In part one,
we gave a general overview of the 1919 or "Wilsonian moment,” a notion
that extends before and after that calendar year, in part
two, issues like the Asian Monroe Doctrine, how relations between China and
Japan from the 1890s onward transformed the region from the hierarchy of time
to the hierarchy of space, Leninist and Wilsonian Internationalism, western and
Eastern Sovereignty, and the crucial March First and May Fourth movements, in part three the important Chinese factions beyond
1919 and the need for China to create a new Nation-State and how Japan, in
turn, sought to expand into Asia through liberal imperialism and then sought to
consolidate its empire through liberal internationalism. And in part four the various arrangements between the
US and Japan including The Kellogg–Briand Pact or Pact in 1928 and The Treaty
for the Limitation and Reduction of Naval Armament of 1930. Whereby next we
will analyze the actual path to war starting with the American China policy the
Manchurian Incident and why this led to an ideological clash with Japanese
Asianism.
The standard "road to war” narratives explain
that Japan's invasion of Manchuria in 1931 strained relations with the United
States, a situation severely aggravated by the empire’s invasion of China
proper in 1937, and then brought to a breaking point in 1941 by Japan's advance
into southern Indochina In response, the administration of President Franklin
D. Roosevelt froze Japan’s assets in the United States and placed a full
embargo on oil. Japan’s leaders, unable to find common ground with the United
States, launched a surprise attack oil Pearl Harbor. But if Japanese expansion
into southern Indochina and the subsequent oil ban provided the initial
‘'spark" of the Pacific War. then what was the "gunpowder' that lay
behind the belligerency? What explains the underlying growing hostility
between Japan and America in the 1930s? The answer is crucial to understanding
why the United States ultimately concluded it had no option but to resort to freezing assets and embargoing oil, and why
Japan chose to abandon diplomacy and resort to
war.
A prominent postwar thesis stresses Japan’s
"search for economic security" in Asia and the construction of ail
autarkic “yen bloc.” This “realist” perspective argues that Japan's
expansionism in the 1930s stemmed primarily from rational calculations aimed at
enhancing national security, in particular, the demand to secure external
markets and access to natural resources in an increasingly protectionist world.
Indeed, there was much talk in Japan at the time about the nation’s alleged
“have-not” status and unquestionable right to vital "lifelines.”
Explaining the Asia-Pacific War as a result of Japan’s drive for autarky, and
America's efforts to contain it, is an important part of the story But it also
tends to construct an image of a Japanese regime single-mindedly focused on
cold calculations of economic security. Underappreciated is how these strategic
pursuits were undergirded by an ideology profoundly at odds with America’s core
convictions about world order.
At the heart of the conflict between the United States
and Japan during the 1930s was the importance of two competing ideologies of
world order, liberal internationalism and Pan-Asianist regionalism. From the
Manchurian crisis of 1931 up through fruitless negotiations in the fall of 1941
discord consistently turned on basic principles about world governance, tied to
rising geopolitical stakes. This also includes the American reception of the
Japanese government's efforts to shape American public opinion in the 1930s
through a vigorous program of cultural diplomacy. By tapping the empire’s
cultural riches or “soft power.” Japan’s leaders hoped to combat negative
perceptions in the United States and legitimize their regionalist aspirations
on the continent.
The American made China policy
The American mission to
China in 1843-44, and the treaty of Wangxia that resulted from it was the
reflection of a strong and autonomous China policy; a policy that found another
voice in the Open Door notes a statement of principles initiated by the United
States in 1899 and 1900 for the protection of equal privileges among countries
trading with China and in support of Chinese territorial and administrative
integrity. The statement was issued in the form of circular notes dispatched by
U.S. Secretary of State John Hay to Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy,
Japan, and Russia.
Underneath drawing depicting the proponents of the
Open Door policy (the United States, Great Britain, and Japan) pitted against
those opposed to it (Russia, Germany, and France), 1898:
The 1899 Open Door notes provided that each great power
should maintain free access to a treaty port or to any other vested interest
within its sphere, only the Chinese government should collect taxes on trade,
and no great power having a sphere should be granted exemptions from paying
harbor dues or railroad charges.
Historian Yamamuro Shin’ichi
has drawn attention to the fact that it was under the influence of World War I
that two other streams of debate became popular: one that ascribed to Japan a
special role as mediator between the West (“Euro-America”) and the East
(“Asia”) in order to “harmonize” or “blend” the two civilizations, and another
that viewed a future clash between the East and West as inevitable and demanded
that Japan lead Asia in this anti-Western enterprise. No matter which of the
two streams one sided with, neither position questioned the relevance or
validity of the geographically, culturally, and ethnically defined oppositional
units, one of which was “Asia.” From the mid-1910s onwards, such affirmative
views of “Asia” began to displace previously dominant attitudes among East
Asians toward “Asia” as an insignificant or derogatory category.
Since a larger Asianist vision of the new world order
was only realistic if China and Japan agreed to cooperate, naturally, a key
component within this debate was the relations between China and Japan. But how
could Japanese-Chinese cooperation or, preferably, even friendship be achieved,
given the strained bilateral relations in the diplomatic arena, the fields of
business and commerce, as well as the growing antagonisms in everyday
interactions between ordinary Japanese and ordinary Chinese?
Ideology is an elusive and expansive term. On one
hand, the word is often used to describe a particularly rigorous,
comprehensive, and dogmatic set of integrated values, based on a systematic
philosophy, which claims to provide coherent and unchallengeable answers to all
the problems of mankind. Thomist Christianity, Marxism-Leninism, and Nazism, one
could suggest, all fall under this cloistered meaning of ideology. Whereby in
contrast to this one could also argue that ideology is a set of closely related
beliefs or ideas, or even attitudes, characteristic of a group or community
which comes closer to expressing a worldview or mentally especially when as is
the case here one is concerned with core political beliefs and values related
to a crucial normative question: how should the international system be
structured and managed? In the 1930s, following a decade of general agreement.
Japanese and American leaders held distinctly antagonistic positions on tins
question of world order. Simply stated, the United States promoted a
universalistic framework based on an ideology of liberal internationalism, while
Japan pursued an exclusive regionalist arrangement with an emphasis on being
the stabilizing force in Asia.
The Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese wars were
important milestones in Japan's quest for world power. With its victories over
China and Russia, Japan proved itself as the most formidable power in Asia.
This was credited as the success of the Meiji Westernization and reorientation
of Japanese civilizational identity. Yet Japan could not obtain recognition of
its status from the West as an equal power in the imperialist club. It became
increasingly clear to the Japanese that race was the major factor for its
failure to, obtain such recognition. Despite Japan's claim of carrying the flag
of Western civilization in Asia, its expansion over Asia caused a conflict of
interests with Western colonialism.
Japanese Pan-Asianism
As we have seen, the mission
to China in 1843-44, and the treaty of Wangxia that resulted from it was
the reflection of a strong and autonomous China policy; a policy that found
another voice in the Open Door notes a statement of principles initiated by the
United States in 1899 and 1900 for the protection of equal privileges among
countries trading with China and in support of Chinese territorial and
administrative integrity. The statement was issued in the form of circular
notes dispatched by U.S. Secretary of State John Hay to Great Britain, Germany,
France, Italy, Japan, and Russia.
Then in 1936, Amau Eiji of the Japanese Foreign
Ministry issued the Amau Doctrine, proclaiming Japan as the "guardian of
peace, and order in East Asia." In this role, Japan claimed the right to
oppose Western support to China and asserted that China did not have the right
to "avail herself of the influence of any other country to resist
Japan."1
This was a direct challenge to the Open Door Policy
declared by the U.S. Secretary of State John Hay in 1899. Basically, the goal
was to prevent any single power, most particularly Japan, from gaining
exclusive colonial control over China. According. to this doctrine, all nations
would have equal trading rights in China and Western spheres of interest in
China would not become colonial possessions. In 1922, the Nine-Power treaty
signed at the Washington Naval Conference endorsed the open door policy and
pledged mutual respect for Chinese territorial integrity and independence. Hay
stated in 1900 that "the policy of the United States is to seek a solution
which may bring about permanent safety and peace to China, preserve Chinese territorial
integrity and administrative entity, protect all rights guaranteed to friendly
powers by treaty and international law and safeguard trade with all parts of
China."2 However, as other parts of Asia were already colonized by the
Western powers, Japan came to increasingly dislike the Open Door Policy as an
exclusive denial of its colonial expansion. In this context, ideas of an
anti-Western, Japan-centric Asian order gained currency among members of the
Japanese political and intellectual elite. The civilizational discourse of the
Meiji era was replaced by the racial discourse in the period of the war and
became hegemonic by the 1930s. The idea of a 'dobun doshu' ("same Chinese
characters, same race") was the basis of this version of Asianism. Yet common
culture and same race did not mean in the perception of Japanese Pan-Asianists
perfect equality of Japan and China. For them, "Japanese must assume the
dominant position in order to 'educate' and 'lead' the Chinese in the right
direction.3 Tokutomi Soho, once a quintessential liberal who converted to the
nationalist cause later, expressed these feelings: The countries of the white
men are already extending into the forefront of Japan. They have already
encroached on China, India, and Persia. Japan is not so far from Europe. Most
of the countries in the east from Suez, excluding Japan, have been dominated by
them. Coping with such a situation, can we have a hope of equal treatment
between the white man and the yellow man? No ... Although the Chinese, like us,
also belong to the world of the yellow man, they always humble themselves
before the white man and indulge themselves by leading a comfortable life. We,
Japanese, should take care of the yellow man in general, Chinese in particular.
We should claim that the mission of the Japanese Empire is to fully implement
an Asian Monroe Doctrine. „Although we say that Asians should handle their own
affairs by themselves, there are no other Asian people than the Japanese who
are entitled to perform this mission. Therefore, an
Asian Monroe Doctrine means in reality a Monroe Doctrine led by the
Japanese...We should end the dominance of the white man in Asia.”4
Leading thinkers from a different political spectrum
in China also showed concern about the new discourse on “Japanese-Chinese
friendship.” Chen Duxiu (1879–1942), together with Li Dazhao (1889–1927), a
co-founder of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), had studied in Japan in 1901
and was a leader of the revolutionary New Cultural
Movement. Although both were highly critical of China’s traditionalism and,
therefore, at least potentially, shared some views held by Japanese debaters
critical of China, they rejected Japanese pressure on China to form an alliance
in the spirit of “Japanese-Chinese friendship” on Japanese terms. In March
1919, Chen published a short essay in which he sharply rejected the demands
from Japan to receive special concessions in Shandong as a reward for its
participation in World War I on the victors’ side. “The countries that have
fought together heroically against Germany in the European War [World War I],”
Chen wrote, “do not demand Zambia or Poland as rewards. And yet, Japan, which
frequently advances ‘Chinese-Japanese friendship’ demands concessions for
mining and railways in Shandong province as a condition in exchange for the
return of Qingdao.
Japan's assistance to the Chinese revolutionary
movement led by Sun Yat-sen (1866 – 1925 who became first president of the
Republic of China and the first leader of the Kuomintang-Nationalist Party of
China) to overthrow the Qing monarchy was a part of
Japan's Asianist strategy. In a speech at a girls’ school in Kobe on 28
November, he invoked the vision of Pan-Asianism first
raised by the exiles in Japan twenty years earlier: the call for solidarity between
peoples suffering the same sickness of imperial domination.
Historian Yamamuro Shin’ichi has drawn attention to
the fact that it was also under the influence of World War I that two other
streams of debate became popular: one that ascribed to Japan a special role as
mediator between the West (“Euro-America”) and the East (“Asia”) in order to
“harmonize” or “blend” the two civilizations, and another that viewed a future
clash between the East and West as inevitable and demanded that Japan lead Asia
in this anti-Western enterprise. No matter which of the two streams one sided
with, neither position questioned the relevance or validity of the
geographically, culturally, and ethnically defined oppositional units, one of
which was “Asia.” From the mid-1910s onwards, such
affirmative views of “Asia” began to displace previously dominant attitudes
among East Asians toward “Asia” as an insignificant or derogatory category.
Since a larger Asianist vision of a new world order
was only realistic if China and Japan agreed to cooperate, naturally, a key
component within this debate was the relations between China and Japan. But how
could Japanese-Chinese cooperation or, preferably, even friendship be achieved,
given the strained bilateral relations in the diplomatic arena, the fields of
business and commerce, as well as the growing antagonisms in everyday
interactions between ordinary Japanese and ordinary Chinese? After Japan had
issued the infamous Twenty-One Demands to
China, followed by boycotts and anti-Japanese protest there, in 1915 and 1916 a
first peak in Japanese proposals for friendship between Japan and China could
be observed. It was mainly driven by Sinophile Japanese, such as Yoshino Sakuzō,
Ukita Kazutami, and Terao Tōru, but it also involved Japanese critical of
China and some Chinese who followed the debate closely. Against the background
of the ever worsening tensions between the two countries in 1919, the “China
problem” turned into a veritable “China crisis” following the disputes between
the Japanese and Chinese delegations at the Paris Peace Conference over
“Japanese special interests” in Shandong and the return of formerly German
possessions there to China. Interestingly, this crisis, which again triggered
massive anti-Japanese protests and boycotts in China, was also the origin of
the revival of calls for “Japanese-Chinese friendship.” While all participants
in this debate agreed on the importance of friendship between the two countries
and peoples, the measures to be taken to achieve this end were contested and
varied widely. Ultimately, the year 1919 represented a chance for friendship
and peace between China and Japan that was missed.
There also was a Japanese proposal to deal with China
and the conflict of interests in East Asia which can be loosely termed an Asian Monroe Doctrine which was a proposal by Ukita
Kazutami, a Kumamoto-born and Western-trained liberal thinker and professor of
history and politics at Waseda University. Ukita’s proposal had originally been
published in September 1918 in the widely read Japanese journal Taiyō, of
which he had been a chief editorial writer. In his essay, Ukita argued that
Japan’s regional approach should be neither seclusion (such as during the
Tokugawa period) nor exclusionist (as some anti-Western proposals for a
Japan-controlled Asia by Tokutomi Sohō and others suggested), but
inclusive and aiming for gradual change. In what was one of the most original contributions
to the public debate on Japan’s Asia policy in the Taishō period, Ukita
advanced a voluntaristic and nonracial conception of “Asians,” whom he defined
as everyone who resided in Asia, regardless of nationality or race. Based on
this assumption, he argued for a conservative interpretation of an Asian Monroe
Doctrine that included the advice to preserve or moderately revise the current
status quo, but not to radically change it. In other words, as opposed to
Tokutomi Sohō’s “old Asianism” and other Japan-centered, imperialist
conceptions of Asian Monroeism that aimed at a “Japan-controlled Asia,” Ukita
rejected radical claims for a proactive Japanese regionalist engagement that
demanded the expulsion of Western powers in order to “regain as Asians control
of Asia.” Also in contrast to more Japan-centered conceptions, Ukita rejected a
special role for Japan as Asia’s “leader” (meishu), but instead argued that
Japan must be “the protector of the East” (Tōyō no hogosha). This
difference in terminology was quite important to Ukita and went beyond the
merely rhetorical level. Rather, it formed the basis for his criticism of
Japan’s own approach toward Asia and in particular toward China. Ukita openly
criticized “Japan’s aggressive tacticians,” who were stuck in
nineteenth-century attitudes of only talking about “Japanese-Chinese
friendship,” but who in reality kept on exploiting China for Japan’s sole
benefit. In the twentieth century, however, Japan needed to revise its attitude
toward China: “Rather than speaking ill of the incompetence or stupidity of the
Chinese, the Japanese themselves must first reconsider their own psychological
attitude towards China,” Ukita wrote, and he recommended that Japan aim at
forming an alliance with China (Ni-Shi kyōdō). Ukita had held
Sinophile convictions for some time and never forgot also to hold Japan
responsible for the shaky state of Sino-Japanese relations. One year after the
outbreak of World War I and half a year after Japan had issued the Twenty-One
Demands to China, Ukita had already argued that the main responsibility for
solving the problems between the two countries lay on the Japanese side,
although he added that Japan “like an elder brother needed to guide China just
as in the past Japan learnt from its elder brother China."5
Japanese activists such as Miyazaki Toten assisted the
efforts of helping Chinese revolutionaries in the name of fighting the common
enemy of the West.7 In Japanese understanding of this new Asian order, there
was no return to the China-centered old Asian order. Japan had to be the center
of Asia. Hence, the Meiji perception of Asia in the Japanese imagination did
not change in this new period; Asianism refused to recognize Asia as the equal
of Japan. Japanese Asianists subscribed to a new Asian civilizational order in
which Japan as the central power was waging a war of independence on behalf of
all Asia. It should be noted, however, that Asianist ideology did not exist in
sharp contrast to the liberal ideology, particularly to the degree of Japan's
centrality. Or why the discourse of Japanese imperialism has changed from the
view that Japan had the right to expand
into Asia as a member of the "civilized" world so that it was Japan's
obligation to liberate Asia from Western imperialism by means of invading it.
There were times when the most Western-oriented and liberal philosophers
expressed Asianist ideas, while the most Asianist thinkers expressed anti-Asian
opinions. However, these two views did not stand in complete opposition of each
other in the mentality of many Japanese. For instance, Fukuzawa Yukichi, the
ideologue of Westernization who famously advocated Japan's de Asianization,
argued for Japanese leadership (meishu) in Asia in the 1880s. Regardless of
their ideological orientation, Meiji intellectuals and policymakers always
agreed that Japan was superior to other Asian nations. In this sense, the
degree of Asianism was determined by the degree of identification with the
West. Japan's disillusionment with China as a result of China's perceived
inferiority against the West convinced Fukuzawa Yukichi and many others to
completely give up any perception of civilizational common identification with
the Chinese and Koreans. Japan represented the contemporary civilization and
was thus entitled to bring it to Asians, if necessary by force. The model for
this liberal imperialism was provided by the West, who justified colonial
expansionism under the pretext of "civilizing mission." On the other
hand, Asianists thought that Asia could be united only under Japan's
leadership. Hence they supported Japan's expansion into Asia in order to unite,
Asians against Western aggression. They believed that Japanese aggression to
achieve this goal did not mean the same as the Western aggression was imperialism,
while Japan represented Asian civilization and it was its defender. It was in
this context of the shift of imperialist discourse that Asianist philosophy
became highly popular. While Fukuzawa was the architect of the transformation
of the Meiji civilizational identity, Okakura became the prime ideologue of
Asian unity and sought a civilizational authenticity in Japanese identity. The
gist of Okakura's indirectly political writings was the idea of a common Asian
civilization. He believed that Asian civilization was one single unit of which
Japan was an integral part. Although Okakura's views did not immediately become
popular when he published his books, they gained traction, as Japan and the
Japanese psyche slowly drifted away from the West under the influence of many
factors explained above. Okakura came from a highly surprising background to be
the ideologue of Asianism. He grew up among English-speaking missionaries in
Yokohama and had a far better command of English than Japanese. He maintained very
strong links with the United States throughout his life, spending a significant
portion of his life in the United States and accepted positions in elite
institutions such as the Boston Museum of Art in 1904 and received an honorary
MA degree from Harvard in 1911. Perhaps it is also true that this background
saved him from a sense of inferiority against the West and allowed him to
confront the West with a stronger sense of self-confidence.8
The Manchurian Incident and Ishiwara's Pan-Asianism
Kanji Ishiwara (石原 莞爾, 1889 –1949)
was the
mastermind of the Manchurian also called Mukden Incident when around 10:20
p.m. on September 18, 1931, Japanese troops based in southern Manchuria
dynamited a small section of a Japanese-owned railway outside of Shenyang
(Mukden) and blamed it on Chinese saboteurs The railway was part of the
1,400-square-mile Kwantung Leased Territory, which Japan administered through
the semi-governmental South Manchurian Railway Company—and which the Japanese
troops, known as the Kwantung Army, were there to protect. Although a
southbound train passed over the area without incident moments later, the alarm
went out according to plan. The Kwantung Army subsequently used the
manufactured incident as a pretext to launch attacks against Chinese troops
with die intent to extend Japanese influence in Manchuria.
Starting from the Mukden Incident as a pretext Japan
occupied Chinese territories and established puppet governments.
Ishiwara, Chief of the Operations Division of the
Japanese Army (as pictured below), argued that Japan must avoid a war with
China at all costs. Although he eventually yielded to the opinion of the
majority and authorized mobilization for the battle near Beijing, Ishiwara
continued to advocate a policy of cooperation with China, for, in his mind, the
Soviet Union was a greater menace than the strident nationalism of Chiang
Kai-shek's Nanjing government. Furthermore, he regarded the development of
Manchukuo and a cooperative relationship among Japan, Manchukuo, and China as a
precondition for the successful prosecution of an eventual war with the United
States, which
he held was unavoidable.
It was with this vision of Pan-Asianism, a strategic
alliance of Japan, Manchukuo, and China, that Ishiwara initiated the foundation
of Manchukuo’s leading institution of higher education in the fall of 1936.
Ishiwara developed his Pan-Asianism in the early
twentieth century. During this period, following Japan's victory in the
Russo-Japanese War (1904-5), Pan-Asianism especially the idea that Japan must
lead an Asian crusade against the West, gained popularity not only in Japan but
also in Asia when the ‘New Asia’ had the imperial palace
in Tokyo as its perpetual political and spiritual nucleus.
Pan-Asianism and Nichiren Buddhism
This articulation of Pan-Asianism arose from growing
confidence in Japan as a model for indigenous modernization that had rapidly
advanced since the Meiji Restoration. In contrast, Ishiwara’s perception of
Pan-Asianism was rooted in a sober conviction that militarism was essential to
the future of Japan. He developed this idea through his critical evaluation of
Japan's victory over Russia. In his judgment, Japan won the war out of luck; he
believed that Russia would have prevailed if the war was protracted because
Japan had no clear plan for a prolonged war.
Both Ishiwara’s 1919 discovery of Nichiren Buddhism
and his observations of China were of seminal importance for his thinking: he
saw the disorder, warlordism, and crime in China, causing him, like many other
Army officers to doubt China’s capacity to modernize on its own. But he was
also critical of the arrogant attitude of many fellow Japanese toward the
Chinese people. At a time when he also realized that Japan’s influence in China
was opposed by the United States, he also learned of Nichiren’s prediction of
an ultimate war followed by world peace. Soon he would put the two pieces
together, predicting that this ultimate war would be one between Japan and the
United States and that it would happen soon. In 1922, Ishiwara met the
religious philosopher and Nichirenist Satomi Kishio (1897–1974), and after
learning of the latter’s intention to visit Europe in order to spread Nichiren
Buddhism, Ishiwara decided to take up earlier offers from the Army to go and
study in Germany. Ishiwara stayed in Germany from 1923 to 1925. He visited the
battlefields and destroyed towns of Northern France, and was shocked to see the
morally devastated state of Germany.
Ishiwara did not simply use Nichiren’s words as an
example to confirm his theories of warfare. His belief in Nichiren and the
outcome of a new world Buddhist civilization and world peace was sincere and
anteceded his theory of war. The dynamic of world conflict followed by world
unity and peace followed the same pattern as the experience of World War I
followed by the creation of the League of Nations and a new ideal of pacifism.
Satō Kōjirō, it should be recalled, predicted a similar
trajectory of war followed by world peace.
Ishiwara’s next concern thus was the rising US power
in Asia, which he thought would eventually clash with Japan. This apprehension
led him to develop a theory of Final War. According to this theory, the
Japan-US confrontation was to be the final world war that would divide the
globe into two: the East led by Japan and the West led by the United States.
Ishiwara’s study of the Russo-Japanese War taught him that Japan must prepare
for this coming conflict, which he predicted would be a prolonged war. How
should Japan prepare? For Ishiwara, Pan-Asian unity was the answer. He argued
that Japan must expand its control over Manchuria and China proper to
strengthen its position geopolitically and to power its economic expansion.
By the time of the Manchurian Incident, thus, a more
chauvinistic brand of Pan-Asianism permeated Japan’s ruling class, one that
combined resentment against the West with condescension toward the East.
Leading Japanese intellectuals, officials, and opinion leaders self-consciously
cultivated the "self-evident truth" that Japan’s emperor-based polity
was miparalleled, that Japan was an exceptional nation, destined to lead and
oversee Asia. In some ways, this paternalistic strain of Pan-Asianism revived
the underlying rationale of imperialism’s “civilizing mission," in which
an ''enlightened" power had a moral duty to elevate allegedly benighted
peoples. Ideologically loaded stock phrases subsequently carried the decade, in
particular, that Japan was “the stabilizing force” or “influence” in Asia. As
historian Eri Hotta has made clear, this ethnocentric strand of Asianism was
not a mere “‘assertion.’ 'opinion.' or even ‘belief,’” but rather a
"potent" and “pervasive” force among Japan’s leaders By the 1930s the fundamental premises of
radical Pan-Asianism had come to be accepted by the mainstream of Japanese
society.
As competing ideologies of world order in the 1930s.
the differences between liberal internationalism and Japan's more radical
iteration of Asianism were critical, and ultimately, irreconcilable. Although
some scholarship has pointed to areas of convergence between the two
worldviews, for instance, shared ideals of self-determination and autonomy,
such congruency is compelling mainly in comparisons between liberalism and the
nondominating strand of Asianism. The latter, however, was most prominent among
Japanese political elites around the turn of the century, not the 1930s.8 What
stands out are the fundamental differences. Again, central to the premises of
liberal internationalism was a reliance on so-called orderly processes, with
states pledging to abide by self-denying strictures, the most hallowed of which
was the repudiation of force in the pursuit of national interest. In the event
of conflict, nations were to settle their differences within a cooperative
framework, through frank discussion and arbitration, either through the League
of Nations or with signatories to multilateral treaties.
When the US-Japanese war started
The Manchurian Incident turned into an ideological
crisis and a turning point in world affairs and US-Japan relations. As the
first real test ease for liberal internationalism, the Manchurian crisis became
the focal point of a tempestuous ideological drama, in which Japan, the United
States, and the League of Nations debated the meaning and merits of the new
diplomacy. Toward this end, we discuss the Japanese government's guiding
rationale for its seizure of Manchuria, which includes the evolving premises of
a more radical Pan-Asianism.
Japan's initial endeavor hereby was to avoid isolation
and win recognition of a new regionalist framework justified by historical
rights, strategic interests, and. increasingly, an ideology of Pan-Asianism.
Strategies by Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs included both official
demarches as well as seemingly “unofficial” diplomacy. including goodwill
trips by eminent Japanese and an emergent soft power campaign involving
cultural propaganda. Despite a somewhat scattershot approach, evidence
suggests the Japanese government’s “charm offensive" further propagated a
“dualism" in American perceptions of Japan among the press and Ambassador
Grew', one that created an unrealistic turnaround in Japan’s foreign policies.
After hostilities erupted in North China in July
1937, Japan’s leaders issued strongly worded Pan-Asianist statements and set
out to realize an autarkic order on the continent. The Kokusai Bunka Shinkokai,
meanwhile, persisted in extolling the empire through cultural activities,
including the establishment of a cultural institute in New York. In Washington.
President Roosevelt, facing an isolationist Congress committed to neutrality,
sought to awaken Americans to the perceived threat of global war.
By 1939, Japan's leadership focused on consolidating
power on mainland China while contemplating a closer relationship with
Germany. In the United States. President Roosevelt became vigilant in what
became a kind of personal mission to alert Americans to the perceived
ideological convergence among revisionist powers and the grave strategic threat
they posed to the liberal democracies. Confident of public backing, the
administration notified Japan in July 1939 that it intended to terminate the
US-Japan commercial treaty of 1911.
This then led to the slippery slope to transpacific
war. As would be the case through the attack on Pearl Harbor, Germany's
stunning victories emboldened Japanese expansionism, which, in turn, stiffened
American resistance. In September 1940. Japanese leaders signed the Tripartite
Pact, which foresaw “new orders" in Europe and Asia. Tire pact’s stated
intention of carving the world into hegemonic blocs only confirmed the
Roosevelt administration's global assumptions about the existential threat
resulting from the interconnectedness between ideology and geopolitical ambitious
among the Axis powers, hi 1941. protracted negotiations between Japan and the
United States revealed a yawning ideological gulf. Although a number of
Japanese leaders began to harbor doubts about going to war against the United
States, it was not because these men had abandoned their dreams of a
Japanese-guided regional order; rather, they believed that war would undermine
such aspirations. Regrettably, eleventh-hour negotiations could do little to
erase the fundamental ideological divide that separated the two nations on the
eve of Japan's surprise attack or alter the historical context of the previous
ten years.
After World War II, the Supreme Commander of the Allied
Powers called upon Ishiwara as a witness for the defense in the International
Military Tribunal for the Far East. No charges were ever brought against
Ishiwara himself, possibly due to his public opposition to Tōjō, the
war in China, and the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Concentrating on the years of the Pacific War
(1941-45), John W. Dower (1986) investigated the role of race in Japan's
wartime policy. In his thesis on the prominent role played by race in igniting
and intensifying war hatred on both sides, Japan and the Anglo-American allies,
one finds the author’s discussion of Japan’s race-based Pan-Asianism. In
analyzing the wartime reports written by governmental bureaucrats, Dower
identified the concept of the "proper place" as the key to the Japanese
racial view of the world. Based on the idea of the racial purity of the
Japanese, whose emperor supposedly descended from the Sun Goddess, the Japanese
official ideology held that the Japanese were destined to dominate other
peoples in Asia who belonged to lower places within a new Pan-Asianist order.
Gerald Horne (2004) similarly highlighted the vital role that race-based
Pan-Asianism played in Japan's initial military success in the war against the
allies. He has shown how Japanese propaganda efforts utilized the local
reality, Southeast Asian people’s strong resentment at white supremacist racism
under Western colonial rule, to construct a
Pan-Asianist message that Japan was a liberator of Asians. This strategy proved
effective, as Japanese troops were able to gain support from the nationalists
of each country. Such race-based collaborations against white colonial regimes
occurred throughout Southeast Asia, in Indochina (under French rule),
Singapore, Malaya, and Burma (under British rule), Indonesia (under Dutch
rule), New Guinea (under Australian rule), and the Philippines (under American
rule). Thus, Horne demonstrated how Japanese policymakers were keenly aware of
Western racism and used racialized Pan-Asianist propaganda to tap into the
anti-Western nationalist sentiments of peoples in the region.
American policy toward Japan until shortly
before the Pearl Harbor attack was not the product of a rational,
value-maximizing decisional process. Rather, it constituted the cumulative,
aggregate outcome of several bargaining games which would enable them to carry
out their preferred Pacific strategy.
Thus earlier we have seen how Roosevelt's idea of a financial siege of Japan
in fact backfired by exacerbating rather than
defusing Japan's aggression. And for sure the attack on Pearl Harbor was
not the result of a deliberate Roosevelt strategy but a Roosevelt
miscalculation. Where by our taks in the following part will be about a
potential attack of China to take Taiwan in order to expand its influence in
the Pacific which China calls the South China Sea.
Continued in part six of; Can a potential future
Pacific War be avoided?
1. Dorothy J. Perkins, Japan Goes to War: A Chronology
of Japanese Military Expansion from the Meiji Era to The Attack on Pearl Harbor
(1868-1941) (Darby: Diane Publishing,1997), 117.
2. Robyn Lim, The Geopolitics of East Asia: The Search
for Equilibrium (London: Routledge, 2003), 34.
3. Kazuki Sato, "'Same Language, Same Race': The
Dilemma of Kanbun in Modem Japan," in The Construction of Racial
Identities in China and Japan: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, ed.
Frank Dikotter (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1997), 131.
4. Susumu Takahashi, "The Global Meaning of
Japan: The State's Persistently Precarious Position in the World Order,"
in The Political Economy of Japanese Globalization, ed. Glenn D. Hook and
Harukiyo Hasegawa (London: Routledge, 2001), 24 On Tokutomi, see John D.
Pierson, Tokutomi SoM, 1863-1957, a Journalist for Modern Japan ' (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1980)
5. Toten Miyazaki, My Thirty-Three Years' Dream: The
Autobiography of Miyazaki Toten (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982);
6. On this see Dick Stegewerns, Adjusting to the New
World: Japanese Opinion Leaders of the Taisho Generation and the Outside World,
1918-1932, 2007.
7. See Notehelfer, "On Idealism and Realism in
the Thought of Okakura Tenshin."
8. Hallet Abend "Japanese Admit Ann to Hold
Manchuria” New York Times, January 1 1932, 19, Ki Tnukai. World's 1932 Hopes
Voiced by Leaders/ New York Times, January 3, 1932. 2 On emperor's reaction,
see Bix. Hirohito, 246.
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