ABSTRACT
Reactions to the Manchurian crisis from within the establishment – roughly defined as the bureaucracy, the cabinet and the two mainstream political parties, the upper echelons of the armed forces and the imperial court – are naturally among the best known, and have often been treated as definitive. They are outlined here partly to establish a norm against which other responses may be measured, but also because closer examination reveals that official opinion was by no means as uniform as it sometimes appears. It might be assumed that if different interpretations and reactions to the events in Manchuria are to be found, they will be found among farmers, or women workers, or business groups, or in some other place outside the national elites. But even at the heart of the establishment, where commitment to the Manchurian project could be most expected, there was in fact significant diversity of opinion.
