“The Way of the Perfect. . . .” (See front cover) The spirit of the Japanese nation is, by its nature, a thing that must be propagated over the seven seas and extended over the five continents. Anything that may hinder it must be abolished, even by force. ARAKI
Scratch a young, ambitious Japanese officer and find a fiercely devoted acolyte of austere, intense War Minister Sadao Araki. Older heads, especially in the House of Peers, may shake, do shake. But Lieut.-General Araki sums up in his short, shrill self both Hodo and Bushido, the benevolent and conquering watchwords of Imperial Japan.
Hodo is “The Way of the Perfect Emperor” and War Minister Araki would put sword to his taut, flat stomach rather than doubt for a single instant the utter perfection of the “Son of Heaven,” bespectacled Emperor Hirohito. Ergo the deeds of the Japanese Army, done exclusively in His Majesty’s divine name, must be just, right and essentially merciful deeds.
Bushido is “The Way of the Warrior” and just now that is Japan’s way—due in no small measure to Lieut.-General Araki. Comparatively obscure 14 months ago, he was not listed in the Japan Year Book’s Ano Hito Wa Tare Desuka (“Who’s Who”)* when Japan’s doddering “Old Fox,” Premier Ki Inukai, 77, made him War Minister (TIME, Dec. 21, 1931). Since then, in Lieut.-General Araki’s opinion, events have followed the Divine pattern. Last week the Japanese Army, symbolizing the Imperial Sword, was striking the last blows needed to round out Japan’s imperial scheme of things in Manchuria, striking to possess the last province not yet taken, the Province of Jehol (see p. 21).
Integrally a part of Sadao Araki’s whole life pattern has been the evolution of Japan’s imperial scheme. As a youth, desperately poor but proud of his Samurai (knightly) lineage, he gloried in modern Japan’s first and decisive war with China which ended (when he was 18) in the ceding by China to Japan of Formosa, the Pescadores Islands, and Southern Manchuria including Port Arthur. When Germany, France and Russia forced Japan to disgorge all her spoils except Formosa and the Pescadores, the young Samurai’s blood boiled with rage and shame. He had been apprenticed to a brewer of Shoyu (soy sauce), quit brewing to enter the Military Academy (where tuition was free), zealously prepared for what all Japan knew was coming, the Russo-Japanese War. This conflict Imperial Russia had made inevitable by “leasing” from Imperial China the Southern Manchurian peninsula which Japan’s “Son of Heaven” had been forced to disgorge.
In 1904 young Captain Araki buckled on his heavy Samurai sword, set off to fight Russia with the First Infantry Brigade and fairly crowed with triumph when Japan captured Port Arthur and Southern Manchuria a second time, taking over Russia’s “lease” and also the southern half of Russia’s oil-rich island Sakhalin.
Superior officers had by this time noted Samurai Araki’s keenness. He was promoted to the General Staff. During the World War, when Japan seized Germany’s foothold on the Chinese mainland (Kiaochow) but was later forced to disgorge it, Staff Officer Araki was Japanese military attaché in Russia, gained invaluable knowledge of modern practices of slaughter by incessant observation trips up and down the Eastern Front.
So Russian-minded was he at the end of the War that he urged Japan’s General Staff (of which he later became chief) to attempt to take all Siberia and add it to the Divine Emperor’s realm—a tragic, costly and futile four-year expedition.
Returning to Tokyo, Lieut.-General Araki wiped from his dreams of conquest Siberia but not Manchuria. He managed to retrieve his reputation by courage during the earthquake. As Chief of the Military Staff College until he was gazetted War Minister last year, he stood upon the supreme rostrum from which to preach (behind locked doors) the subjugation of all Manchuria.
Purifying Politics. At Tokyo, War Minister Araki flashed off orders to Mukden last week which sent 35 Japanese troop trains thundering down upon Jehol. While far off battles raged—with Japanese victories a foregone conclusion—he could review with warm satisfaction the manner in which since last spring obstacles to “The Way of the Perfect Emperor” have melted away. Obstacle of doubt at home. Obstacle of interfering white folk abroad.
The disgusting “Old Fox,” Premier Inu-kai who withdrew Japan’s naval forces from Shanghai before they had scored a sufficiently decisive victory, is dead—assassinated by Japanese military cadets (TIME, May 23). A few hours after this killing War Minister Araki emerged from 20 minutes of private audience with his Divine Emperor to comment “So far as I can learn the events of today were designed to purify politics.”
How pure have Japanese politics been since then!—from the Fighting Services standpoint. Army and Navy appropriations, zooming higher and higher to astronomical figures, have slipped through the frightened Imperial Diet and House of Peers with lightning celerity, whether Finance Minister Korekiyo Takahashi had the money or had to borrow it. The new Premier has been a General’s jewel. He, easy-going Admiral Viscount Makoto Saito (retired), has constantly deferred to the military caste, represented in his Cabinet by Lieut.-General Sadao Araki.
The Lytton Report denounced Japan for seizing Manchuria and branded “Manchukuo” as a mere name coined by Japan to strengthen her pretense that Manchuria spontaneously revolted from China. It was War Minister Araki who brushed aside the Lytton Report as “an interesting travelogue.” It became just that in Geneva last week as League statesmen drafted a resolution under which the League Assembly would virtually abandon any attempt to enforce the Lytton findings, thus bowing to “The Way of the Perfect Emperor”—i. e. to Japanese threats of withdrawal from the League.
Check. But just as Araki seemed most certain of being rid of it, the League stiffened. Reason: U. S. Secretary of State Henry Lewis Stimson had caused his ambassador to remind all Foreign Powers that, in effect, the U. S. would not recognize conquest by force. The U. S. became the last obstacle in the Divine Emperor’s way. But in the mind of Sadao Araki there is just one means (to date highly successful) to overcome obstacles: the sword of the Samurai.
“Beat Any Other Army!” Japan stood last week somewhat in the bright position of Imperial Germany when Bismarck was looking for and finding many a “Place in the Sun,” such as German East Africa.
What a Prussian officer was a Japanese officer is—only much more so, according to recent statements by War Minister Araki which reached the U. S. last week. Only Japanese soldiers and officers, he declared, are denied by their “Way of the Warrior” or military code any possibility of surrendering to the enemy and continuing to live thereafter. If captured, even after being knocked unconscious (as was famed Japanese Major Koga at Shanghai last year), a member of the Japanese Army must commit suicide (as Major Koga did).
“So long as there lives among our soldiers the spirit which Major Koga has shown,” declared War Minister Araki, “the Japanese Army can hope to beat any other army! . . . Retreat is absolutely forbidden in the Japanese Army, but this is not so with foreign armies. They retreat whenever they are at a disadvantage in battle. . . . This is no way of fighting! Our lives, from the very beginning, are given up for His Majesty!” (Elsewhere Lieut-General Araki has said that a Japanese officer, in extraordinary circumstances, may command his men to “advance” in a rearward direction.)
War Minister Araki looks for a spiritual rebirth of the world through Japanese military example. “Where Japan’s real strength is felt,” he often says, “there is peace and order.”
This concept of peace & order in “The Way of the Perfect Emperor” and in “The Way of the Warrior,” Lieut.-General Araki sometimes abbreviates by the term “Japanism,” urges Japan’s representatives abroad to explain and spread its gospel. Best explanation so far is that of Japanese Delegate to the League of Nations Yosuke Matsuoka, who represents Japan in Geneva this week and recently declared: “Japan can offer spirituality to America and to the entire Western world. . . . Japanism is a world communism of moral responsibility, ideals, obligations and honor, unlimited by time, unbounded by distance or area and irrespective of race or nationality. . . . No individual has arisen in the 20th century, no nation has achieved the leisure to lead and inspire. . . . Japan can achieve this task. She has it in her.”
“Not In My Line.” That such notions surge behind Japan’s struggle for her “Place in the Sun” on the Continent of Asia the Great Powers must realize, or ignore the fact of self-styled “Japanese spirituality” to their cost.
In Tokyo the Japanese Diet & House of Peers will soon meet, after New Year’s recess, to face the largest public debt in Japanese history and to make it still larger by authorizing loans stupendous enough to pay the Army & Navy’s bills and balance the budget on paper.
Naturally, with the yen off gold, boundless State spending has already given Japan the fillip of an “inflation boom” (TIME, Jan. 2). When Japanese bankers mention the inevitable crash to Lieut.-General Araki, or indeed when any fiscal topic is broached to the War Minister, he says quietly, “That is not in my line.”
In his line are Spartan days of work at the War Office. He and all his subordinates arrive at 8 a. m. Two days a week he breaks the morning by a horseback ride from 9 to 10 a. m. Lunching at the officers’ mess, where both Japanese and Western food is served, he often orders ham & eggs, washes them down with tea at a total cost of one yen (50¢ at par, now about 7¢). Younger officers knock off about 4 o’clock for tennis or other sports. Not so the tireless oldsters and Lieut.-General Araki who is 55. He always works until 6, then goes to his club or directly home to a pleasant villa with a formal Japanese garden. On the walls hang Japanese paintings, many “not so good ones” done by brother officers. Absorbed in his great mission of “Japanism,” the War Minister draws freely & frankly on Chinese authors for inspiration, paints Chinese characters deftly, devours Chinese poetry.
*Literally “That Man Who Is?”
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