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To Adopt a Small or Large State Mentality: The Iwakura Mission and Japan's Meiji-era Foreign Policy Dilemma
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2025
Abstract
Shortly after the Meiji government assumed administrative responsibilities in 1868, the Iwakura Mission left Japan to circumvent the globe, searching for information on institutions that could centralize a divided archipelago. In so doing, it encountered a world embarking on a new phase of imperial expansion. While the majority of the Mission's participants returned with visions of a large, expansion-oriented Japan, others saw their country's future as a small, neutral state. Debates over the suitability of either vision continued throughout the Taisho period, especially as Japan incorporated territories at its peripheries, including Ezo (Hokkaidō), the Ryūkyū Islands (Okinawa), Taiwan, and Korea. This paper examines the impact of the Mission participants' perspectives, which were informed by their first- and second-hand experience of American and European amalgamation of peoples of diverse cultural, ethnic, and racial origins. How did the participants' experiences influence their views on Japan's future as an expansionist state? What did their experiences teach them about the assimilation of peoples of diverse backgrounds? This paper identifies the legacy of these debates as extending to the present, where Japan seeks to rescind postwar restrictions against extending military powers beyond its borders.
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References
Notes
1 Iwakura Tomomi quoted in Igarashi Akio, Meiji ishin no shisō (Ideology and the Meiji Restoration) (Yokohama: Seori shobō, 1986), 145.
2 Kume Kunitake. The Iwakura Embassy, 1871–73, a True Account of the Ambassador Extraordinary Plenipotentiary's Journey of Observations Through the United States and Europe. 5 vols. Edited by Graham Healey and Chūshichi Tsuzuki. Chiba: The Japan Documents, 2002.
3 For example, Akira Iriye, Pacific Estrangement: Japanese and American Expansion (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1972), 35.
4 Brett L. Walker, The Conquest of the Ainu Lands: Ecology and Culture in Japanese Expansion, 1590—1800 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 227-28.
5 A partial translation of Honda's work is found in Donald Keene, The Japanese Discovery of Europe, 1720—1780 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1968), 180, 203.
6 See a translation of this work in Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi, Anti-Foreignism and Western Learning in Early-Modern Japan: The New Theses of 1825 (Cambridge, Mass: Council of East Asian Studies at Harvard University, 1986), 250.
7 Quoted in David M. Earl, Emperor and Nation in Japan: Political Thinkers of the Tokugawa Period (Seattle: University of Washington, 1964), 174.
8 The other three were Kido Takayoshi (Vice-Ambassador), Nomura Yasushi (Foreign Ministry), and Yamada Akiyoshi (Military Affairs).
9 Roger F. Hackett, Yamagata Aritomo in the Rise of Modern Japan, 1838—1922 (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard East Asian Series, 1971), 51-54.
10 I describe these three forms of expansion—internal, peripheral, and external— in detail in my Japanese Assimilation Policies in Colonial Korea, 1910—1945 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2009), 6-12. France was unique in declaring its intention to assimilate people in its African colonies. This produced a backlash from Social Darwinists in particular, who argued that attempts to introduce “primitive” peoples to “advanced” institutions would be futile. For these arguments, see Raymond Betts, Assimilation and Association in French Colonial Theory, 1900—1960, trans. William Glanville Brown (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1991), 64-69, 147-52.
11 Kume, The Iwakura Embassy I: The United States of America, 216, 219.
12 Kenneth B. Pyle offers a comprehensive summary of the Iwakura Mission's realization of this “catch-up vision” in his The Making of Modern Japan, second edition (Lexington, Mass.: C. C. Hearth and Company, 1996), 98-101.
13 See Grace Elizabeth Hale's Making Whiteness: The Culture of Segregation in the South, 1890—1940 (New York: Vintage Books, 1998) for a discussion on Reconstruction-era black schools.
14 Kume, The Iwakura Embassy II: Britain, 253.
15 Ibid. The Japanese appeared to be overwhelmed with the Highland scenery, which occupied much of the space in that chapter.
16 Ukita Kazutami, “Kankoku heigō no koka ikan” (What are the Effects of Korean Annexation?), Taiyō (October 1, 1910). This observation did not reflect historical reality as the Scottish people had launched anti-English rebellions, as well, in the past.
17 Kume, The Iwakura Embassy III: Continental Europe 1, 129.
18 Ibid, 130-31.
19 The two most prominent voices calling for an end of colonialism were Soviet Chairman Vladimir Lenin's 1917 publication Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism and U.S. President Woodrow Wilson's call for “self-determination” in his fourteen points speech of 1918. Albeit unsuccessful, Franklin Roosevelt used his meetings with Winston Churchill during the Second World War, along with Joseph Stalin's support, to implore the prime minister to liberate his country's colonies.
20 The “father of the Japanese museum” was Machida Hisanari (1838—1897), who studied in Europe for two years from 1865, during which time he became familiar with the museum through visits to London's British Museum and the Louvre in Paris. See Seki Hideo, Hakubutsukan no tanjō: Machida Hisanari to Tokyo no teishitsu hakabutsukan (The Birth of the Museum: Machida Hisanari and Tokyo's Imperial Museum) (Iwanami shinsho, 2005).
21 Kume, The Iwakura Embassy II, 109-10.
22 Ibid, 57.
23 Ibid, 85.
24 Kume, The Iwakura Embassy, V, 11.
25 Ibid.
26 Kume, The Iwakura Embassy III, 323-24.
27 Ibid. Colonel Eugéne Stoffel, who spent time in Prussia before the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, argued after the war that the Prussian education system had disseminated “a strong sense of duty through the Prussian people,” and was a deciding factor in the war. See his “A French View of the Prussians,” The Nation (March 30, 1871).
28 Kume, The Iwakura Embassy III, 324.
29 The Mission may have been encouraged by the success that a Chinese mission had in revising similar treaties that they had signed with the United States. For an account of the “‘Burlingame Mission” see John Schrecker, “For the Equality of Men—For the Equality of Nations’: Anson Burlingame and China's First Embassy to the United States, 1868,” Journal of American-East Asian Relations 17 (2010): 9-34.
30 Kume, The Iwakura Embassy V, 45. This view of Switzerland's neutral foreign policy was a rather idealist interpretation that did not precisely match Swiss involvement in the recently concluded Franco-Prussian War (1870—1871), or other incidences of Swiss interaction with its neighbors. For Swiss history around this time, see Clive H. Church and Randolph C. Head, A Concise History of Switzerland (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2013), Chapter 6.
31 Kume, The Iwakura Embassy V, 45-46.
32 Ibid, 45.
33 Ibid, 76.
34 Ibid, 49, 50.
35 Chapter 85 of Ibid is titled “Switzerland's Mountain Scenery,” 64-86.
36 The Korean government rejected the inquiry as it came from Tokyo, rather than the Tsushima domain that handled Edo-era relations with the peninsula. It also carried the character for ko (皇) that could be used only for the Chinese emperor, as stipulated in the two countries' Sino-centric relations.
37 Saigō's arguments are found in “Saigō Takamori: Letters to Itagaki [Taisuke] on the Korean Question” appears in Sources of Japanese Tradition Vol. 2, Ryusaku Tsunoda, Wm. Theodore de Bary, and Donald Keene, eds. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1958), 147-51.
38 Kido Takayoshi, The Diary of Kido Takayoshi Vol. II: 1871–1874, trans. by Sidney D. Brown and Akiko Hirota, (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1985), 206.
39 Kido, Diary, 387.
40 Okubo's arguments are found in “Okubo Toshimichi: Reasons for Opposing the Korean Expedition,” in Sources of Japanese Tradition II, 151-55.
41 Ibid. Other reasons offered by Okubo include the suddenness and incompleteness of the Restoration, the distractions the expedition would cause in delaying the government's ability to address more immediate matters, and the impoverishment of the country that would result from the expedition.
42 Robert Eskildsen, “Of Civilization and Savages: The Mimetic Imperialism of Japan's 1874 Expedition to Taiwan,” The American Historical Review 107 (2, 2002): 388-418.
43 Nakae Chōmin, A Discourse by Three Drunkards on Government, trans. Nobuko Tsukui (New York: Weatherhill, 1984), 51.
44 Ibid, 91.
45 Ibid, 99.
46 Ibid, 100.
47 Ibid, 101.
48 Ibid, 121-22.
49 Ibid, 136-37.
50 Ibid, 133.
51 Nakae made no mention of Korea at this point, but just two years previous, another member of his political party, Oi Kentarō, faced trial for his involvement in the Osaka Incident (Osaka jiken), which involved Oi's attempts to raise funds to support the Korean reformer Kim Okkyun as he led the Kapsin coup attempt of 1884.
52 Itō‘s assassination in October 1909 by An Chunggŭn left many unanswered questions regarding the former Resident General's ideas about future Korea-Japan relations. It is also difficult to ascertain the extent to which his experiences in his early travels with the Iwakura Mission influenced his views on Korea. For assessments of Itō‘s tenure in Korea as Resident General, see Hilary Conroy's The Japanese Seizure of Korea, 1868—1910: A Study of Realism and Idealism in International Relations (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1960), especially 334-82; and Peter Duus, The Abacus and the Sword: The Japanese Penetration of Korea, 1895—1910 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), especially Chapter 6.
53 See Hackett, Yamagata Aritomo in the Rise of Modern Japan, 138.
54 Matsuo Takayoshi, ed. Dainipponshugika shonihonshugika: Miura Tetsutarō ronsetsushū [Big Japanism? Small Japanism? A Collection of Miura Tetsutarō Essays] (Tokyo: Tōyō Keizai shinbunsha, 1995), 145, 173-74.
55 Kenneth B. Pyle offers an interesting discussion on this lingering influence of the seven-decade postwar U.S. occupation on Japan in his “The Making of Postwar Japan: A Speculative Essay,” Journal of Japanese Studies 46, no. 1 (Winter 2020): 113-43.
56 Richard J. Samuels graphically demonstrates “Article Nine's Slow Death” in his Securing Japan: Tokyo's Grand Strategy and the Future of East Asia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007), 93.