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$Unique_ID{bob00324}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Japan
Chapter 1C.   International Relations}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Rinn-Sup Shinn}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{japan
japanese
china
united
states
political
military
war
japan's
army
see
pictures
see
figures
}
$Date{1981}
$Log{}
Title:       Japan
Book:        Japan, A Country Study
Author:      Rinn-Sup Shinn
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1981

Chapter 1C.   International Relations

     In the 1870s Japan secured sovereignty over nearby islands to the north
and south. An agreement in 1875 with tsarist Russia, the first foreign power
with which Japan experienced disputes over territory and trade in the early
part of the nineteenth century, gave Japan the northern portion of the Kuril
Islands while conceding Sakhalin (Karafuto in Japanese) to Russia. (The
southern part of the Kuril chain had been secured by Japan in 1855.) The
Ryukyu Islands including Okinawa, nominally Chinese but long subject to
Japanese penetration after 1609, were annexed in 1872; a delayed Chinese
protest in 1873 was of no avail. In 1875 Japan's claim to the Bonin Islands
(Ogasawara in Japanese) was recognized by Britain and the United States.

     The overriding foreign policy objective of Meiji Japan was to enhance its
stature as a world power. This was to be achieved first by having the unequal
treaties that were forced on Japan by the Western powers revised as early as
was practicable. A mission sent to Europe and the United States between 1871
and 1873 for this purpose returned empty-handed. Japan became convinced that
it would have to make itself stronger before any concessions could be
obtained.

     The struggle for equality continued but did not gain results until the
1890s after, at Western insistence, certain legal standards and procedures
were adopted. First Britain in 1894 and other powers by 1899 surrendered their
extraterritorial rights. Treaty-imposed restrictions on tariffs were gradually
relinquished, and by 1911 Japan had resumed complete control of its tariffs.

     In 1894 the issue of Chinese claim to sovereignty over Korea precipitated
conflict with China, resulting in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95. In the
1895 Treaty of Shimonoseki, in the wake of Japan's quick victory, China
recognized Korea's independence, and Japan acquired Taiwan, the Pescadores
Islands, and the Liaodong Peninsula in southern Manchuria. The war
demonstrated Japan's military strength and its intention to use it in
competition with the Western powers for concessions and territory on the Asian
mainland. From the late Tokugawa period onward, Japanese nationalists had been
preaching the divine destiny of the nation to rule Asia; its government had
now decided to secure a position on the mainland and to obtain a share of the
spoils.

     Japan's ambition did not go unchallenged, however. Russia, seeing its
designs for a warm water port either in Korea or on the Liaodong Peninsula in
Manchuria blocked, took the initiative to prevent Japan from retaining the
peninsula. Within a few days of the signing of the Treaty of Shimonoseki,
Russia, joined by France and Germany, intervened, forcing Japan to renounce
its claim to the peninsula, ostensibly to preserve China's sovereignty. The
so-called triple intervention was not lost on Japanese nationalists. The
conviction that Japan's destiny depended on its own material and spiritual
strength grew stronger in 1898 when Russia acquired concessions in the
Liaodong territory. Public opinion in Japan supported war with Russia as the
only means of expelling Russia from Manchuria and of establishing Japan's
hegemony in northeastern Asia.

     In February 1904 the Japanese government decided that it would wait no
longer for the conclusion of negotiations with Russia over their respective
positions and rights in Manchuria and Korea and took military action. Without
warning the Japanese navy bombarded Port Arthur on the southern tip of the
Liaodong Peninsula. Two days later Japan declared war, and the Japanese army
advanced from Korea into Manchuria. The Russians were defeated in the major
battles for Mukden and Port Arthur and in the notable naval victory of the
Japanese fleet over the Russian Baltic fleet in the Korea Strait off the
Tsushima Islands.

     Japan's victory substantially reduced Russian power in the Far East and
raised Japan without question to the rank of a major power. The Treaty of
Portsmouth (New Hampshire), signed in September 1905, which was negotiated
with the assistance of the United States, gave Japan the Russian rights in the
Liaodong Peninsula and sovereignty over the southern half of Sakhalin Island
with fishing rights in adjacent waters. Japan also acquired control of the
South Manchurian Railway and the right to station troops along the line to
protect it.

     Japan's rights in Korea were recognized by the United States in 1905 and
by Britain the same year, when a second Anglo-Japanese alliance of broader
scope was signed. By an agreement in 1905 with Korea, Japan obtained a
protectorate over the country. This was followed in 1910 by a treaty of
annexation that made Korea an integral part of the Japanese empire. In 1908
Japan signed an agreement with the United States to maintain the territorial
integrity of China and equality of commercial rights there. In 1911 the
Anglo-Japanese alliance was renewed for ten years. Meanwhile Japan continued
to strengthen its military and naval forces. By the outbreak of World War I in
1914, two years after the close of the Meiji period, Japan was the dominant
power in East Asia.

Liberalism and Reaction

     The death of the Meiji emperor in 1912 and the accession of his son,
whose reign period (1912-26) is known as Taisho, caused little basic change in
government policies. (The Taisho emperor was succeeded by his son, Hirohito,
whose reign title is Showa.) The challenge facing the post-Meiji leadership
was, however, no less formidable in view of Japan's internal and external
settings, which had grown complex and uncertain.

Party Rule

     Political parties that evolved gradually after the 1880s found a more
receptive climate in the early twentieth century. By the early Taisho period
most of the Meiji oligarchy had died, and the highly elitist Meiji political
structure had undergone some change under the pressure of broadly based
conflicts of sociopolitical interests. Decisionmaking was no longer the
exclusive domain of the secretive inner circle of the elite. The power base
was broadened somewhat in order to accommodate and reconcile pluralistic
interest groups speaking for the zaibatsu, rural landowners, civil
bureaucrats, the military, businessmen, intellectuals, and professional
politicians. The necessity of sharing power became accepted, if only
grudgingly, by the top elite. The power structure in fact became coalitional
inasmuch as no single pressure or regional group could predominate as the
Satsuma-Choshu faction had done during the Meiji period.

     Political parties and the Imperial Diet provided the useful vehicles
through which the political system could be made more open and more
representative. During the Taisho period there were two major parties: the
Constitutional Political Friends Association (Rikken Seiyukai) and the
Constitutional Government Party (Kenseito), which was in 1927 renamed the
Popular Government Party (Minseito). Controlled by strong men and private
business interests, these parties were conservative, representing big
business, agrarian capitalists, landlords, and the affluent segment of the
rapidly rising middle class. They supported a moderate course in both domestic
and international affairs and tended to side, on balance, more with civil
interests than military. Their commitment was to a viable parliamentary,
rather than bureaucratic, government. They had reason to be optimistic about
the future of constitutional government after universal manhood suffrage was
extended to all males twenty-five years of age and over in 1925. This
extension increased the electorate from 3 million to 13 million and helped to
popularize the concept of parliamentary democracy. The increase in the
electorate was not translated into greater clout for political parties,
however; the parties were still organizationally fragile, and empathy with
partisan politics was still limited to the educated urbanites and industrial
workers. Most of rural inhabitants remained conservative and were much less
assertive of popular rights. Significantly, however, while extending the
universal suffrage, the government enacted in 1925 a new peace preservation
law, which provided imprisonment of up to ten years for those advocating
radical change in the existing political structure or in the system of private
property ownership. The broadly phrased law was strictly applied to left-wing
parties and intellectuals.

     The era of party rule began in 1918 when the cabinet was first formed by
the party enjoying parliamentary majority, the Constitutional Political
Friends Association. The cabinets formed thereafter-eleven in all-were not all
party controlled and were generally short-lived, reflecting the fragility of
the parliamentary political base upon which the parties rested. Nevertheless
except for gaps in the 1922-24 period, the principle of party rule dependent
on majority support in the Diet was accepted as necessary by political
circles.

Japan after World War I

     The greatest challenge facing the successive party cabinets was how to
cope with the problems as well as opportunities occasioned by Japan's role in
World War I. Under the broad terms of the Anglo-Japanese alliance of 1902,
Japan declared war on Germany and quickly occupied German holdings in the
Chinese province of Shandong and German islands in the Pacific. It was a
profitable venture. European preoccupation with the war enabled Japan to
obtain further rights and privileges in China, which it secured in 1915 by
forcing China to sign the infamous Twenty-one Demands. In the face of United
States protests, the Japanese withdrew some of the demands, which would have
made China a virtual protectorate of Japan.

     Japan also took action to strengthen its position and power in East Asia.
One of the five major victors at the Versailles peace conference in Paris,
Japan succeeded in its secret diplomacy in having other powers confirm its
special interests in China. It also secured a League of Nations mandate over
the former German possessions in the Pacific. Territorial gains in China and
in the Pacific were not without adverse reaction, however. Japanese actions
not only aroused abiding Chinese antagonism but also damaged its reputation in
Europe and the United States. Japan emerged a major Pacific power, a potential
rival to the United States.

     In 1921 and 1922 Japan figured prominently at a conference of major
powers held in Washington to consider a number of questions relating to
security in the Pacific and China and limitations on naval armaments. As a
result Japan joined Britain, France, and the United States in agreeing to
respect one another's rights in the Pacific. In a separate accord nine nations
(Japan, Belgium, Britain, China, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, and
the United States) pledged to guarantee China's sovereignty and territorial
integrity and equality of economic opportunity there for the signatories-a
reaffirmation of the "open door" policy in China for imperialist nations.
Where the naval armaments race was concerned, Britain, France, Italy, Japan,
and the United States-the five major naval powers of the time-agreed to limit
battleship and aircraft carrier tonnage of the five nations to a ratio of five
each for Britain and the United States, three for Japan, and 1.75 for France
and Italy. Japan reluctantly agreed to the lower ratio when Britain and the
United States pledged not to expand their bases and fortifications in the
Pacific other than their existing naval installations. Nevertheless the
upshot of the Washington conference was a growing dissatisfaction in Japan
with the Western powers in general and the United States in particular. These
powers were viewed by many Japanese as bent on military expansion and on
containing Japan's influence in China. The enactment of an exclusionist act
against Oriental immigrants by the United States in 1924 was interpreted as
still another instance of anti-Japanese acts. In time ultranationalists and
militarists in Japan were to react virulently to these external developments.

     Economically World War I marked a period of high growth and prosperity
for Japan. Before the war the economy was stagnant, although Japanese industry
was largely sufficient for domestic requirements, and some Japanese products,
such as textiles, were competitive in the world market. Its trade balance was
unfavorable, its budget was unbalanced, and there was considerable and
continuing inflation. As some historians analyze the situation, Japan's
economic collapse was averted only by the demand generated by the war. Almost
immediately Japanese industrial activity increased sharply in response to the
British and French needs for shipping, services, munitions, and other
supplies, and Japan had a favorable balance of trade. Industrial
diversification and prosperity contributed to urban growth and to the
consolidation of capital in the hands of the zaibatsu. The wealth of the
middle class grew rapidly.

     The wartime boom, which ended in 1918, was followed by the slump of 1920.
Textiles, the leading manufacture, and a few other fields recovered before the
next onset of more severe depression in 1929, but heavy industry did not
revive until the mid-1930s. When the prolonged worldwide depression of the
early 1930s hit Japan, its effects were severe and were compounded by the
financial retrenchment policies of what was to be the last of the pre-World
War II party governments. Unchanged taxation, drastically reduced prices for
such cash crops as silk and rice, and unemployment all contributed to a gloomy
situation that was accompanied by general social unrest. Hardest hit were the
industrial workers, peasants, craftsmen, and small businessmen. Their unrest
created a background to the development of extremist political movements.
Popular discontent with the inefficacy of parliamentary politics was reflected
in the growth of labor unions, tenant farmers' unions, and leftist political
groups, even though their development had only marginal significance and was
checked by government repression. Peasants flocked to the cities and came
under the sway of ultranationalist groups led by young army officers of
peasant origin.

     During the 1920s the army officers at home and those protecting the South
Manchurian Railway System, who led the movement for military control of
national affairs, wanted to expand Japanese influence in China and to purge
Japanese society of "baneful" foreign influences and corrupt party-zaibatsu
leadership. Many of them were of peasant origin or came from poor urban
families and could sympathize with the problems of these groups. Army
indoctrination had imbued them with a firm belief in the sacredness of the
Japanese nation, in the racial superiority of the Japanese people, and in
Japan's divine mission to rule Asia. They had allies in the numerous
chauvinistic societies that sprang up after 1919 in reaction to pacifist
sentiment and the spread of alien liberal and radical ideas.

     Perhaps most instrumental in the rise of military influence was the
Japanese army stationed in Manchuria-better known as the Kwantung Army. A
hotbed of militaristic ideas, this army grew restless in the face of steady
progress in Chinese national unification under Chiang Kai-shek and the rising
influence of the Manchurian warlord, Chang Tso-lin. Japanese militarists
pursued a policy of divide-and-rule toward China, and thus cooperation between
Chiang and Chang was seen as costly to Japanese interests in China and
Manchuria, which had long been regarded as an integral part of China. This
view was shared by the Japanese zaibatsu industrialists who had had a
substantial stake in Manchuria. In 1928 after Chang refused to cooperate in
maintaining Manchuria as an autonomous political entity, ultranationalist
officers in the Kwantung Army engineered the murder of Chang in a train
explosion. Ultranationalism was not confined, however, to the Kwantung Army or
to the military services alone. The Black Dragon Society (a name derived from
the Chinese name for the Amur River in northeastern Manchuria), whose
objective was the extension of Japan's borders to the Amur, included both
military and civilians.

     The Mukden incident of September 1931, involving an explosion in an area
of the rail line guarded by Japanese troops, started a series of events that
culminated in army control of political power in Japan. Alleging Chinese
sabotage, the Kwantung Army occupied all of Manchuria by 1932. presenting the
government in Tokyo with a fait accompli. In February 1932 the puppet state of
Manchukuo was established in Manchuria as a Japanese protectorate.

     The Manchurian coup caused the fall of the Minseito Party cabinet in
December 1931 and was followed by a series of assassinations committed by
ultranationalist groups, the targets of which were leading political,
business, and bureaucratic figures along with moderate army and navy leaders.
The last party-controlled government ended with the assassination of Prime
Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi in May 1932. After 1932, the so-called national
governments of the 1930s were essentially under the military and bureaucratic
elite. Political parties continued their activities but ceased to play an
important role in decisionmaking. With the army's prestige and power securely
in place, big business found it expedient to cooperate with militarists and
their political allies. There was little effective opposition to the army from
a society that had by now come under police surveillance aimed at "thought
control." In any case the public generally acquiesced in the basic policy of
Japanese expansion in the Asian mainland. A few liberal and leftist voices
were still heard but had no impact at all.

     The Manchurian venture damaged Japan's standing in the international
community. When pressed by the Western powers to restore the status quo in
Manchuria, Japan walked out of the League of Nations in 1933 and accelerated
its penetration of China. To ensure against any encroachments by the Soviet
Union, Japan began to move closer to the Axis powers, and in 1936 it joined
Germany and Italy in a pact against the Soviet-controlled Communist
International. This marked the beginning of the profascist orientation of
Japanese foreign policy.

     The second half of the 1930s saw remarkable economic progress in which
rearmament played an important role. Directed by the zaibatsu, industrial
expansion was accompanied by the growth of transport and communications
facilities and foreign trade. Overseas economic holdings were developed
through export of capital. Japan also intensified the economic development of
Korea not only for Japan's own domestic needs but also as a forward logistical
base for its military in Manchuria and China.

     For the Japanese military high command, China had become an obsession. As
a source of raw materials and a market for manufacturers, it was regarded as
an essential part of the economic bloc consisting of Japan, Manchuria, and
Korea. Years of military gambles and heavy expenditures, however, had not
brought a solution to the China question. Anti-Japanese feeling was rising
throughout China, crystallizing into a widespread demand for armed resistance
against the Japanese forces. In 1936 Chiang Kai-shek, under heavy pressure
from disgruntled leaders of ex-Manchurian forces and Chinese Communists,
agreed to launch a united front policy of armed struggle against the Japanese.

     War with China broke out in July 1937 as a minor clash near Beijing
(Peking). The incident provided a further pretext for greater Japanese
military involvement in north China, Inner Mongolia, and central China.
Shanghai and Nanjing fell to the Japanese by the end of 1937. The Chinese
government moved its capital from Nanjing to Hangzhou and from there to
Chongqing in 1938. Japanese land forces never penetrated as far as Chongqing,
but they did subject it to prolonged aerial attack. The Japanese capture of
Canton in late 1938 brought effective control of all significant routes of
access to China except those overland from Southeast Asia and from the Soviet
Union.

     Japanese military operations in China, however, did not attain their
political objectives. The Japanese began increasingly to blame their failure
to settle the "China Affair" on the European powers and the United States,
whose treaty-based rights were often interfered with in China. At the time,
Britain and France were preoccupied with Germany, the United States was
confining its reactions to protests, and only the Soviet Union appeared likely
to provide active opposition to Japan. Negotiations with the Soviet Union,
however, in 1938 and again in 1939, after severe fighting along the
Soviet-Manchukuo border, improved Russo-Japanese relations. Relations with the
United States deteriorated, meanwhile. In mid-1939 the United States announced
its intention to abrogate the treaty of commerce with Japan in six months.
This action removed the legal barrier to the imposition by the United States
of an embargo on trade with Japan, on which Japan had depended heavily for its
imports of oil and scrap iron.

     After war started in Europe in September 1939, Japan took steps to ensure
its sovereignty over European colonies in Asia should Germany and Italy defeat
the European colonial powers. The Tripartite Treaty of Alliance of September
1940 resulted. Meanwhile against the backdrop of increasing economic pressure
from the United States, Japan undertook more effective economic planning in an
effort to exploit Asian markets and materials and to coordinate domestic
production and distribution.

     By late 1941 the military had achieved control of the Japanese economy.
Dominance of domestic politics had already been attained when the political
parties "voluntarily" dissolved themselves in 1940 and became part of a single
ultranationalist body called the Imperial Rule Assistance Association. Until
the end of World War II, this body was the only legal political organization.

     Events in 1941, including Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union, a
stiffening attitude against Japan on the part of the United States, and
military requirements for a secure source of petroleum (prospectively
available from the Netherlands East Indies), led to a decision to eliminate
Western power in the western Pacific. When negotiations with the United States
finally failed to produce the accommodation sought by the Japanese, the
government of General Tojo Hideki ordered attacks on Hawaii, the Philippines,
Wake Island, Guam, Singapore, Malaya, and Hong Kong. The attacks took place on
December 7 east of the international date line and on December 8 to the west
of 180 degrees longitude. Mutual declarations of war followed.