One doesn't shed tears until one sees the coffin. After visiting the Chinese shipyards, the Japanese Navy strongly requested another tour of China. Especially those Japanese naval personnel who hadn't been on the previous visit; hearing that ships could be built on dry land using an assembly line mode, they questioned whether these visitors were speaking nonsense. They suspected it was all just to bewitch the uninformed Japanese into accepting a policy of "fawning over China" or "surrendering to China."

The representative figure among them was the former naval hero, Suzuki Kantaro. Thanks to the excessive success of the "Showa Restoration," Kita Ikki and his group had only conducted a few purges of the military. All retired military personnel were given employment opportunities, but those old naval fellows had money in their pockets and, secondly, loathed working alongside ordinary soldiers. So, centering themselves around the naval shipyards not yet fully controlled by Kita Ikki, they created something resembling a "Counter-revolutionary Salon."

Kita Ikki felt that now was not the time to deal with these old geezers. The counter-revolutionary salon organized by these old fellows still had many benefits; a clustered counter-revolutionary gang was always easier to handle than scattered counter-revolutionaries. Moreover, the People's Party's attitude of legally protecting "freedom of speech" had a significant influence on Kita Ikki. Blocking the mouths of the people is more dangerous than blocking a river; this is the first step losers always take. One of the characteristics of victors is magnanimity. Guaranteeing legal freedom of speech is the foundation of the state.

Since Suzuki Kantaro and the others reacted this way, Kita Ikki logically applied to the Chinese side, hoping to organize a new tour. He wanted to send all the old Japanese fellows to China so they could see China's powerful strength with their own eyes, thereby deterring these petty people.

Before Chen Ke traveled through time, China's GDP and national power had both surpassed Japan's. Furthermore, in Chen Ke's current timeline, there was no particularly unresolvable, deep-seated hatred between China and Japan. Although China had failed in the First Sino-Japanese War, the People's Party had also killed quite a few hundred thousand Japanese. The Chinese people might feel that Japan couldn't compare to China, but they didn't have the kind of irreconcilable stance found in Chen Ke's original timeline, where there was an intent to thoroughly purge Japan.

Thus, on July 1, 1939, the 34th anniversary of the founding of the People's Party, a Japanese delegation representing the upper echelons of old Japan arrived in China by plane. Because of the assassination attempt on Kita Ikki, Emperor Hirohito of Japan had been in a state of complete house arrest. This delegation used Hirohito's state visit as its pretext.

At this stage, completely disposing of Hirohito would be detrimental to the stability of the situation in Japan, but keeping this dizzy Japanese Emperor in confinement in Japan was also a troublesome matter. Kita Ikki fully utilized the Chinese comrades, throwing this group of big troubles over to China. Let these guys get shocked and educated in China; it would be good for Japan's future development. Moreover, many people within Japan were already using Hirohito's situation to attack Kita Ikki. This visit could also prove that Kita Ikki bore no malice toward Hirohito personally.

And so, this Japanese "living god" began an extremely important visit in his life. Hirohito had once visited Europe; originally, he thought that China, the backer behind Kita Ikki, had only won victory by relying on a fearlessly suicidal army. The so-called "state visit" was merely another form of house arrest under the guise of travel.

En route to China on a Chinese plane, Hirohito even thought for a moment that the Chinese might tamper with the plane and cause an air crash or something. Because on the same plane were numerous former ministers and imperial princes whom Hirohito trusted. If the plane were to "suffer an air crash," it would solve the problem more easily than anything else.

Only after the plane landed safely did Hirohito's heart finally settle back into his chest.

In the subsequent tour, Hirohito and those figures of the old school were thoroughly shocked. The original impression China gave Japan was one of vast land and a large population. Seeing China's plains, mountains, industry, agriculture, and military with their own eyes, these members of the Japanese old upper crust finally understood what kind of giant stood behind Kita Ikki.

Suzuki Kantaro was well-versed in naval matters. After visiting the Chinese shipyards with Emperor Hirohito and the others, Hirohito didn't really see the intricacies; he just felt the huge shipyards had many people, even more equipment, and the efficiency seemed very high. Those massive engineering devices made ordinary people appear incredibly small.

Looking at the dumbstruck appearances of Suzuki Kantaro and the former Chief of the Navy General Staff, Prince Fushimi Hiroyasu, Hirohito knew there was something to this. After the visit ended, Hirohito asked Suzuki Kantaro what was actually going on. This old hero of the Japanese Navy actually didn't know how to report back. The former Chief of the Navy General Staff, Prince Fushimi Hiroyasu, was a genuine naval expert, and since they were relatives and his nature was quite straightforward, he simply told the truth.

Hearing that the shipbuilding speed of just one production base in Dalian, China, was several times or even over ten times the shipbuilding speed of the entire nation of Japan, Hirohito was also dumbfounded. China had four or five large shipbuilding bases; didn't that mean China's total shipbuilding capacity was dozens or even a hundred times that of Japan?

As a naval officer by training, former Chief of the Navy General Staff Prince Fushimi Hiroyasu was very skeptical of the quality of the ships China built. So he applied to take a group of old naval fellows to personally inspect the fitting-out process and even selected a newly fitted-out Chinese 3,500-ton destroyer for a sea trial. The excellent performance demonstrated by this destroyer left the Japanese naval experts wide-eyed.

Hirohito's two military tutors were the naval "God of War" Togo Heihachiro, so Hirohito also strongly requested to board the ship. When the warship executed continuous S-maneuvers at high intensity, and even performed a minimum-radius circular maneuver at high speed on the sea surface, Hirohito, who rarely boarded warships, was tossed about terribly. But even a half-expert like him could feel the performance of this very ordinary Chinese warship.

This was a 3,500-ton destroyer, not a small yacht. High-intensity maneuvering causes damage to the fragile structure of a ship; if the ship's overall strength was poor, it would likely disintegrate on its own under such high-speed maneuvering.

After the sea trial ended, former Chief of the Navy General Staff Prince Fushimi Hiroyasu and Suzuki Kantaro both admitted to Hirohito that the quality of the Chinese warships using welding technology was superior to the Japanese naval warships that used riveting technology, and far superior at that. Hearing the opinions of these naval experts whom Hirohito trusted, Hirohito truly believed that the Japanese Navy was no match for China.

Having fallen completely behind in this traditionally dominant Japanese industry, the Japanese delegation truly lost confidence. As for other industries where China had consistently shown a leading advantage, Japan only had the role of visiting and learning.

Witnessing the highly mechanized and technological agriculture on China's great plains, and the intensive farming agriculture in China's elite Jiangnan region that used large amounts of small agricultural machinery, and the "luxurious farming method" where China applied nearly ten kilograms of chemical fertilizer per mu of land, many among the Japanese high command defected in their hearts. It wasn't that they really wanted to deliberately ignore China's progress, but that these guys had never had the chance to systematically witness what kind of country China actually was. Those who dared to truly speak "good words" about China would be consciously "filtered" by the Japanese upper echelons. Now, seeing with their own eyes such a powerful China, especially those female peasant pilots in the countryside who could drive tractors and even fly planes to spray pesticides. Hirohito even took a ride in the sky in a plane piloted by an ordinary rural female pilot. The hearty demeanor of that pilot, wearing ordinary labor cloth clothing and liking to dangle a cigarette from her mouth, finally made the Japanese upper class realize what a "modern working" woman was.

Chinese women had achieved such liberation, and this liberation was so natural to them. Hirohito's wife, who accompanied him on the visit, was dumbfounded. Of course, the greatest gain for this noble lady was finally using sanitary pads. The Japanese imperial family had too many stifling rules. In China, because women had to participate in labor, and women had fully entered the field of social labor, these products that facilitated life and work were completely popularized.

During the visit, the Japanese delegation also noticed one thing: this was wartime. Yet the ordinary people in China only felt the war through the newspapers. China was waging war against Britain in the Western Pacific and the Indian Ocean, yet there were no signs of total mobilization for war preparation.

This left a deep impression on the Japanese upper class. To scrape together the warships to fight the Beiyang Fleet of the Manchu Qing, the Emperor had lived frugally to donate money. If Japan were to engage in such a war, who knew to what degree of tension the country would be strained? But in China, apart from working like hell, everything continued almost as usual. This proved one thing: China had the capability at any time to organize military forces to wage war against Japan while maintaining the current war situation.

Although Emperor Hirohito and these visiting members of the old upper echelon were still extremely hostile toward Kita Ikki—if given the chance, they would not hesitate to have Kita Ikki executed by a thousand cuts—these guys also had a brand-new understanding of the policies Kita Ikki had adopted. Regardless, now was not the time to confront China.

The market China opened to Japan was urgently needed by Japan, and the raw materials China provided to Japan were also urgently needed by Japan. If they were to forcibly rise up and kill Kita Ikki at this stage, once China turned hostile, Japan's gradually recovering economy would collapse immediately. At that time, what the Japanese old upper class would have to face would no longer be the rational enough Kita Ikki, but a large number of angry, irrational Japanese youths. What those people would actually do was something the Japanese upper class didn't even want to think about.

While visiting China, the Japanese upper class also saw another thing they extremely opposed. The anti-feudalism in Chinese society was simply too powerful; there had been a complete severance between the leadership class of New China and the old upper class. Those women who could fly planes were genuine rural laborers; the People's Party personnel hosting these high-status Japanese visitors were mostly of rural origin who had chosen their own jobs after attending school.

China's old powerful families were in a state of total collapse; the new generation of the Chinese bureaucratic class came from very ordinary backgrounds. In the Chinese upper echelons, there was no private plot left for the old powerful families. This was a completely new China, a new world that terrified the Japanese old upper class.

If the Japanese revolution really reached this step... the visitors this time all felt an indescribable panic.