Historical Dictionary of United States-Japan ... - Bakumatsu Films

MANCHURIAN INCIDENT • 173
MAKINO, NOBUAKI (1861–1949). Son of Toshimichi Okubo, a
major leader in the early Meiji government, Makino was also the father-in-law
of Shigeru Yoshida, who served as prime minister and
foreign minister during most of the American Occupation of Japan.
Makino studied in the United States from 1871 to 1874, and thereafter
held a number of foreign affairs–related posts in the Japanese
government. Seen as too pro-British and pro-American by right-wing
militarists, Makino was forced out of the government in 1935 and
nearly killed the following year in the 26 February 1936 Incident.
See also JAPANESE STUDENTS IN AMERICA.
MANCHURIAN INCIDENT (1931). In its most limited sense, the
Manchurian Incident refers to the events of September 1931, when
Japanese army forces conquered China’s northeastern provinces and
later detached them from China proper to create the nominally independent
state of Manchukuo. Its meaning and portent was, however,
much broader in scope than these basic details attest. It was sparked
by an explosion on 18 September on the South Manchurian Railway,
just south of the southern Manchurian city of Mukden. Although the
Japanese claimed that Chinese troops dynamited a section of the
South Manchurian Railway track, the truth of the matter was that the
explosion was part of a plot for the invasion of Manchuria that was engineered
by a group of middle-echelon Kwantung Army officers, including
Lieutenant-Colonel Kanji Ishiwara, Colonel Seijirō Itagaki,
and Colonel Kenji Doihara. Thus marked the high point of the concept
of gekokujō—domination of superiors by inferiors—which continued
to haunt both the army and navy through the 1930s and early 1940s.
The Manchurian Incident’s second point of significance derives
from the fact that the army in the field consistently ignored and outmaneuvered
the cabinet in Tokyo. The army’s initial response to the
explosion was undertaken on its own initiative: it surrounded the Chinese
barracks at Mukden, captured the garrison and military stores,
and seized various points near the railway line in question. Once the
Japanese cabinet learned of these developments, it sought to limit international
fallout by keeping the fighting localized. Army authorities
on the ground, however, ignored this decision and instead widened
the sphere of operations. The Manchurian Incident thus provided ample
evidence of the locus of power within the Japanese government.