In this history of Japanese involvement in northeast China, the author argues that Japan's military seizure of Manchuria in September 1931 was founded on three decades of infiltration of the area. This incremental empire-building and its effect on Japan are the focuses of this book. The principal agency in the piecemeal growth of Japanese colonization was the South Manchurian Railway Company, and by the mid-1920s Japan had a deeply entrenched presence in Manchuria and exercised a dominant economic and political influence over the area. Japanese colonial expansion in Manchuria also loomed large in Japanese politics, military policy, economic development, and foreign relations and deeply influenced many aspects of Japan's interwar history.
This book explores the history of Japanese imperialism in Manchuria from the acquisition of a railway concession following the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5 to the founding of the puppet state of Manchoukuo in 1932. The author argues that Japan's subjugation of this territory, although culminating in armed seizure in 1931, was, for the most part, an incremental process of establishing colonial realities on the ground. He pays special attention to the activities of the South Manchuria Railway Company, a quasi-official corporation that played an instrumental role in laying the foundations of Japanese rule over the course of a quarter-century. The evolving aims, strategies, and meanings of Japanese empire-building in Northeast China are the focuses of this book