793.94 Commission/312
The Ambassador in Japan (Grew) to the Secretary of State
[Received August 1.]
Sir: There is transmitted herewith a copy of an open letter to the League of Nations Commission of Inquiry from the Shiunso, of Tokyo.17 This letter was published in large type, taking an entire page of the Japan Times and Mail, issue of July 4, 1932, on which day the Commission arrived in Tokyo from China. The letter attacks the Chinese and American diplomatic policies, restates Japan’s attitude toward China and Manchuria, and advises the Commission to rectify the mistaken stand of the League of Nations toward Manchuria.
The Shiunso is a small, semi-secret reactionary organization, founded in 1924 and led by Tetsuma Hashimoto. Very little is known regarding the organization, except that it is extremely nationalistic, is opposed to all the present-day political parties of Japan and their financial backers, and is anti-American. Outwardly, the organization does little except occasionally to rent half or full pages in the Japanese newspapers or the Japan Times and Mail and to publish therein manifestos containing its opinions on events of the day. The Embassy would attach little importance to an open letter published by this organization were it not for the fact that there seems to be some connection between its manifestos and succeeding important occurrences. On January 22, 1932, the organization published a bitter attack on Mr. Junnosuke Inouye, formerly Minister of Finance, denouncing him as the cause of the dwindling of the gold reserve of Japan. Eighteen days later, on February 9th, Mr. Inouye was assassinated. The organization also published in the Japanese-language newspapers a manifesto denouncing those who had sold yen and purchased gold dollars last autumn. The chief purchasers of dollars were popularly reported to be the various Mitsui organizations, and on March 5, 1932, Baron Dan of the Mitsui clan was assassinated. These may be coincidences, but on the other hand it is possible that the Shiunso is acting as the mouthpiece of the reactionary and nationalistic organizations of Japan. If the latter assumption is correct, [Page 700] the utterances of the Shiunso may be considered as expressing the views of a large and powerful section of the Japanese nation.
Respectfully yours,
- Not printed.↩