This seems to have been a particular obsession of Japan in its imperial era. What made this patch of land so attractive to Japan and when did Japanese imperialists decide that they had the right to settle it?
From a later post:
I read about this frightening incident where a Japanese imperialist assassinated a liberal, possibly a politician, and subsequently committed suicide. As I recall, he somehow did this in a way that actually sprayed a map of Manchuria in his blood.
I think it was in a biography of Yoshiko Kawashima that I read this. I'd like to know how that fanaticism for Manchuria became relatively common.
Well, the belief started well before the imperial era. It was a build up that resulted in the belief that Manchuria was needed for the start of a way to conquer if not just South East Asia, but the world.
Honda Toshiaki first started to propose in 1798 that Edo Japan should lift it's ban on foreign trade and begin colonizing. His famous four needs of an effective nation of "Gunpowder, metals, shipping, and acquisition of overseas possessions" heavily influenced his theory, in which he believed that for a nation to be successful they needed a strong overseas trading network of the likes of Holland and Great Britain. Famously, he believed that Japan should move it's capital to Kamchatka as it was the same latitude as London to attempt to replicate British success. His ideas on colonizing, so that Japan could "obtain what we lack for what we have" were that a ship should be sent to a potential colony to evaluate their goods and usefulness. If they had something that benefited Japan, the population should then be slaughtered leaving a bare minimum to be 'modernized' to work.
Following this, according to Satō Nobuhiro it wasn't just a need for Manchuria, it was a need for all of East Asia, and Manchuria was just the starting point. He described this in his 1823 work A Secret Strategy for Expansion, in which he laid out his reasoning for, and how Japan should conquer the East Asian sphere of influence as a counter to European aggression. Satō was an ardent believer in the role of authoritarian government, and saw it as the consequential right of Japan to rule the world. In his belief he Sun was the center of the universe, and Japan the favorite of the Sun Goddess so thus it followed that Japan was the center of the world. His reasoning postulated that it was necessary for Japan to use their own amounts of "suitable aggression and annexation" to meet their own national interests. The reasoning behind Manchuria itself was two fold: first it was a spring board into China proper, and second, China (in his opinion) posed no threat to Japan.
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