"Ishiwara-kun, I actually don't quite understand why Britain wants to encircle China. You are so certain about this; what is the reason?"

"As the world hegemon, any country that challenges its hegemonic status will be struck by it. This is not directed at China; in Britain's eyes, there are only two types of countries in the world: those capable of challenging British hegemony, and those currently incapable of challenging British hegemony."

Hearing Ishiwara say this, Kita Ikki's brows furrowed slightly. After pondering for a moment, he asked, "Ishiwara-kun, I read many articles published by He-kun in newspapers during my trip to China. Listening to Ishiwara-kun's views, they surprisingly align with He-kun's line of thought. In my humble opinion, in your eyes, although the European and American countries have committed numerous evil deeds, they are not evil. Could Ishiwara-kun please explain this?"

Ishiwara Kanji nodded but didn't speak immediately. instead, he conducted another mental sorting and judgment of Kita Ikki.

Kita Ikki was born in a fishing village in Niigata, Japan. His father ran a brewing business and had served as mayor. Because he was physically weak, although he skipped a grade to the third year of middle school, he had to be hospitalized for long-term treatment due to an eye disease and eventually failed to graduate from middle school.

In 1903, his father went bankrupt. In 1904, Kita Ikki left his hometown for Tokyo to be an auditor at Waseda University, while associating with early Japanese socialists like Sakai Toshihiko. During this stage, Kita Ikki also tried to earn living expenses by submitting articles to newspapers, but was repeatedly rejected.

If no special unexpected changes occurred, Ishiwara Kanji believed that the hardships of life during this stage, as well as the inability to gain social recognition, caused Kita Ikki in his early twenties to form a cynical mindset.

Academically, Kita Ikki had neither academic mentors nor academic peers. Although he read extensively, his understanding of the reading content was probably limited to the superficial level he could comprehend. So although Kita Ikki...

In terms of understanding society, Kita Ikki never had the opportunity to contact Japanese dignitaries and elites. If Kita Ikki could understand the thinking of the upper echelon, he wouldn't have asked the foolish question, 'In your eyes, although European and American countries have committed numerous evil deeds, they are not evil.'

Kita Ikki's thoughts resonated perfectly with the middle and lower-ranking officers in the Japanese army precisely because they also lacked social knowledge.

Seeing Ishiwara silent, Kita Ikki was also thinking about Ishiwara Kanji. Towards this Japanese war hero, Kita Ikki could feel his own envy and jealousy.

Ishiwara Kanji's father was a police chief. If Kita Ikki's father could also eat the imperial grain, he wouldn't have gone bankrupt. Kita Ikki might have been able to complete his studies and go to university in Tokyo.

However, Ishiwara Kanji's father was a police chief in a rural city. Although he was a big shot, he was not a Japanese dignitary. Ishiwara Kanji himself had excellent grades and attended prestigious schools. After graduating from the Army War College, he went abroad to broaden his horizons, then returned to the Army War College as an instructor. When the country was in trouble, Ishiwara Kanji stepped forward, arrived at the front line alone, reorganized the defeated troops, organized defenses, and turned the tide. Such a person belonged to the category of 'someone else's child,' but was an existence Kita Ikki could understand.

If it were someone like He Rui, who had good interactions with the Japanese upper echelon from a young age and became a specially invited scholar of the Ministry of Finance, although Kita Ikki felt He Rui was truly extraordinary, he couldn't understand He Rui through imagination. This was also the reason why Kita Ikki couldn't understand why Ishiwara Kanji's thinking aligned with He Rui's line of thought.

After re-evaluating Kita Ikki in his heart, Ishiwara spoke, "Kita-kun, if someone sees an opportunity to make money and goes to make money, do you think this is evil?"

"...I think perhaps not," Kita Ikki replied after musing for a moment.

"If someone would rather lose money to do evil desperately, do you think that is evil?"

This time Kita Ikki answered immediately, "Yes."

"Although European and American countries do not talk about justice, they do not do business that loses money. Everything they do revolves around profit. In this process, they have done much evil and committed monstrous crimes. But as long as there is no profit, they immediately stop doing it. I think they are villains. Does Kita-kun think they are evil?"

The logic in this answer made it difficult for Kita Ikki to reply. He felt Ishiwara was playing with rhetoric, but Ishiwara added a sentence at this time, "I think those villains deserve to be killed. But doing evil and being evil are not the same thing. If you can't figure out the difference, you can't understand who Japan's enemy really is."

Kita Ikki felt he couldn't win in a debate against Ishiwara Kanji, who had received a full set of elite education, so he changed the question. "Ishiwara-kun says so, and I think it makes sense. But what is the use?"

"It's very simple. If you consider the problem from an economic perspective, you can fully understand the behavior of the upper echelons of various countries. For Britain, through the behavior of China destroying foreign forces within its borders, they understood that what they lost were all privileges in China and the benefits obtained based on such privileges. The situation in the Far East has begun to break away from British control. Control in the eyes of British dignitaries is control based on the economic level. Britain's military strikes against China and subsequent political control all serve Britain's economic privileges in China. I see that in *An Outline Plan for the Reorganization of Japan* written by Kita-kun, there are many mentions of economic content. But Kita-kun's discussion of economic issues revolves around morality, which makes me feel very surprised."

Hearing Ishiwara's evaluation, the expressions of several Future Society members became somewhat disappointed. They had learned the methodology of political economy analysis from Ishiwara and knew deeply what such an evaluation meant.

It was just that Kita Ikki was very attractive among some low-ranking officers. In *An Outline Plan for the Reorganization of Japan*, Kita Ikki proposed that the Emperor be the absolute leader, dissolve the parliament, ban democratic politics, limit private wealth, and the government be operated or supervised by personnel centered on the army and veterans.

In the eyes of the members of the Japanese Future Society, this was undoubtedly a thorough economic policy. But those low-ranking officers insisted that this was a moral issue rather than an economic issue. If Ishiwara's judgment was correct, Kita Ikki would hold the same view.

Kita Ikki didn't answer immediately. If it were before, Kita Ikki should have immediately refuted Ishiwara, thinking that everything he did was out of longing for a bright future for Japan, and interpreting it from a vulgar economic perspective was undoubtedly an insult.

But having read many articles published by He Rui in newspapers in China, Kita Ikki gradually believed that his views possessed moral, political, and economic aspects simultaneously. The order of importance was morality first, politics second, and economics just a means.

So although Ishiwara's view failed to correctly describe Kita Ikki's philosophy, at least it didn't deviate too much. After thinking for a while, Kita Ikki decided to skip this unpleasant question first. He asked, "Ishiwara-kun, what impact do you think Britain's encirclement of China will have on the Japanese revolution?"

Ishiwara looked at Kita Ikki. Seeing Kita Ikki's gaze evading, he answered, "Britain needs a large army to encircle China. Now Japan, after the war and the Great Kanto Earthquake, has no money to wage war. Britain will very likely provide military funding to Japan and use cooperation with the Japanese high-level officials to bring up the view that Manchuria and Mongolia are Japan's lifeline again. Kita-kun, doesn't your *An Outline Plan for the Reorganization of Japan* also strongly support this slogan?"

"Does Ishiwara-kun not agree with this view?" Kita Ikki asked back.

Ishiwara Kanji slowly shook his head. "Kita-kun, I once held the same view as you. China cannot shoulder the heavy responsibility of resisting European and American pressure, so Japan must replace it, so we must seize Manchuria and Mongolia."

Kita Ikki felt he was completely pinned down by Ishiwara, his inner thoughts completely grasped by Ishiwara. He couldn't help but feel a bit indignant, so he answered loudly, "Indeed so. But I think Japan doesn't need to be used by Britain. After we get Britain's funding, there are plenty of ways to delay."

Ishiwara said no more. He raised his wine glass, "That Kita-kun can have such a view, indeed you are genuinely considering for Japan. Come, drink this cup."

Kita Ikki felt relieved that he finally made Ishiwara understand his love for Japan, so he raised his wine glass and responded, "Cheers!"

Ishiwara drank the wine and sighed as if breathing out alcohol fumes. He was very disappointed in his heart; Kita Ikki was also the kind of person who thought the British Empire wasn't smart enough. If the British Empire really wasn't smart enough, it would have been eaten dry and wiped clean by other Western countries long ago.

Precisely because they couldn't understand why the British Empire was powerful, people like Kita Ikki would think that the Japanese upper echelon was selling out the country for private interests, or even selling out the country for the sake of selling out the country.

The current Japanese upper echelon was the enemy in Ishiwara's eyes, and also the enemy in Kita Ikki's eyes. Because people like Kita Ikki lacked knowledge, they naturally couldn't treat the effective tools of Europe and America as their tools. In some aspects, people like Kita Ikki couldn't be considered comrades.

But there was a basis for cooperation between the two sides. Ishiwara strongly agreed with He Rui's view: 'Make many friends, make few enemies.' If he couldn't use people like Kita Ikki, the people Ishiwara could mobilize alone were completely insufficient to fight a decisive battle with the current dignitaries.

So Ishiwara temporarily gave up on making Kita Ikki understand the world from an economic perspective, nor did he discuss problems from the 'moral' perspective Kita Ikki was proud of. Ishiwara tried hard to talk about the current situation in the Far East from a realistic perspective.

When the gathering ended, Kita Ikki, who had talked extremely happily, took his leave with some reluctance. When only the core members of the Future Society remained in the room, other comrades began to complain, "Such a person truly has no reason to unite with."

Ishiwara shook his head. "If we don't unite with them, are we going to hand them over to the Imperial Way Faction in the army?"

The comrades were speechless for a moment. Currently, the most powerful faction in the army was the 'Control Faction,' and the smaller one was the 'Imperial Way Faction.' Because they started to fall behind in the competition, the Imperial Way Faction was now desperately recruiting people. As Ishiwara said, if the Future Society couldn't unite these people, these people would follow the Imperial Way Faction dead set, to engage in their foolish idea of the Emperor holding real power to unify Japan.

The Imperial Way Faction was mainly based in rural areas, following the 'rural style.' These country people were always willing to believe that the Emperor sincerely represented Japan's justice, and that there were bad people around the Emperor. As long as the bad people were eliminated and people from the Imperial Way Faction were put in power, then Japan would be full of upright people in the court, and from then on, the seas would be clear and the rivers calm, and prestige would extend within the seas.

The biggest problem with such an idea was that such an Emperor had never existed in the past, did not exist now, and was impossible to appear in the future. The biggest reason for the Emperor's unbroken line for ten thousand generations lay in the Emperor...

The comrades could only ask Ishiwara, "How to unite them?"

Ishiwara was not stumped; he laughed, "Let the lower-ranking officers understand that since the Restoration of Imperial Rule, they have been loyal to the Emperor for decades. Now it's time to consider how to truly fight for their own interests."