Letters From Manchuria, China and Japan

I

WHEN raspberries were ripe in the summer of 1931, I was called by telephone to enjoy raspberry foo-yung at an informal family lunch. My host and hostess were a quiet young man and his beautiful young wife who are, among Manchus, the Emperor and Empress of Banners,¹ who are registered in China simply as Mr. and Mrs. Henry Pu-yi, and who have since been proclaimed by the Empire of Japan as King and Queen of Manchukuo.

They and I were then living at opposite ends of Tientsin. Except for myself, this was a household lunch; present were my host and hostess, his two pretty sisters, both in their teens, a boy cousin, my hostess’s aunt, and two of my host’s uncles. We were all in rollicking spirits. According to family stories I have heard, Yehonala, Princess of the White Banner and Empress Dowager of China, was a gifted entertainer. Her kinswoman, Empress of the Banners, has this talent. We each did an impromptu imitation, and hers was best acted. She pantomimed a solemn deputation of two Japanese gentlemen and three Chinese gentlemen who had called recently and asked why she and her husband did not put a throne in Manchuria — the cradle of their race.

On the night of September 18, the first Japanese coûte que coûte occurred in Manchuria. Japan took over the Chinese Government Offices in Mukden, seat of the Manchurian Government, while Chang Hsueh-liang, the young governor, lay ill of typhoid at the Rockefeller Hospital in Peking. After this incident my friends were seriously perturbed by frequent callers, who used pressure and persuasion to force them to go to Manchuria as rulers. As Mr. and Mrs. Henry Pu-yi, civilian republicans, they appealed by letter and by telegram to the President of the Republic. They reported in detail what was happening, stated that they were convinced republicans, and asked for sanctuary outside the Japanese Concession at Tientsin.

Time became late October and they had received no reply from Nanking. They sold the lease of their house in the Japanese Concession.² They sold all their lovely precious ivories to a Danish collector, disposed of other family art treasures to a Frenchman, and sent all the money to Nanking — a gift to Chinese Famine Relief. I saw them frequently during this time. I love them dearly, and they clung to their friends. Eventually they had appealed to every prominent republican in China. They did not receive any response.

At the first rumble of Japanese and Chinese guns at Tientsin, in November, Lieutenant General Kashii, Commander in Chief of the Japanese troops, sent them a courteous but firm command to stay inside the Japanese barricades. Two days later the Japanese Military Attaché, on a visit from Peking, left his cards and advised them to cease receiving visitors from outside.

On the morning of the fifth day of cannonading, the Empress’s aunt came to my bedroom before I was up. She asked me to get America to rescue her niece and nephew, who had been taken away on a Japanese gunboat in the night.

In February 1932, while the Chinese Nineteenth Route Army was defending Shanghai against Japanese military invasion, Tokyo news agencies announced that Manchuria had declared independence of China and set itself up as the sovereign state of Manchukuo under the rulership of Henry Pu-yi. During the summer, just prior to the presentation of the report of the Earl of Lytton’s Manchurian Commission to the League of Nations, Japan officially recognized Manchukuo.

II

In February 1933, when I was in France, I received the following letter from a Manchu princess in residence in Manchukuo: —

‘If thou couldst come to us now, thou wouldst find us different yet the same. Pu-yi sits at the opposite end of the table on which I am writing. He wears his horn-rimmed spectacles and the American trousers. He is in this hour occupied with various reports concerning matters politic, from which he is preparing what he will say tomorrow morning at the State Executive Council; but in all possible leisure now he studies Japanese and Russian, to make himself easy in these tongues as he did in English and French. Pu-yi and I thrive in this which is our natural climate. The Empress, who was in such frail health when we traveled, suffers much from the bitter weather. There is sun this afternoon and she is sleeping in a long chair set where the golden warmth comes by the western window.

‘ I would tell thee of this Manchukuo wherein we are established. Our geography is all north of the Great Wall (built in fear by the Chinese two thousand years ago) which divides Manchuria from China. Our land is land which belonged to our Banners when we conquered China.

‘During our dominion over China, which endured from 1644 to 1912, we protected the purity of our race by an edict which forbade a Manchu clan member, male or female, to mate with a Chinese. We protected Manchuria, our clan homeland, from assimilation by the prolific Chinese people with another edict. No Chinese person was permitted to pass over the Great Wall, or to enter by any route, for any excuse whatsoever, except he possessed a permit. Such a permit was a highly privileged possession. It was “by leave of the Imperial Manchu Household,”“by permission of the Council of Hereditary Manchu Princes,” “by membership in the Chinese Banner Corps.” Membership in the Chinese Banner Corps was the privilege only of sons of those families which were regularly domiciled in Manchuria before the sixteenth century and which had persons in our ranks when we sallied south. We vigorously enforced these restrictions safeguarding the place of our origin until 1906. Then, alas, we did not!

‘We have not completed a census of our present population. In round figures, from available statistics, we know that we are 16,000,000 Manchu clan members, 750,000 registered Koreans, 250,000 domiciled Japanese, and 100,000 royalistic Russians who have sought sanctuary here from republicanism in their birthland. The Chinese population is difficult to estimate.

‘The Chinese Professor of Economics, to whom thou and I listened together at Nankai, counted 27,000,000 of his race as migrated here since 1906. By observation I surmise 14,000,000 as more correct. But if we continue to permit Chinese entry, his total will soon be full. The migration ceased for some months following the Japanese seizure of the Chinese Government offices. It is a voluminous flow now. My intellect tells me that it must be stopped. My heart tells me to blanket my intellect with pity for these bewildered Chinese farm families, who tell of the continued cruelties of civil war in Shantung, and of unmerciful treatment from the unpaid and undisciplined soldiers quartered on Hopei.

‘While on this subject of Chinese migration, I must thank thee for the lantern light thou hast thrown on world affairs for me by sending me The Pacific Area —An International Survey, by George H. Blakeslee, World Peace Foundation. In the chapter, “Manchuria,” I observe: “It was stated by some experts at the Institute of Politics at Williamstown in 1928 that Manchuria could support a Chinese population of 100,000,000.”

‘I am eager to be informed as to how many of these war-weary Chinese citizenry, who are migrating from China to every foreign land that will permit them entry, the United States of America is giving sanctuary to. I have been informed, incorrectly I now presume, that thy country has an edict shutting the gate in the Chinese face.

‘It has been interesting to observe the behavior of our self-invited guests. On pilgrimages to temples and our ancestral tombs, I have traversed a considerable part of Manchuria during the last ten months. When I first journeyed I found the Chinese sullen. Twice during my first pilgrimage I was called “Japanese Toad,” and once my senior bearer was spat upon. Later, after Japanese and Manchukuo troops had begun the anti-bandit raids we are conducting, I found these squatters on our countryside so apprehensive that they ran and hid in their miserable baked-mud hovels as I approached. Some weeks later I discovered that they ventured shyly to return my smile. On my last tour abroad, farmers, wives, and children cheered me with “Good! Good! Good!”

‘ But there is much to be done before we can honestly accept congratulation. Our territory is more than three times the size of France and has been badly conducted for twenty-one years. To set it in order is a tremendous task. Manchuria has seemingly been the favorite hunting ground of the scum of the Russian and Chinese rcvolutions. Our land is overrun with bandits of both races, who have organization threads running up every river channel and over every mountain. We hope, now that we have made an example of those arch-villains Su Ping-wen and Ma Chan-shan, we shall have no further disgrace in the northwest.

‘The Harbin land is an ulcer on our countenance. No woman of any race is safe there. Murder and kidnapping happen with the same frequency as in China. An Englishwoman was recently killed, in broad daylight, attempting to protect her three little girls. She was taking them the short distance from her home to their morning school. We need a competent force to send there, but we do not yet have men to spare, as all our strength is called to protect our China border.

‘We have sufficient to occupy us within our own land, and no desire to be entangled in the affairs of our civilwar-ridden neighbor. But we have had to occupy the Chui Gate eight miles north of Shanhaikwan and send armed men into Jehol. We shall, if necessary to protect the integrity of our birthland, occupy all the Great Wall from where it runs into the sea to the farthest reach of our southern boundary. Quarreling is an extravagance neither we nor China can afford in this era. We each need all our resources to put our own place in respectable condition.

‘The rounding of the year brings us the following balances. We have control of the Salt, the Customs, and the Postal Services. Those employees in these organizations, of whatever nation, who refused to obey our edicts have been deposited below the Wall.

‘The Salt, in which the workers were principally Japanese and Chinese, was comfortably arranged. The Japanese are our allies. The Chinese were found to be of sound common sense and glad to have salaried positions.

‘The Customs Service gave trouble. These officials were for the most part American and English — a race I find peculiar. But these affairs have smoothed. They should soon be correct. We remembered Mr. Edwardes. He was Director-General of the Chinese Customs Service (which was established for our Aunt Yehonala by Sir Robert Hart) until he was dismissed by the “little dragons” at Nanking when they came into possession of the republican seal in 1928. We had Mr. Edwardes’s London address. We used the telegraph to speak with him. He answered “yes.” He is here.

‘For the Postal Service we have made what I think are lovely stamps. Thou canst judge for thyself, as I will enclose a set. One hundred and four main post offices and ninety-seven branch offices are staffed. Letters and parcels are traveling by train, by air, by motor, by cart, by boat, by camel, and by man-foot. The outer world is waking to consciousness that we have a Postal Service. Japan and Russia send us bags of mail; also France, Norway, Italy, Holland, and Sweden. The Post Office of Canada has sent us a Verification Certificate regarding postal matters. We have signed and returned it. More recently wc have received a questionnaire from the General Post Office in New York, which we have gladly answered. The Southampton, England, Postmaster sends us letters and parcels with commendable regularity. China does not see our stamps. We have the same blindness for China’s stamps. Communication is by hand-passage.

‘As we have already written to thee, we want thee to visit us when the ice goes out of our rivers. Thou art of simple taste, so we feel we can invite thee, but I must warn thee that our life is more frugal than thou canst perhaps imagine. Even the luxuries our Tientsin residence possessed are done without. Our court draws no salary and spends nothing beyond what is necessary for food and shelter. We have not had a foot of silk since we came up; our garments of state are the clothes we had when thou last sawest us. Thou knowest well, and sharest, my delight in Chinese theatricals. We do not spend a cash in the hire of actors. But the flowers of our land are exquisite in their brief season. The rippling waterfalls and our many birds make sweet music.

‘This year we have taken tiny taxes from the farmers and shopkeepers. In cases beyond count we have had to forgive default of payment. This must be our policy for a generation. We want our land to be again a land of prosperous people. The race bred here must be virile and strong to survive the stern climate and to maintain our threecornered position between Japan, Russia, and China. Our children must be well fed and properly clad. The standard of their living must be high. During the régime of Chang Tso-lin and his son, in which both “government” and bandit taxes were recognized as a part of the cost of living, our people had a starvation diet and poor shelter. They must be nourished.

‘Our foreign trade is flourishing. We now have a trade balance of more than $1,000,000,000 — all in less than a year. We have also a great many Western visitors bidding extravagantly against each other for purchase of our minerals and our forests. This may make us appear rich. But there is no money for pleasure. Our receipts must be spent in equipping a police and a defense force.

‘We have no expense along our thousands of miles of seacoast. This is assured by our friendly relation with our cousin-race, the Japanese. It would be fatuous to pretend that Manchukuo has been established and is maintained by our own volition. We could not have returned to our rightful place without Japanese consent. Manchu men, women, and children were massacred in every province in China in 1911 and 1912. Our homes were leveled, our wealth taken. We were thus shattered in numbers and in strength. But twenty-one years have passed. A new generation has sprung from “us who survived.” I myself have given life to nine healthy sons.

‘Even so, as long as Japan was content with a Chinese Governor north of the Wall, we could not take our rightful place. Japan was content with Chang Tso-lin, the daring Chinese ex-bandit, who seized control and made himself Dictator of the autonomous state of Manchuria. He was a man who kept his word. But when his heir failed to respect Japanese treaties, causing Japan to make a military occupation to protect her investments, the Emperor of Japan was willing to confer with us.

‘We have made a treaty of mutual benefit. This treaty is public paper for all who wish to read. It does not give any concession or right which Japan did not already possess by preëxisting treaties and agreements, but it assures Japan that the government in Manchuria recognizes these treaties. In return for our signature, Japan agreed to give us military assistance in the establishment and maintenance of national security.

‘Thou knowest the persuasion by which Pu-yi and his Empress arrived here. But perhaps thou dost not know that, while the carrier was a Japanese gunboat, his transport had the sanction of Princes and Princesses of each of our eight Banners. Pu-yi had been bitten by the flea of republicanism. Drastic treatment was necessary to remind him that he is Emperor of Banners.

‘ Now that he has come to his rightful place as leader of his own people in the land of Manchu origin, he understands much that bewildered him a year ago. He is content with circumstance. I think that thou wouldst immediately notice that, although he has retained his natural simplicity, he has developed amazingly.'³

III

In the same mail with the foregoing letter I received another from the House of Exile. To it was added the following postscript: —

‘Although thou art detained in France by thy husband’s command, that thy China-born daughter may correct her China-acquired French and the child’s boarding-school rebellion, our Elder is concerned that thou shalt not become ignorant regarding home affairs. We have been occupied during the past month making copies of the reports, and have a survey of the eighteen provinces ready to post, so that the view of no member of our family may be narrowed by knowledge of only the place seen. I enclose one for thee.'

These reports are a compilation of letters written to the homestead regularly by men of the family who are absent on business relating to the medicine shops which are a major part of the family fortune. Each son of the clan in charge of one of these shops sends to the House of Exile a detailed account of local conditions in his territory, and when these letters are all brought together in the family report they present a bird’s-eye view of what is happening all over China. The complete report is much too long to include here; I shall have to content myself with citing two pertinent and typical passages from it: —

‘Szechuan. Nine civil wars in progress. Can our clan do nothing regarding the never-ending wars here? To what purpose do we support two sons in the Nanking Government, paying bills for foreign tailor clothes continuously, in addition to the past expense of American university education? Why are they permitted to waste their breath in shouting to please America about bitter-climate Manchu land, which was drawn fast to our map only while the Banners ruled us as slaves? America is a tiger wearing prayer beads.

‘In peace, Szechuan is the jewel of China. Space here is greater than that which we might get from the Manchus. Climate here easy. Crop growth almost tropical. Land all cultivatable, and rainfall just right. Mineral and forest wealth magnificent. Native citizens intelligent, quiet, and industrious. But wars for gain waged by intruding generals are sadly depopulating broad spaces. If peace were made here, all those migrating north of the Wall to seek safety would return and achieve prosperity for themselves and for our nation. Security is what we need, and there is no prudence in hypocrisy. The Geneva visitors should have been directed here. Had they even looked in this direction, the Nanking Government would have had to clean Szechuan.

‘China has always kept to herself, but now we are being led about by America. America pretends friendship, yet loves us so much that she has an expulsion act against all Asiatics, and her true purpose in fomenting quarrels between Japan and ourselves is so that she can get rich out of us herself. America declares in a loud voice, “ Wars are wrong.” Writing near the window of our Chungking shop, I view a river vessel unloading. My servant, sent to learn, has brought me a report of its cargo: two scouting planes, a bomber, a fighting plane, thirty-seven machine guns, five anti-aircraft guns, five big guns, 2250 bombs of twenty-five pounds each, and 7000 rounds of ammunition — all sold for cash by an American firm to our local war lord, Lui Hsiang.

‘Shantung. At last it looks as if we were to see an end of our chronic commotions, at least for a time. The troops of General Han Fu-chu, in command here, are well behaved and have given the civil population no trouble. They go about quietly on foot, officers and men alike. Not one has dashed about in a motor car, disturbing the peace. Although without wives, they have committed no raping. This is the first time since the Republic was set up that this province has had soldiers stay three months without looting for wages.

‘Also, civic improvements are under construction. The telephone is being stretched. The river Hsiao-ching is being deepened, that boats may come up from the ocean. Bricks not needed for the city wall are being nicely laid to make a boulevard for summer promenading. Families are encouraged to have trust in Han Fu-chu’s staying. Several urban folk have dared build shops, and one person has started to erect a factory.

‘But the country folk are like the Men of Ch ’i, who feared the heavens might fall. Everything has been done to give them confidence. Even Nature has favored the crops throughout the province by rain and sun. The posting of slogans and regulations for the betterment of the citizens is frequent. These urge the people to kill flies, make cesspools, burn rubbish, clean houses, sweep streets, read the newspapers, and unbind the feet. A training centre for free enlightenment has been established at Tsowping.

‘Yet my last shop-tour convinces me that an estimate of another two million hearthstones dragged up is moderate. These families just leave their homestead title deeds blowing on the Shantung wind for whoever chooses to pick them up. It is not easy to quiet slowwitted country people once they are roused. They do not care about progress. Their concern is for calmness in which to till the earth. Here they have been fevered by twenty-one years of republican purgatory. They have not forgotten their legends, in which the Manchu Empress Dowager of China, affectionately called Old Buddha, and her adviser, little Pu-yi’s grandfather, Jung-lu, are represented as sages, and they want to follow Pu-yi to escape a repetition of the terrors they have seen here.

‘The postage stamps of the North Wall are forbidden transit in China, and one would suppose that enough to stop the passage of unsettling messages. But it is not. Relatives already there send one of their number down, on foot if they have not the boat or train money. These tell of bandits and republican soldiers chased away, all being quickly accomplished by the Manchu Princes, who have got nice polite Japanese-cousin soldiers, in warm garments of wool, and so overfed that they do not even steal a chicken and never shoot at farmers. They tell of taxes so low that I find it hard to believe. They say that this tax money is all spent for repairing the Great Wall barrier against republican invasion. They also report that little Pu-yi is grown to manhood and is a true Son of Heaven, devoting himself industriously to the establishment of government in his ancestral land. They urge haste before the Manchu gates are closed, as they were up to 1906.

‘These Shantung farmers are the kind of hard-working citizens we ought to keep at home. I argue with them, but it is hopeless to talk. I tell them that Geneva will certainly abolish Manchukuo, and then conditions in the Manchu’s land will be worse than here. But these stupid people understand nothing except crop rotation. They reply that they never heard of the Emperor Geneva, and accuse me of another republican lie to keep them here so that I shall have customers for my shops.’

IV

In the last of my ‘Letters from the Manchurian Border,’ printed in the Atlantic for June 1932,I told of two dear friends, married in the same month as myself, one Japanese and one Chinese, from whom I had received messages containing this identical sentence, ‘ My husband fell at Chapei.’ The following is my most recent letter from the Japanese friend: —

‘The first sheep ever in Japan have just arrived. Two hundred and fiftythree of those ordered by our Minister of Agriculture survived the ocean trip from Melbourne in Australia to Yokohama. The object is to make us independent in the production of wool. Annually we now import wool to the cost of eighty million yen — nearly forty million American dollars. Pasturage for sheep is difficult to arrange because we are so closely populated that we have no empty acres. All possible places are already occupied by rice paddies and vegetable plots. We are urged to level the paddies to grass and purchase our rice from China rather than continue to get wool from such distant places as we do.

‘I have smoothed a portion of my rice land and taken two female sheep. The children are delighted. I saw lambs in Kensington Gardens, where they are used to crop the grass, but my little sons have seen only the picture lambs in their Bible-book.

‘It is now nearing the time of the customary calling up of the annual contingent of conscripts for the army. How grateful I am that my four sons are all in childhood! My neighbor, of the house to the west with the violet terraces thou so admirest, has just left me. Her eldest son is in this year’s draft.

‘His name has been drawn among those allocated to the divisions now serving in Manchuria — or rather Manchukuo, as it is recently named. The official notification requests that he be prepared for zero weather, since these conscripts are not to have the usual drill in home camps, but are to go directly to Manchukuo.

‘My second sister’s husband is among the time-expiring men in a regiment on service there these twelve months. In readiness to welcome him home, she has prepared dishes to every recipe of his delight, and has her shrubs and window flowers, cleverly held back through December by inspired snipping, in blossom. We have helped to sew the welcome kimonos for her and the children. No needle except her own has been put in the civilian garments made for him. Now her eyes are scalded with salt. This evening an Imperial Delivery brought word that the time-expired men serving in Manchukuo are detained with the colors.

‘We in Japan, all through this period of adjustment to the Westernisms thrust upon us, have been one people — loyal to our Emperor, confident in our statesmen, faithful to each other. This Manchukuo matter is shaking our nation. The treaty is just. I have not heard that questioned. It does not concede to us anything we did not already possess. It simply assures us that the Government north of the Great Wall of China recognizes our rights to the railways and other enterprises in which we have so trustingly invested — as thou knowest, all the fortune I have from my father is in South Manchurian shares. We did not do a wrong; rather, we righted a wrong by assisting the Manchu clans to their heritage. The sin we committed was done twenty-one years ago, when we trafficked with Chang Tso-lin to prevent the return home of the Emperor of Banners.

‘But the League of Nations censure is an earthquake shaking our foundations. For the first time in our national history many citizens are criticizing our Government. The words spoken are invariably sarcasm against the spending of our resources to make an area of peace on the Asia mainland in an era when all the Western World, according to the observation of the League of Nations, wants continued civil unrest there. Not only is friendship of a sister-race silly in this period of history, so the critics say, but the cost of protecting our investment north of the Great Wall totals many thousand times the value of the investment.

‘The Great Wall of China is the historic boundary between China and Manchu land. In return for the signature of the Emperor of Banners to our treaties of the past, we promised to join forces with the Manchu Banners to protect the integrity of their land whenever it is threatened. The Manchurians are establishing an army as rapidly as they can, but we have an army machine ready to use. They march with us on every campaign, but each time Chinese troops pass over the Great Wall, as they have recently done into Jehol, it is we who must drive them back.

‘I did not realize that there had been so many arrests for criticism of our Government until I received my newspaper yesterday. It contains the police report that 6957 arrests have been made, and that 2278 persons are still detained. Among those arrested are a judge of the Tokyo District Court, two professors at government universities, twenty-nine high-school teachers, one Foreign Office clerk, one official of the Department of Justice, and many sons and daughters of our most respected names. These young people include the eldest son of Mr. Shibata, Chief Secretary of the Cabinet, and the third son of Mr. Mitsuru Toyama. In America, so I understand, you keep lots of people in jail, but in Japan it is our proud tradition that we are model citizens. Consequently this report stuns me.

‘We in Japan have held that dangerous thoughts can only be countered by rigorous suppression. During our world-tour honeymoon, my husband and I found custom in different lands at variance concerning this. At Hyde Park in England we were attracted to the circle gathered about an orator. He denounced the King, the Queen, and all their Cabinet. A policeman approached us. My husband’s face lost its color. I trembled, regretting the curiosity that had drawn us into such a crowd. We thought that we were to be the first arrested. But the policeman made no arrests. He just said to us: “You must keep your little dog quiet. (I had Toto with me.) His yapping prevents people hearing.”’