Japanese rule over rural Manchukuo : strategies and policies

Abstract

The Japanese Kwantung Army created Manchukuo as a client state in northeast China in March 1932. The new entity followed policies that coincided closely with Japanese political and economic interests. In the enterprise of constructing Manchukuo, the Japanese authorities employed a set of strategies and policies to restructure the relationship between state and society. The strategies and policies established the Japanese power in the political domains of Manchukuo and facilitated drastic change in its socioeconomic structures. However, Manchukuo eventually dissolved after the Japanese surrender at the end of the Pacific War in August 1945. Drawing from primary sources in Chinese, Japanese and Korean published in the 1930s and 1940s, this thesis presents a history of the central characteristics of Japanese rule over rural Manchukuo during 1932 and 1945. This thesis analyses the elements of Japanese rule that were expressed in the policies and practices implemented in Manchukuo. In doing so, the thesis illuminates the nature, strength and weakness of Japanese imperialism. This approach generates insights into the mechanisms and limitations of Japanese rule, and it contributes to the theoretical construction of Japanese imperialism. Japanese rule over rural Manchukuo involved a high degree of political intervention in the military, economic and social spheres as well as the reorganisation of state structures. The Japanese authorities stablished public order through the elimination of social resistance and the construction of rural settlements; the reorganisation of the rural administration through the baojia and self-government initiatives; the establishment of rural financial order by organising cooperatives; the control of the procurement and distribution of agrarian output through coercion; and the management of labour through state mobilisation. This thesis argues that the Japanese strategies and policies of control represented a process of reshaping state structures. The Japanese authorities demonstrated great skill in exercising control over the agriculture, government administration, and finance and labour relations in Manchukuo. The Japanese rule over rural Manchukuo revealed both effectiveness and limitations. The effectiveness was manifested in the establishment of social order and institutions to serve the needs of control. The limitations lay in the degree of compliance that the Japanese ensured in the local populace and in the extent to which the Japanese power penetrated into the production relations of the rural society.