Private Shimura Kikujiro can’t hold it any longer.
He has to go now. Kikujiro leaves his post and runs for the closest bathroom, but it’s dark,
and the toilets are too far away. He rushes into the nearby woods to relieve himself. Suddenly,
he hears angry shouts and the mobilization of troops and vehicles. He doesn’t know how,
but his late night bathroom run has just ignited a conflict between Japan and China.
Kikujiro sprints around aimlessly in the dark as troop movement intensifies. He can’t find
his way back to the outpost. Men are screaming, a group of Japanese soldiers advances on the city
that sits across the Marco Polo Bridge. The Chinese begin to fire a barrage of bullets,
pushing the Japanese unit back. It is absolute chaos.
The Japanese regroup and plan a bigger, more aggressive, attack.
They look across the Marco Polo Bridge at the walls of the city of Wanping.
Just beyond it is the Chinese capital. The soldiers regroup at the outpost where
earlier that evening they had been conducting training drills. Hours go by and Kikujiro
finally finds his way back to the outpost. His commanders look at him with shocked expressions.
“What happened to you?” one of the officers asks Kikujiro. “I couldn’t hold it any longer,”
he responds, his face turning slightly red. “I needed to go to the bathroom.”
“We thought the Chinese had captured you and were holding you captive on the other side of
the wall,” the commander explains. “We asked them to let us into the city to see if you were there,
but they refused. We took their response as a sign that they were holding you against your will,
so we attacked. The mayor of Wanping is on his way for peace talks now.”
The commander pauses for a moment. “You need to get out of her Private Kikujiro. You are
our reason we demanded access to the city, if it is known that you’ve been found, we have no
reason to move forward with our attack on Wanping. Make yourself scarce until the fighting begins.”
Dumbfounded, Kikujiro leaves his commanding officers and rejoins his unit.
All I wanted to do was go to the bathroom, he thinks. Now I may have started an all out war.
And Private Shimura Kikujiro would have been right. This single bathroom incident did not
throw the two countries into total war quite yet, but the skirmish would raise tensions
enough that in the coming months Japanese forces would escalate the conflict with China.
This would spark the Second Sino-Japanese War with death tolls in the millions.
But how could something as trivial as sneaking away to go to the bathroom
set events in motion that would eventually lead to war? The answer to this question is pretty crazy.
The constant conflict between the Japanese and Chinese during the turn of the 20th century
was a result of Japan invading China in 1894. This started the First Sino-Japanese War. It
was a short war, lasting just under a year, with Japan claiming large amounts of land from China.
Tensions remained high for the following decades,
but the powder keg that would eventually be lit by Kikujiro’s late night bathroom run
actually started in 1931. It was then that Japan had invaded Manchuria and set up a puppet
government there. This Japanese territory was led by the formerly deposed Qing dynasty Emperor.
Japan had become a force to be reckoned with in East Asia. At the time, they were on the hunt
for raw materials in northern China to boost their industrial productivity, and China was
a ripe target for plundering. Japanese ambition was to turn China into a resource base for their
further expansion throughout Asia- in fact, they knew that without China’s resources,
they could never take on the ultimate threat to their ambitions: the United States.
The League of Nations condemned Japan's activity and invasion of the mainland.
The league even tried to broker peace in the region, but Japan would have none of it. They
left the League of Nations, and China refused to recognize Japan’s newly created state of Manchukuo
on the main continent. This was no surprise as it consisted of land that had been stolen from China.
In 1933 a tentative peace treaty called the Tanggu
Truce was signed between China and Japan, but tensions still remained high,
and the two nations did not trust one another. This all came to a head during the Marco Polo
Bridge Incident, which started with Kikujiro’s bathroom trip. It is crazy to think about how
one man’s need to relieve himself could lead to a misunderstanding that would spark a war.
In 1937 Japan was conducting military drills around China as an intimidation tactic. They had
agreed not to do such things, but were not keeping their promise. This obviously made China nervous,
but they allowed it in certain areas to try and keep some semblance of peace in the region.
Japan had begun carrying out military exercises in Fengtai, which was the heavily forested area
that Kikujiro got lost in. It also happened to be right across the Marco Polo Bridge from Wanping,
a walled city that protected the Chinese capital of Beijing.
The bridge had originally been called the Lugou Bridge and was built in 1189.
When Marco Polo returned home from visiting China in the 1200’s
he talked very highly of the bridge. Then when Europeans started colonizing the regions
of east Asia they renamed the bridge after the explorer. On the opposite side of the
bridge from Wanping and Beijing Japan had stationed between 7,000 and 15,000 men.
However, this was not the only Japanese military force around the Chinese capital, in fact,
they had troops at multiple strategic points. It was only a matter of time before things escalated.
China did not have the military capability or resources to win another conflict with Japan.
They literally couldn’t do anything about the Japanese troops that were massing around the
capital, or the military exercises that they were carrying out. In a feeble attempt to try
and prevent further conflict, Chain asked Japan to give advance notice if they were going to be
doing training exercises in the area. This was not an unreasonable request, but Japan
did not seem to care, as they rarely gave any warnings before commencing military exercises.
Then, on July 7th, 1937, the bathroom incident occurred.
It was around 11:00 PM on the night of the 7th that Japanese officials
decided it was time for another unannounced military exercise.
The Chinese watched the movement of troops and vehicles from their side of the Marco Polo Bridge.
At some point during the training mission Private Kikujiro couldn’t hold it any longer.
It is unknown if he just had a full bladder and needed to relieve himself, or if something
he ate didn’t agree with him and there was a bowel emergency, but either way, he wandered
off into the forest to go to the bathroom. This is when everything began to go downhill.
When Japanese officers noticed their missing soldier they wanted answers.
They sent a message to Chinese regimental commander Ji Xingwen saying that they needed
access to the city of Wanping to search for Private Kikujiro. Unsurprisingly, the Chinese
commander refused. There was no way the Japanese soldiers were going to be allowed to cross the
Marco Polo Bridge, enter the walls of Wanping, and have access to Beijing. It just wasn’t happening.
The Japanese did not take this response very well. Even though it is likely that Kikujiro
had already found his way back from the bathroom and apologized about getting lost,
the Japanese did not inform the Chinese that they had found their missing soldier.
In fact, the Japanese were still demanding access to Wanping.
The Chinese continuously refused to let them enter. It was late at night,
the gates were sealed, and there was no reason the Japanese needed to enter the city.
Yet, they were unrelenting. So finally, the Chinese agreed to conduct their
own search for the lost man. This was unacceptable to the Japanese commanders,
they wanted to carry out the investigation themselves and nothing else would do.
The Japanese forces prepared their soldiers to attack Wanping and gain access to the city.
But here is where things get really messed up. In 2013 Japan’s National Diet Library released
a series of formerly classified files. In one of them it was revealed that as
Japanese soldiers prepared to attack Wanping, Kikujiro returned. This meant that the Japanese
had absolutely no real reason for wanting to enter Wanping other than to show their power,
and to make it known that Japan would not take no as an answer from the Chinese.
Seeing that the Japanese forces were preparing for an attack, China started gathering troops along
the walls of the city. At 2:00 AM on July 8th, the Chinese tried to de-escalate the situation.
They sent Wang Lengzhai, who was the mayor of Wanping at the time across the Marco Polo Bridge
to conduct negotiations with the Japanese. They wanted to prevent conflict at all costs.
However, after hours of negotiations,
Wang Lengzhai quickly returned to Wanping with a distraught look on his face.
It was clear that the Japanese had no intention of backing down. It is not clear if they informed the
mayor that the lost soldier had just been going to the bathroom and had been found. Regardless,
they were still demanding access to the city they had no business being in.
Tensions were so high on both sides that at some point bullets started to fly. It is unknown who
fired the first shot, but in the early hours of July 8th, a skirmish broke out. This was
the opportunity that the Japanese had been waiting for. They sent troops across the bridge
to try and breach the walls of Wanping. They were unsuccessful, and driven back by Chinese gunfire.
A communication was sent from the Japanese to the Chinese with a final ultimatum:
either they allow Japanese forces to access the city, or there will be a much larger attack.
China knew that Japan would make good on their threat, so they called in reinforcements.
Both sides gathered more and more troops. The Chinese had had enough of the threats
and unexpected drills from the opposing side. They decided to push the Japanese forces further
back. The Chinese opened fire at the enemy who were situated across the Marco Polo Bridge.
This was less than an hour after the mayor of Wanping had unsuccessfully tried to negotiate
with the Japanese and had returned to the city. It was around 4:50 in the morning on July 8th
that full on fighting broke out and the Second Sino-Japanese War commenced. And although it
was not Private Kikujiro’s fault for needing to go to the bathroom and then getting lost,
this event did lead to the Japanese demanding admittance into Wanping,
the Chinese refusing, and the eventual escalation of the Marco Polo Bridge Incident.
The Second Sino-Japanese war would continue to escalate until eventually it became the
Pacific Theater of World War II. Obviously, the war continues to be a point of resentment
between the peoples of China and Japan even today. The war raged on until Japan
surrendered to the United States in August of 1945, ending World War II in the Pacific.
It is estimated that around 20 to 35 million Chinese civilians were either
killed or seriously wounded during the Second Sino-Japanese War. On top of that,
the Nationalist Chinese Army is reported to have lost around 3 million men during the conflict.
Japanese records identify a loss of around 1 to 2 million military personnel during the war.
Could the Second Sino-Japanese war have been prevented if Private Shimura Kikujiro had
just held it, and not left his post to go to the bathroom? Absolutely not, the war was inevitable
due to the aggression of the Japanese military and the high tensions between Japan and China.
However, in a crazy turn of events, history has shown that one man going to the bathroom
can be used as a justification to start a conflict that eventually led to an all out war.
Now watch “China vs Japan - Who Would Win - Army / Military Comparison.”
Or check out “Could Taiwan Hold off A Chinese Invasion?”