894.00/668
The Ambassador in Japan (Grew) to the Secretary of State
[Received August 10.]
Sir: I have the honor to submit the following study of the political consequences of the incident of February 26, 1936.
[Page 778]As reported to the Department in numerous telegrams and despatches, on the morning of February 26 at Tokyo a group of young officers in the Japanese Army led several hundred troops to the residences of a number of the highest officials of the country, several such officials were assassinated, the insurgents seized a number of public buildings, martial law was declared by the Government, a few days later the insurgents surrendered and submitted to arrest, they were tried by court martial extending over several months, the leaders were sentenced to death, other conspirators were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment, on July 12 most of those sentenced to death were executed, and on July 18 martial law was lifted.
Confusion was the first effect of the incident. The people were at a loss to know what had occurred and what was about to occur, particularly inasmuch as a strict censorship made them susceptible to rumors as their source of knowledge of what was actually going on. There were frequent expressions of resentment against the censorship, and one newspaper went so far as to say that the incident itself would not have occurred in a community enjoying freedom of speech.
But the populace quickly regained its composure by virtue of its political inertia, its general indifference to political ideas. Although the insurgents began their operations by assassinations, their use of terrorism ended there. Confining their use of violence to this dramatic opening they expected that a simple statement of their motives and program would call forth widespread popular support and lead to the changes which they advocated. They addressed the people through printed statements. Quietly and confidently they harangued the passers-by in front of the buildings which they seized. They explained that they were opposed to privilege, whether of wealth or of big business or of the misguided advisers close to the Emperor or of those Army leaders who gave in to favoritism in military promotions; they advocated a restatement of the fundamental structure of the state; they favored stabilization of the livelihood of the people of Japan; they argued for recognition of the needs of adequate defense of the country. They urged a Showa restoration in the year 1936 as brilliant and comprehensive as the Meiji restoration. But several circumstances materially weakened the appeal of the insurgents to the country. The people did not like the killing of old men in cold blood; they were opposed to the commanding of Imperial troops contrary to orders from above; they resented the threat to the Imperial palace and the Emperor in the movements of the troops controlled by the insurgents; and for the first time they were awakened to the necessity of putting a stop to the long series of political assassinations which have taken place in Japan in recent years.
Stunned that the ideas of the insurgents were not sweeping the populace, and faced by inevitably heavy bloodshed if choosing resistance [Page 779] to the overwhelming loyal force sent against them, the insurgents capitulated. The uprising was at an end. There remained its punishment and the prevention of the recurrence of similar danger in the future. The situation called for the formation of a new cabinet.
At this point the Army stepped forward to assert a leadership which it has successfully maintained up to the present time. Through its well-known power of preventing the formation of a cabinet by forbidding any officer to become Minister of War the Army was able to exact from the new Premier, Hirota, definite concessions to the wishes of the Army. The Army vetoed the appointment of Yoshida as Foreign Minister. More important, the Army undoubtedly required that the new cabinet undertake fundamental political reform. What is especially startling to the foreign observer is that the fundamental reforms which the Army has pushed during the tenure of office of this cabinet are practically those reforms advocated by the insurgents of February 26. Soon after the formation of the Hirota cabinet the Army stated to the press that in the cabinet-forming negotiations it had insisted on Hirota’s recognition of the need for action on the national polity, livelihood of the people, national defense, and positive foreign policy. The details which appeared in this Army statement to the press are now, in retrospect, astonishingly accurate as a prospectus of what has in fact occupied the Government in the months since. The Army took the whip hand and has kept it.
So serious a shock as the incident of February 26 could not pass without causing many intelligent people doubts of Japanese stability. Deposits in the Japanese banks associated with clearing houses fell two and a half per cent between the end of January and the end of February 1936. Pressure to remove investments from Japan to foreign countries resulted in preventive restrictions by the Finance Ministry, and many wealthy Japanese were thereby checked in their plans. Concurrently the Government recognized danger in the covert circulation of politically disquieting documents (such had been discovered to have had a part in all the recent political assassinations of Japan) and new measures were consequently put into force to control dangerous and seditious literature.
A direct consequence of the changed public state of mind following upon the February 26 incident was decisive action in the trial of Aizawa, the Army officer who assassinated General Nagata in August 1935. Previous to the incident Aizawa’s trial had dragged out inconclusively with astonishing explanations of patriotic motive admitted as evidence in his defense. After February 26 a new trial was launched for him and he was sentenced to death. On July 1 [3] he was executed.
When sentences of imprisonment and death were pronounced July 7 on the conspirators of the February 26 incident popular approval was [Page 780] practically unanimous. The conviction was wisely based on the insurgents’ use of Imperial troops without Imperial authority. This ground of conviction in a way justified the punishment meted out, so heavy by comparison with that of the conspirators of May 15, 1932. It had the further virtue of explaining the severe penalties imposed without reflecting upon the reform measures advocated by the insurgents. This was desirable from the Army’s point of view because of the great similarity of the reform measures which the Army is backing.
The Army has gained rather than lost by the incident and its sequel. At first, to be sure, the fact that the insurgents were Army men had its reaction, and there was a noticeable resistance to military service in some districts. But the Army itself has been the executor of the measures taken against the insurgents and has discharged the responsibility with finality in a manner which is approved by the people. In addition, the Army has succeeded in maintaining itself in the role, under the present administration, of trustee for fundamental reform. No organization realizes as well as the Army itself how widespread is military sentiment in favor of basic political change. The movement promoted by the February 26 insurgents was no passing fancy. That General Masaki himself was much more than a passive sympathizer of the insurgents is scarcely open to doubt. The urge to political change is ingrained in the Army, and in spite of the failure of cabinet national policy discussions (these discussions degenerated into special requests by the various departments for increased appropriations, and were abandoned in July after a few sessions) the Army, which is still the crucial factor in the future of Japan, can confidently be expected to continue in its search for a new political order for this country.
The settlement of the incident of February 26, 1936, has strengthened government in Japan without in any way weakening the movement for social and political reform which has been gaining weight in the Army over a period of years. The incident was in large part a protest against privilege—privilege enjoyed by the wealthy, privilege within the Army, privilege close to the Throne, privilege in economic life. It was a protest drawn in the terms of the military code. The incident was decisively put down, but it was put down as a disciplinary measure only, without prejudice to the cause protested. It was put down by the Army itself which has not failed to reiterate the same protest. As a result of the incident, the country’s stand on any political assassinations that might occur in the future is clear and will no doubt serve as a check on conspiracy; but at the same time the increasing adoption of the principles advocated by the disturbers of the peace of the last years has become a more active issue, and an Army-guided expansion of government control of industry at the expense of private property [Page 781] is not only likely but also appears to be expected by most intelligent Japanese.
The lack in Japan of liberal institutions, as is particularly evident in the absence of those guarantees grouped in Anglo-Saxon countries under the heading of civil liberties, should not blind the foreign observer to the great possibility, even the probability, of fundamental political change in this country. What is most solidly established in Japanese political psychology is not a belief in one particular form of government economically and sociologically defined, but is a belief in the necessity and authority and Tightness of government itself. The acceptance of the authority of the Emperor is something that can be counted upon to remain; but along with that acceptance ideas are changing on the subject of what the government should bring to the people. Japan’s constitution itself is a definition rather of structure of government than of function of government, and will prove adaptable to functional changes.
From the February 26 incident, government in Japan emerges strong and the Army emerges strong. Previous to the incident there was noticeable a trend under Army leadership toward increasingly powerful state control of the economic mechanism. That trend has not suffered by the incident; rather it has increased.
Respectfully yours,