ABSTRACT
THE Washington Conference did nothing to ameliorate relations between China and Japan; but the story of the manifold intrigues that centred on the Japanese Legation in Peking is the story of China rather than of Japan. All the Powers professed that they desired to see a strong, prosperous, and united China, and they conspired with one venal general after another, keeping the country in a continual state of war. Dr. Sun Yat-sen in the South could never refrain from coquetting with Japan. At one time Japanese agents tried to induce him to make a declaration that he did not regard Manchuria and Mongolia as an integral part of China, holding out the hope that if he made this declaration Japan would recognise the claims of the Canton Government to be the legitimate Government of the Chinese Republic. The result was that Sun Yat-sen, indignant at such a proposal, entered into an “unholy alliance” with Marshal Chang Tso-lin, the Manchurian dictator; both were advancing on Peking, and the generals of both were bribed to let them down. Japan gained infinite discredit by her dealings with a corrupt gang called the Anfu Club, who were prepared to betray their country in every way for personal gain. Overreaching themselves, they took refuge in the Japanese Legation, which not only protected them, but smuggled them out to resume their malign activities from a safe place. “Incidents,” of course, were numerous, and Mr. Obata, the Minister, always enforced the rule that the Japanese version was true and the Chinese version ridiculous. It was not till December 17, 1922, that the Japanese garrison left Tsingtau in fulfilment of the undertaking made nearly a
year before at Washington. Centralised Government was by this time so disintegrated that Britain, who was supposed to abandon Wei-hai-wei at the same time, never did so, for lack, as officially explained, of a responsible person or body to receive it. Certain it is that Tsingtau, already deteriorated in upkeep in Japanese hands, sank into sad neglect when the Japanese administration was abolished. Except for a voice here and there, feebly advocating a more friendly attitude, there was an almost unrelieved advocacy of strong measures towards China. The Chinese students had naturally become intensely political, and Japanese critics denounced “government by schoolboys.” Viscount Kato never lost an opportunity of showing that he was completely unrepentant regarding the Twenty-one Demands, and continually denounced the Government for not taking a still stronger and still more provocative line in China. Even the exponents of Japanese liberalism were hardly distinguishable from the Jingoes on Chinese questions. Baron Sakatani, who had succeeded the bellicose Okuma as President of the Japan Peace Society, denounced the conciliatory policy towards China, though no such policy was visible. Japanese liberalism at this time, however, was of a peculiar quality. The same statesman, at the beginning of 1923, asked in the Diet for assurances that there should not be, in the new College of Literature and Science, a perpetuation of “the old evil of the predominance of knowledge”—for the East had its war between religion and science as well as the West. General Yamanashi, the Minister for War, then actively engaged in making military drill and instruction a part of the middle school curriculum, endorsed Baron Sakatani, deploring the decline in the spiritual outlook and the growth of materialism, which had resulted in fewer applications for entrance to the Military Academy. The Minister for Education apologetically remarked that efficient teaching was hardly possible without some knowledge of mundane things. But General Yamanashi was not satisfied. Not only was there a lack of eagerness for the army as a career, but
the conscripts were often recalcitrant-a dreadful development which the Minister for War ascribed to the “progress of thought.” Mr. Tokutomi, Japan’s most eminent publicist, developed the theme that conscription should be the key-note of national policy, for Japan, without this moulding to pattern, became a slave to foreign propaganda. The official solicitude for the spiritual outlook was exhibited in the canonisation of the mediæval Buddhist reformer Nichiren, under the name of Rissho Daishi-a very recalcitrant person and a “dangerous thinker” in his time, who spent a large part of his life in banishment on one of the more distant islands. But it is a world-wide phenomenon for the heretic and seditionist of one age to become the fortress of the reactionaries of the next.
