CHAPTER 5 as a Base for Central and the Silk Road

Li Narangoa

Inner Asia, with the Mongolian plateau at its center, historically lay at the crossroads of East and West, as well as being a centerpoint for North and South cultural and trade exchanges, but in the early 20th century it also found it- self at the center of a struggle between the major powers: Japan from the east, from the south, from the north and northeast, and Great Britain from the west. During the first three decades of the 20th century, the major powers were concentrated around the Manchurian plain. After the founda- tion of Manchukuo in 1932, especially after the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War, however, the concentration of power gradually shifted towards the west, the so-called Chinese Northwest provinces—Shansi, Ningxia, Gansu, Qinghai and (East Turkestan), once described as a “new center of gravity” by Lattimore.1 The Northwest has a geographical, trade and ethnic link with along the Silk Road. The Mongol located between these two gravities had cultural and ethnic links to these regions and played an im- portant role in the Japanese attempt to move from the east to the west. This chapter will examine the Japanese effort to win this struggle through consol- idating the Mongol regions as an economic, military and political base and the challenges they faced in their endeavor to access the along the Silk Road. Japan’s strategy towards the Silk Road and Central Asia was to flank the Soviets from its west to prepare for war against the Soviet Union. There was even an attempt to build an air-route between Xinjing (Shinkyō) in Manchukuo and Berlin via (Ejene), Kabul and Baghdad to form a link with Japan’s ally, Nazi Germany. The route over India was a better option, but India was a British colony and so they took the path over the Pamir Mountains and across Central Asia.2 Taking this vast area of Central Asia by military force

1 Owen Lattimore, Pivot of Asia: Sinkiang and the Inner Asian Frontiers of China and Russia (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1950), 3. 2 An airport was built in 1936 in Ejene, but it soon ceased to operate due to the difficulty of gaining fuel. Shinpo Atsuko 新保 敦子, “Chūka minkoku jiki senkyūhyaku jūni senkyūhyaku

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi ��.��63/9789004274310_007 Mongolia as a base for Central Asia and the Silk Road 119 was, however, impossible and thus the soft power of cultural campaigns was used to create Japan-friendly local governments. The Mongol regions west of Manchukuo were to become not only a military base but also a blueprint for such a state or government. The image of the Great was used against the Soviet ideology and Chinese colonization to appeal to Mongol na- tional aspirations. Along with the , Muslims in Mongol regions were also subjected to cultural campaigns to help the Japanese army’s westward advance.

The Shadow of the Mongol Empire and a Unified Mongol State

From the late 19th to the early 20th centuries, the Mongol Empire in the 13 and 14th centuries, which covered the Eurasian and revived the Silk Road served as an aspiration for Japanese adventurers and intellectuals. It gave them confidence as an Asian race when Japan was being belittled by the Western Powers. They were proud that an Asian race, even if were not the Japanese, had conquered half of the continental landmass. In the early 20th century, when Japan gained its confidence as a sovereign and modern state, the image of the Mongol empire still lingered on in the mind of many Japanese, especially when Japan began to expand its interest on the continent. In this context, the image of the Mongol empire served two purposes: First, as a model of a unified Mongol state under Japanese leadership and, second, as an example of a terri- tory that had once been under the Mongol empire and that should be ruled by Asians under Japan, implying that the entire central Asia under the influence of the Soviets should be taken from Russian rule. When the Japanese Kwantung Army conquered and the neigh- bouring Mongol region, some Japanese military officials as well as intellectu- als had the idea of building a great Mongol state including which was then under Soviet influence. This unified Mongol state would be the base for creating other Japan-friendly states or governments in and would help to isolate the Soviets and the Chinese in the long term. The idea was certainly based on the local Mongol aspiration of reviving a Great Mongol State, a reference to their past glorious empire. In the early 20th century, Mongol nationalism was on the rise. In 1911, Mongols north of the declared their independence with the intention of unifying all Mongol lands north of the Great Wall. In 1917 and 1918 around the

shijūkunen ni okeru kokka tōgō to shakai kyōiku no kenkyū” 中華民国時期 (1912–1949 年) における国家統合と社会教育の研究, (Ph.D.diss., Waseda University, 2002), 245.