The theorist who designed Japan's Manchurian expansion
“Who starts a war just because he wants oil?”
Kanji Ishiwara was an Imperial Japanese Army officer and military thinker who viewed Manchuria as a strategic base for a future war against the United States. As a Kwantung Army planner in 1931, he worked with Seishirō Itagaki to use the railway sabotage as a pretext for the Mukden Incident and the occupation of Manchuria. He later opposed an all-out war in China, confronting the consequences of his own expansionist project before his conflict with Hideki Tōjō ended his active career.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1909Graduated from Army Academy, commissioned infantry second lieutenant
- 1915–1918Studied at Army War College, graduated second
- 1921–1925Army War College instructor, studied in Germany
- 1928–1931Kwantung Army chief operations planner and operations chief
- 1935–1937Army General Staff operations chief and director
- 1937–1938Deputy chief of staff, Kwantung Army
- 1939–1941Lieutenant general, commander of 16th Division, retired to reserve
- 1941–1945Director of Ritsumeikan national defense institute, led East Asia League movement
Related historical events
- 1938–1941The Soviet-Japanese Border Wars and the Neutrality Pactarchitect of the Manchukuo projectHe masterminded the Mukden Incident and the Manchukuo project; his total-war economy required Manchurian resources, making the Soviet border the central concern.
- 1941–1945The Pacific WarPlanner of the Mukden IncidentAs a Kwantung Army officer, he helped plan the Mukden railway sabotage and argued for Manchurian expansion as preparation for a future great-power war.
After the retired list: wartime opposition and a postwar reversal
Placed on the retired list in March 1941, Ishiwara Kanji turned to teaching, writing and lecturing. In April he was invited as a lecturer for the newly created national defense course at Ritsumeikan University and became head of its national defense research institute, teaching subjects such as national defense theory, war history and defense economics. The stated purpose of the course was to clear away the old notion that national defense belonged only to soldiers and to give ordinary citizens a working knowledge of it. Hideki Tojo's side, however, kept him under military-police surveillance: lecture content and even visitors to his home were reported to Kempeitai headquarters, and as pressure from the military police and the special higher police grew he resigned, handed his lectures to a successor, and returned to his home region. A book based on that year's lectures appeared in 1942.
On the Pacific War he argued against entering it, in substance asking how a country could start a war just because it wanted oil, but he was not heeded. Around the Battle of Guadalcanal he responded to a request from Prince Takamatsu Nobuhito with a proposal to withdraw from the island, abandon the Solomons, the Bismarcks and New Guinea, and fortify Saipan, Tinian and Guam; he also called for a full apology to the Chinese and immediate withdrawal from the Republic of China, seeking a path to peace through Miao Bin of the East Asia League Association, but failed. Young officers drawn to the league's ideas plotted to assassinate Tojo, and Ishiwara approved the plan before it was uncovered.
After the war he stayed out of the front lines of politics and military affairs and lived communally with comrades at the Nishiyama farm in Shonai, Yamagata Prefecture. The farm took up three principles, dissolution of cities, unity of agriculture and industry, and simple living, and in 1947 adopted a communal charter, the so-called village-building constitution. His prewar thesis of a final decisive war with the United States was revised: Japan, he now argued, should take Article 9 of the constitution as its weapon, carry no arms, block the quarrel between the United States and the Soviet Union, and let the world become one without a final war. He kept, however, a pan-Asian position that praised both the Chinese Nationalists and the Chinese Communists and held that Japan should cooperate with whichever side governed China.
In 1946 he was dropped from the final list of war-crimes defendants, though his exclusion did not settle the question of his responsibility. In May 1947 he appeared as a witness before the Sakata circuit court specially set up for the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, maintaining that the Manchurian Incident had been a defensive action ordered by Kwantung Army commander Shigeru Honjo in response to Chinese military violence. In January 1948 he was designated a militarist and purged from public office; from the spring of 1949 pneumonia, edema and bladder cancer worsened his condition, and he died at the Nishiyama farm on 15 August 1949 at the age of 60.