Within a few days of the outbreak Nationalist M.P.s
were on their way to Shanghai to co-operate with the rebels,
whilst the " Yurin Kai " and the " Zenrun Kai," two
Japanese associations which had been formed to aid the
revolutionaries, were flooding the cables with congratu-
latory and hortatory messages. Nevertheless at the
beginning of the revolution the sympathetic movement
in Japan was strictly limited to the Nationalist party and
to those institutions, financial and commercial, which had
been actively engaged for years past in organizing and
arming the rebels. There is little doubt that the rapid
extension of the revolutionary movement throughout
China came as a great and unpleasant surprise to those
in authority at Tokio. It was not until the latter part of
November that the Japanese press, under official inspira-
tion, began to talk of intervention. From about the middle
of November newspapers of all classes began to press on the
Government an active policy, partly basing their demands
on the undoubted damage the revolution was inflicting
on Japanese trade with China and partly on surmises as
to the future action of Yuan-shi-Kai, who, as an old foe
of Japan, would, it was considered, take every means of
damaging that country's interests. It is worthy of note
that this conversion of the Tokio press dated from the
publication of Wu-ting-Fang's letter to the foreign news-
papers of Shanghai (November 14th, 1911), which was the
first indication of the determination of the revolutionaries
to fight on until the extinction of the Manchu Court.
From that date it was clear that the success of the rebellion
could only mean the establishment of a Chinese Republic.
