Aristocratic prime minister (1937–1939, 1940–1941) who widened the war in China and built the wartime order — the National Mobilization Law, the “New Order in East Asia” and the Imperial Rule Assistance Association; he took his own life when named a war-crimes suspect
A clash at the Marco Polo Bridge near Beiping on 7 July 1937 became the occasion for Japan’s full-scale invasion of China. China resisted for eight years through the United Front; from 1941 the war merged with the Pacific War, ending with Japan’s surrender in 1945.
In 1940 Japan proclaimed a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere binding Japan, Manchukuo, China and Southeast Asia, claiming to liberate Asia from Western imperialism; in reality it was a slogan for conquest and domination to secure resources for war.
Veteran Nationalist leader and follower of Sun Yat-sen who collaborated with Japan during the war and set up a client regime in Nanjing in 1940
Leader of the Chinese Nationalist Party who unified China through the Northern Expedition and led the Nanjing government through the war with Japan; after losing the civil war he moved to Taiwan and ruled the Republic of China there
Emperor of Japan (r. 1926–1989), sovereign during the war with China and the Pacific War, who announced the surrender by radio on 15 August 1945
Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party who won the civil war and founded the People’s Republic in 1949, and launched the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution
The age when the Republic of China, born of the 1911 Revolution, passed through warlord division, the May Fourth Movement, the United Front and the Northern Expedition, fought Japan’s invasion and split in civil war — as Japan moved from Taishō democracy through the Manchurian Incident and military coups to the war in China and the Co-Prosperity Sphere, and colonized Korea resisted through the March First Movement and armed struggle