“a great disobedience against the people”: popular...

53Journal of Japanese Studies, 32:1

© 2006 Society for Japanese Studies

paul e. dunscomb

“A Great Disobedience Against the People”:Popular Press Criticism of Japan’s SiberianIntervention, 1918–22

Abstract: Reports and commentary by Japanese mass-circulation newspapers onthe Siberian Intervention reflect deep ambivalence about the enterprise. Somecriticism of government policy reflected traditional concerns; but a new strainof criticism, unique in the prewar period, claimed that Japan was out of step withthe spirit of international cooperation among the leading democratic powers that emerged victorious at the end of World War I. While initially demanding a “responsible” party government to end the intervention, as the unprofitablestalemate continued, the papers came to lambaste both ineffective party cabinetsand the military for ignoring public opinion.

A confluence of historical events helps explain the 50 months Japanesetroops spent in Siberia from August 1918 through October 1922. The clos-ing acts of World War I, the Bolshevik Revolution and Russian Civil War,and the quest of Japanese expansionists to achieve regional hegemony inEast Asia all played into the decisions that led to the Siberian Interventionand how it unfolded. In Japan itself, the public debate and criticism of thegovernment’s Siberian policy was bound up with and reflected ongoing de-velopments in domestic politics and the evolution of political institutions.Study of Japan’s Siberian Intervention, therefore, would seem to provide po-tential insights into a number of key historical processes taking place inJapan during this period. Despite this, no Japanese or Western historian hasattempted a complete description of the Siberian Intervention or analyzedits impact on domestic politics.1

1. The most striking feature of Japanese scholarship on the intervention is the intense focus on how it began and almost complete indifference to how it ended. Hosoya Chihiro,Shiberia shuppei shiteki kenkyu, 2nd ed. (Tokyo: Shinizumisha, 1976), only covers through Au-gust 1918. Kikuchi Masanori, Roshia kakumei to Nihonjin (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobo, 1973),

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Mary Botto

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54 Journal of Japanese Studies 32:1 (2006)

The intervention unfolded simultaneously with a critical transition inJapan’s political development. Rice riots swept Japan as the climax of ademocratic movement of urban protest, begun in 1905, by ordinary Japan-ese demanding a greater voice in national and international affairs. Ridingthis wave of protest, political parties were able to make their first serious,permanent inroads into the power structure, thereby initiating a system ofdemocratic rule. This period also marked the nadir of the military’s strength,popularity, and political influence.

Almost as important as an examination of the Siberian Intervention’simpact on this transition, and equally neglected, is analysis of the content of criticism brought against the intervention. Possibly this reflects en-trenched assumptions about the nature of domestic criticism of Japan’s for-eign policy in the prewar period. A few socialists and Christian pacifistsaside, debates about Japan’s foreign policy were confined within a narrowrange of acceptable criticism and centered on widespread, popular supportfor imperial expansion and “strong” foreign policy.2 Yet an analysis of criticism of the intervention suggests the limits of the debate were

confines himself largely to events in 1917! Hara Terayuki, Shiberia shuppei, kakumei to kan-sho (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobo, 1989), devotes only a chapter to events after 1920. Only ShinobuSeizaburo, Taisho seijishi (Tokyo: Kawada Shobo, 1968), makes a serious study of the with-drawal from Siberia. Even journal articles are weighted far more heavily toward discussion ofhow the Japanese got into Siberia than how they got out. The only piece specifically discussingwithdrawal, Momose Takashi, “Shiberia teppei seisaku no keisei katei,” Nihon rekishi, No. 428(January 1984), pp. 86 –101, discusses events in May 1921, not 1922 when the Japanese actu-ally withdrew.

The only English-language source solely dedicated to Japan’s experience remains JamesWilliam Morley, The Japanese Thrust into Siberia (New York: Columbia University Press,1954) but, like Hosoya, ends when the first Japanese soldier sets foot in Siberia. The remain-der deal with Japan peripherally at best and none goes beyond Morley’s work. Representativeexamples are: John Albert White, The Siberian Intervention (Princeton: Princeton UniversityPress, 1950); George F. Kennan, Soviet American Relations, 1917–1920, Russia Leaves theWar, Vol. 1 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1956), and Soviet American Relations,1917–1920: The Decision to Intervene, Vol. 2 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1958);Betty Miller Unterberger, America’s Siberian Expedition, 1918–1920 (Durham: Duke Univer-sity Press, 1956); Richard M. Connaughton, The Republic of the Ushakovka: Admiral Kolchakand the Allied Intervention in Siberia, 1918–1920 (London: Routledge, 1990); Ilya S. Somin,Stillborn Crusade: The Tragic Failure of Western Intervention in the Russian Civil War,1918–1920 (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1996).

2. This is a central contention of Andrew Gordon’s The Modern History of Japan: FromTokugawa Times to the Present (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003). In addition, seeSheldon Garon, The State and Labor in Modern Japan (Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress, 1987); Gregory Kasza, The State and the Mass Media in Japan, 1918–1945 (Berkeley:University of California Press, 1988); Sharon Minichiello, Retreat From Reform: Patterns ofPolitical Behavior in Interwar Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1984); George M.Wilson, Radical Nationalist in Japan: Kita Ikki, 1883–1937 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Uni-versity Press, 1969).

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considerably broader in this period than the existing scholarly consensusmight suggest.

Public discussion of foreign policy issues, from revision of the “un-equal” treaties with the West in the 1890s, to the question of war and peacewith China in 1894 –95 and with Russia in 1904 –5, through Japan’s rela-tionship with Republican China after 1911, had long been used as a fulcrumto lever political change. A reading of editorial commentary by Japan’s mass-circulation daily papers shows the intervention to be no exception to thisrule. By looking at the Japanese popular press and how it dealt with events inSiberia, we can place the intervention in the wider context of the develop-ment of Japan’s prewar political institutions, specifically the development ofimperial democracy.

The ubiquity of disenchantment with the intervention and vocal calls forthe government to heed popular desires to modify or end it centered, as be-fore, on a particular political agenda: creation of “responsible” (party cabi-net) governments, universal suffrage, and respect for the popular will. How-ever, criticism of Japan’s policy in Siberia was often framed by how it ignoredor defied the “trends of the times” ( jikan no susei), a euphemism to describethe “triumph” of democracy and Wilsonian internationalism at the end ofWorld War I. The liberalization of Japanese politics desired by many criticsof the intervention was seen as requiring a new sort of foreign policy—internationalist, antimilitarist—which was a radical change from what hadbeen advocated in the past or what would be advocated in the future.

By examining popular criticism of the intervention, we can begin tomeasure the extent to which the Japanese might have been receptive to a re-orientation of their country’s foreign policy to conform to the trends of thetimes. Equally, by looking at the roots of its transience—the way such op-position bucked the general trend of support for unilateralism and empire inJapan’s foreign policy but did not become a permanent feature of popularopinion—we can also draw some conclusions as to why the democraticmovement either “failed” or “evolved” into the more authoritarian, totali-tarian forms of the 1930s.

The arrival of party governments came with the beginning of the inter-vention but their limitations were made manifest by its end. Simply put,Siberia and the way the issue factored in Japanese domestic politics reflectedhow democratic institutions could be initially bolstered and finally undercutby foreign policy issues. Ultimately the public’s cries were for effective gov-ernment (effective in terms of implementing the popular will), and Siberiademonstrated the limited effectiveness of democratic governments.

Newspapers as Industry and Institution

Although it is difficult to find a genuine, unmediated voice for the urbanmasses, the popular, mass-circulation press provides probably the best

Dunscomb: Siberian Intervention 55

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measure of popular attitudes toward the intervention. It is extremely note-worthy, then, that most of Japan’s major dailies were ambivalent or even hostile to the intervention from the start, in strong contrast to their almostuniversal support of unilateralism since the early 1890s. Examination ofmass-circulation dailies provides an understanding of the constant drumbeatof popular sentiment, the political background noise under which Japanesedecision makers operated.

The period spanned by the intervention was an important transitionalphase not merely for Japanese domestic politics but for the Japanese news-paper industry itself. Since the first domestic newspaper was established inthe 1860s, the Japanese newspaper industry grew and evolved rapidly, par-alleling developments that had taken place among Western press institutionsbut at a far more accelerated pace. By the time the Russo-Japanese Warended, the Japanese press had become sophisticated, mass based, industri-alized, and thoroughly commercial.3 As the Siberian Intervention began,Japan’s major daily papers had become big businesses: large, moneymakingcorporations with directors and editors primarily concerned about sellingpapers and making a profit.4

Japan’s two largest urban centers, Tokyo and Osaka, were the base forits great papers, although the two were more competitors with each otherthan separate media markets. The Osaka asahi owned a commercially re-lated but editorially separate Tokyo asahi while the Osaka mainichi had asimilar relationship with the Tokyo nichi nichi. Beyond these were at leasteight other papers with circulations high enough to award them mass status.5

Daily circulation figures for the major papers had begun a general upwardtrend at the beginning of World War I, continued to build through the intervention, and entered an era of explosive growth as new typesetting technology introduced in 1920 finally overcame the last bottleneck to

3. D. Eleanor Westney, Imitation and Innovation: The Transfer of Western Organiza-tional Patterns to Meiji Japan (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987), pp.147–51, 203– 6.

4. Perhaps the best description of the evolution of the Japanese press as a business isJames L. Huffman, Creating a Public: People and Press in Meiji Japan (Honolulu: Universityof Hawaii Press, 1997), pp. 310 –58.

5. These included the Yomiuri and Hochi shinbun (today’s Yomiuri shinbun), Kokuminshinbun and Miyako shinbun (today’s Tokyo shinbun), Yorozu choho, Tokyo mainichi shinbun(not related to the Osaka mainichi), and Nirokou shinbun (all shut down in 1940), and Jijishinpo (merged with Tokyo nichi nichi, 1936). In addition there were the business-orientedChugai shogyo shinpo and Higashi Nihon no shogyo, keizai shi (merged to form Nihon keizaishinbun—Nikkei—in 1942) and Nihon kogyo shinbun which merged with the Nishi Nihonshogyo, keizai shi (1942). A nice graphic representation of the evolution of Japanese newspa-pers into the current “big six” is provided in Sasaki Takashi, Nihon no kindai: Mediya to ken-ryoku, Vol. 14 (Tokyo: Chuo Koron Shinsha, 1999), pp. 24 –25.

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mass printing.6 Osaka asahi’s circulation doubled over the course of the intervention, from about 350,000 in 1918 to 700,000 in 1922. This nearlymatched the Osaka mainichi, which had added an additional 250,000 read-ers between 1918 and 1922. Tokyo asahi figures jumped by around 50 percent to over 300,000 during the intervention. Meanwhile, Tokyo nichi nichifigures nearly doubled, hitting over 600,000 in 1922.7 Though still laggingbehind the most popular tabloids in New York and London, these figureswere comparable to circulation of major papers in those cities. The fact thatthe total number of newspaper subscriptions in Osaka and Tokyo wasgreater than their populations suggests the popularity and penetration of thedailies.8

Historically, the editorial content of Japan’s mass-circulation dailiesrested on three basic pillars: unilateralism, or the notion that Japan shouldpursue its interests in East Asia without reference to the concerns of otherpowers; concern for preservation of “national interests” (kokueki); and rev-erence for the kokutai.9 The tone of the papers was one of extreme patriot-ism, often strident and chauvinistic, which helped to foster a rabid expan-sionism and denied freedom of speech to socialist voices and others whoseemingly denied or threatened the kokutai.10 But during the SiberianIntervention, this monolithic editorial attitude broke down. Of Japan’s masscirculation dailies, only Yorozu choho (among the most strident unilateralistvoices throughout the period of democracy as a protest movement), Kokuminshinbun (a late convert to unilateralism), and the Yomiuri shinbun main-tained a consistently unilateralist attitude throughout the intervention.11

The Siberian Intervention

Before embarking on a detailed analysis of Japanese newspaper com-mentary regarding the intervention, a little historical background seems inorder. Talk about sending Japanese forces into Siberia began almost from themoment V. I. Lenin’s Bolshevik government took power in November 1917.The collapse of Russian central authority provided the Japanese with oppor-tunities and dangers. Many within the government and the army general staffwere eager to exploit the postrevolutionary chaos in the Russian Far Eastin much the same way they had exploited a similar situation in Chinasince 1912. Japanese also worried about the threat that an unstable Russia

6. Westney, Imitation and Innovation, pp. 183–84, Sasaki, Nihon no kindai, p. 351.7. Figures from graph in Sasaki, Nihon no kindai, p. 351.8. Huffman, Creating a Public, pp. 317, 495 (note).9. Ibid., pp. 337–39. Kokutai is the virtually untranslatable phrase (usually rendered

“national polity”) denoting the emperor as the spiritual and political head of the nation.10. Ibid., pp. 377–78.11. Ibid., p. 506 (note); Asahi Shinbun, ed., Asahi shinbunshi: Taisho, Showa senzen hen

(Tokyo: Asahi Shinbunsha, 1990), p. 80.

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or, worse yet, one dominated by hostile Bolsheviks would pose to Japan’scolonial possessions in Korea and South Manchuria as well as Japan’s posi-tion in Manchuria generally.

Discussion of some form of intervention grew urgent after the Bolsheviksmade a separate peace with Germany by the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March1918. Although France and Britain applied considerable pressure for an in-tervention, both Japan and the United States, for widely divergent reasons,were unwilling to send troops to Russia in order to reconstitute an EasternFront against Germany. Even those within the army general staff and the gov-ernment of Terauchi Masatake who were most eager to intervene stayed theirhands for fear of alienating the United States.

The debate surrounding an intervention was not merely a discussion ofwhether troops should be sent to quell disorders in Siberia. For many, thequestion of intervening in Siberia was tantamount to joining the war againstGermany as a full belligerent. Although Japan had entered the war under theterms of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance in August 1914, the costs so far, un-der ¥100 million and just over one thousand killed, were far outweighed bythe benefits: military control over the former German colonies in China andthe Pacific north of the equator.12

However, involvement in Russia would not only require far more troopsand much greater expenditures but risked plunging the empire into the samesort of war of attrition its allies were trapped in. The constant discussion ofJapan’s duty as an ally, continuing reports in newspapers and magazines ofthe eastern spread of German power into Asia, and the public attitude of thegeneral staff that sending troops to Siberia essentially constituted invasionof a hostile nation led to a feeling that Japan was plunging into a vast anddangerous undertaking.13

U.S. opposition to a Japanese intervention evaporated in July 1918 whenPresident Woodrow Wilson proposed a joint dispatch of troops to Vladivos-tok. Each nation would send a modest force of 7,000 men to secure the largeamounts of allied war materials stockpiled in and around the port and to es-tablish a base for the rescue of Czechoslovak troops who in May and Junehad occupied key points along the Trans-Siberian Railway. Recognizingtheir opportunity, the army general staff, with the approval of the Terauchicabinet, dispatched 72,000 men to seize the Trans-Baikal, Amur, and Mar-itime Provinces of the Russian Far East, taking control of the Trans-SiberianRailway from Irkutsk to Vladivostok and its subsidiary, the Chinese EasternRailway, running through north Manchuria.


12. Tobe Ryoichi, Nihon no kindai: Gyakusetsu no guntai, Vol. 9 (Tokyo: Chuo KoronShinsha, 1998), pp. 216 –17. Budget figures in “Shiberi shuppei sokanjo,” Tokyo asahi,June 26, 1922, in Taisho nyuzu jiten, Vol. 5 (Tokyo: Asahi Communications, 1989), pp. 284 –85.

13. Kikuchi, Roshia kakumei to Nihonjin, pp. 66 – 67.

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Just as the intervention was being announced and implemented, Japanwas rocked by the so-called “rice riots” of August and September 1918. Asa result of these protests, the Terauchi cabinet fell and was replaced byJapan’s first cabinet dominated by the majority party in the Diet, the Seiyukaiunder the leadership of Hara Takashi. After World War I ended in Novem-ber 1918, half of the troops in Siberia were withdrawn, partly in response todemands at home and partly in response to U.S. protests. From that point theoverall objective of the Siberian Intervention shifted from an ostensibly anti-German to a vaguely anti-Bolshevik emphasis. After the collapse of theWhite government at Omsk in late 1919, the United States announced its in-tention to withdraw. The last U.S. troops left Vladivostok on April 1, 1920.

The Japanese government was unable to follow suit. Although manyboth within and outside the government argued for leaving with the UnitedStates, divisions between a Hara cabinet favoring withdrawal and an armygeneral staff intent to remain paralyzed decision making. In addition, fromMarch through June 1920 the slowly developing disaster of the NikolaevskMassacre, which involved the slaughter of nearly 700 Japanese soldiers andcivilians by Russian partisans turned freebooters, caused the government toexpand its commitment in Siberia. The government’s official policy state-ment on March 31, 1920, cited the need to protect the lives and property ofits nationals as justification for Japanese troops to remain in the Russian FarEast until the political situation had been “stabilized.”

During the second half of 1920, Hara whittled down the size of the oc-cupied territories and the number of troops stationed there, and in May 1921he was able to compel the general staff to agree to a complete withdrawal inprinciple. However, a rump intervention centered on Vladivostok persistedwhile representatives of the army desperately attempted to gain a favorableposition for Japan in the newly formed Far Eastern Republic (a “noncom-munist” buffer state formed in late 1920 on the orders of Lenin to assuageJapanese fears of a Red Army sweeping up to the shores of the Japan Sea).Although the general staff pursued negotiations with Soviet authorities,Japan’s army in Siberia achieved neither the stability nor the commercial ad-vantages they had sought. When Admiral Kato Tomosaburo assumed thepremiership in June 1922, he immediately announced that Japanese forceswould leave Siberia by the end of October. When the last troops left on Oc-tober 25, virtually all the Japanese civilians in Siberia left with them. Japan’sinfluence in the Russian Far East was extinguished.

Debating the Necessity of Intervention

How did Japan’s mass circulation daily newspapers report, comment on, and attempt to shape the Siberian Intervention from the earliest discus-sions in late 1917 to the final withdrawal in October 1922? Initial debate


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regarding a possible intervention focused largely on the plan, drawn up byFrench Marshall Ferdinand Foch, to send Japanese and American forcesacross the Urals to reconstitute the Eastern Front against Germany that hadcollapsed when Bolshevik leaders agreed to an armistice with the Germans.This notion was a complete nonstarter in Japan. The Terauchi cabinet wasunsympathetic from the first and even among the most fervent proponentsof an intervention in the army general staff, there was little enthusiasm forthis idea. The papers, too, were extremely hostile, although in the course oftheir attacks upon the plan they gave hints that there could be circumstancesunder which an intervention might be warranted. This, however, was limitedto “removal of disturbances to the peace of East Asia.”14

In late December 1917 Chinese troops put down the attempt of theworkers’ and soldiers’ soviet in Harbin to seize control of that city along withthe Russian-controlled Chinese Eastern Railway zone that ran across NorthManchuria. Speculation immediately began about whether the Japaneseshould take similar actions in Vladivostok. On December 28, 1917, the Tokyoasahi criticized the government’s rationale for an intervention. “Saying wewould intervene in the Siberian region to support political stability and toprotect the lives and property of foreigners can hardly be expected to bringRussia’s Bolsheviks [kagekiha, extremists] great happiness as, from theirstandpoint, it would be the same as a declaration of war against Russia.”15

While the Tokyo asahi had little fondness for the Bolsheviks, it would notcountenance intervention against them.16

As a precautionary measure, two Japanese warships were dispatched toVladivostok without obtaining prior permission from Russian authorities.Their unannounced arrival on January 12, 1918, drew bitter condemnationfrom the local soviet.17 The Jiji shinpo noted this on January 13. “China’s in-tervention in Harbin was in its former sovereign territory; Japan [intervening]in Russia would be completely different.”18 The Jiji was willing to concedethe severity of the situation in Siberia and that in situations where “the faithand honor of the Russian government should entirely fall away, or if thepower to protect its own soil should be lost,” action might be justified. But thattime had not yet come. “We must not make the mistake of poisoning the feel-ings of the Russians by taking the management of affairs out of their hands,”they insisted. “To send troops into another country is a gravely serious mat-ter and . . . this sort of thing is something we absolutely should not do.”19

14. Ibid., p. 69.15. Ibid., p. 68.16. Ibid., pp. 94 –95.17. Hara, Shiberia shuppei, pp. 174 –75.18. “Urajio homen no keikoku,” Jiji shinpo, January 13, 1918, in Taisho nyuzu jiten,

Vol. 3, p. 258.19. Ibid.

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As 1918 proceeded, reports of German penetration deeper into Russiaproved a source of constant anxiety and prompted calls on the part of unilateralists, members of the Foreign Ministry, and general staff for inter-vention in Siberia to protect war stocks in Vladivostok and to take controlof the Trans-Siberian Railway (including the Chinese Eastern). Consistentwith their concern for maintaining the nation’s rights and interests in Koreaand Manchuria, newspaper opinion was unanimous that any direct threatsthere would be a grave problem and would have to be resisted. But unilater-alist claims that such a threat did in fact currently exist often provoked disagreement.

In an editorial on March 9, 1918 (about a week after the Bolshevikssigned the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk ending the war with Germany), Tokyoasahi recapitulated the reasons that Britain, France, and Italy, Japan’s formalallies, had for requesting a Japanese intervention. They greatly feared thatRussia might become more a German ally than a neutral nation after signinga separate peace. But the editorial also pointed out the consistent Americanopposition to any Russian intervention, which put Japan in difficulties.20

“Presently we are one of the allied nations and because of [America’s atti-tude] it has been extremely troubling for us.” A serious German threat wouldneed to be resisted. “Of course it would be necessary, to preserve the peaceof East Asia, to expel German power from Siberia and north Manchuria.”But the Terauchi cabinet was not being honest about the extent of this threat.No intervention could take place before the matter had been debated and thepeople united behind it. “The Terauchi ministry has not been up to this heavyresponsibility.”21

Several basic tropes of editorial comment regarding the intervention are available here: deep skepticism regarding the extremity and imminenceof the threat; the need to uphold its duties as an allied country but not toalienate the United States; the necessity of the government to attain popularassent to any intervention; and a basic distrust of the cabinet’s ability tocarry through a policy having such support. These are the themes one findsthroughout the intervention. Some were quite traditional: doubt of the capacity of the government of the day to conduct foreign affairs, for in-stance. The constant concern for protecting Japan’s international status asone of the allied countries also mirrors historical concern for maintainingthe nation’s international position. But the willingness to downplay the levelof danger and the need to stay in step with the United States was some-thing new.

20. Woodrow Wilson, in deference to Washington’s dictum against involving Americain “entangling alliances,” brought the United States into World War I as an “associate” of theallies.

21. “Sankoku no shuppei yokyu,” Tokyo asahi, March 9, 1918, p. 3.

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An example of the former is a Tokyo asahi editorial from June 1918 re-garding the extent of the German menace to Siberia. It noted German ac-tions in the Ukraine, Crimea, and Finland and apparent designs on CentralAsia. However, in regard to Siberia, the editors saw no need for alarm.

Naturally the Germans would like to expand into Siberia, but they are at-tempting the decisive battle abroad and face great discontent about war ex-penditures at home. As for them going some way east of the Urals, the truthis there is nothing to spare for these activities. Of course there are now a fewAustro-German prisoners left in Siberia. However, before the German mil-itarists would dare to use them, the idea that Russian Bolshevik thoughtmight infect the Fatherland makes the militarists look on them as enemies.22

Despair over the ineptitude of the Terauchi cabinet reached an earlypeak after the murder of three Japanese in Vladivostok on April 4, 1918,prompted the landing of naval infantry there. The Bolsheviks had greatlyfeared such a move by Japan and responded with strident calls to resist theJapanese “invasion.” This was an overreaction. No such full-scale commit-ment of Japanese forces was seriously contemplated, but it did not help theTerauchi cabinet avoid blame. “Our distrust of the idle and unskilled diplo-macy of our current cabinet has reached an unbearable point,” Tokyo asahibemoaned. “It is not libelous to say that they have added active failure totheir passive idleness and lack of skill in their diplomacy toward the gov-ernment of Bolshevik Russia.”23

By contrast, American diplomacy was a model of restraint. This was asource of chagrin but also of some envy.

The American attitude toward Russia has been the complete opposite of Japan’s. America, having outwitted Japan, has acquired various rights andinterests in Siberia. It is natural that it has already acquired the right to manage the Chinese Eastern Railway (and in good time the entire Trans-Siberian). Originally it was said among Japanese diplomats that America’sdiplomacy was the most clumsy; according to reports, the number of suchfrivolous fellows dismissing it with laughter were not few. But looking atthe skill above, it is very difficult to despise the diplomacy of the Americans.We know that they have left Japan far behind.24

Up to this point a principal object of the newspaper’s wrath was ForeignMinister Motono Ichiro. The papers appreciated the fact that Motono faced a difficult situation. Trying to steer policy between the pro- and anti-interventionist camps while making sure Siberia did not end up underGerman control would tax any foreign minister. But there was little doubt

22. “Shiberi no shin keisei,” ibid., June 12, 1918, p. 3.23. “Tairo gaiko sanzan no shippai,” ibid., April 11, 1918, p. 3.24. Ibid.

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that Motono never possessed the level of necessary skill, and the generalconsensus was that the problem was largely his own fault.25

Consequently, it was with some enthusiasm that the papers greetedMotono’s replacement, after the disastrous landing at Vladivostok, by HomeMinister Goto Shinpei on April 23. At first it seems that the principal sourceof approval for Goto was that he was not Motono. Only in time would it be-come clear that Goto was as much dedicated to a policy of unilateral inter-vention as his predecessor. Yet accession of the new foreign minister alsosuggested hope of a major political change. Traditionally the foreign minis-ter had always been a career bureaucrat chosen from the pool of overseasambassadors. Goto’s selection broke with that tradition and the Tokyo asahidared suggest that this might prove a model for the future.

Under the headline “San daibatsu no teppai” (Abolish the three greatcliques), the editors noted the precedent Goto’s elevation promised to estab-lish. If it became a regular practice, along with the election of the head ofthe imperial university system, it might end the foreign ministry and schol-arly cliques. But the great hope was that this might embolden politicians tomove to take on the military clique as well. Finding a way to break the holdof the military, particularly the adventurous general staff, was necessary toprotect Japan. “The romping and disasters of our nation’s military clique arevery much like the Germans,” they lamented. In keeping with the trends ofthe times, “the destruction of the three great cliques is the just demand of the age.”26

This highlights another key area in which editorial comment on Siberiawas used as a device for suggesting political reform and change. These po-litical aspects received particular emphasis as the intervention moved to-ward becoming an accomplished fact. The Siberian Intervention provedmore than a convenient stick to beat the government of the day. Rather, likemany such issues before it, it became a lever to try and force politicalchange. In the broadest sense, the desire was simply to create a governmentmore responsive to the popular will. Specifically, the desired changes werethe institution of responsible government and an end to military interferencein foreign affairs.

The Intervention Begins

As a result of Woodrow Wilson’s invitation for a joint U.S.-Japanese in-tervention, the Tokyo asahi noted that the “dead ashes [of the intervention]have again begun to burn.” The paper remained skeptical about the wisdomof such a policy, noting on July 4, “in the end, no matter how many troopsthe government dispatches to Siberia, it is reasonable to assume it will lose

25. “Motono gaiso no jirenma,” ibid., March 15, 1918, p. 3.26. “San daibatsu no teppai,” ibid., April 26, 1918, p. 3.

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face before the world.” It condemned Terauchi for not bringing the matterbefore the recently concluded fortieth Diet. An important matter of policywas being sacrificed to lesser considerations. “For the members of the cab-inet, matters of national defense are less important than the cabinet’s sur-vival; more important than foreign policy, for domestic purposes they preferthe movement of a few troops.”27

Tokyo asahi was among the most outspoken in seeing no justificationfor the intervention whatsoever. Others, Jiji for instance, were much morewilling to see the justice in some sort of intervention, though it was reluc-tant to act in the face of American opposition.28 Osaka mainichi believedJapan should conduct the intervention unilaterally. “Not only is this a mat-ter of Japan’s trust and honor,” it claimed, “but this is a chance for the Japan-ese army to sufficiently demonstrate the swift use of its power to aid civi-lization. An independent intervention in no way conflicts with the allies’grand strategy. Rather we must emphasize the wonderful effect it will haveon the larger spirit of allied operations to have this division of labor.”29

However, all of these papers shared the view that whatever course thenation was to take regarding Siberia, the Terauchi cabinet could not betrusted to carry it out. The Osaka mainichi was exceptionally blunt.

A capable politician possessing confidence, power, and skill with the support of the people would have the qualities necessary to take decisive action under the name of national unity from the first; however, if this islacking, it is a reckless thing to do. With the Terauchi cabinet in its waningdays and lacking this confidence, is it really appropriate to take this actionunder a sort of perverted spirit? Is there not true danger of their carryingthis out unsatisfactorily? There is probably no one who does not share this fear. Does anyone have faith that the Terauchi cabinet can succeed in thisaction?30

The solution to the question was clear.

We do not know what form or method or at what time the Terauchi cabinetmight carry out an intervention. Speaking plainly of constitutionalism, theDiet, that is to say the numerous parties, that is to say the opinion of theSeiyukai on the advisability of this inept decision, will determine the life ordeath of the Terauchi cabinet and the international position of the empire.We must say the Terauchi cabinet is not up to taking this grave responsibil-ity, and there is nothing more important than making clear the propriety ofgiving this heavy responsibility to the parties. The intervention problem and

27. “Shuppei ron no konkyo,” ibid., July 4, 1918, p. 3.28. “Rengokoku no shuppei kibo tsuyomaru,” Jiji shinpo, June 16, 1918, in Taisho nyuzu

jiten, Vol. 3, p. 266.29. “Shuppei mondai ikan,” Osaka mainichi, July 14, 1918, in ibid., pp. 270 –71.30. Ibid.

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the fate of the Terauchi cabinet have really placed the Seiyukai in a difficultposition. Truly, the Seiyukai, whatever its course of action, will greatly con-tribute to the fate of the empire.31

Throughout July 1918 the Advisory Council on Foreign Affairs (GaikoChosakai) debated its answer to Wilson’s invitation. The council had beencreated by the Terauchi cabinet as a means of bringing all interested con-stituencies, including the political parties, into the decision-making processwith the hope of reaching consensus on foreign policy. The papers recog-nized the council debate as a turning point both in the evolution of Japan’sforeign policy but also in its domestic politics. While the vast majority ofcouncil members were generally hawkish regarding the intervention, theirplans came to naught particularly as a result of opposition on the part ofHara Takashi and the Seiyukai.

This was certainly noted at the time and much public discussion was de-voted to it. Numerous articles detailed the tortuous course of negotiations,and the fact that Hara had become the fulcrum of Japanese politics was loston no one.32 The final displacement of Yamagata Aritomo and the last re-maining Meiji elder statesmen from policymaking was also noted and ex-tensively analyzed.33 It was with the full realization that Hara would formJapan’s first party cabinet that the attacks on Terauchi and calls for his res-ignation continued.

As the political crisis surrounding intervention was reaching its heightin mid-July, the Osaka asahi weighed in. It complained that “the justi-fications [for intervention] given up to now have been exceedingly contra-dictory and feeble,” and even now its objectives had not been clarified.“These things are unworthy of our system of constitutional politics.” Itfeared that the authorities would try to sneak a larger intervention in afterthe more limited one proposed by Wilson had begun. It also chastised themfor their avowed wish to enter Siberia to overthrow the Bolsheviks.

To go beyond the cooperative intervention, without its reasons and ob-jectives having been made clear, would this not be a threat to our coopera-tion with other nations? By doing this alone Japan would be in a terriblydisadvantageous position; it would appear Japan had taken a step closer to militarism.

To be frank, if Count Terauchi and Baron Goto take charge of things,Japan’s position will quickly become an untenable one. Although theyfirmly intend to carry out an intervention, they have, however, not providedtruly powerful reasons and objectives. They are drawing the people step bystep into a dangerous place. Today is not the time for a few bureaucratic

31. Ibid.32. Note the articles on pp. 270 –75 of Taisho nyuzu jiten, Vol. 3.33. “Shuppei mondai to seikyoku,” Tokyo asahi, July 20, 1918, in ibid., pp. 275–76.

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politicians to lead the people blindly. If we intervene, we say it will be agreat disobedience against the people.34

The announcement that Japan would intervene in Siberia was made in astatement on August 2, 1918. It started with words of support for Russia andthe hope that order there might quickly be restored. It noted the disorderedstate of Russian politics, the threat of German expansion into the RussianFar East, and that Austro-German prisoners of war were leading the resist-ance against the Czechoslovaks. In order to prevent chaos from spreading,the Japanese government was accepting the American proposal to jointlysend troops to Vladivostok. The statement renounced any desire to infringeon Russian territorial sovereignty or interfere with internal developments,expressed the intention to withdraw rapidly once order was restored, andended with a wish that relations with Russia and the Russian people couldbe restored to the previous state of friendship.35

While such expressions might have disappointed advocates of unilateralintervention, for the moment at least they brought praise from those who hadrejected the intervention in the past. What was particularly pleasing was thenew spirit of cooperation that seemed to be blossoming with the UnitedStates. The Tokyo nichi nichi summed this up in an editorial on August 8. Itfirst noted that relations with America had been troubled by misunderstand-ings in the past but that this fear had been removed in the case of Siberia:

That is to say, our fair and honest objectives in the Vladivostok intervention,by virtue of our empire’s statement of August 2, are limited to defendingagainst the eastward spread of Germany and supporting the Czechoslovaktroops. By these means we shall free Russia of German oppression. Wehave no ambition to occupy one point of ground. How much will this helpthe [American] Japan-bashers [hainichi ronsha] for the first time to under-stand Japan and sweep away their suspicions?36

This newfound spirit of cooperation began to break down almost im-mediately. On August 14, the Terauchi cabinet announced that it was dis-patching troops to Manchuli on the Manchurian side of the Russian borderin the Chinese Eastern Railway zone, under the terms of a military cooper-ation agreement with China signed the previous May. These troops imme-diately began to pour over the border into the Trans-Baikal region ofSiberia. Despite the ministry’s insistence that the two interventions wereseparate undertakings, the Americans protested that Japan was violating itspledges under the intervention announcement of August 2.37

34. “Kokumin o azamukuna,” Osaka asahi, July 17, 1918, in ibid., p. 273.35. “Shuppei seigen,” Jiji shinpo, August 3, 1918, in ibid., p. 278.36. “Nichibei kyocho,” Tokyo nichi nichi, August 8, 1918, in ibid., pp. 281–82.37. Hara, Shiberia shuppei, pp. 398– 407.

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On August 20, the government formally announced the formation of the Rinji Shiberia Keizai Enjo Iinkai (Committee for Economic Aid toSiberia). Although nominally designed to mirror America’s stated intentionto “send to Siberia a commission of merchants, agricultural experts, laboradvisors, Red Cross representatives and agents of the Young Men’s Christ-ian Association. . . . to relieve the immediate economic necessities of thepeople there,”38 the committee was actually the foreign ministry’s unofficialarm for fostering Japanese economic penetration of the Russian Far East.39

On the day the committee was announced, the Osaka mainichi opined thatits efforts would be but pale and feeble imitations of American actions andonce again blasted the Terauchi cabinet for its handling of the situation.While the committee had ambitious goals, the editors noted that “any hopeof putting this into practice disappeared as the Cabinet faced the outbreak ofthe rice riots.”40

Given the difficulties of international affairs, alacrity in bringing forwardappropriate measures is necessary to unite the nation and preserve the em-pire’s international position. However, with the Terauchi cabinet’s immoraland inept attitude of hostility toward the people and competition with thepowers, the grave responsibility of aiding Russia will be as difficult toachieve as being “trapped between high mountains and crossing northernseas.” We look at the cabinet and think of these things and we become ex-ceptionally angry. If for no other reason than the successful management offoreign affairs, the Terauchi cabinet should quickly retreat from its positionand open a new, wise course to the people’s hearts, but we know they can-not hope to succeed. While we recognize the necessity of quickly makingplans [to aid Russia], we believe the resignation of the Terauchi cabinetmust come first.41

Impact of Censorship

At this point it is necessary to consider two important matters not di-rectly related to the intervention itself but which had a vitally importantbearing on it. These were the question of censorship and the relationship ofthe Siberian Intervention to the rice riots of August and September 1918.These subjects were intimately related. Under the revised newspaper law of 1909 it was possible for various ministries to announce restrictions oncoverage of certain events. The principal means by which the Home Min-istry enforced such restrictions was an after-the-fact ban on the sale of the

38. Morley, The Japanese Thrust into Siberia, p. 294.39. Ibid., pp. 407–13; Sven Saaler, “Nihon no tairiku shinshutsu to Shiberia shuppei,”

Kanazawa Daigaku Keizai Gakubu ronshu, Vol. 19, No. 1 (December 1998), pp. 267–70.40. “Shiberia keizai enjo,” Osaka mainichi, August 20, 1918, in Taisho nyuzu jiten, Vol. 3,

pp. 758–59.41. Ibid.

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offending edition (hatsubai kinshi) or a ban on publication by the offendingpaper or magazine (hakko kinshi).42

In December 1917 (during the crisis in Harbin), an order prohibitingcoverage of military activities was briefly put in place. As negotiations on amilitary cooperation agreement with China progressed in April 1918, pro-hibitions were placed on discussion of Sino-Japanese military cooperation,Japanese military support to China and Russia, and troop mobilization or in-tervention. In July 1918, even before the first troops were assembled forVladivostok, the Army Ministry announced a prohibition on articles assess-ing the mobilization of troops, the actions of the Army Ministry, or evencensorship itself. On July 31 the Home Ministry imposed a complete ban oncoverage of the intervention.43

No paper suffered more from censorship in the early days of the inter-vention than the Osaka asahi. Its December 18, 1917, edition was confiscatedbecause of an editorial on army plans for an intervention in north Manchuria.Sale of the April 23, 1918, edition was banned for a piece describing theactions of army officers in Siberia. Tokyo asahi was not immune. An articleinsisting that the general staff was agreeing to a limited intervention in Vladi-vostok while preparing for a full-scale intervention in the Trans-Baikalregion brought a ban on sales of its July 17, 1918, edition.44

It is difficult to measure with any exactness the extent to which censor-ship played a role in discouraging negative comments and coverage of theintervention. The most important thing to note is that the censorship regimewas never so harsh as it was at the very beginning.45 The Terauchi cabinethad long harbored deep dislike for the press. This was certainly not helpedby the abuse heaped on cabinet members for their handling of the interven-tion. But it was coverage of the rice riots that drew the full wrath of HomeMinistry officials.46

Protests against the high price of rice, often accompanied by looting ofrice shops, spread from rural villages and towns into the cities on August 1,the day before the intervention was officially announced. Protests and riots

42. Richard H. Mitchell, Censorship in Imperial Japan (Princeton: Princeton UniversityPress, 1983), chapter 4 passim.

43. Asahi Shinbunsha, ed., Asahi shinbunshi, pp. 77–79.44. Ibid., pp. 80 –81.45. This is based on my own readings of articles over the course of the intervention as a

whole and substantiated by Oya Wataru, “Shiberia shuppei moto ni okeru nara rentai no kita-man hahei ni tsuite,” in Hoken shakai to kindai: Tsuda Hideo sensei koki kinen (Osaka:Dobosha, 1989), p. 837. The great exception was a complete ban on coverage of troops beingused to suppress Korean independence supporters after March 1919.

46. Inoue Yasuji and Watanabe Tetsu, eds., Kome sodo no kenkyu, Vol. 1 (Tokyo: Arina-gakaku, 1954), pp. 124 – 45, provides an overview of the rice riots. Michael Lewis, Rioters andCitizens: Mass Protest in Imperial Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), pp.82–134, is the best English-language source.

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grew increasingly severe in Japan’s major cities through August, with prepa-rations for the intervention being blamed for speculation in rice that forcedup prices and encouraged further protests. Troops were turned out, ulti-mately being sent to 70 locations nationwide, to quell disturbances that werenot finally put down until September.47 With the call up of troops, the news-papers launched a furious campaign of denunciation against the Terauchiministry for its handling of the riots. The government’s response was to im-pose some of the harshest censorship the Japanese press had ever known, in-cluding an attempted deathblow aimed at the Osaka asahi, one of the largestand most popular newspapers in the country.48

On August 26, 1918, Osaka asahi published a deliberately inflamma-tory article covering a protest rally in Osaka which made reference to aphrase in a Chinese poem, “a white rainbow pierced the sun,” which wasused as an omen foretelling the collapse of the imperial dynasty. The Tera-uchi cabinet condemned the phrase as revolutionary, seized the offending issue, indefinitely suspended publication by the paper, and began legal pro-ceedings to shut it down entirely. In the end, this was avoided, but the paperwas forced to publicly apologize for its actions and the president and man-aging editor were compelled to resign.49

No survey of newspaper coverage of the intervention can proceed with-out taking some stock of how the incident affected the newspaper industrygenerally. Although the attempt to shut down the Osaka asahi failed, apowerful message was sent. No other paper attempted to defend or speak upfor the Osaka asahi on free speech or other grounds. Editors and reportersstepped away from their previous advocacy of public protest. Clearly thepress was more chastened and cautious in the following years.50 That beingsaid, it should also be noted that when the Hara cabinet finally replaced theTerauchi ministry in September, the censorship regime was significantly re-laxed. Coverage of the troop withdrawals that began in December 1918 wasfully detailed and entirely uncensored.51 As we shall see, the editorial depart-ments did find their voices once again, but this took a certain amount of time.

Newspaper Coverage of the Intervention

Once troops went into the field, a certain schizophrenia crept into cover-age of the Siberian Intervention. From an editorial standpoint, many papers

47. Inoue and Watanabe, eds., Kome sodo no kenkyu, p. 125.48. For newspaper coverage of the riots and subsequent censorship, see Huffman, Creat-

ing a Public, pp. 366 –70, and Mitchell, Censorship in Imperial Japan, pp. 176 –79.49. Details are available in Asahi Shinbunsha, ed., Asahi shinbunshi, pp. 93–116, and

Sasaki, Nihon no kendai, pp. 247–50.50. Huffman, Creating a Public, p. 370.51. Note the articles on pp. 290 –91 of Taisho nyuzu jiten, Vol. 3.

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still opposed it but the fact was the intervention was news, perhaps thebiggest story beyond the rice riots to happen that year, and the commercialinstincts of all the papers dictated that they should not skimp on coverage.Even the Osaka asahi, strident foe of intervention, sent special reporters toVladivostok and boasted the only news photographer in Siberia, a great coupfor both the Osaka and Tokyo papers.52 Osaka mainichi’s special telegramsinformed readers about the occupation of major cities and towns and de-scribed the heroic actions of its troops, fights on trains, and the use of air-craft.53 Yet once Japanese troops had occupied the three Far Eastern pro-vinces of Siberia, the kind of action that made for exciting news dispatchespretty much disappeared.

In the wake of the rice riots, Hara Takashi formed Japan’s first true partycabinet in September 1918, thereby bringing the period of democracy asprotest movement to an end and initiating the period of democracy as a sys-tem of rule. He took up his post determined to pursue a policy of coopera-tion with the United States and to secure Japan’s vital interests in Manchuria.Hara had brought the former vice-chief of the army general staff, Tanaka Giichi, aboard as his army minister in an effort to secure cooperative rela-tions with the army. Although few had worked harder than Tanaka to bringabout a Siberian Intervention, he sided with Hara against the general staff asa means to increase his own political power.54

With the end of World War I, Tanaka announced that half of the 72,000troops dispatched to Siberia despite American protests were to be with-drawn. With this, the Siberian Intervention began a long, slow decline,marked by continuous argument between the Hara cabinet and the generalstaff. As the situation in Siberia grew static, newspaper coverage began tofall off. Throughout 1919 it is fair to say the intervention was a constant but hardly commanding presence in Japanese newspapers and would onlymanage to gain a hold on public attention sporadically for its remainingyears. One such period was late 1919 through mid-1920.

The White government collapsed and fled its capital in Omsk in No-vember 1919. With no organized resistance against the oncoming RedArmy, the United States announced it would withdraw its forces from

52. Asahi Shinbunsha, ed., Asahi Shinbunshi, pp. 81–82.53. This and a number of such articles are reproduced in Taisho nyuzu jiten, Vol. 3, pp.

287–89.54. Koketsu Atsushi, Kindai Nihon no seigun kankei: Gunjin Tanaka Giichi no kiseki

(Tokyo: Oofusha, 1987), pp. 175–78; Kawada Minoru, “Dai ichiji sekai taisen shuketsu zengoni okeru Hara Kei no koso,” Nihon Fukushi Daigaku Kenkyu kiyo, Vol. 92, No. 2 (January1995), pp. 2–3; Seki Shizuo, “Hara Kei gaiko shido,” Teizukayama Daigaku kiyo, No. 37(March 1994), pp. 57–59; Takahashi Hidenao, “Hara naikaku no seiritsu to soryokusenseisaku: ‘Shiberia Shuppei” kettei katei o chushin ni,” Shirin, Vol. 68, No. 3 (May 1985), pp. 5– 6.

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Siberia on January 10, 1920. Debate immediately sprang up about whatJapan’s response should be. While this allowed Army Minister Tanaka totemporarily increase the troop commitment in Siberia, it brought calls fromthe newspapers to join the Americans in pulling out. On January 26, Tokyoasahi questioned why it was necessary for Japan to remain. It expressedgreat skepticism over the justifications given by Premier Hara, Army Min-ister Tanaka, and Foreign Minister Uchida Yasuya in the Diet. It pointed outthat the excuse of saving the Czechoslovaks had long since evaporated andthat both America and Britain were getting out under a policy of noninter-ference in Russian internal affairs. Even France, stuck with a large, repudi-ated debt, was leaving. The Whites had proved incompetent; they had in-vaded the Bolshevik heartland from all points of the compass and failed.What could Japan hope to accomplish alone?

Looking at these things, our country should now make a firm decision towithdraw and by so doing give the Russians the freedom to decide their ownpolitics. In regard to the thought problem, the fear that having Bolshevikson our opposite shore could influence our country, it would be better to ef-fectively cultivate our people’s thought by developing our own culturerather than to attempt a poor plan, in spite of world opinion, to build barri-ers of military force against other countries.55

After a prolonged and bitter debate, the government ultimately decidedto remain in Siberia, giving its statement on March 31, 1920, that troopswould stay until the political situation had stabilized and the lives and prop-erty of Japanese residents assured.56 The question of safety for Japanese na-tionals in Siberia just then was a matter of grave concern as first reports offighting and heavy casualties in the icebound city of Nikolaevsk at themouth of the Amur River began to trickle in. With much of eastern Siberiareduced to a state of anarchy, numerous armed bands, some Red, someWhite, and some strictly bandits, roamed the hinterland. In late February1920 one such group, formerly Red partisans turned freebooters under theleadership of Yakov Ivanovich Triapitzin, came boiling out of a raging bliz-zard and descended on Nikolaevsk. They captured the town and massacredthe Russian White Guards despite a surrender agreement that had promisedthe Whites protection.57

Nikolaevsk had been an early target of occupation for Japanese forcesbecause it was an important base for commercial fishermen. While most of

55. “Teppei ha ichi dai kyumu,” Tokyo asahi, January 26, 1920, in Taisho nyuzu jiten,Vol. 4, pp. 216 –17.

56. Hosoya Chihiro, “Shiberia shuppei o meguru Nichi-Bei kankei,” Kokusai Seiji, No.17 (December 1961), pp. 85–86; Shinobu, Taisho seijishi, pp. 965–85; Nomura Otojiro,Kindai Nihon seiji gaikoshi kenkyu (Tokyo: Misuzu Shobo, 1982), pp. 280 –81.

57. Hara, Shiberia shuppei, pp. 518–25.

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the fishermen had taken their boats home prior to the winter ice setting in, aconsulate staff and army garrison with associated camp followers, smallmerchants, and their families (about 700 Japanese nationals in total) wereliving in the town. For a while, a tense standoff between the Japanese andTriapitzin’s band continued, both trying to negotiate some sort of settle-ment. The talks failed and fighting between the two groups broke out inearly March.

The initial assault by Triapitzin’s forces took the Japanese army unitsentirely by surprise. The heights and fortifications surrounding the townwere seized and several hundred of the Japanese troops were killed. Aftercontinued assaults in which even more were killed, the remaining Japanesein the town surrendered. About 130 survived and were imprisoned in the cityjail. Although the town was entirely cut off from the outside world by thethick ice, word of the initial massacre got out through the Japanese naval radio station in the town, which then went ominously silent. Stories and ru-mors abounded in the press but hard information was virtually impossibleto come by.

A frantic effort was made to put together a rescue force, but it was notuntil May 14 that a landing could be made at De Castries Bay, 150 milessouth of the town. The progress of the rescue force was agonizingly slowand it was not until June 3 that it finally managed to enter the city. The res-cue was far too late. The remaining Japanese prisoners had been massacredon May 20 and their bodies burned. The rest of the town was then put to thetorch as Triapitzin’s band fled north. Japanese rescue forces entered aburned-out shell of a city.58

Once Japanese troops had control of the city, an investigation was begunto determine how the massacre had happened. Groups of reporters werebrought to Nikolaevsk and filed doleful reports about the burned-out build-ings and the graffiti left on prison walls by Japanese residents now dead.59

The government proved very deliberate in its investigations, causing a stormof condemnation from the papers. It also got them into a heated competitionto try and scoop their rivals with details on the massacre. The prize went toTokyo nichi nichi which published an advanced copy of the report the day be-fore the government officially announced it.60 Osaka mainichi took advan-tage of the interest caused by the report with a special presentation. “Nobe-raretari! Nikko higeki no emaki” (The story can be told! Nikolaevsk tragedypicture scroll!). Nothing best represents the combination of self-interest,

58. Ibid., pp. 536 – 44.59. “Paruchizan Sangeki no Seki o Miru,” Chugai shogyo, June 13, 1920, in Taisho nyuzu

jiten, Vol. 4, p. 245.60. “Nikko jiken keika,” Tokyo nichi nichi, June 23, 1920, in ibid., pp. 247– 48. I infer that

the report was leaked as its language is very similar to the official version.

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self-promotion, and patriotism that the papers brought to their coverageof the tragedy as the story’s breathless single-sentence lead paragraph:

Having completed a detailed investigation of the traces of the desperatescenes accompanying the murder of 700 brethren of Nikolaevsk at thehands of evil partisans, our paper’s specially dispatched military affairs cor-respondent to the Maritime Province, Namura Toratake, returned on swiftheels in order to give the news rapidly to 60 million countrymen; he gavehis Nikolaevsk incident investigative report at 5 P.M. (and again at 7:30) ina highly successful presentation at the Osaka Central Auditorium where thecrowd, a human avalanche of 6,000, braved the rain trying to get into thefirst show.61

The government, naturally, came in for sustained criticism for its han-dling of the crisis at Nikolaevsk. The question of what should be Japan’s“postdisaster policy” regarding Siberia and toward Russia generally becamea topic of fierce debate. As with most crises, there were calls for the resig-nation of responsible officials. In this case, however, the definition of re-sponsibility had a distinctly political connotation. This was made plain byan Osaka mainichi editorial on June 22, 1920, headlined “Sekinin o akirakani suru michi” (The way to make responsibility clear). It called on ArmyMinister Tanaka Giichi to resign. Not only would Tanaka’s resignation clar-ify his own responsibility for the tragedy, but it would also be an importantstep forward in the establishment of “responsible politics.”

At this time we believe it just that the army minister take responsibility andresign. That the army authorities also bear responsibility beyond this is ob-vious. However, from our belief that the political side bears principal re-sponsibility, we must argue that the army minister’s head be placed on thechopping block first [sojyo ni noseru]. It may be argued that under the rightof supreme command the army minister is not responsible. However, theSiberian Intervention was not accompanied by a declaration of war but wasdecided on as a matter of policy. If this is the case, it is needless to say thatblame must be borne for the mistakes in tactics by the military’s represen-tative in the cabinet. By this means we argue that, based on the principle ofresponsible politics, the resignation of the army minister should be thepoint of departure for our postdisaster policy.62

The Osaka mainichi’s hope, that Tanaka’s resignation might not onlyhelp establish the cabinet as the supreme policymaking body but also bringsome level of government control over the actions of the military, was a

61. “Noberaretari! Nikko higeki no emaki,” Osaka mainichi, June 24, 1920, in ibid. pp.250 –51.

62. “Sekinin o akiraka ni suru michi,” Osaka mainichi, June 22, 1920, in ibid., pp.245– 46.

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widespread one. Yet while there was scorn for the army’s actions in Siberia,there was no notion that the army itself shared any blame for the state of af-fairs there. As the intervention dragged interminably on and the militarywas increasingly seen as the major obstacle to withdrawal, this attitudewould change.

For the moment, however, the intervention was an albatross hung firmlyaround the neck of the Hara cabinet. During the summer of 1920, the ca-binet decided to withdraw from the Trans-Baikal region and northernManchuria. The withdrawal from western Siberia was completed by the endof August. On September 1, the last Czechoslovak troops, the ostensible rea-son for Japan’s first entering Siberia, took ship for home.63 Ten days later thegovernment announced that troops stationed in Khabarovsk and Nikolaevskwould be withdrawn. General Oi, the commander in Siberia, stated that the14th and half of the 11th and 13th divisions would return to the homeland.The remaining troops of the two divisions would remain centered on Vladi-vostok and the army would consolidate its position there and in the south-ern portion of the Maritime Province. This brought a renewed condemna-tion from the press.

Tokyo nichi nichi denounced the withdrawal as a half measure in an ed-itorial on September 21, 1920. The editor’s reaction to the announcementwas sarcastic. “It is the sort of spectacle one should not miss to see the gov-ernment, which dreamed a great plan to hold the vast area of the three FarEastern Provinces east from Trans-Baikal, today planning to station two di-visions of troops on a postage-stamp-sized area around Vladivostok.” Theeditorial questioned the rationale for the continued deployment, stating thatthe Russian government in Vladivostok could adequately protect the zone itcontrolled and was unlikely to be absorbed into the emerging Far EasternRepublic anytime soon. In such a case, “what does the government want tostation such a large number of troops for?”64

But the continued presence of troops in Siberia was part of a larger pol-icy failure, that of normalizing relations with the Russians. “What is thepoint of stationing a large force of two divisions at great expense in thisworthless, tiny region? With the government having no capacity to quicklyinform the people of the meaning of stationing troops, a complete with-drawal is preferable; the time has come to call for the set up of friendly re-lations with our neighboring country.”65

Osaka mainichi editorialized in a similar vein four days later. It notedwith approval the recently completed withdrawals from the Trans-Baikal re-gion and north Manchuria. “To state it plainly, the government is following

63. “Chekku gun tettai kanryo,” Osaka mainichi, September 2, 1920, in ibid., pp. 236.64. “Chuhei hokei henben,” Tokyo nichi nichi, September 21, 1920, in ibid.65. Ibid.

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public opinion. To elaborate, people must be aware that army support for[Gregorii] Semenov and the establishment of an anti-Bolshevik governmentin the Far East can’t match the ruthlessness of Bolshevik power. At the same time they are aware that indefinitely stationing troops is harmful andunproductive.”66

This is a most intriguing stance, considering the paper’s support for uni-lateral intervention in the summer of 1918. It clearly acknowledged the factthat the public was growing tired of the endless commitment there and hadlost faith in the ability of the army or of Japanese puppets to affect the situ-ation positively. However, the paper remained committed to upholdingJapan’s interests and honor regarding the settlement of the Nikolaevsk mas-sacre. For this reason it was less than pleased with the announced withdrawalfrom Khabarovsk.

The paper treated with suspicion the government’s claim that it wasabandoning the town and the area around Nikolaevsk because of difficultieskeeping troops there through the winter. These areas were part of the landsseized to guarantee redress for the massacre at Nikolaevsk. Was this an indication of a policy change? “With this [withdrawal], our government’sdeclaration that it must hold Sakhalin until there’s a responsible governmentfrom which to seek redress becomes so much waste paper.” The editorsclaimed the withdrawal showed proof that the Hara cabinet was respondingto American protests, which “clearly indicates the government’s lack offaith in its own policy and shows regrettable fear of foreign nations.”67

But this last venting of unilateralist pride could not compete against thesheer unpopularity of the intervention.

We have never, then or now, agreed with the Sakhalin occupation policy. Andsince the government won’t explain itself or its plans, it grows difficult to be-lieve it. It is not too much to say that we have paid out upward of a billion yenfrom the national treasury and lost numerous lives pursuing the interventionwith nothing to show for it, stupidly fostering anti-Japanese feelings amongthe Russians while other countries look at us and denounce us as invaders.Does this not plainly show positive proof of the failure of the present gov-ernment’s policy? The time has come when the government must recognizethis. Maintaining troops in Vladivostok and Sakhalin just to keep up appear-ances clearly shows the meaninglessness of its actions.68

The editorial closed with a ringing announcement of principles. Notonly did they stand in strong contrast to the paper’s opinion in 1918, but theyconstituted an almost total rejection of unilateralist assumptions.

66. “Waga Tai Ro seisaku no henka,” Osaka mainichi, September 25, 1920, in ibid. pp.236 –37.

67. Ibid.68. Ibid.

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Then as now we have earnestly advocated anti-interventionism, anti-interference-ism [hai-kansoshugi], friend of Russia-ism [shin-Ro-shugi] asthe basis for our relations with the Russian Far East. The objective of ourmain argument is to make plain the government’s insincerity regarding thischange [of policy]. Because the government fears being attacked for thefailure of its policy, it seeks to cover itself.69

With the consolidation of the Japanese army’s position in the southernMaritime Province, the Siberian Intervention entered a period of seeminglyendless, utterly unproductive stalemate. This stalemate was primarily a re-sult of the standoff between the cabinet and the general staff over who heldthe ultimate responsibility for stationing troops. In the end, nothing was ac-complished. After the assassination of Premier Hara in November 1921 andthe brief, caretaker ministry of Takahashi Korekiyo, the admiral and navyminister, Kato Tomosaburo, formed a new government in June 1922. Withindays a firm date for withdrawal of Japanese forces from Siberia was an-nounced. This announcement was greeted with enthusiasm by the press butthe long stalemate had built up reserves of bitterness against both the armyand the cabinet that now began to vent.

It began almost immediately with the Tokyo asahi publishing “Shiberishuppei sokanjo” (General accounting of the Siberian Intervention) two daysafter the cabinet made its commitment to withdraw. Since the declaration ofwar against Germany in 1914, the story reckoned, the Diet had allocated¥917 million in extraordinary expenditures for military operations. Of this,¥243 million went to the navy and a little less than ¥78 million had gone tooperations on the Shandong peninsula in China. The remainder, around ¥600million, had been committed to the Siberian Intervention, of which ¥155 mil-lion was as yet unspent but would be needed to cover the costs of withdrawaland demobilization of the troops. There was even the prospect that the nextDiet would have to make still more appropriations.70

The sacrifices in men had also been heavy. During the course of the in-tervention, all or part of 11 of the army’s 17 divisions had been committedto the intervention. The casualties suffered in the Nikolaevsk massacre in1920, together with other battle casualties, brought the total combat deathsto 1,480. In addition, another 600 men had perished through exposure anddisease. “For this expenditure of untold millions and heavy sacrifices inSiberia, what have we gotten?” asked the paper. “No final accounting can becompleted without using the word failure.”71

69. Ibid.70. In terms of the regular budget, the navy dominated these years averaging ¥358.6 mil-

lion (27.3 per cent of the entire budget) from 1918 to 1922 against the army’s ¥219.4 millionand 16.9 per cent respectively. Tobe, Nihon no kindai, chart, p. 224.

71. “Shiberi shuppei sokanjyo,” Tokyo asahi, June 26, 1922, in Taisho nyuzu jiten, Vol. 5,pp. 284 –85.

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Who should shoulder responsibility for this final accounting ending in fail-ure? It is either the sin of the militarists or the result of the cabinet’s ever-changing policy with no fixed idea, or shall we call it the sin of unskilleddiplomacy? The people have, from the first, demanded that this responsi-bility be clarified, but now the important matter is our postdisaster policy.By withdrawing our troops we can allay the suspicions of the powers, butwhat measures to take to make friends of the Russian people? How can ourcountrymen participate in the peaceful economic development of the fieldof Siberia? Is this not our most urgent business?

Muckraking and breaking of public scandals had been one of the hall-marks of the Japanese press since the 1890s and the stories of the Ashio cop-per mine.72 Despite its high level of controversy, the Siberian Interventionhad yet to produce any significant scandal of its own. In its waning days,however, as the matter of how to dispose of the vast stores of war materialslying around Vladivostok became acute, one finally erupted. In September1922, the Jiji shinpo detailed secret aid the army had given to Manchurianwarlord Zhang Zuolin by shipping him some of these weapons. An armyspokesman admitted that certain amounts of arms and stores might have got-ten into the hands of the Whites but denied covert aid to Zhang.73

Denials by the army were not only disbelieved by the press but alsobrought down a bitter hail of condemnation for the disastrous effects of thearmy’s “double diplomacy” on the Siberian Intervention. Osaka mainichi,which in July 1918 had advocated unilateral intervention in Siberia as an op-portunity for the army to “sufficiently demonstrate the swift use of its powerto aid civilization,” now denounced it. “The story of the Vladivostok LostArms Incident leaves the people in wonderment as the most vivid exampleof the high-handed impudence of our army.”74

But the army was not solely to blame.

By now the background of this state of affairs certainly cannot be unknownto our citizens; the evil practice of double diplomacy has ever and unceas-ingly been denounced by scholars, politicians, and newspapers of inde-pendent standing and the militarists, the object of these attacks, have beenconfronted head on. But the battle to exterminate double diplomacy to itsvery evil roots is a responsibility that the politicians in a position to do sowill not attempt. While successive cabinets have been aware of the tyranny

72. Sasaki, Nihon no kindai, pp. 110 –37; Huffman, Creating a Public, pp. 247–59.73. “Hatake rikugunsho gunmu kyokusho dan,” Jiji shinpo, September 27, 1922, in

Taisho nyuzu jiten, Vol. 5, p. 295. The abuse the army received for this is ironic considering thepolicy of covert support to Zhang was approved by Hara at the “Eastern Conference” in May1921. See Yoshihisa Tak Matsusaka, The Making of Japanese Manchuria, 1904 –1932 (Cam-bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001), pp. 261– 65.

74. “Buki soshitsu jiken no kyokun,” Osaka mainichi, October 4, 1922, Taisho nyuzujiten, Vol. 5, pp. 297–98.

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of the militarists, and have suffered from it, the fact of the matter is theyhave never actively resisted it.75

The lack of accountability by the army undermined the nation’s interna-tional standing:

The military has not paid consideration to the advocates of justice withinthe country in the least. What becomes of our cabinet’s declarations of itsplans here and abroad is of no concern to them; they by their own judgmentmake their plans for foreign policy and, step by step, work to carry themout. Thus, in their arrogant pride, they themselves decide how to deal withmatters of utmost importance to the nation.76

The ultimate solution to this problem was political, and it lay with thepeople.

No matter that it has proved impossible to curtail the military’s power toconstantly disrupt our nation’s policy . . . if we persevere in getting to theroot of the matter, in the end we must revitalize the sources of support forthose who have done battle with the military in the past. If a change for thebetter to break the militarists is to come, opportunities for the people to ex-press their just opinions must be provided. To speak to the point, one cannow realize that we have reached a condition of stalemate in the necessaryadaptations of our national system of representation.

Should the military’s overgrasping power be maintained and the evilpractice of double diplomacy not be changed, one must know that ourJapanese Empire can be unexpectedly plunged into chaos. If things con-tinue as before and if the roots of our grief be not wrenched out, does thisstory not make clear the serious defects of our political institutions? Thenwe, seeing these defects, must return to the fact that our present system ofpopular representation is faulty, that is to say, our limited elections havereached the end of their usefulness.

With this incident we must ring the death knell of the militarists. How-ever, in order to do this we must think keenly on how the opinion of the cit-izens can be given influential expression in political matters by speedilymoving in the direction of universal suffrage. Let that be our consolation forthis incident.77

As the arms scandal unfolded, it produced a scapegoat in the person of Major Hara Soichi, an adjutant on the staff of the army command inVladivostok. In a public court martial in Kumamoto in mid-October, Haraadmitted that he had released several loads of munitions to Zhang’s repre-sentatives on his own initiative. Extensive transcripts of his testimony

75. Ibid.76. Ibid.77. Ibid.

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appeared in the press.78 The Tokyo nichi nichi, commenting on the first day’stestimony, dismissed Hara’s comments that he had acted without the knowl-edge and connivance of his superiors but spoke to the seriousness of a mil-itary command that could not control its own.

In truth, this arms incident has wounded the international faith placed in ourcountrymen. Of course the Russians think this, but beyond Russia our rela-tions with other countries [have suffered]; Japan has signed the WashingtonTreaties but, same as before, it is thought of as a nation worshiping mili-tarism where the military controls foreign policy. In recent years this sus-picion had thinned and this was thought a good thing, but the fact that fool-ish subordinate officers have revived these suspicions is truly regrettable.This is something our countrymen should sincerely feel sad about for thedevelopment of the world. Naturally, Major Hara and the men under himthought they were doing something for the sake of Japan. Undoubtedly,even if at one point it brought the ill feeling of a part of the citizens, in theend, they thought, it was for the good of the nation. Truly in their hearts theymust have been sincere. That Major Hara and the others never stopped tothink that they obstructed the unification of Russia and pushed Far Eastpeace far into the future is regrettable. They may not have thought about it,but they must realize that they have darkened the world situation.79

It is difficult to imagine reading anything even remotely similar to thisten years later, as junior officers of the Kwantung army concluded theManchurian Incident and later declared the formation of the puppet state ofManchukuo.

Perhaps an early clue to why the promise of imperial democracy gaveway to imperial authoritarianism is found in the doleful valedictory thatOsaka mainichi published two days after the end of the intervention on Oc-tober 27, 1922. “Looking back to 1918, since the joint intervention withAmerica under the Terauchi ministry, our Siberian policy has gone from in-ept to stupid. How many families mourn, how much of our national treasurespent to obtain, in the end, nothing; having vainly left a begrudging Russianpeople, our sad and lonely soldiers withdraw.” Who was to blame?

The story has already been told of the Terauchi cabinet’s great mistakeof secretly dispatching ten times the number of troops it told the UnitedStates it would to the occupied areas, but the Seiyukai cabinet, unable toovercome the opposition of a military clique run wild, must bear a largemeasure of responsibility. After the intervention, the shameful-acting Tera-uchi and Hara cabinets both must bear responsibility for this crime. . . .

78. “Buki chosa tsuko,” Osaka mainichi, October 15, 1922, pp. 301–3, and “Buki jikenkohan dai ni kai,” Tokyo nichi nichi, October 17, 1922, pp. 304 – 6, in ibid.

79. “Wake no wakarane buki mondai,” Tokyo nichi nichi, October 16, 1922, in ibid., pp. 303– 4.

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Thus the failure of our Siberian Intervention teaches us an expensivelesson, that our politicians are shortsighted and irresolute and that our nation can sustain unnecessary loss from the militarists’ mistaken aggres-sion; at the same time we see the voice of the people has become very weak.For all the people’s opposition to stationing troops in Siberia, it has boughtthem nothing. No greater example than this can be found of our governmentand military stubbornly resisting public opinion.80

Thus, while the military had remained resistant to the will of the people,the political parties and democratic politics had yet to show they were anymore responsive or capable of effective action.

Conclusion

It was taken as a matter of faith in Japan from the early years of the Meijiperiod through the end of World War II that in order to consider itself afront-rank nation, Japan must have an overseas empire. And yet, while thepeople were greatly cheered by the victories of the nation’s soldiers andsailors in acquiring overseas possessions, the experience was inevitablysoured by the fact that they were required to pay for the increased defenseestablishment necessary to hold the new gains.81 The Siberian Interventionbrought the Japanese people no victories to celebrate, no apparent opportu-nities for profit, and no hope of a rapid conclusion. It should not surprise usit was unpopular.

Yet the immediate aftermath of World War I provided Japanese dis-satisfied with the imperial experience a new lexicon to criticize the imperialadventure in Siberia and, indeed, a new paradigm by which to define the ba-sic characteristics of a “modern state.” The victorious “allied and associ-ated” powers shared a commitment to democracy, constitutionalism, and amore cooperative style of foreign relations, rejecting the outright conquestand drive for autarchy that had failed the central powers. To truly rank itselfamong the rekkoku, or great powers, meant Japan too must embrace theideas, social institutions, and approaches to foreign relations that had seem-ingly propelled Britain and the United States into the very front ranks of international power. “The defeat of Germany,” said Hamaguchi Osachi ofthe Kenseikai, “has deeply implanted the idea that bureaucratism and mi-litarism have declined and that politics must be modeled entirely upon

80. Osaka mainichi, October 27, 1922, in ibid., p. 293.81. Stewart Lone, Army, Empire and Politics in Meiji Japan: The Three Careers of Gen-

eral Katsura Taro (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), as well as Gordon, Labor and Imper-ial Democracy in Prewar Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), and TheModern History of Japan, all note this deep ambivalence of the Japanese people toward the imperial enterprise.

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democracy. The great tide of democracy is overwhelming the entire worldat this moment.”82

This seeming verdict of history provided an important boost for demo-cratic advocates as democracy as a protest movement made the transition toa system of rule. With the rise of the first cabinet drawn from the majorityparty in the Diet, many advocates of democracy and “responsible govern-ment” hoped for a new respect for popular opinion in the making of Japan’sforeign policy. The inability of the Hara cabinet to overcome resistance fromthe Japanese military and end the intervention seriously eroded those hopes.What is critical here is that democracy was rarely valued by its advocates asan end in itself; rather, it was seen as a tool to build the national power andprosperity that were part and parcel of being a “first-rank” nation and dealwith social problems facing the nation. Should democratic institutions andpolitical parties prove incapable of effectively actualizing the popular will,then the option of abandoning it was always available.

The continuing stalemate between the cabinet and the general staff,which prolonged the unpopular and unprofitable intervention, proved deeplyfrustrating for the Japanese. The appeal of the idea that Japan should act au-tonomously to secure its interests in East Asia had not died but was tem-porarily eclipsed by new postwar attitudes and the traditional unwillingnessof the urban masses to continue to shoulder the burden of empire. The im-potence of democratic government and the inability of Japanese civil soci-ety to compel meaningful change disheartened democratic advocates andalienated the people from the political parties.

Meanwhile, the Japanese military and its supporters attributed the fail-ure in Siberia not to a flawed strategy of trying to impose an alien rule upona hostile population deeply imbued with nationalistic fervor, but rather to alack of public support for the army there. As a result they would concentratetheir efforts throughout the 1920s and 1930s not on avoiding such adven-tures in the future but on trying to explain the army’s imperial mission to theJapanese people in order to rally the public behind future adventures.

University of Alaska Anchorage

82. Frederick Dickinson, War and National Reinvention: Japan and the Great War,1914 –1919 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 228.

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“a great disobedience against the people”: popular...

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