This essay examines testimony revealing that the views of Hotsumi Ozaki were consistently respected within the Konoe Cabinet and the Japanese government, even on the critical issue of peace with China.
It exposes how the Second and Third Konoe Declarations carried far graver consequences than the first, shaping U.S. policy under Franklin D. Roosevelt and setting Japan on an irreversible course toward war.
An essential historical reassessment.

It is said that within the Konoe Cabinet and the Japanese government at the time, Ozaki’s views were always respected even on the issue of peace with China.
2016-11-09.

After reading this essay, which is important beyond description, I became firmly convinced of the following matters as well.
The first time I learned of Wakamiya Yoshibumi, who served as editorial director of the Asahi Shimbun, was when he appeared as a guest commentator on TV Asahi’s Hōdō Station.
The strangeness of his expression, and the bizarre manner in which he suddenly invoked the name of Kakuei Tanaka without any connection to the host’s question, left an overwhelming impression.
I became convinced that the reputation of Wakamiya as a representative figure behind the Asahi Shimbun’s biased reporting was entirely accurate.
His expressions and behavior were that abnormal.
They were enough to make one wonder whether he was suffering from dementia.
Yet that expression may well have been signaling that the central theme of this chapter was correct.

Needless to say, I now scarcely watch this program or TBS’s News 23.
However, last night, in an attempt to obtain information on the U.S. presidential election, I watched News 23 briefly for the first time in a long while, and was genuinely appalled.
Once again, a considerable amount of time was devoted to reporting on the so-called “buraku remark” incident in Okinawa.
I am convinced that the time has long since come for Japan to investigate the relationship between TBS and Chinese intelligence organizations.

What truly astonished me most about Wakamiya was the report that he was found dead in a hotel in Beijing while visiting China.
The moment I heard this news, I felt that this was no ordinary matter.

When Kazuo Asami, a reporter for the Mainichi Shimbun, appeared likely to confess that the fabricated “hundred-man killing” story was false, the Chinese Communist Party relocated his entire family to Beijing under luxurious conditions and enrolled his daughter at Peking University.
That is the Chinese Communist Party.

In his later years, Wakamiya appears to have found himself in an extremely uncomfortable position, as his views came under widespread criticism.
He may have begun, or was about to begin, writing his autobiography.
Such a work would have exposed truths profoundly inconvenient to the Chinese Communist Party.
That is why he was eliminated.
Who can say that my inference is absurd.

What follows is a continuation of the previous chapter.

A document records that when Gao Zongwu visited Japan in July 1938, the non-military figures who met with him included Shigeharu Matsumoto, Kōichi Saionji, Hotsumi Ozaki, and Ken Inukai.
Ozaki attended under the pretext of being a friend of Saionji, in order to avoid causing trouble for Lieutenant General Kagesa.

At that time, Ozaki was nothing more than a private citizen.
He resigned from the Asahi Shimbun and became a cabinet adviser on July 8, 1938, during the stay of Gao and others in Japan.
Yet such a person was present at secret negotiations with Chinese envoys conducted under Army control.
These moves were concealed even from Chiang Kai-shek.
Given that Inukai deliberately had Ozaki attend as “a friend of Saionji,” it is likely that Ozaki participated even before his official appointment.
The very dating of that appointment suggests an attempt to conceal the scandal of a civilian’s participation in secret talks.

Who permitted a Soviet spy, at the very least, to attend negotiations that could determine the fate of the nation.
Moreover, Inukai testified that Ozaki viewed peace with deep pessimism and opposed it both implicitly and explicitly.
Nevertheless, within the Konoe Cabinet and the Japanese government at the time, Ozaki’s opinions were consistently respected even on the issue of peace with China.
It is precisely here that the hidden essence of the Wang Jingwei maneuver and the Konoe Declarations is revealed.

Thus, the Second and Third Konoe Declarations carried far more serious implications than the first declaration that proclaimed Japan would “no longer deal with” its counterpart.
From around this time, Franklin D. Roosevelt began to consider a strategy of cornering Japan, provoking it to fire the first shot, and drawing the conflict into the war against Germany.
He believed Japan could then be easily crushed with remaining strength.
One month after the declaration, the Roosevelt administration approved a massive twenty-five-million-dollar aid package to Chiang Kai-shek.
On January 31 of the following year, Roosevelt went so far as to portray Japan as a barbaric aggressor equivalent to Nazi Germany.
From that point until the outbreak of war between Japan and the United States, Japan’s subsequent actions were little more than responses to the great historical swell that emerged in the latter half of 1938.
To be continued.