Welcome friends and listeners to season four, episode six, China and the early 20th Central.

This is Tokyo Road. Are you listening? All you find voice in your comfortable foxhole?

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The Now, over the previous two episodes, we've spent quite a bit of time discussing the rise of the ultra-nationalist right in Japan.

We especially noted the fact that Emperor Hirohito really waffled back and forth between trying to rule as a constitutional

monarch and the tradition of the British, on the one hand at least, and then being an

authoritarian on the other.

We also looked at what historians refer to as the Mukden incident, where the Japanese used

a false lag attack as an excuse to invade Manchuria and set up a puppet government under

the rule of Puyi, the former emperor of China. That was really the start of the Sino-Japanese

war, at least in my mind. Now, you should note, I was torn about the title of that last episode.

Originally, I titled it The Rise of Japanese Militarism Part 2, but went with Sano

Japanese War Part 1. I did that because the Mukden incident was, at the very least, a prelude

to the full-on fighting that took place between the Japanese and Chinese. Most historians date the

start of the second Sano-Japanese War as 1937, but in my mind they were at war as of September

1931. The years in between were a sort of phony peace period, a pause in the fighting.

Thus, I am also pausing our discussion of the second Sino-Japanese War to delve into a bit of Chinese history in this and the next two episodes.

Having said that, in this episode, we are going to take a look at China in the early 20th century.

So we can understand how it got into a position to be dominated by the Japanese in the 1930s.

Okay, so let's jump into our time machine and head back to the early 20th century.

Our song of the week this week is Rose Rose I Love You, a popular Shanghai jazz song of the 1930s.

We'll see you in a few minutes. May, Mayquay, Mayquay, Mayquay, Mayquy, Mayquy, Manye

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