The Nomonhan Incident: Imperial Japan and the Soviet Union

Abstract

A DECADE after the establishment of relations, the Soviet Union came to be looked upon as the primary threat to the security of Imperial Japan. The Chief of Staff of the Kwantung Army expressed this opinion in a talk with Arita Hachir6, who became Foreign Minister in the Cabinet ofHirota K6kii a few days later (April 2, I936). On this occasion it was observed that in recent years the national power of the Bolshevik state had been increasing steadily, and that it now possessed an army of over one million four hundred thousand having ideal organization, equipment, and so forth. It was also observed that there had been an especially remarkable increase of Soviet military strength in the Far East. It was thought that, as a natural result of this fact, Soviet diplomacy toward Japan had assumed an aggressively hard line-in contrast to the soft and passive line of earlier years.2