The Japanese pursuit of an empire in East Asia embodied the hopes and anxieties of Meiji Japan following the two-and-a-half-century period of national isolation imposed by the Tokugawa government. As the only non-Western colonial regime at the turn of the twentieth century, Japan instituted an imperial system that was distinctly different, and peculiarly Japanese, after it acquired the lucrative colonies of Taiwan and Korea in 1895 and won the Russo-Japanese War in 1905. Those two military accomplishments exemplified the success of the Meiji Restoration; they also proved that regional dominance in East Asia had shifted from China to Japan and that Japan’s concern with national security had shifted to national assertiveness and its endeavors in colonial expansion. With their success in acquiring territories and power, the Meiji statesmen had fully realized their dreams of colonialism. This self-assertion encouraged them to fashion a colonial system with implacable and unyielding logic, one that never failed for lack of determination or effort because they could not afford to gamble with their nation’s future.

A restrained society and limited resources were two tremendous obstacles Japan had to tackle before it, as an underdeveloped country, could design a program of modernization to insure its survival and national independence. In this regard, Japan could scarcely rest secure in the belief that it would be exempt from Western imperialist aggression. Being an Asian state, it was therefore mandatory that it expand its perimeter for political, military, and economic development to nearby areas essential to the defense and security of the island country. In this introductory chapter, the reasons that Japan undertook imperialist policies, and the strategies it devised to expand its territories to tropical islands in South East Asia, are compared with those of the European powers. This helps account for the many ways in which the Japanese Empire was unique among the other empires of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

In his pioneering article, “The Evolution of Japanese Colonialism,” Hyman Kublin explains the most notable difference between the Western and Japanese colonial regimes:

What distinguished [the Japanese Empire] primarily was neither its size nor location, neither the composition of its peoples nor the manner of its creation, which was decidedly conventional in an age of rampant imperialism. Of paramount significance was perhaps the Asian provenance of this empire. For, although imperial regimes had risen and fallen in the East for several millennia, the phenomenon of an expanding Asian empire in an era when the western powers were engaged in the obliteration of national independence in Asia was clearly extraordinary. And whatever motives and drives, aims and purposes, that may be ascribed to the western nations in their imperialist activities, it is most likely that none are to the same degree attributable to Japan. (82)

The settlement colonies established in the era of the mercantilist imperialism of maritime powers such as Spain and Portugal in the sixteenth century, and Holland, Britain, and France in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, were “remarkably diverse in form and character,” reflecting “the contrasts in European civilization” (Peattie 3). However, according to Mark R. Peattie, in the late nineteenth century, as the industrial West was engaged in all sorts of colonial activities, there came a “new imperialism,” with modern colonial systems that were “notable for the rapidity with which they were assembled and the degree to which they were similar in arrangement, structure, and evolution” (3). In light of this, the modern Western empires were mostly settled in tropical territories “composed of broad expanses of jungle, great stretches of desert, or scattered islands in the torrid zones” (3). Scattered around the globe at great distances from their European mother countries, these tropical empires were forced open by explorers, traders, or missionaries, acting for their own benefit even while bearing in mind a minimal sense of national pride and the interests of the mother country. Mercantilism was the backbone of those settlement colonies, which were eventually fortified with the full political or military support of their home government. A modern tropical colony, therefore, could be seen as “a colony of occupation,” where a European elite minority governed an indigenous majority whose “racial origins” and “cultural traditions” bear no distinct relevance to those of the colonialists (Peattie 4). Furthermore, those tropical territories had not yet undergone the industrial revolution that would make them modern states, which aptly demonstrated why the administrative structures and socio-political systems of those occupied areas were strikingly different from those of the European governments and councils.

With the dominant power concentrated in the hands of European elite, the territories within modern colonial systems, despite their individual differences in size and degree of their involvement in colonial expansions, were governed “autocratically” and therefore, without any measure of “demonstrable public support” (Peattie 4). Such elite-based administrations, in the eye of Peattie, led to the “common defect of overly cautious conservatism,” which, aside from some attempts to implement radical programs to educate and transform the colonized peoples in the European image, contributed to stagnant indigenous social and economic systems and consequently prevented the tropical colonies from developing into industrialized countries (4). Succinctly put, European expansion into or colonization of other lands was generated by scientific and intellectual curiosity, by ambitious merchant adventures, and by the flagrant violation of human dignity on the part of the greedy elite classes. In addition, religious dissidence in Europe and the quest of emigrants for political and economic opportunities refused at home also aptly explains why the European powers engaged in conquest and settled in areas remote from the homeland. Because of these various motivations and the traditions and practices of intercontinental mobility, the “new imperialism” established among Europeans in the late nineteenth century was widely accepted by settler colonial societies as a normal aspect of national affairs (Peattie 5). All these attributes came to form the governmental and bureaucratic structures perceived as modern Eurocentric colonialism: a minority of foreign invaders governing and dominating a territory or landmass, imposing machine-oriented civilization, medical practices, powerful economies, and in some cases, Christian beliefs on the indigenous majorities. The European colonizers asserted a sense of their racial and cultural superiority and ordained mandate to rule over the indigenous majorities.

While the colonialism of the various European powers displayed common patterns and structures, the character and avowed intent of colonial dominance varied from case to case. Colonialism reflects a mentality, employing a constellation of attitudes and assumptions that organize efforts toward military aggression or capitalist expansion. In the case of Japan, colonialism was to follow a course of discipline and development that made it substantially different from the European patterns. In terms of time and experience, Japan was a late-comer to the imperialist venture, unlike the British, French, and German imperia. According to Peattie, the “globe-girdling” British Empire, due to its diversity of origins and multifarious functions, provided the possibility of an “autonomous development of its various components,” for which Britain bore the common “burden” of trusteeship (5). In addition to the British imperium, there was France, employing the republican principles of 1789 and adhering to the assumption that its colonies were “parts of an indivisible republic” whose global purpose was “the propagation of French civilization” (Peattie 5). Likewise, imperial Germany brought to its colonial tasks “the accomplishments of nineteenth-century German science and rationalism.” It thus prided itself on the establishment of the “scientific colonialism,” based on its enthusiasm for “methodical research and investigation,” which the German Empire regarded as “pre-requisites for economically sound administration and maximum efficiency in the extraction of wealth from colonial territories” (Peattie 5).

The modern European colonial systems reflected, culturally and historically, the distinct features of their metropolitan countries. The most important function of their colonies was to meet the strategic interests of the parent country, including the need for prestige, economic opportunities, missionary outreach, and competition with other colonial powers. But sometimes, as in some of the British colonies, there was “no immediately discernible reason at all” for the existence of the colonies (Peattie 5). The progression of Japanese imperialism, however, told another story. No equivalent case could be found among the European countries, in spite of the fact that Japan’s colonies seemed to be “formally patterned after the tropical empires of modern Europe” (Peattie 6). Japan for a long time had to confront the fact that the Chinese Empire dominated East Asia and its outlying areas, which resulted in, as Hyman Kublin perceives it, the Tokugawa government’s policy of self-inflicted national seclusion from 1640 to 1854 (69). The Tokugawa statesmen believed that “an expanding foreign commerce, technological innovation, and intellectual and cultural stimuli from abroad might have undermined the foundations of Tokugawa life and society and weakened Japan for an ultimate and devastating onslaught by imperialist powers from the west” (Kublin 69). The samurai class also posited that the steady and persistent intrusion of foreign influences would provoke opposition between the civilians and the authorities. However, the younger generation, especially the rangakusha (scholars of the Dutch Learning), felt that Japan as a nation should open up to the world and launch a revolutionary change by entering the competition for acquisition of an overseas empire. Whatever the fate of Japan might have turned out to be, once the Tokugawa shogunate had reached its final decision to reject alien influences and shut Japan’s doors to the world, the national policy of self-seclusion was rigorously enforced and continued for more than two hundred years. Then, during the era of the Meiji Revolution, Japan’s leaders faced the two major tasks of social reform and consolidating political systems as they attempted to move Japan from a feudal society to a modern nation-state, and later, to a colonial regime occupying territories in the north and southeast Asia.

The formation of the Japanese Empire was, in Peattie’s terms, “regional and continent-directed” (7). Due to its self-imposed isolation, Japan had become a “passive spectator” to the invasion of the Western powers in Asia and the West Pacific; as a result, it missed the most opportune moment to “preempt a dominant position in either of those areas” (Peattie 7). For the newly established Meiji government, the nation’s ability to spread the values and characteristics of the Japanese people to distant shores was frustrated by inadequate economic resources and in the limitations of its political and military tactics. Nor could it be certain of expelling threats from the Western colonial powers as it sought to develop an empire. To compete with its European counterparts on the one hand, and to bear, at the best possible moment, sufficient political and military power for the seizure of territories on the other, the new Japan had to assiduously keep abreast of Western technology while simultaneously beginning a Japanese Empire in its neighboring areas. Only in this way could it assert dominance unchallenged at home and abroad.

The renouncement of Tokugawa isolation, initiated by Commodore Perry’s naval-diplomatic mission in 1853, reflected Meiji Japan’s intent to withstand the threats of imperialist aggression and its vulnerability to the temptations of overseas expansion. After the signing of the Perry Treaty, also called the “Japan and US Treaty of Peace and Amity” or the Convention of Kanagawa, in 1854, there ensued a struggle within Japan, evincing its concern for national security, over whether to open its ports to American vessels and establish an American consul in Japan, and whether to enter into similar diplomatic relations with other Western powers, such as Britain, France, the Netherlands, and Russia. Moreover, the threat of force posed by their superior weaponry exposed the backwardness of the Japanese military and the diffidence of its politicians as the Meiji leaders strove to restore the power of the Emperor. It is from this perspective that the Meiji Restoration can be seen as a direct response to the forced ending of Japan’s national isolation and the rule of the shogunate. I therefore contend that Perry’s fleet, a symbol of the superior military technology of the West, led to Japan’s determination to industrialize, while Rangaku , a body of knowledge about Western science, and in particular, surgical knowledge, helped lay the foundation of Japan’s rise as an imperial power in East Asia.

The chief purpose of the Meiji Restoration was to modernize Japan and prevent its subjugation by Western imperialists. However, given that modernization meant westernization, the military aristocrats, that is, the samurai class, had to accept the fact that history would no longer have a place for people of their kind, once the allowances dispensed by feudal lords ended and nationwide conscription was introduced. Before the restoration, the samurai class was privileged, having the exclusive right to carry arms and serve in close attendance to the nobility. Thanks to the modern social reform that was considered essential to Japan...