Chapter VII
GOVERNING INSTITUTIONS OF THE JAPANESE AND PRO-JAPANESE
Facing the National Armies, and encircling the guerrillas, lie the Imperial Japanese forces. Frank agents of Imperial policy, they—unlike the Hitler-Mussolini contingents in Spain—make no pretense of subordination to their Chinese allies. Publicly and legally instruments of the Japanese state, their function is to destroy the Chinese government, to control and bend Chinese society to the Imperial purposes, and to protect Chinese who come forth as allies. The Japanese Empire is accordingly itself militarily extended to China; occasional, half-hearted attempts to deny the ensuing international complications have been sternly rejected by other great powers. The United States is not alone in insisting on full Japanese responsibility for everything that happens within the zone of Japanese control.
The position of the Japanese army as a governing engine, unacknowledged colonial machinery of a vast unassimilable colony, is not one relished by the Japanese people or by their leaders. Even in the case of Manchoukuo, the Japanese played a half-deception on themselves by pretending that they were extending the area of their influence, not the extent of their responsibilities. In part this distaste for overt control is based on the ease, cheapness and irresponsibility of indirect rule, employed in varying degrees by the British in Malaysia, the French in Indo-China, and the Soviets in Outer Mongolia. The Japanese like to think that they are aiding China, and incidentally themselves, to a New Order in East Asia—autarkic, stable, racially independent of the Whites, militarily secure. They do not like to contemplate the slaughter of innocent people for sheer conquest, or to consider the hopeless immensity of trying to overwhelm China. This complicates their position.[1]
For if the status of the Japanese army in China is clear, its purposes are not. The war aims of the Japanese are confused. Japan's goal is defined by overtones of the inexpressible—in economic motivation, once valid, no longer meaningful; in rationalizations so long reiterated that they become genuine; in the toss and push of world affairs, tempting Japan's leaders to this opportunism or that; in sheer sentiments of Japanolatry, Emperor-worship, racialism, archaic resentment against China, fellow-feeling for the Chinese orientals, and plain fear. A few Japanese know exactly what they want. The policy as a whole, the policy of the Imperial state, encompasses ill-assorted economic, political, strategic, racial and purely ideological objectives.
Even at the simple level of institutional control, the Japanese aim in China has been ill-defined. The restoration of the Manchu monarchy in Manchoukuo was an appeal to monarchist legitimism, to the Chinese past, and to common Confucianist values. When the Japanese came further into China, it was at first expected that they might install Mr. Chin P'u-yi as Emperor of all China, and rehabilitate him in the Palace-museum he left when a youth. Instead, they apparently attempted to create a chain of linked, reactionary, agricultural Chinese states, mixed in form—a federation of princes in Inner Mongolia, an Empire in Manchoukuo, republics elsewhere. They began by going as far as to create a dozen or more ephemeral pro-Japanese agencies—for a while one might legitimately have expected that a Nanking government follow a Peking government, a Hankow government, a Canton government, ad infinitum. But the trend was reversed when the Autonomous East Hopei Anti-Communist Government of Mr. Yin Ju-kêng was merged with the Peking regime, and—as pressure rose in Japan for a settlement of the China affair—a China-wide Japanophile government was first contemplated, and then established. The establishment of these institutions has not meant the abdication of the Imperial Japanese forces from the government of China. The pro-Japanese governments were and are civil auxiliaries of the Japanese army; their influence has in no case extended beyond the immediately effective reach of the Japanese infantry. Even in planning the long-range permanent settlement of Chinese affairs—on her own terms—Japan does not propose to withdraw all her troops from China.
The Japanese Army as a Chinese Government
The Japanese army is the effective military government of occupied China. The Japanophile Chinese have a few troops, who function in close proximity to Japanese, and are in no sense a military counterweight to the invaders. The Japanese army is a large force, modern by somewhat second-rate standards, which requires the use of an effective communications system, modern economic auxiliaries such as shops, banks, post offices, and a variety of other services including hospitals, shrines, brothels, and crematories. These do not exist in China in forms suited to Japanese needs, nor could Japan afford to trust Chinese with the railways, the air services, the river commerce, the telegraphs, the food warehouses, and other most vital services. Thus, all over occupied China, the Japanese have installed a military government.
This government assumes direct responsibility for administering whatever seems necessary or profitable. Thus, in the city of Nanking, the best buildings are occupied by the Japanese, and the Wang government is profoundly gratified to be allowed to share some of them, obtaining second choice. The Japanese military, through protected corporations, supervises the operation of the railroads and airlines, but it does not even rely on the corporations to provide military transport, which is under direct army control. If a Chinese who has gone over to the Japanese and occupies a high position in their protected governments wishes to ride on a Chinese train between Shanghai and Nanking, he must buy a ticket from a Japanese clerk, show it to a Japanese conductor under the eyes of a Japanese guard, with Japanese detectives standing about, order a Sino-Japanese or pseudo-European meal in a Japanese dining car with Japanese waitresses from a menu printed in Japanese, and must pay, not in his own puppet-bank currency, but in special Japanese currency not acceptable in Japan.