ther leading politicians, and the use by the armed forces of their power to bring down cabinets by refusing to appoint Ministers of War and Navy, the militarists by 1932 effectively ended civilian parliamentary rule in Japan.
During the 1930s Russo-Japanese relations worsened. Then militarily weak in the Far East, the Soviet Union acquiesced in the Manchurian coup. However, it strengthened its ties with the Nationalist Government in China and reinforced its Far Eastern forces. According to Pelz (1974), by the end of 1935 the U.S.S.R. had three times as many troops and five times as many combat planes in the Far East as did Japan (p. 168). The Japanese Army was then split between the Koda-ha or Imperial Way faction, largely based in Manchuria, which Bix said "considered the Soviet Union to be Japan's main enemy" and t
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