This article ** from WeChat *** Youth Insights.
Japan is an island nation with a narrow territory and extremely poor resources. The lack of natural mineral resources is just that, there is not even enough rice to eat. Even because of the problem of insufficient rice, there was a ** in which 20,000 people participated, which was known as the "1918 Rice Riot".
Japan is not only small and has few resources, but also has many disasters, volcanoes, typhoons, and tsunamis are frequent, among which the most serious ones are particularly serious. For example, in September 1923, the "Kanto Great **" not only killed more than 100,000 people, but also damaged countless industrial facilities, and severely damaged the Japanese economy. Tragically, Japan also suffered from the capitalist economic crisis that began in 1929, but Japan did not have the skills of Hitler, Roosevelt and Stalin, and could only sit back and watch its industrial and economic deterioration at the level of a second-rate power.
With its usual belligerent mentality and nouveau riche mentality, Japan's only way is to play militarism and desperately develop its military industry, such as successfully developing the world's first aircraft carrier in 1922, and then carry out foreign expansion to snatch resources from its neighbors Korea and China. After entering Northeast China through the "First Sino-Japanese War" and the "Russo-Japanese War", they increased the intensity and scale of investment in order to prepare for full-scale occupation in the future.
But the problem is that Japan's investment in China has climbed to nearly 90% of its overseas investment, which has led to economic development relying heavily on profits and resources from China, and once China is dominated by the Soviet Union and the United States, it will be quite fatal for Japan. Therefore, on the China issue, the contradictions between Japan, the Soviet Union, and the United States cannot be reconciled.
The leader of Japan at this time was Emperor Hirohito of Showa, a dangerous element with great ambitions. His grandfather, Meiji Emperor Muhito, was in average health and died of uremia at the age of only sixty. His father, Taisho Emperor Yoshihito, was in even worse physical condition, suffering from meningitis when he was a child, cerebral thrombosis in middle age, escalating to mental illness at the age of forty, and dying at the age of forty. But the strange thing is that Hirohito actually lived to be eighty-eight years old, and he reigned for nearly seventy years, making him the longest-reigning emperor until 1989.
According to the power structure of a constitutional monarchy, the emperor theoretically has no real power, and the cabinet is the actual powerholder. But the rules are dead, people are alive, and there are people who don't play cards according to the rules at any time. The person who does not play according to the rules is Emperor Meiji, who left himself a back door in the Constitution of the Empire of Japan, that is, the right to command the navy and the army, and the power to decide on the establishment and strength of the army belong to the emperor. In other words, from the beginning of the Meiji Emperor to the end of World War II, the three emperors of Japan were allowed to intervene in military affairs, and all had military personnel powers. Specifically, the Japanese military department, that is, the supreme command organs of the Japanese army and navy (Army General Staff Headquarters and Navy Command Department) and military decision-making organs (army ministries and navy ministries), are independent of the cabinet and parliament and are directly accountable to the emperor.
Muren's ability is very strong, the military power is in hand, and his words count. But his son Yoshihito was no longer good, because he had a problem with his head, no one took him as the emperor seriously, and the power gradually fell into the hands of the Meiji Restoration veteran and the powerful minister Yama Prefecture Aritomo, who monopolized the power of the military department. When the ambitious Hirohito succeeded to the throne, he naturally couldn't tolerate Yama Prefecture Aritomo continuing to stay in the position of a powerful minister, because he also liked power and couldn't tolerate someone sitting in that seat pointing fingers at him. However, the idea that you must get rid of the mountain county Youpeng, as a thought, it's okay to think about it occasionally, but if you really do it, it won't work, it's easy to drive the other party away. Therefore, Hirohito is in great need of allies at this time, and he very much needs someone to stand up and support him.
It should be said that Hirohito was lucky, and at this time, a group of officers of the Shaozhuang faction, who were later called the "Unification faction", happened to be premeditated and purposefully rebelled against the Yama Prefecture. Almost all of them graduated from Japan's best military schools, the Army Non-commissioned Officer School and the Army University, such as Okamura Ninji, Tojo Hideki, Kawamoto Daisaku, Ishihara Waner, Sakagaki Seishiro, and Tohihara Ken, who are very familiar to Chinese.
Second, Ryosuke Isoya, Mijiro Umezu, Ishine Matsui and others are among them.
There are good reasons why these people chose to rebel. First of all, there is corruption in the personnel of the army, and there is little hope for them to be promoted and raised. At that time, almost all the middle and high-ranking officers of the Japanese army and navy were related households of Yama Prefecture Youtomo and naval tycoon Yamagonbei Yamaken, which means that the promotion of officers almost all depended on fighting for their fathers and relationships, which was very unfavorable to the grassroots class with insufficient backgrounds.
Second, these young Zhuang officers also have their own political ideals. Most of them had been educated or worked abroad (mainly in Germany) and were well aware of the gap between Japan and Germany, so they wanted to overthrow the old Yama Prefecture Aritomo and Yamagonbei in order to realize their blueprint: annex Manchu and Mongolia abroad and control China; Establish military ** rule at home, curb the domestic economic recession, and quickly strengthen Japan. Moreover, this ideal of theirs is very marketable among the junior officers of the Japanese Army.
Emperor Hirohito wanted to drive out Yamaguchi Aritomo, and the "unification faction" also wanted to overthrow Yamaprefecture Aritomo. The emperor had status and power, and these middle and high-ranking officers had the ability and strength, so the two sides hit it off, and in 1925, they launched an attack on the Yama Prefecture Aritomo faction. This was followed by a large-scale disarmament, purging more than 2,000 officers who were related to Yama Prefecture's friends and Yamagon's main soldiers, and replacing them with officers from the "control faction" who took up the post of section chief (belonging to the middle rank).
Hirohito finally had a firm grip on military power. With the acquiescence of the emperor, these young Zhuang officers branded themselves with the sacred label of "serving the emperor and fighting for patriotism." From then on, they fanatically expanded their military and advocated foreign aggression until the end of World War II, causing heavy damage to Asia and the world.