By Eric Vandenbroeck and
co-workers
The Wilsonian Moment
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.
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