"The Way of the Perfect. . . ." (See front cover) The spirit of the Japanese nation is, by its nature, a thing that must be propagated over the seven seas and extended over the five continents. Anything that may hinder it must be abolished, even by force. ARAKI
Scratch a young, ambitious Japanese officer and find a fiercely devoted acolyte of austere, intense War Minister Sadao Araki. Older heads, especially in the House of Peers, may shake, do shake. But Lieut.-General Araki sums up in his short, shrill self both Hodo and Bushido, the benevolent and conquering watchwords of Imperial Japan.
Hodo is "The Way of the Perfect Emperor" and War Minister Araki would put sword to his taut, flat stomach rather than doubt for a single instant the utter perfection of the "Son of Heaven," bespectacled Emperor Hirohito. Ergo the deeds of the Japanese Army, done exclusively in His Majesty's divine name, must be just, right and essentially merciful deeds.
Bushido is "The Way of the Warrior" and just now that is Japan's way—due in no small measure to Lieut.-General Araki. Comparatively obscure 14 months ago, he was not listed in the Japan Year Book's Ano Hito Wa Tare Desuka ("Who's Who")* when Japan's doddering "Old Fox," Premier Ki Inukai, 77, made him War Minister (TIME, Dec. 21, 1931). Since then, in Lieut.-General Araki's opinion, events have followed the Divine pattern. Last week the Japanese Army, symbolizing the Imperial Sword, was striking the last blows needed to round out Japan's imperial scheme of things in Manchuria, striking to possess the last province not yet taken, the Province of Jehol (see p. 21).
Integrally a part of Sadao Araki's whole life pattern has been the evolution of Japan's imperial scheme. As a youth, desperately poor but proud of his Samurai (knightly) lineage, he gloried in modern Japan's first and decisive war with China which ended (when he was 18) in the ceding by China to Japan of Formosa, the Pescadores Islands, and Southern Manchuria including Port Arthur. When Germany, France and Russia forced Japan to disgorge all her spoils except Formosa and the Pescadores, the young Samurai's blood boiled with rage and shame. He had been apprenticed to a brewer of Shoyu (soy sauce), quit brewing to enter the Military Academy (where tuition was free), zealously prepared for what all Japan knew was coming, the Russo-Japanese War. This conflict Imperial Russia had made inevitable by "leasing" from Imperial China the Southern Manchurian peninsula which Japan's "Son of Heaven" had been forced to disgorge.
In 1904 young Captain Araki buckled on his heavy Samurai sword, set off to fight Russia with the First Infantry Brigade and fairly crowed with triumph when Japan captured Port Arthur and Southern Manchuria a second time, taking over Russia's "lease" and also the southern half of Russia's oil-rich island Sakhalin.