Abstract
The Chinese Currency Reform of November 1935 and the Kodama Mission to China of March 1937 are generally thought to be important events in the lead up to the Sino-Japanese War. With regard to the currency reform, revisionists have tried to show that representatives of the Ministry of Finance, such as Takahashi Korekiyo and Tsushima Jyuichi, and others from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, such as Shigemitsu Mamoru sought to help make it a success. This paper however demonstrates that this is false by introducing new evidence. It also analyzes the manipulation of information by the army and the two civilian agents, Takahashi Kamekichi and Tachibana Shiraki, who sought to separate North China from the rest of China. Experts on China, such as Uchida Katsushi tried to insist on helping China to succeed in its currency reform from the viewpoint of financial interests. However, the army forced him not to express his opinion.
With regard to the Kodama Mission, this paper emphasizes its unusual importance. The mission sought to solve the Japan-China crisis in two ways. The first was to make a strong channel of cooperation between the business associations in the two countries in order to check the Japanese local army's plot to invade China and to lower the Chinese government's high anti-Japanese tariffs. The second was to make the Chinese government understand the Japanese government's will to control the army, prevent anti-Chinese smuggling and abolish the puppet government in North China. Its messenger was Fujiyama Aiichiro, the son-in-law of the Finance Minister Yuki Toyotaro, who promoted Sato's Peace Diplomacy. Fujiyama proposed to China a type of economic cooperation based on the idea of helping the Nanking Government to unify China and to reconstruct the Chinese economy. This idea grew out of his experience in Java. Yuki, his father-in-law, represented the financial sector and was one of the leaders of “Zaikai”, the Japanese business elite circle. At that time the only way to solve the Japan-China problem was to slow down the Japanese local army and to avoid the clash of economic and nationalistic interests between the two countries. The Kodama Mission and its planners, Finance Minister Yuki and Foreign Minister Sato tried to do that.
Their efforts failed in the end, but it was not an insignificant episode without any political support, as is often said. Konoe Fumimaro also pursued a similar plan, and he conveyed it to the Nanking Government through Uchida Katsushi. After the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese war he started to make peaceful advances along the lines of the Kodama Mission's economic diplomacy approach.
