How China Started the Second Sino-Japanese War:Why Should Japan Apologize to China?
By Moteki Hiromichi, Acting Chairman;
Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact
Introduction
In the so-called "apology issue," which concerns Japan's conduct in China during theSecond Sino-Japanese War, there exists two opposing points of view:"I guess the only thing we can do is to keep on apologizing until China tells us,'The problems between us may not be settled, but for now you have sufficientlyapologized.'" -Murakami Haruki1"A grateful China should also pay respect to Yasukuni Shrine." -Ko Bunyu2Mr. Murakami's opinion is based on the belief that Japan waged an aggressive war
against China, a belief shared by many Japanese even if they don't know the reason why.
This belief holds that the Japanese should be completely repentant over that act ofaggression for the sake of clearing our own conscience.
There are two major problems with this point of view.
First of all, it rests on the conventional wisdom that Japan was guilty of aggression
towards China. Many people will perhaps respond to that by saying something like,"What are you talking about? The Japanese Army invaded continental China and waged
war there. Surely that constitutes a war of aggression."

1

Quoted in the column “Sankeisho” (Sankei Shimbun, April 25, 2015) from an interview Mr.

Murakami gave to Kyodo News on April 17, 2015. Murakami is an internationally known novelist,
said to be a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
2

Ko Bunyu (Huang Wenxiong) was born in Taiwan in 1938. He is an active commentator on

current and historical events and also a visiting professor at Takushoku University. He is the authorof more than 300 books.

1However, let's imagine the following scenario. What if the Japan Self-Defense Forces
launched an unprovoked attack on American military units, which are stationed in Japanin accordance with the provisions of the US-Japan Security Treaty, and a war broke out
on Japanese territory? Because the fighting would be taking place in Japan, does thatmean that, in this scenario, the US Army is undeniably the aggressor? No matter how
distasteful a person might find the US military presence to be, under international law,
Japan would be deemed the aggressor here.
Therefore, the most important question we ought to be asking is not "Where did theSecond Sino-Japanese War take place," but rather "Which side started the SecondSino-Japanese War?" The present work shall attempt to answer that question, and I hope
to demonstrate to the reader that the reality is utterly contrary to the conventional
wisdom.
Secondly, this issue is tied into postwar peace treaties. The war between China andJapan was brought to an official conclusion through the Treaty of Taipei, which wassigned with the Republic of China, and the Joint Communiqué and Treaty of Peace andFriendship, which were signed with the People's Republic of China. As with any war, it
can be expected that each side will have its own grievances, and that some ill feelings
will remain. Nevertheless, reopening old wounds time and time again serves only tomake it more difficult to rebuild normal relations between two countries after a war.
Therefore, I believe that one of the most important lessons we have learned from humanhistory is that conflicts should be settled definitively through peace treaties.
Mr. Murakami's thinking, that Japan should continue to apologize until China issatisfied, flies in the face of the lessons of history. This seems to me to be a very
simplistic way of thinking, showing scant concern for anything other thandemonstrating an emotional response. I don't think that this will help to clear anyone'sconscience.
One might say that, even if a conflict is settled through a peace treaty, ill feelings ofcertain people will still exist. However, in that case, it won't be a one-sided problem,
because there are quite a few Japanese people who personally feel that China's lawless
acts during the war were also entirely unforgiveable. If we go down that path, there will
be no end.

2This is all the more true if personal ill feelings become entangled in international level
politics. If these matters engulf Japan, rather than stay at the individual level, then theletter and spirit of a peace treaty will be meaningless. Therefore, even if we leave aside
the first problem of whether or not Japan waged aggressive war on China, the conceptof eternally apologizing would remain, not an act of good conscience, but rather anatavistic principle in defiance of the wisdom acquired through history.
Ko Bunyu's opinion, which comes from the title of an essay he contributed to themagazine Rekishitsu,3 might seem extreme, biased, or eccentric on first glance.
Nevertheless, this is the conclusion he reached in an essay grounded on sound logic andbacked with a wealth of historical facts.
Ko Bunyu wrote the following at the beginning of the essay:"China has alleged that the Japanese Army was responsible for aggression, massacres,rape, and pillage directed against the Chinese and other Asian peoples, and since the endof the war this is also what people in Japan have generally believed. However, this is
not what people think in Taiwan 4... Thankfully, the people of Taiwan were neverindoctrinated by the version of history promoted at the Tokyo War Crimes Trials.
Because of this, the people of Taiwan lamented that Japan lost the war, and we had no
problem in accepting the historical fact that Japan's true objective in fighting the war
was to take back Asia and rid it of the invasive colonial powers.” 5The people of Taiwan were not indoctrinated by the version of history promoted at theTokyo War Crimes Trials. In other words, they were not brainwashed by the War Guilt
Information Program6 and thus they learned the uncensored historical facts. Ko Bunyu

3See Rekishitsu, special issue of March 2015. An English translation of this article is available atthe website of the Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact. A Grateful China Should Also
Pay Respect To Yasukuni Shrine(http://www.sdh-fact.com/CL/China-Should-Pay-Respect-To-Yasukuni-.pdf)
4

A Grateful China, p.1.

5Ibid., p.1-2.

6

The War Guilt Information Program was a propaganda operation put in place by the Supreme

Commander for the Allied Powers (General MacArthur) in order to rob Japan of its spirit ofindependence and implant a war guilt complex in the minds of the Japanese people. For more3

asks the question, "what is it exactly about the Second Sino-Japanese War that Japanand the Japanese people are supposed to repent?” 7
He concludes with, "Stopping the civil war, famine relief and relief for farmers,
preventing China's dismemberment by the great powers... No matter how you look at it,
China should be thanking the Japanese rather than criticizing them. Accusing Japan ofwaging a war of aggression on China is nonsense. Instead China should show gratitude
to Japan, a country which was burdened by its foolish neighbor."8The part about "stopping the civil war" might make one pause, but as Ko Bunyu
explains, tens of millions of Chinese people perished in internal conflicts which
continued until 1950. China's state of civil war continued after the Xinhai Revolution,9and, in fact, was stopped only through the intervention of the Japanese Army. Over aseven year period, extending to 1930, internal wars involving the Chinese Nationalist
Party, which are barely known to most people today, including the Zhili–Anhui War,the Zhili–Fengtian War, and the Central Plains War, left a total of thirty million people
dead according to the estimates of Lin Yutang.10 Japan's activities in China were not aunilateral intervention in the affairs of a peaceful nation.
Ko Bunyu's assertion that Japan undertook "famine relief and relief for farmers" inChina might surprise the reader, but, as he explains, "the Japanese, far from plundering
China, instead created agricultural production plans similar to those already
implemented in Taiwan, Korea, and Manchukuo. In China, the Japanese guided andsupported production, ended oppressive taxation by landlords, protected villages fromlocal bandits, and enthusiastically helped farmers and made their food supplies secure."
11

information, see Sekino Michio's book, "Nihonjin o Kuruwaseta Senno Kosaku" [The Brainwashing
Operation that Robbed the Japanese of Their Sanity](Jiyuu-sha, Tokyo, 2015).
7

Ibid., p.1.

8Ibid., p.1.

9The Xinhai Revolution of 1911 brought down the Qing Dynasty and resulted in the establishmentof the Republic of China by Chinese republicans.
10Lin Yutang was a writer, linguist, and commentator of the Republic of China. He was nominatedas a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1940 and 1950.
11Ibid., p.10.

4

One of the leaders providing guidance in farming communities was Ozawa Kaisaku. His
son is the famous conductor Ozawa Seiji, whose given name was formed by taking one
syllable from the given names of two prominent Japanese army officers, Itagaki
Seishiro and Ishiwara Kanji.12 Ozawa Kaisaku did creditable work in farm relief inManchukuo and strived to do the same for the farmers of mainland China.
Ko Bunyu's opinion is the product of an honest acceptance of the historical facts,
without the propaganda of the victors' view of history promoted by the Tokyo War
Crimes Trials. For this reason, I believe that he is right.
That is the premise on which I wrote this book. My focus will be to determine whichside provoked the war by examining the circumstances of the Marco Polo BridgeIncident13 and the Battle of Shanghai14 (and the subsequent Battle of Nanking), which
are regarded as the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War. That will be the subjectof Part 2, the main part of this book.
Still, because the Tokyo War Crimes Trials deemed the Manchurian Incident15 to be thestart of the Japanese invasion, and because China also regards it as the start of the"Fifteen-Year War," I must begin with a concise overview of that as well. The
Manchurian Incident will be the subject of Part 1.

12Itagaki Seishiro and Ishihara Kanji initiated the Manchurian Incident.

13The Marco Polo Bridge Incident was a clash between the Japanese China Garrison Army andChina's 29th Route Army, which took place at Marco Polo Bridge in southwest Beijing on July 7,
1937.
14

The Battle of Shanghai began on August 13, 1937 when the Chinese Army launched a sudden

attack on the Japanese naval landing force which was protecting Japanese residents of the Shanghai
concession. On August 14, China called out its air forces as well and launched a full-scale offensive,
which led to all-out war between China and Japan.
15

On September 18, 1931, Japan's Kwantung Army attacked the forces of Zhang Xueliang, whichwere affiliated with the Republic of China, in response to an explosion along the South Manchuria
Railway at Liutiaogou on the north side of the city of Mukden. The Kwantung Army, with a force ofa mere 10,000 men, routed Zhang's army and quickly drove it out of Manchuria. In March of thefollowing year, the new nation of Manchukuo was proclaimed.

5It needs to be made clear from the outset that Manchuria was the cradle of the Manchu
people, who founded the Qing Dynasty, and after the Manchurian Incident it was ruledby Emperor Puyi, who was also the last Qing emperor. Therefore, China has no right tocall the Manchurian Incident an act of aggression.
Still, because the Republic of China somehow became internationally recognized as thesuccessor to the Qing Dynasty, China's unjust claims have gone unchallenged. I shallbriefly explain the unreasonableness of this position and the misconception that
Manchukuo was a Japanese puppet state.
Finally, in Part 3, I want to touch on the subject of Japan's policies toward China at thattime, particularly Japan's efforts to resolve the conflict and the peace terms Japanoffered.
What I hope that the reader will take from this book is that Japan's war guilt complex,
alongside the theory that Japan waged aggressive war on China, are fundamentallywrong and contrary to all facts.
This book will refer to the war between Japan and China as the Second Sino-JapaneseWar, even though the government of Japan officially named it the "China Incident"
following the outbreak of the Battle of Shanghai. I made this decision for two reasons.
Firstly, the Chinese government's general mobilization order escalated the conflict
beyond the level of a mere "incident". Secondly, I concluded that it was the only
appropriate term I could use to refer more generally to the big picture of Sino-Japanese
conflict following the Manchurian Incident. It seemed to me that the term "China
Incident" referred to a conflict with a more specific span of time.
I would be happy to hear from readers who have further questions about the issues
presented in this book.
September 1, 20156

Table of Contents
Introduction
Part 1 - The Manchurian Incident
Chronology
How did 10,400 Japanese soldiers occupy Manchuria?
The appearance of local committees and Manchuria's declarations ofindependence
The Lytton Report
Zhang Jinghui's speech to the Greater East Asia Conference
Achieving the world's highest rate of economic growth
The myth of the Fifteen-Year War
Part 2 - The Marco Polo Bridge Incident and the Battles of Shanghai and Nanking
The Battle of Shanghai: The true starting point of the war
The unmistakable aggressor was China
China's orchestration of the Marco Polo Bridge Incident
China's need to attack JapanThe outbreak of the Marco Polo Bridge Incident
The smoking gun: The CCP's "7-8 circular telegram"The CCP's plans to escalate the crisis
The North China Incident and the Tongzhou Incident
The Tongzhou Massacre
What about the Nanking Massacre?
Japanese outrage and the rise of the "Punish China" slogan
The Sino-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact and secret military agreement
China's all-out attack: The struggle of the naval landing force and the dispatch oftwo divisions
China's deadly bombing of the foreign concessions
The order to capture Nanking
Why do people say that a massacre happened in Nanking?
Nationalist China's silence on the "Nanking Massacre"
Open questions for President Hu Jintao

7

Japan's peace terms after the fall of Nanking and the First Konoe Statement
Part 3 - Japan's Policies Toward China
Was the North China Separation Strategy an act of aggression?
Peace talks after the Battle of Shanghai and the Trautmann Mediation
Japan's China policy after the First Konoe Statement
The Japanese Army's attitude towards China as seen in Orders for Officers andMen of the Expeditionary Force
Afterword
The military parade of September 3
The shameful act of the world's leaders
The historical fabrications of the movie Cairo Declaration

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