Kenji Doihara (8 August 1883 – 23 December 1948) was a general of the Imperial Japanese Army who served in the Second Sino-Japanese War as the commander of various Japanese formations, including the Japanese 7th Area Army and the Japanese 1st General Army.
Biography[]
Kenji Doihara was born on 8 August 1883 in Okayama Prefecture, Japan, and in 1912 he graduated from the Army Staff College before serving in the Siberian Intervention of the Russian Civil War in the 1920s. Doihara joined the Toseiha clique in the Interwar Years, and he became head of the military intelligence service of the Kwantung Army. He helped in engineering the Mukden Incident, which led to the Second Sino-Japanese War, during which he held various commands. He was nicknamed "Lawrence of Manchuria", and after the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, he was given command of the Japanese 1st Army in northern China. Doihara held various commands during the war, and he ended the war in command of the Japanese 1st General Army. He was charged with encouraging the consumption of opium among the people of China, and he was a known opium addict himself. In 1948, he was hanged for war crimes.