Pacific War, 1931-1945: A Critical Perspective on Japan's Role in World War II, trans. Frank Baldwin. New York: Pantheon.

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Inoue, Toshikazu. 1994. Kiki no Naka no Ky6cho Gaiko: Nitchui Senso ni Itaru Taigai Seisaku no Keisei to Tenkai (Co-operative Diplomacy in the Midst of Crisis: The Formation and Development of Foreign Policy Leading up to War between Japan and China). Tokyo: Yamakawa Shuppansha.

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