The Japanese Kwantung Army occupied the Liaodong Peninsula and patrolled the South Manchurian Railway zone. Many of the officers of this force were keenly aware of Japan’s continental interests and prepared to take steps to further them. Their actions were designed to place the civilian government in an untenable position and to force its hand.

Direct action in Manchuria began with the murder of Marshal Zhang Zuolin, the warlord ruler of Manchuria, whose train was bombed by Japanese extremists in June 1928. The bombing was not authorized by the Tanaka government and helped to bring about its fall. Because of resistance from the army, Tanaka’s cabinet dared not investigate and punish those responsible, and this contributed to the feeling of extremist officers that they were exempt from civilian oversight. The succeeding Hamaguchi government showed intentions of restraining the power of the military. Unsurprisingly, subsequent plots centred around plans for replacing civilian government altogether, and in November 1930 Hamaguchi was mortally wounded by an assassin’s bullet. In March 1931 a group of highly placed army generals planned to carry out a coup by terrorizing civilian politicians into a grant of martial law, but the scheme was abandoned because of lack of agreement among the principals.

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On September 18, 1931, the Manchurian (Mukden) Incident marked the dawn of Japanese military aggression in East Asia. The Kwantung Army alleged that Chinese soldiers had tried to bomb a South Manchurian Railway train. Damage to the railway was minimal and the train arrived at its destination safely. Nevertheless, the incident resulted in the speedy and unauthorized capture of Mukden (now Shenyang) followed by the occupation of all of Manchuria. The civilian government in Tokyo had no control of the Kwantung Army, and even direction from army headquarters was not always heeded by field commanders.

In December 1931 Prime Minister Wakatsuki Reijirō was succeeded by Inukai Tsuyoshi, who immediately moved to check the political power of the military. Inukai’s efforts to stop the armies by enlisting the aid of the emperor were frustrated when the army discovered his plans before he could act. In May 1932 naval officers took the lead in extremism: they launched an attack in Tokyo that left Inukai dead. The terrorists failed to kill their other targets—among them the film star Charlie Chaplin, who had been visiting Japan on a promotional junket—and they failed to secure a proclamation of martial law. With the military proving unsuccessful in its attempt to secure power by force, the army simply declared that no party cabinet would be acceptable to it.

In an effort to placate the army, the last genro, Saionji, recommended retired admiral Saitō Makoto as prime minister. Plotting continued furiously, culminating in the revolt of a regiment about to leave for Manchuria. On February 26, 1936, a large number of prominent statesmen (including Saitō and Takahashi Korekiyo, the finance minister who had guided Japan out of the Depression) were murdered; Prime Minister Okada Keisuke escaped when the assassins mistakenly shot his brother-in-law. For several days the rebel units held much of downtown Tokyo, and it required great effort to convince the troops that their junior officers had acted without warrant and in violation of their proper loyalty. When the uprising was finally suppressed on February 29, the ringleaders were quickly arrested and executed, and with them fell their mentor Kita Ikki. From that point, the influence of the young extremists, often referred to as the Imperial Way faction (Kōdō ha), gave way before that of the more cautious Control faction (Tôsei ha), which had less-sweeping plans for internal reform but shared many of the foreign policy goals of the young fanatics.

The only possible source of authority and prestige sufficient to thwart the military lay with the emperor. Senior statesmen, however, were reluctant to jeopardize the very institution of the throne. The young emperor Hirohito had succeeded to rule in 1926, taking as his reign title Shōwa (“Bright Peace”). He had traveled in the West, and his interests lay in marine biology, a scientific attachment the ultranationalists felt unfortunate in one whose role it was to embody the Japanese mystique. Saionji and other palace advisers feared the radicalism of the young extremists and thought a strong stand by the emperor would only widen the search for victims. Saionji himself was on almost every assassination list, and he feared that the extremism might lead to overthrow of the monarch. Therefore, he chose to bide his time, hopeful that national or international currents would shift in such a way as to change or thwart the extremists’ plans. Unfortunately, this was not to be. As international criticism of Japan’s aggression grew, many Japanese rallied to the support of their soldiers.