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The Britain of the East? A Study in the Geography of Imitation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Extract

To an Englishman of my generation, whose schooling took place during the 1920–30s, the practice of comparing Japan with Britain has long been a commonplace. School geography lessons on Japan invariably began with a reference to the temperate offshore island kingdom of eastern Asia as the ‘Britain of the East’, and this theme was often elaborated to include the characterization of Osaka and Kobe respectively as the Manchester and Liverpool of Japan. But following the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931 the climate of opinion began to change, and so did the analogy. In 1936, Freda Utley, in a book which attracted widespread interest, observed:

Although the real Japan comes a little closer to being the Prussia of Asia than the Britain of Asia, it is fundamentally unlike all these romantic pictures, and in so far as it resembles another country, that country is Russia under the tyranny of the Tsars.

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Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1968

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References

1 Utley, Freda, Japan's Feet of Clay, London, 1936, p. 17.Google Scholar

2 Although the opening sentence of the chapter on Japan in the 12th edition of Stamp, L. D., Asia, London, 1967, refers to the analogy, it implies that it is of limited validity, as does a similar reference inGoogle ScholarSchwind, Martin, Das Japanische Inselreich, Vol. I, Berlin, 1967, p. 8.Google Scholar

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10 Before the edicts of 1637 which banned all Japanese from sailing overseas, thousands had found their way as traders and adventurers to many parts of Southeast Asia.Google Scholar

11 This practice was known euphemistically as mabiki, the word used for thinning out a row of plants.

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17 Though coaling facilities had to be organized at appropriate intervals along the main sailing routes. The desire to obtain such facilities on the great circle route across the northern Pacific was one of the factors behind Perry's mission to Japan in 1853.Google Scholar

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19 The railway journey across the U.S.A. took one week, or approximately the same time as the pre-railway journey from London to the north of Scotland.

20 His Grundlage des Neunzehnten Jahrhunderts, which drew extensively on Gobineau's, J. A.Essai sur l'Inégalité des Races Humaines, Paris, 18531855, was first published in Germany in 1899 but did not appear in English translation until 1911.Google Scholar

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22 It is perhaps unnecessary to add that the distinguished English sociologist counselled caution. Ibid., p. 38.

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24 A similar fear of hostile action from the sea underlay the initial decision that the railway from Tokyo to Osaka should follow an inland route beyond the range of naval bombardment. However, as the ruggedness of this route made it too costly, the coastal Tokaido route was eventually adopted.

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27 Vladivostok was normally icebound for five months in the year.

28 Including also the Pescadores. On the Formosan question, see Quo, F. Q., ‘British diplomacy and the cession of Formosa, 1894–5’, Modem Asian Studies, 2 (1968), p. 141–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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37 Mackinder, H. J., ‘The geographical pivot of history’, Geographical Journal, 23 (1904), p. 443.CrossRefGoogle Scholar This paper, together with its elaboration in Mackinder's, Democratic Ideals and Reality, London, 1919, provided some of the basic concepts which were later used by Karl Haushofer in the development of his geopolitical doctrines. See above, p. 356 and below, p. 368. The German school of geopolitics also owed much to the Swedish political scientist Rudolf Kjellén, who first used that term in 1915.Google Scholar

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39 Black dragon is a symbolic name for the Amur river.

40 See Stoddard, , op. cit., p. 23.Google Scholar

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43 Quoted in Stoddard, op. cit., p. 32.Google Scholar

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46 Ibid., p. 318.

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49 See Elsbree, Willard H., Japan's Role in Southeast Asian Nationalist Movements, Cambridge (Mass.), 1953, p. 3.Google Scholar

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53 Quoted in Grew, J. C., Ten Years in Japan, London, 1944, p. 165.Google Scholar

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56 In fact silk was mainly exported raw.

57 See Trewartha, Glenn T., Japan—A Physical, Cultural and Regional Geography, Madison and London, 1965, p. 409.Google Scholar

58 Meanwhile a further significant aspect of the same basic conflict arose when attempts to expand the production of hydro-electric power clashed with the growing needs for irrigation water.

59 See Fisher, Charles A., The Reality of Place, London, 1965, pp. 27–9.Google Scholar

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61 See also Fisher, op. cit., p. 38.

62 And also some other territories as well, notably the whole of the Kuriles and initially also of the Ryukyus, though part of the latter has since been restored to Japanese rule.

63 Yoshida, op. cit., p. 98.

64 An article entitled ‘LDP reveals outline of urban policy plan’ in the Japan Times of 27 May 1968 contains the following comment: ‘The urban policy is designed to explore the possibility of using national land most effectively. It is also aimed at revamping the Japanese island chain to become a highly efficient, balanced and extensive urban sphere’.Google Scholar