Japan decides to intervene

On the evening of 2 August 1918 the government of Prime Minister Masatake Terauchi announced in a special edition of the official gazette that Japan was sending troops to Siberia. The declaration recalled that the Central Powers were taking advantage of the chaos in Russia to entrench themselves on its territory, and that armed German and Austro-Hungarian prisoners were serving in the units fighting the Czechoslovak Legion. The United States had proposed to Japan the rapid dispatch of troops to help the Czechoslovaks, and the Japanese government, “desiring to meet the wishes of the American Government” and to act in concert with its allies, had decided to send part of its forces to Vladivostok at once. Tokyo gave assurances that it respected Russia’s territorial integrity, would not interfere in its internal affairs and would withdraw all its troops once the aim of the expedition had been achieved. That same day the 12th Division from Kokura on the island of Kyushu, commanded by Lieutenant-General Shigemoto Ōi, received its mobilisation order.

Wilson’s proposal

The decision came after several months of hesitation that had begun even before the April landing of Japanese sailors in Vladivostok. The General Staff, in which the deputy chief of staff, General Giichi Tanaka, played a major role, had long wanted a large, independent expedition that would give Japan control of eastern Siberia. Opposed to acting without the Americans, however, were among others the genrō Aritomo Yamagata and the leader of the Rikken Seiyūkai party, Takashi Hara, while President Woodrow Wilson had opposed intervention all spring. He changed his mind only when the Czechoslovaks took over Vladivostok and a large part of the Trans-Siberian Railway. After a conference at the White House on 6 July, Secretary of State Robert Lansing presented to the Japanese ambassador Kikujirō Ishii a plan to send about 7,000 Americans and as many Japanese to Vladivostok. They were to cover the rear of the Czechoslovaks moving west, and the command was to go to the Japanese. On 17 July Washington presented this plan to the Allies in a formal aide-mémoire.

The dispute over numbers

The Japanese reply disappointed the Americans. On 24 July Ishii stated that for political reasons his government could not agree to a limit of 7,000, because the opposition would regard it as proof of a lack of trust in Japan. It intended to send a division, that is, about 12,000 men at peacetime strength, and even more in the event of strong resistance. The draft declaration he brought referred to “Japan’s special position” and announced that, if necessary, a further detachment might guard order along the Trans-Siberian Railway. The Japanese Foreign Minister Shinpei Gotō also spoke to the American ambassador of the need to patrol the railway through Manchuria as far as Karymskaya station in Transbaikalia. The State Department regarded this as a new proposal. It agreed to a larger Japanese contingent, mentioning a ceiling of 10,000–12,000 soldiers, but demanded that the reference to Japan’s special position be struck out and that the expedition be confined to Vladivostok.

At the beginning of August Tokyo gave way. The published text no longer contained either the “special position” or the announcement of a second detachment on the railway. However, when on 3 August Ishii informed Washington that the American proposals had been accepted, he made an oral reservation that if the Czechoslovaks were threatened with massacre, Japan might send reinforcements or move its troops beyond Vladivostok, in the last resort without consultation. That same day the United States published its own declaration on taking part in the expedition. Gotō later explained to the Americans that the declaration had been published unexpectedly quickly so that public opinion would more readily accept all the American conditions, and gave assurances that the number of soldiers would not exceed 12,000. Ambassador Roland Morris reported from Tokyo that the decision had been received with approval but without enthusiasm.

Rice and politics

The announcement of the expedition came at the worst possible moment. Rice prices in Japan had been rising for months, and in July in Toyama prefecture women from fishing families began protesting against the shipment of rice out of the ports. Expecting demand for food for the army, merchants and speculators held back sales. On the Osaka exchange a koku of rice cost about 35 yen on 1 August and more than 50 on 9 August. In the following weeks the rice riots spread across the whole country and at the end of September brought down Terauchi’s government. The expedition, which had been promised to be limited to some ten or twelve thousand men, grew in the autumn of 1918 to more than 70,000 soldiers, and Japanese troops left the mainland part of the Russian Far East only in October 1922.