manchurian crisis

he Mukden Incident, or Manchurian Incident, known in Chinese as the 9.18 Incident

(九・一八), was a false flag event staged by Japanese military personnel as a pretext for
the 1931 Japanese invasion of Manchuria.On September 18, 1931, Lieutenant Suemori
Kawamoto of the Independent Garrison Unit of the 29th Japanese Infantry Regiment
(独立守備隊) detonated a small quantity of dynamite close to a railway line owned by
Japan's South Manchuria Railway near Mukden (now Shenyang). The explosion was so
weak that it failed to destroy the track, and a train passed over it minutes later. The
Imperial Japanese Army accused Chinese dissidents of the act and responded with a full
invasion that led to the occupation of Manchuria, in which Japan established its puppet
state of Manchukuo six months later. The deception was exposed by the Lytton Report
of 1932, leading Japan to diplomatic isolation and its March 1933 withdrawal from the
League of Nations.The bombing act is known as the Liutiao Lake Incident (traditional
Chinese: 柳條湖事變; simplified Chinese: 柳条湖事变; pinyin: Liǔtiáohú Shìbiàn,
Japanese: 柳条湖事件, Ryūjōko-jiken), and the entire episode of events is known in
Japan as the Manchurian Incident (Kyūjitai: 滿洲事變, Shinjitai: 満州事変, Manshū-
jihen) and in China as the September 18 Incident (traditional Chinese: 九一八事變;
simplified Chinese: 九一八事变; pinyin: Jiǔyībā Shìbiàn).

Background
Japanese economic presence and political interest in Manchuria had been growing ever
since the end of the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905). The Treaty of Portsmouth that
ended the war had granted Japan the lease of the South Manchuria Railway branch
(from Changchun to Lüshun) of the China Far East Railway. The Japanese government,
however, claimed that this control included all the rights and privileges that China
granted to Russia in the 1896 Li–Lobanov Treaty, as enlarged by the Kwantung Lease
Agreement of 1898. This included absolute and exclusive administration within the
South Manchuria Railway Zone. Japanese railway guards were stationed within the
zone to provide security for the trains and tracks; however, these were regular Japanese
soldiers, and they frequently carried out maneuvers outside the railway
areas.Meanwhile, the newly formed Chinese government was trying to reassert its
authority over the country after over a decade of fragmented warlord dominance. They
started to claim that treaties between China and Japan were invalid. China also
announced new acts, so the Japanese people (including Koreans and Taiwanese as both
regions were under Japanese rule at this time) who had settled frontier lands, opened
stores or built their own houses in China were expelled without any compensation.
Manchurian warlord Chang Tso-lin tried to deprive Japanese concessions too, but he
was assassinated by the Japanese Kwantung Army. Chang Hsueh-liang, Chang Tso-lin's
son and successor, joined the Nanjing Government led by Chiang Kai-shek from anti-
Japanese sentiment. Official Japanese objections to the oppression against Japanese
nationals within China were rejected by the Chinese authorities.The 1929 Sino-Soviet
conflict (July–November) over the Chinese Eastern Railroad (CER) further increased
the tensions in the Northeast that would lead to the Mukden Incident. The Soviet Red
Army victory over Chang Hsueh-liang's forces not only reasserted Soviet control over
the CER in Manchuria but revealed Chinese military weaknesses that Japanese
Kwantung Army officers were quick to note.The Soviet Red Army performance also
stunned Japanese officials. Manchuria was central to Japan's East Asia policy. Both the
1921 and 1927 Imperial Eastern Region Conferences reconfirmed Japan's commitment
to be the dominant power in Manchuria. The 1929 Red Army victory shook that policy
to the core and reopened the Manchurian problem. By 1930, the Kwantung Army
realized they faced a Red Army that was only growing stronger. The time to act was
drawing near and Japanese plans to conquer the Northeast were accelerated.In April
1931, a national leadership conference of China was held between Chiang Kai-shek and
Chang Hsueh-liang in Nanking. They agreed to put aside their differences and assert
China's sovereignty in Manchuria strongly. On the other hand, some officers of the
Kwantung Army began to plot to invade Manchuria secretly. There were other officers
who wanted to support plotters in Tokyo.

Events
Believing that a conflict in Manchuria would be in the best interests of Japan, and acting
in the spirit of the Japanese concept of gekokujō, Kwantung Army Colonel Seishirō
Itagaki and Lieutenant Colonel Kanji Ishiwara independently devised a plan to prompt
Japan to invade Manchuria by provoking an incident from Chinese forces stationed
nearby. However, after the Japanese Minister of War Jirō Minami dispatched Major
General Yoshitsugu Tatekawa to Manchuria for the specific purpose of curbing the
insubordination and militarist behavior of the Kwantung Army, Itagaki and Ishiwara
knew that they no longer had the luxury of waiting for the Chinese to respond to
provocations, but had to stage their own.Itagaki and Ishiwara chose to sabotage the rail
section in an area near Liutiao Lake (柳條湖; liǔtiáohú). The area had no official name
and was not militarily important, but it was only eight hundred meters away from the
Chinese garrison of Beidaying (北大營; běidàyíng), where troops under the command
of the "Young Marshal" Chang Hsueh-liang were stationed. The Japanese plan was to
attract Chinese troops by an explosion and then blame them for having caused the
disturbance in order to provide a pretext for a formal Japanese invasion. In addition,
they intended to make the sabotage appear more convincing as a calculated Chinese
attack on an essential target, thereby making the expected Japanese reaction appear as a
legitimate measure to protect a vital railway of industrial and economic importance. The
Japanese press labeled the site "Liǔtiáo Ditch" (柳條溝; liǔtiáogōu) or "Liǔtiáo Bridge"
(柳條橋; liǔtiáoqiáo), when in reality, the site was a small railway section laid on an
area of flat land. The choice to place the explosives at this site was to preclude the
extensive rebuilding that would have been necessitated had the site actually been a
railway bridge.

Incident
Colonel Seishirō Itagaki, Lieutenant Colonel Kanji Ishiwara, Colonel Kenji Doihara,
and Major Takayoshi Tanaka had completed plans for the incident by May 31, 1931.

The plan was executed when 1st Lieutenant Suemori Komoto of the Independent
Garrison Unit (獨立守備隊) of the 29th Infantry Regiment, which guarded the South
Manchuria Railway, placed explosives near the tracks, but far enough away to do no
real damage. At around 10:20 pm (22:20), September 18, the explosives were detonated.
However, the explosion was minor and only a 1.5-meter section on one side of the rail
was damaged. In fact, a train from Changchun passed by the site on this damaged track
without difficulty and arrived in Shenyang at 10:30 pm (22:30).
Invasion of Manchuria
On the morning of September 19, two artillery pieces installed at the Mukden officers'
club opened fire on the Chinese garrison nearby, in response to the alleged Chinese
attack on the railway. Chang Hsueh-liang's small air force was destroyed, and his
soldiers fled their destroyed Beidaying barracks, as five hundred Japanese troops
attacked the Chinese garrison of around seven thousand. The Chinese troops were no
match for the experienced Japanese troops. By the evening, the fighting was over, and
the Japanese had occupied Mukden at the cost of five hundred Chinese lives and only
two Japanese lives.At Dalian in the Kwantung Leased Territory, Commander-in-Chief
of the Kwantung Army General Shigeru Honjō was at first appalled that the invasion
plan was enacted without his permission, but he was eventually convinced by Ishiwara
to give his approval after the act. Honjō moved the Kwantung Army headquarters to
Mukden and ordered General Senjuro Hayashi of the Chosen Army of Japan in Korea to
send in reinforcements. At 04:00 on 19 September, Mukden was declared secure.

Chang Hsueh-liang personally ordered his men not to put up a fight and to store away
any weapons when the Japanese invaded. Therefore, the Japanese soldiers proceeded to
occupy and garrison the major cities of Changchun and Antung and their surrounding
areas with minimal difficulty. However, in November, General Ma Zhanshan, the acting
governor of Heilongjiang, began resistance with his provincial army, followed in
January by Generals Ting Chao and Li Du with their local Jilin provincial forces.
Despite this resistance, within five months of the Mukden Incident, the Imperial
Japanese Army had overrun all major towns and cities in the provinces of Liaoning,
Jilin, and Heilongjiang.

Aftermath
Chinese public opinion strongly criticized Chang Hsueh-liang for his non-resistance to
the Japanese invasion. While the Japanese presented a real threat, the Kuomintang
directed most of their efforts towards eradication of the communist party. Many charged
that Chang's Northeastern Army of nearly a quarter million could have withstood the
Kwantung Army of only 11,000 men. In addition, his arsenal in Manchuria was
considered the most modern in China, and his troops had possession of tanks, around 60
combat aircraft, 4000 machine guns, and four artillery battalions.

Chang Hsueh-liang's seemingly superior force was undermined by several factors. The
first was that the Kwantung Army had a strong reserve force that could be transported
by railway from Korea, which was a Japanese colony, directly adjacent to Manchuria.
Secondly, more than half of Chang's troops were stationed south of the Great Wall in
Hebei Province, while the troops north of the wall were scattered throughout
Manchuria. Therefore, deploying Chang's troops north of the Great Wall meant that
they lacked the concentration needed to fight the Japanese effectively. Most of Chang's
troops were under-trained, poorly led, poorly fed, and had poor morale and questionable
loyalty compared to their Japanese counterparts. Japanese secret agents had permeated
Chang's command because of his and his father Chang Tso-lin's past reliance on
Japanese military advisers. The Japanese knew the Northeastern Army very well and
were able to conduct operations with ease.The Chinese government was preoccupied
with numerous internal problems, including the issue of the newly independent
Guangzhou government of Hu Hanmin, Communist Party of China insurrections, and
terrible flooding of the Yangtze River that created tens of thousands of refugees.
Moreover, Chang himself was not in Manchuria at the time, but was in a hospital in
Beijing to raise money for the flood victims. However, in the Chinese newspapers,
Chang was ridiculed as "General Nonresistance" (Chinese: 不抵抗將軍; pinyin: Bù
Dǐkàng Jiāngjūn).

Because of these circumstances, the central government turned to the international

community for a peaceful resolution. The Chinese Foreign Ministry issued a strong
protest to the Japanese government and called for the immediate stop to Japanese
military operations in Manchuria, and appealed to the League of Nations, on September
19. On October 24, the League of Nations passed a resolution mandating the withdrawal
of Japanese troops, to be completed by 16 November. However, Japan rejected the
League of Nations resolution and insisted on direct negotiations with the Chinese
government. Negotiations went on intermittently without much result.On November 20,
a conference in the Chinese government was convened, but the Guangzhou faction of
the Kuomintang insisted that Chiang Kai-shek step down to take responsibility for the
Manchurian debacle. On December 15, Chiang resigned as the Chairman of the
Nationalist Government and was replaced as Premier of the Republic of China (head of
the Executive Yuan) by Sun Fo, son of Sun Yat-sen. Jinzhou, another city in Liaoning,
was lost to the Japanese in early January 1932. As a result, Wang Jingwei replaced Sun
Fo as the Premier.On January 7, 1932, United States Secretary of State Henry Stimson
issued his Stimson Doctrine, that the United States would not recognize any government
that was established as the result of Japanese actions in Manchuria. On January 14, a
League of Nations commission, headed by Victor Bulwer-Lytton, 2nd Earl of Lytton,
disembarked at Shanghai to examine the situation. In March, the puppet state of
Manchukuo was established, with the former emperor of China, Puyi, installed as head
of state.On October 2, the Lytton Report was published and rejected the Japanese claim
that the Manchurian invasion and occupation was an act of self-defense, although it did
not assert that the Japanese had perpetrated the initial bombing of the railroad. The
report ascertained that Manchukuo was the product of Japanese military aggression in
China, while recognizing that Japan had legitimate concerns in Manchuria because of its
economic ties there. The League of Nations refused to acknowledge Manchukuo as an
independent nation. Japan resigned from the League of Nations in March 1933.Colonel
Kenji Doihara used the Mukden Incident to continue his campaign of disinformation.
Since the Chinese troops at Mukden had put up such poor resistance, he told
Manchukuo Emperor Puyi that this was proof that the Chinese remained loyal to him.
Japanese intelligence used the incident to continue the campaign to discredit the
murdered Chang Tso-lin and his son Chang Hsueh-liang for "misgovernment" of
Manchuria. In fact, drug trafficking and corruption had largely been suppressed under
Chang Tso-lin.

Controversy
Different opinions still exist as to who caused the explosion on the Japanese railroad at
Mukden. Strong evidence points to young officers of the Japanese Kwantung Army
having conspired to cause the blast, with or without direct orders from Tokyo. Post-war
investigations confirmed that the original bomb planted by the Japanese failed to
explode, and a replacement had to be planted. The resulting explosion enabled the
Japanese Kwantung Army to accomplish their goal of triggering a conflict with Chinese
troops stationed in Manchuria and the subsequent establishment of the puppet state of
Manchukuo.

The 9.18 Incident Exhibition Museum (九・一八歷史博物館) at Shenyang, opened by

the People's Republic of China on September 18, 1991, takes the position that the
explosives were planted by Japan. The Yūshūkan museum, located within Yasukuni
Shrine in Tokyo, also places the blame on members of the Kwantung Army.

David Bergamini's book Japan's Imperial Conspiracy (1971) has a detailed chronology
of events in both Manchuria and Tokyo surrounding the Mukden Incident. Bergamini
concludes that the greatest deception was that the Mukden Incident and Japanese
invasion were planned by junior or hot-headed officers, without formal approval by the
Japanese government. However, historian James Weland has concluded that senior
commanders had tacitly allowed field operatives to proceed on their own initiative, then
endorsed the result after a positive outcome was assured.In August 2006, the Yomiuri
Shimbun, Japan's top-selling newspaper, published the results of a year-long research
project into the general question of who was responsible for the "Shōwa war". With
respect to the Manchurian Incident, the newspaper blamed ambitious Japanese
militarists, as well as politicians who were impotent to rein them in or prevent their
insubordination.Debate has also focused on how the incident was handled by the
League of Nations and the subsequent Lytton Report. A. J. P. Taylor wrote that "In the
face of its first serious challenge", the League buckled and capitulated. The Washington
Naval Conference (1921) guaranteed a certain degree of Japanese hegemony in East
Asia. Any intervention on the part of America would be a breach of the already
mentioned agreement. Furthermore, Britain was in crisis, having been recently forced
off the gold standard. Although a power in East Asia at the time, Britain was incapable
of decisive action. The only response from these powers was "moral condemnation".

Remembrance
Each year at 10:00 am on 18 September, air-raid sirens sound for several minutes in
numerous major cities across China. Provinces include Heilongjiang, Jilin, Liaoning,
Hainan, and others.

In popular culture
The Mukden Incident is depicted in The Adventures of Tintin comic The Blue Lotus,
although the book places the bombing near Shanghai. Here it is performed by Japanese
agents and the Japanese exaggerate the incident.

The Chinese patriotic song Along the Songhua River describes the lives of the people
who had lost their homeland in Northeast China after the Mukden Incident.

In Akira Kurosawa's 1946 film No Regrets for Our Youth, the subject of the Mukden
Incident is debated.

See also Junji Kinoshita's play A Japanese Called Otto, which opens with the characters
discussing the Mukden Incident.
The 2010 Japanese anime Night Raid 1931 is a 13-episode spy/pulp series set in 1931
Shanghai and Manchuria. Episode 7, "Incident", specifically covers the Mukden
Incident.

The violent manga Gantz has a reference when an elder says that an occurrence reminds
him of the "Manchurian Incident".

Dutch death metal band Hail of Bullets covers the event in the song "The Mukden
Incident" on their 2010 album On Divine Winds, a concept album about the Pacific
Ocean theatre of World War II.

The television drama Kazoku Game (English: Family Game) deals with the history
textbook controversy in episode 4, mentioning the Mukden Incident.

The 1969 novel black rain by Masuji Ibuse mentions the incident on numerous
occasions.

See also
Events preceding World War II in Asia

Jinan incident (May 1928)

Huanggutun incident (Japanese assassination of the Chinese head of state Generalissimo

Zhang Zuolin on 4 June 1928)

Northeast Flag Replacement (by Zhang Xueliang on 29 December 1928)

Second Sino-Japanese War

Japanese invasion of Manchuria (1931)

January 28 Incident (Shanghai, 1932)

Defense of the Great Wall (1933)

Marco Polo Bridge Incident (7 July 1937)

History of Sino-Japanese relations#Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II

History of the Republic of China

Military of the Republic of China

National Revolutionary Army

References
Citations
Sources

External links
World War II Database- Manchurian Incident

Article on Japanese military cliques and their involvement in The Mukden Incident
from Japanese Press Translations 1945–46