Manchukuo
Authors: Culver Annika A. 
Published: April 2023

Manchukuo was a Japanese-led client state occupying northeast China from 1932 until 1945, whose sovereignty and legitimacy remained contested since its violent inception: on 18 September 1931, high-ranking Japanese officers including Ishiwara Kanji (b. 1889–d. 1949) plotted a manufactured Chinese “terrorist attack” on rail-lines near Shenyang as pretext for Japan’s Kantô (Kwantung) Army invasion of northeast China, which in several months drove warlord Zhang Xueliang (b. 1901–d. 2001) beyond the Great Wall, while Ma Zhanshan (b. 1885–d. 1950) continued resistance until 1932. Koreans bordering colonial Korea fought until 1933, with Japanese forces ultimately succeeding. In 1931–1932, the League of Nations Lytton Commission came to observe conditions: they condemned Japan for exploding tracks near Chinese barracks, and recommended Manchuria’s return to China—also blamed for fomenting anti-Japanese propaganda. These findings prompted Japan’s decoupling from multi-lateral organizations, and 1933 League of Nations departure. Japan’s government dithered over recognizing Manchukuo: not until Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi’s (b. 1855–d. 1932) assassination by a junior navy officer on 15 May 1932 was it recognized as an “independent” new nation. Organizations under Japanese control began propaganda campaigns convincing foreign countries, especially the United States and Great Britain, of Manchukuo’s legitimacy. Rationale for its creation included serving as imperial Japan’s natural resource “lifeline” and as political bulwark against Communism, with “empty” northeastern lands bordering the Soviet Union to relieve rural pressures for Japanese farmers. As a client state, it enabled resource extraction, where southeastern port cities like Dairen became trade nexi with Korea, China, and Japan. Japanese-occupied Manchuria provided spaces for innovation in technocratic planning, experimental agricultural stations, and transportation networks, largely run by the South Manchuria Railway (SMR) Company, which gained a toehold after its 1907 Dairen incorporation. Manchukuo’s key internal political and economic problems arose in failing to integrate diverse populations into a cohesive whole, though Japan’s intellectuals saw it as a utopian “blank slate” for developing new cultural forms and social management. Japanese bureaucrats and officials ran Manchukuo under Kantô Army influence where propaganda slogans like “racial harmony” and “Paradise of the Kingly Way” rang hollow for largely Chinese residents. With the Second Sino-Japanese War’s (1937–1945) eruption, factions in China, including the Guomindang (KMT) and Chinese Communist Party (CCP), saw Manchukuo as a contested arena: after his 1931 defeat, “exiled” warlord Zhang Xueliang retreated to Xi’an and briefly allied with Chiang Kai-Shek (b. 1887–d. 1975) to eventually retake Manchuria, while Mao Zedong (b. 1893–d. 1976) organized CCP resistance from his Yan’an base. Manchukuo contributed to imperial Japan’s war effort as rear operations base for military incursions into China and Southeast Asia: as reservoir for natural resources and manpower, it helped sustain warfare, while the controversial Pingfang-based Unit 731 under army microbiologist Ishii Shirô (b. 1892–d. 1959) perpetrated experimentation on Chinese and Allied POWs to develop biological weapons. Japanese settler families populated areas bordering the Soviet Union, cultivating land and producing livestock, including patrolling borders. The 9 August 1945 Soviet invasion forced the capitulation of Manchukuo’s troops and precipitated imperial Japan’s defeat of 15 August. Thereafter, Manchuria returned to Chinese control, initially under Communist forces, which prevailed in uniting China as the People’s Republic of China in 1949. English-language studies of Manchukuo began with a small group of US scholars, who used primarily Japanese, and some Chinese, materials. This budded from 1980s-era developments in Japan, where people identifying as zanryû koji (“left-behind orphans”) and their descendants began discovering Japanese roots. With Manchukuo’s wartime defeat, Japanese colonists fled for their lives, sometimes leaving children with sympathetic Chinese families for survival. Japan’s government first addressed “left-behind orphans” as a human rights issue in the 1980s, following renewed official diplomatic relations with China in 1972, and Deng Xiaoping’s (b. 1904–d. 1997) 1979 “Opening and Reforms” that allowed resuming business connections, with travel and cultural exchanges enabling personal connections. This openness helped Chinese scholars pick once-taboo topics, like collaboration with Japan during the wartime occupation. In the late 1980s, initial Japanese studies began emerging, prompting a 1990s “Manshû bûmu” (Manchuria Boom) featuring numerous secondary studies, followed by encyclopedias. In Japan, besides Tsukase Susumu at Nagano University, Yamamurô Shin’ichi and Kishi Toshihiko at Kyoto University are top authorities on Manchukuo’s history, while Liu Xiaoli at East China Normal University in Shanghai is an expert on Manchukuo’s literature like Kawamura Minato at Japan’s Hôsei University. This East Asian efflorescence inspired iconic English-language studies on Manchukuo, including an annotated bibliography of Chinese and Japanese sources by American historian Ronald Suleski (Suleski 1994, cited under General Historical Overviews, Manchukuo and Japan’s Empire), then president of the Tokyo-based Asia Society of Japan while an international publishing executive, who pioneered English-language studies of Manchuria/Manchukuo, followed by two US-based scholars, Louise Young (Young 1998), then at New York University, and Prasenjit Duara (Duara 2003; both cited under General Historical Overviews, Manchukuo and Japan’s Empire), once based at University of Chicago. A second generation of scholars whom they trained or inspired, began publishing in the early 2000s, like Canadian historian Norman Smith (Smith 2005, cited under Manchukuo Drugs and Intoxicants; and Smith 2007, cited under Women in Manchukuo) and American Asian studies scholar Mark Driscoll (Driscoll 2010, cited under Manchukuo Drugs and Intoxicants). A third generation includes US-based historians Annika A. Culver (Culver 2013, cited under North American Perspectives), Janice Mimura (Mimura 2011, cited under Economic Development), and Emer O’Dwyer (O’Dwyer 2015, cited under Manchukuo Cities), who examined Manchukuo’s intellectual and political underpinnings. A current younger generation of scholars increasingly focuses on cultural history and arts, primarily film and literature. Manchukuo studies, composed of research on a multi-ethnic Japanese-led state in Northeast Asia characterized by intersections between nations and peoples, is now a thriving field whose transnational perspectives foster interdisciplinarity and multidisciplinary studies. (NOTE: This annotated bibliography is comprised mainly of secondary sources and is not meant as comprehensive, and reveals my scholarly expertise as a cultural historian of imperial Japan who researches visual cultures of imperialism utilizing multidisciplinary Japanese, Chinese, and English sources. While inclusivity is attempted, sources prevail in these fields. My limited Korean reading ability precludes inclusion of Korean-language sources, which clearly warrant future attention.)