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paul e. dunscomb
“A Great Disobedience Against the People”:
Popular Press Criticism of Japan’s Siberian
Intervention, 1918 –22
Abstract: Reports and commentary by Japanese mass-circulation newspapers on
the Siberian Intervention reflect deep ambivalence about the enterprise. Some
criticism of government policy reflected traditional concerns; but a new strain
of criticism, unique in the prewar period, claimed that Japan was out of step with
the 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 unprofitable
stalemate continued, the papers came to lambaste both ineffective party cabinets
and the military for ignoring public opinion.
A confluence of historical events helps explain the 50 months Japanese
troops spent in Siberia from August 1918 through October 1922. The closing acts of World War I, the Bolshevik Revolution and Russian Civil War,
and the quest of Japanese expansionists to achieve regional hegemony in
East Asia all played into the decisions that led to the Siberian Intervention
and how it unfolded. In Japan itself, the public debate and criticism of the
government’s Siberian policy was bound up with and reflected ongoing developments in domestic politics and the evolution of political institutions.
Study of Japan’s Siberian Intervention, therefore, would seem to provide potential insights into a number of key historical processes taking place in
Japan during this period. Despite this, no Japanese or Western historian has
attempted a complete description of the Siberian Intervention or analyzed
its 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 kenkyū, 2nd ed. (Tokyo: Shinizumisha, 1976), only covers through August 1918. Kikuchi Masanori, Roshia kakumei to Nihonjin (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō, 1973),
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The intervention unfolded simultaneously with a critical transition in
Japan’s political development. Rice riots swept Japan as the climax of a
democratic movement of urban protest, begun in 1905, by ordinary Japanese demanding a greater voice in national and international affairs. Riding
this wave of protest, political parties were able to make their first serious,
permanent inroads into the power structure, thereby initiating a system of
democratic 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’s
impact on this transition, and equally neglected, is analysis of the content
of criticism brought against the intervention. Possibly this reflects entrenched assumptions about the nature of domestic criticism of Japan’s foreign policy in the prewar period. A few socialists and Christian pacifists
aside, debates about Japan’s foreign policy were confined within a narrow
range of acceptable criticism and centered on widespread, popular support
for 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 kanshō (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō, 1989), devotes only a chapter to events after 1920. Only Shinobu
Seizaburō, Taishō seijishi (Tokyo: Kawada Shobō, 1968), makes a serious study of the withdrawal from Siberia. Even journal articles are weighted far more heavily toward discussion of
how the Japanese got into Siberia than how they got out. The only piece specifically discussing
withdrawal, 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 actually withdrew.
The only English-language source solely dedicated to Japan’s experience remains James
William 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 remainder deal with Japan peripherally at best and none goes beyond Morley’s work. Representative
examples are: John Albert White, The Siberian Intervention (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1950); George F. Kennan, Soviet American Relations, 1917–1920, Russia Leaves the
War, 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 University Press, 1956); Richard M. Connaughton, The Republic of the Ushakovka: Admiral Kolchak
and 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: From
Tokugawa Times to the Present (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003). In addition, see
Sheldon Garon, The State and Labor in Modern Japan (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 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 of
Political Behavior in Interwar Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1984); George M.
Wilson, Radical Nationalist in Japan: Kita Ikki, 1883–1937 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969).
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considerably broader in this period than the existing scholarly consensus
might suggest.
Public discussion of foreign policy issues, from revision of the “unequal” treaties with the West in the 1890s, to the question of war and peace
with China in 1894 –95 and with Russia in 1904 –5, through Japan’s relationship with Republican China after 1911, had long been used as a fulcrum
to lever political change. A reading of editorial commentary by Japan’s masscirculation daily papers shows the intervention to be no exception to this
rule. By looking at the Japanese popular press and how it dealt with events in
Siberia, we can place the intervention in the wider context of the development of Japan’s prewar political institutions, specifically the development of
imperial democracy.
The ubiquity of disenchantment with the intervention and vocal calls for
the government to heed popular desires to modify or end it centered, as before, on a particular political agenda: creation of “responsible” (party cabinet) governments, universal suffrage, and respect for the popular will. However, criticism of Japan’s policy in Siberia was often framed by how it ignored
or defied the “trends of the times” ( jikan no sūsei), a euphemism to describe
the “triumph” of democracy and Wilsonian internationalism at the end of
World War I. The liberalization of Japanese politics desired by many critics
of the intervention was seen as requiring a new sort of foreign policy—
internationalist, antimilitarist—which was a radical change from what had
been advocated in the past or what would be advocated in the future.
By examining popular criticism of the intervention, we can begin to
measure the extent to which the Japanese might have been receptive to a reorientation of their country’s foreign policy to conform to the trends of the
times. Equally, by looking at the roots of its transience—the way such opposition bucked the general trend of support for unilateralism and empire in
Japan’s foreign policy but did not become a permanent feature of popular
opinion—we can also draw some conclusions as to why the democratic
movement either “failed” or “evolved” into the more authoritarian, totalitarian forms of the 1930s.
The arrival of party governments came with the beginning of the intervention but their limitations were made manifest by its end. Simply put,
Siberia and the way the issue factored in Japanese domestic politics reflected
how democratic institutions could be initially bolstered and finally undercut
by foreign policy issues. Ultimately the public’s cries were for effective government (effective in terms of implementing the popular will), and Siberia
demonstrated the limited effectiveness of democratic governments.
Newspapers as Industry and Institution
Although it is difficult to find a genuine, unmediated voice for the urban
masses, the popular, mass-circulation press provides probably the best
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measure of popular attitudes toward the intervention. It is extremely noteworthy, then, that most of Japan’s major dailies were ambivalent or even
hostile to the intervention from the start, in strong contrast to their almost
universal support of unilateralism since the early 1890s. Examination of
mass-circulation dailies provides an understanding of the constant drumbeat
of popular sentiment, the political background noise under which Japanese
decision makers operated.
The period spanned by the intervention was an important transitional
phase not merely for Japanese domestic politics but for the Japanese newspaper industry itself. Since the first domestic newspaper was established in
the 1860s, the Japanese newspaper industry grew and evolved rapidly, paralleling developments that had taken place among Western press institutions
but at a far more accelerated pace. By the time the Russo-Japanese War
ended, the Japanese press had become sophisticated, mass based, industrialized, and thoroughly commercial.3 As the Siberian Intervention began,
Japan’s major daily papers had become big businesses: large, moneymaking
corporations with directors and editors primarily concerned about selling
papers and making a profit.4
Japan’s two largest urban centers, Tokyo and Osaka, were the base for
its great papers, although the two were more competitors with each other
than separate media markets. The Ōsaka asahi owned a commercially related but editorially separate Tōkyō asahi while the Ōsaka mainichi had a
similar relationship with the Tōkyō nichi nichi. Beyond these were at least
eight other papers with circulations high enough to award them mass status.5
Daily circulation figures for the major papers had begun a general upward
trend 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 Organizational 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 is
James L. Huffman, Creating a Public: People and Press in Meiji Japan (Honolulu: University
of Hawaii Press, 1997), pp. 310 –58.
5. These included the Yomiuri and Hochi shinbun (today’s Yomiuri shinbun), Kokumin
shinbun and Miyako shinbun (today’s Tōkyō shinbun), Yorozu chōhō, Tōkyō mainichi shinbun
(not related to the Ōsaka mainichi), and Nirokou shinbun (all shut down in 1940), and Jiji
shinpō (merged with Tōkyō nichi nichi, 1936). In addition there were the business-oriented
Chūgai shōgyō shinpō and Higashi Nihon no shōgyō, keizai shi (merged to form Nihon keizai
shinbun—Nikkei—in 1942) and Nihon kōgyō shinbun which merged with the Nishi Nihon
shōgyō, keizai shi (1942). A nice graphic representation of the evolution of Japanese newspapers into the current “big six” is provided in Sasaki Takashi, Nihon no kindai: Mediya to kenryoku, Vol. 14 (Tokyo: Chūō Kōron Shinsha, 1999), pp. 24 –25.
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mass printing.6 Ōsaka asahi’s circulation doubled over the course of the
intervention, from about 350,000 in 1918 to 700,000 in 1922. This nearly
matched the Ōsaka mainichi, which had added an additional 250,000 readers between 1918 and 1922. Tōkyō asahi figures jumped by around 50 per
cent to over 300,000 during the intervention. Meanwhile, Tōkyō nichi nichi
figures nearly doubled, hitting over 600,000 in 1922.7 Though still lagging
behind the most popular tabloids in New York and London, these figures
were comparable to circulation of major papers in those cities. The fact that
the total number of newspaper subscriptions in Osaka and Tokyo was
greater than their populations suggests the popularity and penetration of the
dailies.8
Historically, the editorial content of Japan’s mass-circulation dailies
rested on three basic pillars: unilateralism, or the notion that Japan should
pursue its interests in East Asia without reference to the concerns of other
powers; concern for preservation of “national interests” (kokueki); and reverence for the kokutai.9 The tone of the papers was one of extreme patriotism, often strident and chauvinistic, which helped to foster a rabid expansionism and denied freedom of speech to socialist voices and others who
seemingly denied or threatened the kokutai.10 But during the Siberian
Intervention, this monolithic editorial attitude broke down. Of Japan’s mass
circulation dailies, only Yorozu chōhō (among the most strident unilateralist
voices throughout the period of democracy as a protest movement), Kokumin
shinbun (a late convert to unilateralism), and the Yomiuri shinbun maintained a consistently unilateralist attitude throughout the intervention.11
The Siberian Intervention
Before embarking on a detailed analysis of Japanese newspaper commentary regarding the intervention, a little historical background seems in
order. Talk about sending Japanese forces into Siberia began almost from the
moment V. I. Lenin’s Bolshevik government took power in November 1917.
The collapse of Russian central authority provided the Japanese with opportunities and dangers. Many within the government and the army general staff
were eager to exploit the postrevolutionary chaos in the Russian Far East
in much the same way they had exploited a similar situation in China
since 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: Taishō, Shōwa senzen hen
(Tokyo: Asahi Shinbunsha, 1990), p. 80.
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or, worse yet, one dominated by hostile Bolsheviks would pose to Japan’s
colonial possessions in Korea and South Manchuria as well as Japan’s position in Manchuria generally.
Discussion of some form of intervention grew urgent after the Bolsheviks
made a separate peace with Germany by the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March
1918. Although France and Britain applied considerable pressure for an intervention, both Japan and the United States, for widely divergent reasons,
were unwilling to send troops to Russia in order to reconstitute an Eastern
Front against Germany. Even those within the army general staff and the government of Terauchi Masatake who were most eager to intervene stayed their
hands for fear of alienating the United States.
The debate surrounding an intervention was not merely a discussion of
whether troops should be sent to quell disorders in Siberia. For many, the
question of intervening in Siberia was tantamount to joining the war against
Germany as a full belligerent. Although Japan had entered the war under the
terms of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance in August 1914, the costs so far, under ¥100 million and just over one thousand killed, were far outweighed by
the benefits: military control over the former German colonies in China and
the Pacific north of the equator.12
However, involvement in Russia would not only require far more troops
and much greater expenditures but risked plunging the empire into the same
sort of war of attrition its allies were trapped in. The constant discussion of
Japan’s duty as an ally, continuing reports in newspapers and magazines of
the eastern spread of German power into Asia, and the public attitude of the
general staff that sending troops to Siberia essentially constituted invasion
of a hostile nation led to a feeling that Japan was plunging into a vast and
dangerous undertaking.13
U.S. opposition to a Japanese intervention evaporated in July 1918 when
President Woodrow Wilson proposed a joint dispatch of troops to Vladivostok. Each nation would send a modest force of 7,000 men to secure the large
amounts of allied war materials stockpiled in and around the port and to establish a base for the rescue of Czechoslovak troops who in May and June
had occupied key points along the Trans-Siberian Railway. Recognizing
their opportunity, the army general staff, with the approval of the Terauchi
cabinet, dispatched 72,000 men to seize the Trans-Baikal, Amur, and Maritime Provinces of the Russian Far East, taking control of the Trans-Siberian
Railway from Irkutsk to Vladivostok and its subsidiary, the Chinese Eastern
Railway, running through north Manchuria.
12. Tobe Ryōichi, Nihon no kindai: Gyakusetsu no guntai, Vol. 9 (Tokyo: Chūō Kōron
Shinsha, 1998), pp. 216 –17. Budget figures in “Shiberi shuppei sōkanjō,” Tōkyō asahi,
June 26, 1922, in Taishō nyūzu 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, Japan
was rocked by the so-called “rice riots” of August and September 1918. As
a result of these protests, the Terauchi cabinet fell and was replaced by
Japan’s first cabinet dominated by the majority party in the Diet, the Seiyūkai
under the leadership of Hara Takashi. After World War I ended in November 1918, half of the troops in Siberia were withdrawn, partly in response to
demands at home and partly in response to U.S. protests. From that point the
overall objective of the Siberian Intervention shifted from an ostensibly antiGerman to a vaguely anti-Bolshevik emphasis. After the collapse of the
White government at Omsk in late 1919, the United States announced its intention to withdraw. The last U.S. troops left Vladivostok on April 1, 1920.
The Japanese government was unable to follow suit. Although many
both within and outside the government argued for leaving with the United
States, divisions between a Hara cabinet favoring withdrawal and an army
general staff intent to remain paralyzed decision making. In addition, from
March through June 1920 the slowly developing disaster of the Nikolaevsk
Massacre, which involved the slaughter of nearly 700 Japanese soldiers and
civilians by Russian partisans turned freebooters, caused the government to
expand its commitment in Siberia. The government’s official policy statement on March 31, 1920, cited the need to protect the lives and property of
its nationals as justification for Japanese troops to remain in the Russian Far
East until the political situation had been “stabilized.”
During the second half of 1920, Hara whittled down the size of the occupied territories and the number of troops stationed there, and in May 1921
he was able to compel the general staff to agree to a complete withdrawal in
principle. However, a rump intervention centered on Vladivostok persisted
while representatives of the army desperately attempted to gain a favorable
position for Japan in the newly formed Far Eastern Republic (a “noncommunist” buffer state formed in late 1920 on the orders of Lenin to assuage
Japanese 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 advantages they had sought. When Admiral Katō Tomosaburō assumed the
premiership in June 1922, he immediately announced that Japanese forces
would leave Siberia by the end of October. When the last troops left on October 25, virtually all the Japanese civilians in Siberia left with them. Japan’s
influence 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 discussions 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 by
French Marshall Ferdinand Foch, to send Japanese and American forces
across the Urals to reconstitute the Eastern Front against Germany that had
collapsed when Bolshevik leaders agreed to an armistice with the Germans.
This notion was a complete nonstarter in Japan. The Terauchi cabinet was
unsympathetic from the first and even among the most fervent proponents
of an intervention in the army general staff, there was little enthusiasm for
this idea. The papers, too, were extremely hostile, although in the course of
their attacks upon the plan they gave hints that there could be circumstances
under which an intervention might be warranted. This, however, was limited
to “removal of disturbances to the peace of East Asia.” 14
In late December 1917 Chinese troops put down the attempt of the
workers’ and soldiers’ soviet in Harbin to seize control of that city along with
the Russian-controlled Chinese Eastern Railway zone that ran across North
Manchuria. Speculation immediately began about whether the Japanese
should take similar actions in Vladivostok. On December 28, 1917, the Tōkyō
asahi criticized the government’s rationale for an intervention. “Saying we
would intervene in the Siberian region to support political stability and to
protect the lives and property of foreigners can hardly be expected to bring
Russia’s Bolsheviks [kagekiha, extremists] great happiness as, from their
standpoint, it would be the same as a declaration of war against Russia.” 15
While the Tōkyō asahi had little fondness for the Bolsheviks, it would not
countenance intervention against them.16
As a precautionary measure, two Japanese warships were dispatched to
Vladivostok without obtaining prior permission from Russian authorities.
Their unannounced arrival on January 12, 1918, drew bitter condemnation
from the local soviet.17 The Jiji shinpō noted this on January 13. “China’s intervention in Harbin was in its former sovereign territory; Japan [intervening]
in Russia would be completely different.” 18 The Jiji was willing to concede
the severity of the situation in Siberia and that in situations where “the faith
and honor of the Russian government should entirely fall away, or if the
power to protect its own soil should be lost,” action might be justified. But that
time had not yet come. “We must not make the mistake of poisoning the feelings 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 matter 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 hōmen no keikoku,” Jiji shinpō, January 13, 1918, in Taishō nyūzu jiten,
Vol. 3, p. 258.
19. Ibid.
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As 1918 proceeded, reports of German penetration deeper into Russia
proved a source of constant anxiety and prompted calls on the part of
unilateralists, members of the Foreign Ministry, and general staff for intervention in Siberia to protect war stocks in Vladivostok and to take control
of the Trans-Siberian Railway (including the Chinese Eastern). Consistent
with their concern for maintaining the nation’s rights and interests in Korea
and Manchuria, newspaper opinion was unanimous that any direct threats
there would be a grave problem and would have to be resisted. But unilateralist 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 Bolsheviks
signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk ending the war with Germany), Tōkyō
asahi recapitulated the reasons that Britain, France, and Italy, Japan’s formal
allies, had for requesting a Japanese intervention. They greatly feared that
Russia might become more a German ally than a neutral nation after signing
a separate peace. But the editorial also pointed out the consistent American
opposition to any Russian intervention, which put Japan in difficulties.20
“Presently we are one of the allied nations and because of [America’s attitude] it has been extremely troubling for us.” A serious German threat would
need to be resisted. “Of course it would be necessary, to preserve the peace
of 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 the
people united behind it. “The Terauchi ministry has not been up to this heavy
responsibility.” 21
Several basic tropes of editorial comment regarding the intervention
are available here: deep skepticism regarding the extremity and imminence
of the threat; the need to uphold its duties as an allied country but not to
alienate the United States; the necessity of the government to attain popular
assent to any intervention; and a basic distrust of the cabinet’s ability to
carry through a policy having such support. These are the themes one finds
throughout the intervention. Some were quite traditional: doubt of the
capacity of the government of the day to conduct foreign affairs, for instance. The constant concern for protecting Japan’s international status as
one of the allied countries also mirrors historical concern for maintaining
the nation’s international position. But the willingness to downplay the level
of danger and the need to stay in step with the United States was something new.
20. Woodrow Wilson, in deference to Washington’s dictum against involving America
in “entangling alliances,” brought the United States into World War I as an “associate” of the
allies.
21. “Sankoku no shuppei yōkyū,” Tōkyō asahi, March 9, 1918, p. 3.
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An example of the former is a Tōkyō asahi editorial from June 1918 regarding the extent of the German menace to Siberia. It noted German actions in the Ukraine, Crimea, and Finland and apparent designs on Central
Asia. However, in regard to Siberia, the editors saw no need for alarm.
Naturally the Germans would like to expand into Siberia, but they are attempting the decisive battle abroad and face great discontent about war expenditures at home. As for them going some way east of the Urals, the truth
is there is nothing to spare for these activities. Of course there are now a few
Austro-German prisoners left in Siberia. However, before the German militarists would dare to use them, the idea that Russian Bolshevik thought
might infect the Fatherland makes the militarists look on them as enemies.22
Despair over the ineptitude of the Terauchi cabinet reached an early
peak after the murder of three Japanese in Vladivostok on April 4, 1918,
prompted the landing of naval infantry there. The Bolsheviks had greatly
feared such a move by Japan and responded with strident calls to resist the
Japanese “invasion.” This was an overreaction. No such full-scale commitment of Japanese forces was seriously contemplated, but it did not help the
Terauchi cabinet avoid blame. “Our distrust of the idle and unskilled diplomacy of our current cabinet has reached an unbearable point,” Tōkyō asahi
bemoaned. “It is not libelous to say that they have added active failure to
their passive idleness and lack of skill in their diplomacy toward the government of Bolshevik Russia.” 23
By contrast, American diplomacy was a model of restraint. This was a
source 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 and
interests in Siberia. It is natural that it has already acquired the right to
manage the Chinese Eastern Railway (and in good time the entire TransSiberian). Originally it was said among Japanese diplomats that America’s
diplomacy was the most clumsy; according to reports, the number of such
frivolous fellows dismissing it with laughter were not few. But looking at
the 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 Foreign
Minister Motono Ichirō. 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 under
German control would tax any foreign minister. But there was little doubt
22. “Shiberi no shin keisei,” ibid., June 12, 1918, p. 3.
23. “Tairo gaikō 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 general
consensus was that the problem was largely his own fault.25
Consequently, it was with some enthusiasm that the papers greeted
Motono’s replacement, after the disastrous landing at Vladivostok, by Home
Minister Gotō Shinpei on April 23. At first it seems that the principal source
of approval for Gotō was that he was not Motono. Only in time would it become clear that Gotō was as much dedicated to a policy of unilateral intervention as his predecessor. Yet accession of the new foreign minister also
suggested hope of a major political change. Traditionally the foreign minister had always been a career bureaucrat chosen from the pool of overseas
ambassadors. Gotō’s selection broke with that tradition and the Tōkyō asahi
dared suggest that this might prove a model for the future.
Under the headline “San daibatsu no teppai” (Abolish the three great
cliques), the editors noted the precedent Gotō’s elevation promised to establish. If it became a regular practice, along with the election of the head of
the imperial university system, it might end the foreign ministry and scholarly cliques. But the great hope was that this might embolden politicians to
move to take on the military clique as well. Finding a way to break the hold
of the military, particularly the adventurous general staff, was necessary to
protect Japan. “The romping and disasters of our nation’s military clique are
very much like the Germans,” they lamented. In keeping with the trends of
the 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 Siberia
was used as a device for suggesting political reform and change. These political aspects received particular emphasis as the intervention moved toward becoming an accomplished fact. The Siberian Intervention proved
more than a convenient stick to beat the government of the day. Rather, like
many such issues before it, it became a lever to try and force political
change. In the broadest sense, the desire was simply to create a government
more responsive to the popular will. Specifically, the desired changes were
the institution of responsible government and an end to military interference
in foreign affairs.
The Intervention Begins
As a result of Woodrow Wilson’s invitation for a joint U.S.-Japanese intervention, the Tōkyō asahi noted that the “dead ashes [of the intervention]
have again begun to burn.” The paper remained skeptical about the wisdom
of such a policy, noting on July 4, “in the end, no matter how many troops
the government dispatches to Siberia, it is reasonable to assume it will lose
25. “Motono gaisō 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 matter
before the recently concluded fortieth Diet. An important matter of policy
was being sacrificed to lesser considerations. “For the members of the cabinet, matters of national defense are less important than the cabinet’s survival; more important than foreign policy, for domestic purposes they prefer
the movement of a few troops.” 27
Tōkyō asahi was among the most outspoken in seeing no justification
for the intervention whatsoever. Others, Jiji for instance, were much more
willing to see the justice in some sort of intervention, though it was reluctant to act in the face of American opposition.28 Ōsaka mainichi believed
Japan should conduct the intervention unilaterally. “Not only is this a matter of Japan’s trust and honor,” it claimed, “but this is a chance for the Japanese army to sufficiently demonstrate the swift use of its power to aid civilization. An independent intervention in no way conflicts with the allies’
grand strategy. Rather we must emphasize the wonderful effect it will have
on the larger spirit of allied operations to have this division of labor.” 29
However, all of these papers shared the view that whatever course the
nation was to take regarding Siberia, the Terauchi cabinet could not be
trusted to carry it out. The Ōsaka 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 is
lacking, it is a reckless thing to do. With the Terauchi cabinet in its waning
days and lacking this confidence, is it really appropriate to take this action
under a sort of perverted spirit? Is there not true danger of their carrying
this out unsatisfactorily? There is probably no one who does not share this
fear. Does anyone have faith that the Terauchi cabinet can succeed in this
action? 30
The solution to the question was clear.
We do not know what form or method or at what time the Terauchi cabinet
might carry out an intervention. Speaking plainly of constitutionalism, the
Diet, that is to say the numerous parties, that is to say the opinion of the
Seiyūkai on the advisability of this inept decision, will determine the life or
death of the Terauchi cabinet and the international position of the empire.
We must say the Terauchi cabinet is not up to taking this grave responsibility, and there is nothing more important than making clear the propriety of
giving 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 kibō tsuyomaru,” Jiji shinpō, June 16, 1918, in Taishō nyūzu
jiten, Vol. 3, p. 266.
29. “Shuppei mondai ikan,” Ōsaka 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 Seiyūkai in a difficult
position. Truly, the Seiyūkai, whatever its course of action, will greatly contribute to the fate of the empire.31
Throughout July 1918 the Advisory Council on Foreign Affairs (Gaikō
Chōsakai) debated its answer to Wilson’s invitation. The council had been
created by the Terauchi cabinet as a means of bringing all interested constituencies, including the political parties, into the decision-making process
with the hope of reaching consensus on foreign policy. The papers recognized the council debate as a turning point both in the evolution of Japan’s
foreign policy but also in its domestic politics. While the vast majority of
council members were generally hawkish regarding the intervention, their
plans came to naught particularly as a result of opposition on the part of
Hara Takashi and the Seiyūkai.
This was certainly noted at the time and much public discussion was devoted to it. Numerous articles detailed the tortuous course of negotiations,
and the fact that Hara had become the fulcrum of Japanese politics was lost
on no one.32 The final displacement of Yamagata Aritomo and the last remaining Meiji elder statesmen from policymaking was also noted and extensively analyzed.33 It was with the full realization that Hara would form
Japan’s first party cabinet that the attacks on Terauchi and calls for his resignation continued.
As the political crisis surrounding intervention was reaching its height
in mid-July, the Ōsaka asahi weighed in. It complained that “the justifications [for intervention] given up to now have been exceedingly contradictory and feeble,” and even now its objectives had not been clarified.
“These things are unworthy of our system of constitutional politics.” It
feared that the authorities would try to sneak a larger intervention in after
the more limited one proposed by Wilson had begun. It also chastised them
for their avowed wish to enter Siberia to overthrow the Bolsheviks.
To go beyond the cooperative intervention, without its reasons and objectives having been made clear, would this not be a threat to our cooperation with other nations? By doing this alone Japan would be in a terribly
disadvantageous position; it would appear Japan had taken a step closer to
militarism.
To be frank, if Count Terauchi and Baron Gotō take charge of things,
Japan’s position will quickly become an untenable one. Although they
firmly intend to carry out an intervention, they have, however, not provided
truly powerful reasons and objectives. They are drawing the people step by
step into a dangerous place. Today is not the time for a few bureaucratic
31. Ibid.
32. Note the articles on pp. 270 –75 of Taishō nyūzu jiten, Vol. 3.
33. “Shuppei mondai to seikyoku,” Tōkyō 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 a
great disobedience against the people.34
The announcement that Japan would intervene in Siberia was made in a
statement on August 2, 1918. It started with words of support for Russia and
the hope that order there might quickly be restored. It noted the disordered
state of Russian politics, the threat of German expansion into the Russian
Far East, and that Austro-German prisoners of war were leading the resistance against the Czechoslovaks. In order to prevent chaos from spreading,
the Japanese government was accepting the American proposal to jointly
send troops to Vladivostok. The statement renounced any desire to infringe
on Russian territorial sovereignty or interfere with internal developments,
expressed the intention to withdraw rapidly once order was restored, and
ended with a wish that relations with Russia and the Russian people could
be restored to the previous state of friendship.35
While such expressions might have disappointed advocates of unilateral
intervention, for the moment at least they brought praise from those who had
rejected the intervention in the past. What was particularly pleasing was the
new spirit of cooperation that seemed to be blossoming with the United
States. The Tōkyō nichi nichi summed this up in an editorial on August 8. It
first noted that relations with America had been troubled by misunderstandings 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 defending
against the eastward spread of Germany and supporting the Czechoslovak
troops. By these means we shall free Russia of German oppression. We
have no ambition to occupy one point of ground. How much will this help
the [American] Japan-bashers [hainichi ronsha] for the first time to understand Japan and sweep away their suspicions? 36
This newfound spirit of cooperation began to break down almost immediately. On August 14, the Terauchi cabinet announced that it was dispatching troops to Manchuli on the Manchurian side of the Russian border
in the Chinese Eastern Railway zone, under the terms of a military cooperation agreement with China signed the previous May. These troops immediately began to pour over the border into the Trans-Baikal region of
Siberia. Despite the ministry’s insistence that the two interventions were
separate undertakings, the Americans protested that Japan was violating its
pledges under the intervention announcement of August 2.37
34.
35.
36.
37.
“Kokumin o azamukuna,” Ōsaka asahi, July 17, 1918, in ibid., p. 273.
“Shuppei seigen,” Jiji shinpō, August 3, 1918, in ibid., p. 278.
“Nichibei kyōchō,” Tōkyō nichi nichi, August 8, 1918, in ibid., pp. 281– 82.
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 to
Siberia). Although nominally designed to mirror America’s stated intention
to “send to Siberia a commission of merchants, agricultural experts, labor
advisors, Red Cross representatives and agents of the Young Men’s Christian Association. . . . to relieve the immediate economic necessities of the
people there,” 38 the committee was actually the foreign ministry’s unofficial
arm for fostering Japanese economic penetration of the Russian Far East.39
On the day the committee was announced, the Ōsaka mainichi opined that
its efforts would be but pale and feeble imitations of American actions and
once again blasted the Terauchi cabinet for its handling of the situation.
While the committee had ambitious goals, the editors noted that “any hope
of putting this into practice disappeared as the Cabinet faced the outbreak of
the rice riots.” 40
Given the difficulties of international affairs, alacrity in bringing forward
appropriate measures is necessary to unite the nation and preserve the empire’s international position. However, with the Terauchi cabinet’s immoral
and inept attitude of hostility toward the people and competition with the
powers, the grave responsibility of aiding Russia will be as difficult to
achieve as being “trapped between high mountains and crossing northern
seas.” We look at the cabinet and think of these things and we become exceptionally angry. If for no other reason than the successful management of
foreign affairs, the Terauchi cabinet should quickly retreat from its position
and open a new, wise course to the people’s hearts, but we know they cannot hope to succeed. While we recognize the necessity of quickly making
plans [to aid Russia], we believe the resignation of the Terauchi cabinet
must come first.41
Impact of Censorship
At this point it is necessary to consider two important matters not directly related to the intervention itself but which had a vitally important
bearing on it. These were the question of censorship and the relationship of
the 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 on
coverage of certain events. The principal means by which the Home Ministry 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 ronshū, Vol. 19, No. 1 (December 1998), pp. 267–70.
40. “Shiberia keizai enjo,” Ōsaka mainichi, August 20, 1918, in Taishō nyūzu jiten, Vol. 3,
pp. 758 –59.
41. Ibid.
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offending edition (hatsubai kinshi) or a ban on publication by the offending
paper or magazine (hakkō kinshi).42
In December 1917 (during the crisis in Harbin), an order prohibiting
coverage of military activities was briefly put in place. As negotiations on a
military cooperation agreement with China progressed in April 1918, prohibitions were placed on discussion of Sino-Japanese military cooperation,
Japanese military support to China and Russia, and troop mobilization or intervention. In July 1918, even before the first troops were assembled for
Vladivostok, the Army Ministry announced a prohibition on articles assessing the mobilization of troops, the actions of the Army Ministry, or even
censorship itself. On July 31 the Home Ministry imposed a complete ban on
coverage of the intervention.43
No paper suffered more from censorship in the early days of the intervention than the Ōsaka asahi. Its December 18, 1917, edition was confiscated
because 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 the
actions of army officers in Siberia. Tōkyō asahi was not immune. An article
insisting that the general staff was agreeing to a limited intervention in Vladivostok while preparing for a full-scale intervention in the Trans-Baikal
region brought a ban on sales of its July 17, 1918, edition.44
It is difficult to measure with any exactness the extent to which censorship played a role in discouraging negative comments and coverage of the
intervention. The most important thing to note is that the censorship regime
was never so harsh as it was at the very beginning.45 The Terauchi cabinet
had long harbored deep dislike for the press. This was certainly not helped
by the abuse heaped on cabinet members for their handling of the intervention. But it was coverage of the rice riots that drew the full wrath of Home
Ministry officials.46
Protests against the high price of rice, often accompanied by looting of
rice 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 University
Press, 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 Ōya Wataru, “Shiberia shuppei moto ni okeru nara rentai no kitaman hahei ni tsuite,” in Hōken shakai to kindai: Tsuda Hideo sensei koki kinen (Osaka:
Dōbōsha, 1989), p. 837. The great exception was a complete ban on coverage of troops being
used to suppress Korean independence supporters after March 1919.
46. Inoue Yasuji and Watanabe Tetsu, eds., Kome sōdō no kenkyū, Vol. 1 (Tokyo: Arinagakaku, 1954), pp. 124 – 45, provides an overview of the rice riots. Michael Lewis, Rioters and
Citizens: 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 preparations for the intervention being blamed for speculation in rice that forced
up prices and encouraged further protests. Troops were turned out, ultimately being sent to 70 locations nationwide, to quell disturbances that were
not finally put down until September.47 With the call up of troops, the newspapers launched a furious campaign of denunciation against the Terauchi
ministry for its handling of the riots. The government’s response was to impose some of the harshest censorship the Japanese press had ever known, including an attempted deathblow aimed at the Ōsaka asahi, one of the largest
and most popular newspapers in the country.48
On August 26, 1918, Ōsaka asahi published a deliberately inflammatory article covering a protest rally in Osaka which made reference to a
phrase in a Chinese poem, “a white rainbow pierced the sun,” which was
used as an omen foretelling the collapse of the imperial dynasty. The Terauchi cabinet condemned the phrase as revolutionary, seized the offending
issue, indefinitely suspended publication by the paper, and began legal proceedings to shut it down entirely. In the end, this was avoided, but the paper
was forced to publicly apologize for its actions and the president and managing editor were compelled to resign.49
No survey of newspaper coverage of the intervention can proceed without taking some stock of how the incident affected the newspaper industry
generally. Although the attempt to shut down the Ōsaka asahi failed, a
powerful message was sent. No other paper attempted to defend or speak up
for the Ōsaka asahi on free speech or other grounds. Editors and reporters
stepped away from their previous advocacy of public protest. Clearly the
press was more chastened and cautious in the following years.50 That being
said, it should also be noted that when the Hara cabinet finally replaced the
Terauchi ministry in September, the censorship regime was significantly relaxed. Coverage of the troop withdrawals that began in December 1918 was
fully detailed and entirely uncensored.51 As we shall see, the editorial departments 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 coverage of the Siberian Intervention. From an editorial standpoint, many papers
47. Inoue and Watanabe, eds., Kome sōdō no kenkyū, p. 125.
48. For newspaper coverage of the riots and subsequent censorship, see Huffman, Creating 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 Taishō nyūzu jiten, Vol. 3.
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still opposed it but the fact was the intervention was news, perhaps the
biggest story beyond the rice riots to happen that year, and the commercial
instincts of all the papers dictated that they should not skimp on coverage.
Even the Ōsaka asahi, strident foe of intervention, sent special reporters to
Vladivostok and boasted the only news photographer in Siberia, a great coup
for both the Osaka and Tokyo papers.52 Ōsaka mainichi’s special telegrams
informed readers about the occupation of major cities and towns and described the heroic actions of its troops, fights on trains, and the use of aircraft.53 Yet once Japanese troops had occupied the three Far Eastern provinces of Siberia, the kind of action that made for exciting news dispatches
pretty much disappeared.
In the wake of the rice riots, Hara Takashi formed Japan’s first true party
cabinet in September 1918, thereby bringing the period of democracy as
protest movement to an end and initiating the period of democracy as a system of rule. He took up his post determined to pursue a policy of cooperation 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 relations with the army. Although few had worked harder than Tanaka to bring
about a Siberian Intervention, he sided with Hara against the general staff as
a means to increase his own political power.54
With the end of World War I, Tanaka announced that half of the 72,000
troops dispatched to Siberia despite American protests were to be withdrawn. With this, the Siberian Intervention began a long, slow decline,
marked by continuous argument between the Hara cabinet and the general
staff. As the situation in Siberia grew static, newspaper coverage began to
fall off. Throughout 1919 it is fair to say the intervention was a constant
but hardly commanding presence in Japanese newspapers and would only
manage to gain a hold on public attention sporadically for its remaining
years. One such period was late 1919 through mid-1920.
The White government collapsed and fled its capital in Omsk in November 1919. With no organized resistance against the oncoming Red
Army, 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 Taishō nyūzu 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 shūketsu zengo
ni okeru Hara Kei no kōsō,” Nihon Fukushi Daigaku Kenkyū kiyō, Vol. 92, No. 2 (January
1995), pp. 2 –3; Seki Shizuo, “Hara Kei gaikō shidō,” Teizukayama Daigaku kiyō, No. 37
(March 1994), pp. 57–59; Takahashi Hidenao, “Hara naikaku no seiritsu to sōryokusen
seisaku: ‘Shiberia Shuppei” kettei katei o chūshin 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 what
Japan’s response should be. While this allowed Army Minister Tanaka to
temporarily increase the troop commitment in Siberia, it brought calls from
the newspapers to join the Americans in pulling out. On January 26, Tōkyō
asahi questioned why it was necessary for Japan to remain. It expressed
great skepticism over the justifications given by Premier Hara, Army Minister Tanaka, and Foreign Minister Uchida Yasuya in the Diet. It pointed out
that the excuse of saving the Czechoslovaks had long since evaporated and
that both America and Britain were getting out under a policy of noninterference in Russian internal affairs. Even France, stuck with a large, repudiated debt, was leaving. The Whites had proved incompetent; they had invaded 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 to
withdraw and by so doing give the Russians the freedom to decide their own
politics. In regard to the thought problem, the fear that having Bolsheviks
on our opposite shore could influence our country, it would be better to effectively cultivate our people’s thought by developing our own culture
rather than to attempt a poor plan, in spite of world opinion, to build barriers of military force against other countries.55
After a prolonged and bitter debate, the government ultimately decided
to remain in Siberia, giving its statement on March 31, 1920, that troops
would stay until the political situation had stabilized and the lives and property of Japanese residents assured.56 The question of safety for Japanese nationals in Siberia just then was a matter of grave concern as first reports of
fighting and heavy casualties in the icebound city of Nikolaevsk at the
mouth of the Amur River began to trickle in. With much of eastern Siberia
reduced to a state of anarchy, numerous armed bands, some Red, some
White, and some strictly bandits, roamed the hinterland. In late February
1920 one such group, formerly Red partisans turned freebooters under the
leadership of Yakov Ivanovich Triapitzin, came boiling out of a raging blizzard and descended on Nikolaevsk. They captured the town and massacred
the Russian White Guards despite a surrender agreement that had promised
the Whites protection.57
Nikolaevsk had been an early target of occupation for Japanese forces
because it was an important base for commercial fishermen. While most of
55. “Teppei ha ichi dai kyūmu,” Tōkyō asahi, January 26, 1920, in Taishō nyūzu 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, Taishō seijishi, pp. 965 – 85; Nomura Otojirō,
Kindai Nihon seiji gaikōshi kenkyū (Tokyo: Misuzu Shobō, 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, a
consulate staff and army garrison with associated camp followers, small
merchants, and their families (about 700 Japanese nationals in total) were
living in the town. For a while, a tense standoff between the Japanese and
Triapitzin’s band continued, both trying to negotiate some sort of settlement. The talks failed and fighting between the two groups broke out in
early March.
The initial assault by Triapitzin’s forces took the Japanese army units
entirely by surprise. The heights and fortifications surrounding the town
were seized and several hundred of the Japanese troops were killed. After
continued assaults in which even more were killed, the remaining Japanese
in the town surrendered. About 130 survived and were imprisoned in the city
jail. Although the town was entirely cut off from the outside world by the
thick ice, word of the initial massacre got out through the Japanese naval
radio station in the town, which then went ominously silent. Stories and rumors abounded in the press but hard information was virtually impossible
to come by.
A frantic effort was made to put together a rescue force, but it was not
until May 14 that a landing could be made at De Castries Bay, 150 miles
south of the town. The progress of the rescue force was agonizingly slow
and it was not until June 3 that it finally managed to enter the city. The rescue was far too late. The remaining Japanese prisoners had been massacred
on May 20 and their bodies burned. The rest of the town was then put to the
torch as Triapitzin’s band fled north. Japanese rescue forces entered a
burned-out shell of a city.58
Once Japanese troops had control of the city, an investigation was begun
to determine how the massacre had happened. Groups of reporters were
brought to Nikolaevsk and filed doleful reports about the burned-out buildings and the graffiti left on prison walls by Japanese residents now dead.59
The government proved very deliberate in its investigations, causing a storm
of condemnation from the papers. It also got them into a heated competition
to try and scoop their rivals with details on the massacre. The prize went to
Tōkyō nichi nichi which published an advanced copy of the report the day before the government officially announced it.60 Ōsaka mainichi took advantage of the interest caused by the report with a special presentation. “Noberaretari! Nikko higeki no emaki” (The story can be told! Nikolaevsk tragedy
picture scroll!). Nothing best represents the combination of self-interest,
58. Ibid., pp. 536 – 44.
59. “Paruchizan Sangeki no Seki o Miru,” Chūgai shōgyō, June 13, 1920, in Taishō nyūzu
jiten, Vol. 4, p. 245.
60. “Nikko jiken keika,” Tōkyō 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 coverage
of the tragedy as the story’s breathless single-sentence lead paragraph:
Having completed a detailed investigation of the traces of the desperate
scenes accompanying the murder of 700 brethren of Nikolaevsk at the
hands of evil partisans, our paper’s specially dispatched military affairs correspondent to the Maritime Province, Namura Toratake, returned on swift
heels in order to give the news rapidly to 60 million countrymen; he gave
his Nikolaevsk incident investigative report at 5 P.M. (and again at 7:30) in
a highly successful presentation at the Osaka Central Auditorium where the
crowd, a human avalanche of 6,000, braved the rain trying to get into the
first show.61
The government, naturally, came in for sustained criticism for its handling of the crisis at Nikolaevsk. The question of what should be Japan’s
“postdisaster policy” regarding Siberia and toward Russia generally became
a topic of fierce debate. As with most crises, there were calls for the resignation of responsible officials. In this case, however, the definition of responsibility had a distinctly political connotation. This was made plain by
an Ōsaka mainichi editorial on June 22, 1920, headlined “Sekinin o akiraka
ni suru michi” (The way to make responsibility clear). It called on Army
Minister Tanaka Giichi to resign. Not only would Tanaka’s resignation clarify his own responsibility for the tragedy, but it would also be an important
step forward in the establishment of “responsible politics.”
At this time we believe it just that the army minister take responsibility and
resign. That the army authorities also bear responsibility beyond this is obvious. However, from our belief that the political side bears principal responsibility, we must argue that the army minister’s head be placed on the
chopping block first [sojyō ni noseru]. It may be argued that under the right
of supreme command the army minister is not responsible. However, the
Siberian Intervention was not accompanied by a declaration of war but was
decided on as a matter of policy. If this is the case, it is needless to say that
blame must be borne for the mistakes in tactics by the military’s representative in the cabinet. By this means we argue that, based on the principle of
responsible politics, the resignation of the army minister should be the
point of departure for our postdisaster policy.62
The Ōsaka mainichi’s hope, that Tanaka’s resignation might not only
help establish the cabinet as the supreme policymaking body but also bring
some level of government control over the actions of the military, was a
61. “Noberaretari! Nikko higeki no emaki,” Ōsaka mainichi, June 24, 1920, in ibid. pp.
250 –51.
62. “Sekinin o akiraka ni suru michi,” Ōsaka 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 affairs there. As the intervention dragged interminably on and the military
was increasingly seen as the major obstacle to withdrawal, this attitude
would change.
For the moment, however, the intervention was an albatross hung firmly
around the neck of the Hara cabinet. During the summer of 1920, the cabinet decided to withdraw from the Trans-Baikal region and northern
Manchuria. The withdrawal from western Siberia was completed by the end
of August. On September 1, the last Czechoslovak troops, the ostensible reason for Japan’s first entering Siberia, took ship for home.63 Ten days later the
government announced that troops stationed in Khabarovsk and Nikolaevsk
would be withdrawn. General Ōi, the commander in Siberia, stated that the
14th and half of the 11th and 13th divisions would return to the homeland.
The remaining troops of the two divisions would remain centered on Vladivostok and the army would consolidate its position there and in the southern portion of the Maritime Province. This brought a renewed condemnation from the press.
Tōkyō nichi nichi denounced the withdrawal as a half measure in an editorial on September 21, 1920. The editor’s reaction to the announcement
was sarcastic. “It is the sort of spectacle one should not miss to see the government, which dreamed a great plan to hold the vast area of the three Far
Eastern Provinces east from Trans-Baikal, today planning to station two divisions of troops on a postage-stamp-sized area around Vladivostok.” The
editorial questioned the rationale for the continued deployment, stating that
the Russian government in Vladivostok could adequately protect the zone it
controlled and was unlikely to be absorbed into the emerging Far Eastern
Republic anytime soon. In such a case, “what does the government want to
station such a large number of troops for?” 64
But the continued presence of troops in Siberia was part of a larger policy failure, that of normalizing relations with the Russians. “What is the
point of stationing a large force of two divisions at great expense in this
worthless, tiny region? With the government having no capacity to quickly
inform the people of the meaning of stationing troops, a complete withdrawal is preferable; the time has come to call for the set up of friendly relations with our neighboring country.” 65
Ōsaka mainichi editorialized in a similar vein four days later. It noted
with approval the recently completed withdrawals from the Trans-Baikal region and north Manchuria. “To state it plainly, the government is following
63. “Chekku gun tettai kanryō,” Ōsaka mainichi, September 2, 1920, in ibid., pp. 236.
64. “Chūhei hokei henben,” Tōkyō 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 government
in the Far East can’t match the ruthlessness of Bolshevik power. At the
same time they are aware that indefinitely stationing troops is harmful and
unproductive.” 66
This is a most intriguing stance, considering the paper’s support for unilateral intervention in the summer of 1918. It clearly acknowledged the fact
that the public was growing tired of the endless commitment there and had
lost faith in the ability of the army or of Japanese puppets to affect the situation positively. However, the paper remained committed to upholding
Japan’s interests and honor regarding the settlement of the Nikolaevsk massacre. For this reason it was less than pleased with the announced withdrawal
from Khabarovsk.
The paper treated with suspicion the government’s claim that it was
abandoning the town and the area around Nikolaevsk because of difficulties
keeping troops there through the winter. These areas were part of the lands
seized to guarantee redress for the massacre at Nikolaevsk. Was this an
indication of a policy change? “With this [withdrawal], our government’s
declaration that it must hold Sakhalin until there’s a responsible government
from which to seek redress becomes so much waste paper.” The editors
claimed the withdrawal showed proof that the Hara cabinet was responding
to American protests, which “clearly indicates the government’s lack of
faith in its own policy and shows regrettable fear of foreign nations.” 67
But this last venting of unilateralist pride could not compete against the
sheer unpopularity of the intervention.
We have never, then or now, agreed with the Sakhalin occupation policy. And
since the government won’t explain itself or its plans, it grows difficult to believe it. It is not too much to say that we have paid out upward of a billion yen
from the national treasury and lost numerous lives pursuing the intervention
with nothing to show for it, stupidly fostering anti-Japanese feelings among
the 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 government’s policy? The time has come when the government must recognize
this. Maintaining troops in Vladivostok and Sakhalin just to keep up appearances clearly shows the meaninglessness of its actions.68
The editorial closed with a ringing announcement of principles. Not
only did they stand in strong contrast to the paper’s opinion in 1918, but they
constituted an almost total rejection of unilateralist assumptions.
66. “Waga Tai Ro seisaku no henka,” Ōsaka 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, antiinterference-ism [hai-kansōshugi], friend of Russia-ism [shin-Ro-shugi] as
the basis for our relations with the Russian Far East. The objective of our
main argument is to make plain the government’s insincerity regarding this
change [of policy]. Because the government fears being attacked for the
failure of its policy, it seeks to cover itself.69
With the consolidation of the Japanese army’s position in the southern
Maritime Province, the Siberian Intervention entered a period of seemingly
endless, utterly unproductive stalemate. This stalemate was primarily a result of the standoff between the cabinet and the general staff over who held
the ultimate responsibility for stationing troops. In the end, nothing was accomplished. After the assassination of Premier Hara in November 1921 and
the brief, caretaker ministry of Takahashi Korekiyo, the admiral and navy
minister, Katō Tomosaburō, formed a new government in June 1922. Within
days a firm date for withdrawal of Japanese forces from Siberia was announced. This announcement was greeted with enthusiasm by the press but
the long stalemate had built up reserves of bitterness against both the army
and the cabinet that now began to vent.
It began almost immediately with the Tōkyō asahi publishing “Shiberi
shuppei sōkanjō” (General accounting of the Siberian Intervention) two days
after the cabinet made its commitment to withdraw. Since the declaration of
war 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 to
operations on the Shandong peninsula in China. The remainder, around ¥600
million, had been committed to the Siberian Intervention, of which ¥155 million was as yet unspent but would be needed to cover the costs of withdrawal
and demobilization of the troops. There was even the prospect that the next
Diet would have to make still more appropriations.70
The sacrifices in men had also been heavy. During the course of the intervention, all or part of 11 of the army’s 17 divisions had been committed
to the intervention. The casualties suffered in the Nikolaevsk massacre in
1920, together with other battle casualties, brought the total combat deaths
to 1,480. In addition, another 600 men had perished through exposure and
disease. “For this expenditure of untold millions and heavy sacrifices in
Siberia, what have we gotten?” asked the paper. “No final accounting can be
completed without using the word failure.” 71
69. Ibid.
70. In terms of the regular budget, the navy dominated these years averaging ¥358.6 million (27.3 per cent of the entire budget) from 1918 to 1922 against the army’s ¥219.4 million
and 16.9 per cent respectively. Tobe, Nihon no kindai, chart, p. 224.
71. “Shiberi shuppei sōkanjyō,” Tōkyō asahi, June 26, 1922, in Taishō nyūzu jiten, Vol. 5,
pp. 284 – 85.
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Who should shoulder responsibility for this final accounting ending in failure? It is either the sin of the militarists or the result of the cabinet’s everchanging policy with no fixed idea, or shall we call it the sin of unskilled
diplomacy? The people have, from the first, demanded that this responsibility be clarified, but now the important matter is our postdisaster policy.
By withdrawing our troops we can allay the suspicions of the powers, but
what measures to take to make friends of the Russian people? How can our
countrymen participate in the peaceful economic development of the field
of Siberia? Is this not our most urgent business?
Muckraking and breaking of public scandals had been one of the hallmarks of the Japanese press since the 1890s and the stories of the Ashio copper mine.72 Despite its high level of controversy, the Siberian Intervention
had 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 materials
lying around Vladivostok became acute, one finally erupted. In September
1922, the Jiji shinpō detailed secret aid the army had given to Manchurian
warlord Zhang Zuolin by shipping him some of these weapons. An army
spokesman admitted that certain amounts of arms and stores might have gotten 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 also
brought down a bitter hail of condemnation for the disastrous effects of the
army’s “double diplomacy” on the Siberian Intervention. Ōsaka mainichi,
which in July 1918 had advocated unilateral intervention in Siberia as an opportunity for the army to “sufficiently demonstrate the swift use of its power
to aid civilization,” now denounced it. “The story of the Vladivostok Lost
Arms Incident leaves the people in wonderment as the most vivid example
of 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 unknown
to our citizens; the evil practice of double diplomacy has ever and unceasingly been denounced by scholars, politicians, and newspapers of independent standing and the militarists, the object of these attacks, have been
confronted head on. But the battle to exterminate double diplomacy to its
very evil roots is a responsibility that the politicians in a position to do so
will 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 rikugunshō gunmu kyokushō dan,” Jiji shinpō, September 27, 1922, in
Taishō nyūzu jiten, Vol. 5, p. 295. The abuse the army received for this is ironic considering the
policy of covert support to Zhang was approved by Hara at the “Eastern Conference” in May
1921. See Yoshihisa Tak Matsusaka, The Making of Japanese Manchuria, 1904 –1932 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001), pp. 261– 65.
74. “Buki sōshitsu jiken no kyōkun,” Ōsaka mainichi, October 4, 1922, Taishō nyūzu
jiten, Vol. 5, pp. 297–98.
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of the militarists, and have suffered from it, the fact of the matter is they
have never actively resisted it.75
The lack of accountability by the army undermined the nation’s international standing:
The military has not paid consideration to the advocates of justice within
the country in the least. What becomes of our cabinet’s declarations of its
plans here and abroad is of no concern to them; they by their own judgment
make their plans for foreign policy and, step by step, work to carry them
out. Thus, in their arrogant pride, they themselves decide how to deal with
matters of utmost importance to the nation.76
The ultimate solution to this problem was political, and it lay with the
people.
No matter that it has proved impossible to curtail the military’s power to
constantly disrupt our nation’s policy . . . if we persevere in getting to the
root of the matter, in the end we must revitalize the sources of support for
those who have done battle with the military in the past. If a change for the
better to break the militarists is to come, opportunities for the people to express their just opinions must be provided. To speak to the point, one can
now realize that we have reached a condition of stalemate in the necessary
adaptations of our national system of representation.
Should the military’s overgrasping power be maintained and the evil
practice of double diplomacy not be changed, one must know that our
Japanese Empire can be unexpectedly plunged into chaos. If things continue as before and if the roots of our grief be not wrenched out, does this
story not make clear the serious defects of our political institutions? Then
we, seeing these defects, must return to the fact that our present system of
popular representation is faulty, that is to say, our limited elections have
reached the end of their usefulness.
With this incident we must ring the death knell of the militarists. However, in order to do this we must think keenly on how the opinion of the citizens can be given influential expression in political matters by speedily
moving in the direction of universal suffrage. Let that be our consolation for
this incident.77
As the arms scandal unfolded, it produced a scapegoat in the person
of Major Hara Sōichi, an adjutant on the staff of the army command in
Vladivostok. In a public court martial in Kumamoto in mid-October, Hara
admitted that he had released several loads of munitions to Zhang’s representatives 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 Tōkyō nichi nichi, commenting on the first day’s
testimony, dismissed Hara’s comments that he had acted without the knowledge and connivance of his superiors but spoke to the seriousness of a military command that could not control its own.
In truth, this arms incident has wounded the international faith placed in our
countrymen. Of course the Russians think this, but beyond Russia our relations with other countries [have suffered]; Japan has signed the Washington
Treaties but, same as before, it is thought of as a nation worshiping militarism where the military controls foreign policy. In recent years this suspicion had thinned and this was thought a good thing, but the fact that foolish subordinate officers have revived these suspicions is truly regrettable.
This is something our countrymen should sincerely feel sad about for the
development of the world. Naturally, Major Hara and the men under him
thought 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 the
end, they thought, it was for the good of the nation. Truly in their hearts they
must have been sincere. That Major Hara and the others never stopped to
think that they obstructed the unification of Russia and pushed Far East
peace 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 this
ten years later, as junior officers of the Kwantung army concluded the
Manchurian Incident and later declared the formation of the puppet state of
Manchūkuo.
Perhaps an early clue to why the promise of imperial democracy gave
way to imperial authoritarianism is found in the doleful valedictory that
Ōsaka mainichi published two days after the end of the intervention on October 27, 1922. “Looking back to 1918, since the joint intervention with
America under the Terauchi ministry, our Siberian policy has gone from inept to stupid. How many families mourn, how much of our national treasure
spent to obtain, in the end, nothing; having vainly left a begrudging Russian
people, our sad and lonely soldiers withdraw.” Who was to blame?
The story has already been told of the Terauchi cabinet’s great mistake
of secretly dispatching ten times the number of troops it told the United
States it would to the occupied areas, but the Seiyūkai cabinet, unable to
overcome the opposition of a military clique run wild, must bear a large
measure of responsibility. After the intervention, the shameful-acting Terauchi and Hara cabinets both must bear responsibility for this crime. . . .
78. “Buki chōsa tsūkō,” Ōsaka mainichi, October 15, 1922, pp. 301–3, and “Buki jiken
kōhan dai ni kai,” Tōkyō nichi nichi, October 17, 1922, pp. 304 – 6, in ibid.
79. “Wake no wakarane buki mondai,” Tōkyō nichi nichi, October 16, 1922, in ibid.,
pp. 303 – 4.
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Thus the failure of our Siberian Intervention teaches us an expensive
lesson, that our politicians are shortsighted and irresolute and that our
nation can sustain unnecessary loss from the militarists’ mistaken aggression; 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 bought
them nothing. No greater example than this can be found of our government
and 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 any
more responsive or capable of effective action.
Conclusion
It was taken as a matter of faith in Japan from the early years of the Meiji
period through the end of World War II that in order to consider itself a
front-rank nation, Japan must have an overseas empire. And yet, while the
people were greatly cheered by the victories of the nation’s soldiers and
sailors in acquiring overseas possessions, the experience was inevitably
soured by the fact that they were required to pay for the increased defense
establishment necessary to hold the new gains.81 The Siberian Intervention
brought the Japanese people no victories to celebrate, no apparent opportunities for profit, and no hope of a rapid conclusion. It should not surprise us
it was unpopular.
Yet the immediate aftermath of World War I provided Japanese dissatisfied with the imperial experience a new lexicon to criticize the imperial
adventure in Siberia and, indeed, a new paradigm by which to define the basic characteristics of a “modern state.” The victorious “allied and associated” powers shared a commitment to democracy, constitutionalism, and a
more cooperative style of foreign relations, rejecting the outright conquest
and drive for autarchy that had failed the central powers. To truly rank itself
among the rekkoku, or great powers, meant Japan too must embrace the
ideas, social institutions, and approaches to foreign relations that had seemingly propelled Britain and the United States into the very front ranks of
international power. “The defeat of Germany,” said Hamaguchi Osachi of
the Kenseikai, “has deeply implanted the idea that bureaucratism and militarism have declined and that politics must be modeled entirely upon
80. Ōsaka mainichi, October 27, 1922, in ibid., p. 293.
81. Stewart Lone, Army, Empire and Politics in Meiji Japan: The Three Careers of General Katsura Tarō (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), as well as Gordon, Labor and Imperial Democracy in Prewar Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), and The
Modern 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 world
at this moment.” 82
This seeming verdict of history provided an important boost for democratic advocates as democracy as a protest movement made the transition to
a system of rule. With the rise of the first cabinet drawn from the majority
party in the Diet, many advocates of democracy and “responsible government” hoped for a new respect for popular opinion in the making of Japan’s
foreign policy. The inability of the Hara cabinet to overcome resistance from
the Japanese military and end the intervention seriously eroded those hopes.
What is critical here is that democracy was rarely valued by its advocates as
an end in itself; rather, it was seen as a tool to build the national power and
prosperity that were part and parcel of being a “first-rank” nation and deal
with social problems facing the nation. Should democratic institutions and
political 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 deeply
frustrating for the Japanese. The appeal of the idea that Japan should act autonomously to secure its interests in East Asia had not died but was temporarily eclipsed by new postwar attitudes and the traditional unwillingness
of the urban masses to continue to shoulder the burden of empire. The impotence of democratic government and the inability of Japanese civil society to compel meaningful change disheartened democratic advocates and
alienated the people from the political parties.
Meanwhile, the Japanese military and its supporters attributed the failure in Siberia not to a flawed strategy of trying to impose an alien rule upon
a hostile population deeply imbued with nationalistic fervor, but rather to a
lack of public support for the army there. As a result they would concentrate
their efforts throughout the 1920s and 1930s not on avoiding such adventures in the future but on trying to explain the army’s imperial mission to the
Japanese 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.