宗泰院 - The spiritual resting place of Wang Zhaoming

Canadian geese Average
Nov 9, 2024
3 min read

In 1937, Chinese Kuomintang forces clashed with Imperial Japanese army units in a incident now notoriously known as "Marco-Polo bridge incident". With failures on both sides to engage in diplomacy and Japanese Imperial ambitions, the "Incident" quickly ballooned into the second Sino-Japanese war.

As Japanese forces captured Shanghai and Nanjing, Tokyo saw fit to establish a puppet government based out of occupied Nanjing in order to administer the vast sweathes of land gained during 1937-1938. As a leader for this new nation-state, the Japanese government installed the former vice-president of the Chinese nationalist party, one Wang Zhaoming.

Who was Wang Zhaoming?

Wang Zhaoming was born in 1883 in a upper middle class Chinese family. Joining the Chinese clerical system through the "Imperial examination" of the Qing empire in 1904, he studied European law and Japanese history at the Tokyo university. Finding great admiration for the Japanese in their achievement of the Meiji-restoration, he openly expressed adoration for Japan as a "asian" upon their victory in the Russo-Japanese war. During the duration of his studies in Japan, he would make contact with legendary Chinese liberal revolutionary, Sun Yat-sen. Finding much common ground between each other, Wang Zhaoming was invited by Sun Yat-sen into the Chinese nationalist political group of "Chinese Restoration Alliance" based in Japan, where he would participate "Proactively and enthusiastically", quickly climbing the ranks.

Graduating his class at second place out of his three-hundred, He continued onto learn advanced European constitutions. During this period, he worked loosely with the revolutionary movements of Sun Yat-sen, sometimes directly participating in the revolution through the negotiation table. However, In a botched revolution effort he would be sentenced to life in prison in 1910. Upon the Xinhai revolution and the formation of the "Republic Of China", Wang Zhaoming was released and went onto study in Paris to study Napoleon law, only returning in 1917 as per Sun-Yatsen's invitation, marking the start of his career as a Guomindan leader. Advocating for national unity through reconciling the CCP, he came to clashes on many occasions with the anti-communist hardliner and future KMT leader Chiang Kaishek. Furthermore, he began to view Japan as a threat to China in accordance to the inflating imperialist tendencies Japan showed in the 1910's, stating Japan as "China's calamity, misfortune of the world" in his diaries.

When the second sino-japanese war began in 1937, Wang Zhaoming was offered leadership over the Chinese Nanjing government. Seeing victory over Japan impossible, Wang Zhaoming accepted this role. During his time in office, he would collaborate closely with the Japanese military and government, mainly focusing his efforts on the reconstruction of Chinese infrastructure. He would die in 1944 at Nagoya while being treated for kidney cancer.

To this day, Wang Zhaoming is branded a "national traitor" by both the PRC and ROC, with his original grave in China demolished in 1946 by Kuomintang forces. So why is his grave kept in Tokyo?

宗泰院 (Sotai-in)

宗泰院 (Soutai-in) is a buddhist temple, located in the Sugnami district of Tokyo. Surrounded by Japanese Suburbs, this modest and inconspicuous temple houses a myriad of graves belonging to local families. Tracing it's legacy back to the 17th century, Wang Zhaoming's spiritual resting place was reportedly erected here by a returning unnamed Japanese officer who admired Wang Zhaoming's character, holding a fragment of his grave and some of his personal belongings.