I was hesitating where to put this thread, as it could also have been placed in the "civilisation and community"...
I had a vague remembering of this liberal period from former reading, but it was confirmed again when I looked to the story of General Ishiwara on the ARTE +7 channel...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanji_Ishiwara


And this interesting film:
http://vimeo.com/52408583


In fact the film showed this liberal period from the Twenties till the Thirties and it ended nearly as in Germany with the American economic crisis. It was my thesis and I found it confirmed by historical reading that the real breaktrough of the Nazi party came for a great deal during the difficulties in Germany in 1931, while the German economy was so connected with the American investments (due to the Dawes plan?)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawes_Plan

As in Japan, which was also recognized in the club of the big powers, with the Locarno pact Germany was also rehabilitated in the circle of the nations.

The recent history of Japan:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/japan_quest_empire_01.shtml

"As in Japan, which was also recognized in the club of the big powers"

From the BBC article:

"Thus, after joining the victorious Allies in World War One, Japan was granted Germany's Asian colonial territories under a League of Nations' mandate. The territories consisted of Tsingtao, on the Chinese Shantung Peninsula, and the formerly German-held islands in Micronesia.
At long last it seemed that the unequal treaties and the triple intervention had been avenged - Japan had been allowed into the 'big power club', and for now she felt secure. Talk of further expansion died away."

 From the BBC article:
about the liberal Japan:
"Deadlock
Until the late 1920s Japanese leaders generally supported the ideal, if not the practice, of economic liberalism. Their attempts to integrate the Japanese economy into a liberal world order, however, became frustrated in the early 1930s when the depressed western economies placed barriers on Japanese trade to protect their own colonial markets."

And thus as in Germany sparked by the economic crisis in the US the same happened in Japan?
In the ARTE film there were examples from the "liberal way" of life during the Twenties copied on the American way of life and not appreciated by the old "clique" of traditionalists. There came a counter reaction in the Thirties with the Nationalists and militarist tradionalists even with propaganda films debunking the "entartete" way of "modern" western life...

Kind regards, Paul.

Addendum to the previous message.

For those who understand French here the complete film:


Kind regards, Paul.

PaulRyckier wrote:

the story of General Ishiwara

Despite being the (47-year-old) poster boy of the militarist and expansionist elements in the Japanese army whose coup attempt in February 1936 saw the assassination of several politicians (including 2 former prime ministers), Kanji Ishiwara confounded the plotters by speaking out against them and condemning their unauthorised use of Imperial forces. He was then instrumental in enforcing the period of martial law which followed the failed coup. This was slightly hypocritical of him considering his own unauthorised use of Imperial forces 5 years earlier while orchestrating the Mukden Incident which had then been used as a pretext for the Japanese invasion of Manchuria. The incident, which involved the setting off of an explosion beside a railway track and then duffing in the rag-tag soldiers of a local warlord in far off Manchuria, was a quite different thing, however, to a bloody coup attempt in Tokyo itself.

The millenarian Ishiwara (he believed that a global war was in the offing which would be followed by a world enlightened by Buddhism) became increasingly pacific from then on. Despite having instigated the invasion of Manchuria, he later opposed the subsequent war in China proper. He became an implacable enemy of general (later prime minister) Hideki Tojo and was also critical of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

The assassination of former PM Abe yesterday brings to mind the spate of assassinations of serving or former Prime Ministers of Japan in the 1930s, three between 1931 and 1936.