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?
Part 1: Overview of
the discussions following the 1919 or "Wilsonian moment,” a notion that extends
before and after that calendar year: Part One Can a
potential future Pacific War be avoided?
Part 2: 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 were covered
in: Part Two Can a potential future Pacific War be
avoided?
Part 3: 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 were covered in: Part Three Can a
potential future Pacific War be avoided?
Part 4: 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. Including that 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 was covered in: Part Four Can a
potential future Pacific War be avoided?
Part 6:The war itself
quickly unfolded in favor of Japan’s regionalist ambitions, a subject we
carried through to the post-world war situation. Whereby we also discussed when
Japan saw itself in a special role as mediator between the West (“Euro-America”)
and the East (“Asia”) to “harmonize” or “blend” the two civilizations and
demanded that Japan lead Asia in this anti-Western enterprise there are
parallels with what Asim Doğan in his extensive new
book describes how the ambiguous and assertive Belt and Road Initiative is a
matter of special concern in this aspect. The Tributary System, which provides
concrete evidence of how Chinese dynasties handled with foreign relations, is a
useful reference point in understanding its twenty-first-century developments.
This is particularly true because, after the turbulence of the "Century of
Humiliation" and the Maoist Era, China seems to be explicitly re-embracing
its history and its pre-revolutionary identity in: Part Six Can a potential future Pacific War be avoided?
Part 7: Part Seven Can a potential future
Pacific War be avoided?
Part 8: While
initially both the nationalist Chiang Kai-shek (anti-Mao Guomindang/KMT),
including Mao's Communist Party (CCP), had long supported
independence for Taiwan rather than reincorporation into China, this started to
change following the publication of the New Atlas of China's Construction
created by cartographer Bai Meichu in 1936. A turning
point for Bai and others who saw China's need to create a new Nation-State was
the Versailles peace conference's outcome in 1919 mentioned
in part one. Yet that from today's point of view, the fall of Taiwan
to China would be seen around Asia as the end of American predominance and even
as “America’s Suez,” hence demolishing the myth that Taiwan has no hope is
critical. And that while the United States has managed to deter Beijing
from taking destructive military action against Taiwan over the last four
decades because the latter has been relatively weak, the risks of this approach
inches dangerously close to outweighing its benefits. Conclusion and outlook.
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.
For updates
click homepage here