 | This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Imperial Way Faction" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(February 2011) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
| Imperial Way Faction | |
|---|---|
| 皇道派 | |
 GeneralSadao Araki was regarded as the leader and primary philosopher of theKōdōha. | |
| Also known as | Kōdōha |
| Foundation | 1920s |
| Dissolved | 29 February 1936 (1936-02-29) |
| Motives | Establishment of amilitary government |
| Active regions | Japan |
| Ideology | Statism Totalitarianism Militarism Imperialism Fascism[1] |
| Notable attacks | February 26 Incident |
| Opponents | Control Faction |
TheKōdōha orImperial Way Faction (皇道派) was apolitical faction in theImperial Japanese Army active in the 1920s and 1930s. TheKōdōha sought to establish amilitary government that promotedtotalitarian,militaristic and aggressiveimperialist ideals, and was largely supported byjunior officers. The radicalKōdōha rivaled the moderateTōseiha (Control Faction) for influence in the army until theFebruary 26 Incident in 1936, when it wasde facto dissolved and many supporters were disciplined orexecuted.
TheKōdōha was never an organizedpolitical party and had no official standing within the Army, but its ideology and supporters continued to influenceJapanese militarism into the late 1930s.[2]
TheEmpire of Japan had enjoyedeconomic growth duringWorld War I but this ended in the early 1920s with theShōwa financial crisis. Social unrest increased with the growingpolarization of society andinequalities, such astrafficking in girls, with thelabor unions increasingly influenced bysocialism,communism andanarchism, but theindustrial andfinancial leaders of Japan continued to get wealthier through their inside connections with politicians andbureaucrats. The military was considered "clean" in terms ofpolitical corruption, and elements within the army were determined to take direct action to eliminate the perceived threats to Japan created by the weaknesses ofliberal democracy and political corruption.
The founders of theKōdōha were GeneralSadao Araki and hisprotégé,Jinzaburō Masaki. Araki was a notedpolitical philosopher within the army, who linked the ancient Japanesebushido code of thesamurai with ideas similar to Europeanfascism to form the philosophical basis of his ideology, which linked theEmperor, thepeople,land andmorality as one and indivisible.
TheKōdōha envisioned a pure Japanese culture, a return to the pre-westernized Japan in which the state was to be purged of corrupt bureaucrats, opportunistic politicians, and greedyzaibatsu capitalists. The state would be run directly by emperorHirohito in a "Shōwa Restoration" assisted by the military. Domestically, the state would return to the traditional values of Japan, and externally, war with theSoviet Union was unavoidable.[3] In a news conference in September 1932, Araki first mentioned the word "Kōdōha" ("The Imperial Way"), from which his movement received its popular name.
Araki becameMinister of War in thecabinet ofPrime MinisterInukai in 1931, and Masaki became Vice Chief of theImperial Japanese Army General Staff. Both began to purge followers of their rival GeneralKazushige Ugaki from important posts in both the ministry and the general staff.[2] Whereas Ugaki was pushing for a modernization of the military in terms of materials and technology, Araki and his followers argued that the spiritual training, orélan, of the Army was more important.
Tetsuzan Nagata andHideki Tōjō created theTōseiha (Control Faction) group, a loose faction united mostly by their opposition to Araki and hisKōdōha.
Fundamental to both factions, however, was the common belief that national defense must be strengthened through a reform of national politics. Both factions adopted some ideas fromtotalitarian andfascist political philosophies, and espoused a strong skepticism ofpolitical party politics andrepresentative democracy. However, rather than the confrontational approach of theKōdōha, which wanted to bring about a revolution, theTōseiha foresaw that a future war would be atotal war, which would require the cooperation of the bureaucracy and thezaibatsu conglomerates to maximize Japan's industrial and military capacity.[4] TheKōdōha was strongly supportive of theStrike North strategy of apreemptive strike against the Soviet Union, but theTōseiha wanted a "more cautious" defense expansion by theStrike South policy.[5]
After theManchurian Incident, the two cliques struggled against each other for dominance over the military.[6] TheKōdōha was initially dominant; however, after the resignation of Araki in 1934 due to ill health, theKōdōha began to suffer a decline in its influence. Araki was replaced by GeneralSenjūrō Hayashi, who hadTōseiha sympathies.[3]
In November 1934, a plot byKōdōha army officers to murder a number of important politicians was discovered before it could be implemented. TheTōseiha faction forced the resignation of Masaki from his position asInspector General of Military Education (the third most powerful position in the Japanese Army hierarchy) for his complicity in the plot, and demoted some 3,000 other officers.
In retaliation, aKōdōha officer,Saburō Aizawa, murderedTōseiha leader GeneralTetsuzan Nagata in theAizawa Incident. Aizawa'smilitary tribunal was held under the jurisdiction of theFirst Infantry Division inTokyo, whose commander, GeneralHeisuke Yanagawa, was a follower of Araki. The trial thus became a vehicle by which theKōdōha was able to denounce theTōseiha, portray Aizawa as a selflesspatriot, and Nagata as an unprincipled power-mad schemer.[7]
At the climax of the Aizawa trial, to reduce tensions on the Tokyo area, the First Infantry Division was ordered from Tokyo toManchuria. Instead, this caused the situation to escalate further, as theKōdōha decided that the time was right for direct action, and backed the First Infantry Division in an attemptedcoup d'état on 26 February 1936 known as theFebruary 26 Incident. The failure of the coup three days later resulted in the almost complete purge ofKōdōha members from top army positions and the resignation of their leader Sadao Araki.
Thus, after the February 26 Incident, theKōdōha effectively ceased to exist, and the Tōseiha lost most of itsraison d'être.[8] AlthoughTōseiha followers gained control of the army, theKōdōha ideals of spiritual power and imperialmysticism remained embedded in the army, as did its tradition ofinsubordination of junior officers (gekokujō), and resurfaced with the outbreak of theSecond Sino-Japanese War in 1937.[9]
| Themes | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Movements | |||||||||
| People |
| ||||||||
| Organizations and factions |
| ||||||||
| History |
| ||||||||
| Works | |||||||||
| Related topics |
| ||||||||
