premise: After the Empire of Japan invaded and occupied the Northeast in 1931, the Chinese Communist Party organized small anti-Japanese guerrilla units, and formed their own Northeastern People's Revolutionary Army, dedicated to social revolution, but these were dwarfed by the Anti-Japanese Volunteer Armies which had been raised by their anti-Japanese, patriotic appeal.
hypothesis: The Japanese approved of the Empire of Japan. 
reason: It's neither most probably, because we don't know the possibility that if Japanese citizens disapproved or approved of what the empire was doing..