The Kwantung Army (more accurately in Japanese, the Kanto Army), was a significant entity in Japan's fight in ww2 and prior to that. Created in 1906 in order to protect Japan's imperial ambitions in China's Manchuria, and Shandong Peninsula ( which was leased to Japan called the "Kwantung Leased Territory") after ww1. Prior to World War 2, the army often acted in self interest and carried out massive acts of insubordination from the Japanese government, those rogue actions would eventually lead to the assassination of the Manchurian warlord, Zhang Zuolin, and the orchestration of the Mukden incident. And just like every Japanese military personnel, ignored the pleas of the Emperor to stop the war from continuing. The Kwantung Army would fight in every single battle against China, and briefly entered Mongolian territory and had a skirmish with the Soviets there, and obviously, committed a lot of war crimes in the process, especially it's involvement with Unit 731, Japan's chemical researching personnel. During the final years of WW2, the Kwantung army has been drastically weakened, and lost a lot of their best soldiers. The army was defeated and later surrendered to the Soviets on the 9th of August, 1945. There is more to this horrendous immoral army but I had to condense it
The lyrics are apparently written in classical Japanese, which would explain why some of the kanji don't match how they normally are pronounced, and why the translations of this song are horrible. So I decided to give it a shot, I have a sense that it's not good, but at least it's grammatically correct...
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Hakko Ichiu (八紘一宇) means "The world under one roof", a quote from a Japanese nationalist that I forgot the name of, but it became the motto of the Japanese Empire until the end of ww2
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暁雲の下見よはるか
起伏果なき幾山河
わが精鋭がその威武に
盟邦の民いま安し
栄光に満つ関東軍
興安嶺下見よ広野
父祖が護国の霊ねむり
いま同胞が生命を
正義に託す新天地
前衛に立つ関東軍
烈々の士気見よ歩武を
野ゆき山ゆき土に臥し
寒熱何ぞ死を越えて
挺身血湧く真男児
風雲に侍す関東軍
北斗の星座見よ使命
暗雲天をとざすとも
神与の剣ひらめけば
妖魔散じて影空し
東亜の護り関東軍
旭日の下見よ瑞気
八紘一宇共栄の
大道ここに拓かれて
燦々たりや大陵威
皇軍の華関東軍
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