January 28 incidentThe January 28 incident or Shanghai incident (January 28 – March 3, 1932) was a conflict between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan. It took place in the Shanghai International Settlement which was under international control. Japanese army officers, defying higher authorities, had provoked anti-Japanese demonstrations in the International Settlement following the Japanese invasion of Manchuria. The Japanese government sent a sect of militant ultranationalist Japanese Buddhist priests belonging to the Nichiren sect to Shanghai.
Kwantung ArmyThe Kwantung Army (Japanese: 関東軍, Kantō-gun) was a general army of the Imperial Japanese Army from 1919 to 1945. The Kwantung Army formed in 1906 as a security force for the Kwantung Leased Territory and South Manchurian Railway Zone after the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, and expanded into an army group during the Interwar period to support Japanese interests in China, Manchuria, and Mongolia.
Events preceding World War II in AsiaThis article is concerned with the events that preceded World War II in Asia. The revolution led by the Kuomintang (KMT, or Chinese Nationalist Party) and others ended the last Chinese dynasty, the Qing dynasty, which was replaced by a republic, the Republic of China, in 1912. Prior to World War I, however, the ROC central government failed to effectively rule its territory. China fell into a fragmented region of local warlords. Other than the warlord-controlled central government, two primary forces aimed to unite China under their ideology.
Nationalist governmentThe Nationalist government, officially the National Government of the Republic of China (), also known as the Second Republic of China or simply as the Republic of China, refers to the government of the Republic of China from 1 July 1925 to 20 May 1948, led by the Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist Party). After the outbreak of the Xinhai Revolution on 10 October 1911, revolutionary leader Sun Yat-sen was elected Provisional President and founded the Provisional Government of the Republic of China.
Battle of ShanghaiThe Battle of Shanghai () was the first of the twenty-two major engagements fought between the National Revolutionary Army (NRA) of the Republic of China (ROC) and the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) of the Empire of Japan at the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War. It lasted from August 13, 1937, to November 26, 1937, and was one of the largest and bloodiest battles of the entire war, later described as "Stalingrad on the Yangtze", and even regarded by some historians as the first battle of World War II.
Mukden IncidentThe Mukden Incident was a false flag event staged by Japanese military personnel as a pretext for the 1931 Japanese invasion of Manchuria. On September 18, 1931, Lieutenant Suemori Kawamoto of the Independent Garrison Unit of the 29th Japanese Infantry Regiment (独立守備隊) detonated a small quantity of dynamite close to a railway line owned by Japan's South Manchuria Railway near Mukden (now Shenyang). The explosion was so weak that it failed to destroy the track, and a train passed over it minutes later.
