Araki Brothers & Murder

Araki Brothers & Murder

Japan's most potent Jingo, Lieut.-General Sadao Araki, onetime War Minister and boss of the Army's "Ginger Group," had glorious news last week from Shanghai where a Japanese squadron is commanded by his brother Rear Admiral Sadasuke Araki. The glorious news: somebody had murdered a Japanese Marine in full uniform near the Japanese Naval headquarters. At this news in utter panic rich & poor Chinese alike fled from Chapei in the native quarter of Shanghai to the International Settlement which proved safe in 1932 when the Japanese blew Chapei to bloody smithereens. If the Araki Brothers were at it again, then woe to China, no matter who murdered the Japanese Marine. As a matter of course, Admiral Araki assumed the killer to be Chinese, posted some 2,000 Japanese bluejackets with fixed bayonets "defending the scene of the crime" and blustered at the Mayor of Greater Shanghai, Quaking General Wu Teh-chen, who officially promised four times in succession: "I will do everything in my power!" Fresh woe for Wu developed when a mob smashed the plate-glass window of one of Shanghai's Japanese-owned stores. As panicky Chinese ran for the International Settlement an attache of Japan's Embassy declared, "We deplore this exodus. We have made no demands. We are gratified by the spontaneous co-operation of Mayor Wu." On the Island of Kyushu last week Japan's Emperor was directing army maneuvers. It was altogether possible that the "Ginger Group" had seized and perhaps manufactured at just the right moment an incident only to be ended by gunfire and aerial bombs. But there was also another hypothesis worthy of the Araki Brothers in their calmer moments. When all China was taken off the silver standard fortnight ago by Finance Minister Kung, he threatened to prosecute for treason any Chinese who did not send his white metal to the Government's banks. If that threat works it means, among other things, that the Japanese forces now predominant in North China will see all their silver slip through their fingers to Nanking. One way to stop such a slip was to scare the daylights out of China by another "Shanghai Incident." In Peiping, where Japanese last week forced the installation of puppet Mayor Chin Teh-chuan, Japanese military authorities gave an inkling of what the Araki Brothers may be up to by having their official spokesman boom: "If North China should send her silver to Nanking, the economic structure of North China would collapse, and Japan's attempt to build up the prosperity of this part of China would fail. North China silver must be kept in North China!"

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