I'll argue that it's not accurate. Following the Japanese seizure of Manchuria in 1931, there was no state of war between Chiang's government and the Empire of Japan. There were clashes certainly, and these clashes persisted over the next six years, but it was chiefly a diplomatic crisis. In fact, Chiang's government had never exercised directly control over Manchuria, he only nominally controlled it through a prominent and popular warlord, Zhang Xueliang.

There were certainly calls for war after Japan entered Manchuria, and no shortage of rhetorical allusions to Song-style revanchism. Chiang was forced to pay lip service to an aggressive policy that advocated a war or reconquest, but Chiang was held back by two seemingly conflicting ideals: his pragmatism, and his ongoing crusade to crush Mao's communist party.

Although in fact, even in the absence of a Communist opponent, it is unlikely that Chiang would have sought war against Japan in response to the loss of the Northeast. China was completely unprepared for a war against Japan, a fact that Chiang seems to have known very well.

Although, I could be wrong in that assessment in light of the events of 1937. This is a little known fact, but when war broke out in 1937 it was actually Chiang who chose to carry out an all out war, not Japan. In 1937, during the Marco Polo bridge incident, Japan was hoping to just seize a bit more of Northern China without provoking open warfare. Ultimately, however, Chiang decided China could not tolerate another loss of territory without fighting back, so he marched his troops toward the Japanese concessions in Shanghai. It was Chiang's response, not the Japanese instigation itself, that directly lead to the war. This is interesting because China was equally ill-prepared in 1937, yet war came all the same.