The Imperial Japanese Army accused Chinese dissidents of the act and responded with a full invasion that led to the occupation of Manchuria, in which Japan established its puppet state of Manchukuo six months later.

In Japanese, "Manchurian incident" (Kyūjitai: 滿洲事變, Shinjitai: 満州事変, Manshū-jihen) usually refers to the entire sequence of events (including the invasion), rather than just the initial September 1931 attack on the railway line.

The Japanese government, however, claimed that this control included all the rights and privileges that China granted to Russia in the 1896 Li–Lobanov Treaty, as enlarged by the Kwantung Lease Agreement of 1898.

[citation needed] Meanwhile, the newly formed Chinese government was attempting to reassert its authority over the country after over a decade of fragmented warlord dominance.

However, after the Japanese Minister of War Jirō Minami dispatched Major General Yoshitsugu Tatekawa to Manchuria for the specific purpose of curbing the insubordination and militarist behavior of the Kwantung Army, Itagaki and Ishiwara believed that they no longer had the luxury of waiting for the Chinese to respond to provocations but had to stage their own.

The area had no official name and was not militarily important, but it was only eight hundred meters away from the Chinese garrison of Beidaying (北大營; běidàyíng), where troops under the command of the "Young Marshal" Zhang Xueliang were stationed.

[16] The plan was executed when 1st Lieutenant Suemori Kawamoto of the Independent Garrison Unit (獨立守備隊) of the 29th Infantry Regiment, which guarded the South Manchuria Railway, placed explosives near the tracks, but far enough away to do no real damage.

Therefore, the Japanese soldiers proceeded to occupy and garrison the major cities of Changchun and Dandong and their surrounding areas with minimal difficulty.

Despite this resistance, within five months of the Mukden incident, the Imperial Japanese Army had overrun all major towns and cities in the provinces of Liaoning, Jilin, and Heilongjiang.

In addition, his arsenal in Manchuria was considered the most modern in China, and his troops had possession of tanks, around 60 combat aircraft, 4000 machine guns, and four artillery battalions.

The first was that the Kwantung Army had a strong reserve force that could be transported by railway from Korea, which was a Japanese colony, directly adjacent to Manchuria.

Therefore, deploying Zhang's troops north of the Great Wall meant that they lacked the concentration needed to fight the Japanese effectively.

[15] On November 20, a conference in the Chinese government was convened, but the Guangzhou faction of the Kuomintang insisted that Chiang Kai-shek step down to take responsibility for the Manchurian debacle.

The report ascertained that Manchukuo was the product of Japanese military aggression in China, while recognizing that Japan had legitimate concerns in Manchuria because of its economic ties there.

Strong evidence points to young officers of the Japanese Kwantung Army having conspired to cause the blast, with or without direct orders from Tokyo.

The resulting explosion enabled the Japanese Kwantung Army to accomplish their goal of triggering a conflict with Chinese troops stationed in Manchuria and the subsequent establishment of the puppet state of Manchukuo.

The 9.18 Incident Exhibition Museum (九・一八歷史博物館) at Shenyang, opened by the People's Republic of China on September 18, 1991, takes the position that the explosives were planted by Japan.

David Bergamini's book Japan's Imperial Conspiracy (1971) has a detailed chronology of events in both Manchuria and Tokyo surrounding the Mukden incident.

However, historian James Weland has concluded that senior commanders had tacitly allowed field operatives to proceed on their own initiative, then endorsed the result after a positive outcome was assured.

[24] In August 2006, the Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan's top-selling newspaper, published the results of a year-long research project into the general question of who was responsible for the "Shōwa war".

With respect to the Manchurian incident, the newspaper blamed ambitious Japanese militarists, as well as politicians who were impotent to rein them in or prevent their insubordination.

Historian Emily Matson stated that this shift in the official timeline is part of a domestic "legitimizing narrative" that aims to enhance the CCP's prestige and discredit the Nationalist government's "nonresistance policy" at the time.