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Anomaly or representative?: challenging common portrayals of Ishiwara Kanji

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ANOMALY OR REPRESENTATIVE?:

CHALLENGING COMMON PORTRAYALS OF ISHIWARA KANJI

by

Jessica Kristin Egyud

A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
(EAST ASIAN AREA STUDIES)

December 2012

Copyright 2012 Jessica Kristin Egyud

ii
Table of Contents

Abstract iii
Chapter 1: Introduction 1
Literature Review 4

Chapter 2: The Development of Ishiwara’s Career and Theories 13

Chapter 3: A Closer Look – “The Founding of Manchukuo and the China 25
Incident”

Chapter 4: Contemporary Viewpoints 39
Konoe Fumimaro 39
Tōjō Hideki 41
“Obstructing the Resolution of the China Incident: What is the 45
East Asia League?”
Larger Trends: Buddhism, pan-Asianism, and Radical Shinto 48
Ultranationalism

Chapter 5: Conclusion 56

References 60

iii
Abstract
As one of the major figures in the Japanese army during and after the Manchurian
Incident, Ishiwara Kanji frequently appears in works about Japan’s war with China.
These works either attempt to place Ishiwara as either a militarist or a pacifist or portray
him as an inconsistent anomaly whose views and actions fall far from the norm in Japan
at the time. This thesis argues that, rather than attempting to place Ishiwara on the
militarist-pacifist spectrum and rather than studying his inconsistencies and the ways in
which he diverges from more dominant schools of thought, it is more useful to study him
as a representative of his times. A speech that Ishiwara gave in 1940 entitled “The
Founding of Manchukuo and the China Incident” is discussed, and the main points in the
speech are compared and contrasted with the views of other individuals and groups. From
this comparison, it becomes clear that Ishiwara is far less outlandish than he is often
portrayed to be.

1
Chapter 1: Introduction
Prasenjit Duara, in his work Sovereignty and Authenticity: Manchukuo and the
East Asian Modern, calls Ishiwara Kanji “perhaps the single most forceful figure behind
the creation of Manchukuo.”
1
In Ishiwara’s own interpretation of history, his part in the
instigation of the Manchurian Incident was one of the most important catalysts in
beginning Japan’s war with China. Furthermore, his contributions to Japanese thought
before and during the war with China cannot be overlooked. During the part of his career
when he had power and influence, his ideas shaped a great deal of the planning in terms
of setting up Manchukuo. Even after he had fallen from a position of influence, his ideas
provided a backbone for the East Asia League, which grew quite large before it was
disbanded. Despite his unpopularity with those in power and his constant challenges to
authority throughout his career, Ishiwara was able to avoid brutal punishment, which
exemplifies the way in which contending schools of thought could coexist in Japan, even
during wartime. A prolific writer and instigator of significant historical events, Ishiwara
Kanji cannot be left out of accounts of wartime Japan. Portrayals of Ishiwara vary widely
in the literature, and due to this lack of consensus among works that discuss his actions,
his contribution to and role in Japanese history remain ambiguous. Because of his
significance in bringing about such an important event and in subsequent historical events,
it is crucial to understand Ishiwara’s role as an historical figure and the theories that
shaped his actions and the trajectory of his career.

1
Prasenjit Duara, Sovereignty and Authenticity: Manchukuo and the East Asian Modern (Lanham:
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2003), 61.
2
Focusing on Ishiwara’s thought during the early period of Japan’s war with China,
this paper will argue that, rather than attempting to place a label on Ishiwara or identify
him as belonging to a particular school of thought, and rather than studying the ways in
which his ideas are inconsistent or remarkable, it is more fruitful to study him as a
representative Shōwa theorist. While his character may set him apart from his
contemporaries, his theories are, in fact, quite consistent with a number of other theories
at the time. Furthermore, the so-called inconsistencies in his ideas are common to the
majority of theories at the time, and to focus on them detracts from a more
comprehensive understanding of Ishiwara’s ideas and how they fit into the broader
picture of wartime Japan. During the 1930s and 1940s in Japan, there was no ideological
unity; a number of ideas coexisted and influenced and opposed one another. Even within
ideologies, there was a great deal of internal disagreement, and ideas were often used to
justify things that they were not intended to support. These characteristics of the
ideological landscape of wartime Japan apply to Ishiwara’s ideas, making him a
representative of how ideology in wartime Japan functioned rather than an outsider.
First, this paper will discuss how Ishiwara has been portrayed in the literature
written about him in English with a focus on characterization and major themes covered.
While longer works with more space to devote to Ishiwara’s ideas emphasize the
inconsistencies demonstrated in his ideas over the course of his career, works that devote
less space to Ishiwara tend to focus on a particular facet of his ideas depending on their
overall themes and drastically oversimplify his ideas. The next section will provide a
historical context for Ishiwara’s theories and will discuss Ishiwara’s ideas and their
3
development. Ishiwara’s ideas shifted over time, which often had consequences on his
career, so his career trajectory and relationships with those in power will also be
discussed.
Following a discussion of relevant background information, a lecture that
Ishiwara gave in 1940 in Kyoto entitled “The Founding of Manchukuo and the China
Incident” will be examined to give a clearer picture of where Ishiwara stood on certain
issues. In particular, his stance on dealing with the China Incident, cooperating with the
rest of East Asia against the West, and reforming Japan and the behavior of the Japanese
people will be discussed. Ishiwara’s ideas will then be compared to those of other major
figures of that time period, including Konoe Fumimaro and Tōjō Hideki, to further
contextualize his ideas. Finally, a work critiquing the East Asia League and Ishiwara’s
ideas will be examined. As will be shown through a comparison to specific
contemporaries and greater schools of thought at the time, Ishiwara’s ideas are not as
outlandish as they are frequently portrayed.
While there was no real unity in Japan during the war with China, conflicting
schools of thought overlapped in a number of ways. Like many others in Japan at the
time, Ishiwara was against the war with China and felt that it was necessary to end the
war with China so that Japan could move on to fighting the West, which should be its
main enemy. Many people, including Ishiwara, Zen Buddhists, and Shinto
ultranationalists, used religion as a way to justify their involvement in the war and
believed that winning the war would allow Japan to spread its ideals to the rest of the
world. Finally, like Konoe Fumimaro, Tōjō Hideki, and pan-Asianists in general,
4
Ishiwara saw the importance of cooperation with the rest of East Asia in preparing for its
future war against the West. What made Ishiwara unique was his perspective of China.
While others seemed unaware of the reality of conditions in China at the time, Ishiwara
understood that anti-Japanese sentiment was rising in China and that this opposition
could not be ignored. Though there were some differences, Ishiwara’s ideas were similar
in a number of ways to those of others at the time, and these similarities make it clear that
Ishiwara fit into the ideological landscape of wartime Japan and that the ideological
landscape of Japan had room for a number of different schools of thought.
Literature Review
Ishiwara Kanji was one of the major figures behind the planning of the
Manchurian Incident, and his ideas played a large part in the formation of the state and
institutions within it. When he was not involved directly in the development of
Manchuria, he was a prolific writer and speaker and published a large volume of works
dealing with questions of Japan’s actions. With such a pivotal role in Japan’s
involvement in Manchuria and such a vocal presence in wartime Japan, it is no surprise
that Ishiwara has been mentioned in a number of studies dedicated to Japan’s colonial
project. In these studies, there is no uniform portrayal of Ishiwara. While some scholars
present him as a militarist interested in the continent as a resource base for war against
the West, others highlight his efforts to promote cooperation among the East Asian
people. Scholars have a tendency to focus on the inconsistencies in Ishiwara’s theories
and in his approach to interacting with the rest of East Asia. This lack of a uniform
portrayal of Ishiwara suggests both that his theories and actions may be too complex to
5
categorize easily and that there is a need to study Ishiwara from a more comprehensive
perspective.
Mark Peattie’s Ishiwara Kanji and Japan’s Confrontation with the West is
currently the only work in English focused entirely on Ishiwara Kanji and thus does the
most to contribute to English readers’ understanding of Ishiwara. Peattie traces the
development of Ishiwara’s ideas and theories and the trajectory of his career in the
Japanese army. With the goal of using the case of Ishiwara to elucidate larger issues in
pre-war Japan, Peattie focuses his work “on Ishiwara the thinker and his perceptions as to
the nature of war, the means to prepare for it, the domestic structure of Japan, and the
nation’s place in Asia, as much as on his role as a decision-maker in specific crises.”
2
In
this exploration of Ishiwara’s ideas and actions, several trends emerge in the
characterization of Ishiwara. Peattie portrays him as an arrogant and increasingly isolated
nonconformist whose ideas, though perhaps more realistic than those of others at the time,
are inconsistent and ultimately geared towards preparing for war.
Ishiwara’s nonconformity is referenced a number of times in Peattie’s book, and
he is often presented as standing apart from his peers. Peattie includes a number of
anecdotes that exemplify the ways in which Ishiwara was different. For instance, Peattie
makes note of Ishiwara’s strange choice of dress at a League of Nations reception: “At a
reception for foreign military attaches given in his honor at the Japanese Embassy,
Ishiwara attended the full-dress affair in the starkly simple haori and hakama of

2
Mark R. Peattie, Ishiwara Kanji and Japan’s Confrontation with the West (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1975), viii.
6
traditional Japanese attire.”
3
Similar stories are scattered throughout Peattie’s work,
portraying Ishiwara as an eccentric and contributing to the notion that he should be
considered as a distinct force from the rest of his peers. This nonconformity is significant
in that, as Peattie notes, Ishiwara frequently found himself disagreeing with those in
positions of authority. According to Peattie, Ishiwara’s nonconformity frequently put him
at odds with others: “[…] contrasted with the average Japanese army officer, Ishiwara
emerges as a very different sort of figure, temperamentally unsuited to work easily within
a group or to adjust his views readily to consensus.”
4
At first, this willingness to
challenge authority worked in his favor, as was the case with his instigation of the
Manchurian Incident. Later on, however, his nonconformity ended up leading to a
gradual loss of power and prestige.
5
Whether through specific actions or examples of
insubordination, Peattie makes it clear that Ishiwara Kanji was a unique figure.
Another point that is frequently noted in Peattie’s work is the inconsistency
inherent in Ishiwara’s theories. Though Ishiwara promoted racial equality in East Asia, he
clearly felt that Japan should take a leadership role: “Indeed, it was to be central to the
contradictions of his view of Asia that he continued to speak with genuine feeling of the
need for Japanese to shed their feeling of racial superiority while at the same time he
assumed that Japan had both the political capacity and the duty to guide the destinies of

3
Peattie, Ishiwara Kanji, 192.

4
Peattie, Ishiwara Kanji, 24.

5
Peattie, Ishiwara Kanji, 305.

7
‘backward’ Asian nations.”
6
Peattie references these contradictions a number of times. As
Peattie later points out, however, Ishiwara himself most likely did not consider this
combination of racial equality and Japanese leadership inconsistent: “To Ishiwara there
was nothing about this arrangement that was incongruous with racial equality; it was
merely a proper apportionment of racial capabilities.”
7
Naturally, to Ishiwara, the
Japanese people were endowed with the capability to lead the rest of Asia. As presented
in Peattie’s work, Ishiwara is both concerned with promoting racial equality in East Asia
and convinced that Japan is the only country capable of providing leadership in the region.
This focus on inconsistency is especially prominent in Peattie’s discussion of
Ishiwara’s views of China and Manchuria. According to Peattie, these inconsistencies in
Ishiwara’s views are a result of the fact that all of Ishiwara’s plans and actions were
geared towards preparation for the Final War he believed would occur between Japan and
America. While Ishiwara believed in racial cooperation and the liberation of the Asian
people, Peattie notes that he was willing to use force against them if they were to stand in
the way of Japan’s preparations for the Final War: “[…] if any of these peoples stood in
the way of their own liberation by obstructing Japan’s efforts, then they would be forced
to cooperate, even if it meant their own merciless exploitation. Independent or occupied,
therefore, Manchuria was to be but the first step on the way to the Final War.”
8
Though
other East Asian states would ideally cooperate with Japan, Ishiwara was prepared to

6
Peattie, Ishiwara Kanji, 36.

7
Peattie, Ishiwara Kanji,164.

8
Peattie, Ishiwara Kanji, 167.

8
exploit them if necessary to ensure Japan’s success in the Final War. Peattie interprets
Ishiwara’s willingness to attack China as indicating a lack of a moral basis for desiring
racial harmony. Instead, he believes that Ishiwara’s focus on racial harmony was a façade
geared towards increasing support for Japan in the inevitable Final War.
9
In this
interpretation, Ishiwara’s calls for harmony were not genuine.
Despite these so-called inconsistencies, however, Peattie notes that Ishiwara’s
view of China was, in many ways, more well-informed than those of his peers. While
most other army leaders felt that the Chinese people had no sense of national identity and
could be intimidated into acquiescence, Ishiwara was aware of nationalistic trends in
China and proposed cooperating with rather than exploiting the country. Peattie notes that,
though Ishiwara’s views should not be interpreted as concerned entirely with the well-
being of China, his ideas regarding Japan’s role in China were more realistic than those
of his peers at that time: “Yet within the political-military framework in which any
responsible Japanese staff officer would have had to operate in the nineteen thirties his
was perhaps the sanest view of China in central army headquarters.”
10
Ishiwara was more
willing than his peers to take into account the actual conditions in China. He felt that
Chinese nationalism should be channeled into friendship with Japan rather than anti-
Japanese sentiment, and in order to accomplish that, Ishiwara believed that Japan needed
to create a model for racial cooperation in Manchukuo and show China that its intentions

9
Peattie, Ishiwara Kanji, 284.

10
Peattie, Ishiwara Kanji, 273.

9
were sincere.
11
Ultimately, then, according to Peattie, Ishiwara Kanji was a stubborn
nonconformist, unwilling to change his unpopular and often inconsistent ideas in order to
salvage his career and convinced of Japan’s need to prepare for a future confrontation
with the West.
Though Peattie’s work is the only book in English devoted entirely to the study of
Ishiwara, it is by no means the only work that attempts to explain his ideas as related to
the greater spectrum of Japanese thought at the time. Yamamuro Shinichi’s work
Manchuria Under Japanese Dominion, which was translated into English by Joshua
Fogel in 2006, characterizes Ishiwara in ways similar to Peattie’s work. Yamamuro
presents Ishiwara as primarily interested in preparing for the final war. Ishiwara’s plans
and actions, according to Yamamuro, were geared towards ensuring Japan’s ultimate
victory: “In short, Ishiwara’s conception of total war was to take possession of Manchuria
and Mongolia, make them part of Japan’s sphere of self-sufficiency, and then, if this
should incite another foreign war, Japan would be able to pursue it successfully by taking
further control over China proper.”
12
Ishiwara believed in using war to support war, and
his actions were inspired by a distant future war.
Yamamuro, like Peattie, also notes the inconsistencies in Ishiwara’s views
towards China and the rest of East Asia. Ishiwara shifted from believing that the Chinese
people were incapable of forming a modern nation-state on their own to believing that

11
Peattie, Ishiwara Kanji, 281.

12
Yamamuro Shinichi, Manchuria Under Japanese Domination, trans. Joshua Fogel (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Books, 2006), 19.
10
they could succeed politically.
13
As Yamamuro points out, Ishiwara’s ideas varied
between two extremes: “In his confrontations with various currents, Ishiwara swayed
widely between the two poles of military realism, with the creation of a state for strategic
and supply-base reasons to assure victory in the final world war, and the idealism
inherent in the creation of ethnic harmony and the paradise of the kingly way.”
14

Yamamuro also makes note of the fact that Ishiwara was willing, if necessary, to abandon
pretenses of harmony in the event that the Chinese people did not cooperate with Japan’s
mission.
15
Yamamuro and Peattie both mention numerous times how inconsistent and
contradictory Ishiwara’s beliefs seem. This presentation, though, may be too simplistic;
by dismissing his ideas as inconsistent, Yamamuro and Peattie potentially miss the larger
connections within Ishiwara’s theories. More important, perhaps, than the inconsistencies
are the common threads that tie the theories together and link them to other schools of
thought at the time.
Works focused on broader themes portray Ishiwara as a less complex and
inconsistent character and attempt to place him as either in favor of expansion and
aggression or in favor of cooperation and harmony. Beasley’s Japanese Imperialism,
1894-1945 does not devote as much space as Yamamuro and Peattie to understanding
Ishiwara’s ideas and thus oversimplifies his views. Beasley, whose discussion of Ishiwara
is mostly limited to the years before the Manchurian Incident, refers to Ishiwara as a
militarist and focuses primarily on his belief in Japan’s inevitable confrontation with the

13
Yamamuro, Manchuria, 52.

14
Yamamuro, Manchuria, 54.

15
Yamamuro, Manchuria, 141.
11
West.
16
Because Japanese imperialism is the main focus of Beasley’s work, mentions of
Ishiwara are often related to his desire to use Manchuria as a way of preparing for war:
“To Matsuoka, Ishiwara, and the men who thought like them it seemed self-evident that
‘saving’ Japan required not only lines of military defense… but also control over markets
and resources, in order to sustain the industry on which modern warfare depended.”
17

Though the preparation for war was an important motivation for Ishiwara’s plans and
actions, to focus only on these points reduces Ishiwara to a one-dimensional militarist.
Other works that are focused on larger themes simplify Ishiwara’s ideas in the
opposite way. Boyle’s China and Japan at War, 1937-1945: The Politics of
Collaboration, for example, focuses on instances of cooperation between China and
Japan, which likely influences its portrayal of Ishiwara as an almost heroic figure.
Ishiwara, according to Boyle’s interpretation was completely against the idea of war with
China and is portrayed as being in opposition to the expansionists.
18
In his discussion of
Ishiwara’s actions, Boyle consistently presents Ishiwara as a tragic figure whose ideas
were ignored to the detriment of Japan: “Rather than awakening at Ishiwara’s alarming
warning about an aroused nation that would not surrender, Japan continued to be lulled
by the more agreeable picture of the enemy as a weak and isolated warlord regime, an
enemy that must surely fall to a quick, mortal blow.”
19
Ishiwara, in this version of the

16
W.G. Beasley, Japanese Imperialism 1894-1945 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), 182-4.

17
Beasley, Japanese Imperialism, 255.

18
John H. Boyle, China and Japan at War, 1937-1945: the Politics of Collaboration (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1972), 47-9.

19
Boyle, China and Japan, 82.
12
story of Japan’s involvement in China, is the lone voice of reason. This portrayal is
understandable given Boyle’s focus on collaboration between 1937 and 1945. In
Yamamuro and Peattie’s works, the war with China served as one of the major points
when Ishiwara’s ideas began to seem inconsistent. The majority of Ishiwara’s discussions
of using East Asia, especially Manchuria, as a resource base, occurred in the early 1930s,
and by the time during which Boyle’s work is focused, Ishiwara had become far more
vocal in his support for cooperation.
Evidently, there is no uniform portrayal of Ishiwara Kanji in literature written to
this point. Depending on their focus, historians writing about events or themes that apply
to wartime Japan in general tend to reduce Ishiwara to either a militarist or a pacifist.
Both of those portrayals, however, greatly oversimplify Ishiwara’s theories and role in
Japan. Works that deal with Ishiwara to a greater extent cover both militarist and pacifist
extremes of Ishiwara’s theories and point to the inconsistencies between them. A focus
on the inconsistency of his ideas, however, may lead to a dismissal of the greater context
of and meaning behind those ideas. To contextualize these various portrayals of Ishiwara
and gain a more comprehensive understanding of his significance as an historical figure,
it is necessary to study his ideas and his career and how they fit into and were influenced
by the greater picture of Japan during the 1930s and 40s.

13
Chapter 2: The Development of Ishiwara’s Career and Theories
According to Peattie and Yamamuro, as mentioned earlier, Ishiwara’s concept of
the Final War served as a theoretical centerpiece for many of his beliefs and actions
during his time in the army. The Final War was based on a combination of his belief in
Nichiren Buddhism and his own theories about the nature of war. As Jacqueline Stone
explains, Nichiren’s ideas were reinterpreted in the Meiji period and beyond to justify
Japanese expansionism: “With Nichiren Buddhist circles, however, Nichiren’s mandate
to spread the Lotus Sutra and thus realize the Buddha land in this present world was
assimilated to imperialist aspirations in a way that inflated the latter to millenialist
proportions.”
20
Ishiwara Kanji was one of the many Buddhists who were inspired by the
notion that it was Japan’s mission to rule over the rest of the world. Ishiwara interpreted
Nichirenist teachings about a great war that would occur at the beginning of the Final
Dharma age as applying to a war that would occur in the near future between Japan and
the United States. As the United States’ influence in Asia rose, Ishiwara came to believe
that this Final War would be an inevitable clash of civilizations: “The reason for this war
was not simply a struggle over political hegemony in the Pacific, but a war in which
Eastern and Western civilizations, both of which had advanced across several millennia
of human history, would confront each other in a final decisive battle, championed
respectively by Japan and the United States.”
21
With the United States as the leader of the

20
Jacqueline Stone, "Japanese Lotus Millennialism: From Militant Nationalism to Contemporary Peace
Movements” in Millennialism, Persecution, and Violence: Historical Cases, ed. Catherine Wessinger
(Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2000), 265.

21
Yamamuro, Manchuria, 31-2.
14
Western world and Japan as the leader of the East, eventually a war would be fought and
the winner’s ideals would be imposed on the rest of the world.
22
Winning this war would
result in an era of great peace under Japanese dominance during which the spirit of the
Japanese people would be spread throughout the world.
23
Naturally, much needed to be
done in order to prepare for this war.
Ishiwara believed that Manchuria was to play a key role in supplying Japan with
the tools needed to defeat America, and he was able to influence Japan’s policy with
regards to Manchuria to some extent following his appointment to the Kwantung Army
staff in 1928. As Peattie explains, to Ishiwara, Manchuria was necessary to protect
Japan’s national security: “To quit Manchuria would be to court national disaster,
Ishiwara believed, for it would imperil Japanese security and throw the nation back on its
own narrow shores and meager resources. Outright occupation of Manchuria was
ultimately essential to Japan’s continued growth as a great power.”
24
For Ishiwara and a
number of others at the time, Manchuria could serve as a buffer zone between the Soviet
Union and Japan’s colonial possessions in Korea and could also serve as Japan’s
industrial base during preparation for the Final War and be the first step to Japan’s
domination of the rest of Asia.
25

This conviction that control of Manchuria would help Japan prepare for the Final
War inspired Ishiwara to take action on the continent. His close relationship with Itagaki

22
Peattie, Ishiwara Kanji, 57.

23
Stone, “Japanese Lotus Millenialism,” 272.

24
Peattie, Ishiwara Kanji, 96.

25
Peattie, Ishiwara Kanji, 97-8.
15
Seishirō, then Chief of the Intelligence Section of the Kwantung Army, led to his views
about Manchuria as essential to Japan’s preparation for war becoming more prominent in
the decision-making process.
26
Frustrated with what they interpreted as weak Japanese
diplomacy in Manchuria, members of the Kwantung Army began to desire a more
forceful course of action on the continent. After a series of minor scuffles in the few
months leading up to the incident and with the knowledge that both Ishiwara and Itagaki
were potentially nearing the end of their tour of duty in Manchuria, the two men
subverted the government’s wishes and planned the bombing that served as the
justification for Japan’s invasion of Manchuria in 1931.
27
This would allow Japan to
prepare for the future war against America and attempt to gain allies in Asia in the
meantime. Disagreements over setting up the state would later create tensions between
Ishiwara and others in the Kwantung Army.
Once the Kwantung Army occupied Manchuria, a number of new problems arose.
One of these problems was the question of leadership. As Louise Young describes, the
army’s bold move in acquiring Manchuria gave it a good deal more influence in Japanese
politics: “The bubble of enthusiasm for the Manchurian occupation restructured the
balance of bureaucratic power in favor of the army, which in turn ensured the
perpetuation of the new policy of military expansionism.”
28
The army gained control of
politics, but within the army, there were a number of divisions, which made planning a

26
Peattie, Ishiwara Kanji, 105.

27
Peattie, Ishiwara Kanji, 111-3.

28
Louise Young, Japan’s Total Empire: Manchuria and the Culture of Wartime Imperialism (Los Angeles:
University of California Press, 1998), 129.
16
challenge. While the War Ministry and General Staff wanted some level of Chinese
authority to be maintained in the region, Ishiwara and Itagaki envisioned Manchuria as a
place that would ideally be under military control and designed to complement the
Japanese economy. In order to appeal to the people, Puyi, the last emperor of the Qing
dynasty, was put in place as the ruler, and government institutions were set up with
Chinese people in leadership positions, but the Japanese army was orchestrating things
behind the scenes.
29
Beyond creating the appearance of Chinese rule, state planners had
other ways of making the new government more palatable to the inhabitants.
One way that planners attempted to make the new state more acceptable to the
people living there was through the manipulation of Tachibana Shiraki’s idea of the
Kingly Way. A long-time China scholar, Tachibana believed that the Chinese people
were capable of self-government and was against the poor treatment of the native
population.
30
Unlike the majority of Japanese people involved in planning the state,
Tachibana was aware of the need to appeal to the people already living there. Because his
ideas about native self-government were not popular, however, he was forced to find a
way to promote his ideas in a framework that the bureaucrats would agree with. He
proposed that the government be founded on the ideal of the Kingly Way, which meant
that the leader would be benevolent and that rule would be based on the will of the people
with a focus on ethnic harmony.
31
Bureaucrats claimed that the state was founded based

29
Beasley, Japanese Imperialism, 194-5.

30
Yamamuro, Manchuria, 75.

31
Janis Mimura, Planning for Empire: Reform Bureaucrats and the Japanese Wartime State (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 2011), 53.
17
upon these principles and in opposition to the one-party Nationalist dictatorship, but in
reality, it was something else entirely: “The government of this state, with a might that
never considered the will of its inhabitants and was in no way restricted by legal
institutions, in fact emerged with the aim of Japanese control through an autocratic
executive organ.”
32
Though planners attempted to use Tachibana’s ideas to appeal to the
masses, they were unable to relinquish enough control to allow for the consideration of
the will of the people. The government of Manchuria remained largely in their hands,
despite attempts to make it seem otherwise.
The disparity between rhetoric and reality is especially apparent in the case of the
Concordia Association. Originally, the Concordia Association was to serve as a new mass
movement that would stand apart from other political parties in China. It was intended to
promote ethnic harmony, and many of the people involved in it, including Ishiwara,
thought of it as a way for Chinese people to have political power. Along with others in
favor of the Concordia Association’s pan-Asianist goals, Ishiwara felt that it could
mobilize the masses in Manchuria and could influence government policy. To Ishiwara,
Japan was not meant to dominate the new state and should instead merely participate.
33

The Concordia Association should encourage equality among the races, and if Japanese
people were in leadership positions, it was because they were most naturally suited for

32
Yamamuro, Manchuria, 115.

33
Mimura, Planning for Empire, 58-9.
18
it.
34
At first, Ishiwara believed that the Concordia Association would give the people in
Manchuria a way to participate in the new state and influence decisions.
Unfortunately, as mentioned earlier, the Concordia Association became a tool for
control and a way to spread pro-Japanese propaganda. The idealistic interpretation of it as
a vessel for spreading ethnic harmony and cooperation was eventually discarded. While
some saw it as a unifying force, the army saw it as a propaganda tool, and the leaders
were primarily Japanese.
35
From the beginning, there was a divide between the idealistic
goals of those interested in helping the Chinese people and those interested in promoting
the army’s goals. As Mimura describes, the actual goals and purpose to the Concordia
Association were difficult to discern: “Its official platform changed from adopting an
independent, anticapitalist stance and promoting ethnic harmony and kingly way to
espousing vague, universal expressions of the unity between the government and the
people and of the ‘inseparable relationship between Japan and Manchukuo.’”
36
Though
intended as a way for the various races in Manchuria to work together, the Concordia
Association merely served as another way for the Japanese army to exert control under
the pretense of ethnic harmony.
At the same time that the role of the Concordia Association changed, Ishiwara’s
views of the capabilities of the Chinese people shifted as well. At first, Ishiwara was
convinced that other Asian nations needed Japanese guidance and could not rule
themselves. At first, Ishiwara did not believe in the ability of the Chinese people to rule

34
Peattie, Ishiwara Kanji, 173.

35
Peattie, Ishiwara Kanji, 170; Young, Japan’s Total Empire, 289.

36
Mimura, Planning for Empire, 80.
19
themselves: “China was obviously incapable of unifying even herself, much less all the
peoples of East Asia; Japan therefore had to take the lead in this process, so that the
peoples of the East would be of one mind and heart in the epic struggles ahead.”
37
It was
Japan’s mission to unite the rest of East Asia because no other race would be capable of it.
Japan’s invasion of Manchuria would demonstrate to China what they would need to do
to improve, and Ishiwara felt that the Chinese people would happily accept Japanese
dominance because it would inevitably lead to peace, unity, and stability in East Asia.
38

Originally, Ishiwara’s view of the Chinese people was paternalistic – Japan would have
to take responsibility for fixing China’s deficiencies and guiding it into its proper place in
the region.
Though Ishiwara Kanji was initially skeptical about the feasibility of the Chinese
people ruling themselves, his views later shifted in favor of independence. Following the
Manchurian Incident, Ishiwara claimed that his perception of the abilities of the Chinese
people to rule themselves independently had changed and that he now believed that Japan
should surrender its privileges in Manchuria and allow for equality among the races.
39

Ishiwara’s vocalization of this idea of racial equality pitted him against army leadership.
These views on the importance of racial and ethnic cooperation and the role of the
Concordia Association put Ishiwara at odds with others in the army and impacted the
trajectory of his career. His vocalization of these views angered those in power, and in

37
Boyle, China and Japan, 47.

38
Yamamuro, Manchuria, 36.

39
Peattie, Ishiwara Kanji, 156-8.
20
August of 1932, he was reassigned to a position in Japan. At this point, Ishiwara was so
disappointed with the way things had developed in Manchuria that the reassignment was
welcome.
40
While in Japan, he refined his ideas about racial and ethnic harmony and
devised a new form of cooperation, the East Asia League. He first elaborated on this idea
in 1933 when he was commander of the Fourth Infantry Regiment. In his vision,
Manchukuo would be consolidated, the Soviet Union would be expelled from the region,
and China would be convinced to join forces with Manchukuo and Japan to form an
Asian bloc. This bloc would be economically self-sufficient and would work as a unit in
the eventual war against the Western nations.
41
With the ultimate goal of victory in the
Final War in mind, Ishiwara saw this alliance of Asian nations as necessary for Japan’s
future success.
42
The East Asia League became a vital part of Ishiwara’s vision.
Related to the East Asia League was Ishiwara’s idea of the Shōwa Restoration. As
Peattie explains, Ishiwara’s initial idea for the Shōwa Restoration was focused on
preparing the country for war: “Thus its reforms, in his view, should center on harnessing
the nation’s political energies along totalitarian lines, including the creation of a single
mass political organization and the imposition of a thoroughly regimented economy to
increase national productivity.”
43
The Restoration would be a series of domestic reforms
geared towards strengthening Japan’s national defense. Later on, this vision grew to
encompass all of East Asia: “The Shōwa Restoration, though it would first involve

40
Peattie, Ishiwara Kanji, 180.

41
Peattie, Ishiwara Kanji, 193-5.

42
Peattie, Ishiwara Kanji, 313-4.

43
Peattie, Ishiwara Kanji, 229.
21
sweeping changes within Japan, was to be an Asian restoration, bringing together all
Asian races. It would weld their loyalty to a common set of moral values into a racial
alliance for the struggle to eradicate two hundred years of humiliation by the West.”
44

Thus, the Shōwa Restoration would be an important step in the strengthening of the East
Asia League and would enable Japan and the rest of Asia to stand up to the West.
The promotion of the East Asia League influenced Ishiwara’s approach to dealing
with China. Believing that Japan-Manchuria relations could serve as “a model of
harmony and mutual prosperity that would entice China into cooperation” he advocated
that Japan should avoid fighting with China and should be wary of underestimating the
strength of the Chinese Nationalist Party. Ishiwara believed that Chinese nationalism was
a threat to Japan and that China was ready to fight a prolonged war against Japan.
45

Rather than continuing its aggression on the continent, Ishiwara thought, the Japanese
army should channel the rising sense of Chinese nationalism into friendship rather than
anti-Japanese sentiment. To prepare for the coming war against the West, Japan would
need allies, and Ishiwara believed that Japan’s actions in China should reflect that fact.
Of course, not everyone agreed with Ishiwara’s position regarding China. Though
the army was by no means monolithic in terms of its views regarding the rest of Asia,
those in power held vastly different ideas from Ishiwara. The army’s policy was to slowly
expand in order to create a buffer zone between Manchuria and the Nationalist Party.
They set up local regimes in Northern China in hopes that eventually they would gain

44
Peattie, Ishiwara Kanji, 319.

45
Boyle, China and Japan, 47-8, 58-9.
22
control over a large area. Hoping that eventually Chiang Kai-shek would agree to joint
rule in China, the army tried to persuade him to stop spreading anti-Japanese
propaganda.
46
Even China specialists in the army seemed unconvinced that Chinese
nationalism was a threat to Japan. Most believed that China did not have the capacity to
unite and wage war against Japan and that, in the event of a war, China would fall
quickly.
47
These views proved detrimental when war finally broke out in 1937.
When war broke out with China, the army was largely divided over how to proceed.
The incident at Marco Polo Bridge was unintended, and a series of misunderstandings
and miscalculations led to an escalation of fighting. While one faction of the army pushed
for sending a lot of Japanese troops to China and crushing China in one blow, the other
faction advocated negotiation.
48
Ishiwara was one of the most vocal of those against
fighting in China. Most of those opposed to war with China, as Shyu explains, were more
concerned with preparing for a war with the Soviet Union: “National security, therefore,
demanded that war with China be avoided, so that Japan could concentrate its attention
on its frontiers with the Soviet Union.”
49
Fighting against China would divert troops and
resources from more important future wars. At this point in time, Ishiwara’s career was
on the decline, and he lacked the ability and support to influence decision-making.

46
Peattie, Ishiwara Kanji, 269-71.

47
Peattie, Ishiwara Kanji, 286-8.

48
Peattie, Ishiwara Kanji, 294-5.

49
Lawrence N. Shyu, “Introduction: Sino-Japanese Relations in Peace and War,” in China in the anti-
Japanese War, 1937-1945: politics, culture, society, ed. David P. Barrett and Lawrence N. Shyu (New
York: Peter Lang, 2001), 7.
23
Following the outbreak of war with China, Ishiwara was sent back to Manchuria in
late 1937 as Vice Chief of Staff of the Kwantung Army. At this point, due to his
unconventional ideas, he was at odds with much of the military bureaucracy.
50
As Boyle
explains, this assignment reflected his position in the army: “The transfer was tantamount
to exile. Ishiwara’s voice was henceforth muffled, heard by a group of comrades but
largely ignored in the higher councils of the Army and the Government.”
51
Despite this
setback, Ishiwara continued to speak out against the war in China. Disappointed with the
way Manchukuo had developed, he denounced army leaders and was sent back to Japan
the following year.
52
When he returned to Japan, he had more time to develop his ideas
about the East Asian League.
With more time to devote to his theories, Ishiwara was able to refine his vision of
the East Asia League and its relation to the Final War in the late 1930s. In 1939, Itagaki
Seishirō found Ishiwara a job as the commander of the 16
th
Depot Division in Kyoto,
where he was able to think about training and how the East Asia League would function.
He envisioned the League as joining the defenses and economies of the involved nations
while allowing for political independence.
53
Moral virtue rather than coercion would be
the basis of the League, and after defeating the West in the Final War, the League’s ideals
would be spread throughout the world. The Japanese emperor would lead the world, but
Japan would still be equal to the rest of the world. These contradictions hurt the

50
Peattie, Ishiwara Kanji, 311.

51
Boyle, China and Japan, 53.

52
Yamamuro, Manchuria, 177-8.

53
Peattie, Ishiwara Kanji, 317-8.
24
reputation of Ishiwara’s league and led to a great deal of criticism from both domestic
and foreign sources.
54
This criticism eventually lead to the League’s disbandment.
Despite the criticism, though, the East Asian League became popular in the late
1930s. Though Ishiwara was never officially involved in the Association for an East Asia
League, his ideas formed the backbone of the organization. It grew to over one hundred
thousand members and had multiple branches and a magazine. The official goals of the
Association were to establish the East Asia League, prepare for the Final War, and to
follow what was called the righteous way. The Association made attempts to recruit other
Asian people, and many leaders on the continent urged Japanese troops to cooperate with
the Chinese. Branches were set up in China, and Wang Ching-wei headed the General
China Assembly for the East Asian League.
55
Unfortunately, as soon as the League
started gaining momentum on the continent, in 1941 Tōjō Hideki was able to gain
support in forcing them disband.
56
Still, the East Asia League was an important
movement towards ethnic cooperation and was a major facet of Ishiwara’s vision.

54
Peattie, Ishiwara Kanji, 320-22.

55
Peattie, Ishiwara Kanji, 322-5.

56
Peattie, Ishiwara Kanji, 326.
25
Chapter 3: A Closer Look - “The Founding of Manchukuo and the China Incident”
On March 1, 1940, Ishiwara gave a speech at a girls’ school in Kyoto to an
assembly of about 1500 people. Sponsored by the Kansai branch of the East Asia League
Association, which had been founded one year earlier, the speech was held on the day of
the commemoration of the founding of Manchukuo.
57
The speech, then, would have been
given in front of an audience of people in support of his ideas. In this speech, titled “The
Founding of Manchukuo and the China Incident,” Ishiwara addresses a number of
important issues and reveals his stance on these matters. Topics mentioned in the speech
include but are not limited to the meaning of the China Incident, the best way to deal with
or solve the China Incident, how Japanese people should behave both at home and in
China and Manchukuo, and how cooperation within the East Asian League should work.
A closer examination of these issues and a discussion of the views of other people during
the same time period will allow us to place Ishiwara more clearly in the ideological
spectrum of wartime Japan.
This speech is significant for a number of reasons. At the point when this speech
was given, Ishiwara was working as commander of the 16
th
Depot Division in Kyoto. As
mentioned earlier, it was during this time that he was able to more clearly articulate his
plans for the East Asia League.
58
A year later, the East Asia League Association would
be disbanded and Ishiwara would be retired, but at the point of the speech, the
association’s membership was quite large, and Ishiwara’s ideas served as the basis for

57
Ishiwara Kanji, “Manshuu kenkoku to shina jihen” (The founding of Manchukuo and the China Incident),
in Shina jihen kaiketsu no konpon saku (Fundamental plan for solving the China Incident), (Toa renmei
kyoukai (East Asian League Association): 1940): 91.

58
Peattie, Ishiwara Kanji, 318.
26
much of its ideological framework.
59
This speech, given to an audience of people in
support of his ideas, provides a good overview of Ishiwara’s views at the time, especially
with regard to the East Asia League. Though his career was on a downward slide,
Ishiwara continued to advocate his ideas, and this speech embodies various currents of
his thought.
One of the topics addressed in Ishiwara’s speech was the meaning of the China
Incident. To Ishiwara, the China Incident was a continuation of the Manchurian Incident:
After the Manchurian Incident, Japan had no firm plans, and disputes between
Japan and China piled up, which, a number of years after the founding of
Manchukuo, finally led to the China Incident. The China Incident is a
continuation of the Manchurian Incident. The Japanese people think that the
Manchurian Incident is over. That is a great mistake because the Manchurian
Incident is not over at all. Selfishly, the Japanese people think that the incident is
over, but China will definitely not recognize Manchukuo’s independence; no
country in the world will recognize it. … To put it another way, it was only a
ceasefire. The gunshots at Marco Polo Bridge in July of 1937 were just the
ceasefire being torn.
60

In other words, Ishiwara believed that there was no resolution to the Manchurian Incident
and that the relatively peaceful conditions that had prevailed in the years between the two
incidents was merely an informal ceasefire. Here Ishiwara is criticizing the Japanese
people’s apathy with regards to conditions on the continent. Ishiwara is also disappointed
in the way the Manchurian Incident was handled:
The Concordia Association was, on March 9, 1933, with the spirit of the founding
of Manchukuo, clearly declaring its purpose to be the exertion of people’s
harmony in China and the establishment of the East Asia League. The guiding
principle of the Shōwa Restoration, first found in the establishment of Manchukuo,
was the East Asia League, which was unfortunately only understood by a small

59
Peattie, Ishiwara Kanji, 323.

60
Ishiwara, “Manshuu kenkoku,” 52.
27
group of people, and because of this, finally the Manchurian Incident has
reoccurred and this incident has happened.
61

Ishiwara claims that the formation of the East Asia League was supposed to result from
the Manchurian Incident and would have allowed Japan to avoid the China Incident
because it would have led to harmony in East Asia. Because no one understood or
supported the East Asia League, however, the China Incident occurred.
The importance of racial harmony and cooperation led Ishiwara to refer to the war
with China as a holy war. In his mind, it was a holy war because it was being fought for
the good of East Asia, and the Japanese people would need to start acting in accordance
with that goal:
We used the term holy war to describe the Manchurian Incident, but this idea that
became a national slogan is truly a characteristic of this new incident. What is
called a holy war is Manchukuo’s kingly way promptly becoming the spirit of the
imperial way. It is not for the purpose of profit or for the purpose of taking
something. It is a fight for the Way. It is a fight for all of East Asia. The Japanese
people are truly amazing because while half asleep, they have grasped the essence
of this incident. Even so, perhaps it is sad that because they were not fully
conscious, in their heads they thought it a holy war, but with their hands and feet,
they cannot avoid copying Western imperialism. Still today we cannot settle the
incident.
62

For Ishiwara, the war against China held a great deal of significance in terms of spreading
Japan’s ideals and way of thinking to the rest of East Asia. Because these pan-Asian
goals were not achieved in the resolution of the first incident, the China Incident occurred,
as mentioned earlier, and Ishiwara felt that the solution of the China Incident should
involve the cooperation of the East Asian nations. Though he does not consider it a war

61
Ishiwara, “Manshuu kenkoku,” 53.

62
Ishiwara, “Manshuu kenkoku,” 55-6.
28
for the purpose of profit or of taking things from China, however, he seems concerned
with the tendency of the Japanese people to utilize Western-style imperialism in their
dealings with the rest of East Asia. Again he is criticizing the conduct of the Japanese
people and leadership.
Rather than imitating the ways of the West and fighting with China, Ishiwara felt
that Japan should see the West as its enemy. At multiple points in his speech, Ishiwara
references the ways in which Japan has imitated the West in its relations with the rest of
East Asia: “In the same way that the Westerners bullied us, in retaliation, we have done
the same to our younger brother, Manchukuo.”
63
This bullying is contradictory to the
mission of the holy war and is detrimental to the goal of racial harmony and cooperation.
Rather than copying the West, Ishiwara felt that Japan should stand against it: “If
pressure is added from other nations, again, even if the incident is solved, if we have
decided that we want to follow the path of the East Asia League, we must resolve to
make all of Europe our enemy. In the West, there is not a single country that approves of
the East Asia League.”
64
What was important, in Ishiwara’s mind, was securing support
for the East Asia League, and, naturally, Europe would not be interested in supporting an
association founded with the purpose of uniting against it.
Ishiwara also felt that Europe functioned differently from East Asia, especially in
terms of relations between countries. Ishiwara believed that the West considered war to
be inevitable: “Many people in the West firmly believe that between people there is

63
Ishiwara, “Manshuu kenkoku,” 68.

64
Ishiwara, “Manshuu kenkoku,” 88.
29
always war and that between countries, rivalry is inevitable. These people are certainly
not adherents of the imperial way.”
65
According to Ishiwara, this belief in war as
unavoidable set Europe apart from East Asia, especially Japan. Japan’s imperial way,
though never clearly defined in his speech, was a far more peaceful strategy of interacting
with other nations. While imperialism and aggression may have worked for Western
nations, Ishiwara felt that they did not suit Japan: “However, imperialism and the use of
military rule are clothes we borrowed from [the West] that are not properly fitted for
us.”
66
The aggression of Western nations did not fit in with the imperial way of Japan.
Because of this, East Asia and the West were destined to fight one another.
In terms of geography, as well, Ishiwara believed that China was destined to be
Japan’s ally. Ishiwara saw the world as divided into several blocs:
Looking at it today, depending on your point of view, the world can be divided
into four or five large groups. North and South America are one group, the
socialist or Soviet states are one group, and even while fighting, Europe is fated to
be a group. East Asia, too, although Japan and China are currently involved in a
terrible quarrel, is destined to become another grouping.
67

Despite the fact that they were currently fighting, Japan and China were part of the same
bloc. Because of this, the China Incident would need to be solved and the two nations
would need to work together against the West.
Because of the importance of eventually being ready to fight the West, Ishiwara
believed that the China Incident must be dealt with and that Japan should curtail its

65
Ishiwara, “Manshuu kenkoku,” 70.

66
Ishiwara, “Manshuu kenkoku,” 83.

67
Ishiwara, “Manshuu kenkoku,” 46.
30
aggression on the continent. Ishiwara notes that many people initially believed that the
China Incident would be solved easily:
It was thought that China could be sorted out easily, but we have been unable to
finish there. It is fine. […] I get the feeling that I want to make it so that we can
say, ‘You’ve really gotten better – compared to China of ten years ago, you have
grown to the extent that you are beyond recognition.’ Although we are fighting
now, we must soon become allies. But while we are fighting one another, we must
attack.
68

Ishiwara hoped that Japan and China could become allies and work together to improve
conditions on the continent. Particularly interesting here is the juxtaposition of Ishiwara’s
conviction that Japan and China must become allies with his willingness to fight Japan’s
future ally as long as it was necessary. Ishiwara also believed that sincere cooperation
would make the formation of the East Asia League much easier: “We people of the East
must cooperate with sincere hearts… I believe that with this spirit, even progress on the
economic bloc, which is the most important condition for the formation of the East Asia
League, will be unexpectedly easy, and Sino-Japanese peace will be established on an
unmovable base.”
69
If both Japan and China would understand the necessity of working
together and would cooperate, peace would come easily.
Unfortunately, Chiang Kai-shek was spreading anti-Japanese sentiment in China,
and Ishiwara recognized this as detrimental to the formation of the East Asia League.
Ishiwara was, as noted earlier, one of the few Japanese leaders who was aware of the
threat of Chinese nationalism. While others critiqued the political system in Nationalist
China, Ishiwara recognized its merits:

68
Ishiwara, “Manshuu kenkoku,” 72.

69
Ishiwara, “Manshuu kenkoku,” 63.
31
Meanwhile, economically and socially stagnant China has, for many years, under
the guidance of the Nationalist party, made anti-Japanese sentiment an element of
their training. Politically, it is a totalitarian state, and totalitarianism has been
criticized in many ways, but against individualism, liberalism, and capitalism, it is
a political system in which the people are under one plan. In other words, it is a
political system under which national policies can be settled and carried out.
While Japan is politically insecure, Chiang Kai-shek is one step ahead, dismissing
critics of totalitarianism and putting politics in order.
70

Though the government was totalitarian, Chiang was able to carry out his political
policies and had a high level of influence over the people. Unfortunately, Chiang was
using that influence to spread anti-Japanese sentiment: “As mentioned earlier, what
Chiang Kai-shek is using to resist Japanese force is not Soviet airplanes, British artillery,
or American shells. Any of those things would be befitting, but instead his greatest wish
is to use the anti-Japanese sentiment of the masses of his wide land in guerilla warfare.”
71

Ishiwara saw this anti-Japanese sentiment as one of the greatest challenges Japan would
have to face in China.
Chiang Kai-shek was, according to Ishiwara, not the only source of anti-Japanese
sentiment. It also stemmed from the unfortunate behavior of exploitative Japanese
merchants in China. In his speech, Ishiwara is highly critical of the conduct of Japanese
merchants and traders in China: “Unfortunately, while Japanese people, especially
Japanese merchants, are preaching about the holy war, they are feeling around for a trade
system to exploit the Chinese masses. Skillfully borrowing the authority of the Japanese
nation-state, they are committing unjust acts with the Chinese masses.”
72
While they

70
Ishiwara, “Manshuu kenkoku,” 86.

71
Ishiwara, “Manshuu kenkoku,” 79.

72
Ishiwara, “Manshuu kenkoku,” 78-9.
32
claimed good intentions, the Japanese merchants in China were exploiting the masses,
which certainly did not reduce the amount of anti-Japanese sentiment. Ishiwara believed
that the Japanese merchants and the Japanese people in general should carefully consider
their actions towards China:
If Japanese merchants in China would conduct business properly and create
conditions in which the Chinese people would certainly feel thankful to the
Japanese, no matter how much propaganda Chiang Kai-shek used, the masses
would definitely not accept it. Regrettably, however, because the Japanese people
are doing just as Chiang Kai-shek has said, just as chairman Chiang Kai-shek has
said, day by day, anti-Japanese sentiment is increasing. Regarding this, we must
reflect as a nation, and upon reflection consider whether our conduct towards the
Chinese people has truly been based upon the spirit of the imperial way. We
especially must correct our economic conduct.
73

Ishiwara felt that the behavior of the Japanese people in China was not in line with the
imperial way and that things must be changed in order for Japan to win over the Chinese
people.
Though much of Ishiwara’s speech is critical of the behavior of the Japanese people,
he also discusses their strengths and the role that they must play in preparing for the
future war. Ishiwara felt that the ability to withstand hardship was a key facet of the
Yamato spirit:
It will be required that the people’s lives will become more and more tense. I
think that the ability to not backslide despite difficulties is the essence of we
Yamato people. …If things become truly terrible, at that time, we will be willing
to go through fire and water, and the Yamato spirit will be demonstrated.
74

Ishiwara warned that war would be difficult for the people but was confident in their
ability to persevere. He called upon the people to determinedly prepare for the final war:

73
Ishiwara, “Manshuu kenkoku,” 79-80.

74
Ishiwara, “Manshuu kenkoku,” 89.
33
We need to establish a national determination to not lay down our arms until the
purpose of the holy war is achieved. Once this determination is fixed, if we
execute that ourselves, the incident will be solved unexpectedly quickly, and
Japan and China will cooperate on the path of the Shōwa Restoration, which will
be a constructive step towards the decisive battle in the next world war.
75

In solving the China Incident and preparing for war, the participation of the Japanese
people would be essential. They would need to be willing to face the difficulties ahead
and do whatever would be necessary to prepare for war and spread the spirit of the
imperial way.
Ishiwara also called upon the people to reorganize their society and change the
way that things in Japan are run. The Japanese people would need to consider the fate of
the rest of the world and create a new society:
I think that it will be necessary, as I mentioned earlier, for the people of Japan to
think of the people of the world and demonstrate the wisdom of the Japanese race
for the people, for their country, for their descendants and must resolutely look
forward to the Showa Restoration and face the difficulties ahead happily and with
true selfless devotion, must establish a new society and a new economy.
76

The Japanese people were destined to lead the rest of the world, and with that fate in
mind, they needed to work towards improvement. While complimenting the quality of
people living in Japan, Ishiwara urges them to make some changes: “It is surprising how
many superior people are in Japan. But in this grave situation, a complete plan for a
solution requires a new organization of the people.”
77
The great people of Japan would
need to work together through difficulties to improve their society.

75
Ishiwara, “Manshuu kenkoku,” 90.

76
Ishiwara, “Manshuu kenkoku,” 76-7.

77
Ishiwara, “Manshuu kenkoku,” 88.
34
Society was not the only thing that Ishiwara felt needed to change. The Japanese
government would also need to implement a number of reforms to prepare itself for
taking part in the East Asia League. As mentioned earlier, Ishiwara held some amount of
respect for what Chiang Kai-shek had been able to accomplish in China and felt that the
political system in Japan had lost its efficacy:
Since the incident, in China, Chiang Kai-shek has been working alone for the past
three years, but here, in Japan, since Konoe, we have replaced prime ministers
three times. I think it seems incredibly hopeless, but you certainly agree. Here in
Japan, without a doubt we lack strong and clear politics.
78

Just as he had criticized the behavior of Japanese merchants in China, Ishiwara also
criticized the weaknesses of Japanese politics. While China had a strong government able
to enact its policies, Japan was unable to establish a more appropriate system: “However,
in this grave emergency situation, in spite of the fact that we cannot break through, in
present-day Japan, a new government has not formed.”
79
Ishiwara felt that reforms were
necessary if Japan was going to become the leader of the rest of the world and break free
of the quagmire it was facing.
In Ishiwara’s vision, the victorious side in the final war would spread its ideology
to the rest of the world, and the leader of that country would become the leader of the rest
of the world. Ishiwara explained that the Showa Restoration would unite the people of
East Asia in a single mission:
The Meiji Restoration was a movement during which all of the clans were
defeated and Japan became one under the emperor. ‘Abolish the han, establish
prefectures’ was a political slogan of the Meiji Restoration. Related to that, if you

78
Ishiwara, “Manshuu kenkoku,” 85.

79
Ishiwara, “Manshuu kenkoku,” 85-6.
35
consider what the meaning of the Shōwa Restoration is, in the ‘Essay on the
Shōwa Restoration,’ it is written that the final world war will approach in a
number of years. The Shōwa Restoration will make use of the full capacity of all
of the people of East Asia, and we can expect a victory in this decisive battle.
After this final war that will happen in about thirty years, it will be decided
whether the Japanese emperor will become the world emperor, or whether some
other country’s president will become the world leader, and with this fate in mind,
people will prepare for the final war, and of course the system of the winning side
will be put in place. That is what is known as the Shōwa Restoration, and I agree
with it. Looking at it from this perspective, Japan alone does not demonstrate the
strength necessary. We must cooperate and place our fate in leading the East
Asian people.
80

Like the Meiji Restoration, which united the people of Japan under the emperor, the
Shōwa Restoration would unite the people of East Asia under the Japanese emperor. In
the event that Asia were successful in the final war the Japanese emperor would become
the ruler of the world, but without the cooperation of the people of East Asia, Japan
would not be victorious. It was necessary, in Ishiwara’s opinion, for Japan to work with
the rest of East Asia.
If Japan were able to convince China of the benefits of cooperation, Ishiwara had
a clear idea of how their collaboration should function. First, China and Japan must
recognize the independence of Manchukuo: “And so the citizens of Japan and China must
recognize the independence of their joint property, Manchukuo. Once it is recognized,
Japan, Manchukuo, and China will cooperate based on the spirit of the kingly way…”
81

Following the recognition of the independence of Manchukuo, the three states could
collaborate and form the East Asia League. The League would be set up as follows:

80
Ishiwara, “Manshuu kenkoku,” 49-50.

81
Ishiwara, “Manshuu kenkoku,” 51.
36
… National defense should be joined against the white man to protect East Asia,
economically we should create a community with the purpose of mutual
prosperity and coexistence, and the economy should be planned as one body, but
politics should be determined independently based on the characteristics of each
country. We will not interfere in one another’s politics. These will be the
conditions. Thus, we will spiritually cooperate based on the spirit of the kingly
way.
82

Based on the spirit of the kingly way, Japan, China, and Manchukuo would join their
national defenses and their economies and would remain politically independent.
Cooperation under these conditions would, as mentioned earlier, lead to success in the
final war.
In summary, as evidenced in this speech, Ishiwara was highly in favor of
cooperation among the East Asian nations and believed that Japan should focus its
energies on preparing to fight the West. At a number of points, Ishiwara referenced ways
in which the West had negatively influenced the Japanese people. According to Ishiwara,
imperialism and aggression were tactics of Western nations, and Japan should avoid
copying the West and instead work to cooperate peacefully with its neighbors based on
the kingly way. The final war would be a confrontation between these two frameworks
for interacting with other nations. Ishiwara felt that it was accurate to describe the China
Incident as a holy war because its purpose was to spread the ideologies of Japan to the
rest of Asia in order to gain allies for the final war. Japan would not be able to win the
final war on its own, so the cooperation of the rest of Asia would be necessary. Naturally,
Western nations would not support an alliance of Asian nations, so Ishiwara felt that
Japan should make all of Europe and America its enemy.

82
Ishiwara, “Manshuu kenkoku,” 43.
37
Unfortunately, as Ishiwara saw it, Japan faced several obstacles in the way of this
cooperation. Anti-Japanese sentiment was one of Japan’s biggest challenges. Ishiwara
admired Chiang Kai-shek’s ability to unify the Chinese people but worried about the
growing sense of nationalism in China. Chiang Kai-shek was unfortunately not the only
source of growing anti-Japanese sentiment. Ishiwara criticized the behavior of the
Japanese people in China, especially the merchants, and claimed that they were too
concerned with profit and were exploiting the Chinese masses. The Japanese people
would need to modify their behavior and embody the spirit of cooperation in order to
solve the China Incident. Ishiwara felt that the Japanese people were capable of dealing
with hardship and urged that they prepare themselves for the horrors of war. The
Japanese government would also need to change to prepare for war. Despite the
challenges it faced, as Ishiwara pointed out, the Japanese government had not changed,
which was detrimental to its ability to carry out national policies and unite the people.
If Japan were able to succeed in convincing China of the benefits of the East Asia
League, Ishiwara had very clear ideas for how cooperation should work. The two sides
would first need to recognize the independence of Manchukuo. Together, Japan, China,
and Manchukuo would prepare their national defenses and would form an economic bloc.
The only thing that would remain independent would be politics, which would be
determined based upon the needs of each nation. Based on these conditions, Japan, China,
and Manchukuo would unite against the West in forming the East Asia League.
Ultimately, then, in this speech, Ishiwara explained some of the key facets of his
theories and views on Japan, its involvement with the rest of East Asia, and the meaning
38
of the war. While he believed that the Japanese people were superior to others in many
ways, he also felt that their behavior would need to change, especially in terms of their
treatment of non-Japanese people living in the colonies and the organization of politics
and society. Thus, though Ishiwara thought highly of Japan, he recognized that things
would need to change at home. One of the most significant changes necessary would be
Japan’s attitude toward and treatment of its neighbors. Cooperation with the rest of East
Asia was necessary, but Japan would need to adjust its behavior in order to convince
other nations, specifically China, of the necessity of cooperation. Ishiwara saw the
detrimental impact that the growing sense of nationalism in China was having on Japan’s
efforts towards ending the war. In the end, the West, not China, was Japan’s enemy, and
Japan was fighting to spread its ideals to the rest of the world. These ideas relate in many
ways to those of Ishiwara’s contemporaries.

39
Chapter 4: Contemporary Viewpoints
Konoe Fumimaro
Ishiwara’s framework for collaboration was in line with Konoe Fumimaro’s plans
for a New Order in East Asia. Prime Minister three times between 1937 and 1941, Konoe
came into power shortly before war broke out in China at a point when the military had
an unprecedented amount of power in the government.
83
When war broke out, he
supported the government sending troops to China, claiming that Japan had attempted
and failed to avoid escalation and that China did not seem sincerely invested in reaching
an agreement. Sending troops, he felt, was a way of ensuring peace.
84
Like Ishiwara,
Konoe was in favor of cooperating with China. For this peace to work, China would need
to collaborate more sincerely with Japan and would need to recognize the independence
of Manchukuo: “China had to be forthcoming in its diplomatic relationship with Japan by
being unbiased and open minded; it was essential for China to recognize the foolishness
of its anti-Japanese movement and to accept sovereign status of Manchukuo.”
85
Japan’s
purpose on the continent was not to take something from China. Instead, Japan was
interested in working with China to protect East Asia. This is slightly different from
Ishiwara’s perspective, as Konoe blamed China’s anti-Japanese sentiment solely on
Chinese leadership rather than examining Japan’s conduct and considering whether
Japan’s behavior would need to be modified.

83
Yagami Kazuo, Konoe Fumimaro and the Failure of Peace in Japan: A critical appraisal of the three
time prime minister, 1937-1941, (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2006), 8-9.

84
Yoshitake Oka, Konoe Fumimaro: A Political Biography, trans. Shumpei Okamoto and Patricia Murray,
(Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1983), 57.

85
Yagami, Konoe Fumimaro, 70.
40
In December of 1938, Konoe issued a statement called the Konoe Doctrine, which
outlined the details of his plans for cooperation in East Asia. “Japan, Manchukuo, and
China would be united by the common aim of establishing a New Order in East Asia and
of realizing a good neighbor relationship, common defense against communism, and
economic cooperation.”
86
Similar to Ishiwara’s conception of the East Asia League,
Konoe’s New Order would involve the cooperation of East Asian nations against a
common enemy. While in Ishiwara’s case, this common enemy was the West, Konoe saw
communism as the more pressing threat. For Konoe, this cooperation was the end goal in
Japan’s military campaign: “Japan sought the establishment of a new order which would
insure the permanent stability of East Asia; this was the ultimate purpose of Japan’s
military campaign.”
87
In this way, Japan’s aggression could be justified as being geared
towards the eventual unification of East Asia.
There is some question, however, as to the meaning of this New Order. Mimura
considers the idea that it could have served as one of the first attempts to justify the war
on the continent: “Konoe’s proclamation of a ‘New Order in East Asia’ following the fall
of Wuhan and Guangzhou in the autumn of 1938 represented the first tentative attempts
to promote a new interpretation of war and a new worldview. Leaders portrayed the
China War as an ideological war, not as a military war for resources.”
88
Portraying the
war as ideological rather than resource-driven could perhaps make it appear more
benevolent to outsiders. In this way, the war was framed as Japan standing against the

86
Yoshitake, Konoe Fumimaro, 82.

87
Yoshitake, Konoe Fumimaro, 80.

88
Mimura, Planning for Empire, 143-4.
41
rest of the world and in need of allies. In many ways, this is similar to how the East Asia
League was discussed.
These ideas related closely to what Ishiwara had been proposing, and he made
numerous mentions of the Konoe Declaration in his 1940 lecture. According to Ishiwara,
the principles of the East Asia League are the same principles that informed Konoe’s
statement: “The Konoe Declaration is clearly made according to the principles of the East
Asia League. The decree was written in recognition that based on those principles, Japan,
China, and Manchuria will cooperate based on the kingly way and the conditions of a
joint national defense, economic unity, and independent politics.”
89
The fact that Ishiwara
found such parallels with his ideas in Konoe’s work means that his ideas could not have
been as eccentric or contrary as they are often portrayed.
Tōjō Hideki
Portrayals of Ishiwara often mention his relationship with Tōjō Hideki, another
important figure at the time. The relationship between the two was contentious. As
mentioned earlier, Tōjō was one of the most vocal supporters of the disbandment of the
East Asia League. He also made several attempts to cut Ishiwara’s career short: “In
December 1940, he had determined to put Ishiwara on the retired list, but for a number of
reasons, not the least of which was the possibility of violent repercussions from the
younger military and civilian adherents of Ishiwara, he decided this might be
premature.”
90
Fortunately for Ishiwara, support from other members of the army and the

89
Ishiwara, “Manshuu kenkoku,” 57-8.

90
Peattie, Ishiwara Kanji, 326-7.
42
Japanese population in general made it so that Tōjō could not take any drastic measures
against him. Even after Tōjō succeeded in having Ishiwara dismissed from the army, he
made sure that there was constant surveillance on him.
91
Clearly, Tōjō had a number of
problems with Ishiwara and did not trust him as a colleague.
Tōjō was not the only aggressor in the relationship, however. Ishiwara was often
antagonistic towards Tōjō, as well: “… a few days earlier Tōjō had brought him to the
office of the prime minister and tried to persuade him to change his views and join Tōjō’s
team. Ishiwara had responded by telling Tōjō that he was just as incompetent as Ishiwara
had always believed, and the best thing Tōjō could do for the country was to resign.”
92

This is just one of many instances in which Ishiwara blatantly challenged Tōjō’s
authority or denounced his character. At one point, Ishiwara went so far as to call Tōjō
the enemy of Japan: “‘The enemy is not the Chinese people, but rather certain Japanese.
It is particularly Tōjō Hideki and Umezu Yoshishiro, who, armed and pursuing their own
ambition, are the enemies of Japan. As disturbers of the peace they are the enemies of the
world. They should be arrested and executed.’”
93
Astonishingly, Ishiwara was able to
make such bold statements and face little, if any, repercussion. The intensity of the two
men’s dislike of each other is apparent; however Tōjō’s ideas were similar to Ishiwara’s
in several ways.
Like Ishiwara, Tōjō felt that Japan should be focusing its energies on fighting the
Soviet Union rather than fighting China. According to Hoyt, Tōjō’s view of the situation

91
Peattie, Ishiwara Kanji, 340.

92
Edwin P. Hoyt, Warlord: Tojo Against the World, (New York: Cooper Square Press, 2001), 128.

93
Peattie, Ishiwara Kanji, 330.
43
in 1938 was slightly different from that of Ishiwara: “It was now obvious… that the
Soviet Union intended to help China enough to keep the Japanese engaged there. They
would do so to sap Japan’s strength and confidence, and then the Russians would join the
Chinese in fighting Japan. The Soviet plot was not only to fight and defeat Japan but to
communize China.”
94
Tōjō believed that the Soviet Union was actively plotting against
Japan and that Japan needed to prepare to fight the Soviet Union alongside China. Tōjō
was also very interested in fighting America in the future, but he recognized that the war
with China would need to be ended before Japan could take on an additional enemy.
95

Tōjō had a slightly different view of China than Ishiwara did, thinking of it more
as a resource base than a future ally. Tōjō’s understanding of China was not as deep as
Ishiwara’s: “Obviously General Tōjō did not understand the depth of Chinese national
aspirations to independence, but he did understand that as long as the Nationalist
government controlled much of China, no settlement with the Chinese could be
achieved.”
96
Like Ishiwara, Tōjō recognized the strength of the Nationalist party. Tōjō
was less interested in the well-being of the Chinese people and was less well-informed
than Ishiwara was about the conditions in China. For Tōjō, the rest of East Asia was the
resource base from which Japan would be able to supply itself for future wars against
more important enemies.
97

94
Hoyt, Warlord, 17.

95
Hoyt, Warlord, 40.

96
Hoyt, Warlord, 27.

97
Hoyt, Warlord, 26.

44
Despite the fact that Tōjō was less interested in creating an alliance among East
Asian nations, he still believed that what he was doing was for the good of the Asian
people. As Hoyt explains, Tōjō was not interested in seeking power for personal reasons:
“His motivation, and theirs, was to extend the Japanese Empire and promote the welfare
of Japan. Tōjō always said, and there is no reason to disbelieve him, that the Japanese
militarists also felt that what they were doing was in the interest of Asia and Asians, to
bring them out from under the yoke of colonialism.”
98
Tōjō, like a number of other
Japanese people at the time, conceived of Japan’s mission in Asia as liberating. Japan and
the rest of East Asia were pitted against the West, which had been taking advantage of
their weaknesses for far too long. Tōjō eventually became more interested in the idea of
the Greater East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere and envisioned Japan as the leader of a sort
of United States of Asia: “First, Japan would take control and retain control of the areas
that were absolutely essential for the defense of Greater East Asia. But other areas, which
she might occupy for a time, would be dealt with in accordance with the tradition, culture,
and circumstances of each people.”
99
While Tōjō’s ideas about East Asian cooperation
may not have been as central to his plans as Ishiwara’s were and while his method for
cooperation may have been different, it seems as though their ideas were not so
drastically different. Both men eventually came to see the necessity of East Asian
cooperation, and both men were more interested in fighting the West. Though the details
of their theories and plans may have been different, their purpose was similar.

98
Hoyt, Warlord,43.

99
Hoyt, Warlord, 116.
45
“Obstructing the Resolution of the China Incident: What is the East Asia League?”
Tōjō may have been Ishiwara’s most powerful detractor, but there were many
others who opposed Ishiwara and the East Asia League. In a publication entitled
“Obstructing the Resolution of the China Incident: What is the East Asia League?”
compiled by the Mental Science Institute in 1941, an anonymous author or authors
delineate their concerns with the East Asia League and the theories behind it. Their
critiques range from extremely rational dismissals of the Final War to seemingly paranoid
claims that the East Asia League forged Diet members’ signatures on important
documents. Examining these critiques in more detail could serve as another way to
contextualize Ishiwara’s theories in the greater scheme of wartime Japan.
The writer begins his critique of the East Asia League with some concerns about
its motivations. After a discussion of the forging of Diet members’ signatures in support
of the East Asia League’s ideas, he expresses his fear that the ideas of the East Asia
League will be forced upon Japan. He sees mass movements on the continent as being
indicators that the ideas of the East Asia League have gained support and will soon
spread to Japan.
100
This is a seemingly paranoid interpretation of the East Asia League,
and the writer seems to feel as though the East Asia League’s advocates’ methods were
somewhat sinister. In addition, according to the writer, those in support of the East Asia
League are using meaningless slogans and have distorted the meaning of the foundation
of Manchukuo in order to make their ideas more appealing: “But the adherents of the
East Asia League are distorting the spirit of the state foundation of Manchukuo and using

100
Shina jihen no kaiketsu wo sogai suru mono: toa renmei to ha nani ka (Obstructing the China Incident:
What is the East Asia League?), (Seishin kagaku kenkyuujou: 1942), 18.
46
meaningless slogans like ‘harmony of the people.’ …they are proactively confusing the
emotional and political connections between Manchukuo and Japan.”
101
Though the
writer does not explain the purpose of this distortion, the notion that the East Asia
League’s supporters have misrepresented history for their own benefit portrays a sense of
foreboding. With these claims, the writer has made the East Asia League seem
threatening and eventually provides more specific criticism.
Later on in the publication, the writer’s critiques are focused on the actual theories
of the East Asia League supporters. Specifically, the writer finds a number of flaws in the
idea of the kingly way. According to the writer, the supporters of the East Asia League
consider the kingly way to be synonymous with the harmony of the people.
102
As
mentioned earlier, the kingly way was never clearly defined and was often discussed in
nebulous terms. The writer of this compilation recognizes this vagueness and questions
the implications of a league based upon the kingly way. The writer also questions
whether the kingly way can be applied to Japan and the rest of East Asia. The writer
questions whether this ideology that the East Asia League adherents are pressing on
others can be found in Japan. Because China and Manchukuo are different from Japan,
the writer questions whether the kingly way and the imperial way can truly be exported to
Japan’s neighboring countries.
103
The notion that the ideology of the kingly way can be
made universal is, in the writer’s eyes, not necessarily valid.

101
Shina jihen, 23.

102
Shina jihen, 25.

103
Shina jihen, 25-6.

47
The writer also questions the methods of those in support of the East Asia League.
He believes that the goals of the formation of the East Asia League are not feasible:
Isn’t advocating independent politics and joint national defense a bit too
optimistic? The politics of New China must be fundamentally subordinated to
Japanese politics. If we proceed from the East Asia League, which advocates the
new political order’s ‘perfect freedom of sovereignty,’ whether Wang Ching-wei
will be anti-Japanese and pro-Communist or pro-Japanese is a secondary problem.
Ultimately, the idea that anti-Japanese sentiment must be thoroughly crushed
should be abandoned. Also, there is the joining of national defense. Will that not
lead to Japan becoming China’s watchdog?
104

The writer does not think that independent politics will succeed because eliminating anti-
Japanese sentiment will be impossible. Joint national defense, he believes, will simply
lead to a situation in which Japan must protect China. Neither of these things will work
out in the way that the East Asia League supporters envision them.
Finally, the writer criticizes Ishiwara’s conception of the final war. He feels that
the war with China must be seen as a total war that will impact the lives of the people
rather than as a means to an end:
The China Incident is a war that risks our country. It is by no means preparation
for the final war. At the present time, while we must protect Japan’s self-reliance,
the incident continues to progress. This war is a total war. Total war means that
right now we must persist in the battle and it means that we must advance and
protect the lives of the people, and therefore it is a war for eternity. The lives of
the people of Japan will become part of this eternal war. The notion that after the
final war will come world peace is a fatal error of the Marxist way of viewing
human life.
105

He feels that looking at the war against China as preparation for the final war is
unrealistic. The war is far more significant than that in the daily lives of the people.

104
Shina jihen, 28.

105
Shina jihen, 30.
48
Furthermore, the idea of the final war is, according to the writer, Marxist. Peace will not
follow war. War is far more everlasting than that.
This publication is significant because it reveals that, at this point in time, the East
Asia League had enough support to begin to look like a threat to those who were against
it. It reveals the writer’s fear of the possibility of Japan being dominated by the East Asia
League’s ideology and his concerns about the ideology itself. He questions whether it can
be applied to Japan and the rest of East Asia, whether the guiding principles would
benefit Japan, and whether the idea of the final war is useful. These critiques are all direct
and contemporary critiques of Ishiwara’s ideas, as Ishiwara’s ideas formed the basis for
the East Asia League. This publication, paired with Ishiwara’s speech discussed earlier,
reveals that there was space in early 1940s Japan for conflicting opinions to be voiced
and for intellectual debate to occur. Appealing to feeling and reason and directly
addressing some of the same issues that Ishiwara referred to in his speech, the compilers
of this publication point out the issues inherent in the formation of the East Asia League
and the methods and ideologies of its supporters. While it is important to understand how
Ishiwara’s ideas were similar to and different from those of specific contemporaries or
groups of contemporaries, it is also important to remember that these personal
disagreements were occurring in the much larger context of wartime Japan. Thus, it is
necessary to examine some of the larger currents of Japanese thought at the time.
Larger Trends: Buddhism, Pan-Asianism, and Radical Shinto Ultranationalism
As both Peattie and Yamamuro explain, the Final War that he believed would
occur within the next fifty years between Japan and the West served as the backbone for
49
Ishiwara’s theories.
106
Based on Nichirenist ideas, Ishiwara believed that the winner of
this Final War would come to rule over the rest of the world in an era of peace. This
notion of Buddhism or other seemingly peaceful ideas serving as a support for war was
by no means unique to Ishiwara’s theories. In his book Zen at War, Brian Daizen Victoria
explains the ways in which various schools of Zen Buddhism worked to make their ideals
more relevant for wartime Japan. Published in 1937, a book called The Buddhist View of
War explained the ways that Buddhism and war were compatible: “Having established
that war is neither intrinsically good nor evil, the authors went on to develop one of the
central themes of their book, that war was a method of accomplishing Buddhist goals.”
107

The book went on to explain that the war in China was being fought to eliminate war
itself and to benefit the people in East Asia. In this complicated society, Buddhism
needed to abandon its pacifist nature and support the war effort because ultimately, the
war was being fought to achieve Buddhist goals.
108
To fit into the ideological landscape
of wartime Japan, Zen Buddhist sects found a way of making their ideas applicable to
war. Whether actively or passively, despite their initial intention, ideas in wartime Japan
were frequently adjusted to justify or support the war effort, and Buddhism is just one
example.
Pan-Asianism, like Buddhism, developed and evolved over the course of the
1930s and was eventually transformed to support Japanese policy. Like Ishiwara, who
called for an East Asian League that would unite Asian nations against the West, pan-

106
Peattie, Ishiwara Kanji, 365; Yamamuro, Manchuria, 19.

107
Daizen Victoria, Zen at War, (Lanham, Md: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2006), 86-8.

108
Victoria, Zen at War, 89, 93.
50
Asianists called for a unity of Asian people based on a common history and culture and a
common destiny against the West.
109
At first, the rhetoric was primarily geared towards
the peaceful unification of East Asian countries: “Early pan-Asianist writings, in a rather
‘romantic’ and ‘idealistic’ manner, emphasized Japanese commonalities with Asia and
aimed at uniting Asian peoples and countries against Western encroachment.”
110
Much
like Ishiwara, early pan-Asianists envisioned cooperation among East Asian countries
against the West.
As time went on, however, the tone of pan-Asianist rhetoric changed and
eventually the theory entered the realm of politics. Depending on contemporary
conditions, “… attitudes towards the necessity for regional cooperation – for which a
base in common racial, cultural, and linguistic features was deemed essential – changed
and were adjusted in a flexible manner over time, according to the changing international
environment and Japan’s situation within the international arena.”
111
Japan’s position in
Asia as advocated by pan-Asianists shifted from being on equal footing to taking a
leadership role. As Sven Saaler explains, as Japan gained power and territory, pan-
Asianism began to serve as a way for Japan to justify its imperial aspirations: “[…] the
growing power of the Japanese nation-state, and growing Japanese self-confidence…
eventually militated against a return to Asia, but led instead to ever-strengthening
Japanese claims of superiority over Asia and leadership in Asia culminating in the ‘new

109
Sven Saaler, “Pan-Asianism in modern Japanese history: Overcoming the nation, creating a region,
forging an empire” in Pan-Asianism in Modern Japanese History: Colonialism, regionalism, and borders,
ed. Sven Saaler and J. Victor Koschmann, (New York: Routledge, 2007), 10.

110
Saaler, “Pan-Asianism,” 3.

111
Saaler, “Pan-Asianism,” 11.
51
order’ of the 1930s and the ‘Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere’ of the early
1940s.”
112
Japan’s new power in the international arena led to a new kind of pan-
Asianism that envisioned Japan leading the rest of Asia against the West rather than
being on equal footing with the rest of Asia. This new pan-Asianism eventually supported
government policies and agendas, including Konoe’s New Order and the Greater East
Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. Evidently, pan-Asianism and its uses evolved significantly
over time.
Because of these changes within pan-Asian thought, it came to embody a number
of contradictions and conflicting perspectives. As Miwa Kimitada explains in his
contribution to Pan-Asianism in Modern Japanese History: Colonialism, regionalism and
borders, different motivations led to different interpretations of pan-Asianism: “When
exposed to the militarily superior and aggressive expansionist threat from the West, some
Japanese, motivated by their communal identity as Asiatics, believed they should work
together for the common goal of regional security, while others were more inclined to
believe in their national uniqueness and capability of establishing Japan’s own national
security on their own.”
113
Views on the role of Asia and the role of Japan within it
differed greatly among pan-Asianists. These internal contradictions are also apparent
within Ishiwara’s theories and in his conception of the East Asia League.
As was common among pan-Asianists, Ishiwara’s ideas included a conviction that
East Asia should work together as equals alongside a belief in Japanese superiority. In

112
Saaler, “Pan-Asianism,” 3.

113
Miwa Kimitada, “Pan-Asianism in modern Japan: nationalism, regionalism and universalism” in Pan-
Asianism in Modern Japanese History: Colonialism, regionalism and borders, ed. Sven Saaler and J.
Victor Koschmann, (New York: Routledge, 2007), 21.
52
The Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia: Visions of World Order in Pan-Islamic and Pan-
Asian Thought, Cemil Aydin points out the contradictions inherent in Japanese pan-
Asianism and uses the East Asia League’s rhetoric as a key example. According to Aydin,
the journal of Ishiwara’s Greater East Asia League serves as a representative of the tone
of Japanese pan-Asianist discussions: “This artificial perspective tended to give the
journal a self-congratulatory tone, which became typical of Japanese pan-Asianism
during the late 1930s; Japanese readers received the impression that Asian nationalists
eagerly looked to Japan for leadership.”
114
Holding a paternalistic view of the rest of Asia,
pan-Asianists called for Japan to guide its neighbors and believed that the people of Asia
were grateful for this assistance. Ishiwara, like the rest of the people holding pan-Asianist
ideas during wartime Japan, called for racial equality under Japanese leadership.
Believing that their actions were for the benefit of the people of East Asia, pan-Asianists
were able to justify Japan’s war effort. These simultaneously condescending and
empowering views of the Asian people were certainly not unique to Ishiwara’s theories
and eventually became integrated into government rhetoric and were used to support
major policies.
Other groups were less concerned with how Japan interacted with its neighbors
and were more interested in how Japan’s government functioned, including a group of
people referred to by Walter Skya as “radical Shinto ultranationalists.” These people used
Shinto ideas to promote their cause: “The Japanese radical Shinto ultranationalists also

114
Cemil Aydin, The Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia: Visions of world order in pan-Islamic and pan-
Asian thought, (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 178.

53
drew on the powerful traditions of absolutism, organicism, and irrationalism in Japanese
history, as well as in Western history. The Shinto doctrines of the ‘unbroken line of
emperors from ages eternal,’ ‘eight corners under one roof,’ and ‘dying to the self and
returning to the one’ were all used to mobilize the nation.”
115
Relying on Japanese
traditions, the radical Shinto ultranationalists reacted to changes in the Japanese
government with alarm. Although its adherents had the same general motivations, like
pan-Asianism, radical Shinto ultranationalism was not a unified school of thought. Skya’s
work discusses the theories of several figures that he believes fall into the radical Shinto
ultranationalist camp and the differences between them.
116
Even within this vocal and
often violent group, there was room for disagreement. This further illustrates the notion
that during this time period, multiple voices coexisted in Japan, and though there were
some points of conflict between them, they overlapped in many ways as well.
Like Ishiwara, the radical Shinto ultranationalists believed that Japan must fight a
holy war that would end with Japan ruling over the rest of the world. Their main source
of concern, much like Ishiwara’s, was the influence of Western nations, and they
envisioned a holy war between Western and Eastern civilizations: “… for [radical Shinto
ultranationalists] the main source of conflict in the world was a civilizational and
religious conflict between a divinely governed theocratic Japanese empire and a secular
global order created and controlled by Western nations.”
117
In terms of the means used to

115
Walter A. Skya, Japan’s Holy War: the ideology of radical Shinto ultranationalism, (Durham: Duke
University Press, 2009), 25.

116
Skya, Japan’s Holy War, 23.

117
Skya, Japan’s Holy War, 11.
54
achieve their goals, the radical Shinto ultranationalists were quite different from Ishiwara.
They “advocated personal government by the emperor and the abolition of parliamentary
government in addition to unlimited expansionism to establish imperial rule in Asia, and
then the world.”
118
While Ishiwara’s Shōwa Restoration aimed to unite the people of East
Asia in harmony in order to win a war based on Buddhist ideas, the Shōwa Restoration of
this group was most concerned with restoring the emperor to a position with more
political clout. Though both aimed to unite the world under Japanese rule and to prove
the superiority of Eastern civilization over that of the West, their methods and
motivations were different. While Ishiwara’s plans were grounded in Buddhism, their
ideas were, as mentioned earlier, based in Shinto. Furthermore, they focused their plans
on domestic change and often took violent measures to invoke change, including a
number of assassinations of major political figures.
119

Ishiwara also differed from this group in terms of how they viewed the Chinese
people. As Skya points out, to the radical Shinto ultranationalists, China could not be
considered a state because it had neither an ethnic base nor a homogenous culture
throughout history: “This idea that China was really not a nation was common among
nearly all Japanese radical Shinto ultranationalist thinkers and was one argument they
used to justify taking over territory in China.”
120
This viewpoint allowed the
ultranationalists to push for expansion without considering the human side of things.
Furthermore, their portrayals of China in this light allowed them to convince the Japanese

119
Skya, Japan’s Holy War, 11.

120
Skya, Japan’s Holy War, 305.
55
people that China was not a threat: “Bombarding the Japanese masses with outdated
perceptions of China and the Chinese people… [t]hey simply reinforced the prevalent
attitude among the Japanese that, since the Chinese people had no true sense of
nationhood, they should be easily conquered.”
121
Unlike Ishiwara, who worked to
understand the Chinese people and cautioned against taking the war with China lightly,
the radical Shinto ultranationalists perpetuated these misperceptions. Though they were
similar in their views of the West and their conviction of a future clash of civilizations,
the methods and motivations of Ishiwara and the radical Shinto ultranationalists differed
in a number of ways.
In the end, a lot of people had similar ideas about the China Incident and Japan’s
role in East Asia. Most people, including those labeled as militarists, did not want to be
involved in a war with China. They saw the Soviet Union and Western civilization in
general as a common threat and wanted to end the war with China as quickly as possible
so that they could focus on more important enemies. More significantly, everyone
believed that they were doing what was best based on their own interpretation of the
situation and that the war Japan was waging was for the benefit of the rest of Asia and
later, the world. Though their methods may have differed, in many ways, their
justifications for their actions were the same.

121
Skya, Japan’s Holy War, 306.

56
Chapter 5: Conclusion
A major figure in the founding of Manchukuo, Ishiwara Kanji is a prominent
figure in historical accounts of prewar Japan. In these accounts, there is little consensus
on the nature of his ideas; while some historians portray him as either a militarist or a
pacifist, others focus on the inconsistencies within his theories or the ways that they
differ from the mainstream. In this thesis, I examined a lecture Ishiwara gave in 1940
called “The Founding of Manchukuo and the China Incident” in order to gain a clearer
understanding of the content of his theories. Inspired by Buddhist ideas, Ishiwara
believed in a final war that would occur between Eastern and Western civilizations, the
winner of which would then go on to rule over the rest of the world. Convinced of the
superiority of Asian civilization, Ishiwara called for an East Asian League that would
unite Japan and its neighbors against the West. Ishiwara was in favor of cooperation with
other countries in Asia and encouraged the Japanese people to work harder in order to
convince China of the benefits of that cooperation. He was well-informed about the
conditions in China at the time and recognized that the Japanese people would need to
modify their behavior in order to curtail the threat of rising anti-Japanese sentiment.
Though he clearly felt that the Japanese nation was superior, he criticized the Japanese
government and the actions of Japanese people, particularly with regard to their actions
on the continent. When examined alongside the ideas of others at the time, it becomes
clear that Ishiwara’s ideas were not as anomalous as often portrayed.
Ishiwara’s ideas overlapped in many ways with those of others during that time
period. Though Ishiwara may have been more aware of the feelings of Chinese people
57
toward Japan, he was not the only person advocating cooperation with the rest of East
Asia against the West. Konoe Fumimaro, three time prime minister during the war,
believed that Chinese cooperation was important for Japan’s success and envisioned a
New Order in East Asia which would involve the cooperation of Manchukuo, China, and
Japan against the West. Tōjō Hideki, often seen as one of the more aggressive figures in
wartime Japan, believed that the war he was waging was for the benefit of the rest of Asia
and felt that the Soviet Union should be Japan’s primary enemy. Pan-Asianists, though
their ideas were not uniform, all felt that East Asia should be united against the common
enemy of the West. Finally, while radical Shinto ultranationalists did not see China as an
equal partner, they believed that Japan’s conflict with the West was a holy war based
upon cultural differences. In this way, although Ishiwara often found himself at odds with
those in power – whether through his own doing or through their persecution of him – his
ideas were far more mainstream than they are often portrayed. Ultimately, his ideas were
not all that anomalous.
In terms of the larger scheme of things, too, Ishiwara’s ideas and theories
functioned in similar ways to other ideas at the time even if they were not necessarily
similar in content. Ishiwara used the promise of a future peace as a means to justify war
and envisioned a future in which all of East Asia would be equal under Japan’s rule.
Ishiwara’s ideas may seem inconsistent or self-contradictory. This was not unique to
Ishiwara, however. Buddhist sects were forced to mold their beliefs to fit into the wartime
ideological landscape and supported the war with China because they believed that it
would bring peace to East Asia. In a similarly seemingly self-contradictory way, pan-
58
Asianists called for equality among East Asian nations under the rule of Japan.
Meanwhile, radical Shinto ultranationalists called for the restoration of the Japanese
emperor to power, criticizing the way that the Japanese government functioned while
considering Japan superior to other nations. Ishiwara’s ideas overlapped with these in
many ways.
While studying Ishiwara’s contemporaries gives us a clearer picture of how
Ishiwara fit into the larger scheme of things, studying Ishiwara himself can also teach us
a great deal about Japan during that time period. Ishiwara’s ideas overlapped with those
of others at the time, and there were common threads between different schools of
thought. Despite these commonalities, however, there were also a great deal of
differences, including ways that groups viewed the rest of East Asia and Japan’s relation
to it, their guiding principles, and the steps that they felt should be taken in order to
secure Japan’s future. The fact that all of these schools of thought were able to coexist is
significant in that it demonstrates that prewar Japan was far from monolithic. There was
space for a number of different perspectives, as is evident from Ishiwara’s lecture and the
pamphlet his opposition wrote critiquing that lecture. There was a great deal of
ideological freedom. Ishiwara’s survival, despite his criticisms of the Japanese
government and people and his conflicts with those in power, is evidence that prewar
Japan was ideologically diverse.
Japan in the 1930s and early 1940s was a place where ideas were manipulated to
fit into the war effort, there was no internal unity, and dominant theories seemed
inherently self-contradictory. Ishiwara Kanji’s theories should be studied with these
59
points in mind. Ishiwara worked towards the formation of an East Asian League that
would promote the cooperation of the people of East Asia. This league, based on the
notion that the races of Japan should be on equal footing with one another, would come
together to fight a war against the West. After emerging victorious from that war, the
Japanese way would come to prevail, and the Japanese emperor would rule over all the
people of the world in an era of eternal peace. For Ishiwara, war was necessary for an
eventual peace. The various facets of his ideas interacted with one another in ways that
were very similar to the ways that the multitude of ideologies used to support the war
effort interacted with and influenced each other. In the larger scheme of things,
Ishiwara’s ideas connected in many ways with the ideas of others. Because of this,
studying Ishiwara Kanji as a representative figure of wartime Japan could give a more
comprehensive picture of how he fits into Japanese society and how Japanese society
functioned.

60
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Creator Egyud, Jessica Kristin (author)

Core Title Anomaly or representative?: challenging common portrayals of Ishiwara Kanji

School College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program East Asian Area Studies

Publication Date 08/31/2012

Defense Date 08/30/2012

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Ishiwara Kanji,OAI-PMH Harvest,Pacific War,Showa Japan

Language English

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Advisor Godart, G. Clinton (committee chair), Piggott, Joan R. (committee member), Sheehan, Brett G. (committee member)

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