When historical theorists debate how the retelling of history shapes past, present and future, they need only look as far as the historiography surrounding the Second Sino-Japanese War as proof. For those unfamiliar, the period from the turn of the 20th Century to the end of the Chinese Civil War in East Asia remains a battleground where the pen has become mightier than the sword. A veritable quagmire awaits the adventurous historian: primary sources have been propagandized or censored to fit the vision of each of the actors, secondary work is tainted with the intense emotions of both wars, and language barriers have made transnational history a major hurdle. As such, the historiography remains quite murky with scholars launching offensives and counter-offensives based on ever more “new” archival material to undercut previous “biased” works, typically following the patterns of old rivalries. Donald Jordan’s 2001 China’s Trial By Fire: The Shanghai War of 1932 is—quite unfortunately—one such work.

Jordan sets out on an ambitious task to rewrite the narrative surrounding the “Shanghai Incident” which he astutely claims has been largely trivialized in the “accepted” waypoints of deteriorating Sino-Japanese relations. Building on his previous research that explored Chinese Anti-Japanese antagonisms and economic competition, Jordan aims to show that rather than a simple incident, the clash in 1932 constituted an outright war in all but name. Jordan points to the staple marker of war—military actions—for his primary evidence supported by supplementary government documents from the various Kuomintang (KMT) factions and the Japanese. Primarily, he points to the five divisions of the KMT 19th Route Army (R.A.) and 5th Army and the seven Japanese Shanghai Special Navy Landing Force (SSNLF) battalions alongside three Army divisions, surface ships and aircraft as indicative that this was no mere “incident” and more an outright war. 

The punitive expedition meant to teach the “unruly” anti-Japanese mobs, had certainly spiraled out of control when the SSNLF found itself in direct confrontation with the numerically superior 19th R.A. Yet, beyond the sharp combat in Shanghai, the trail of political documents point to the reality that neither the Japanese nor the reformed KMT sought to expand to a general conflagration. Despite grandiose posturing by Chaing Kai-Shek, his overtures to fight the Japanese as long as possible were often juxtaposed with pleas to the Great Powers and the League of Nations to apply political pressure on the Inukai Government to resolve the incident peacefully (73, 134). Similarly, even during the height of the Japanese Army’s offensive in late February under General Shirakawa Yoshinori, the Japanese sought to end the conflict as rapidly as possible under Imperial directive (176). As such, one is left with the feeling that the whole affair was a masquerade, quite far from all out war. Still, it would be excusable if this was the most contentious point of the work but unfortunately Jordan’s blatant bias renders an otherwise worthwhile study utterly useless.

This prejudice slowly evolves throughout the work in which Jordan paints the classic Orientalist vision of Imperial Japan in the 1930s as the barbaric samurai, lacking moral fiber and crafting conspiracies at every corner. Jordan often includes bold throwaway sentences that ultimately undermine the efficacy of his extensive research. This ranges from a borderline obsession with Tanaka Ryukichi playing puppet master to create a “diversion” for the Kwantung Army to complete their invasion of Manchuria—a well known farce—(pg 7, 11, 12, 20, 39 and 98 to name a few examples) to baseless claims such as Japanese Navy aircraft “introduced the world to aerial bombardment of a civilian city” seemingly forgetting the First World War happened (47) or another dizzying inclusion that “only the German advisors learned the lessons” of Shanghai and “used it in their Blitzkrieg” (189). Jordan further juxtaposes heroic “special forces” plainclothes Chinese snipers fending off SSNLF troops against the Japanese equivalent portrayed as “yakuza ronin” thugs, beating and shaking down Chinese civilians to drive home his interpretive lens (78-80). 

Ultimately, in more talented hands this could have been a valuable inclusion in the historiography of Sino-Japanese relations and the prelude to total war. Regrettably, this is not the case and we must all wait for a superior work to be written.