KENJI DOIHARA

'Kenji Doihara' (土肥原 賢二) ''Doihara Kenji'', August 8, 1883 - December 23, 1948) was a Japanese officer and spy who served in northeastern China from 1913 and who became a major military commander in Japan's invasion of China over the following decades. He was one of the main plotters of the so-called Mukden Incident, the pretext for the Japanese invasion of Manchuria prior to the Second World War. Doihara was nicknamed 'Lawrence of Manchuria', a reference to the West's Lawrence of Arabia.
Kenji Doihara was born in Okayama Prefecture on August 8, 1883. He joined the Imperial Japanese Army in 1912 from after graduating from college, working in the Japanese Army General Staff Headquarters, and was sent to China by the General Staff Headquarters in 1913. There he began his career as a spy in China. Diohara could speak fluently in the language of Beijing, and also was said to speak several other Chinese dialects.
Meanwhile he worked his way up the military ladder, attached to 2nd Regiment from 1926 to 1927 and 3rd Regiment in 1927. In 1927 he was part of an official tour to China and then attached to IJA 1st Division from 1927 to 1928. He was then made Military Adviser to the Chinese Government until 1929. In 1930 he was made Colonel and commanded 30th Regiment.
At this time Doihara's espionage work paid off for him, because of his performance he was attached to General Staff in 1930 to 1931, then transferred to its Tientsin espionage agency, and was part of another official tour to China. The following year he was again transferred to Shenyang as Head of the Houten Special Agency,Kwantung Army where he served until early 1932. There he with Colonel Itagaki Seishiro was instrumental in engineering the Mukden Incident, and as part of the following invasion of Manchuria subborning the cooperation of Northeastern Army generals Hsi Hsia in Kirin, Chang Ching-hui in Harbin and Chang Hai-peng at Taonan in the northwest of Liaoning province.
Next Colonel Doihara was dispatched by Colonel Itagaki to Tientsin to return Pu Yi to Manchuria. The plan was to pretend that Pu Yi had returned to resume his throne in answer to a popular demand of the people of Manchuria, and that Japan had nothing to do with his return, but would do nothing to oppose the popular demand of the people. In order to carry out this plan, it was necessary to land Pu Yi at Yingkou before that port became frozen; therefore, it was imperative that he arrive there before 16 November 1931.
In early 1932 Colonel Doihara was sent to Head the Harbin Special Agency of the