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For a prime minister who is about to leave office and has publicly announced that he will not participate in the next prime minister election, life should have been quite comfortable. No one deliberately confronts Takahashi Korekiyo anymore, and no one troubles Takahashi Korekiyo because of urgent state affairs. Anyway, the most urgent thing for Japan now is the candidate for the next prime minister.

Takahashi Korekiyo also has no intention of withdrawing from politics. Various forces, including the Imperial Palace, the Army Department, the Navy Department, and the Diet, have spoken to Takahashi Korekiyo, hoping that he can serve as the Finance Minister after stepping down as prime minister. Theoretically, Takahashi Korekiyo only needs to wait to bow and step down, and then go to the Ministry of Finance to continue doing what he is best at.

However, things are not that simple. Takahashi Korekiyo wanted to spend the last few days of his prime minister term easily, but political matters still came one after another.

The biggest difference between Takahashi Korekiyo and other politicians is their way of thinking about solving problems. The current mainstream thinking in Japan has a strong characteristic, that is, domestic problems are solved abroad. Since the countries surrounding Japan are all truly major powers—China, Russia, Britain, and even the United States desperately infiltrating the Western Pacific—the strength of each country is above Japan. Except for Britain, China, Russia, and the United States all hold hostility towards Japan. Most Japanese political figures believe that Japan must expand to obtain stability, and Japan must seize every opportunity to implement expansion.

Therefore, Takahashi Korekiyo himself is a minority in Japanese politics. He does not oppose expansion, but believes that expansion should obey the pace of Japan solving internal problems, rather than all activities within Japan obeying the needs of expansion.

So several things placed in front of Japanese Prime Minister Takahashi Korekiyo are full of controversy. The first thing is about Kolchak moving east. Although lacking coordination, the Entente Powers have an agreement on attacking Russia. Churchill, who served as the British Secretary of State for War during the siege of Soviet Russia, claimed after the operation ended that he served as the organizer of the "Fourteen-Nation Attack" on the Soviet Republic.

China and the United States can completely ignore the orders of Churchill and Britain, but Japan dares not do so. After Kolchak was defeated west of the Ural Mountains and driven across the Ural Mountains to the vast and wild eastern part of Russia, he did not decide to establish a base on the spot, but continued all the way east, seeking refuge with Japan according to Britain's "suggestion," striving to make a comeback.

After more than half a year of marching, more than a million people under Kolchak actually arrived in the Pacific region. Kolchak's envoy demanded that Japan honor its promise to Britain and help Kolchak gain a foothold in the Far East.

Japan is very troubled by this. After the Russian Revolution, Japan certainly hoped to make a big fortune in the Far East. Hope is always too fragile. First, they fell into a protracted public security war in Korea. The crazy plunder of the Army Department in Korea led to fierce resistance from Koreans. Korean guerrillas fiercely attacked Japanese mining areas in northern Korea, tore up railways, blew up bridges, and attacked and destroyed scattered Japanese strongholds. This forced most of Japan's troops to be used to deal with the Korean problem.

And China marched north, fighting all the way to the vicinity of Nerchinsk, occupying vast lands. These areas occupied by China relied entirely on railway transportation, and the ship cannons of the Japanese Navy could not even threaten the Chinese. The Japanese Army Department did not want to fight a big war with China in these northern regions at all, so Japan only seized the northern part of Vladivostok.

Even this harvest could not be enjoyed by Japan alone. The US Navy sent troops demonstratively in the name of the joint dispatch of troops by the Entente Powers and also landed in the northern part of Vladivostok. China and the United States firmly blocked Japan's road to the north.

So whether it was the Japanese Army Department or the Navy Department, they all found Takahashi Korekiyo for a meeting, preparing to discuss this "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity."

Reaching this current situation, Takahashi Korekiyo didn't care about anything anymore. The Army Department shouted the loudest, and Takahashi Korekiyo poured a bucket of cold water on their heads, "Although I don't understand military affairs, as far as the common sense I know is concerned, rather than the army landing on the Far East coast and fighting a war with China which has railway transportation advantages, it would be more money-saving to cross the Sino-Japanese border line of the Yalu River directly and go to war with China."

Hearing this, the Army Department fell silent. Theoretically, this was the best way. China's march into the Far East relied entirely on the Northeast they had already seized as a base. The best way to seize the Far East was to seize Northeast China. The only problem was that the Japanese Army Department had no ability to do this at all.

The Japanese Navy Department did not want to invite humiliation. The navy could at most seize a few ports and was powerless to complete the plan of seizing the Far East alone.

Seeing that the military department yielded with difficulty, Takahashi Korekiyo did not continue to act as a hero verbally. He said: "The most important thing now is to quickly figure out Kolchak's situation."