CO129-575-3 Japanese affairs 2-1-1939 - 21-12-1939 — Page 237

THIS DOCUMENT IS THE PROPERTY OF HIS BRITANNIC MAJESTY'S GOVERNMENT

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FAR EASTERN (JAPAN).

CONFIDENTIAL.

December 30, 1938.

SECTION 5.

[F 13890/68/23]

Sir R. Craigie to Viscount Halifax.--(Received December 30.) (No. 977. Confidential.) My Lord,

Copy No. 101

Tokyo, December 2, 1938.

I HAVE the honour to transmit herewith a memorandum(1) giving the substance of an outspoken article by Colonel Kenryo Sato, the official spokesman of the Ministry of War, which appeared in the November issue of a magazine called Kakushin. (Colonel Sato's post corresponds with that of the newly-created "Director of Public Relations at the War Office in London.) The title of this publication is the name given to the reactionary renovation movement, advocated by the extreme Right, and Colonel Sato is stressing the need for a national movement to support the continental policy.

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2. It is quite possible in this remarkable country that, notwithstanding his official position, Colonel Sato may be expressing the sectional views of the "young officers " and of extremists, like the Vice-Minister of War, rather than the opinion of the Ministry of War as such. But however this may be, the views of the young officers

are a force which cannot be ignored by their superiors or anyone else, and they have, in fact, been the determining influence in the contemporary history of Japan since 1931.

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3. The doctrine expounded by Colonel Sato is by no means new. The same ideas are to be found on every page of the enclosure in Sir R. Clive's despatch No. 564 of the 25th October, 1934. Their test in operation can only be in the success or otherwise of the continental policy, and it is symptomatic that they should once more find prominent expression after the recent spectacular successes won by the Japanese forces in China.

4. Colonel Sato also appeals for close co-operation and "unity" between this national movement in Japan and similar movements in Manchuria and the new China"; he also appeals to the youth of the three countries. We have already seen in Manchuria the totalitarian State, par excellence, built up under the auspices of the Kwantung Army. Colonel Sato wishes this process to be repeated in Japan and extended further to the "new China." Although he does not elucidate what are to be "the second and third stages of the continental policy," the aggressive potentialities of the self-sufficient bloc envisaged in this article are too patent to need further emphasis.

5. These ideas are completely foreign to the mass of the population of Japan who desire to lead a detached and peaceful existence; there is still wide- spread indifference, if not actual dislike, of the war, especially in the country districts. But a docile and intensely patriotic population, controlled as it is by a military and industrial oligarchy, can readily be coerced into such a move- ment with the weapons of mystical pseudo-religious concepts such as Shinto and "the Kingly Way." The forces of conservatism among the ruling classes are still to be reckoned with, but at present they act as little more than a brake to exclude hasty and precipitate action. The possibility of a Liberal revival when the war is over, as a kind of national reaction against the extravagances of the present, ultra-nationalistic régime, should not be altogether excluded. But this is only a vague possibility whereas the present totalitarian trends are both real and intensely vigorous.

6. The speech of Lieutenant-General Tojo, the Vice-Minister of War, which was reported in my telegram No. 1414 of the 30th November, is a further exposition of the school of thought to which Colonel Sato belongs. A full translation of this speech forms the enclosure in my despatch No. 971 of the 2nd December.

[483 gg-5]

I have, &c.

R. L. CRAIGIE.

(') Not printed.