It was this unity of the Chinese nation that the Japanese feared and following another fabricated incident, the ‘China Incident’, the Chinese and Japanese armies clashed near the Marco Polo Bridge outside Peking.  On July 29th 1937 the Japanese took Peking and China was at war.  On the 10th of December the city of Nanking was entered by the Japanese and there followed for the next three months atrocities of such an inconceivable nature.  This reign of terror by the Japanese Army became known as the ‘Rape of Nanking’.  In September Prince Teh Wang joined the Japanese in the war against China and occupied the province of Suiyan.  He was designated a traitor of the National Government.

 The history of China at this time was so closely intertwined with Japan that one must now turn ones attention back to that nation.  During the thirties Japan suffered a period of unchecked aggression abroad and murderous conspiracy at home.  Following the death of Chang Tso-lin the Japanese Government resigned and Hamaguchi Yuko became Prime Minister.  In 1930 he was shot and wounded by a right-wing ‘patriot’ at a Tokyo station and later died of his wounds.  For a short time Shidehara Kijuro, the Foreign Minister became Acting Prime Minister after the attempted assassination of the Prime Minister though at the time of the ‘Mukden Incident’ he had resumed the office of Foreign Minister.

 In 1931 the ‘Young Officers’ plotted a ‘coup d’état’ to assassinate the entire Cabinet and recommended that Araki Sadao be made Prime Minister.  He urged the high command [following the murder of Chang Tso-lin] to send an army to overrun Manchuria.  He headed the 40,000 strong Kodokai: an organisation based on the philosophy of Koda ‘the Imperial Way’, which recommended reform at home and expansion abroad.  “There is a shining sun ahead for Japan in this age of Showa”, prophesied Araki.  Showa or ‘Enlightened Peace’ was the title given to the period of Hirohito’s reign.  The coup was suppressed and Araki was appointed Minister of War in December 1931 with the Seiyukai party.  [Seiyukai means Association of Political Friends.]  This party favoured economic, rather than military, expansion.  He also favoured the Strike-North rather than Strike-South movement, which was the vehement intention of Hirohito and with whom he eventually fell out of favour.  The Strike-North faction favoured expansion into Communist Russia rather than southwards into China and other Asiatic countries where there were raw materials in which Japan was lacking.