JAPANESE ARMY

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 47, 25 February 1937, Page 25

JAPANESE ARMY

CONTROL OF RESERVISTS

The Imperial Ex-servicemen's Association, which, with its 3,000,000 members, all former soldiers and sailors, organised in 15,000 local groups throughout the country, constitutes one of Japan's largest organisations, has been recently reorganised and placed under the direct control of the Ministers of War, and Navy, who will henceforward appoint the head of the association, says the "Christian Science Monitor." The effect of this change, which was announced through an Imperial ordinance, is to substitute direct for inidirect military and naval control and to establish more responsibility for the political activities of the reservists. ; '

Hitherto the association has been a kind of happy hunting ground foe retired generals and admirals, who, in Japan as in other countries, are apt to cherish strongly conservative views ( : Its public expressions of opinion have been strongly influenced by the "Meirinkai"—Society of Higher Ethics—a conservative and predominantly militarist body which repudiates the wilder terrorist methods of the mosj extreme Nationalists, but is strongly opposed to Liberalism,. constitutionalism, and other supposedly subversive "isms." A year ago the Association of Exservicemen repeatedly dragged up the so-called Minobe Theory, according to which the power of the Emperor is subject to certain constitutional limitations, as a stick with which to beat •the mildly Liberal Okada Cabinet, which was machine-gunned out of existence by the outbreak of February 26, 1936. It may be doubted how much the simple-minded peasants and fishermen who make up a large part of the rank-and-file membership of the association know or care about niceties of constitutional interpretation. But to the majority of high military and naval officers any theory that denies absolute power of the Emperor or seems to justify Parliamentary interference in military and naval affairs is as the traditional red rag to a bulL

Japanese Press comments on the new status of the association has been somewhat mixed. It is recognised that more responsibility will presumably be enforced in the political utterances of the association, and that it cannot so easily be used as a means of embarrassing future Cabinets, since the War and Navy Ministers are sponsors for its leadership. At the same time, the placing of the association under such direct military and naval control may conceivably influence its members as citizens and turn out ultimately as a step towards .that complete totalitarian mobilisation of Japan's human and material resources which is the ideal of some of the younger militarists