It is said that Japan did not approach her enemies to end the hostilities until the last stage of the Pacific War. But she tried repeatedly to negotiate a cease-fire between herself and Nationalist China (Chungking) during the war. What made Japan consider a separate peace only with China? How did she intend to make peace with China? This paper aims to analyze the objectives of Japan's approach to China and to make clear the circumstances of her peace efforts toward Chungking.
At first Japan contemplated making peace with China as a part of the plan to weaken the will of the United States to continue the war. As the tide of war turned unfavorably to her, Japan wanted to move her troops stationed in China to the other fronts by making a cease-fire with Chungking. In the last stage of the war, some of the Japanese leaders hoped that China would act as an intermediary between Japan and the United Nations to obtain less severe peace terms than unconditional surrender.
Japan, however, did not negotiate directly with China. The approaches in the early stage of the war were limited to gathering intelligence about Chinese tendency to make peace. Japanese were afraid that they would betray their weakness if they made overtures to China. Japan relied on the Wang Ching-wei Government (Nanking) to make contact with Chungking. Nanking government leaders, especially Chou Fo-hai, opened and maintained various routes of contact with Chungking through liaison agents. But they used the routes as a means to pursue their own purposes other than making peace overtures.
Japan did not regard China as a full-fledged member of the United Nations. So she expected that she would be able to exploit the differences between Chungking and its allies and to make a separate peace with it. But China would not show any attitude to accept Japan's overtures. Japan had few resources or means to induce China to consider making a separate peace.
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