板垣征四郎
On 15 August, the 11th Army came up with the general plans for a campaign south of the Yangtze, ranging from the Xinjiang River to the Gan River (). In early September, Japanese General Toshizō Nishio of the "Japanese Expeditionary Forces to China" and Lieutenant-General Seishirō Itagaki set out to capture Changsha, the provincial capital of Hunan. The Japanese 101st and 106th Divisions were deployed on the western bank of the Gan River in northern Jiangxi (), and the 6th, 3rd, 13th, and 33rd Divisions marched southward from southern Hubei () to northern Hunan.