The Mukden Incident of
September 18,
1931, known in Japanese as the
Manchurian Incident, occurred in southern
Manchuria when a section of railroad owned by
Japan's
South Manchuria Railway, near
Mukden (now
Shenyang), was dynamited.
[1] The
Imperial Japanese Army accused
Chinese dissidents of the act, thus providing a pretext for the
invasion of Manchuria. The incident represented an early event in the
Second Sino-Japanese War, although full-scale war would not start until 1937. In
Chinese, this incident is referred to as the
September 18 Incident (
Chinese ?•????/?•???? ?
Jiuyiba Shìbiàn) or
Liutiaogou Incident (
Chinese?????/????? ?
Liutiáogou Shìbiàn), or in Japanese as the
Manchurian Incident (
Kyujitai ????,
Manshujihen ????).
The Japanese economic presence and political interest in Manchuria had been growing ever since the end of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. The resulting Treaty of Portsmouth had granted Japan the lease of the South Manchuria Railway branch (from Changchun to Lüshun) of the China Far East Railway. The Japanese government claimed that this control included all the rights and privileges granted to Russia by China in the Li-Lobanov Treaty of 1896, as enlarged by the Kwantung Lease Agreement of 1898; which included absolute and exclusive administration within the South Manchuria Railway Zone. Japanese railway guards were stationed within the zone to provide security for the trains and tracks; however, these were regular Japanese soldiers, and they frequently carried on maneuvers outside the railway areas.
The weak state of the Republic of China and its tenuous control over Manchuria, the growing threat of communism from the Soviet Union to the north, and the highly politicized and militaristic outlook of the semi-autonomous Kwantung Army of Japan were all factors by which Japanese junior officers sought to detach Manchuria from China and to add it to the Empire of Japan.
Kwantung Army Colonel Seishiro Itagaki and Lieutenant Colonel Kanji Ishiwara, devised a plan to invade Manchuria. Ishiwara presented the plan at the Imperial General Headquarters in Tokyo, and it was approved to be launched but only following a major incident started by the Chinese. However, when the Japanese Minister of War Jiro Minami dispatched Major General Yoshitsugu Tatekawa to Manchuria for the specific purpose of curbing the insubordination and militarist behavior of the Kwantung Army. Itagaki and Ishiwara knew that they no longer had the luxury of waiting for the Chinese to answer to repeated provocations, but had to stage their own.
