Word: japanism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1930-1939
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Staring glassily through his myopic eyes, and nodding his flat, imperial head, Hirohito gave approval to military plans which launched Japan upon a great national adventure...
...Tokyo last week, Cabinet Ministers scuttled in & out of Emperor Hirohito's moat-encircled palace. The assent of the Son of Heaven was required to dozens of decisions, most important of all to the drastic decision of the military high command to ship Japan's entire regular army -some 260,000 men-across the sea to China...
Last week's decision to ship the entire Japanese Army to China meant but one thing: Japan had committed herself to speeding up the slow process of history many times repeated in-three milleniums. At Shanghai,- nearly 100,000 Japanese troops were already involved. The campaign could no longer be fought locally. A new field of operations had been opened and the great triangle between Peiping, Shanghai and the mountains on the west had become a potential battleground...
Blockade. Next step of the Japanese was to declare a blockade of the Chinese coast from Shanghai almost to Hongkong. At first Japan announced that the blockade would be aimed only against Chinese shipping. Few days later, still without formal declaration of war, Japan went one better, threatened that U. S., British and other foreign ships would also be searched for contraband if they put in at Chinese ports. Despite this neither London nor Washington put down a firm foot even when the British freighter Shengking, on its way to evacuate refugees from Shanghai, was questioned by a Japanese warship...
Weak Yen. Fortnight ago, Japanese Government bonds were quoted. at 90. Last week they had dropped to 76 and the yen was in a precarious position. Pessimists insisted that Japan had funds for only three months of warfare, must collapse financially after that period. Realists pointed that bankruptcy seldom stops wars, but pointed out too that China's finances, almost as precarious, have been in general improving as Japan's declined. Busily touring Europe recently, drumming up loans has been rotund Dr. H. H. Kung, China's Minister of Finance. Loans he got, both in Switzerland...