Manchukuo

Names and terminology

Manchukuo was a puppet state of the Empire of Japan in Manchuria, existing from 1932 until 1945. Its name renders the Chinese 滿洲國 (Mǎnzhōuguó) and the Japanese 満州国 (Manshūkoku); in Manchu it was known as manju gurun. In 1934, in connection with the transition to monarchy, the great empire of Manchukuo was proclaimed. The government of Manchukuo used more than one English name, including Manchoukuo and Manchoutikuo, and treated "Manchou Empire" as an abbreviated form. In Chinese the name is often prefixed with 偽 (wěi), meaning puppet, to stress its perceived illegitimacy. That "Manchuria" had shifted from an ethnonym to a geographic term under foreign and especially Japanese influence in the 19th century also bears on the character of the state's name.

Manchukuo and the Russo-Japanese War legacy

Manchuria had historically been the homeland of the Manchu people, though by the 20th century they had long since become a minority, with Han Chinese constituting by far the largest ethnic group. The Manchu-led Qing dynasty was overthrown in the 1911 Xinhai Revolution. The Russian Empire had annexed large tracts adjoining the Amur River through unequal treaties in 1858 and 1860. Japan's victory in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905 replaced Russian influence in Manchuria; under the Treaty of Portsmouth, Japan gained the Kwantung Leased Territory and the South Manchuria Railway and was entitled to occupy southern Manchuria. The South Manchuria Railway, capitalized at 200 million yen, was Asia's largest corporation and dominated the region's economy. The Japanese population of Manchuria rose from 16,612 in 1906 to 233,749 in 1930. The war cost Japan about 500,000 casualties and fostered a possessive attitude toward Manchuria, while the settlement left the question of Manchuria as "unfinished business."

From the Mukden Incident to the establishment of the state

In June 1928, Kwantung Army staff officers including Komoto Daisaku killed the Fengtian warlord Zhang Zuolin by blowing up his train; the plot to create a pretext was foiled when Zhang Xueliang succeeded his father without incident. On 18 September 1931, the Kwantung Army blew up the South Manchuria Railway track at Liutiaogou and blamed Chinese soldiers, launching the invasion of Manchuria. In 1932, the Northeast Supreme Administrative Council announced the independence of the three northeastern provinces; Manchukuo was formally established on 1 March 1932 in Xinjing, then Changchun; and Japan extended formal recognition on 15 September 1932 through the Japan–Manchukuo Protocol. Chinese volunteer armies organized by Zhang Xueliang's remaining forces and others resisted, and it took several years to pacify the region.

Who actually ruled

The commander-in-chief of the Kwantung Army also served as the official Japanese ambassador and had the power to veto decisions by the emperor. From 1932 to 1945 six men held this dual post: Mutō Nobuyoshi, Hishikari Takashi, Minami Jirō, Ueda Kenkichi, Umezu Yoshijirō and Yamada Otozō. The emperor was primarily a figurehead, held in place by the Kwantung Army, which also installed Japanese vice-ministers in his cabinet. Puyi was celebrated as an emperor, yet he was famous for fearing the Kwantung Army and its Japanese advisers, and he was an object of surveillance rather than protection. The State Council was the center of political power and could impose conscription in law, while the Legislative Council was largely ceremonial, existing to rubber-stamp decisions. Puyi was considered a living god whose will could not be limited by any law, so the purpose of the law was reduced to serving his will rather than protecting individual rights. The jurist Zheng Xiaoxu, first prime minister of Manchukuo until 1935, developed the official ideology of the "Kingly Way" (wangdao), an ordered Confucian society expressly hostile to individualism, and the Japanese scholar Ishiwara Kanji joined him in attacking the European legal tradition on that ground.

Ideology of the state

Manchukuo was built as the first pan-Asian state within the concept of a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Its official ideology was the harmony of five races: Chinese, Mongols, Manchus, Koreans and Japanese, with Confucianism as the basis. The Concordia Association, founded in 1932, became the only permitted political party and, from 1937, automatically enrolled students aged 16 to 19; by 1943 it counted up to 10 percent of the population. Buddhist and Shinto institutions, as well as Muslim and Lamaist hierarchies, were mobilized as ideological instruments, and the state pursued a two-faced policy toward Islam and Lamaism in particular.

Economy and labour

Economic planning in Manchukuo was influenced by Japanese observations of the Soviet approach to catch-up industrialization. From the beginning the Army intended to turn Manchukuo into the industrial heartland of the empire, prioritizing military build-up and heavy industry without emphasis on profitability. In 1935 Nobusuke Kishi became Deputy Minister of Industrial Development, brought zaibatsu capital into a strongly state-directed economy, and pursued vastly increased industrial production while showing indifference to the exploited Chinese workers; the historian Mark Driscoll described Kishi's system as "necropolitical." Manchukuo's steel production exceeded Japan's in the late 1930s. On 23 March 1935, the Soviet Union accepted a Japanese offer to buy the Chinese Eastern Railway, and in return five Soviet consulates in Manchukuo were closed. Korea moved toward a cooperative relationship with Manchukuo in the 1930s, and Manchukuo provided a market for Korea. Manchukuo's Five Year Plans, the first for 1937–1941 and the second for 1942–1946, targeted materials exported to the metropole; in 1944 the colony accounted for 228 percent of iron ore extraction, 52 percent of coal, and 85 percent of pig iron output compared with production in Japan.

Japanese colonization

The Japanese government had official plans for the emigration of five million Japanese to Manchukuo between 1936 and 1956. Between 1938 and 1942, about 200,000 young farmers arrived, and after 1936 they were joined by 20,000 complete families; almost half of these settlers came from rural Kyushu. Much of the country's economy was subordinated to Japanese interests; traditional lands were taken and redistributed to Japanese farmers, with local farmers relocated into collective farming units, and Chinese workers were the target of pervasive discrimination.

Manchukuo in World War II

Manchukuo served as a base for the Japanese invasion of the rest of China, beginning with the 1937 Marco Polo Bridge incident. The Manchu general Tong Linge was killed by Japanese forces in the Battle of Beiping–Tianjin, which opened the Second Sino-Japanese War. In May 1939 a skirmish between Manchukuoan and Mongolian cavalry escalated into the Battle of Khalkhin Gol, where a combined Soviet-Mongolian force defeated a Kwantung Army with limited Manchukuoan support. When the Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Pact was signed on 13 April 1941, the USSR pledged to respect Manchukuo's territorial integrity and Japan pledged the same for Mongolia.

Recruitment and minorities

The Manchukuo Imperial Army was formally established by the Army and Navy Act of 15 April 1932 and reached as many as 170,000 to 220,000 troops at its peak in 1945 by some estimates. Its soldiers were mostly Manchurian-born Han Chinese, with smaller contingents of Koreans, Mongols and White Russian émigrés. The Manchukuo Imperial Guard was formed of ethnic Manchu soldiers, and a special Korean detachment was founded in 1937 on the initiative of Lee Beom-ik, a collaborationist Korean governor of Gando Province. Throughout the 1930s a "Mongolian Independence Army" was built from about 6,000 ethnic Mongolian recruits. Japanese officers regarded most units as unreliable, and desertion and mutiny were common.

Human rights abuses

According to a joint study by the historians Zhifen Ju, Mitsuyoshi Himeta, Toru Kubo and Mark Peattie, more than ten million Chinese civilians were used by the Kwantung Army for slave labor in Manchukuo under the supervision of the Kōa-in. The most serious mine disaster in the world, the Benxihu Colliery disaster, occurred in Manchukuo; the dead included some 1,550 Chinese miners, including 31 women, making it among the largest industrial disasters in history. Unit 731, based near Harbin, experimented with bacteriological weapons on humans from 1932 to 1945; victims, mostly Chinese, Russians and Koreans, were subjected to vivisection, sometimes without anesthesia. The Oroqen suffered a significant population decline under Japanese rule, and between 1931 and 1945 the Hezhen population fell by 80 to 90 percent. In April 1938, a new type of Special Security Court was created for those charged with the five types of "thought crime," and on 26 August 1941 a new security law ruled that those tried before the Special Security Courts had no right of appeal or to a defense lawyer.

Dissolution and date discrepancies

On 8 August 1945, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan and invaded Manchukuo from Outer Manchuria and Outer Mongolia; Russian sources add that the Red Army had begun its Manchurian offensive on 9 August. The Soviet Union captured 850,000 Japanese settlers but repatriated most of them to Japan in 1946–1947. The Manchukuo government declared the emperor's abdication in August 1945, and Puyi agreed to abdicate when the Japanese surrender was announced on 15 August 1945. Russian sources date the end of the state to 19 August 1945, when Puyi was captured by Red Army paratroopers at the Fengtian airport. Manchukuo's territory entered the People's Republic of China in 1949. Many Manchukuo Army troops later joined the Communists since the Chinese Nationalists executed former collaborators with Japan, becoming an important source of manpower and equipment for the Communists in the region.

Aftermath

After the war, former officials and military personnel of Manchukuo were pursued by the Chinese Communist Party and some were branded traitors. Manchukuo officials captured by China were imprisoned on charges of war crimes alongside Puyi. In Japan, the legacy of the officer corps and the colony weighed on the modern Japanese right, and former Kwantung Army personnel faced war crimes trials. Heavy industry and infrastructure left by Manchukuo formed part of the industrial base of the early People's Republic of China.

International recognition

The League of Nations dispatched the Lytton Commission in December 1931 and endorsed its report in February 1933; Japan responded by withdrawing from the organization, and the United States articulated the Stimson Doctrine, withholding recognition from changes created by force. The new state was nevertheless recognized by El Salvador (3 March 1934), the Dominican Republic (1934), Costa Rica (23 September 1934), Italy (29 November 1937), Spain (2 December 1937), Germany (12 May 1938) and Hungary (9 January 1939). The USSR extended de facto recognition on 23 March 1935 but explicitly noted that this did not mean de jure recognition, and only upon signing the Neutrality Pact on 13 April 1941 did it recognize Manchukuo de jure. The Holy See never established diplomatic relations with Manchukuo, contrary to a common belief. Manchukuo asserted recognition by 23 of the 80 states then existing; according to Manchukuo propaganda, this recognition demonstrated that Manchukuo was a legitimate state, but in reality the recognition came predominantly from the Axis powers and their dependencies.

Legacy and assessment

The region of Manchuria was turned into an industrial base of East Asia, and Manchukuo is sometimes presented as the first modern state to base itself on the identity of the Manchu minority. In practice Puyi and the Manchu elite held only limited power, with real authority in the hands of Japanese vice-ministers, and the legislature was merely a formal institution. Manchukuo's territory was inherited by the Republic of China and then the People's Republic of China after 1949, and the region remains part of China's Northeast and eastern Inner Mongolia.