Coming on the heels of another book on Zhang Xueliang (张学良), 张学良与日本， is this book. This is a rather short book of about 250 pages. The first quarter of the book was on Zhang's early life, and therefore has much to do with his father, the warlord Zhang Zuolin (张作霖). Zhang Xueliang came to prominence after his father was murdered by the Japanese and partly motivated by that, he decided to 'change flag' (易帜), that is, to change to the Nationalists' flag in a show of subjugation to them. After he lost his empire to the Japanese in the Manchurian Incident, he became increasingly opposed to Jiang's policy of 'Resisting Foreign Aggression after Stabilizing the Country' (先安内，后攘外), which culminated in the Xi'an Incident (西安事变) resulting in Zhang's five-decade house arrest.This book was written by 松本一男, a Japanese born in Taiwan. However, when I first started, I wondered who translated the book, was it done faithfully to the original script or was it done by a Taiwanese or a Chinese who skewed the slant of the book towards their national stance on Zhang; the Chinese treat him as a national hero, the Taiwanese, a traitor. Some of the early parts suggested that the Chinese Communist Party might have a hand in it. There were instances when the author was highly critical of the Japanese (e.g., pg 41), in ways that only Chinese would do. Others, like the claim that growing up, Zhang did not even have the slightest affinity to the Japanese (pg. 43) also sounded a little too much like Chinese writing, there was also much criticism of Chiang Kai-shek throughout the book, written in a way contemporary Chinese would. Yet at the end of the book, the author's stance was a lot more unbiased, for example, his opinion that the Xi'an Incident saved the Communist Party from annihilation was not something many in China would admit to readily. Most of all however, is his description of the June Fourth Incident in China in 1989. This would never have made it into print had it been translated by a Chinese.
On the Xi'an Incident, there wasn't a lot written. How Zhang came to be in cahoots with Yang Hucheng (杨虎城) was totally ignored. But the author showed that the general political condition then made it hard for Zhang to hold the line on 先安内，后攘外. This book might be a little dated and so some facts were not firmly established when it was written. It could be for this reason that I found the author careful about being overly certain concerting events that are hard to authenticate. For example what was Zhang doing on the night of when the Manchurian Incident took place? Current accounts prefer to suggest that he was having a good time in the theatre. The author took the more tentative approach of suggesting that it was not conclusive and so two accounts were available. He was also less dramatic in describing Jiang's capture during the Xi'an Incident compared to this other account. On the other hand, what was glaringly inconsistent with common knowledge was his missing out on the fact that Chiang fell and hurt his back while trying to escape during the Xi'an Incident (pg. 176).
Overall though, I feel that the author has done a very commendable job in synthesising and presenting his facts. This can be seen from his triangulation of information with various sources when presenting the account of 'who did what' during the Xi'an Incident. More telling was his handling of the literature surrounding the execution of 杨宇霆 and 常蔭槐. The author commented about the conflicting accounts in the Chinese literature and their tendencies to sensationalise and he therefore decided only consulted overseas literature (pg 85). Another strength of the book was the detailed information on the different sects and warlords (pg. 91) and also the order of battle of Zhang's army.
What was surprising to me was what I thought would be the most boring part of the book turned out to be the most moving. This concerns Zhang's life in house-arrest over the five decades, how he turned from being hopeful of early release to join the fight against the Japanese to his gradual acceptance that it would not happened, yet sprinkled sporadically with unfulfilled hopes when old friends visited him promising to put in a good word for him in front of Chiang; the condition of his living quarters in the different places, where he sometimes could only spend a few months or even weeks because of the Nationalist Army's constant retreat from the Japanese; his general state of his physical and mental health and in the end, how his 'freedom statement' was dictated by the politics of Taiwan, right up to the third president.
This book speculates about Zhang Xueliang's nature and attributed his eventual sympathy with the students' cause in 1936 to the May Fourth Movement which he witnessed as a young man . It is easy for people to feel this way about Zhang for he clearly was more naive than he should be, one need only see his belief that Chiang would not treat him as he did. And from this, one can make a judgement on Chiang.
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