The Merchants of Death

CHAPTER XVI FROM KONBO TO HOTCHKISS

I had hoped that the page of future history might record the great fact that in one spot in the Eastern World the advent of Christian civilization did not bring with it its usual attendants of rapine and bloodshed; this fond hope, I fear, is to be disappointed. I would sooner see all the treaties with this country torn up, and Japan returned to its old state of isolation, than witness the horrors of war inflicted upon this peaceful people and happy land.—Townsend Harris, first American consul-general to Japan.

THE “well-oiled” military machine of Japan, to employ the newspaper jargon, has crushed all opposition in Manchuria and has even moved into Jehol. It is indeed well lubricated by the industry, efficiency and progressiveness of the Japanese. Less than three-quarters of a century ago these people were dependent on medieval instruments of war; and, considering the way they have handled all the lethal apparatus of 1933, their adaptability is astonishing. But the monster which they have so ably harnessed manifests most of the customary traits—and some others which occidental countries had not yet developed. How the Japanese reached this high stage of machine gun culture is a fascinating story.

True, their own weapons could easily be improved upon, according to European lights. They had the konbo, a long stick made of iron and wood, which was the weapon of the varlets, and the broadsword, which the high-born Samurai used. But according to the doctrines of the Bushido (Way of the Warrior), honorable warriors had to meet their adversaries face to face with cold steel; and a blunderbuss, however defective its aim might be at hundred paces, was decidedly bad form for any Samurai. Tradition was all against the new and cowardly device.

Besides the konbo and the broadsword, there were the naginata or long-handled falchion, the bow and arrow, and those elaborate suits of armor that are now the amazement of the museum visitor: these were the equipment of Japanese soldiers until the nineteenth century. The Japanese tinkered with firearms and employed them in winging birds, but that was about all. Factories for the new fowling pieces did not exist, for the Japanese were accustomed to making their medieval weapons in various shapes and designs according to their individual fancies and ideas. Mass production of arms was, of course, still in the womb of time.

For centuries the shogun, greatest of feudal lords, ruled Japan from his capital Yedo and kept the Emperor in virtual captivity in Kyoto as a mere ceremonial and religious official. Now the advent of the strange trousered white men, with their death-dealing cannon, stirred up one of the more progressive shoguns, who felt a desire to study and import Western methods, just to be on the safe side in case the visitors should turn belligerent. The young heir to the throne, too, was eager to imitate the occidentals; and so a rapprochement was effected between the up-to-date shogun and the royal house.

The Western intruders did show their teeth in 1863 when three Englishmen, who were so incautious as to ride their horses into a ceremonial parade, were summarily cut down. Thereupon a British fleet appeared demanding a large indemnity. The shogun refused and the British bombarded the town of Kagoshini. The game was up. The shogun realized that his precious palace overlooking the harbor was at the mercy of the British guns and he paid the indemnity.

The game was up, likewise, for the backward shogunate. The majority of the feudal lords had become so “civilized” and unwarlike that all they were good for was to sip rice wine and paint wall screens after the manner of Hokusai. The up-and-coming members of the clans determined to restore the Emperor to power as a symbol of progress. In 1867 the old order fell, and in the following year the most “go-getting” Son of Heaven in many a century ascended the throne which was now dominant over the shogunate.

But these were only sporadic efforts. The greatest impetus to the Japanese munitions industry came after the civil war of 1877. A Japanese general, who wished to be considerably more progressive than his fellows, started an insurrection in that year, and all the power of the Empire was brought to bear before he was put down. He committed hari-kiri, but the arms industry rose in greater strength from his ashes. During the insurrection, orders had poured into the arms factories in such huge quantities that even women had to be pressed into service to speed up production. It was the first appearance of female labor in Japanese industry. It was a sign of the times, and the government, to prevent another such shortage in arms, decided to accelerate the development of the arms industry.

Sir William, who late in his career was attached to the British Admiralty, had spent some time in the employ of the firm of Armstrong. He was not unworthy of his hire. He it was who saw the advantage of exploiting the Far Eastern situation for the best interests of the armament company stockholders. When, in connection with the Franco-Chinese war in Tonkin, Admiral Courbet cruised up and down the South China coast throwing shells into bamboo villages, Sir William made his report to Armstrong’s: “Orders can only be taken when the Chinese are in the humor and the destruction of their men-of-war the other day, instead of depressing them, I am quite sure will stir them up to further endeavors.” He was correct; the Chinese were so stirred up that they gave Sir William the orders he wanted.

This was an excellent opportunity to point out to the Japanese the growing menace of the Chinese fleet, built as it was by so good a firm as Armstrong’s. China meanwhile had been gazing apprehensively across the Sea of Japan, anxious over the growing military power of its island neighbor. Sir William’s adulant biographer summarized this gratifying situation very neatly: “White was not unwilling to play the part of honnête courtier by pointing out the growth of the Japanese navy to his Chinese clients, or of the Chinese to their indomitable rivals. In doing so, he was careful to insist on the confidential nature of his designs and the daily progress of our scientific knowledge. By such means he was able to increase the profits of the great company which employed him, to extend what is perhaps the most important of national industries, and to kindle in the hearts of two Asiatic peoples the flames of an enlightened and sacred patriotism.”

Townsend Harris must have shaken his head with all the satisfaction of a successful prophet in 1904, when Japan startled the world with her defeat of the Russians. The destruction of the Russian fleet in the Sea of Japan by Admiral Togo was an epochal victory. Together with the correspondingly great victories of the army at Port Arthur, it placed Japan in the front rank of military powers. Even if she did have to depend on the willing ministrations of Messrs. Vickers, Krupp, Schneider, and Bannerman during the war, she had demonstrated that she was able to make good use of the implements and organization of the modern industrial era.

From medieval primitiveness to modern industrialism in less than a half-century—that was a record of achievement. The first daily newspaper in 1871, the first railroad built by Britishers in 1873, baseball introduced by American missionaries in 1876, horse cars two years later, Hotchkiss guns right after that, etc., etc. That is a brief recapitulation of the stages of her progress. She was now almost as fully organized as the Kaiser’s Germany or “Hell-Jack” Fisher’s Britannia.

The year 1913 found the Japanese spending 33 per cent of the national budget for arms—arms which were most useful in the following years when the Japs captured Germany’s Eastern possessions. But the richest harvest came during the World War, when Japanese factories and arsenals worked night and day supplying arms and ammunition to their Western allies. Just as in America, huge profits were earned, and by the end of the war the island empire was bursting with money.

This Chinese situation has fascinated students of the arms merchants for some time. One observer summed up the picture as follows:

Hamburg soon became the shipping center for German, French, and Czechoslovak armament manufacturers. The extent of the traffic may be gauged by the following facts. On February 2, 1932, two ships departed for Japan loaded with grenades, dynamite and airplane parts; on February 7, Skoda sent 1,700 cases of ammunition; on February 8, a Norwegian vessel called for 1,000 cases of explosives destined for the Far East; on the same day the French sent machine guns valued at 100 million francs. That is the record for one week.

British exports include thousands of machine guns, millions of rounds of ammunition, aircraft and aircraft guns, millions of shells and grenades and bombs, and steamships. Japan purchased 76 British ships, many of them for scrap iron, others, among them one of 45,000 tons, for transporting troops and supplies to the Chinese mainland. Officially, British exports of war materials to the Far East amounted to £5,039,836 in 1929, £3,969,372 in 1930, and £3,281,050 in 1931. But in this case these figures belong in the third category of Mark Twain’s list of lies: black lies, white lies, and statistics.

The League of Nations was concerned with the Sino-Japanese conflict. The Lytton Report found Japan guilty of aggression and there was much talk of a boycott against that country. Meanwhile public opinion in Great Britain was exerting pressure on the government to do something about the British exports in war materials to the Far East. The British have a licensing system for the arms industry, and this could readily be invoked to halt the traffic in arms. Of course, what the League and others had in mind was an embargo on arms exports to Japan alone, but the British government now placed an embargo on exports to Japan and China. This was not the act of a pacifist government but a clever political trick, because it did not antagonize Japan nearly so much as a one-sided embargo would have done. But the British arms merchants were not worried. They went right on with the manufacture of arms and before long they were able to sell again to both belligerents. Since no other nation followed the lead of Great Britain, the embargo was soon revoked and the British government could point to a “noble gesture” which other governments had nullified by their inaction.

The most curious incident of this entire episode happened in a British arms factory. It was told to the British Parliament on February 27, 1933 by M. P. Morgan Jones.

An octopus never starves, particularly in Japan, where military hegemony is complete. While far-seeing Japanese statesmen and economists wonder where the nation is heading, now that Manchuria and Jehol have been taken, they look out upon an amazing picture, a new visage which the country of the Mikado has acquired. Societies of the Black Dragon—far fiercer than Fascisti or Nazis—assassinations of conciliatory statesmen, the sword-clankers running the show, a national economic system which clusters around the arms factories like a medieval town encircling a baron’s castle. Yet it is only eighty years since the painters of the school of Hokusai were the chief artisans of the islands, since the noble broadsword was the sole accepted implement of honorable combat, and since the Son of Heaven dozed peacefully before a Shinto shrine. The four black ships from the Occident were indeed of “evil mien.”