Secret Societies and the Chinese Revolution

Author: Takayoshi Mitani
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2002-09-01
Features: The examples of the organization and activities of folk secret societies discussed in this book are still very limited, and what it reveals is only a part of the various problems that occurred during the aforementioned 20 years. However, China is a society composed of many different regional structures, and each region has its own unique history, as well as its own geographical and socio-economic conditions. It can be said that it is probably impossible to study the overall folk secret societies that operate within this diverse society from the very beginning. In the long history of China, the existence of various secret societies is not an oddity; some of them even played important roles at critical turning points in history. This book takes the "era of war and revolution" from the National Revolution, workers' and peasants' movements, the Nanjing government, and the War of Resistance as the background, with the Hongqianghui, Xiaodaohui, Dadaohui, and Tianmenhui as the main subjects, attempting to reveal their final activities on the historical stage. Regarding their relationships with various political forces, such as the different factions of the Kuomintang, the warlord factions, the Communist Party of China, and the Japanese army, this book seeks answers that align with historical facts through the analysis of specific cases, while focusing on analyzing the political processes of the evolution of these relationships from the perspective of changing circumstances.