Manchukuo , officially the State of Manchuria prior to and the Empire of Manchuria after , was a puppet state of the Empire of Japan in Northeast China and Inner Mongolia from until It was founded in after the Japanese invasion of Manchuria , and in it became a constitutional monarchy. Under the de facto control of Japan, it had limited international recognition.
The area was the homeland of the Manchus , including the emperors of the Qing dynasty. In , the region was seized by Japan following the Mukden Incident. A pro-Japanese government was installed one year later with Puyi , the last Qing emperor , as the nominal regent and later emperor. The territories claimed by Manchukuo were first seized in the Soviet invasion of Manchuria in August , [2] and then formally transferred to Chinese administration in the following year. Manchus formed a minority in Manchukuo, whose largest ethnic group was Han Chinese.
The population of Koreans increased during the Manchukuo period, and there were also Japanese , Mongols , White Russians and other minorities. The Mongol regions of western Manchukuo were ruled under a slightly different system in acknowledgement of the Mongolian traditions there. The southern tip of the Liaodong Peninsula present-day Dalian continued to be directly ruled by Japan as the Kwantung Leased Territory.
In Japanese, the name refers to the state of Manchuria , the region of the Manchus. The English name, adapted to incorporate the word Manchu , would mean the state of the Manchu people. Indeed, Manchukuo was often referred to in English as simply "Manchuria", a name for Northeast China which had been particularly employed by the Imperial Japanese to promote its separation from the rest of the country.
The formal name of the country was changed to the " Empire of Manchuria " sometimes referred to as "Manchutikuo" , after the establishment of Puyi as the Kangde Emperor in The Japanese had their own motive for deliberately spreading the usage of the term Manchuria. Garcia noted that usage of the term "Manchuria" was out of favor in "current scholarly practice" and preferred the term "the northeast".
