The Cherry Society

Hashimoto

The Cherry Society, also known as “Sakura” was “formed secretly [in 1930] under [Japanese] Lieutenant Colonel Kingoro Hashimoto and [Captain] Isamu Cho,” both active duty [military] staff officers.[1] Their goal was political reform. They sought “the elimination of party government by a coup d’état and the establishment of a new cabinet based upon state socialism, in order to stamp out Japan's allegedly corrupt politics, economy, and thought.”[2] Reportedly, the group’s membership numbered “several hundreds” by October 1931, shortly before their attempted overthrow of the government. Their plans (which may have been patterned after Hitler’s failed Munich Beer Hall Putsch in 1923) called for the instigation of “massive riots in Tokyo [which they deduced would cause] the call-out of troops, the proclamation of martial law, and [ultimately] the execution of a coup d’état.”[3] Also included in their plans was “to form a cabinet under the premiership of the then-War Minister, General Ugaki.” But their coup failed and their cause came to nothing.[4] The group’s socialist bent may have contributed to Prince Konoe’s government to conclude a Neutrality Pact with the Soviet Union, in April 1941, just prior to the Second World War.[5] That agreement had the effect of removing the threat of attack from the Soviet Union, thereby allowing the Japanese to concentrate on their thrusts to the southwest, into China, and to the south and southeast, against the United States. Historians Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millet did not include mention of the Cherry Society in their joint history of World War II because their stated intent was to “concentrate on the conduct of operations by the military organizations that waged the war.”[6]

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[1]Saburo Hayashi, “Kogun: The Japanese Army in the Pacific War (Marine Corps Association, 1959), http://www.tecom.usmc.mil/utm/kogun.txt (accessed 29 June 2012).

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millet, A War to Be Won: Fighting the Second World War (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2000), 166.

[6] Ibid., x.