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The Tanaka Memorial (1927): authentic or spurious?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

John J. Stephan
John J. Stephan
Affiliation:
University of Hawaii
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Extract

Few documents in recent history have provoked such controversy as the so-called ‘Tanaka Memorial’. ‘Document’ is perhaps a misnomer, for the original (assuming that there was one) has never been seen by anyone willing to admit its existence. The memorial is said to be a 13,000-word secret petition presented by Prime Minister Baron Tanaka Giichi to Emperor Hirohito on 25 July 1927 outlining a program of economic penetration into Manchuria, China, and Mongolia that would prepare for Japan's subjection of Asia and Europe. Exposed by the Chinese in 1929, the document gained global notoriety during the 1930s. Over vehement Japanese objections and disclaimers, it was translated and circulated in Europe and the United States. Grandiose designs expressed in a language that might have aroused incredulity or mirth in calmer times sounded uncomfortably authentic in the context of Japanese behavior in East Asia and the Pacific between 1931 and 1945.

Type
Articles
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 7 , Issue 3 , May 1973 , pp. 733 - 745
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1973

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References

1 Other appellations include ‘Tanaka Memorandum’ (Soviet and some Japanese works), ‘Tien Chung tsou-che’ (Chinese works), and ‘Tanaka jōsōbun’ (Japanese works). Nihon rekishi daijiten refers to it (perhaps inadvertently) as a ‘memorium’. XII (Tokyo, 1958), 206.Google Scholar

2 Asahi shinbun, 27 February 1960.

3 Some Japanese scholars dissociate the memorial from Tanaka's foreign policy. Others concede that the memorial itself may be spurious but insist that it reflected Tanaka's continental aspirations. For the former view, Inō Dentarō, ‘“Tanaka jōsōbun” o meguru nisan no mondai’, Kokusai seiji, no. 26 (1964), pp. 72–87. For the latter, Eguchi Kei'ichi, ‘Tanaka jōsōbun no shingi’, Nihonshi kenkyū, no. 80 (1966), pp. 60–5.

4 ‘Tanaka Memorandum’ in Bol'shaia souetskaia entsyklopediia, 2nd ed., XLI (Moscow, 1956), 586.Google ScholarZhukov, E. M. (ed.), Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia na Dal'nem Vostoke (1870–1945 gg.) (Moscow, 1951). pp. 386–8Google Scholar; Eidus, Kh. T., Ocherki novoi i noveishei istorii Iaponii (Moscow, 1955), pp. 163–4Google Scholar; Nikiforov, V. N. (ed.), Novaia i noveishaia istorii Kitaia (Moscow, 1950), p. 80Google Scholar; Kutakov, L. N., Portmutskii mirnyi dogovor (Moscow, 1961), pp. 200–1Google Scholar; Eidus, Kh. T., SSR i Iaponiia (Moscow, 1964), p. 5.Google Scholar

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6 Snyder, Louis T. (ed.), The imperialism reader (Princeton, 1962), p. 93. Snyder subtitled the memorial ‘Japan's blueprint for colonization of the Far East’ and remarked that ‘it at least had the historical value of summing up Japanese imperialist ambitions’.Google Scholar

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10 See, for example, Akira, Iriye, After imperialism: the search for a new order in the Far East, 1921–1931 (Cambridge, Mass., 1965)Google Scholar; EtōShinkichi, , ‘Kyōhōsen shadan mondai no gaikō katei: Tanaka gaikö to sono haikei’, in Hajime, Shinohara (ed.), Kindai Nihon no seiji shidō (Tokyo, 1965), pp. 375–429.Google Scholar

11 In addition to Tanaka, the participants of the Eastern Conference included the commander of the Kwantung Army (Mutō Nobuyoshi); the governor of the Kwantung Leased Territory; the minister to Peking (Yoshizawa Kenkichi); the consuls in Mukden (Yoshida Shigeru), Shanghai, and Hankow; representatives from the Army Ministry and General Staff (including Minami Jirō and Abe Nobuyuki); the Navy Minister (Okada Keisuke); Foreign Ministry officials (including Mori Kaku, Hotta Masaaki, and Saitō Yoshie); and representatives from the Finance Ministry.

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13 Iriye, , op. cit., pp. 152–9, 162–72Google Scholar; Etō, op. cit., pp. 399, 416–24.

14 Inō, op. cit., p. 81.

15 Ibid., pp. 81–2.

16 Ibid., p. 81. Members of the American Council of the IPR visiting Mukden in the summer of 1929 also heard reports of the memorial. Their informants were from the entourage of Marshall Chang Hsüeh-liang. New York Times, 15 May 1932, IX, 3.

17 Inō, op. cit., p. 83; Willoughby, W. W., Japan's case examined (Baltimore, 1940), p. 149.Google Scholar

18 Shihshih yüehpao's chief editor was Ch'en Li-fu who together with his brother led the Kuomintang's ‘Organization clique’ (‘CC clique’).

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21 Ibid., 17 September 1931, pp. 889–90.

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23 The Chinese National Salvation Publicity Bureau (San Francisco) published it in 1937. ‘The Tanaka Memorial: An Outline Presented to the Japanese Emperor on July 25, 1927 by Premier Tanaka for the Japanese Conquest of China and other Nations’. 17 pp. Hereafter, citations from the memorial will be taken from this text (referred to as ‘Tanaka Memorial’).

24 Isukura sōsho, I, (Tokyo, 1946). For more on the memorial's distribution and translation see Inō, op. cit., pp. 75–7.Google Scholar

25 Inukai Tsuyoshi in an introduction to Kawakami, K. K., Japan speaks on the Sino-Japanese Crisis (New York, 1932), xi–xii.Google Scholar

26 In the course of an exchange with Wellington Koo before the League Council on 23 November 1932, Matsuoka averred that the memorial had been forged by a military attaché (nationality unspecified) in Peking and sold to the Chinese for $50,000. Willoughby, op. cit., p. 152 n.

27 International Military Tribunal for the Far East. Affidavit of Okada Keisuke. Documents no. 1749, 11525. Exhibits no. 175 and 176.

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33 Ibid.

34 According to Horinouchi Kensuke, Japanese Consul-General in New York. New York Times, 15 May 1932, IX, 3.

35 ‘Tanaka Memorial’, p. 2.

36 Ibid.

37 Ibid., p. 8.

38 Ibid., pp. 2, 15.

39 Ibid., p. 3.

40 Ibid., p. 2.

41 Ibid., pp. 2, 13.

42 Ibid., pp. 8–9.

43 Willoughby, op. cit., p. 152 n.

44 International Military Tribunal for the Far East, Proceedings, p. 2, 468.

45 Tetsu'ichi, Takakura (ed.), Tanaka Giichi denki, II (Tokyo, 1960), 668–72.Google Scholar

46 Inō, op. cit., p. 87; Eguchi, op. cit., p. 61.

47 ‘Tanaka Memorial’, p. 9; Inō, op. cit., p. 86. Soviet writers are apparently unaware of this aspect of the memorial. Otherwise, they might be less energetic in upholding its authenticity.

48 Tanaka spent four years in Russia as a young army officer (1898–1902) during which he learned the language and acquainted himself thoroughly with military, economic, and social conditions there. He served in Manchuria during the Russo Japanese War and directed the Siberian War Planning Committee of the General Staff during the Allied Intervention (1918–22).

49 Inō, op. cit., p. 81.

50 Tanaka and the Soviet ambassador, Aleksandr A. Troianovskii, did talk informally about the Manchurian problem on 8 March 1928, but this conversation entailed no subsequent cooperátion. Lensen, George A., Japanese recognition of the USSR, Soviet-Japanese relations, 1921–1930 (Tokyo, 1970), p. 357.Google Scholar

51 Etō, op. cit., p. 424.

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53 Eguchi, op. cit., pp. 63–4.

54 Ibid., p. 64, citing a 1951 Tokyo University dissertation by Inumaru Giichi. Kuhara Fusanosuke, Minister of Communications in Tanaka's cabinet from 23 May 1928 to 2 July 1929, admiringly recalled Tanaka's personal continental visions in Kōdō keizai ron (Tokyo, 1933), pp. 73–4.Google Scholar

55 United States, National Archives, National Archives Microcopy No. T-82, Serial 198, Roll 157, frames 294027–294075.

56 Ibid., frame no. 029064.

57 Bergamini, David, Japan's imperial conspiracy (New York, 1971)Google Scholar; for early examples, see Crow, Carl, Japan and America (New York, 1916),Google Scholar and McCormick, Frederick, The Menace of Japan (Boston, 1917).Google Scholar

58 Hotta Masayoshi (1810–1864), lord of Sakura han and senior councillor in the Tokugawa bakufu (1841–43, 1955–58). For a discussion of Hotta and global conspiracy, see Upton Close, Behind the Face of Japan (New York, 1942), pp. 100–5,Google Scholar and Tolischus, Otto D., Tokyo Record (New York, 1943), p. 23.Google Scholar

59 Tani Kanjō (1837–1911), army officer and statesman from Tosa, known for his traditionalism, nationalism, and agrarian idealism. For Tani's letters, see Close, p. 103.

60 Honjō Shigeru (1876–1945) commanded the Kwantung Army during the Manchurian Incident of 1931, although he played a passive role in the affair. Honjö retired in 1938 and committed suicide on 20 November 1945, reputedly out of a sense of responsibility for his role in the incident.

61 Inukai Tsuyoshi (1855–1932) is a bizarre candidate for an expansionist memorial. He paid with his life for his refusal to entertain such notions.

62 Seichō, Matsumoto, Shōwa shi hakkutsu, III (Tokyo, 1966), 29–32.Google Scholar