How Japan imitated the Western powers in creating the Empire

Résumé du document

At the end of the 19th century, it was commonly believed that all successful modern powers had to expand overseas. It was clearly recognized that the international arena was controlled by the Western powers which were continuously struggling with one another for greater national strength. The Japanese leaders thus believed that strong foreign policies were a sign of internal health and power. Moreover, rivalries among the Western powers in Asia were well known to the Japanese.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Japan had obtained a dominant place in Asia and gained formal equality with the Western powers. Pursuing its quest for modernity, it emulated the great powers acquiring an empire, which enabled it to become a model modernizer in the non-western world. Japan's drive for the empire had numerous roots that can be linked to western imperialism. We will first study the international context that led Japan to choose imperialism, and the western methods it used to do so. We also look into how it used ideology to justify its choice and, finally, how it used its empire from an economical point of view.

Extraits

[...] That is why Japan stressed the fact that it had to awaken and reform Asians, for instance providing them with law and order, and introducing them to the benefits of modern civilization. Japanese leaders even used the same vocabulary as the Westerners. For instance, in 1871, fifty fishermen from the Ryukyu Islands had been shipwrecked and drifted to Taiwan, where they were massacred by aborigines. Thus, the Japanese decided to the “uncivilized” people of Taiwan. Japan considered it had to behave as a tutor since it was the only modernized country of Asia; it was in charge of Asian unity against the West. Somehow, Japan had to be an Asian power. [...]

[...] The Japanese government also exploited the Korean labor force. The best example is probably the way it forced Korean laborers to emigrate in South Sakkhalin, exploited them, changed their names into Japanese one, and after the end of World War II, refused to repatriate them, leaving them a stateless people forced to stay in Sakkhalin. To conclude, the move to empire was propelled by connected logics of military powers, competitive geopolitics, expending trade and investment, and sometimes ideals of Japanese supremacy. [...]

[...] Thus, public support to the government was more important than ever. It is often argued that Japanese imperialism was partly due to intellectual traditions, notably developed by scholars of National Learning, which claimed a special place for Japan. However, Japanese leaders decided to prepare for conflict with China and Korea more for the consolidation of the modern Japanese State than for ideology. Nevertheless, if they were not driven by ideology, it is true that they often had to invocate ideological arguments either to justify their actions or to obtain popular support. [...]

[...] Thus, Japan emulated the Western gunboat diplomacy it had experienced during the 1850s'. In 1876, Japanese leaders sent three warships to conclude the treaty of Kanghwa with the Korean kingdom. Fully conscious of the parallel with the Perry expedition, Japan imposed almost the same unequal treaties that it had been forced to sign two decades earlier. The process as well as the result reminded of Perry expedition. The treaty opened three ports to trade with Japan and gave the Japanese extraterritorial jurisdiction. [...]

[...] Japan considered that the revenue from export trade and the grains imported from Korea were important for its industrialization so it wanted to transform it for its own advantage, and the control of Korean military affairs would protect these economic ties. Japan established a colonial state highly centralized and bureaucratized which enabled it to control the society. This powerful state used authoritarian methods to minimize dissidence and to pursue Japanese interests. As most of the imperial powers, Japan at first exchanged Korean agricultural products for Japanese manufactured goods. Then, it increased production and built a successful export-oriented economy. [...]