The Nature and Origins of Japanese Imperialism

A Re-interpretation of the 1873 Crisis

Donald Calman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415865395
• eBook ISBN: 9781134918430
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

This important book, which many will regard as controversial, argues convincingly that the Japanese imperialism of the first half of the Twentieth Century was not a temporary aberration. The author looks at the detail of the great crisis of 1873 and shows that the prospect of economic gain through overseas expansion was the central issue of that year's political struggles. He goes on to show that Japan had a long, earlier history of aiming for economic expansion overseas; and that Japan's Twentieth Century imperialism grew out of this. In addition, he argues convincingly that much of the writing about Japan has played down the true extent and nature of Japanese imperialism.

1

INTRODUCTION

Let us begin with a brief look at the period 1868–1940 in order to introduce some of the themes, concepts, personalities and terminology which will figure prominently in this study.

Certain Japanese words such as geisha and samurai have passed into the English language because there is no word in English which captures their true essence and special aura. In like manner, when dealing with Japanese imperialism, there are key words and phrases which lose much in translation. The very act of translation tends to make bland and familiar concepts which are chillingly alien. Such expressions shall be explained then left in the original Japanese.

Much of this book revolves around the seihen of 1873. Seihen may be translated as ‘political crisis’; but a crisis may come and go leaving everything unchanged, whereas seihen contains the idea of a crisis which leads to far-reaching changes. Moreover, it is not just a political or constitutional crisis occurring in the capital, but usually involves much of the country, with the threat of civil war looming in the background. There was to be another seihen in 1881. Paradoxically, it was largely orchestrated by Mitsubishi, but it brought Japan to the verge of‘a Japanese French Revolution’. We shall refer throughout to the 1873 Seihen (or the Meiji year 6 Seihen) and to the 1881 Seihen (or Meiji year 14 Seihen).

Kokugakusha is another word best left in the original. It is usu-ally translated as National scholars’, or the somewhat dismissive ‘nativists’. Analysing Japanese imperialism without dealing with the kokugakusha is rather like giving an account of Arab expansion without mentioning Mohammed, and referring to the kokugakusha as ‘nativists’ immediately tends to tone down the religious fanaticism and extreme racism.

The events of 1868 are described in English as the Meiji Restoration, which is taken to mean the termination of the Shogunate (or Bakufu) and the restoration of power to the Emperor. Such a restoration was, of course, a polite fiction. Many of the Shoguns, especially the recent ones, had been weak, sickly youths who were personally insignificant. In 1867 the future Emperor Meiji was a terrified fifteen year old who had been brought up by his mother’s family and who probably shared the widespread suspicion that his father, the Emperor Kōmei, had been poisoned by the victors. The great western fiefs which had brought about the Restoration clearly regarded the young Emperor as a pliable figurehead. For them, restoration meant the restoration of their own political and economic power.

Tokugawa power dated from the great battle fought in 1600 at Sekigahara near modern Nagoya — virtually a battle between west Japan and east Japan. Sekigahara had been decided in the traditional manner when, at the height of the battle, a Hiroshima leader changed sides. The wealth and power of the great western fiefs had been based on their overseas trade and it was largely to prevent their revival that the Tokugawas imposed a policy of Seclusion.

The western clans’ opposition to the Shogunate was the product not so much of ideological differences as of a determination to resume overseas trading and hence build up their own wealth and power. Even before 1868 people such as Iwasaki Yataro, founder of Mitsubishi, and Godai Tomoatsu, an unscrupulous Satsuma entrepreneur, had been trying to get into Korea, and, quite predictably, those efforts were to be intensified once Sekigahara was reversed in 1868. Business sharks such as Godai have been virtually written out of Japanese history, but, as with the kokugakusha, the story of Japanese imperialism becomes grossly distorted if one does not give due prominence to the likes of Godai.

The long struggle against the Shogunate had largely been carried out by extreme, ideological followers of the kokugakusha with their doctrine of fukko Shintō and their goal of fukko ishin. Shintō (the holy way) was to become the State Religion, and for a while the Department of Religion figured prominently in the Meiji government. But the new pragmatic rulers from the West soon distanced themselves from the ideologues and their goal of fukko ishin. Fukko meant ‘to restore the old’, but it had a very special meaning: they were to go back to an Emperor-based theocracy and to the ethos of antiquity before ‘corrupting’ influences came in from China and India. The gods had descended from the heavens and had made their home in Japan. At first the whole world had been in harmony under the rule of the Japanese Emperor, the descendant of those gods. In the course of time, other countries had broken away and the world had degenerated into a state of disharmony. Now the time had come to ‘restore’ not only Japan’s own pure Japanism but also her position as the centre of the universe. The world had to be brought once more into ‘harmony’.

In Japanese, the Meiji Restoration is referred to as the Meiji Ishin. The term ishin means ‘to make new’, so the Meiji Ishin is often thought of as a movement to modernize Japan. But ishin should not be separated from fukko; it had strong revolutionary overtones, and was concerned not with administrative and technological modernization but with making the spirit and the heart new again. Thus Meiji Revolution would probably be a better translation than Meiji Restoration.

There is a strong feeling of betrayal running through Japanese history right down to 1940 (and indeed beyond), and that feeling centres around the betrayal of their ishin (or revolution) of 1868. In the 1930s, for example, the young officers were openly seeking a second ishin. It is important to note that in the 1930s, as in the 1870s, this hostility sprang in part from the greed and corruption of the government and its business partners, but in part it was a reaction to the government’s failure to proceed with sufficient speed to implement the policy of foreign aggression implicit in the doctrine of fukko ishin. The slogans seikan (Let’s attack Korea) and seishin (Let’s attack Shin China), which had wide currency long before 1868, must be regarded as specific planks in the doctrine of fukko ishin, and the nature of the China War of 1894–5 is hopelessly distorted if one concentrates on the immediate causes.

The first period of Meiji history, from 1868 to 1873, began with the promise of a widely based modern state founded on the Rule of Law. But soon the two great western fiefs, Satsuma and Chōshū (Satchō), moved to concentrate power in their own hands. They maintained a tight control of the armed forces, the Japanese Navy being known ironically as ‘the Satsuma Navy’ and the Army as ‘the Chōshū Army’. Continuing well into the twentieth century, all senior Army promotions were decided informally at the Ippin Club, a group open only to Chōshū officers, the name coming from the Choshu clan symbol which may be read Ippin (one thing). The extremism of the young officers in the twenties and thirties represented in part an attempt to break down this Choshu monopoly.

This control of the armed forces enabled Satcho in 1871 to carry out a coup d’état, concentrating power in their own hands, with Tosa and Saga, two other western trading fiefs, as junior partners. Corruption was of a kind now usually associated with newly emerging Third World countries. This fuelled the extremists’ sense of betrayal and led to a series of uprisings and scandals which culminated in the 1873 Seihen. The Boshin Civil War of 1868 had seen the Satcho forces defeat the supporters of the Shogun, notably in the east and north. Since that time the task of distributing the spoils of victory had been proceeding steadily, and after the 1873 Seihen the victors were able to proceed apace with the redistribution of Japan’s mineral wealth. With the spoils of wars past thus settled attention could be focused on the spoils of wars — or ‘incidents’ — soon to come. The Satchō government, the fukko extremists and the great merchants were all determined that Korea should be opened. It was just a question of finding the right pretext.

Of course, this Satchō government under Satsuma’s Ōkubo Toshimichi was widely detested. The ideologues returned to their home provinces and staged a series of uprisings. The most serious, the Seinan (West-South) Wars began in Satsuma itself in 1877. Ōkubo’s old comrade-in-arms, the legendary Saigō Takamori, had stormed out of the government after the 1873 Seihen and had returned to Satsuma. There he became a rallying point and the war when it came had all the nastiness and bitterness usually associated with civil wars. At war’s end Saigō committed seppuku and a year later Ōkubo was assassinated. Two of the younger generation, Chōshū’s ltd Hirobumi and Ōkuma Shigenobu of Saga, now competed for the number one spot and their rivalry helped bring on the 1881 Seihen, though it was not, as some Japanese historians would have us believe, the major cause.

The 1873 Seihen had established the fact that Satchō were above the law. Having failed to set up an independent judiciary to restrain Satchō, many of those defeated in 1873 resigned from the government and embarked upon a campaign to achieve an elected parliament as a way of breaking the Satchō monopoly of power. Thereafter the government was constantly assailed both by the extremists still seeking fukko ishin and by the minken advocates demanding a Western-style parliament. There was also widespread agrarian unrest caused by the increased taxes, conscription (‘the blood tax’) and reforms such as giving the Eta (untouchables) full legal rights.

By the end of the seventies the government found itself being threatened by yet another force — Mitsubishi. Unlike Mitsui, Mitsubishi was a new company whose development had been sponsored by the government to prevent first American, then British, shipping from gaining control of Japanese waters. Yet even after this foreign threat had been beaten off, and Mitsubishi had gained a virtual monopoly of Japanese shipping, it continued to be heavily subsidized. However, the British and Dutch East India Companies were well known in Japan, and it was widely believed that Japan too would produce one such dominant trading company. To pre-vent Mitsubishi fulfilling such a role, a stop-Mitsubishi movement emerged. As a way of toppling I tō Hirobumi and the Satchō hanbatsu Ōkuma Shigenobu threw in his lot with Mitsubishi, as did Fukuzawa Yukichi, media-magnate and founder-president of Keio University. Things came to a head in 1881 when a new Satsuma company was virtually presented with the large northern island of Hokkaidō which was in danger of being engulfed by Mitsubishi shipping and trading interests. This created a nationwide storm, with Mitsubishi, the minken advocates and old ideologue forces all braying for blood. Ōkuma and his supporters were all driven out of the government and civil service, but Satcho was forced to compromise: the ‘sale’ of Hokkaido was cancelled and a proclamation was issued in the name of the Emperor promising a parliament in ten years’ time.

Satchō, however, remained vulnerable and isolated. The war with Mitsubishi was to continue for many years, while that with the democrats was just beginning. Thus it was that after 1881 the Satchō hanbatsu turned back once more to their old allies, the fukko ishin extremists. The Emperor was still their trump card, and with the help of the ideologues, the Emperor system was now elaborated and forced upon the country. Though its implementation dates from the 1890s, the general concept goes far back into Japanese history. In all essentials, it was what the extremists had been seeking in the Bakumatsu (late Bakufu or late Shogunate) period, except, of course, that they had not pictured it as a tool to prop up the Satchō hanbatsu.

This reactivating of the old alliance must be understood if we are to grasp the nature of Japanese imperialism. Ōkubo Toshimichi, Ōkuma Shigenobu, I tō Hirobumi and his alter ego Inoue Kaoru, were all modern, pragmatic men. In the seventies they had pushed on together with a policy of economic imperialism. It is hardly an exaggeration to speak of the Satchō-Tosa colonization of Japan. Tohoku, in particular, became a colony whose minerals were seized, whose labour trudged off to Hokkaidō, and whose shipping and banking became dependent on the southern colonizers.

Korea was forced open in 1875–6 by a Satchō government pro-moting the fortunes of Satcho business interests which moved swiftly to tie up Korean grain, banking, etc. This economic imperialism did not cease to exist after 1881, but once Mitsubishi defected and waged war on Satchō and its affiliated companies, the ongoing economic imperialism, already covered by an elaborate garb of phony ‘national honour’, was removed even further from the spotlight as the fukko ishin extremists and the militarists took centre stage.

Japan did get a parliament of sorts in 1890, and predictably this led to savage attacks on the Satcho prerogatives. The Emperor system proved to be an effective weapon for controlling both the parliament and the populace, but it could not control the extremists who were now let loose. The most notorious, the Fukuoka-based Black Dragon Society, provided the government with thugs to ‘police’ the 1892 election, and its agents pushed ahead on the mainland, laying the basis for the war that was sure to come. The government finally moved in 1894 when it was being sorely pressed in parliament — a move which, predictably, succeeded in uniting the parliament and the people behind it. As in 1904 against Russia, Japan seized the initiative by attacking before war was declared — acts of initiative generally applauded in the West. Tōgō sank Chinese troop ships making for Korea, then, with scrupulous care, rescued every one of their British officers. The Chinese troops and seamen, to the last man, were left to drown. Whatever the concern for Asia’s ‘soul’, Asian bodies clearly did not rate highly.

That war produced acts of Japanese savagery which have gone unreported in Japan to this day. The sickened Western correspondents left Taiwan en masse. But back in Japan, the quick victories, territorial gains and large reparations produced a state of euphoria which was only partially dampened when Russia, Germany and France stepped in and demanded that most of the territorial gains be can-celled. The reparations were mostly spent on further military expan-sion, and a 1902 Treaty with Britain freed Japan for a showdown with Russia, now promoted to the status of traditional enemy.

I tō Hirobumi played almost a lone hand in seeking an accommodation with Russia, but he had little chance against the extremists who were increasingly calling the shots from behind the curtain. Thus in fairly quick succession there followed the Russian War of 1904–5, the annexation of Korea, the Great War plundering of China, the post-war occupation of Siberia, the China ‘Incident’ and subsequent ‘advance’, and then the Second World War.

The Satchō-fu Jcko ishin extremist alliance reactivated after 1881 may be said to have ended with the extremists gradually taking over the reins. As the assassination of both political and business leaders was used as a major weapon, this struggle took place out in the open. However, the 1881 Seihen also marked the real beginning of an equally vital struggle — one which was conducted away from the public gaze. In Tokugawa days, and also in the early Meiji period, certain merchants were officially licensed to serve the government. These were termed goyō merchants. But when Mitsubishi, Okuma and Fukuzawa threw down the gauntlet in 1881, what they were really saying was that the great merchants were now stronger and more important than the politicians. It is clear that by the end of the century the great merchants with their zaibatsu had come out on top. Thereafter Japanese politics must generally be regarded as a case of goyō politicians serving the great merchants — a situation which continues to this day.

By the time of the 1894 China War, fear of a Japanese version of the British East India Company had receded and the feeling was now that the world, and especially China, was big enough for everyone to have a substantial slice. The tendency was now to form business associations or to hold informal zaibatsu summits at which spheres of influence were mapped out to prevent the great Japanese companies from competing against each other outside Japan — again a feature of Japanese econo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Glossary
• Preface
• 1 INTRODUCTION
• 2 WESTERN WRITERS AND MEIJI HISTORY
• 3 EZOCHI, KOREA AND THE FOUR GREAT WESTERN CLANS
• 4 TOKUGAWA JAPAN
• 5 KURUME: TAKAYAMA, MAKI AND SADA
• 6 MARUYAMA, DAIRAKU, KURUME'S CONVULSIONS AND SHINTO'S 'BRIEF HISTORY'
• 7 JAPANESE PERCEPTIONS OF THE 1873 SEIHEN
• 8 THE NATURE OF JAPANESE IMPERIALISM
• 9 THE POWER STRUGGLE IN HOKKAIDŌ
• 10 THE RULE OF LAW
• 11 THE TOSA CLAN, GODAI AND THE OPENING OF KOREA
• 12 CONCLUSION
• Bibliography
• Index