Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 November 2008
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.
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
3 Yazu, Masanaga, Chügaku Bankoku Chishi, Tokyo, 1896.Google Scholar
4 The Hon. Curzon, George N., Problems of the Far East, London, 3rd edition, 1894, pp. 395–6.Google Scholar
5 Dyer, Henry, Dai Nippon, London, 1904, p. 342.Google Scholar
6 Quoted in Neumann, W. L., America encounters Japan, from Perry to MacArthur, Baltimore, 1963, p. 63.Google Scholar
7 Dickins, F. V., and Lane-Poole, S., The Life of Sir Harry Parkes, Vol. 2, London, 1894, p. 359.Google Scholar
8 Quoted in Lach, Donald F., Asia in the making of Europe, Vol. I,Google ScholarThe Century of Discovery, Chicago and London, 1965, p. 696.Google Scholar
9 Murray, Hugh, An Encyclopaedia of Geography, London, 1834, p. 1102.Google Scholar Note Murray's further comment: ‘The greatest deficit seems to be pride which runs through all classes, rises to the highest pitch among the great, and leads them to display an extravagant pomp in their retinue and establishment… It has the still worse effect of giving rise on any injury, real or supposed, to the deepest and most implacable resentment. This passion which decorum and the rigour of the laws prevents from breaking into open violence, is brooded over in silence till the opportunity for vengeance arrives’. Ibid.
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.
12 Japan's early emulation of Britain was not motivated by any sense of affection for a country which initially treated it with much condescension and which it had good reason to distrust. On Japanese attitudes to Britain before 1894, see Nish, Ian, The Anglo-Japanese Alliance, London, 1966, pp. 7–11.Google Scholar
13 See Understanding Japan, Bulletin II, Tokyo, 1964, p. 50.Google Scholar
14 For an exceptionally interesting account of Meiji Japan as seen through the eyes of a distinguished and sympathetic German physician who practised there from 1876 to 1904, see Toku, Bälz (Ed.), Erwin Bälz, Das Leben eines Deutschen Arztes im erwachenden Japan, Stuttgart, 1930.Google Scholar
15 As part of the process of emulating Britain, the Japanese at first assumed that it was appropriate also to adopt a free trade policy, though in fact, as N. Wakayama later pointed out, Britain had only adopted such a policy after industrialization was firmly established. See Chuhei Sugiyama, ‘The development of economic thought in Meiji Japan’, in this issue of Modern Asian Studies, p. 332.Google Scholar
16 Although the French built the Suez canal the British, as the leading maritime nation, reaped the main benefit from it. In 1893 out of 3340 vessels using the canal 2400 were British, followed by 270 from Germany, 190 from France and 180 from the Netherlands.
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
18 See List, Friedrich, The National System of political Economy, 1846. As Sugiyama points out (op. cit., pp. 333–4)Google Scholar List's work was not translated into Japanese until 15 years after that of the American Carey, H. C. (Principles of Social Science, 1858–1859), ‘whose theory gave the greatest support to the Japanese protectionists’. While this timing was doubtless related to the later development of Japanese interest in Germany, it is also significant that, in contrast to List, whose protectionism was advocated primarily in respect of industrialization, Carey's doctrine was directed mainly towards the conservation of agriculture. As such, it was in line with the Meiji leadership's view that a healthy agriculture was essential in order to guarantee the nation's food supply, provide the main source of revenue for modernization, and support a large peasantry which would simultaneously provide a reserve of military manpower and a factor of stability in an era of rapid change.Google Scholar
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, 1853–1855, was first published in Germany in 1899 but did not appear in English translation until 1911.Google Scholar
21 I.e., ‘The improvement of the Japanese race’; quoted in Ishii, op. cit., p. 37.Google Scholar
22 It is perhaps unnecessary to add that the distinguished English sociologist counselled caution. Ibid., p. 38.
23 The Japanese readiness to accept European values was regarded with contempt in China, which considered itself to be the supreme Asian civilization. Note the comment ‘China… regards Japan as a traitor to Asia (which fortunately she is)’ in Norman, Henry, The real Japan, London, 1892, p. 111.Google Scholar
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.
25 See Norman, E. H., ‘The Genyosha: origins of Japanese Imperialism’, Pacific Affairs, 17 (1944), pp. 262–3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
26 Ibid., p. 267 et seq.
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
29 See Stoddard, op. cit., p. 20.Google Scholar
30 Curzon, George N., Problems of the Far East, Revised edition, London, 1896, p. 394.Google Scholar
31 Ibid.
32 Norman, Henry, The Peoples and Politics of the Far East, London, 1895, p. 394.Google Scholar
33 Ibid., p. 396.
34 Norman, Henry, The Peoples and Politics of the Far East, London, 1895, p. 398.Google Scholar
35 Ibid., p. 399.
36 The Chinese Eastern Railway diverges from the all-Russian Trans-Siberian route (which was not completed until 1917) at Manchuli, whence it runs almost due south-east to Vladivostok.Google Scholar
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
38 Norman, , op. cit., 1895, p. 401.Google Scholar
39 Black dragon is a symbolic name for the Amur river.
40 See Stoddard, , op. cit., p. 23.Google Scholar
41 On restrictive legislation, see Ishii, op. cit., pp. 194–5.Google Scholar
42 On restrictive legislation, see Ishii, op. cit., p. 39.Google Scholar
43 Quoted in Stoddard, op. cit., p. 32.Google Scholar
44 Haushofer, Karl, Dai Nihon—Betrachtungen über Grosz-Japans Wehrkraft, Weltstellung und Zukunft, Berlin, 1913.Google Scholar
45 Ibid., pp. 2–3.
46 Ibid., p. 318.
47 See above, p. 359.Google Scholar
48 See above, pp. 360–1.Google Scholar
49 See Elsbree, Willard H., Japan's Role in Southeast Asian Nationalist Movements, Cambridge (Mass.), 1953, p. 3.Google Scholar
50 See above, p. 344.Google Scholar
51 Since 1900 the armed forces had been able to exert a veto on government policy by virtue of an imperial ordinance which laid down that the Ministers of War and the Navy must be officers of high rank on the active list of the two respective services. See Storry, Richard, A History of Modern Japan, London, 1960, p. 128.Google Scholar
52 This formed an unexpectedly large part of a combined Allied force; some of the Japanese did not leave Russian Sakhalin until 1925.Google Scholar
53 Quoted in Grew, J. C., Ten Years in Japan, London, 1944, p. 165.Google Scholar
54 See ‘Asia through Haushofer's glasses’ in Hans W. Weigert and Vilhjalmur Stefansson, Compass of the World, New York, 1944, pp. 395–407.Google Scholar
55 In the propaganda preceding and accompanying their drive to the south the Japanese repeatedly stressed the theme of Asia for the Asiatics. But, as Henry Norman had implied (op. cit., 1895) this really meant Asia for the Japanese.Google Scholar
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
60 Yoshida, Shigeru, Japan's Decisive Century, New York and London, 1967, p. 17.Google Scholar
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