The Japan-Sino War, known as the Japan-China War in modern times, is said to have started with the Lugou Bridge Incident that took place on July 7, 1937 in the suburbs of Beijing, China.
The Lugou Bridge is a bridge over the Yongding River, and a small-scale battle took place when a company of the Japanese Army, which was training at night under the bridge, was fired upon by the Chinese Army.
The Japanese troops were stationed there legally in accordance with the treaty that followed the Yihe Dan incident in 1900. However, the incident occurred in the midst of the growing tensions between the two countries since the founding of Manchukuo five years ago. Some believe that the presence of the Communist Party, which was gaining power in China, was behind the incident.
However, neither the Japanese government nor the Army Central Command had any intention of expanding the situation any further, and an agreement was immediately signed in the area, bringing the situation under control for the time being.
However, on July 29, 225 Japanese residents were slaughtered in Tongzhou, a town east of Beijing, and tensions rose again.
On August 9, the Second Shanghai Incident occurred. A Japanese navy serviceman was killed by Chinese security forces, and the two sides began to fight in earnest.
The war spread from Shanghai to Nanking, which was the capital of the Nationalist government organized by the former President Chiang Kai-shek, and became a quagmire.
During this time, Chiang Kai-shek called for an attack on Japan in his "Last Guandu" speech after the Lugou Bridge Incident. In other words, Japan was dragged into the war by Chiang Kai-shek's China. However, the international community did not necessarily see it that way.
In particular, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt who on October 5 gave a speech in which he said that "belligerents must be quarantined like patients with an infectious disease". It was clear that he was trying to make Japan the "bad guy" in this war. Roosevelt, who was elected president for the first time in 1933, is said to have had a maternal grandfather who had amassed a huge fortune through trade with China during the Qing Dynasty. For this reason, he felt a strong affinity for China. He also had an understanding of communism, which had been spreading in China since the Russian Revolution.
On the other hand, the former President of the Chinese Nationalist Government, Chiang Kai-shek, had as his wife Soong Mei-ling, the younger sister of Soong Ching Ling, the wife of Sun Yat-sen, the leader of the "Xinhai Revolution".
Soong Mei-ling was a Christian (Protestant) who had been educated in the United States as a child. The former President Chiang Kai-shek was also baptized as a Christian, and some say it was to win over the American people in the war between Japan and China.
Soong Mei-ling was a prominent figure in U.S. social circles and a close friend of Roosevelt's wife, and played a role in gradually dragging the U.S. public into the "pro-China" camp.
Furthermore, after the Battle of Nanking, the British journalist Harold Timperley, in his book "What is War?", reported to Western society as if there had been a "Nanking Massacre" by the Japanese military, which strengthened the "Japan-bad theory".
According to recent research, Timperley has been linked to the Central Propaganda Department of the Chinese Nationalist Party.
Although Japan had won the war against China in terms of military power, it had suffered a major defeat in the propaganda war.
According to Hideo Kobayashi's "The Japan-Sino War," in January 1938, the Chiang Kai-shek compared the strengths and weaknesses of the Japanese and Chinese in a document entitled "Resistance Search and Offer of Victory"
The advantages of the Japanese are that they "never stop researching," while their weakness is that they are "not familiar with international affairs.
The Chinese, on the other hand, had the advantage of being "strong in international affairs" and the disadvantage of "insufficient research".
It can be said that Chiang Kai-shek saw through Japan's "international illiteracy" and skillfully used it to his advantage, as he could not see through the "pro-China" and "anti-Japan" mood of the United States.
However, Japan did not just sit idly by in the face of China's propaganda war.
In order to fight the Japan-Sino War, Japan set up a press section in the Army and Navy departments of the Imperial Headquarters in Tokyo. They also commissioned Shinjiro Yamamoto to try to make the Catholic and other Christian world understand Japan's position.
Yamamoto, a patriotic ex-military man with strong connections to the papacy and European society, was finally being recognized by the government.
However, it would have been foolhardy to expect a single Christian soldier to take on China, which was waging a nation-wide propaganda war. But Yamamoto, as a patriot, boldly took on this role.
It can be assumed that the Emperor Showa, who was well aware of the power of Christianity in the international community, had his own "intentions" at work. On November 22, 1937, before his departure, Yamamoto had an audience with the emperor and delivered his departure speech.
