Japan, China, and Pan-Asianism
Alan Baumler
Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus
Course Reader no. 9

Japan, China, and Pan-Asianism

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VOLUME EDITOR
ALAN BAUMLER
Indiana University of Pennsylvania

SERIES EDITORLAURA HEIN
Northwestern University

EDITORIAL BOARD
Mark Caprio
Lonny Carlile
Parks Coble
Sabine Frühstück
Tom Grunfeld
Laura HeinJames Huffman
Jeffrey Kingston
Susan Long
Laura Miller
Mark Ravina
Mark Selden
Stephen Vlastos

Japan, China, and Pan-Asianism

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The copyright of all material in this course reader is held by the respective authors, except whereotherwise noted.
The article “Pan-Asianism as an Ideal of Asian Identity and Solidarity, 1850–Present,” by Sven
Saaler and Christopher W. A. Szpilman, originally appeared in Pan-Asianism: A Documentary
History, edited by Sven Saaler and Christopher W. A. Szpilman. © 2011 Rowman & Littlefield
Publishers, Inc. Used with permission. All rights reserved.

The volume editor can be contacted at baumler@iup.edu.

Japan, China, and Pan-Asianism

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Japan, China, and Pan-Asianism
Introduction

5

Sven Saaler and Christopher W. A. Szpilman

7

Sven Saaler and Christopher W. A. Szpilman, “Pan-Asianism as an Ideal of
Asian Identity and Solidarity, 1850–Present,” The Asia-Pacific Journal
9.17.1, April 25, 2011.
Gerhard Krebs

35

Gerhard Krebs, “World War Zero? New Literature on the Russo-Japanese
War 1904/05,” The Asia-Pacific Journal 10.21.2, May 21, 2012.
SATO Kazuo

96

Sato Kazuo, intro. Joshua Fogel, “Sun Yat-sen’s 1911 Revolution Had Its
Seeds in Tokyo,” The Asia-Pacific Journal, November 23, 2007.
Christopher Robins

105

Christopher Robins, “Japanese Visions of Lu Xun in the Light of the Magic
Lantern Incident,” The Asia-Pacific Journal, February 4, 2007.
Zeljko Cipris

129

Zeljko Cipris, “Seduced by Nationalism: Yone Noguchi’s ‘Terrible Mistake’:
Debating the China-Japan War With Tagore,” The Asia-Pacific Journal,
November 17, 2007.
Diana Lary
Diana Lary, “China and Japan at War: Suffering and Survival, 1937-1945,”
The Asia-Pacific Journal 10.48.2, November 29, 2010.

145

Japan, China, and Pan-Asianism
Timothy Brook, Prasenjit Duara, and Margherita Zanasi

4152

Timothy Brook, “Collaboration in the History of Wartime East Asia,” The
Asia-Pacific Journal, July 5, 2008.
Prasenjit Duara, “Collaboration and the Politics of the TwentiethCentury,” The Asia-Pacific Journal, July 4, 2008.
Margherita Zanasi, “New Perspectives on Chinese Collaboration,” The
Asia-Pacific Journal, July 24, 2008.
HAYASHI Hirofumi and Vivian Blaxell

183

Hayashi Hirofumi, “The Battle of Singapore, the Massacre of Chinese andUnderstanding of the Issue in Postwar Japan,” The Asia-Pacific Journal
9.28.4, July 13, 2009.
Vivian Blaxell, “New Syonan and Asianism in Japanese-era Singapore,”
The Asia-Pacific Journal, January 23, 2008.
Erik Esselstrom
Erik Esselstrom, “The 1960 ‘Anpo’ Struggle in The People’s Daily: Shaping
Popular Chinese Perceptions of Japan during the Cold War,” The AsiaPacific Journal 10.51.1, December 17, 2012.

216

Japan, China, and Pan-Asianism

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Introduction
This course reader deals with relations between Japan and China primarily in the
period 1895-1945. Before 1945 Japan was indivisible from its empire, and the mostimportant target of Japanese imperialism was China. The lingering impact of this shared
imperial history is very different in Japan and China, a fact that has an enormous impact on
the relationship between the two countries today. While this history is not forgotten in
Japan, it is not central to Japanese identity. By contrast Chinese national identity has been
built around China’s suffering under foreign—especially Japanese—imperialism.
In both places historical memory centers on conflict, without acknowledging theequally important histories of cooperation and mutual influence. In 2011, for example,
Chinese nationalists defaced a monument at a cemetery for Japanese refugees in Fanzhengcounty, Heilongjiang, a province that had once been part of the Japanese puppet state ofManchukuo. The Japanese buried there were agricultural migrants (peasants) who had insome cases come to China against their will, and who starved in 1945 before they could
make it back to Japan. While these migrants were certainly part of Japan’s invasion ofChina, they can also been seen as victims of the Japanese empire. Those Chinese today who
prefer to think in terms of a sharp dichotomy between evil Japanese oppressors andvirtuous Chinese resisters do not acknowledge this kind of complexity, although the
Chinese press sometimes does. As one Chinese newspaper put it, “many of the settlers
were ordinary Japanese civilians [but]… once they came to China they took on the role ofinvaders.” So how should we think about these issues today?
From about 1850 both Japan and China were threatened by Western imperialism
and both responded by trying to borrow the Western model of the national state. Bothwere also influenced by Pan-Asianism, the idea that Asian peoples were not (or not only) a
collection of autonomous nations, but that they shared certain cultural, historical, racial, or
political characteristics that marked them out from other nations, and that this should leadto some sort of common action, organization, or feeling. But these two responses to thethreat of imperialism often contradicted each other. Pan-Asianism, like Pan-Arabism or
Pan-Slavism, always had a problematic relationship with nationalism. Was Pan-Slavism anattempt to create a Slavic world, or an attempt to expand Russian national power? In thecase of Pan-Asianism, Japanese national interests would gradually take over from moreegalitarian ideas. As a result most of the early Pan-Asianists are now seen as apologists forJapanese imperialism even though, if history had unfolded differently, they might not beviewed that way. The purpose of this set of readings is to uncover the various meanings
Pan-Asianism had for Chinese and Japanese in hopes of better understanding therelationship between the two.
Japan provided a model to China on how to modernize its economy, military, andsociety. Countless Chinese were educated in Japan, including both exiled politicians andintellectuals who went on to form all of China’s twentieth-century governments. Sun Yatsen became the Father of the Chinese Republic in part because of Japanese aid. Both Wang
Jingwei, the leader of Japan’s puppet government during the 1937-1945 War of Resistance
Against Japan, and his opponent, Chiang Kai-shek, the leader of the Chinese resistance,
studied in Japan. Chiang actually served in the Japanese Army. Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao,
founders of the Chinese Communist Party, both studied in Japan. Lu Xun, China’s most
famous modern writer, claimed that Japan was the site of his political awakening. Even

Japan, China, and Pan-Asianism

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those who did not travel there read books translated from Japanese. But while thesepeople got a great deal from their connections to Japan they all harbored suspicions about
Japanese imperial interests in China. When the artist Feng Zikai departed for Japan his
friend Ye Tiandi encouraged him to go, but also warned him: “Don’t eat too much of theirraw fish and cold rice… and don’t fill yourself up on their militaristic thinking either.”1
For Japan too, China was vital. After the Western intrusion, China lost its traditional
place as Japan’s most important source of ideas and culture, but it remained the mostimportant site of expansion for Japan economically and militarily. Japanese went to China
for many reasons, such as to make money, help save Asia from Western expansion, escapetrouble at home, or learn to play jazz.
All of these exchanges took place in the context of both growing political conflict andever-closer ties between the two countries. Japan’s victory in the 1894-5 Sino-Japanese
War led to the beginning of direct Japanese colonization over the former Chinese island of
Taiwan. Japan also became one of the leading imperial powers in China, and Japanese
economic interests in China expanded rapidly. That war also led to a burst of Chineseinterest in learning from and working with Japanese. By 1910 some ten thousand Chinese
students were studying in Tokyo. Conflict and co-operation continued to ebb and flow, but
conflict gradually predominated. While some Japanese were aware of the increasingly
exploitative nature of the relationship between the two countries, for most it was easy tothink of the relationship as primarily friendly even after the Japanese seizure of China’s
Northeast in 1931 and the outbreak of open war in 1937. In the end, the war was a disaster
for Japan, a disaster in large part caused by Japan’s inability to find a way to live peacefully
with its neighbors, above all China.
It is therefore not surprising that the 2011 protesters in Fangzheng county were
infuriated by the monument for dead Japanese, especially given that the memorialdescribed them as “pioneers” (kaituo tuan). But their anger was directed mainly at other
Chinese. The protesters claimed that the monument they objected to had been erected by
the local government in hopes of attracting Japanese investment and tourism, which may
well have been true. Just as before 1945, individual Chinese and their government can both
reject foreign political domination and still be eager to absorb foreign goods and culture. In
fact, Japan and China remain intimately connected today as they have been for the last 100
years. While many of the people discussed in these readings are today denounced as
apologists for Japanese imperialism—and some of them were just that—the readings also
show a more complicated relationship. As Timothy Brook puts it, describing those Chinese
who worked with Japan, “Contemporary Chinese consciousness has no way of making
sense of such people, especially of that minority who declared themselves willing to
combine a Japanese allegiance with their Chinese identity.” It may surprise readers toknow that during the war Chinese often spoke and wrote sympathetically about theJapanese civilian population in general, carefully contrasting them to the military forces,
unlike the 2011 protesters against the cemetery. The current situation of major conflictand even larger cooperation between the two countries is far closer to the situation of
1895-1945 than to the Cold War situation of minimal contact, and this vital relationshipcannot be understood without knowing its history.

1

Barme, An Artistic Exile, 50.

Saaler and Szpilman: Pan-Asianism as an Ideal of Asian Identity and Solidarity

7“Pan-Asianism as an Ideal of Asian Identity and Solidarity, 1850–Present”
Sven Saaler and Christopher W. A. Szpilman
April 25, 2011
http://japanfocus.org/-Sven-Saaler/3519
Sven Saaler and Christopher W. A. Szpilman’s “Pan-Asianism as an Ideal of Asian
Identity and Solidarity, 1850–Present”2 deals with Pan-Asian ideas in a broad context, fromthe earliest encounters with Western imperialism and nationalism to contemporary
concepts of “Asian Values.” They argue that Pan-Asianism only became part of Japan’s
mainstream political vocabulary in the 1910s, and it was problematic from the start.
Unresolved questions included: Did Japan want to lead Asia in resisting European
imperialism, or did it want an alliance with Great Britain? How should Asia fit into a
European-dominated world? How did Korea and China, both of which Japan had long andcomplicated relationships with, fit into the vision of a Japanese-led Asia? Saaler andSzpilman also make clear that as time went on, Japanese proponents of Pan Asianism
increasingly imagined the future as one of Japanese domination over the rest of Asia rather
than equal partnerships, and they also found themselves winning increasing support fromthe Japanese government. The authors provide a thorough survey of the varieties ofJapanese Pan-Asianism’s leading thinkers and texts, (as well as many Chinese and Korean
responses), briefly touching on all the issues discussed below.

2This essay is a summary of some of the main points in their excellent two-volume collection of sources PanAsianism. They include many readings on Pan-Asianism outside of Japan/China in addition to those discussed here.

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Pan-Asianism as an Ideal of Asian Identity and Solidarity, 1850–Present
Sven Saaler and Christopher W. A. Szpilman
This is a revised, updated and abbreviated version of the introduction to the two volume
collection by the authors of Pan-Asianism. A Documentary History. Vol. 1 covers the years
1850-1920; Vol. 2 covers the years 1850-present (http://www.rowman.com/isbn/1442206020).
The economic and political power of Asia, the world’s largest continent, is increasing rapidly.
According to the latest projections, the gross domestic products of China and India, the world’s
most populous nations, will each surpass that of the United States in the not-too-distant future.
China’s economy, like Japan’s, is already larger than that of any single European country. With
this new economic might comes growing diplomatic influence. The twenty-first century, many
pundits agree, will be an Asian century. This undisputed Asian success story, together with its
accompanying tensions and discontents, has attracted much media and scholarly attention. Yetfor all this talk of Asia, there is no consensus on what Asia actually stands for as a whole. Is thevast Asian landmass a single entity? There has never been—and perhaps never will be—universal agreement on this question.
Where is Asia?
Attempts to define Asia are almost as old as the term itself. The word “Asia” originated inancient Greece in the fifth century BC. It originally denoted the lands of the Persian Empire
extending east of the Bosphorus Straits but subsequently developed into a general term used by
Europeans to describe all the lands lying to the east of Europe. (The point where Europe ended
and Asia began was, however, never clearly defined.) Often, this usage connoted a threat, real or
perceived, by Asia to Europe—a region smaller in area, much less populous, poorer, and far lesssignificant than Asia in terms of global history.
The term “Asia” arrived in East Asia relatively late, being introduced by Jesuit missionaries inthe sixteenth century. The term is found, written in Chinese characters (亜細亜), on Chinese
maps of the world made around 1600 under the supervision of Matteo Ricci (1552–1610), one of
the founders of the Jesuit mission in China. However, it took two more centuries before the namegained wide currency in the region. For it was only with the resumption of European colonialist
expansion in the nineteenth century that “Asia” ceased to be a technical term used by East Asian
cartographers and, in reaction to the threat of Western colonialism, came to represent a specificgeopolitical space bound together by such commonalities as a shared history, close cultural links,
a long record of diplomatic relations, trade exchanges, and the notion of a “common destiny.”
Although the definitions of Asia were diverse and often contradictory, the real or perceived
Western threat caused an increasing number of intellectuals, politicians, and activists throughout
Asia to argue for strengthening “Asian” solidarity in relation to “the West.”

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1808 map of Asia

These arguments about the definition and nature of Asia in reaction to the impending Western
threat marked the beginnings of Pan-Asianism as an ideology and a movement. Vague
sentiments about strengthening Asian solidarity were gradually developed into concrete policy
proposals for a united defense of Asia against the encroachments of Western imperialism. In
many cases, such calls for Asian solidarity, integration, and unity were accompanied byendeavors to create an Asian identity by postulating commonalities and identifying traditions ofinteraction and interrelationship. Some thinkers took for granted the existence of an Asian
identity. Others argued that such an identity must be deliberately forged as a necessary condition
for realizing the ultimate objective of unifying Asia. Although individual writers in different
places and at different times advocated a wide variety of strategies and views on the nature of
Asian unity, we can nonetheless observe a certain degree of uniformity in the development of
pan-Asian rhetoric from the nineteenth century down to the present—a pattern discussed below.
In this way, then, a pan-Asian worldview or “style of thought” became established and diffusedthroughout the region. It can be identified in the writings of intellectuals, political statements,
popular slogans, and even in songs and poems in a number of Asian states and nations. A
representative selection of such texts, all of which are of great significance in the history of PanAsianism and Asian regionalism, are included in this collection. They were written or collectedin various parts of Asia, from Japan, through Korea, China, Indonesia, and India to the Ottoman
Empire, over the past 150 years. These texts, most of which have been translated into English
from a number of Asian languages, are brought to the Western reader for the first time in anJapan, China, and Pan-Asianism

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easily accessible form. Each source is accompanied by a commentary that provides essential
information, such as a biographical sketch of the author and the historical context of the
document under consideration.
A number of collections of pan-Asian texts have been published in Japanese. The most importantof these is Takeuchi Yoshimi’s (1910–1977) volume Asianism, which, in addition to providing a
selection of sources, examines the significance of Pan-Asianism and attempts to place it in its
historical context. Much less useful is the recently published three-volume anthology,
Ajiashugishatachi no Koe (Pan-Asianist Voices), which merely reproduces snippets of texts
seemingly at random without any critical contextualization. Pan-Asianism, however, receives
scant attention in widely available English-language source collections on Asia such as thevolumes in the Introduction to Asian Civilizations series—Sources of Japanese Tradition,
Sources of Chinese Tradition, Sources of Korean Tradition and Sources of Indian Tradition.
The end of the Cold War in 1989 produced a surge of interest in issues of regionalism andtransnational identity in contemporary East Asia. This new interest in contemporary regionalism
was followed only a decade later by the recognition of the long-term historical developments
underlying the geopolitical formation of the East Asian region and the idea of Asian solidarity(i.e., the ideology of Pan-Asianism) as important research subjects. Few works on Pan-Asianism
were published before 2000 in any language. But since the beginning of the twenty-first century
there has been an upsurge of interest in the historical development of Pan-Asianism, reflected ina stream of book-length publications on various aspects of Pan-Asianism. In addition, a numberof important articles have been published on the subject over the years. Notwithstanding thesepublications, however, knowledge of Pan-Asianism and its role in modern Asia remains
fragmented, unsystematic, and unbalanced.
This collection aims to remedy the situation by providing readers with the seminal documents of
Pan-Asianism and thus a comprehensive overview of the development of the ideals of Asiansolidarity and regionalism in the hope of stimulating further research and providing thefoundations for a synthesis of earlier work. The major difficulty with researching Pan-Asianism
is a linguistic one, for it would be very difficult, if not impossible, for any one scholar to masterall the languages necessary for a comprehensive study of the subject. So, while the community ofscholars interested in issues of Asian regionalism continues to grow, linguistic difficulties andthe barriers of specialization have prevented them from studying Pan-Asianism as an ideologythat transcends linguistic boundaries and national narratives and examining the processes ofregional integration in East Asia from the perspective of the longue dureé. We hope that thiscollection, with its comprehensive approach, will help scholars to look beyond the scope of theirnarrow specializations and open new possibilities for transnational cooperation in research on
Asian regionalism.
The Origins of Pan-Asianism: Macronationalism and Transnationalism
The term “Asia” came into common use in East Asia only in the mid-nineteenth century in
response to the increasing diplomatic, military, and economic presence of the Western powers,
and their territorial expansion in East Asia. The Opium War of 1839–1842 was a watershed in
the history of Asian–European encounters. The British victory led to the recognition, throughout
East Asia, of Europe as a common threat, and it was at that time that intellectuals and politicians
throughout the region began to consider the questions of “Asia” and Asian solidarity. With aview to giving the concept of solidarity substance, they began exploring Asian cultural

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commonalities and the common historical heritage of the continent. It is of course true that, asHamashita Takeshi and other scholars have pointed out, East Asian countries had a long history
of interaction before the nineteenth century. This took the form of an interstate system, centeredon China. It was this Sinocentric system (sometimes also known as the tributary system) towhich the Western powers had to accommodate when they first came into contact with East
Asian states. But it was the acute sense of crisis brought about by the Chinese defeat in theOpium War that forced Asian writers and thinkers actively to pursue the agenda of a united Asia,
an Asia with a common goal—the struggle against Western imperialism.
Ideas of Asian solidarity came in a large variety of forms, as did the geographical definitions
underlying claims for regional solidarity. Some forms of the concept were based on assumptionsof racial unity, following, curiously enough, racial notions that had originated in the West
(Hannaford 1996; Dikötter 1997). Others tended to emphasize commonalities in culture andlanguage (more accurately written language). This was especially the case in East Asia, often
referred to in the West as the “Orient” (Japanese: Tōyō; Korean: Tong’yang; Chinese:
Dongyang), a region which, for thousands of years, had been under the powerful influence ofChinese civilization. (The term “East Asia” was used from the late nineteenth century on[Japanese: Tōa; Korean: Dong-a; Chinese: Dong-ya].) In this context, some thinkers saw the newquest for solidarity as a strengthening of the existing networks of economic and cultural
exchange. Others were inspired by pan-movements emerging almost simultaneously in Europe
and America. The various approaches to Pan-Asianism, however, all shared a common emphasison transnationalism and Asian unity.
Pan-Asianism was at times used to legitimize Japan’s territorial aggrandizement and colonial
expansion. One of the few detailed studies of pan-movements in general, Louis Snyder’s MacroNationalisms, characterizes pan-movements as “Nationalism Writ Large” or “extended
nationalisms.” However, as the present volume shows, advocacy of Pan-Asianism also reflected
reservations about the concepts of nation and nationalism, which were also imported in theirmodern forms to Asia from the West in the nineteenth century. The popularity of a transnational
Pan-Asianism and the transnational political activities of revolutionaries show that the nation
was not, as is often believed, an absolute and unquestioned value in Asia. (The rise of panmovements in other parts of the world, too, has been seen as an expression of skepticism over theabsolute character of the “nation.”) To be sure, in a number of Asian countries protonationalism
had already developed before the arrival of the European powers in the region. Within the
Sinocentric international order, the elites of tributary states in East Asia had developed their own
sense of nationhood. However, in the nineteenth century new forms of nationalism developed in
East Asia. In the same way as Pan-Asianism, they represented a reaction to Western colonialism
and over time developed into national independence movements. Yet again, these nationalist
aspirations and the independence movements they spawned were characterized by strongtransnational links, alliances that were apparent in the activities of Asian revolutionaries
described in this volume: Indians, Vietnamese, Indonesians, Filipinos, and activists from other
Asian countries who went into exile in Japan, where they exchanged ideas, promoted pan-Asiansolidarity, developed networks, and worked together to achieve national independence. Benedict
Anderson has brilliantly traced the process by which the elites of colonized nations developed asense of national identity and a desire for independence from their colonial masters during
periods of residence in the metropole. It could be argued that a similar process was at work in thecase of the revolutionary members of Asian elites. Particularly those who found themselves inJapan, China, and Pan-Asianism

12Japan, whether as students or exiles, interacted with other Asians and in this way developed acommon Asian consciousness.
In Japan they came also into contact with Japanese pan-Asianists, many of whom supported
independence movements throughout Asia. The Japanese triumph in the war with Russia in
1904–1905 was an important turning point, an event that accelerated the spread of pan-Asianideas throughout the continent. Many Asians now believed that Japan would soon assume
leadership in the struggle against the tyranny of the Western imperialist powers. Even in distantEgypt, a delighted Arab announced the news of the Russian defeat to the Chinese revolutionary
leader Sun Yat-sen (1866–1925), who was traveling by boat through the Suez Canal. “The joy ofthis Arab, as a member of the great Asiatic race,” Sun recalled many years later, “seemed toknow no bounds”. However, disillusionment with Japan soon set in when it embarked on a
program of carving out its own colonial empire at the expense of other Asian nations andjustified these expansionist policies with pan-Asian rhetoric.
Pan-Asian cooperation was institutionalized in the form of numerous pan-Asian associations
founded all over Asia and was also reflected in pan-Asian conferences that took place in Japan,
China, and Afghanistan in the 1920s and 1930s. These developments showed the diversity andinterconnectedness of anti-Western movements throughout Asia. A few examples will suffice toillustrate this phenomenon. In 1907, socialists and anarchists from China, Japan, and India joined
forces to found the Asiatic Humanitarian Brotherhood in Tokyo. In 1909 Japanese and Muslim
pan-Asianists in Japan established the Ajia Gikai (Asian Congress) with the goal of promoting
the cause of Asian solidarity and liberation. It was almost certainly this Ajia Gikai that a British
intelligence report referred to when it mentioned “an Oriental Association in Tokyo attended by
Japanese, Filipinos, Siamese, Indians, Koreans, and Chinese, where Count Okuma [Shigenobu,
1838–1922] once delivered an anti-American lecture”. In 1921, the Pan-Turanian Association
was founded in Tokyo to rally Japanese support for the unification of the Turks of Central Asiaand their liberation from Russian rule. The association cooperated closely with the Greater Asia
Association (Dai Ajia Kyōkai) and other Japanese pan-Asian organizations.
The transnational character of Pan-Asianism was also apparent in its publishing activities. Indian
pan-Asianists published material in Japan, China, the United States, and Germany; Japanese panAsianists published in China, India, and the United States. Koreans, too, such as the court noble
An Kyongsu (1853–1900), published their works in Japan. Journals with a clear pan-Asian
message—the source of many of the documents in this collection—were published in Japan,
China, and Southeast Asia.
Although such writings might be dismissed as mere “propaganda”, there is no doubt that asignificant number of Westerners were sympathetic to the ideals of Asian solidarity and PanAsianism. At the center of pan-Asian activities in Japan at the end of World War I stood the now
obscure French mystic, Paul Richard (1874–1967), whose works were published in Japan, India,
and the United States and certainly widely read, at least in Japan. In the 1920s and 1930s, thefamous editor of the Zeitschrift für Geopolitik, Karl Haushofer (1869–1946), paid tribute to thepan-Asian movement, seeing it as proof of his theory that international relations would come tobe dominated by regional blocs. Haushofer introduced to his readers the writings and activities of
pan-Asianists such as Sun Yat-sen, Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941), and Benoy Kumar Sarkar(1887–1949). These Asian activists and revolutionaries, Haushofer was convinced, reflected atrend toward a future world order that would be dominated by large, regional blocs, replacing theSaaler and Szpilman: Pan-Asianism as an Ideal of Asian Identity and Solidarity

13

existing order characterized by the sovereign nation-state. Another proponent of pan-ideas,
Richard Nikolaus Count von Coudenhove-Kalergi (1894–1972), the founder of the panEuropean movement and the publisher of the journal Pan-Europa, also praised the pan-Asianmovement; a Japanese translation of an enthusiastic article by him appeared in the journal Dai
Ajiashugi (Greater Asianism).
As a final striking example of the appeal of Pan-Asianism to Westerners, in 1934 an anonymous
Greek wrote a letter addressed “to the Eastern Asiatic people of the Mongolian race and colour,”which he sent to the Japanese consulate at Surabaya in the Dutch East Indies (present-day
Indonesia). The letter called on Asians tocultivate the Pan-Mongolian consciousness, in feeling, in thought and above all in action;
harmonize, cultivate and facilitate in every possible way the Inter-Mongolian raceintercourse and understanding by adopting an official and compulsory taught and used
Inter-Mongolian language composed of Words of Chinese, Japanese and Siamese
languages; Eliminate from your mind and from your dictionaries the word FOREIGNER,
and cultivate the Inter-Mongolian fellowship and community of interest; Harmonize yournational, political, social, economic and religious life. … [F]orm and organize THE
INTER-MONGOLIAN AND INTER-CONTINENTAL HARMONIZEDAWAKENING, in every city, town, village and hamlet.
This bizarre letter was apparently inspired by the Japanese Foreign Ministry’s so-called Amau
Statement, which declared “special responsibilities for Japan in East Asia” and which was often
interpreted as a declaration by Japan of an “Asian Monroe Doctrine,” that is, a call for
noninterference by Western powers in China. As far as one can tell, this appeal to an inter-Asian
consciousness elicited no reaction either in Japan or elsewhere in Asia. Nevertheless, PanAsianism was stimulated, both positively and negatively, by Western influences. For example,
the Japanese politician Kodera Kenkichi (1877–1949), who had studied international relations in
Europe and the United States for almost a decade, justified his advocacy of Pan-Asianism byconstantly referring to the positive role of pan-movements in the West. In contrast to Kodera,
Prince Konoe Fumimaro (1891–1945) chose to stress the negative aspects of the West by
rejecting the universalist pretensions of the League of Nations (founded 1919) when heproclaimed the need for Asian solidarity under Japanese leadership. Both Kanokogi Kazunobu(1884–1949) and Hirano Yoshitarō (1897–1980) were strongly influenced by German ideas, aswere the 1930s proponents of a regional bloc in East Asia such as the political scientist Rōyama
Masamichi (1895–1980) and Kada Tetsuji (1895–1964).
While the West was important as a reference point, Pan-Asianism as an ideology also posed asignificant challenge to the earlier Sinocentric order—an order not limited to China proper but
also appropriated by the nomadic conquerors of China and by states on the periphery such as
Korea and Japan. In this context, the seemingly “more modern” ideology of Pan-Asianism
served as an integrating force, helping to fulfill the requirement for the “de-centering of China.”
Arguably, in many cases the Sinocentric hierarchical view of the world influenced the thinkingof some Japanese pan-Asianists who appropriated it faithfully with one significant change. Forthem it was Japan, not China, that was to be the new “Middle Kingdom” and the leader of Asia.
Although, as we show, early forms of Pan-Asianism often envisioned cooperation on equalterms, insistence on Japanese leadership (meishu) in Asia increased in proportion to the growthand expansion of Japan’s power in East Asia.

Japan, China, and Pan-Asianism

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For advocates of this “Meishuron” Asianism, Japan’s leadership was justified on moral grounds
as well as by the realities of international relations. Japan qualified as the leader of Asia because
it was morally superior to China, which was in political turmoil, and had always been as a resultof its frequent dynastic changes. In contrast, Japan, many Japanese elites believed, was qualified
to lead Asia because of its divine imperial dynasty that was “unbroken through ages
immemorial.” Japan, in this view, was a “chosen” country, the “Land of the Gods”—qualities
that uniquely fitted it for a special “mission” to liberate Asia from Western oppression, become
the leader of the region, and, as its more imaginative supporters asserted, unite the whole world
under the benevolent rule of the Japanese emperor, following the ancient slogan hakkō ichiu, or“The Eight Corners of the World [United] under One Roof.” Rather than drawing on thefoundational myths, other pan-Asian writers justified Japan’s leadership of Asia on the groundsof Japan’s successful modernization program, an effort they contrasted with the failure of the restof Asia in this regard. From this perspective, Japan’s technological advances served as evidenceof Japanese superiority. But whatever the grounds for such claims, the fact remains that many
Japanese pan-Asianists, in various ways, consciously or unconsciously, provided justification forJapan’s colonial rule and territorial expansion in Asia.
Pan-Asianism and Empire
One of the reasons why, for a long time after 1945, Pan-Asianism was largely ignored byresearchers—not to mention politicians and diplomats—was its fateful connection to Japaneseimperialism and the role it played as an ideology that legitimized Japan’s empire-building projectin the first half of the twentieth century. While some commentators insist that Japan neverofficially pursued a pan-Asian foreign policy before or even during the Asia-Pacific War (1931–
1945), it is undeniable that the Japanese government frequently utilized pan-Asian rhetoric in the
1930s and 1940s in order to bolster claims to Japanese leadership in East Asia and legitimize itscolonial rule over parts of Asia.
In The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt suggested a close link between nineteenthcentury Pan-Germanism and Pan-Slavism and twentieth-century totalitarianism andexpansionism. “Nazism and Bolshevism,” she contended, “owe more to Pan-Germanism and
Pan-Slavism (respectively) than to any other ideology or political movement. This is mostevident in foreign policies, where the strategies of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia havefollowed so closely the well-known programs of conquest outlined by the pan-movements before
and during the First World War . . .”. Although it would be an exaggeration to claim that PanAsianism formed an important component of any totalitarian developments in modern Asia, one
cannot overlook the connection between Pan-Asianism and Japanese ultranationalism (discussed
below) and also the contribution of this ideology to the legitimization of Japanese colonial ruleand empire building in Asia in the first half of the twentieth century.
As early as 1910, pan-Asian rhetoric was used by the Japanese government to legitimize theannexation of Korea. The Annexation Treaty referred specifically to commonalities between
Japanese and Koreans, such as racial origins, a common history and culture, and a shareddestiny. This remained the orthodox way of justifying and legitimizing Japanese rule in Korea
throughout the colonial period and was reiterated time and again in both public and private
statements. The same pan-Asian rhetoric was continuously reaffirmed and applied to othercolonial territories. For example, in 1939, in the semi-official journal Contemporary Japan, awriter insisted that

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15

contrary to the general assumption held abroad, and even entertained by some Japanese,
Chosen [Korea], Taiwan, and even Manchukuo are not Japanese colonies according to
the Western way of thinking. … “To make the world one household” is an expression
used by the Japanese to indicate their moral principle of co-existence and co-prosperity.
… Although their languages and customs are now different, Japan and Korea were
especially close to each other until about thirteen centuries ago, there having been a large
intermixture of both blood and culture before that time. … Japan’s annexation of thepeninsula might be taken as a reversion of the two countries to their ancient status ofbeing one homogeneous whole.
The assertion of racial and cultural commonalities presented here went hand in hand with thelegitimization of Japanese superiority on the grounds that Japan was a country chosen by thegods. As early as the late 1910s, a number of writers, such as Kanokogi Kazunobu, Kita Ikki, andŌkawa Shūmei, spoke of a divine Japanese “mission” to liberate Asia. This high-sounding
objective was often difficult to distinguish from the substitution of one form of colonial
oppression (by Europeans) for another (by fellow Asian Japanese). And a belief in Japan’s divine
mission was by no means limited to radical reformists. Even mainstream writers who eschewed
ideologically driven rhetoric and sought to explain international relations in terms of Realpolitik,
such as Tokutomi Sohō (1863-1957), urged Japan to establish an “Asian Monroe Doctrine.” Indoing so, Tokutomi may have been applying an idea of Western provenance to international
relations in East Asia, but he still believed, like Kita and Kanokogi, that Japan had a special“mission” to accomplish in East Asia.
In the 1930s, claims that Japan’s empire was anembodiment of pan-Asian ideals were voiced
more frequently and openly than before. Thiswas due to the impact of “regional bloc thinking”
that was highly influential at the time. For
example, Rōyama Masamichi insisted in 1934
that “the Pan-Asiatic movement” was a “decisive
influence responsible for the establishment of the
Empire.” Though he lamented that thismovement lacked “any coherent programme
under any prominent leader,” he neverthelessregarded it as full of promise for the future. As
evidence, he noted with satisfaction that “manysmall groups of so-called Pan-Asianists loosely
affiliated through study organizations . . . havesprung up like mushrooms during the past two
The Asian Monroe Doctrine
years in both Japan and Manchuria”. Rōyama’s
notion of an “East Asian bloc” gained wide
prominence in Japan in the late 1930s, amplified by a fusion with the geopolitical ideas of Karl
Haushofer and Carl Schmidt (1888–1985) and with earlier concepts of an “Asian Monroe
Doctrine.” The notion of an “East Asian bloc” was also popular with Marxists and socialists, as
can be seen in the writings of Takahashi Kamekichi (1894–1977) and some members of the
Shōwa Kenkyūkai, the brain trust founded by Prince Konoe Fumimaro, prime minister in 1937–
1939 and 1940–1941.

Japan, China, and Pan-Asianism

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The intimate connection of Pan-Asianism with Japan’s empire-building ambitions leads toanother central problem of Pan-Asianism—the inherent ambiguity of the concepts involved. It isclear that, from the outset, pan-Asian thought was riddled with ambiguity and contradictions thatmade this ideology capable of being used to legitimize both the anticolonial struggle against theWest and the domination of one Asian nation by another. This ambiguity is also inherent in theterminology used to describe the ideology.
Problems of Terminology
As stated at the start of this introduction, Pan-Asianism poses a problem as a topic of scholarly
inquiry even at the level of terminology. The object of inquiry is hard to define and is almost as
elusive as a continuously shifting target. There is no scholarly consensus on the definition of“Asia,” on pan-movements, or on ideologies with a transnational focus that have evolved overtime. Likewise, the question of how Pan-Asianism is related to other pan-movements is far fromsettled.
As we have seen, the emergence of Pan-Asianism was inseparable from the rise of Japan as amajor power and Japan’s struggle with China for leadership in Asia. But Pan-Asianism also
reflected attempts by East Asian elites to forge Asian unity by bringing Japan and China
together. Thus, early manifestations of the movement were characterized by the close
cooperation of ideologues, activists, and politicians from Japan, China, and Korea. But the needfor cooperation and, thus, compromise resulted in pan-Asian ideas being characterized by amarked lack of specific content. Although the concept of Pan-Asianism can be traced from the
mid-nineteenth century on, the term “Pan-Asianism” (or Asianism, Greater Asianism) was not in
use in China, Korea, and Japan before the 1890s and occurs only infrequently prior to the 1910s.
Around the turn of the century, Western writers who were clamoring about the threat of the
Yellow Peril occasionally used the terms “Pan-Asianism” or “pan-Asiatic league” in warning of
the dangers a united Asia would pose for Western supremacy. The Japanese government wasquick to lay any Western suspicions on this score to rest, particularly after the start of the war
with Russia, a Western power, in 1904. It took this popular Western agitation so seriously that on
many occasions it officially disclaimed any interest in promoting closer relations with its (weak)
Asian neighbors. Japanese diplomats were dispatched to Europe and the United States expressly
to dispel any Western suspicions as to Japan’s pan-Asian ambitions. For example, in the UnitedStates, Harvard-educated Baron Kaneko Kentarō (1853–1942) dismissed rumors voiced in the“yellow” press that Japan was aiming to form an Asian federation, as did diplomat Suematsu
Kenchō (1855–1920) in Europe. As late as 1919, Takekoshi Yosaburō (1865–1950) ridiculed theidea of a Japanese-led Asian alliance against the West in a publication funded by the Japanese
government:
Among our own people, there are some who do not rightly interpret the history of theirown country, and who do not take their national strength into proper consideration andwho, being prompted by certain fanatical ideas, advocate the alliance of the yellow races
against the white, an alliance of which Japan should be the leader, and with that object inview, they favour the partition of China. Those who argue in this strain have evidently
lost their mental balance.
Just as the government went to great lengths to deny any association with Pan-Asianism, theopposition placed a strong emphasis on Pan-Asianism, calling for the unification of the “yellow

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race,” that is, the Asian peoples. As early as 1874, Ueki Emori (1857–1892), a prominent
member of the opposition freedom and peoples’ rights movement (jiyū minken undō), had
attacked what he considered the pro-Western policy of the government and, insisting that theWest was Japan’s enemy, called for the formation of an Asian League (Ajia rengō). Ueki held aversion of Pan-Asianism that assumed equality among Asian nations. He even advocatedindependence for the Ryukyu archipelago (present-day Okinawa Prefecture), a previously
independent kingdom that was annexed by Japan in the 1870s. An anonymous writer in thejournal Ajia (Asia) and the antigovernment activist and politician Tarui Tōkichi (1850–1922)
made similar proposals in the 1880s. It was not until 1903 that the first acknowledgment of thepotential of Pan-Asianism as a significant factor in international relations was made, when the art
critic Okakura Tenshin (1862–1913), famous for coining the phrase “Asia is one,” stated in his
book The Awakening of the East that a “Pan-Asiatic Alliance” would “in itself constitute animmense force.” However, the impact of this statement may have been somewhat reduced inJapan by the fact that Okakura had written his book in English for an Indian and not a Japaneseaudience.
While the term “Pan-Asianism” entered the mainstream political vocabulary only in the 1910s, inthe nineteenth century advocates of Asian unity could draw on a number of terms and slogans
when propagating their ideals. In the 1880s, the term Kōa, or “Raising (or Developing) Asia,”
was the most widely used slogan, implying the need for Asia to modernize in order to catch up
with the technologically advanced West. The term was not without problems, however. For
example, an organization called the Kōakai (Raising Asia Society) was founded in Tokyo in
1880. Its membership was predominantly Japanese—they had chosen the group’s name—but it
included some Koreans and Chinese who objected to the name on the grounds that it implied—incontrast to successful, modern Japan—that Asia was backward, oppressed, and downtrodden,
and could be saved only by “raising” it through Japanese leadership and advice. Following such
criticism, the Kōakai was renamed Ajia Kyōkai (Asia Association) in 1883. But it was not only
Japanese pan-Asianists who believed in Japanese superiority; many Asians also acknowledged
their political and economic backwardness in relation to Japan. Many Chinese recognized thefailure of modernization, at least implicitly, in their nation, accounting for the formation ofpolitical associations with names such as the Raise China Society (Xingzhonghui), founded by
Sun Yat-sen in 1894, and the China Revival Society (Huaxinghui), founded in Hunan 1904.
Another early term used to describe pan-Asian solidarity was the classical Chinese phrase fuche
chunchi (Japanese: hosha shinshi; Korean: poch’a sonch’i), which means “mutual dependence”
or, literally, “a relationship as close as that between the lips and the teeth or between the chassis
and the wheels of a cart.” This image implied a high degree of interdependence, but, in contrast
to the potentially hierarchical Kōa, it presumed equal relations among Asian nations. Its origin
also indicates the influence of Chinese classical scholarship on early Pan-Asianism. This phrase
was used by early pan-Asianists particularly in the 1870s and 1880s, but it can be found in manyof the texts presented in this collection well into the twentieth century.
A third influential slogan used to express pan-Asian sentiment and activism that was very
popular at the turn of the century was “Same Culture, Same Race” (Japanese: dōbun dōshu;Chinese: tongwen tongzhong; Korean: tongmun tongjong), which likewise did not imply
hierarchical relations between Asian nations or make claim to the superiority of any one country.
In Japan, the term was used particularly often by Prince Konoe Atsumaro (1863–1904), who,
uncharacteristically for an early pan-Asianist, was a member of Japan’s ruling elite, and by theJapan, China, and Pan-Asianism

18

Tōa Dōbunkai (East Asian Common Culture Society). The term also appears frequently inJapanese journals of the day and seems to have received some acceptance in other Asian
countries. Closely related to the rise of racial thinking in Japan and East Asia, this slogan also
has to be seen as an expression of the growing fear in Japan of a future “clash of races,” that is, a
war fought along racial lines in which Japan would have no choice but to side with the Asian, or“colored,” peoples against the white powers of the West. Parallel with the development of thiskind of racial thinking in Asia, the idea of the “White Peril” also gained ground. It was aninversion of the “Yellow Peril” hysteria that affected Europe at the time. The proponents of the“White Peril,” including some Europeans (e.g., Gulick 1905), believed that the threat tocivilization came not from the “yellow” peoples of Asia but from the predatory European
powers.
It was only in the 1910s that the term “Pan-Asianism” made its debut in intellectual discourse.
Japanese political scientist Ōyama Ikuo (1880–1955) used the term for the first time to describe
Chinese political associations which were promoting “Greater Asianism” (Da Yazhouzhuyi) “insecretly published pamphlets” with the intention of spreading anti-Western sentiment in China”.
Ōyama himself rejected Asianism because he saw the emergence of this ideology as a sign ofincreasing nationalistic and xenophobic tendencies in Japan. While Ōyama criticized Asianism
from his position as a liberal intellectual, the Japanese government remained wary of pan-Asian
proposals because it feared that such tendencies might undermine Japan’s good relations with theWestern powers. Between its signing in 1902 and 1921–1922, when it was superseded by the
Washington treaty system, the Anglo-Japanese Alliance was always at the heart of Japan’s
foreign policy. The alliance, however, would be in jeopardy if it transpired that Japan was
supporting an independence movement in India as part of a pan-Asian foreign policy. On several
occasions, Britain showed suspicion over Indian–Japanese relations, particularly during WorldWar I when members of the Indian independence movement were cooperating with Germany.
For example, the visit of the celebrated poet and first Asian Nobel laureate, Rabindranath
Tagore, to Japan in 1916 caused “considerable uneasiness in London” over “a Japanese–Indianunderstanding that could eventually take a political and anti-British form”. The British
intelligence service kept close tabs on Indian independence activists in Japan (and China) andtheir Japanese sympathizers.
If only to avoid alienating its British ally and other Western powers, both the Japanese
government and the press tended to be highly critical of pan-Asian schemes. The hostile tone
adopted by Japanese newspapers during a public debate on Pan-Asianism in 1913 well illustrates
this point. In a debate with the British journalist and diplomat Sir Valentine Chirol (1852–1929),
the celebrated American naval strategist Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan (1840–1914) defended
the 1913 California “Alien Land Bill”, which would prevent Asian immigrants from owning landor property in the state on the grounds that America would not be able to “digest and assimilate
the strong national and racial characteristics which distinguish the Japanese.” Mahan seemed
moreover to believe that in excluding the Japanese, Californians were acting in the interests not
only of the United States but also of “the whole community of European civilization”. In thedebate Chirol, who had retired from his position at The Times two years before and joined theForeign Office, criticized the Land Bill. However, it appears that he was a voice in thewilderness. Even the editors of The Times seemed to support Mahan when they criticized Japanfor what they regarded as contradictions in its foreign policy:

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On the one hand, she [Japan] demands recognition because her people are not as other
Asiatics. On the other hand, … her publicists are now asserting that “to Japan is assigned
the leadership in the claim of the ‘coloured’ races against the ‘non-coloured.’” These two
sets are mutually destructive. Japan cannot have it both ways. … She must make up her
mind whether she wishes to present herself as aloof from other Asiatic races, or as theavowed champion of Pan-Asiatic ideals.
Such criticisms clearly struck a sensitive chord in Japan. Throughout June and July 1913, thesestatements were discussed at great length by Japan’s leading newspapers, including the Osaka
Asahi Shinbun, the Osaka Mainichi Shinbun, and the Tokyo Nichinichi Shinbun. The Asahi
unequivocally declared that it considered “Pan-Asianism an illusion (kūsō),” while the Nichinichi
ridiculed the notion that Japan would “lead the Asian peoples to fight against the Euro-American
white powers” as “useless and reckless.” It was in these articles dismissing the accusations madeby Mahan and the Times that the terms Han-Ajiashugi (“Pan-Asianism,” Mainichi and
Nichinichi) and Zen-Ajiashugi (“All-Asianism,” Asahi) made their first appearance in theJapanese language. They were coined specifically to express the English term “Pan-Asianism,”
which previously had had no exact Japanese equivalent. At this stage, as indicated by the critical,
derisory tone of the newspaper articles, these neologisms were used in a derogatory sense.
Yet, little by little, the negative connotations of the term “Asianism” were lost in the aftermath ofWorld War I. The bloodbath in Europe made Japan the dominant power in East Asia and brought
about an upsurge in Japan’s self-confidence. At the same time, it stimulated international
attempts to establish a new world order after the war, an order that would guarantee peace—if
not permanent peace, then at least peace for the foreseeable future. Within these developments,
Japan’s newly found self-confidence resulted in an outpouring of pan-Asian writings during thelast two years of the war. These writings should be seen as a Japanese contribution to the debate
on how a new international order could guarantee peace. But Japanese writers were not alone inarguing for the necessity of regional integration. There were also notably some Chinese
commentators who, while critical of Japanese Pan-Asianism, nonetheless advocated regional
integration on the grounds that only a regional, pan-Asian order would result in the achievementof a permanent peace. When the idea of a League of Nations surfaced during World War I, panAsian writers in Japan reacted by proposing an East Asian League (Tōa renmei) that would
guarantee peace on a regional basis.
By the war’s end, pan-Asianist visions of regional integration had thus come to be accepted, atleast by public opinion and some politicians, as a realistic scenario for future international
relations in East Asia. Certainly, in contrast to the vague professions of pan-Asian unity that had
been the norm up until the beginning of the twentieth century, the ideology of Pan-Asianism hadby 1918 become concrete and well defined. It had gained recognition in public discourse and was
no longer confined to the political fringes. Terms such as Pan-Asianism (Han Ajiashugi), Greater
Asianism (Dai Ajiashugi), All-Asianism (Zen Ajiashugi), and the “Asian Monroe Doctrine” (Ajia
Monrōshugi), largely absent from public discourse until then, now began to appear frequently innewspapers and journals. This proliferation of neologisms reflected a growth of diverse andsophisticated approaches to the issue of Asian solidarity in all its ramifications. The wide rangeof responses can be gleaned from the flood of articles on Pan-Asianism that appeared during andafter the war. While these works indicated the spread and acceptance of the term “Pan-Asianism”
in Japanese discourse, perhaps more important they also defined Asianism in concrete terms anddemanded that Japan act in accordance with pan-Asian principles in international relations.

Japan, China, and Pan-Asianism

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The new popularity of Pan-Asianism in Japanese intellectual discourse and politics received aboost when news of a new immigration law that would bar Japanese from immigration to theUnited States (part of the 1924 Immigration or Johnson-Reed Act) reached Japan. Protests
against the act were held through the length and breadth of Japan, events that in many cases
turned into demonstrations of pan-Asian solidarity.
In this climate of anti-American agitation a number of new associations sprang up whosenames—such as the Federation of East Asian Races (Ajia Minzoku Gikai, founded in 1923) or
the Oriental Co-Existence Society (Tōyō Kyōzonkai)—proclaimed their pan-Asian orientation.
The invigoration of popular interest in Pan-Asianism as a result of America’s exclusionist
policies was also attested to by a slew of articles on the subject in the Japanese press. For
example, the influential journal Nihon oyobi Nihonjin (Japan and the Japanese) brought out aspecial issue on “Greater Asianism” (Dai Ajiashugi) in October 1924, and the Asian Newspaper
Company published a call for the “Foundation of a Greater East Asian Federation”.
Not all pan-Asian slogans and catchphrases—like some of the new associations—survived.
Many enjoyed a brief popularity and then quickly disappeared from public discourse. Someterms, however, resurfaced in later years, often in different contexts. The notion of an “EastAsian League,” for example, exemplified the entrenchment of the term “East Asia” in Japanesepublic discourse around the turn of the century. However, after the wave of anti-American
protests subsided in 1924, “East Asia” receded from public discourse, only to return to themainstream discussion in the late 1930s, in somewhat modified form, as the “East Asian
Cooperative Community” (tōa kyōdōtai or tōyō kyōdōtai). The formation of a “Greater Asian
League” (Dai Ajia rengō) was also proposed in the founding manifesto of the Dai Ajia Kyōkai(Greater Asia Association) in 1933. This manifesto, drafted a year after Japan had left the
League of Nations, insisted that such a league was necessary given the global trend toward theformation of regional blocs.
“All-Asianism” (Zen Ajiashugi), another term for Asianism or Pan-Asianism, was launched byŌkawa Shūmei in the wake of the 1913 Chirol–Mahan debate in articles he contributed to
Tairiku (The Continent). However, the term did not catch on and vanished from public discoursein the early 1920s. In any event, all these terms were used largely interchangeably. Even Ōkawa
on occasion used Han Ajiashugi in the same context as Zen Ajiashugi, and he appears to havemade no distinction between the two.
The term “Kōa” perhaps enjoyed the most remarkable career of any pan-Asian term. Kōa first
appeared in the 1880s, when it was used as the main slogan to express pan-Asian solidarity.
However, it was quickly discarded because it implied Japanese leadership of the pan-Asianmovement. But the term was not forgotten completely, as it reappeared in the 1930s at a time
when Japan was adopting a form of Pan-Asianism in its foreign policy. By then, Japan had begun
to abandon its policy of cooperation with the Anglo-American powers and was openly pursuing astrategy of destroying the political status quo in East Asia. The unity of Asia and, at the sametime, the establishment of Japanese hegemony in East Asia had become Japan’s ultimate
objective. Although no government decrees contained the terms “Asianism” or “Pan-Asianism”
even in the 1930s, the Japanese government demonstrated its commitment to the pan-Asiancause in 1938 by creating the Kōa-in, the Agency for the Development of Asia (sometimes also
known in English as the East Asia Development Board). The Kōa-in was a cabinet-level agency
with the primary task of coordinating political, economic, and cultural activities in regard toSaaler and Szpilman: Pan-Asianism as an Ideal of Asian Identity and Solidarity

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China. While it engaged in research on Chinese affairs and published its findings in the Kōa-in
Chōsa Geppō (Kōa-in Monthly Research Bulletin), some scholars argue that it was also involvedin the recruitment and management of forced labor and even in the opium trade in China. Suchwere the powers of this agency that only formal diplomatic relations with China remained within
the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Kōa-in was integrated into the Ministry ofGreater East Asia (Daitōa-shō) in 1942, which from that time on directed Japan’s political anddiplomatic relations with the members of the newly declared Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity
Sphere.
This official endorsement of what is probably the oldest pan-Asian term caused a veritable boomin the use of Kōa. Newspapers used the term frequently; journals incorporating it in their title—
such as Kōa Kyōiku (Education to Raise Asia) or simply Kōa—were founded, while politicians,
diplomats, and intellectuals discussed the new Kōa policy. These figures included a foreign
minister, and a prime minister who proclaimed the “Raising of Asia” a “holy task”. Under thecircumstances it is no surprise to learn that, in Japanese schools, children were taught from a“Colonial Kōa Textbook”. Newly founded political organizations and a number of politicalconferences held in the late 1930s and early 1940s also were characterized as contributing to thepolicy of “Raising Asia.” In 1941, the Dai Nihon Kōa Dōmei (Greater Japanese League for
Raising Asia) was founded. Its members and advisers included venerable pan-Asianists such as
Tōyama Mitsuru (1855–1944) and Kuzuu Yoshihisa (1874–1958), party politicians well known
for their pan-Asian sympathies such as Nagai Ryūtarō (1881–1944), as well as a large number ofsenior military figures, such as Araki Sadao (1877–1966), Yanagawa Heisuke (1879–1945),
Koiso Kuniaki (1880–1950), Ōi Shigemoto (1863–1951), Hayashi Senjūrō (1876–1943), Honjō
Shigeru (1876–1945), Matsui Iwane (1878–1948), and Abe Nobuyuki (1875–1943). This
impressive lineup, which included two former (Hayashi and Abe) and one future prime minister(Koiso), reflected a growing interest in the potential of Pan-Asianism in military circles. In theatmosphere of social mobilization that thickened as the war escalated, the League became acentral organization, incorporating fifty-three associations and institutions of pan-Asian character
under its umbrella. These included the Tōa Dōbunkai, the Dōjinkai (Comrades’ Society), the Tōa
Renmei Kyōkai (East Asian League Association), the Tōa Kensetsu Kyōkai (Association forConstructing East Asia), the Tōa Kyōkai (East Asia Association), and the Tōyō Kyōkai (Oriental
Association), in addition to think tanks engaged in research on East Asia, such as the Dōmei Tōa
Kenkyūkai (Alliance East Asia Research Association), the Tōa Chōsakai (East Asia Investigation
Association), the Tōa Kenkyūjo (East Asia Research Institute), and the Tōa Chitsujo Kenkyūkai(East Asian Order Research Association).
These wartime efforts to “raise Asia” had also an international dimension. A year before thefounding of the League, a “Raising Asia Welfare Congress” (Kōa kōsei taikai) was held in Osakain October 1940 that was attended by representatives of eleven countries, including Japan’s
Asian and also its two European allies, Germany and Italy. Even today, the name of a Japanese
insurance company, Nippon Kōa Sonpo, which was founded in 1944, reminds us of the former
popularity of this pan-Asian term.
Another term pan-Asianists began to use in the late 1920s was “Kingly Way” (Chinese:
wangdao; Japanese: ōdō). In the 1930s it was used with increasing frequency as a way ofemphasizing the region’s legacy of Confucian values and the significance of Confucianism as apotential basis for the unification of Asians. The “Kingly Way” implied benevolent rule and wasused as a fundamental concept to help legitimize Japan’s construction of the new state ofJapan, China, and Pan-Asianism

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Manchukuo after 1932. Japanese “guidance” of this new, ostensibly independent state—in reality
it was a puppet state—was seen in paternalistic, Confucian terms as the kindly direction andadvice offered to a younger brother (Manchukuo) by his elder brother (Japan). In fact, as is wellknown, under Japan’s “benevolent” guidance Manchukuo became a cornerstone of the Japanese
Empire. It was ruthlessly exploited to provide materiel for the Japanese war effort, and thiseconomic exploitation, carried out under the cloak of paternalistic benevolence, contributed
significantly to the discrediting of pan-Asian ideology—the subject to which we turn next.
Pan-Asianism and the Asians
As we have argued, Pan-Asianism was particularly important in the framework of intellectual
debate and policy formulation in Japan, but other Asians also made an important contribution to
the discussion—comment that was sometimes supportive, sometimes critical. While in China theterm apparently made its debut in the 1910s, in Korea similar terms were used to express similar
sets of ideas a decade or so earlier. At the turn of the century, the term “Easternism”(Tong’yangjuyi) was first found in Korean writings on the subject to describe the idea of close
cooperation between Korea, China, and Japan. Although Koreans were on the whole suspiciousof Pan-Asianism as a concept that served to cloak Japanese attempts to establish their leadershipof East Asia, anxiety over a future “race war” with the West was just as widespread in Korea asin Japan. In fact, one of the first concrete pan-Asian policy proposals was penned by a Korean,
An Chung-gŭn (Ahn Choong Kun, 1879–1910), a member of the anti-Japanese movement in
Korea. In 1910, while imprisoned on death row for assassinating Prince Itō Hirobumi (1841–
1909), Japan’s minister-resident in Korea, he wrote a visionary essay in which he talked of aunited Asia facing the reality of a coming war between the yellow and white races. In order toprepare for this conflict, An advocated a transnational military force and even a single currency
for an East Asian political union. However unrealistic in the climate of the time, An’s vision
testified to the increasing importance of Pan-Asianism in international relations in East Asia.
As official and public support for Pan-Asianism as a tool forestablishing Japanese hegemony in East Asia grew stronger
in Japan, the likelihood of the acceptance of pan-Asian
ideals waned in other Asian countries. This distrust of PanAsianism was particularly pronounced in East Asia, where
the Japanese threat was most palpable. In Korea, forexample, Pan-Asianism was marginalized. Korea was aspecial case because of its geographical proximity to Japan.
Most Korean intellectuals and political activists had been
fairly skeptical about the idea of Asian solidarity even in thenineteenth century, even if some pro-Japanese modernizers,
such as Kim Ok-kyun (1851–1894), had promoted PanAsianism as a useful tool for cooperation with Japan against
the threat posed by imperial Russia. In spite of Koreansuspicions over Japanese ambitions for the Korean
peninsula, many Korean intellectuals, strongly influenced bysocial Darwinism during the final years of the nineteenth
An Chung-gŭn
century, were convinced that for historical reasons the
Koreans—”a backward and thus inferior race”—had nochoice but to form an alliance with China and Japan as a result of Korea’s proximity to its twoSaaler and Szpilman: Pan-Asianism as an Ideal of Asian Identity and Solidarity

23

neighbors. Others, who feared the much-trumpeted Western peril much more than any alleged
racial inferiority, reached the same conclusions.
After Korea became a Japanese protectorate in 1905 and a Japanese colony in 1910, Korean
writers naturally became highly suspicious of their powerful neighbor and advocated resistanceand “self-strengthening” as a way of regaining their independence. Under Japanese rule, theappeal of Pan-Asianism to Koreans was greatly limited. But it was not extinguished completely.
Some Korean pan-Asianists continued to advocate a more or less equal “union of the Korean andJapanese cultures within the context of a broader Asian alliance,” or within “a pan-Asian
community,” until the end of Japanese colonial rule in 1945. Some Koreans who continued toadhere to the ideal of pan-Asian solidarity even interpreted the outbreak of war with the UnitedStates in 1941 (or the “Greater East Asian War,” as it was officially called in the Japanese
Empire) as the beginning of “a real war of races—the Yellow against the White”. For these
Koreans it was clear that Korea, as an Asian nation, had to side (temporarily at least) with Japanin this war of the races, even though Koreans were unhappy with Japanese colonial rule.
Some Chinese intellectuals and activists also continued to adhere to Pan-Asianism in the first
decades of the twentieth century, as is evident from the quotation by Sun Yat-sen discussed
above. However, open criticism of Japanese Pan-Asianism as a tool of Japanese expansionism
was voiced as early as 1907, when the scholar and revolutionary Zhang Taiyan (1868–1936)
described Japan as the “public enemy” (kōteki) of Asia. Zhang gave vent to his conviction thatJapan was an imperialist predator rather than a victim of imperialist oppression to which calls for
Asian solidarity could properly be directed. Zhang also questioned the validity of pan-Asian
discourse in general. Rejecting the simplistic scheme of “oppressed yellow Asians” and “white
oppressors,” he stressed the “double enslavement of the Chinese”—bondage by Westernimperialism and by “foreign,” that is, Manchu, rule. His argument led him to emphasize theurgent need to establish Chinese nationalism as a counterforce to Manchu rule. However, theseviews did not prevent him from forming the Asiatic Humanitarian Brotherhood to promote
cooperation with other Asian peoples.
Another revolutionary leader of modern China, Li Dazhao (1888–1927), also rejected PanAsianism as advocated by its Japanese exponents. In 1919, he harshly criticized Japanese panAsian writings as an expression of Japanese expansionism. However, while rejecting Japanese
forms of Asianism, Li nevertheless conceded that some kind of regional cooperation wasnecessary to counter the threat of Western imperialism and called for the formulation of a “NewAsianism” that presumably would be untainted by Japanese distortions. The tense atmosphere of
pan-Asian conferences organized by Japanese and Chinese groups in Nagasaki in 1926 andShanghai in 1927, however, clearly demonstrated that Chinese hostility to Japanese versions of
Pan-Asianism had undermined any realistic expectation of close Sino–Japanese cooperation in
an atmosphere of true solidarity.
Some Chinese, such as Sun Yat-sen (until his death in 1925) and his confidant Wang Ching-wei(1883–1944), remained hopeful that Pan-Asianism might yet play a constructive role in Asia’s
fight against Anglo-Saxon imperialism, and a group of Chinese pan-Asianists published ajournal, Asiatic Asia, in Shanghai from 1941. However, in the end Japanese efforts to legitimize
its various forms of aggression, including the war against China (1937–1945), as a pan-Asian“holy war” completely discredited the idea of Asian solidarity in China for many years to come.

Japan, China, and Pan-Asianism

24

In India, by contrast, Pan-Asianism left few negative legacies, probably because, unlike Korea
and China, that country had never come under Japanese rule. In India, attempts to secure
Japanese support for the national independence movement had a long tradition and resulted inclose connections with Japan. A number of Indian revolutionaries found asylum there, and someeven used Japan as a base for their pan-Asian activities. Among them was Taraknath Das (1884–
1958), who frequently published in Japan under the pseudonym “An Asian.” In works publishedin Japan and China, Das called on “Asian Youth” to resist the West: “Every Asian youth . . . who
possesses even a tiny bit of the feeling of self-respect should strive to achieve the goal ofassertion of Asia to the fullest sense of its meaning.” Clearly Japan’s invasion of China did
nothing to dampen Das’s hopes for Japan as the liberator of Asia, for as late as 1941 he insisted
that Japan was “the only Eastern Power which can challenge the mighty forces of the West. . . .
People of the East . . . have set their eyes on [Japan] as their possible saviour.” Rash Behari Bose
(1886–1945), who was naturalized as a Japanese subject in 1923, also used his Japanese contacts
to campaign on behalf of Pan-Asianism and Indian independence. He was an influential advocate
of a Japan-centered Pan-Asianism and remained so until his death in 1944. His compatriot
Subhas Chandra Bose (no relation, 1897–1945), who met Hitler in his attempt to marshal support
for Indian independence, also entertained great hopes for Japan as Asia’s savior. He held
meetings with Japanese leaders to encourage their support for his nationalist cause andparticipated in the Assembly of the Greater East Asiatic Nations in 1943.
The celebrated writer and cultural nationalist
Rabindranath Tagore was a longtime friend of
Okakura Tenshin and visited Japan several times
in the 1910s and 1920s. During his first visit,
Tagore condemned Japanese nationalism as an
imitation of Western practices. However, in
1924, when demonstrations against the UnitedStates Asian Exclusion Act erupted in Japan,
Tagore spoke out on a number of occasions inGreater East Asia Conference, 1943. Tojo Hideki favor of pan-Asian unity to audiences of several(center), Subhas Chandra Bose (right), Wang
thousand. Announced at these rallies as “The
Ching-wei (third left), José Laurel (third right)
Pride of the Orient,” Tagore called on his fellow
Asians to “awake, arise, agitate, agitate andagitate against this monstrous and inhuman insult which America has heaped upon us.” He
hoped that the discriminatory U.S. immigration law would “unite the Asiatic races who will
awake from their long sleep and . . . prove invulnerable against the attacks of the White Races”
and motivate them to erect an “Empire of Asia . . . [that would] spring roaring into the arena of
the world’s politics.”

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25

South East Asians became suspicious ofJapanese Pan-Asianism only in the late 1930s—
much later than the Koreans and Chinese. The
main reason for this was, unlike in Korea andChina, the Japanese were not perceived as athreat to a region dominated by the Western
powers. Consequently, Japanese-directed PanAsianism enjoyed great appeal throughout
Southeast Asia. In the Philippines, Japanese panAsianists had already supported the
independence movement under Emilio
Aguinaldo (1869–1964) as early as 1898. In
1915, a Pan-Oriental Society was formed in
Manila. The society was headed by General Jose
Rabindranath Tagore in Japan, 1916
Alejandrino (1870–1951), who had gained his
rank in the struggle against the United States and, after surrendering in 1901, went on to enjoy acareer as a senator. British intelligence reported that “he speaks and writes Japanese and speaks
with the authority of the Japanese Foreign Office.” To the British, the anti-Western position of
the Pan-Oriental Society was clear. At its meetings “speeches are made favoring an ‘Oriental
Monroeism’ headed by Japan.” But it would be wrong to dismiss the society as nothing morethan a front for Japanese propaganda. Alejandrino took a wider interest in Asian affairs andwrote newspaper articles in which he mentioned the Indian Independence Party and evendiscussed the possibility of a free India. And there was some evidence of contacts with other
Asian pro-independence movements. According to the British intelligence report, “an intercepted
letter, written by a Filipino student returned from Tokyo, shows that there might be a danger of aconnection between these Filipino students and disaffected Indians in Japan.” In Malaya, too,some looked to Japan as a liberating force. For example, the nationalist journalist Ibrahim bin
Haji Yaacob (1911–1979) founded, with Japanese support, the pro-Japanese and pan-Malay (ifnot pan-Asian) Kesatuan Melayu Muda (League of Malay Youth). Its members cooperated with
the Japanese forces during the invasion of the Malay Peninsula against the British and continued
to do so throughout the Japanese occupation.
The Japanese occupation of Southeast Asia in the wake of Pearl Harbor and the economic
exploitation of the region that followed called into question the sincerity of pan-Asian rhetoric.
However, even under the Japanese occupation, Pan-Asianism remained an important factor inJapan’s relations with Southeast Asia. The Japanese certainly milked pan-Asian sentiment tohelp mobilize the region’s resources for the war effort. At the same time some Southeast Asians,
such as the contributors to the Greater Asia newspaper in Indonesia embraced the anti-Westerncomponent of pan-Asian rhetoric.
However, relations between Japan and the leaders of independence movements in Southeast Asia
remain a controversial subject in Asian historiography. The position of those Southeast Asians
who supported the Japanese war effort was much more ambivalent than is generally believed.
The Indonesian independence activist Mohammed Hatta (1902–1980) is a case in point. Hatta is
known for his collaboration with the Japanese occupation authorities during the war, but even atthat time he was no Japanese puppet. And even before the war, in the 1930s, he was capable of asober critique of the problems inherent in the Japanese version of Pan-Asianism. This is made

Japan, China, and Pan-Asianism

26

clear by an article that he published in 1934, shortly after returning from a visit to Japan, where
he was wined and dined by members of the Dai Ajia Kyōkai. In the article, pointedly titled“Does Japan Desire to Return to Asia?,” Hatta predicted the failure of Japanese Pan-Asianism
because, in his view, the two conditions necessary to ensure its success—a permanent peace
between Japan and China and the achievement of perfect equality between the Asian nations—
could not be realized in the foreseeable future. Indeed, notwithstanding his enthusiastic reception
in Japan, Hatta regarded Asianism as tainted by fascist tendencies, among which he included
Japan’s ambition to become the leader of Asia.
In western Asia, hopes for Japanese leadership in the struggle against Western imperialism weregrowing, but in the end no significant cooperation between Japan and any western Asian nationmaterialized. Japanese contacts with the Ottoman Empire, official and unofficial, went back to
the late nineteenth century. In the first decades of the twentieth century, pan-Islamic activists
came to Japan, where (among other things) they cooperated with Japanese pan-Asianists infounding the Ajia Gikai discussed here. During World War II, hopes for Japanese support werestrongly expressed throughout the Arab world; they were fueled by the founding of the Greater
Japan Islamic League (Dai Nippon Kaikyō Kyōkai) in Japan in 1938. However, although anumber of influential individuals, including Ōkawa Shūmei and General Hayashi Senjūrō, were
sympathetic to the Arab cause, the failure of the Japanese to advance west of India during thecourse of the war precluded any effective cooperation.
The “Greater East Asian War” and PanAsianism
The use of pan-Asian ideology to legitimize war
and Japanese colonial rule discredited the
movement. As a result, Pan-Asianism came to be
widely identified as an ideology of colonial
rule—specifically, Japan’s colonial rule over
Asian countries and peoples, which, the Japaneserulers insisted, was more “benevolent” thanWestern colonial rule because Japanese werefellow Asians. Yet, as much recent research has
shown, Japanese colonial rule was as oppressive
as that of any European power. Like theEuropean imperialists, the Japanese ruthlessly
Pan-Asian gathering in Tokyo in the late 1930s
exploited the territories they ruled. They
(participants include Tōyama Mitsuru, a central
figure in the Japanese nationalist movement,
mobilized their subject populations for the
GeneralHayashi Senjūrō and Tatar pan-Islamist
Japanese war effort, and, unlike most Western
Abdurreşid Ibrahim)
powers, they made efforts to assimilate thepopulations of at least some of the colonial
territories they controlled. For the populations of Japanese-controlled territories, Japanesecolonial rule was not substantially different from Western colonial rule, even if the Japanese
proclaimed pan-Asian “brotherhood” and professed to save them from the evils of colonial ruleby non-Asians.
Many prominent Asians, however—politicians, diplomats, intellectuals, and writers alike—were
forced to choose sides, particularly after the outbreak of the “Greater East Asian War.” China,

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27

where people were also forced to choose sides, was a special case. For the overwhelming numberof Chinese “the war” meant not an “Asian” war of liberation against “the West” but a war
against Japanese aggression in which Western countries including the United States and Britain
were allies. The war in China had started much earlier than in the rest of Asia: it had broken out
in 1931 in northeastern China (Manchuria), spreading to the rest of China by 1937. The different
terms to name the conflict that were used by the opposing sides are instructive. While theJapanese term “Greater East Asian War,” used for the war against the United States and Britain
from December 1941, implied some pan-Asian notion of liberation of the whole region, theChinese term rejected the notion that this was a racial war and had anything to do with pan-Asian
ideals. It was—and still is—simply the “War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression” (kangri
zhanzheng).
The Japanese government made concerted efforts to stress the pan-Asian character of the war.
Numerous government statements during the war emphasized the pan-Asian character of theconflict. However, it should be noted that it was only several months after the outbreak ofhostilities that the Japanese government officially included the “liberation of Asia from Westernimperialism” in its list of war objectives. Pan-Asian propaganda intensified as the war continued.
In 1942, the Ministry of Greater East Asia was founded in order to coordinate and strengthen
intra-Asian cooperation. This move was intended primarily to underline the rhetoric of panAsian liberation—but, at this point in the war, “strengthened cooperation” meant, above all, themobilization of resources for Japan’s war effort. The worse the military situation became forJapan, the more the Japanese government tended to draw on pan-Asian rhetoric. In this context,
the declaration of the “Assembly of the Greater East Asiatic Nations” issued in 1943 sounds likea last, desperate appeal for pan-Asian unity.
At that time even a liberal intellectual like
Hasegawa Nyozekan (1875–1969), seemingly
oblivious to the looming disaster ahead, was stillinsisting that the “Greater East Asian War” must
be the starting point for the establishment of “aunited cultural sphere [by] the races of East
Asia.” In similar vein, Nishida Kitarō (1870–
1945), one of Japan’s leading philosophers, in1943 characterized the war as a holy, pan-Asianstruggle to liberate and unify Asia:

The Assembly of the Greater East Asiatic Nations,
1943, with Japanese Prime Minister General Tōjō
Hideki in the center and representatives from
China, Manchukuo, Thailand, India, the Philippines
and Burma.

The Great East Asian War is a sacredwar, because it is the culmination of thehistorical progress of Asia. … The task of
the liberated peoples is now to win the war and establish the Great East Asia CoProsperity Sphere, in co-operation with the Germans, Italians, and other peoples in
Europe, who are engaged in a heroic struggle to create a new order in Europe. … Japan’s
victory will save Asia and will offer a new hope for mankind.
So, even though schemes for pan-Asian unity became more and more unrealistic as the fortunes
of war turned against Japan, the official espousal of Pan-Asianism by the Japanese government
and military resulted in a further wave of publications on Asian solidarity and brotherhood.

Japan, China, and Pan-Asianism

28

Pan-Asian Solidarity and the Legacies of Pan-Asianism in the Postwar Period
Japan’s surrender and the advent of the Cold War resulted in the disappearance of pan-Asian
ideals from the international relations arena. Japanese proponents of Pan-Asianism were purged
from office, and pan-Asian associations were disbanded by the occupation authorities. PanAsianism no longer figured in debates on foreign relations, in Japan or elsewhere. Clearly, there
was no room for pan-Asian schemes in the new bipolar world order. This situation did notchange even after the estrangement between China and the Soviet Union in the 1950s because
Japan, once again an important Asian nation, was now closely allied to the United States andthus in effect part of “the West.” In the 1960s, however, the emergence of the nonaligned
movement (NAM) led to the resurgence of pan-Asian ideals. The NAM was founded in 1961
under the leadership of India’s Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964), President Gamal
Abdul Nasser (1918–1970) of Egypt, and Yugoslav President Josip Tito (1892–1980). However,Asian and African countries played the central role in the activities of the movement, which had
its roots in the 1955 Bandung Conference. The Bandung Conference and the NAM assumed afirmly anti-imperialist stance and objected strongly to the domination of international relations
by the United States, just as the pan-Asian movement before 1945 had opposed (and evenfought) Anglo-American world hegemony.
Although Japan did not play a leading role in these developments, in Japan the sense of a panAsian “mission” was preserved in other forms. After the devastation wrought by the war hadnullified the achievements of the prewar era and, as some suggested, turned Japan into an
agricultural economy, intellectuals like Shimizu Ikutarō (1907–1988) felt impelled to proclaimthat “now, once again, the Japanese are Asians”. Pan-Asian themes also survived in leftist
critiques of Western modernity and in the related claims that Japan must side with the oppressednations of Asia in their resistance to the continuing Western imperialist domination of the nonEuropean world. Variations on the pan-Asian theme have continued to inform ideas of solidarity,
both in left-wing circles and among those who became ultranationalists after giving up hope in
the possibilities of socialism, such as the writer Hayashi Fusao (1903–75).
However, postwar Pan-Asianism was tainted by its association with Japanese imperialism andaggression. Indeed it became synonymous with it. For the most prominent political scientist of
the postwar period, Maruyama Masao (1914–1996), Pan-Asianism, together with “familism”(kazokushugi) and “agrarianism” (nōhonshugi), was one of the three fundamental components ofJapanese ultranationalism. Perhaps because of this association, there was no serious scholarly
attempt to deal with Pan-Asianism as a subject of historical inquiry in the 1950s and the 1960s.
One scarcely need mention that in Korea and China Pan-Asianism was completely discredited as
an ideology of collaboration with the enemy and the colonizers. This was the direct consequenceof the use of pan-Asian rhetoric to justify Japanese colonial rule in Korea, and (in wartime
China) to justify Japanese aggression and legitimize the Nanjing puppet government. There aresigns, however, that this situation is changing, as indicated by recent efforts by high-level
Chinese diplomats to present Pan-Asianism in a more positive light.
In Japan, the first serious attempt to grapple with the thorny question of the legacy of Asianism
was made by the Sinologist and literary critic Takeuchi Yoshimi. Takeuchi, who in his youth had
enthusiastically embraced pan-Asian ideals, had his beliefs shaken by Japan’s defeat. Yet
although some aspects of Takeuchi’s faith were undermined, he had no doubt that there werepositive features that were worth preserving. Pan-Asianism, he never ceased to believe, wasSaaler and Szpilman: Pan-Asianism as an Ideal of Asian Identity and Solidarity

29

much more than mere window dressing for Japan’s Greater Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. In
Takeuchi’s view, there was a core of pan-Asian ideals that retained validity and therefore needed
to be remembered and even cherished. Interestingly, Takeuchi regarded Japan’s aggression in
China not as a consequence of Pan-Asianism but rather as Japan’s “shedding” of Asia (datsu-A),
a concept that emerged in the 1880s and became highly influential as the antithesis to PanAsianism throughout the course of modern Japanese history. From this perspective, Japan’s
aggression was in effect an application of inauthentic (and therefore culpable) Western methods
to Asia and thus had nothing to do with the “Eastern spirit” or Eastern cultural practices orpolitical norms. It was a natural, if deplorable, consequence of the westernization of Japan. This
misguided attempt by Japan to depart from pan-Asian principles was corrected, to some extent atleast, by the war Japan waged from December 1941 on the colonial powers of the United States,
Britain, and the Netherlands. It was little wonder that Takeuchi welcomed this war
enthusiastically. Takeuchi is difficult to locate on the ideological spectrum. Although he would
not classify himself as a rightist, his attempts to restore legitimacy to the discredited term PanAsianism were unusual. Those on the left preferred to talk of Asian solidarity, brotherhood, or
cooperation, which often overlapped with socialist or communist forms of international
solidarity, or the solidarity of the nonaligned movement. For the Japanese left, the term “PanAsianism” was (and perhaps still is) practically synonymous with Japanese colonialism andaggression.
Yet, whether or not they eschewed the term itself, in postwar Japan the left incorporated panAsian elements into its own views. And the continuity between prewar pan-Asian rightists andpostwar left-wing circles should not be overlooked in this context. This (at first sight) surprisingcontinuity has only rarely been discussed in previous research. The prewar flirtation withnational socialism and Japanism by socialists like Asanuma Inejirō (1898–1960) is well known.
It is less widely known, however, that Marquis Tokugawa Yoshichika (1886–1976), one of the
major sponsors of the rightist movement in the prewar period and a close friend of pan-Asianists
such as Ōkawa Shūmei, became a benefactor of the newly founded Socialist Party of Japan after
the war. It appears that Tokugawa’s support for the Socialist Party was motivated to some extent,
at least, by pan-Asian motives. These motives were also apparent in an extraordinary statementby Tokugawa’s erstwhile comrade in the rightist movement, Ōkawa, who in 1949 detected a“close resemblance between today’s communists and the early Muslims” and wished for “asecond battle of Tours-Poitiers” to be fought between the communists and the West, which thistime would result in victory for the communists (i.e., Asia).
Another right-wing Pan-Asianist, Tsukui Tatsuo (1901–1989), well known in the postwar period
as an “ultranationalist historian,” is known to have lavished praise on communist China. In the
mid-1950s, a U.S. counterintelligence report accused Tsukui of bringing a large sum of moneyfrom mainland China, funds that were eventually given to the National Diet member and former
army colonel, Tsuji Masanobu (1902–1961?), “for safe keeping.”
It should be noted that, like Tsukui, the recipient of this unspecified largesse, Colonel Tsuji, who
had achieved notoriety during the war, made no secret of his pan-Asian sympathies in the
postwar period. According to Tsuji, on matters of regional solidarity ideological differences wereless important than blood ties. At a gathering of former generals on 20 November 1954, Tsuji isreported as arguing that Japan should work with India to achieve neutrality and with communist
China to maintain peace. Noting his friendship with Chinese Communist Party officials such as
Zhou Enlai (1898–1976), he explained that, communist or not, “[a]fter all, they’re Asians.” AnJapan, China, and Pan-Asianism

30

American intelligence analyst concluded, “Tsuji, head of the neutralist Self-Defense League (Jiei
Dōmei), has long been a vigorous exponent of ‘the Asia for Asiatics,’ doctrine of the late
Ishihara Kanji. Like right wing critic Tsukui Tatsuo, who also returned from Communist China,
Tsuji considers the ties that bind Asians together stronger than those between Communist China
and the USSR”. A Japanese biographer of Tsuji agreed that he was “harsh on the Soviet Unionand soft on communist China.” For members of the Japanese left, Tsuji, as an army colonel
blamed for a number of wartime atrocities, was beyond the pale. However, they would no doubt
agree with his support for the downtrodden peoples of Asia.
Leftists might find the case of the politician and parliamentarian Utsunomiya Tokuma (1906–
2000) even more ambiguous. The son of General Utsunomiya Tarō (1861–1922), commander of
the Japanese army in colonial Korea, Utsunomiya was one of the founding members of the
Liberal Democratic Party in 1955 but cannot be categorized simply as a conservative politician.
In the 1980s Utsunomiya emerged as a stern critic of the party he had helped to found but nolonger supported, and, on a number of occasions, he appeared to be closely allied with theSocialist Party. He was a fervent proponent of disarmament and ran successfully in elections
against the retired Self-Defense Forces general, Kurisu Hiroomi (1920–2004), an advocate ofrearmament. In the 1960s Utsunomiya had been a prominent supporter of Algeria’s struggle forindependence. He went out of his way to support all expressions of “Asian and African
nationalism” and never hid his pan-Asianist sympathies. It could be argued that Utsunomiya’s
pro-Asian attitudes were inseparable from his anti-Western and, more specifically, antiAmerican, sentiments.
This same set of attitudes has characterized many on the left, one of whose major criticisms of
the Japanese government is its pro-American, pro-Western stance. Most left-wing commentators
would never admit to entertaining pan-Asian sentiments, for, as we have seen, in their view PanAsianism was irredeemably besmirched by Japan’s wartime aggression. But whether theyrecognize it or not, the political left in Japan is heir to the pan-Asian tradition. This is abundantly
clear both from the activities of the Japanese pacifist movement in general and the movement
against the Vietnam War (organized by the Citizens’ League for Peace in Vietnam; Japanese:
Betonamu ni Heiwa o! Shimin Rengō, Beheiren) in particular. Numerous statements by membersof these movements condemning American imperialism and American aggression have been
issued over the years and continue today.
The pan-Asian undertones of these criticisms are generally revealed in their appeals to Asian
brotherhood and Asian solidarity. This tendency is also seen in gestures made by prominent leftwing politicians such as Doi Takako (1928–), the one-time leader of the Japan Socialist Party; instatements by activists such as Dr. Nakamura Tetsu (1946–), who has devoted his life to thecause of helping the needy and sick in Afghanistan; and in lawsuits challenging Japaneselogistical assistance to U.S. military activities in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere. Most recently,
in a remarkable example of this tendency to pan-Asian solidarity, in late 2009 the Japanesecabinet, led by Hatoyama Yukio (1947–), the leader of the Democratic Party of Japan incoalition with the Social Democratic Party, halted Japanese military support for American-led
operations in Afghanistan and recalled the Maritime Self-Defense Forces from the Indian Ocean.
Recent Developments
As stated at the outset, issues of regionalism and regional integration in East Asia have received
considerable attention since the 1990s. In Korea, for example, pan-Asian unity is identified as a

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promising path to avoid domination not only by Japan but also by China. In 2002, for example,
former South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun (1946–2009) declared that “the age of Northeast
Asia is arriving.” At the same time, regional approaches in East Asia, especially since thebeginning of the present century, have been an expression of increasing discontent with
American-led globalization and a developing unilateral world system. In South Korea, panAsianist regionalism is thus “seen as an attractive alternative to Korea’s dependence on
America.” South Korean and Japanese interests seem to have converged in these respects. In
Japan, from as early as the 1980s, a “New Asianism” has begun to resurface, partly as anoffshoot of the so-called Asian values debate of the 1980s, a discussion initiated by Malaysia’s
Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad (1925–) and the prime minister of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew(1923–), supported by the xenophobic populist politician, writer and governor of Tokyo Ishihara
Shintarō (1932–). Despite his frequent “Asian-bashing” outbursts, Ishihara is also known for his
advocacy of pan-Asian views—which, essentially, are an expression of his strong antiAmericanism.
In the 1980s these politicians—and others like them—advocated a set of common “Asianvalues” (always vaguely defined), based on Confucian virtues, as a counter to the universalist
claims of liberalism, democracy, and human rights, values that were dismissed as alien to theregion and inauthentic for Asians on account of their allegedly Western provenance. However,many Asian politicians and writers, such as the future president of South Korea, Kim Dae-jung(1925–2009), strongly rejected the idea of a common set of “Asian” values, and the debate has
made little headway since. Recent work by Chinese scholars suggests an attempt to find somekernel of truth in the legacy of Pan-Asianism with the objective of criticizing “Western” (i.e.,
United States) policies or the West’s claim to the universality of democratic values. The recent
trend in Chinese academia to deal more openly with the once completely discredited ideology of
Pan-Asianism, in combination with statements by high-ranking diplomats acknowledging thepotential of the region’s pan-Asian legacy, arguably reflects a change in attitudes in China.
In Japan, the rise of a “New Asianism” has reflected diplomatic and economic efforts tostimulate regionalist approaches. These efforts were, however, always placed under strain by thestrong priority given by the Japanese government to the US-Japan Security Treaty. Nonetheless,Japan, as a recent study notes, “has been a driving force of Asian regionalism throughout the
post-war period,” particularly in the economic sphere. Notable in this regard was Japan’s
involvement in the founding of the Asian Development Fund in 1957 and the proposal for an
Asian Monetary Fund in 1997. In addition, Japan has also been relatively active in the
ASEAN+3 cooperative network, involving the ASEAN nations plus China, Japan, and South
Korea. But as the acronym indicates, the driving force of this new body is ASEAN—the only
effective organization working for regional integration in Asia, which has brought a considerable
degree of stability and economic growth to Southeast Asia. Japan also has been rather passive
and reactive with regard to the development of a Free Trade Agreement network in East Asia,
and, given its continuing dependence on the security treaty with the United States, it remains
questionable whether Japan can play a leading role in the integration of the region in theimmediate future—notwithstanding the outspoken advocacy of Pan-Asianism by some leading
politicians.
Nor should one forget the historical legacies of World War II and of Pan-Asianism as an
ideology. As late as the 1990s, partly because of the difficulties Japan experienced in coming toterms with its past, writers in Asia as well as in the West warned that Japanese regionalist

Japan, China, and Pan-Asianism

32

initiatives could be interpreted as a resurgence of claims for Japan’s leadership in East Asia, withthe objective of creating “a new version of the Greater East-Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere of WorldWar II.” In recent years, the issue of historical memory has become less contentious in Japan, but
persistent elements of “retrospective Pan-Asianism”—the rehabilitation of wartime pan-Asianrhetoric to whitewash Japan’s wars of aggression and colonial rule in Asia—continue to hinderattempts to promote regional integration.
On the academic level, however, considerable progress has been made over the past two decades,
as witnessed by drafts for an “Asian Constitution,” proposals for an East Asian Common Houseand a myriad of academic conferences dealing with (and not infrequently advocating) regional
integration. This suggests that attention to the historical legacies of Pan-Asianism and theidentification of positive examples of pan-Asian solidarity and regional integration in the past
will play an increasingly significant role in the years to come.
Recurrent Pan-Asian Themes
Pan-Asian styles of thought have always come most to the fore in debates on foreign policy andon Asian identity. If the many varieties of Pan-Asianism had anything in common, it was theiropposition to the West: opposition to the West’s presence in Asia (i.e., Western imperialism),
opposition to Western culture and values, and, conversely, an emphasis on the importance (andin many cases, the superiority) of Asian culture and Asian values. In fact, it could be argued thatanti-Westernism was central to Pan-Asianism. In opposition to the “West”—which was, to alarge degree, an invented concept—pan-Asian writers constructed their own “Asia.” Images ofthis constructed Asia varied greatly. They changed over time and took particular forms in
different places and in the works of different authors. But all pan-Asianists assumed theexistence of “one Asia” and based this assumption on one or more of the following categories:• Geography (Asia, East Asia, the Orient)• Cultural unity (influence of Indian and Chinese civilization, religions)• Historical interconnectedness (Sinocentric system, tribute relations, trade networks)• Racial kinship (the yellow race, races of color)• The unity of Asian civilization in terms of its values and spiritual character(Confucianism, justice and benevolence vs. Western materialism and rationalism)• A common destiny (the fight against Western imperialism and colonial rule)
Nevertheless, there was never a consensus on the geographical definition of Asia and that panAsian writers constantly revised their definitions of “Asia,” blurring geographical exactitudewith interpretations that allowed them to extend their definition of Asia even to some Europeanand African nations.
The perception and creation of cultural unity, brought to an extreme of simplification in theslogan “Asia is one,” also remains an important theme of pan-Asian writers over the past one anda half centuries—and down to the present day. In 2010, an Internet search (google.com) of theterm generates a large number of hits. Although it is clear that any particular assertion of what
constitutes cultural commonalities (or differences) is highly arbitrary and subjective, it isimportant to acknowledge that such a particularized insistence on the existence of commonalities
has played an important role in the construction of Pan-Asianism, as the texts reproduced in thiscollection show.

Saaler and Szpilman: Pan-Asianism as an Ideal of Asian Identity and Solidarity

33

Recent research has stressed the importance of historical interconnectedness as an authentic
foundation for forces encouraging the development of regional integration. The notion of a world
system that connected the various states of East and Southeast Asia for centuries, before theimposition of Western-based international law, had sufficient cogency to bind indigenous forces
against the threat of external domination. In recent years, these approaches have once again been
attracting attention as a reaction to the emergence of a unipolar world order.
Enough has already been said about the incorporation of the Western ideas of race into panAsianist rhetoric. References to “racial kinship” were frequent, as the documents in thiscollection make clear. However, the Western provenance of the concept of race made it highly
questionable that such an ideology could serve as the basis for a regional identity—not least
since a Pan-Asianism based on racial motives limited “Asia” to East Asia and tended to exclude
India, western Asia, and other areas. Further, the ideal of racial equality and the reality of racial
discrimination within Asia eventually thoroughly discredited the racial component within PanAsianism, particularly in Korea (after 1910) and other territories under Japanese colonial rule.
The complex notion of Asian values—Asian “spirituality” versus the “materialism” of Western
civilization—is also highly contested and riddled with contradictions. As we have already notedin the discussion of geographical definitions, the “Asia” of the pan-Asianists sometimes included
territories that are generally classified as “Western” countries, such as Germany, Italy, or even
Ireland. The 1920s saw a wave of sympathy for the cause of Irish independence in Asianpublications, and in the 1930s, Japan allied itself with Germany and Italy—ostensibly sinceGermany and Italy had chosen to join the fight against “Western” materialism, now limited to
Anglo-Saxon civilization.
Notwithstanding the various contradictions generated by any definition of Asia or the West, panAsianists have generally regarded “the West” as the alien Other. Time and again, as thiscollection shows, for pan-Asianists Asia represents the antithesis of the West. Indeed, thesewriters regularly define Asia in terms of the West. This is true of such diverse figures as Okakura
Tenshin, Ōkawa Shūmei and, in the postwar period, Takeuchi Yoshimi, Ishihara Shintarō, andNakamura Tetsu. The corollary to this vision of the West as the Other is the assumption that
there exists a coherent set of Asian values and that these values, ex definitione shared by all
Asians, are superior to Western values. This idea is often linked to an emphasis on the antiquityof Asian culture, which is often presented by pan-Asianists as the cradle of civilization, including
European civilization. In this connection, much has been made of the fact that all major religionsof the world, including Christianity, originated in what is geographically considered Asia. On
these grounds, it is often argued that only “Asian” civilization has the potential to ultimately savemankind, including the West. In the words of Tagore, “If Asian civilization constituted a great
reservoir of spiritual power, and if modern civilization was about to destroy humanity itself, thenit must be from a regenerated Asia that man’s salvation would come.” Tagore was an outspoken
critic of nationalism in at least some of his writings. There is no doubt that the kind of PanAsianism to which he subscribed was “a vision of community that sought to transcend theterritorial nation-state and redeem and regenerate the world through Eastern spiritual morality.”
Yet, for all this cultural tension, the material advantages of the West and of modernity in generalbecame obvious to most Asians, except for a very small number of reactionary obscurantists.
Western-style modernity was an indispensible condition for success in the nineteenth-century
world. For that reason, along with the majority of Asians, most pan-Asianists never rejectedJapan, China, and Pan-Asianism

34

modernity as such. Many ancient Asian customs and practices were patently useless oranachronistic in the modern world, and, under the circumstances, the chief problem that had tobe overcome was the antiquated structure of state and society. But was everything distinctive
about the East to be denied? Initially there was a tendency to discard the whole culture, lock,
stock, and barrel. In an excess of modernizing enthusiasm, some Japanese even wanted to giveup their native tongue in favor of English. Needless to say, such proposals were at best
impractical. But were there aspects of Eastern tradition still of relevance in this Westerndominated world? Above all in the realms of ethics, morals, and philosophical and religious
thought, convincing arguments could be made for the relevance, if not the superiority, of Eastern
traditions—arguments that the reader will encounter time and again throughout this collection.
While the meaning—and even the existence—of “Asian values” remains debatable, the notion ofcommonly held Asian values and a common culture and racial identity, which together constitutethe basis of Pan-Asianism, is closely related to the sentiment of a “common destiny” for Asianpeoples. This latter notion represents another recurrent theme in Pan-Asianism—one that perhaps
retains much of its appeal even today, if recent statements by Asian governments (e.g., theinitiative of former Japanese Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio to prioritize East Asian
community) or declarations by transnational organizations such as ASEAN, are anything to go
by. It is impossible to gauge whether such sentiments will contribute to the realization of closer
transnational cooperation or even regional integration in the future. To be sure, obstacles toregional cooperation in East Asia remain numerous. They include not only strong expressions ofnationalism and the negative legacies of World War II but also the geography and demographicsof Asia. Unlike in the case of European countries, the “Other,” or the “enemy,” for many smaller
Asian nations is to be found within Asia, not somewhere outside. While Asia will certainly neverbe “one,” we may anticipate continued progress in the areas of regional cooperation andintegration, developments that can contribute to the stability and the prosperity of the region.
Sven Saaler is Associate Professor of Modern Japanese History at Sophia University. He wasformerly Head of the Humanities Section of the German Institute for Japanese Studies (DIJ) and
Associate Professor at The University of Tokyo. His book Politics, Memory and Public Opinion
examines recent history debates in Japan. Together with J. Victor Koschmann, he edited PanAsianism in Modern Japanese History, with Wolfgang Schwentker The Power of Memory inModern Japan and with Christopher W. A. Szpilman Pan-Asianism: A Documentary History(Rowman & Littlefield, 2011).
Christopher W. A. Szpilman is professor of modern Japanese history and international relations
at Kyushu Sangyo University. He is co-editor of Kita Ikki’s Kokutairon oyobi junseishakaishugi(On National Polity and Pure Socialism), Mitsukawa Kametarô nikki (Mitsukawa Kametaro
Diaries, Ronsôsha 2011) and Pan-Asianism: a Documentary History.

Krebs: World War Zero?

35“World War Zero? New Literature on the Russo-Japanese War 1904/05”
Gerhard Krebs
May 21, 2012
http://japanfocus.org/-Gerhard-Krebs/3755
Japan had the predominant role in creating the discourse of Pan-Asianism because it
won the Russo-Japanese War. Gerhard Krebs’s “World War Zero? New Literature on the
Russo-Japanese War 1904/05” surveys some of the recent work on that war and the impact
of Japan’s victory around the world. It captured global attention as a racial war, since it
was the first time an Asian nation had defeated a white nation. The greatest impact was in
China and Korea, but Japan’s success also influenced Pan-Islamic thought and the“Japanizers” of Ethiopia.
Although the Sino-Japanese war of 1894-5 had radically changed the relationshipbetween Japan and China, it was the Russo-Japanese war that lifted Japan out of the mass ofAsian nations and into the status of a world power. Victory in this war first gave Japan achance to speak as the voice of Asia to the Western powers. This achievement encouraged
many in China and elsewhere in Asia to model their national reconstruction efforts on
Japan. In Southeast Asia colonial subjects of the European empires hoped that Japan would
help them gain independence. Although these hopes would not be dashed immediately,some people became aware of the contradictions between Pan-Asianism and the growing
Japanese empire very early. Chinese intellectual Zhang Taiyan (who had famously said thatthe relationship between Japan and China should be as close as “lips and teeth”) became
convinced that Japanese Pan-Asianism was not leading to what he desired, an “Asian
Humanitarian Brotherhood,” but to Japanese imperial domination. By 1907 he wasdenouncing Japan as the “public enemy” of Asia.

Japan, China, and Pan-Asianism

36

World War Zero? New Literature on the Russo-Japanese War 1904/05
Gerhard Krebs
On the occasion of its Centennial the Russo-Japanese War has found great attention among
historians who organized many symposiums and published their studies, many of them based on
conference papers. Some of the publications will be introduced in this review article.1
The Russo-Japanese War, 1904-5: a Collection of Eight Volumes. Compiled & Introduced by Ian
NISH. Folkstone: Global Oriental 2003.
Rotem KOWNER, Historical Dictionary of the Russo-Japanese War. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow
Press 2006. pp. LIII, 567 (henceforth: Kowner/Dictionary).
Josef KREINER, Ed., Der Russisch-Japanische Krieg (1904/05). Bonn: Bonn University Press
2005. pp. 186 (henceforth: Kreiner).
John W. STEINBERG, Bruce M. MENNING, David SCHIMMELPENNINCK VAN DER OYE, DavidWOLFF and YOKOTE Shinji, Eds., The Russo-Japanese War in Global Perspective: World War
Zero. Bd,1, Leiden: Brill 2005. pp. XXIII, 671 (History of Warfare, Vol. 29), (henceforth:
Steinberg).
David WOLFF, Steven B. MARKS, Bruce W. MENNING, David SCHIMMELPENNINCK VAN DER
OYE, John W. STEINBERG and YOKOTE Shinji, Eds., The Russo-Japanese War in Global
Perspective: World War Zero. Vol. 2, Ibid. 2007. pp. XV, 583 (History of Warfare, Vol. 40),
(henceforth: Wolff).
Maik Hendrik SPROTTE, Wolfgang SEIFERT and Heinz-Dietrich LÖWE, Ed., Der RussischJapanische Krieg 1904/ 05. Anbruch einer neuen Zeit? Wiesbaden, Harassowitz Verlag 2007.
pp. XI, 302 (henceforth: Sprotte).
Rotem KOWNER, Ed., The Impact of the Russo-Japanese War. London and New York: Routledge
2007. pp. XIX, 348 (Routledge Studies in the Modern History of Asia, Vol. 43). (henceforth:
Kowner/Impact).
Ibid., Ed., Rethinking the Russo-Japanese War, 1904-05. Vol. I : Centennial Perspectives.
Folkstone: Global Oriental 2007. pp. XXVIII, 512 (henceforth: Kowner/Rethinking).
John CHAPMAN and INABA Chiharu, Eds., Rethinking the Russo-Japanese War, 1904-05. Vol. II:
The Nichinan Papers. Folkestone: Global Oriental Ltd 2007. pp. XXXV, 348 (henceforth:
Chapman/Inaba).
Cemil AYDIN, The Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia: Visions of World Order in Pan-Islamicand Pan-Asian Thought. New York: Columbia University Press 2007. pp. VII, 299 (henceforth:
Aydin, Politics).
Cemil AYDIN, “A Global Anti-Western Moment? The Russo-Japanese War, Decolonization andAsian Modernity”, Sebastian Conrad and Dominic Sachsenmaier, Eds., Competing Views ofWorld Order: Global Moments and Movements, 1880s-1930s. New York: Palgrave Macmillan
2007, pp. 213-36 (henceforth: Aydin, Global).

Krebs: World War Zero?

37

HIRAMA Yōichi, Nichi-Ro sensō ga kaeta sekaishi. “Samurai” Nihon no isseiki [The WorldHistory, Changed by the Russo-Japanese War. One Century of the “Samurai”-Nation Japan].
Tōkyō: Fuyō Shobō 2004. pp. 299.
GUNJISHIGAKKAI hen [Study Society for Military History, Ed.], Nichi-Ro sensō [The RussoJapanese War], Vol. I: Kokusaiteki bunmyaku [The international Context]. Tōkyō: Kinseisha
2004 (also Vol. 40, 2/3, = Nos. 158/159 of the Journal Gunjishigaku). pp. 347. (henceforth:
Gunjishigakkai I).
Ibid., Vol. II: Tatakai no shisō to isan [Comprehensive Aspects and the Heritage of the Fight].
Ibid. 2005 (= Gunjishigaku Vol. 41, 1/2, = Nos. 161/162). pp. 339. (henceforth: Gunjishigakkai
II).
NICHI-RO SENSŌ KENKYŪKAI hen [Research Society on the Russo-Japanese War, Ed.], Nichi-Rosensō no shin-shiten [New Aspects of the Russo-Japanese War]. Yokohama: Seibunsha 2005. pp.
541. (henceforth: Nichi-Ro sensō).
Alex MARSHALL, The Russian General Staff and Asia, 1800-1917. London and New York:
Routledge 2006. pp. XII, 274 (Routledge Studies in the History of Russia and Eastern Europe, 4)(henceforth: Marshall, Staff).
Felix PATRIKEEFF and Harold SHUKMAN, Railways and the Russo-Japanese War: Transporting
War. London and New York: Routledge 2007 (henceforth: Patrikeeff/Shukman).
Martin AUST and Ludwig Steindorff, Eds., Russland 1905. Perspektiven auf die erste Russische
Revolution. Frankfurt/M.: Peter Lang 2007 (henceforth: Aust/Steindorff).
Renée WORRINGER, Ed., The Islamic Middle East and Japan: Perceptions, Aspirations, and the
Birth of Intra-Asia Modernity. Princeton: NJ, Markus Wiener 2007 (= Princeton Papers:
Interdisciplinary Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 14, 2007) (henceforth: Worringer).
SHIMAZU Naoko, Japanese Society at War: Death, Memory and the Russo-Japanese War.
Cambridge University Press 2009. pp. XV, 335.
Steven ERICSON and Allen HOCKLEY, Eds., The Treaty of Portsmouth and its Legacies. Hanover,
New Hampshire: Dartmouth College Press 2008. pp. VII, 249 (henceforth: Ericson/Hockley).
MATSUMURA Masayoshi, Baron Kaneko and the Russo-Japanese War, 1904-5: A Study in the
Publbic Diplomacy of Japan. Morrisville, North Carolina: Lulu Press 2009. XVI, 518 S.
Turning-point of epochs and historiography
In the beginning of the Russo-Japanese War nobody outside Japan had expected a Russian defeat
but rather saw the national existence of the Tennō’s empire endangered. The result of the war,
however, was immediately seen as a turning-point in world history since for the first time an
Asian nation had defeated a European great power so that global events hence were notexclusively determined by the occident. Rather Japan became an important actor in worldpolitics. Due to the impact of the outcome of the war which was not restricted to the two
warfaring nations but obtained a global character and led to a new constellation of powers andtherefore became a prelude for the next conflict, World War I, Steinberg and Wolff are using intheir co-edited volumes the expression “World War Zero”. Similar is the conclusion that the
Russo-Japanese War was a forerunner of the trench and fortification warfare at the western front

Japan, China, and Pan-Asianism

38

1914-18 (K. Hildebrand in Kreiner) and the sacrifice of mass armies in offensive as well as indefensive warfare (J. W. Steinberg et al. in Steinberg pp. xix-xxi): Port Arthur as a test groundfor Verdun. Likewise the Russian revolution of 1905 appears to anticipate the October
Revolution of 1917 (J. W. Steinberg et al. in Steinberg pp. xix-xxi)—and the end of monarchies
in the defeated nations Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey in 1918 as can be added. In asimilar way Japanese authors are using titles like “The Russo-Japanese War as World History”2
or “The Century of the Russo-Japanese War” 3 which had been followed by a chain reaction.
Shillony/Kowner in Kowner Rethinking (p. 4) und Kowner in Chapman/Inaba, too, areinterpreting the conflict of 1904/05 as a path to World War I since it changed the balance ofpower in Europe by leading to the Entente and finally the Triple-Entente thereby isolating
Germany and leading to a great-style armament race. In contrast to later wars, however, nofurther countries were drawn into the Russo-Japanese conflict which did not assume thecharacter of total war as R. Kowner in Kowner/ Impact (p. 4) stresses.
J. W. Steinberg et al. (in Steinberg pp. xix-xxi) also come to the conclusion that global conflicts
did not start in 1914 but with the Russo-Japanese War which was fought on foreign territory,financed to a large extend by foreign money and for which other countries had delivered most of
the war ships and weapons. Peace was also concluded on foreign territory. Furthermore, despite
several declarations of neutrality the different alliance systems made themselves felt and the war
stirred up national passions in colonial territories and among the population under Russian rule in
East Europe.
Influential strategists in almost all countries, above all those of the great contracting nations of1914, Germany and France, drew grave and probably wrong conclusions from the RussoJapanese War: That the mass attack particularly by infantry regardless of own losses was the key
to military success and therefore was commendable even against a superior enemy - to use acontemporary expression: To use human bullets (jap.: nikudan)—though the defensive
operations of the Boers against the British some years before had doubted such conviction.4
Even the antiquated bayonet was celebrated as decisive weapon in trench fighting, while thedisastrous effects of machine guns and modern artillery in the hands of the defenders did not findsufficient attention.
Not enough attention attracted the fact that neither party had been able to defeat the enemy
completely but both were bled out, were economically exhausted and had to carry high social
costs so that they had to conclude a compromise peace. Therefore, in the judgement of many
historians,5 among them Steinberg (in Steinberg pp. 106, 128), unfortunately the devastations
caused by the technology of the industrial revolution and the mass employment of modern
weaponry resulting in high numbers of victims did not caution the statesmen and the military of
the world so that the lesson was not learned and World War I not prevented. 6
While the volume edited by Steinberg et al. deals more with the Russian perspective thefollowing volume edited by Wolff et al. is concentrating more on Asia. Among the authors,
however, as far as they are from Far Eastern countries, most are Japanese besides two Koreansand one Chinese. New Russian archival sources could be used, particularly for the first volume,
but without coming to new findings. Both books, subdivided in subject groups, are, however, so
voluminous that the editors obviously have sometimes lost the synopsis resulting in diverse
repetitions. The volumes are illustrated with contemporary pictures, photos and maps.

Krebs: World War Zero?

39

Unfortunately a bibliography as found at the end of the publications Kowner/Rethinking,
Chapman/Inaba, Nichi-Ro sensō and Gunjishigakkai II is missing.
The recent boom of studies on the Russo-Japanese War can be called the second wave since inthe first decade after the outbreak of hostilities a sea of publications appeared, among them
reports of observers on the battlefields and official operation histories of different countries.
Later, however, the Russo-Japanese War found rather little attention. The official side in several
countries tried to avoid dealing with this history: Japan feared being put on the pillory for
opening the war in 1904 as initial act of her expansion policy until 1945. So for example S. M.
C. Paine (in Gunjishigakkai II) and H. P. Willmott (Ibid., pp. 21-22) see a continual developmentof Japanese aggression against the West with the greatest eruption in World War II to be
traceable to the conflict of 1904/05—and in the case of Paine even to the war against China in
1894/95—so that they explain history in the same way as the pacifistic Japanese historians, while
the Marxists blame capitalism entirely for this and other wars. For China on the other hand it wasembarrassing to have glorified the victor of 1905 - and that meant: the wrong side. The same canbe said about Great Britain, Japan’s ally of that period, who had encouraged Japanese expansion
on the continent but in the long run had destroyed her own empire. The United States which
initially had incited Japan to see America’s own rival Russia weakened in the end had to copewith a strengthened Japan in a struggle of life or death and besides that was criticized for its own
imperialist policy in Asia also tried to avoid discussing her role of 1904/05. Russia herself evenin Soviet times was still ashamed of the historic humiliation in the war with Japan(Shillony/Kowner in Kowner/Rethinking pp. 1-4). Anyway, until the end of the Cold War a
fruitful cooperation between Japanese and Russian historians was hardly to be accomplished as I.
Chiba in his introducing article “Invitation to a new perspective” in Nichi-Ro sensō (pp. 10-11)
stresses. The inclusion of Russian authors in the same volume can serve as prove how much thesituation has changed since the 1990s. With the distance of time to the war of 1904/05 andlessening bilateral tensions between Japan and Russia it appears to be possible to interpret the
global effects of that war sine ira et studio.
An overview on historiographical tendencies about the war of 1904/05 during one century can befound in H. Nakanishi and S. Naraoka in Nichi-Ro sensō. Their conclusion is that in the
beginning only studies on military history appeared, most of them with an official character.
After World War I Marxist historiography blamed the Russo-Japanese War as “imperialistic”.
Only after World War II were works with diplomatic, economic and social history in the centre
written, only slowly in the beginning but had become a real boom with the nearing of thecentenary.
How much the Russo-Japanese War was used and misused for patriotic propaganda until 1945 istreated by F. R. Dickinson in Steinberg. I. Chiba in Wolff and in Nichi-Ro sensō is dealing withthe further development until about 1980 coming to the conclusion that the enthusiasm of theJapanese people artificially aroused by a press manipulated by the government and the military
soon calmed down and the disappointment about the peace conditions allegedly to mild for
Russia even led to riots. Besides that, a nationalistic historiography justified the war. Only at the
25-year celebrations in 1929/30 the subject was dealt with in an exaggerated way by the military
in the heated atmosphere of the London naval conference and found a much wider treatment on
the 30th anniversary when in 1931/32 after the annexation of Manchuria the aims of the RussoJapanese War were propagated as accomplished. In the historiography after World War II among
other questions the problem was discussed if the war of 1904/05 was in the first place fought forJapan, China, and Pan-Asianism

40

Manchuria or Korea since in the first case it would have been a war of aggression while in thesecond case it could be interpreted as a war of defence.
The Russo-Japanese War found a greater interest due to the writings of fiction author Shiba
Ryōtarō (1923-96), first published in 1968-72 as a news paper series and later reprinted in a 6volume book publication. His treatment influenced the image of the war in Japan until today. For
Shiba, the Russo-Japanese War represented the successful apex of Japan’s modernisation(Shimazu, Society p. 275). I. Chiba in Wolff and in Nichi-Ro sensō attributes the nationalistic
tendencies found in Shiba’s work to the increased self confidence of the Japanese people, being
proud about the economic success at the time of publication.7 In contrast Shimazu (Society p.
276) calls Shiba’s writings revisionistic, since the author for example mercilessly deconstructs
the myth surrounding the usually deified General Nogi Maresuke because of his catastrophic
warfare. She sees Nogi as essentially an anachronistic aesthete, a surviving relic of theTokugawa period and a highly incompetent general, especially in the latter’s disastrous
campaign to capture the 203 Metre Hill and Port Arthur. The author even interprets Shiba’s
writings as a vehicle to criticise the militarism of Japan in the 1930s which led to the Second
World War but she has to admit that the narrative had a cathartic quality, and allowed the postwar generation to be proud of its modern history, or at least of a part of it. This is the reason, as
Shimazu (p. 279) judges, why Shiba’s work appealed to the generally conservative mainstream
readership, and in turn made him the target of the accusation of being pro-war by the Left.
The review article of D. Pavlov in Nichi-Ro sensō demonstrates that Russian historiography has
seen even more turns: Until the October Revolution a commission led by general staff officers
wrote an official war history followed a little bit later by a voluminous study by the navy on sea
warfare. Both works intensively inquired after the causes of defeat. Besides that several officers
published books, quite often with apologetic tendency, as well as contemporary observers did.
Many foreign books were translated demonstrating the great interest in Russia. In the second
period, according to Pavlov the years 1917-1991, the communist doctrine became the guideline.
After the end of the cold war the era of free scholarly research began in 1991. Review articles on
Western publications on the Russo-Japanese War are presented by Inaba in Nichi-Ro sensō
and—limited to recent research - Sh. Yokote in Gunjishigakkai I. Also in Gunjishigakkai I. T.
Hara and N. Kanno are listing the documents in the Research Institute of the Japanese Self
Defence Forces (Bōeikenkyūjo).
I. Chiba in Nichi-Ro sensō reports about the presentation of the war with Russia in Japanese
movies after 1945. It is surprising that in the year 1957 a production with the Meiji-Tennō in theleading role became a box-office magnet. It was for the first time that a Japanese emperor was
shown in a movie. Until 1945 such an act would have been considered sheer blasphemy.
Obviously the nation after the catastrophe of the Second World War was glad to remember aconflict which with some favour could be interpreted as a defensive measure. Many intellectuals,
however, criticized the movie severely for its apologetic tendency. This discrepancy between
box-office success and rejection was to find a continuation in the case of productions with thesame subject until the 1980s as Chiba demonstrates.
Renewed interest
R. Kowner (Dictionary p. XIII) complains that the Russo-Japanese War was largely forgotten
after the first boom years following the peace treaty. In connection with the centenary, however,historians promoted a second boom with Kowner as one of the main actors. In his Dictionary theKrebs: World War Zero?

41

course of events is described as the most thorough one of the publications under consideration.
The author deals with the Russo-Japanese War in a very wide sense based on Western, Russianand Japanese material so that he not only describes battles, weapons and persons involved, butalso the conditions which have led to the outbreak of hostilities as well as the political, social andmilitary consequences until World War I. The main part of the book consists of almost 600
articles, presented in alphabetical order. They reflect also the contents of publications in Russianand Japanese, that means in languages the average Western reader does not know. An author’s
introduction, maps, a chronology, an annex with key documents, a glossary, an index and abibliography of more than 60 pages are also added. The bibliography is subdivided in many parts
so that several titles are mentioned more than once.8 Such a voluminous book written by a single
author, though he profited from the support by many colleagues, must be called a superhumanaccomplishment.
In the edited volumes presented here it is noticed that in the German language publications withfew exceptions only German authors are included while in the English and some of the Japanese
language books scholars from many countries are included. Ian Nish, the grand old man ofJapanese contemporary history who is engaged with studies on the British-Japanese alliance andthe Russo-Japanese War since more than half a century9 is of course an author present in severalof the publications. In Steinberg he examines the causes of the war which he finds in the
weakness of China as well as Korea. Their traditional tactic to play one rival country off against
the other was to end with the victory and the following preponderance of Japan in East Asia. In
the volume edited by Kreiner, Nish deals with war planning, warfare and the conclusion ofpeace. In Kowner/Rethinking his subject is land warfare which in his opinion made the conflict a
collision of two continental powers and the two largest armies of world history until that era
despite the spectacular sea battle of Tsushima. Nish stresses the far too great self confidence ofimperial Russia which despite the approaching dark clouds could not believe, that a country like
Japan considered to be inferior would dare to attack (in Kowner/Rethinking p. 67). In
Chapman/Inaba he writes about Foreign Minister Komura Jutarō and the British-Japanesealliance preceding the war and then about the war itself.
Besides that, some years ago Nish edited the British diplomatic documents on the subject10 aswell as the eight-volume series The Russo-Japanese War, 1904-5 mentioned above which are
reprints of reports and studies on the war. In the first volume extracts from books, journals andnews papers are found, some of them commented by the editor, while the other volumes aremonographs reprinted in photostat way. With one exception they contain the complete text ofbooks which have been out of print for decades. Ian Nish wrote an introduction to the series andpresents an overview with short descriptions of the publications and their authors. He stresses
that he, when selecting the texts, had attached great importance to the fact that the authors had
dealt with the political and economic background rather than with the course of the war itself. In
the reprinted monographs11, however, no Japanese authors are found. only British and Russians.
The path to war
All edited works dealt with in this review article follow the same intention as announced by theauthors of the work of M-H. Sprotte which is based on a symposium at Heidelberg University,
namely to overcome a narrow analysis of the war centred on national history as well as on causes
and consequences but rather widen the research on Asia and the United States in order to add a

Japan, China, and Pan-Asianism

42

global perspective to the traditional historical interpretations. The effects for Europe, however,are restricted on Russia and the Balkan region in Sprotte.
M. R. Auslin in Steinberg goes far back describing how Russia 150 years earlier than the AngloSaxon nations vigorously had already knocked at the door of the then secluded Japan, i.e. about
the year 1800, to establish contacts and to start trade relations. The Tsar’s empire did not succeed
at that time but after the opening of Japan in the mid-19th century it made many efforts to reduce
tensions arising from overlapping territorial claims though, as the war begun in 1904
demonstrates these endeavours had not succeeded for important regions in East Asia. While
Auslin largely presents the Japanese perspective, D. Schimmelpenninck van der Oye in the same
volume describes the Russian side whose relative reduction of power since 1895 and its seesaw
policy towards China appear not to be compatible with its territorial ambitions. The author had
already written a monograph on the ideology of Russian imperialism among other subjects
posing the question if and how far Russia understood herself as an Asian nation and how thereby
the path to war with Japan was influenced.12 Within the Russian elites he differentiates between
representatives of several currents from demagogues of the “yellow peril” propaganda type toimperialists with expansionist or economic aims as well as to idealists with a Eurasian vision. In
Ericson/Hockley Schimmelpenninck comes to the conclusion that the European powers,
allegedly having legitimate interests overseas, had developed a system since 1880 not to allow
their colonial quarrels in Africa and Asia to lead to a great war but had not taken into
consideration an outsider like Japan, so that Russia’s inability to take Tōkyō seriously as a player
with equal rights in the imperialist game led to war.
D. Goldfrank in Steinberg also goes far back comparing the Crimea War of 1853-56 with the
Russo-Japanese War. He sees several parallels: In both cases the origin of the conflicts was
Russia’s refusal to end the occupation of a weak neighbour’s border regions, Ottoman-Turkish
territory in one case and Chinese land in the other. Other imperial powers were not ready totolerate the increase of power and the economic strengthening of their Russian rival andintervened instead. In both cases, as the author maintains, the chances for a peaceful solution in
the negotiations which preceded the outbreak of war and still could have prevented the hostilities
were wantonly abandoned by St. Petersburg since the respective Tsar more and more listened toradical circles. Finally Russia with her extended borders and a periphery difficult to defend
turned out to be a colossus with clay feet.
Nicholas II., the Tsar at the time of the outbreak of war in 1904, had made as crown prince in
1890/91 a long Orient tour including Japan in the program, since Russia believed in her “historic
mission” in Asia. This episode is dealt with by R. Utz in Sprotte. It was the first visit a heir to thethrone made to the Asian part of the vast Russian empire and among other aims the tour served
for celebrating the opening of the works on the Trans-Siberian railway in its Eastern section. Utz
in his study stresses the Russian inferiority feeling against Europe and the superiority feelingagainst Asia. His prove that in connection with the Orient tour there was some hope in Russia
for a cooperation in Asia with Germany against England and Japan, particularly in order tostrengthen the influence in China deserves attention (pp. 129-32). Utz, however, limits his study
to the role of the Far East in the Russian nationalism and neglects the Japanese-Russian relations.
So the assassination attempt on Nicholas near Kyōto in 1891 when the crown prince was injured
and had a narrow escape and the consequences thereof on the bilateral relations are ignored.

Krebs: World War Zero?

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The internal development in Russia and Japan until the outbreak of war is described by H.-D.
Löwe und M-H. Sprotte in Sprotte respectively. Therein the Tsar’s empire appears as extremely
disrupted due to the effects of industrialization and autocratic rule compared with thesuccessfully unified and modernized state of the Tennō. Sprotte in a second contribution
examines the interaction of external and internal events in Japan from the German-FrenchRussian triple intervention of 1895 aimed at limiting the booty for Japan from the war against
China which was sensed as bitter defeat by Tōkyō. The author follows the development until theend of the Katsura cabinet in 1906 and Japan’s continental policy during this decade. A helpless
Japan had to watch in 1898 that Russia secured for herself as leased territory from China out of
all things the Liautung-peninsula which the Tōkyō government had to renounce in 1895 (Sprottein Sprotte p. 85). In the year 1898 other European powers, too, obtained territories and special
rights but it does not become clear in the article that Germany with Tsingtau had led off the“leasing orgy”13 while Russia, Great Britian and France only followed her policy as is foundcorrectly described by Schimmelpenning in Ericson/Hockley. Sprotte further traces themilitarisation of Japan following the war connected with economic and strategic interests as wellas he describes the radicalisation under the influence of anti-Russian nationalistic secretsocieties. U. M. Zachmann in Kowner/Rethinking demonstrates that there was a change of mind
towards Russia also in the Japanese public after the crisis of 1897/98 and a growing readiness towage war while M.-H. Sprotte in Sprotte deals with the approval the government found after the
opening of hostilities in 1904. Though the patriotism reached new heights the author also foundpacifist currents, particularly within the hesitantly arising Socialist movement for whose further
development he considers the discussion of that period as important though it had no politicaleffect for the time being. Opposition within the Japanese parliament against an eventual war
course and against the massive naval rearmament is the subject of Y. Katō in Wolff, thought theauthor has to admit that in the Lower House, parallel to the growing sense of crisis in 1904, thewillingness to risk a war was growing.
As main points of friction between Russia and Japan all authors see unanimously Manchuria andKorea but the importance attached to the two regions can differ. T. Kanō in Nichi-Ro sensō andin Chapman/Inaba investigates Russia’s regional policy in East Asia particularly in these two
disputed areas. In the beginning Russia was relieved that Chinese rule over Korea was prevented
by Japan but soon it feared the growth of strength of the Tennō’s empire. Therefore, the author’s
impression is that Russia’s tactics was extremely cautious in order not to provoke Tōkyō. In
contrast to conventional historiography Kanō takes the view that St. Petersburg until the last days
before the outbreak of war showed willingness to accept compromise proposals presented by
Tōkyō (similar Hirono in Nichi-Ro sensō), so that Japan would have gained great influence in
Korea and equal rights as all other states in Manchuria. The telegraphic report to Tōkyō,however, was delayed, perhaps by the hawk faction in Russia which was aiming at the
breakdown of the negotiations. To a large extend Kanō sees the causes of Russian weakness in
the insufficient financing of institutions and personal. He analyses among other subjects the antigovernment press in Russia which criticized the handling of disputed questions in the Far Eastand he stresses the great unrest among the workers which had flared up already before the war
started.
In this historiography the question quite often is asked who was to blame for the hardening of
Russian policy interpreted by Japan as provocation. In most cases Minister of Interior Plewe isnamed as the bad guy—he was to die as victim of an assassination attempt in July 1904—so byJapan, China, and Pan-Asianism

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his opponent and long-time Minister of Finance Witte who ascribed to Plewe the word of the“small victorious war” against Japan which was quoted to satiety in historiography. This
allegedly desirable war would prevent demands of dissatisfied circles for social reforms andthereby forestall a revolution. Perhaps the suppression of the Boxer rebellion in China in 1900
should have served as a model to justify a military action. H.-D. Löwe in Sprotte considers it
possible that the famous word has never been used in the quoted way but rather that Witte had
tried to avoid becoming the scapegoat for the lost war himself. On the contrary, as the author
maintains, Russia had stumbled into the war without the necessary preparations though sure of
the own victory (Löwe in Sprotte p. 147; similar Grüner in Sprotte p. 173). According to Löwe
Witte himself has to bear a great part of the responsibility for the increasing gravity of thesituation which led to war due to his railway construction and his plans for economic expansion
as means to create an informal empire in Manchuria despite his demand for a mere “peacefulpenetration” though he later—too late—had given the advice for moderation thereby causing theloss of power for himself (Löwe in Sprotte p. 52; similar F.B. Schenk in Aust/Steindorff pp. 5154). With the controversy of Witte’s role and responsibility for the path to war are also dealing
D. Schimmelpennick van der Oye in Kowner/Rethinking und Y. Iijima in Gunjishigakkai I.
These authors also see both a strong responsibility of the former finance minister who did not get
rid of the ghosts he once had called.
Nevertheless, Witte was ready to compromise and would have agreed to renounce any claims on
Korea but the much more radical elements in Russian policy got the upper hand. They are dealt
with in articles by I. V. Lukoianov in Nichi-Ro sensō and in Steinberg. In the first line theentrepreneur and radical politician Alexander M. Bezobrazov with his entourage appears as an
influential warmonger who had come to a vast economic engagement in the North of Korea andat the same time served as special envoy of Tsar Nicholas II. Lukoianov makes clear that
Bezobrazov over a long period exerted great influence on the Tsar, so that his agitation caused
extreme danger in the deadlock situation for which his arch-enemy Witte was responsible. How
much Japan’s economic interests clashed with those of Russia, particularly those of
Bezobrazov’s companies, becomes also clear in a contribution from N. Kanno in Gunjishigakkai
I. In contrast to most authors Bezobrazov in the article of Wada in Wolff appears as less radical
having been influenced in a moderating sense among others by the former military attaché to
Tōkyō, Konstantin I. Vogak, who had developed deep respect for the Japanese army because of
its performance in the war against China in 1894/95. Bezobrazov even proposed a military
alliance to the Japanese side on January 10, 1904 but left the Tennō’s embassy in St. Petersburg
guessing if he was authorized to do so. 14 Until the outbreak of war several weeks later there was
not enough time for clarification.
In a study on Russian strategy in Manchuria, D. Schimmelpenninck in Gunjishigakkai II, comesto the conclusion that the refusal to withdraw the troops stationed in that area after the Boxer
rebellion was caused by the underestimation of the Japanese to whom no chance at all was given
in a fight with a European power. Since an attack from their side was excluded because of suchreasons no serious preparations for war were made and the Tsarist troops finally limited theiractions to a largely defensive nature when war started. J. Kusber in Kreiner describes the change
from Russian confidence of victory to contrition and critique towards their own military andallotment of guilt. The author includes in his treatise the perception of the enemy by Russians
dealing with persons of influence one after the other. “Good credits” are given to Prince Esper
Uchtomskij who as a specialist for Asia had accompanied Crown Prince Nicholas on his OrientKrebs: World War Zero?

45

tour and who was full of admiration for the successful Japanese modernization and who alreadyat the beginning of the war had warned not to underestimate the enemy. No attention is given to
the fact that Uchtomskij soon took a hard attitude when he became one of the most eloquentadvocates for a continuation of the war until a complete victory would be gained (see N. E. Saulin Steinberg p. 488). Other moderate voices could not succeed in the time preceding the war
either since the Tsar inclined to listen to the most radical elements. As an exceptionally tragic
figure appears War Minister Kuropatkin: He of all people had warned not to underestimate theJapanese, particularly when he came to know the high standard of their military forces und thestate of their society when visiting the country in 1903 and gave the advice to avoid a conflictwith such an enemy if ever possible (D. Wright in Steinberg pp. 596, 601). On the other side herecommended after the Boxer rebellion to use the chance for a complete occupation ofManchuria (Parikeeff/Shukman p. 24) so that one has to question how a collision with Japan
could have been prevented. Kuropatkin who after the outbreak of war was appointed Supreme
Commander of the Russian forces in the Far East lost one battle after the other. After the end of
war the fighting continued on the book market, particularly between Witte and Kuropatkin who
blamed each other for the catastrophe. Their publications were translated into several languages.
War Minister Kuropatkin’s moderate stand towards Japan becomes also evident in his diaries ofthe years 1902/03 which showed up only little by little and which are analysed by Y. Hirono
since some time. The author in Nichi-Ro sensō presents the contents of the part of June 9-29,
1903 about the general’s travel to Japan which have become known only in 1996. Kuropatkin in
Tōkyō held interviews with the most prominent politicians, among them Itō Hirobumi andYamagata Aritomo. War Minister Terauchi Masatake showed an interest in the maintenance ofpeace since Japan even in the case of victory would be weakened. Furthermore Kuropatkin heldtalks with Foreign Minister Komura Jutarō, among other subject on the Korean problem. In that
period Russia enjoyed several rights in Korea based on a treaty with Japan of the year 1895,
among them the right to station troops to protect Russian citizens at certain places including thelegation in Seoul. The number of soldiers, however, must not exceed that one of Japanese troops.
In contrast to these agreements Kuropatkin is said to have won the impression in his talks with
Komura that Japan would not honour other important Russian rights. Nevertheless, so Hirono’s
conclusion, Russia little by little reduced the demands and claims concerning Korea making
many concessions in the following negotiations but the “Korea-Manchuria-problem”, obviously
seen in Tōkyō as indivisible, could not be solved.
Kuropatkin of course also plays a leading role in A. Marshall’s great study on the Russian
general staff in Asia. He calls Kuropatkin one of the few to truly merit the label of being ageopolitical thinker but comes to the conclusion that the Far East did not have great importancefor the general with respect to Russia’s position as a great power, since he saw the Tsar’s empire
endangered from the Western flank meaning from Germany. The lesser priority he gave to East
Asia resulted in insufficient preparations for a war against Japan (Marshall, Staff pp. 2, 90-91,
94-95). According to Marshall the Russian military, not only in East Asia but in general, sufferedfrom financial and organizational weakness. The armed forces budget had been cut to a barely
sustainable minimum in the period from 1881 to 1897 so that many soldiers marched to war
against Japan in 1904 in ill-fitting boots and with inadequate greatcoats. The second factor
obstructing the most effective use of even these limited resources was organizational. The role of
the Asiatic Department of the general staff in intelligence gathering was never clearly defined sothat Russia went to war with Japan in 1904 armed with inadequate maps, a poor cultural

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knowledge of its opponent, and with a critical lack of reliable interpreters (Marshall, Staff pp.
180-82). The author explains convincingly how the discredited Asiatic Department lost influence
after the defeat playing only a role in language training for officers henceforth. Instead the Main
Directorate of the General Staff gained influence and took over the field of intelligencegathering.
In Japan, too, over a long period a tug-of-war was held about the course to be taken during theyears preceding the war. S. Naraoka in Chapman/Inaba treats the close relations between Katō
Takaaki und the political party Seiyūkai as well as the efforts to keep a certain distance between
the foreign ministry and the army. Katō, the former minister to London (1894-1900) and mainarchitect for close bonds with Great Britain held the position of foreign minister in the cabinet of
Itō Hirobumi 1900/01. After the resignation of that administration he refused to stay in officesince in his opinion the new Prime Minister Katsura Tarō had too close relations with the
influential genrō (elder statesman) General Yamagata Aritomo and that meant: with the army.
Though the new Foreign Minister Komura Jutarō pursued a different policy as Naraoka
convincingly demonstrates he followed towards Great Britain the same course as his
predecessor, concluded the alliance with England thereby earning the fruits of Katō’s efforts.
Katō himself at this time was concentrating his activities more on domestic policy as deputy inthe Lower House. In the parliament as well as in the press he continued his fight against thecabinet and particularly against Foreign Minister Komura. Naraoka emphasizes particularly thedifferences between Yamagata and Katō who provoked the genrō with his demands to develop a
more democratic and more constitutional base for national policy and therefore kept close
contact with the Seiyūkai party. As president of a newspaper Katō made full use of winning theJapanese public for his hard line to demand an unconditional Russian surrender during the war of
1904/05. His hard line almost was to cost him the return into office once the war ended, but in
1906 he succeeded to take over the foreign ministry again for a short period in Saionji
Kinmochi’s Seiyūkai cabinet. Surprisingly Katō does not get his own article in Kowner’s
Dictionary in which he is not mentioned at all.
The attitude of the Meiji-Tennō, according to the constitution the supreme commander of themilitary forces, towards the war finds its treatment by Y. Itō in Nichi-Ro sensō and in
Chapman/Inaba. For these studies the author had the testimonies of court officials at his
disposal. The emperor appears as hesitant towards the decision to open hostilities and concerning
several operations. It further seems that he had not always fully understood the views of thedifferent army factions and the strategy to be pursued.
As a decisive cause of the war the construction of the Russian railway in Siberia and Manchuria
is given great attention to in the historiography. In 1903 the East China Railway was completed
in a record time of only six years offering a shortcut from Europe to Vladivostok and resulting inthe settlement and stationing of many Russians on Chinese territory. The greatest influx was tothe town of Harbin which was developed into an important junction and a boom city from whereanother railway line branched off leading as the South Manchurian Railway to the ice-free portsof Port Arthur and Dalien (Dal’ny, Dairen) on the Liautung-peninsula reducing - as long as it
was in Russian hands - the importance of Vladivostok being ice bound during four months per
year.
The development of railways and their importance for warfare is the subject of the monograph of
Patrikeeff/Shukman and the article of S. J. Ericson in Wolff. Japan had the advantage to transport

Krebs: World War Zero?

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troops and supply in great quantities and short time across the sea which Japan ruled. Within thehomeland Japan, too, had to rely on the railway which belonged to a lot of private companies andwas therefore difficult to coordinate as S. J. Ericson in Wolff demonstrates. Because of this bad
experience soon after the end of the war most lines were nationalized. In Korea and Manchuria
Japan began to construct railways already during the war to support military operations. M.
Fujita in Gunjishigakkai II deals with food supply for the fighting forces.
It is an irony that both sides in the conflict were supplied by American and British companies
with material and rolling stocks for their railway lines (Patrikeeff/Shukman pp. 45, 94). The
Trans-Siberian railway was impressive on the map but suffered besides its sheer length fromseveral difficulties: in practice it was susceptible to trouble, was only single-track therefore
having only a limited loading capacity, closed the last gap only in autumn 1904 and due to thenumerous slopes allowed only a low average speed. Besides these problems Nomadic bandits
often attacked the trains and installations. Nevertheless the achievements of the Russian railways
were impressive and without it warfare would have been impossible. Patrikeeff/Shukman (p. 84)
are contrasting the modernity of the railway achieved thanks to Finance Minister Witte with theold Russia represented by the army with its corruption and inefficiency.
Patrikeeff/Shukman see in the railway system both an advantage and a disadvantage. It allowed
the transport of troops and material within a very short time but extended the Russian rule so far
to East Asia that the military forces were overstretched. Furthermore, the authors are convincedthat without the Russian railways the war would not have broken out at all since Japan, being an
expanding nation herself, would not have felt provoked and endangered. Manchuria could havebeen a buffer and security zone, a cordon sanitaire, saving troop capacities on both sides.
E.-M. Stolberg in Kowner/Rethinking extends the research on railways until the year 1922
stressing that the economic boom following the Russian construction activities attracted Japanese
entrepreneurs interested in raw materials as well as settlers to the region. As a result St.
Petersburg was uneasy if the area being only thinly inhabited could be held by Russia. In theauthor’s eyes Siberia was the hinterland of the Russo-Japanese War and could be saved for the
Tsar’s empire in the peace treaty but that agreement did not end Japanese greed as theparticipation in the allied intervention from 1918 proved. Finally Tōkyō dispatched the greatest
troop contingent which stayed the longest on Russian soil.
Patrikeeff/Shukman (p. 121) call the reader’s attention to the fact that Russia during the Soviet
era had largely passed over in silence its “Manchurian past” which was dealt with only
sometimes by Russians in exile, for example those in Harbin which after World War I was astronghold of anti-Bolshevik Russians. They, however, at the latest after World War II left thecity. Oxford University emeritus Harold Shukman’s interest in Manchuria obviously arises fromthe fact that his father had been a private in the Imperial Russian Army from 1902 to 1906 andhad fought in the battle of Mukden. After the end of the cold war, however, the Russian interestin the common history with Manchuria has grown considerably. Nowadays in the streets ofHarbin being not far away from the Siberian border many Russians can be seen promenading in a
nostalgic mood on the tracks of the former settlers and many young people from Russia are
studying the Chinese language at the universities of the city.

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The conduct of war
Not only Russia but almost all other nations had underestimated Japan so that the opening of thewar came as a great surprise. A. Iikura in Nichi-Ro sensō and in Chapman/Inaba (there withchanging writing of the author’s name) deals with the new image of Japan in the West in thecourse of the war instead of the earlier picture of a romantic country. The author maintains thatthe image was basically “paternalistic”: Japan as protégé, student or child of the Western nations,particularly of the USA and Great Britain. Their sympathy had lain from the beginning on on theside of the underdog Japan but this feeling was soon superseded by admiration for the “David”
being so successful on the battlefield at “Goliath’s” cost and by praise for the “docile” student
who has grown into a state of “civilization” though even his masters began to fear him. Iikura
sees parallels in the paternalistic attitude Japan was to assume from the 1930s on towards theother Asian countries. Surprisingly Germany is hardly mentioned in the article though Germany
also claimed to be the father of the Japanese successes, particularly in the field of land warfare.
In most of the edited works introduced here the conduct of war plays only a minor role and onlyin Steinberg and Gunjishigakkai II one section is found. Steinberg himself in Steinberg gives an
overview over the operations with land warfare in the focus but he presents only known facts.
The efficiency of Japanese warfare is dealt with in contrast to the confusion about competence
and the improvisation on the Russian side. B.W. Menning in Steinberg in his article on Russianstrategy also comes to the conclusion that the Tsar’s empire could not use its superiority inmaterial and troop strength because of its surprising dilettantism. Furthermore, despite having an
impressive fleet in Far Eastern waters at her disposal Russia did not rule the sea as would havebeen absolutely necessary—also as precondition for a successful land warfare—according to thetheory of the leading and internationally acknowledged naval strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan (soalso V. L. Agapov in Gunjishigakkai II, p. 114). That Mahan’s theory was thoroughly studied inJapan is demonstrated by F. Takahashi in Gunjishigakkai I: Even the lowest echelons among theofficers had to write related studies again and again.
In the contribution of O. R. Airapetov in Steinberg on the mistakes of the Russian army thewarfare of the Tsar’s empire also appears as chaotic. The same author in Nichi-Ro sensō deals
with Russia’s strategic planning on the eve of the war. He stresses the handicap that the military
had due to geographic reasons only a very limited and complicated access to ocean waters. B.W.
Menning in Steinberg takes the view that neither side in the war had learned the lesson ofGerman strategist von Moltke—or at best the Japanese in a relatively late moment for the battleof Mukden—“to march separately and to fight jointly”, so that mobile warfare with pincer
attacks to encircle the enemy was a rare exception. This failure is demonstrated for the battle of
Liaoyang in August 1904 by Y. Shinohara in Gunjishigakkai II: Though the Japanese were thewinners the encirclement of the Russian forces did not succeed so that General Kuropatkin could
save most of his troops and could build up a new defence line at Mukden. There, defending thecity half a year later they inflicted heavy casualties on the Japanese but finally were defeated. Y.
T. Matsusaka in Steinberg also stresses the great mistakes on the Japanese side. Though theconquest of Port Arthur required half a year and cost losses of almost 50.000 men a myth in the
Tennō’s empire around the vestige and the “hero” Nogi Maresuke arose so that critic on his
conduct of war could not be uttered openly. Actually the assault against the fortifications byinfantry had turned out as imprudent so that Marshall Ōyama Iwao had to come to the troubled
Nogi’s aid with heavy siege artillery. Matsusaka, however, refuses the wide-spread opinion thatthe ruthless strategy against the own soldiers had to be attributed to the instruction by Prussian

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officers. Actually, he maintains, after the period of German instruction, particularly in the war
against China 1894/95, the Japanese had undergone their own experiences and as a result had
modified the conduct of war (pp. 186-87).
One episode, General Nogi’s contact with the spirit of Buddhism is dealt with by I. Matsumotoin Gunjishigakkai II: The priest Ōta Kakumin who arrived in Manchuria in early 1905 to takecare for the Japanese soldiers met Nogi near Muden at the battlefield which was littered withcorpses. The monk included in his prayers also the fallen Russian soldiers and reached anunderstanding with the general that the victims would be justified if thereby security and peace
could be reached for the general public. Nogi who had lost two sons in the war with Russia
himself committed ritual suicide together with his wife after the death of the Meiji-Tennō in1912. The motive for this deed, usually interpreted as archaic henchman’s loyalty is seen by
Matsumoto also as the burden of responsibility for the numerous war dead of 1904/05 which had
become too heavy for Nogi. Ōta Kakumin in June 1938 published a report on the meeting with
Nogi obviously criticizing the cruel war against China which Japan had begun the previous year.
Back to the Russo-Japanese War: M. Sevela in Kowner/Rethinking researches a secondary
theatre of war, the almost unknown fighting on the island of Sakhalin. The invasion there began
only in July 1905, that means after the decisive battle of Tsushima. The Russian defence waschaotic, the more so as the Japanese now controlled all sea routes. Sevela examines all possible
motives for the conquest, may they be of psychological, strategic or economic nature. Anotherauthor comes to the conclusion that the occupation of the island “was considered by many as thelast nail driven into the coffin of Russia’s early twentieth century Asiatic ambitions” (N. E. Saulin Steinberg p. 486). One has to take into consideration that Sakhalin in contrast to other disputed
territories like Manchuria and Korea was Russian territory so that the loss hurt very much, when
the southern half of the island came into the possession of victorious Japan for 40 years. Anotherborder region is the subject of an article by T. Nakami in Wolff demonstrating that during the war
Russia as well as Japan tried to pull Mongolian tribes on their side. This tug-of-war was tocontinue for decades. Most of the Mongolians were de jure subjects of China to whose territory
their homelands still belonged.
Despite the fact that the Russo-Japanese War had seen the greatest sea operations since Napoleon
and despite the decisive importance of the battle of Tsushima—in Japan called the naval battle of
the Japanese Sea (Nihonkai kaisen)—naval warfare finds less attention in historiography than theland battles which dragged on over a long period of time. Nevertheless some articles deal withnaval problems like Papastratigakis/Lieven in Steinberg with their article on the operation plansof the Russian far eastern fleet. They view the study on sea warfare conducted immediately after
the war in Russia as unsatisfactory since too many restraints were exercised because of politicalreasons. The authors stress the fact that the Japanese fleet construction program was more or lesscompleted in 1903 while the Russian one was not. Therefore, time would have worked in favourof Russia so that Japan was interested to open war as soon as possible. Not only in pure strength
was the Japanese fleet slightly superior to the Russian Far Eastern Fleet but it was of one
founding and on the latest technical standard in contrast to the enemy’s patched up and obsolete
units. Furthermore, the Russians had adhered too much on Mahan’s theory of the crucial role oflarge fleets and great battleships to be able to fight a decisive battle, thereby ruling the seas anddominating the land warfare as well so that they neglected the alternative respectively the
supplementation by following the French model of the “cheap variant” to concentrate on mines,
torpedo boats and submarines as they were foreseen for the protection of the Baltic coast. The

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reader, however, remembers that the Japanese navy suffered from several losses inflicted by
Russian mines and the fear of that weapon hampered operations so that for example the plan fora thrust into the bay of Port Arthur had to be given up.
Russian warfare at sea is the subject of an article by Luntinen/Menning in Steinberg. It becomes
clear how chaotic and full of blunders already the defensive measures of the Far Eastern Fleet
and the journey of the Baltic Fleet to the Far East had been. Furthermore, the latter one had not
had the time nor the chance for a common manoeuvre before going into battle. So the leadershipof the Russian navy appears as rather following a policy of wait and see what was to be expectedin the waters of East Asia dominated by Japan. It must be mentioned, however, that the authors
used Russian sources only, so that the weak points of the Japanese navy are largely ignored.
After all, the ships having been in action for more than one year showed considerable signs of
attrition. One has to consider further that alone the transfer of the Baltic Fleet to the Far East
under adverse circumstances was a masterly accomplishment from the logistic point of view.
Finally, the fleet being equal to the complete Japanese navy in number of ships and even superior
concerning battleships was outmanoeuvred by the tactic of the enemy and sent to the bottom of
the sea almost in its entirety near the island of Tsushima. The whole world was amazed, andCommander Tōgō Heihachirō received the nimbus of a “second Admiral Nelson”.
In view of this victory the judgement of the Russian Navy Attaché Rusin from prewar days
strikes the reader as funny: that Tōgō was just incompetent concerning tactics and strategy (B.
W. Menning in Wolff p. 52). Articles by K. Aizawa in Wolff and in Gunjishigakkai II on the
opening of war by the surprise attack on Port Arthur, however, seem to justify this view largely
stressing Tōgō’s mistakes. The author in the beginning explains the differences during theplanning stage between the navy general staff and Tōgō who insisted to make only a limited
attack with a destroyer squadron on Russian units in order to provoke with this sensational
opening of war the Russian fleet to leave the harbour for a decisive battle instead of using fromthe start on the Japanese fleet including battleships and cruisers to make a devastating strike on
Port Arthur. Though Tōgō had to give in he put the great warships into action during theoperation only with a certain delay so that he could not make full use of the element of surprise
inflicting on the enemy mere pinpricks. The Russians used the chance to remain in the safe bayof Port Arthur to wait for enforcements and to induce the Japanese navy to blockade the mined
harbour entrance thereby binding many ships. Thereby Tōgō’s attack on Port Arthur turned out
to be a flop so that Japanese troops had to conquer the fortifications under heavy losses tobombard the Russian fleet from land. They succeeded only ten months later in a race with timesince they had to reckon with reinforcements for Russia over sea and land. Discussing Tōgō’s
alleged failure one has to consider, however, that his tactic locked the Russian fleet up in the
harbour of Port Arthur, forced it to inactivity and prevented it joining the units based in
Vladivostok. The fleet there remained rather passive, seldom made a thrust to the open sea toengage Japanese ships in fighting and did not even show up for the decisive battle of Tsushima
but it bound certain forces of the enemy (see V. L. Agapov in Gunjishigakkai II and thecommentary of A. Tsutsumi in ibid.).
General Kuropatkin obviously was right to complain that if the Russian fleet had dominated thesea Russia would not have had to face the terrible battles on land. The worldwide conclusionfrom the battle of Tsushima was that Mahan’s theory was correct that a large fleet of big
battleships being able to fight a decisive battle was the base for a great power. So it is no wonderthat after the Russo-Japanese War a new round of the naval rearmament race began. R. Kowner

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and C. Eberspächer in Kowner/Impact describe the consequences of the Russo-Japanese War forthe navies worldwide. Above all the exit of Russia as a sea power led to a completely newpolitical orientation on the international stage. Great Britain, now bound to France, had to fear
only Germany and made rearmaments according to the new situation, the more so when Russia
joined the entente in 1907. The naval armament race witnessed a quantum leap in the following
years15 but Kowner finds it outdated that the navies worldwide continued to give priority to great
battleships since they were not only extremely expensive but soon turned out to be the dinosaursof the sea facing the revolutionizing of naval warfare by innovations like submarines and later
airplane-carriers. In Eberspächer’s article some overlapping with Kowner’s are found but it is
written more from the German perspective.
Some studies deal with the parallel of strategy in 1904 and 1941. In both cases Japan wasunderrated and its enemies could not imagine that such a weak nation would dare to attack asuperior nation thereby committing national suicide. Aizawa in Wolff (p. 81) stresses that Japan
twice opened hostilities with a naval attack far away from her home waters prior to a declarationof war16 considering it essential to take advantage of the element of surprise to inflict initialphysical and psychological damage because of the limits Japan’s own economy imposed on war
making capabilities. The initiative gained, it was hoped, would carry Japan through to victory.
Yamamoto, the planner of the attack on Pearl Harbor, had participated in the Russo-Japanese
War from which he learned the lessons as he claimed that Japan must make efforts, based on the
successes and failures of 1904, to handle the opening of the war with America much more
successfully to secure victory on Day One of hostilities. Indeed the Russo-Japanese war appears
to have served as a blueprint for the Pacific War (on the parallel also Steinberg in Steinberg p.
107; H. P. Willmott in Gunjishigakkai II pp. 19-20; S. C. M. Paine in ibid., pp. 235-36).
Japanese sources also prove that the Russo-Japanese War served as a model for the PacificWar.17 After the initial devastating strike against the enemy’s fleet in his home waters it was
hoped to provoke the USA into a decisive battle near the Japanese coast and then induce theUnited States to negotiate a peace largely under Tōkyō’s conditions using the mediation of aneutral country—as the United States were so used in 1905 for the peace treaty of Portsmouth.
By the way, in the Soviet Union a comparison was made between the Japanese attack of 1904
and the German attack of 1941 but at that time it was not mentioned openly (D. Oleinikov in
Steinberg p. 520). While the USA had applauded the Japanese strike on Port Arthur in 1904 as abrilliant act, they called the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941 an “infamy”. In similar expressions
Tsar Nicholas had called the Japanese attack without declaration of war “treacherous”, but wasreminded by a British vice admiral that many similar cases could be traced in European history
so for example the Russian surprise attack on the Ottoman fleet in the bay of Sinope on
November 30, 1853 starting the Crimean War, with the slight difference, as the authors added
ironically, that “only some hundred Mohammedan Turks were killed there in contrast to Port
Arthur, where e great number of Christian Russians fell while defending their fatherland”.18
Until Pearl Harbor, however, international law had changed. The problem of opening hostilities
without declaration of war is treated by T. Saitō and Ch. Inaba in Nichi-Ro sensō (pp. 394-95,
450). The Japanese attack of 1904 became the cause of the 2nd peace conference in Hague in1907 which decided in the new “Convention respecting the laws and customs of war on land”
that henceforth a declaration of war or an ultimatum must precede the opening of hostilities of
one state against another.

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52

Several authors deal with the conclusions Russia draw for military reforms. A. Marshall in
Kowner/Rethinking describes the influence of the war experience on military planning in Eurasia
and the reorganization of the army until the outbreak of World War I. This subject, however, isfound more detailed in his monograph (chapters 6-8). D. Wright in Steinberg concentrates his
article on the lessons learned from the war in the field of spirit and social situation. The Japanese
were not any more the laughed at monkeys of prewar racism but became models for the new
Russian soldiers. The reasons for the superiority of the enemy were analysed without hesitation:
heroism and defiance of death, patriotism as result of an efficient school-system, implantingclassical values of the samurai class in the entire population, the will to serve the Tennō and thenation, a fairly just social system including a broad strata of land-owning independent farmers
and racial homogeneity instead of the multi-ethnic mixture of the Russian military with uneducated, ill-treated, half-starved and miserably equipped conscripts showing a fatalistic attitude(so also Patrikeeff/Shukman pp. 1-2, 75-79). The view of the foreign observers about the reasonsfor the Japanese fighting moral was similar, and also General Kuropatkin, trying to exculpate
himself, in his memoirs attributed the failure of the owns troops with the bad Russian education
system and the insufficient patriotism resulting thereof. In contrast to prewar times Kuropatkin
now also made use of the yellow peril propaganda presenting the vision of large armies withmillions of Japanese and Chinese soldiers instructed by German advisers (A. Marshall, Staff pp.
95-96). Kuropatkin was lucky to escape punishment while leading military figures weresentenced to death though they were finally pardoned to long prison terms (Patrikeeff/Shukmanp.82).
The purge of the officer corps after the lost war had sometimes more the character of revenge or
looking for scapegoats than reform. D. Wright in Steinberg describes in detail the will expressedby the Russian army after the war for military, educational and social reforms as precondition for
victory in a future conflict. The author, however, does not answer the question if and how deeds
followed the declared intentions except the reduction of the average age in the officer corps.
B.W. Menning and J.W Steinberg in Ericson/Hockley hold that Russia failed to draw theconsequences of the effects on modernization of the military: Lack of unity and coherence
plagued Russian military strategy not only during the war but also after the end, and postwar
efforts to address the problem by creating an independent general staff and State Defence
Council in 1905 but rather than providing overall direction and integration of imperial defence,these two new organs ended up simply adding to the fragmentation of decision making. Nicholas
II. remained the “final interpreter and arbiter” of military and foreign-policy matters. He
eventually ignored the recommendations of the State Defence Council and the lessons of the war
by pushing for construction of a Mahan-style blue-water Dreadnought style navy and thecreation of a Naval General Staff at the expense of ground-force modernization, with serious
consequences for Russian military preparedness at the outbreak of World War I.
Japan seems to have not learned the lessons from the war, either. The army adhered, as
demonstrated by T. Hara in Gunjishigakkai II, until World War II to the doctrine that a glorified
infantry attack with the bayonet was the key to victory. J. Kreiner deals in the volume edited byhimself and based on a symposium at Bonn University, with the influence of the war of 1904/05
on Japanese history coming to the conclusion that the victorious nation viewed the results as thecompletion of the Meiji era reforms. In the article it becomes also clear that the military triumph
led to a kind of megalomania so that Japan was convinced from that time on that it was
invincible and that her traditional fighting spirit could cope with a superior enemy. When in 1941

Krebs: World War Zero?

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the decision for war against the United States was made, Japan hoped that again David would geta chance against Goliath.
In the exaltation of 1905 the insight that Japan had won only a Pyrrhic victory and herself had
been so exhausted that it was hardly in the position to have continued the war became lost. The
overestimation of Japan’s own strength found the most visible expression in the Hibiya riots in
Tōkyō protesting against the peace conditions regarded as too mild (Kreiner in Kreiner pp. 5859; Kowner in Kowner/Impact pp. 34-35). Particularly the military became presumptuous
missing the chance for a long-term peace order which would have saved Japanese resources.
This aspect is dealt with by M. Tadokoro in Wolff: The Japanese victory was everything else but
complete and should have been supplemented by a strategy like the British one after Trafalgar, toestablish a “Pax Britannica” und “balance of power” policy in order to keep Great Britain out of
the continent thereby avoiding costly ventures. At the same time England protected herself witha battle fleet second to none which also allowed the nation to dominate world trade. Instead offollowing such a course Japan had decided to gain a foothold in Korea and Manchuria and to
widen her influence permanently. For that purpose Japan maintained a huge army of conscripts
much too large for a mere defence of the home territory in contrast to Great Britain with her
small army of professional soldiers. Furthermore, Japan built up a fleet which was too large toprotect the own coast but too small to dominate the sea in Alfred Thayer Mahan’s sense. Japan’s
failure to become the “Britain of Asia” avoiding to be involved in conflicts on the continent otherwars erupted for which the country was too weak so that it finally perished as an imperial power.
The author names as chief witness the prominent navy officer Satō Tetsutarō, the “Mahan ofJapan”, who after intensive studies on military history in Great Britain and the USA came to theconclusion that a policy of restriction for activities on the continent would be advisable forJapan. Therefore he demanded rearmament restrictions for the army to give priority to the navy.
In Tadokoro’s study, however, it does not become clear, that Satō not only provoked the army
but that he became increasingly isolated in the navy. His image in historiography is that one of a
“hawk” who had advocated a large rearmament program of the navy against the USA and had
fought vehemently against the restrictions put upon Japan at the Washington conference in 1922
which established a ratio for great warships of 60% compared with the Anglo-Saxon nations. In
1923 Satō with the rank of vice admiral was put on the reserve list by Navy Minister Katō
Tomosaburō because of his opposition of the official navy policy visible in the Washington
treaty.19
The finances
G. Distelrath in Kreiner explores Japan’s economy and armament production as basis for warfare
having become possible by the surprisingly quick industrialization since the beginning of the
Meiji era. Nevertheless, financing the war was a big problem and that for both sides. In contrast
to Russia, however, Japan at the time of opening hostilities disposed of sound finances since it
could still rely on the reparations China had paid since 1895. K. Ono in Gunjishigakkai I
explains how these reserves were used by Tōkyō to prepare the war against Russia. Since bothcountries suffered from a deficit despite raising taxes and using the national bond market, half of
the war costs had to be covered by loans from abroad so that the war was made “on credit”. That
is why T. Suzuki in Nichi-Ro sensō even talks about a second war which had to be waged, a “warabout money” (p. 84). The decisive sum was lent to Japan by the investment bank Kuhn, Loeb
and Co. by intermediation of the Jewish banker Jacob Schiff after negotiations with Japanese
government financial commissioner and Vice President of the Bank of Japan TakahashiJapan, China, and Pan-Asianism

54

Korekiyo. Usually this transaction is viewed as an act of revenge for anti-Jewish pogroms in
Russia and this version is also reported by Schiff and Takahashi themselves but D. Gutwein in
Kowner/Rethinking comes to the conclusion that the true motives have been to ease the burden of
British bankers who were in danger to get into political and economic trouble because of theirloans to Japan. Furthermore, the circle of bankers involved aimed at a Russian defeat in order tohelp Witte, who was excluded from politics at that time, and his efforts for a quickindustrialization to a breakthrough—and that intention succeeded temporarily after theconclusion of peace in 1905. Therefore, as Gutwein claims, Schiff’s meeting in London withTakahashi was no “mere accident” as Takahashi himself assumed and reported but was brought
about intentionally by banking circles. The author opposes the conviction found in thehistoriography over many decades that the bankers’ support for Japan was motivated by Russiananti-Semitism or that has been at least one important reason (though to the old interpretation
adhere B.-A. Shillony in Kowner/Rethinking pp. 397-98; M. Matsumura in Chapman/Inaba p.
59; R. Smethurst in ibid. pp. 67-71; E. S. Miller in Steinberg pp. 471-72; T. Suzuki in Nichi-Rosensō pp. 94-95). R. Smethurst in Chapman/Inaba, however, comes insofar to a similar
conclusion as Gutwein as the meeting between Takahashi and the American investors was nomere accident but was striven for by them because of the common interests with their British
partners. Therefore, Schiff acted out of a double motive, one of them being the fight against theRussian anti-Semitism.20 In connection with that question B.-A. Shillony in Kowner/Rethinking
examines the mixed feelings of Jews worldwide towards the war. Many of their fellow-believers
served and died in Russian uniform but in general the sympathies were on Japan’s side whose
final victory was welcomed with great relief. Patrikeeff/Shukman (pp. 9-13, 77-78) stress the factthat Jewish soldiers suffered more than others from the arbitrary and cruel Russian military
apparatus. At least Sergej Witte who was to become the leader of the Tsar’s delegation at thepeace conference of Portsmouth seems to have learned the lesson: Before the conference was
opened he worked out a plan to attract American public opinion to his side, particularly Jewish
opinion, hoping to overcome the negative image that prevailed of Russia as a despotic autocracy
and he met with the most powerful American Jewish bankers, though no direct success of his
efforts can be ascertained (Lukoianov in Ericson/Hockley pp. 52, 54).
N. Sussman and Y. Yafeh in Kowner/Rethinking also studying the British loans come to theconclusion that Japan’s victory was more attributable to the country’s reputation as a reliable
debtor than the preceding reforms of the Meiji era. Attention should be paid to the evidence thatthe interest rates rose or sank parallel to the military development. K. Ono in Kowner/Rethinking
demonstrates that Japan even after the war due to the costs of warfare suffered from financial
problems, the more so since army and navy were expanded, and that the country was only savedby the economic boom during World War I. The same author in connection with the war
finances directs his attention in Nichi-Ro sensō and in Wolff on the Bank of Japan whose money
policy he views as decisive and whose role in historiography he regards as neglected. Without
the bank’s skilful measures the government could not have financed the war since it had
calculated the costs much too low. T. Suzuki in Nichi-Ro sensō particularly praises Takahashi
Korekiyo for the acquisition of loans but has to admit that the banker has had a good dose of luck
and that he could use the global network of the trading banks and their interests.
Even more than Japan, Russia had to rely on credits from abroad where it was already in debt
very much anyway. How much the Tsar’s empire even before the outbreak of war owed money
to the French becomes clear in the study by N. Shinonaga in Gunjishigakkai I. B. Ananich inKrebs: World War Zero?

55

Steinberg describes that in the early phase of war it was relatively easy for Russia to borrowmoney, though against high interest rates, particularly further on from France and in second
place from Germany. The total war costs the author estimates at 6,5 billion rubels. In March
1905 the French, however, learning of the Russian defeat of Mukden refused to conclude a new
credit agreement which had been already prepared for signature. Only after the catastrophe ofTsushima had it become evident to the Tsar’s empire that without a peace treaty no new loans
would become available. Even after the successful conference of Portsmouth, however, theFrench hesitated to grant new credits due to the revolution in Russia, and changed their mind
only in 1906 and demanded higher interest rates. In contrast loans for Japan during the war
became easier and easier to obtain so that E. S. Miller in Steinberg talks in the headline of his
article about “Japan’s other victory”. Furthermore, the author stresses that New York developed
into a global finance place during the Russo-Japanese War while it had been in the shadow ofLondon before.
The foreign observers
In contrast to the Japanese-Chinese War of 1894/95 the conflict of 1904/05 immediately after its
outbreak attracted great international attention. Many countries dispatched not only
correspondents to both sides of the front but also military observers who hoped to win insights
for a future war. Their status would nowadays probably be called “embedded” (on this group see
D. Jones in Wolff). After the war the perceptions won during the conflict were used as basematerial for official studies in both contracting countries but in many cases were kept under lockand were accessible only for official purposes for many years (see Sh. Yokote in Wolff). In someneutral countries such studies were compiled as well. Besides that, many observers, journalists
and military officers, published their reports, some of them still during the war. Book authors
wrote non-fiction works as well so that it can be concluded that an active market existed. Someof the most important publications are found in the reprint series The Russo-Japanese War,
1904-5,edited by Ian Nish. Translations into other languages enlarged the distribution. Theinterest in studies on the Russo-Japanese War, however, was replaced one decade later by that
one in World War I.
Ph. Towle in Kowner/Rethinking is dealing with the largest observer group, the British. For them
the perceptions had been particularly valuable since the battles in the Far East were fought soonafter their traumatic experience in the Boer War. Most of the British observers were on the sideof their ally Japan but a minority was also with the Russian troops. Both had to suffer from thecensorship of the belligerent parties. In their reports the prejudices and fears of the epoch arereflected but they did not include predictions and warnings of a future mass war though trench
warfare, fire-power of the defenders, barbed wire, machine guns and heavy artillery which would
have given a foretaste of what was to be expected in World War I. In a retrospective view it still
surprises that the people of the world after the lessons of the Russo-Japanese War went into aneven more catastrophic war so easy-minded and optimistically or even enthusiastically in 1914.
Towle (p. 320) therefore quotes some voices which later blamed the reporters for having aroused
the war enthusiasm of World War I with their passion for war in and after 1904/05. Soberwarning voices were hardly listened to as in the case of the Russian-Polish banker and railway
entrepreneur Ivan Stanislavovich Bloch (1836-1902). He already in a strategic analysis of 1899
titled Is War Now Impossible?, published in Japanese translation in 1904, had warned thatdragged on siege wars on an industrial base would supersede the mobile and limited wars ofearlier times and would benefit the defender, but in the end due to the high costs would cause theJapan, China, and Pan-Asianism

56

economic collapse and revolutions on both sides. Bloch who came to his conclusions based onearlier wars, particularly the Boer War, did not live to see the Russo-Japanese War. Even afterthat conflict ignored his Cassandra warnings since Japan had allegedly proved that withindustrialized conduct of war a convincing victory was possible despite all sacrifices (Tohmatsuin Wolff21 and in Gunjishigakkai II). Only after World War I Bloch’s book found some attention
and lead to a certain reflection.
What historians on the British army only much later said about the lessons not learned instead
adhering to a cult of offensive in the United Kingdom was also true for strategists in almost allother countries:
The Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5 emphasized the following points: the importance ofmachine-guns and heavy artillery; that artillery had to adopt the new technique of indirect firefrom covered positions instead of assembling long lines of guns wheel to wheel in the open; theutility of hand grenades and mortars and the importance of signal communications. It was one
thing, however, to read the omens correctly, but quite another to change the ideas of men so
traditionally conservative as soldiers.22
The British observers were very much impressed by the efficiency, braveness, spirit of sacrificeand the successes of the Japanese. Sometimes, however, they had a misgiving how much thestrengthening of their Far Eastern ally would do harm to the British Empire and the position of
the white powers in general, as Homer Lea’s popularised opinion became known later.
Therefore Y. Hashimoto in Wolff points out how in England a feeling of twilight of the gods
concerning their own colonial empire spread. In some reports also the misery of the population in
Korea and Manchuria is treated, the people of which had to suffer from the conduct of war andpresence of foreign troops (Towle in Wolff pp. 325-26).
British accounts are also researched by J. Ferris in Chapman/Inaba, be they from professional
officers like General Ian Hamilton and Colonel Aylmer Haldane or from newspaper
correspondents like Charles Repington of the Times who himself was a former army officer.
Though the British as nationals of an allied power enjoyed a favourable treatment they, too, were
kept at distance from the front in the first half year of the war. They did not understand thelanguage of their hosts anyway. Only parallel to the military successes the Japanese did lessen
their reserved attitude. Ferris views Hamilton together with Repington as the most pro-Japaneseobservers and Haldane as the most critical one who thought to perceive the lack of individualism
as the decisive weakness of the Japanese and did not believe them capable of convincing
successes in future wars. The conclusions drawn from the observations by the British who hadlearned more from the Russo-Japanese War than the specialists of any other countries had, as
Ferris maintains, a great influence on the following development of the British military and the
conduct of war in 1914-18. The importance of the tactical defence and the technics of trench
warfare had been recognized but the British suffered heavy losses, particularly in the years
1915/16, when they practiced self-sacrifice the Japanese style to bring their infantry through theenemy’s barrage by all means. Therefore, Ferris comes to the conclusion that the British officers
at the Western front between 1914 and 1918 had successfully transformed their men into
Japanese (p. 132).
Y. Sheffy in Kowner/Impact also examines the importance of the Russo-Japanese War for WorldWar I and the alleged inability to learn the lesson of the 1904/05 conflict, though 83 officers
from many countries had been dispatched to support the work of the military attachés in Japan.

Krebs: World War Zero?

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The author also deals with Ian Hamilton who is mentioned frequently in other articles, too, but
he doesn’t treat lessons the officer did or did not learn though in this general the whole dilemmaand contradictions from experiences and conclusions are disclosed. So for example Hamilton in
his great study on the Russo-Japanese War which became a bestseller sneers at the Japanesemass frontal attack in closed formation learned from Prussia which he finds archaic and outdated
tactics facing modern artillery. He traces this kind of warfare back to the fact that Germany had
not made a great war for 30 years so that it remained behind in modern warfare with her “trust insabre and lance”. 23 By the way, this passage is missing in the German language edition ofHamilton’s book. 24 The critical question if he did not think that the employment of so dense aformation from the outset must entail useless loss of life was answered by a Japanese officer in a
way considered by Hamilton as “stock German” that without loss of lives no successes could be
gained.25 It is strange, however, that the same Hamilton himself in a book published five years
after the war declared the frontal attack regardless of the enemy’s armament as the key to victory
and therefore must be maintained at all costs: “…all that trash written by M. (sic!) Bloch before
1904 about zones of fire across which no living being could pass, heralded nothing but
disaster.”26 Acting accordingly as commander of the expedition forces in the invasion battle near
Gallipoli at the Dardanelle straits in 1915 he used the same tactics as the Germans and theJapanese throwing one wave of soldiers after the other in the attack against the Turkish
fortifications regardless of losses and suffering terrible casualties—the same way as the British
tactic at the Western front. After several months he had to break off the operation and
Hamilton’s military carrier ended abruptly. The First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Spencer
Churchill, being responsible for the operation had to resign. Obviously both had not learned theirlesson from the Russo-Japanese War. Churchill, however, was to prepare very well the next great
invasion battle, that was in 1944 against Germany in Normandy, though he failed in smaller
amphibious operations like in Senegal in September 1940 and Dieppe in August 1942.
The German observers on the Japanese side like those from all other nations suffered from thesecret-mongering of their hosts while with the Russians they found more openmindedness
because friendships and bribery allowed more insights. The Japanese who in the beginning of thewar were not taken seriously became more respected in course of time. Along with their growing
strength among the Germans a feeling that their own role in East Asia would end sprang up (seeC. Eberspächer in Kowner/Impact). These military observers, their conclusions and the attitudeof Germany resulting thereof is the subject of the contribution by O. Griffin in
Kowner/Rethinking. Among them often mockery about the military “achievements” of theRussians found vent. They were characterized as apathetic, insufficiently trained, inflexible andundisciplined. The most favourable attribute was “defensive minded”. This negative estimation
was to have effects and should be paid dearly for in the preparation of World War I as the author
maintains. Chief of the General Staff Alfred von Schlieffen at this time worked out an offensive
plan which was to determine the German strategy in 1914. In his memorandum on the RussoJapanese War he allotted no important military importance to Russia so that he neglected in his“strategic testament” the German Eastern front, as Griffin claims. This underestimation was tohave negative results for Germany in the early phase of World War I (see also Kowner in
Chapman/Inaba p. 300; P. Berton in Kowner/Impact p. 119-20). M.S. Seligmann inKowner/Impact shares this opinion though he realizes that in a part of the historiography also theconviction is found that the German military had come to the conclusion that the Russian
fighting strength had not seriously suffered from the war with Japan and had been fast reinforced
and modernized in the following years. Also from Schlieffen remarks of June 1905 exist that

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Russia would have at her disposal at the Western border the same number of troops within six
months after concluding a peace as it had before the war and would be a menace if by their mass
only.27
Unpublished reports in German archives, first of all in the military archive (BundesarchivMilitärarchiv in Freiburg/Br.) are the main base of B. Martin’s article in Kowner/Rethinking. The
author examines the findings and the bearing on German policy towards Russia to demonstratethat Germany tried to use the war in the Far East to prevent their own encirclement by the other
European great powers but finally ended in isolation. Berlin assuming an attitude of benevolent
neutrality incited St. Petersburg to go to war and getting involved in a long-term struggle in East
Asia instead of meddling into Balkan problems. Germany with her still young navy tried to learn
from Russia’s experience from the war while the brilliant accomplishments of the Japanese army
often were reduced to the instruction by German officers in the 19th century so that the observers
could also be proud of their own country. The reports, however, in the first line reflect theRussian failure and the breakdown of discipline. Among the reports of foreign observers usuallythose from the democratic model state Switzerland are overlooked. It is therefore to bewelcomed that A. Nakai introduces them in Gunjishigakkai I.28
The policy of the European powers
M.S. Seligmann in Kowner/Impact and G. Krebs in Chapman/Inaba deal with Berlin’s policy
during the war. The attitude was controversial within Germany but the policy of the Emperor andhis entourage was dominant seeing Russia forever bound in Asia thereby also weakening the
Tsar’s ally France whom Germany humiliated by bringing about the Moroccan crisis during thistime. Instead of gaining a hegemonial position in Europe using the conflict of 1904/05 Germanyin the end was faced with overall isolation and a dwindling of her strength in the next decade.29
Seligmann (pp. 112-13) further takes the view that Japan intended to take the German colony ofTsingtau as hostage to force Berlin to good conduct concerning Tōkyō’s interests. Krebs
describes the unstable course of German policy during the war sometimes aiming at arapprochement with Great Britain, sometimes with Russia, then with the United States and evenwith Russia and France. In the end Wilhelm II. stood there with empty hands. By Japan’s
alliance with Great Britain the menace from Asia he had warned of over the years became a selffulfilling prophecy when Japan in 1914 belonged to Germany’s enemies. M. Berg in Sprotte und
Ph. Gassert in Sprotte deal with the racist agitation of the “yellow peril”.30 They see in thispropaganda in the first line German hegemonial ambitions since Wilhelm II. thereby tried to use
the white world for his own purposes.
Berlin’s endeavours to profit from Russian weakness is examined by J. Chapman in
Chapman/Inaba examines particularly concerning the implications on British strategic planning,coming to the conclusion that since the battle of Mukden Germany had gained the position of
main enemy for England. He further stresses that London’s intelligence activities against Berlin
had been extended considerably even during peacetime. Besides that the author proves that
British officers in Asia, partly in cooperation with Japan, had great success in dismantling
German spy activities in World War I. Nevertheless, even after the Russo-Japanese War, as
Chapman claims, for Japanese professional soldiers the model was still the army of Germany
which now tried to sell the latest technology to the British educated Imperial Japanese navy anddid not even hesitate to use bribery of the highest officers for that purpose. Chapman further
proves that Berlin supported the nascent independence movement in India which on the otherKrebs: World War Zero?

59

hand was inspired by the Japanese victory over a European great power in 1905 while Tōkyōbound itself in the same year in the revised version of the alliance with London to defend India
for the British Empire. These contradictions were solved only by World War II.
In close connection with German policy one must see the French attitude as P. Beillevaire in
Chapman/Inaba demonstrates. Paris did the splits to obtain an attitude of benevolent neutrality
towards the Russian alliance partner but on the other hand tried everything to avoid being pulled
into the conflict despite rising tensions. Since Great Britain, too, was interested in evading an
entrance into the war, the loose bonds of the entente concluded in April 1904 facilitated it for
both to fulfil this aim. Both had no influence at all to effectively hold back their respective ally,
Russia or Japan, from starting a great war. Instead, France together with her arch-enemy
Germany supplied the Baltic Fleet with coal and other goods on the long way to East Asia. P.
Beillevaire in Kowner/Impact, however, points out that Japan, in contrast to the official policy,
could count also on sympathies in France where in left and liberal circles the alliance between
their republic and autocratic Russia was viewed unnatural, holding the Tennō’s empire as much
more democratic and progressive than that one of the Tsar. In France the war was also seen withgreat uneasiness because many investors feared for the credits they had granted to Russia.
From 1907 on a rapprochement between St. Petersburg and Tōkyō took place, though only
relatively gradual but surprisingly fast, which found its expression in several conventions.
Among them was a secret agreement in 1908 to divide Manchuria into spheres of interest as istreated by P. Berton in Kowner/Impact who continues his study until the alliance concluded in
1916 and by S. Yokote in Ericson/Hockley with an outlook until the 1920s.31 This policy was
facilitated by the Russian access to the British-French entente in 1907, so that de facto a Fourpower-entente against an isolated Germany developed. The surprising quick rapprochement
between the enemies of the 1904/05 war is compared by Berton (p. 78) with the reconciliation
between Japan and Germany on one side and the Western powers on the other after World War
II. One of the reasons for the rapprochement after 1905 was the motive to keep the United States
off Manchuria where American investment sought influence while the area was controlled by
Japan and Russia by way of their respective railways and where both powers tried to blockpotential rivals. Later, during World War I, both countries were enemies of the Central Powers.
While Tōkyō’s policy aimed at preventing the conclusion of a Russian-German separate peace
St. Petersburg depended on Japanese supply of war material for which it recognized special
rights for Japan in China in a secret agreement.
Russia’s successful efforts to overcome their own isolation after 1905 is also dealt with by T.
Saitō in Nichi-Ro sensō and the path to the new constellation of powers developing thereof isalso researched in detail by K. Neilson in Kowner/Rethinking who stresses that Great Britain’s
policy of “splendid isolation” had worked only in Europe but not overseas since it had notprevented the menace of her colonial empire by France and Russia. By the policy of reducing
tension followed since 1904, however, these risks had been removed for Britain.
Intelligence
Usually it is assumed that the underestimation of Japan by Russia before the outbreak of war andin its initial phase had been among other reasons the result of insufficient intelligence.32 This
judgment is qualified by B. W. Menning in Wolff who points out that intelligence activities had
been more successful than usually recognized, particularly concerning the Japanese navy. H.
Wada in Wolff reaches even the conclusion that the Russian military and navy attachés in Tōkyō

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had absolutely understood the high level of the Japanese military and its readiness for war andhad also influenced War Minister Kuropatkin with their respect but their reports were given
credence in St. Petersburg only very hesitantly and when the government was ready to execute aturn in politics it had been too late to prevent the Japanese attack.
Russian spy activities are researched more thoroughly by D. B. Pavlov in Chapman/Inaba,finding definitely some successes rendered possible with the help of some befriended Koreans. It
becomes evident that the foreign ministry in St. Petersburg was very active in this field, could
rely on a spy network in China and all that independently from military agencies. Besides that it
becomes clear how much Korea, particularly the court, was longing for protection from Russia toprevent their impending inclusion into the Japanese sphere of influence. The same subject isdealt with by E. Y. Sergeev in Steinberg but this author views the Russian secret service at thetime of the beginning of the war as very backward and susceptible to misinformation launchedby the Japanese counterespionage. He recognizes, however, some progress made until the time ofthe peace conference and after. He stresses that Russia could not only rely on Asian spies but
also on a row of agents from different European countries. Though he is of the opinion that thehistory of Russia’s secret service is not nearly researched sufficiently he sees some reason for
optimism due to the far-reaching opening of the related archives since the 1990s.
On the other side C. Inaba and R. Kowner in Kowner/Rethinking can prove, based on an
admirable amount of archival documents that Japan spied against Russia much more thoroughly
using a lot of money. The activities included the observation of the Bosporus and the Suez Canal
which the British could not close for Russian warships due to international treaties. The authors
maintain that there were still blunders, errors of judgement and amateurish behaviour in this field
being still new for the modernizing nation. It becomes clear that the foreign ministry, generalstaff and navy general staff though working separately from each other concerning intelligence,
they finally exchanged material of a certain relevance. Furthermore, Japan received intelligencematerial from the ally Great Britain and agents were recruited in different countries: Russia,
China and Turkey as well as in Europe, among them Switzerland, Finland and Poland. These
activities became much more successful than the efforts undertaken at the same time to support
the independence movements in Finland and Poland with money or weapon deliveries. So during
the war with Russia Japan prepared the ground to cooperate in politics and the more so in thefield of intelligence against the Soviet Union with Finland and Poland after World War I whenthese countries became independent.33
This story is described in greater detail by A. Kujala in Steinberg concentrating on the activities
of Colonel Akashi Motojirō. When this officer lost his position as military attaché at the legationin St. Petersburg with the outbreak of war he was transferred to Stockholm. From there and from
London he organized the support for the independence movements for people under Russian
domination, the revolutionary activities of Social Democrats and acts of sabotage along therailway lines and even financed Vladimir I. Lenin living in Switzerland—the same way as did
the Germans in World War I—to destabilize the enemy nation and to hope for a second front
which would bind Russian forces. Particularly close was Akashi’s cooperation with the Finn
Konni Zilliacus who succeeded in getting deliveries of weapons from Japan though the greatest
quantity of them got lost when the freighter transporting them ran on a rock before the Finnish
coast and had to be blown up. Kujala mentions that the Japanese showed less interest in relations
with the Poles who had become unquiet during the Russo-Japanese War, too, but the author does
not give a reason. After all Józef Pilsudski who was to become as “Marshall” the ruler ofKrebs: World War Zero?

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independent Poland after World War I sojourned in Tōkyō in 1904 to negotiate on an alliance
between the Polish underground and Japan. Perhaps this idea was thought to be without
foundation since the Polish part of Russia in contrast to Finland had no coast to land supports.
This episode is dealt with by W. Benecke in Aust/Steindorff who can prove that Pilsudski though
he was not able to conclude an alliance got considerable financial means from Japan. Also his
rival, Roman Dmowski, was in Japan at the same time, but he did not aim at a revolutionary
break from Russia but only at a greater autonomy within the Tsar’s empire. The rivalry between
both politicians was to continue even after the refounding of independent Poland in 1919.
Furthermore, newly found documents prove that Pilsudski had made in Tōkyō proposals far
exceeding what was known before: To organize a Polish military unit to be recruited among
Poles in the USA and to be sent to Manchuria. It would be enlarged by Polish soldiers who haddeserted the Russian troops at the front and by prisoners taken by the Japanese army in the battle
field.34
Akashi’s subversive activities were uncovered by Russia soon after the end of the war andofficial Japan seeking better relations with St. Petersburg in the meantime felt urged to keepsome distance from the officer. Kujala comes to the conclusion that Akashi’s importance was
exaggerated in Japan after the Russian Revolution when Tōkyō reactivated the bonds with Polesand Finns. Also other information deserves attention that Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, a
Polish writer showing an extreme anti-Russian attitude and better known under his pen nameJoseph Conrad, took sides with Japan as a publicist in the British exile during the war of 1904/05(Y. Hashimoto in Wolff p. 387; Patrikeeff/Shukman pp. 59-61, 63).
D. Wolff in Steinberg described the role of Chinese spies who worked for both sides and wereforced to collaborate out of sheer poverty. China herself was neutral but on her territory most of
the battles were fought. While Japan already for many years since had organized an intensive
intelligence educating many specialists in Chinese and Russian language, Russia had neglectedlanguage training so that hardly one Russian was able to understand Chinese or Japanese. Only
little by little Russia developed a spy network in China but this became effective only when the
war was almost finished. The great differences in quantity and quality of intelligence is judged
by Wolff as one of the reasons for the Japanese victory. Tōkyō’s extended spy network in China,organized by the army and the foreign ministry with the consulates as main bases is also treatedby D. Cao in Chapman/Inaba. Alex Marshall (Staff pp. 96-101) demonstrates that Russian
intelligence work in China as well as in Japan due to the lessons learned painfully in 1904/05
was decisively improved and expanded in the following years.35
Conclusion of peace
US-President Theodore Roosevelt’s willingness for mediation paved the way for the conferenceof Portsmouth and the conclusion of peace. This aspect is dealt with in the edited volume by
Ericson/Hockley based mainly on a symposium at Dartmouth College. The United States,
particularly President Roosevelt, originally had hoped that Japan would block an uncontrollable
Russian expansion in the Asian-Pacific region thereby working for American interests.
Furthermore, there were strong antipathies in the USA against the Tsar’s empire because of its
autocratic government and anti-Semitism flaring up again and again so also during therevolutionary actions in 1905 caused by the hardships of the war with Japan. In inciting this antiRussian mood the prominent journalist George Kennan exercised great influence as isdemonstrated by L. Inoue in Nichi-Ro sensō as well as by E. P. Trani and D. E. Davis inJapan, China, and Pan-Asianism

62

Ericson/Hockley. Kennan had travelled a great deal particularly in Russia and had won the
reputation of a sharp critic of the Tsar’s rule. Therefore he was not allowed to enter Russia any
more, so that during the war 1904/05 he reported from Japan and that for the influential journal
Outlook. As normal in western countries he interpreted the conflict as a fight between David and
Goliath showing strong sympathies for Japan as a modern and civilized nation struggling withmedieval barbaric Russia. During this time he led a correspondence with President Roosevelt
recommending an act of mediation at an early point of time for which idea he also met withinterest in talks with Japanese politicians. Both Americans shared a disrespect for Korea. For the
discontent of the Japanese public concerning the allegedly too small concessions of the enemy inthe peace treaty of Portsmouth Kennan showed great understanding. During the war he also
visited in their camps Russian prisoners of war whose language he spoke fluently trying toconvince them of liberal ideals and providing information material, supported by Russians inexile. The prisoners got additional news about the revolutionary situation in their fatherland fromletters they got from home so that among them a Social Democratic spirit spread (see T. N.
Yasko in Gunjishigakkai II). Kennan welcomed this development among the Russians while helater opposed vehemently as publicist the Bolshevist October Revolution of 1917 and the regime
arising thereof. By the way, George Kennan (1845-1924) was the elder cousin of the prominent
diplomat George F(rost) Kennan (1904-2005) who after World War II set up the policy of“containment” against the Soviet Union and worked in a leading position to include the former
enemy nations Japan and Germany into an anti-Soviet block. E. P. Trani and D. E. Davis in
Ericson/Hockley (p.74) see a continuing line from George Kennan’s activities over George Frost
Kennan’s diplomacy which morphed into Paul H. Nitze’s rollback policy in 1950 to Ronald
Reagan’s Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI), often referred to as “Star Wars” and his “evilempire” rhetoric.
On both sides of the warring nations there were considerations already in summer 1904 about theadvisability of a peace, on the Japanese side particularly by Minister Hayashi Tadasu in London
and on the Russian side by the former finance minister Witte. Both, however, were forced bytheir respective government to inactivity. I. V. Lukoianov in Ericson/Hockley deals with St.
Petersburg’s policy based on Russian sources. He proves that particularly Tsar Nicholas II. under
the influence of his advisers was unyielding, only showing interest in ending the war after thecatastrophic defeat of Tsushima in May 1905. It was a disappointment, however, when not the
pro-Russian Itō Hirobumi was appointed leader of the Japanese delegation but the hardliner
Foreign Minister Komura Jūtarō. Therefore the negotiations proceeded only very slowly.
According to Lukoianov Russia still had at her disposal some trumpcards, among them the factthat she had broken the Japanese cipher so that it became possible to read numerous diplomatic
telegrams. Furthermore the imperturbable will to continue the war and the vast Russian territory
were scary for Japan. In addition, St. Petersburg succeeded to cause other countries to exertpressure on Japan, in first line by the United States. By this strategy Tōkyō could be induced togive up several demands, among them the payment of reparations and the cessation of North
Sakhalin and the China Eastern Railway. Not only Witte’s diplomacy but also the Tsar’s
unshakable attitude get “good credits” in Lukoianov’s article.
While the United States in general were content with the Russian defeat a total Japanese victorywould have been a nightmare as well since a strong rival for the USA would have emerged in thearea. Therefore it was quite in the American interest that both contractors in states of exhaustion
accepted President Roosevelt’s mediation offer leading to the conclusion of peace on September

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5, 1905. These efforts to maintain the balance of power in the Far East are described in thearticles of M. Berg in Sprotte and N. E. Saul in Steinberg. Berg elaborates Roosevelt’s idea ofthe rise and decline of civilizations and “racial” accomplishments. Soon after the end of war
many Americans got the feeling they had backed the wrong horse or as a historian titled: “TheDeus ex machina that failed”36. With the fear of the Japanese superman in the United States the
movement to exclude Asians from immigration grew considerably. The last chapter of the
Russo-Japanese war for the USA was not the happy end of the gentlemen’s agreements on theimmigration question between Washington and Tōkyō in 1907 and 1908 with which Berg’s
article ends but the bilateral tensions were even to rise. Saul in Steinberg deals thoroughly withthe preparation and the handling of the peace conference for which Roosevelt at the outset had to
overcome opposition from both warring sides. To have won over the Tsar and his government
the author attributes in the first line to the US-ambassador to St. Petersburg, George vonLengerke Meyer. The access to Japan was easier due to the close personal relations between
Roosevelt and special delegate Kaneko Kentarō. Negotiation leader at the peace conference wason the Russian side the former finance minister Sergej Witte who had risen to the president of
the ministers’ council (prime minister) supported by Roman Rosen, since May 1905 ambassador
to Washington and until 1904 minister to Tōkyō37 and on the Japanese side Foreign Minister
Komura Jutarō whose policy is described by T. Minohara in Wolff. Originally as delegation
leader Itō Hirobumi was foreseen but had declined since he with his relatively friendly attitude
towards Russia had criticized the war from the beginning on. Komura in contrast belonged to thehawk faction. His right hand in Portsmouth was the minister to Washington, Takahira Kogorō,
while Kaneko Kentarō acted as special assistant. Minohara stresses Roosevelt’s pro-Japanese
attitude who for example had recommended to conquer Sakhalin in order to further the Russian
readiness for negotiations and peace (p. 558). The author rejects the thesis that the president had
deceived Japan to convene a new conference dominated more by himself after a failure of thepeace negotiations therefore having withheld information on the Russian approval to cede theSouthern half of Sakhalin to Japan. Rather, the author claims, the president, considering theinfamous inconstancy of the Tsar, had waited for confirmation from St. Petersburg (pp. 561-66).
Also M. Matsumura, probably the best expert of the Russo-Japanese War, deals with Roosevelt
and the Portsmouth conference in Chapman/Inaba. For this author the personal relations of thepresident to the diplomat and the Upper House deputy Kaneko Kentarō played an important role.
Both had studied at the same time at Harvard University though they met personally not in
those years but only about a decade later. Kaneko even was awarded an honorary doctorate inlaw by Harvard in 1899. He took over several ministries in different cabinets and was sent to the
USA as special envoy during the Russo-Japanese War. Matsumura Masayoshi had published avoluminous study on Kaneko’s role during the Russo-Japanese War in 1980 - written while hewas consul in New York - and an updated edition in 1987 in Japanese. Now an English languagetranslation with minor additions is available, translated by Ian C. Ruxton. Unfortunately the listof used sources and literature is not updated. Matsumura traces back Kaneko’s appointment to
the trauma of 1895 when Tōkyō due to the Triple Intervention in 1895 had to give up a great dealof the booty from the war against China. Therefore, it now seemed advisable to stage apropaganda campaign in favour of Japan to oppose the Russian publicity campaign for an alleged
new crusade led by a nation guided by Christianity. Matsumura therefore calls Kaneko“Ambassador for Public Diplomacy” who had to cope with pro-Russian feelings in the public,
among industrialists and in the press. He succeeded, however, in first line to win over President
Roosevelt to a favorable attitude towards Japan.

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While Russia could count on sympathies in the United States as a Christian country T. Niita in
Gunjishigakkai I sees in the attitude of the orthodox Russian church a great share of guilt alreadyin the ideological preparation of the war before its outbreak. The same role as Kaneko in the
USA was plaid in Great Britain by Baron Suematsu Kenchō, who was also an Upper House
deputy and was the son in law of Genrō Itō Hirobumi. His activities aiming to prevent an
eventual renewed fear of the “yellow peril” are described by M. Matsumura in Gunjishigakkai I.
Matsumura in Nichi-Ro sensō and in his monograph finds Roosevelt’s attitude towards Japan
contradictory so that different interpretations could be possible. It puzzles the author that the USpresident never got a Japanese decoration for his mediation, totally in contrast to the banker
Jacob Schiff who was awarded the highest order a foreigner could receive by the Tennō. The
neglect of Roosevelt, however, was probably caused by the fact that the Japanese public madehim the scapegoat for not having been paid the expected war reparations because of the USpresident’s appeals for moderation. In this disappointment D. Wolff in Ericson/Hockley (pp.
131-38) views the beginning of Japanese anti-Americanism which was to be observed very soon
also in other countries of East Asia like Russia, China and Korea which all saw themselves as
losers respectively victims of the war and the growing US-engagement in the Far East. After all,however, Roosevelt was awarded the Nobel peace prize as the first head of state to be honouredthat way though in the opinion of T. Minohara in Wolff (p. 566) rather the leader of the Russiandelegation Witte would have deserved it.
I. Nish in Chapman/Inaba also researches Komura Jutarō’s role giving him the best credits since
the diplomat, together with Katō Takaaki and Hayashi Tadasu, was the architect of the alliancewith Great Britain, had also during the war with Russia stayed in close contact with London andsucceeded in keeping other countries out of the conflict. Furthermore, as the author maintains,
Komura got in touch with the USA thereby rendering possible Roosevelt’s peace mediation, had
shown a remarkable sense of proportion dissuading the own military to insist on the annexationof Vladivostok and North Sakhalin and had followed the American advice to renounce war
reparations. That Komura on the other hand brought about concessions from Russia which leadJapan on a dangerous path to further expansion and collision with other countries is convincingly
demonstrated by N. Fujita in Gunjishigakkai II: The cession of the Liautung-peninsula allegedly
lying in Japan’s “national interest” and even obtaining the Chinese consent to the “change of theleaseholder” thereby launching the economic penetration by the Tennō’s empire.
The condition of the peace treaty brought many benefits for Japan: The recognition of herhegemonial position in Korea, the cession of the Kwantung leased territory (Liautung) and South
Sakhalin, the conveyance of the South Manchurian Railway from Chanchun38 to Port Arthur,fishing rights in Russian territorial waters and the withdrawal of Russian troops from Manchuria.
Despite these benefits the Japanese public was not content since it had expected more gains
particularly the payment of war reparations. On the day of signing the treaty of Portsmouthheavy riots broke out spontaneously in the Hibiya section of Tōkyō so that martial law had to be
declared. These events would have deserved their own article but they are only remarked upon inpassing by some of the authors (H. Tohmatsu in Wolff p. 193; I. Chiba in Ibid. p. 359-60; Y.
Kitamura in Ibid. p. 428: T. Mihohara in Ibid. p. 567; Kreiner in Kreiner pp. 58-59; Kowner inKowner/Impact pp. 34-35; Shimazu, Society, passim). I. Nish includes in Vol. I (pp. 161-65) of
his edited work The Russo-Japanese War a report on the riots from the British diplomatic
documents. That even in the countryside protests movements arose which quite often werestirred up by the local press is demonstrated with Nagasaki as example by H. Yokoyama inKrebs: World War Zero?

65

Nichi-Ro sensō. In this case the public was probably upset the more since from the neighbouringnavy base of Sasebo the Combined Fleet had sailed for the battle of Tsushima. Instead of paying
the expected reparations to the victorious nation Russia soon after signing the peace agreement
demanded that Japan to compensate individuals for damages caused by Japanese warfare so for
example for businessmen or for the sinking of ships not justified by international law of war. In
the beginning Tōkyō refused stressing the final character of the Portsmouth treaty but eventuallyentered negotiations which dragged on until 1911 leading to financial compensation in somecases (see Sh. Itō in Nichi-Ro sensō).
The home front
Not only soldiers in the field found attention in the literature but also the situation at home,particularly the fate of the women in different roles linked to the war and the families of the
bereaved. Sh. Bejarano in Kowner/Rethinking publishes an article on illustrations dealing withthe subject. While impressive paintings and photos on the course of the war are widely known
and have been distributed by the government, official Japan did not grant a greater role towomen despite their importance for the economy as well as for the health and welfare system.
Therefore this contribution fills a gap by presenting the fate of the female part of the population:
Women left behind or mourning, nurses and men, dreaming of their home. The role of Russian
women as “forgotten heros” is examined by Y. Mikhailowa and M. Ikuta in Nichi-Ro sensō andKowner/Rethinking. The authors undertake a subdivision in four parts: Nurses, combatants,
journalists and the female population in the battle zone. It becomes clear that the women, thoughglorified for the care they furnished the men with, remained in an underprivileged position. Afterall, however, they got the chance for a vocational training and an own income, though very low,which allowed them a certain independence.
The traces of the war—the first one to be widely discussed in the media—in Japanese literaturefinds an investigation by F. Y. Kleeman in Chapman/Inaba comparing the methods of treatment
by male and female authors respectively, some of them with experiences in the battle area. Whilemen often show a macho behaviour women usually appear to be more thoughtful. The author
attributes the difference to the roles of the sexes during the war: Here active participation in thefighting, there passive endurance of the consequences. At that time the word jūgo (= home front)
emerged in the Japanese language (p. 250). In some way different is the case of the female spy
Kawahara Misaoko, the “Japanese Mata Hari” who was decorated after the war with a highaward, with her own work as well as with the treatment her life found by other authors. Kleeman
in the literature also came across voices which did not join the hero-worship of the majority but
took a critical stand towards the war and rejected it, be it out of Socialist or Christian spirit for
example. The author comes to the conclusion that in general the treatment of the subject was
freer than in later eras, since after World War I “unpatriotic” voices were not tolerated any more.
The Russo-Japanese War is called by Shillony/Kowner in Kowner/Rethinking (pp. 5-6) “the lastgentlemanly war” in which the opponents showed the highest respect to each other, the civil
population was not affected unnecessarily and - as demonstrated in the exhaustively in thecontribution of Y. Kita in Gunjishigaku I—the prisoners of war on both sides got fair treatment
according to the Hague Convention. V. G. Datsyshen in Chapman/Inaba deals with the Japaneseprisoners of war and civilian internees in Russian hand who were either held in Siberian camps
or were brought to the European part of the vast empire of the Tsar. The United States asprotecting power for Japan took care of them. An equally fair treatment was accorded to RussianJapan, China, and Pan-Asianism

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prisoners who had fallen in Japanese hands and whose number finally had reached 70.000 men.
Their fate is described by N. Shimazu in Steinberg and in her monography (Steinberg pp. 37083; Shimazu, Society pp. 157-96). It is surprising that their life conditions were bearable—aswell as those of the German and Austrian defenders of Tsingtau fallen in Japanese hands inWorld War I—and completely different from the treatment of their fellow-sufferers in Word War
II. Shimazu traces the humanitarian treatment of the Russians in 1904/05 to the fact that they
were Europeans and with the wish of Japan to be recognized as a civilized nation thereby
winning the goodwill of the public opinion in the West (in Steinberg p. 370). One has toconsider, however, that the Chinese, i.e. non-Europeans, in the war of 1894/95 had not become
the targets of cruelties comparable to those in the 1930s and 1940s, either. Furthermore, it canbe asked why the Japanese prisoners of 1904/05 did not become victims of contempt in theircountry to the same degree as those in World War II.
The home front in Russia is dealt with by Y. Tsuchiya in Nichi-Ro sensō and in Wolff while in
Chapman/Inaba the same author includes also Japan in his research. He examines the support bydifferent institutions for families which had fallen into poverty and misery because of the war.
For that purpose he made use of regional archives in both countries besides other sources coming
to the conclusion that there had been in Japan from the state hardly initiatives to prevent thefamilies of soldiers to sliding down into poverty but that on the local level solidarity and support
was found. This is demonstrated also with Kyōto as example by T. Takemoto in Wolff and in
Gunjishigakkai II. Similar was, as Tsuchiya maintains, the situation in Russia though theactivities there were organized less systematically and the solidarity by the people had been
suppressed for a long time since the leadership of the state had in first place been interested in
the preservation of autocratic rule and public order. In contrast the government in theconstitutional monarchy of Japan had had to listen willy-nilly to the people. The author provesthat there had definitely been a patriotic outburst in Russia after the beginning of the war arisingfrom the anger about the Japanese assault but because of the inhuman policy of the own
government against the people this feeling had fizzled out very fast. The disappointment about
the inability of the Tsar’s regime had lead to the loss of authority and to demands for reforms
from intellectual circles. In contrast to Russia the patriotism in Japan had grown steadily, as
Tsuchiya concludes. Life circumstances in both capitals of the warring states are also thecontents of memoirs by British diplomats, reprinted in Vol. I (pp. 116-44) of I. Nish’s edition
The Russo-Japanese War.
U. Eppstein in Kowner/Rethinking observes the rise of Japanese nationalism by militant songs
becoming radical more and more and introduced to elementary schools and that already in thedecade before the outbreak of war. The influence of the war resulted in a gradual militarizationof society finding an expression in the identification with the armed forces and enthusiasm fortheir music. The army as well as the navy sent a music corps to the troops near the front tostrengthen the moral, as becomes clear in the contribution of M. Tanimura in Gunjishigakkai II.
Together with the modernization of Japan Western music had been introduced including marchmusic.
The influence of the war on art and literature is the subject of several publications. Y.
Mikhailova and M. Ikuta in Nichi-Ro sensō and in Kowner/Rethinking introduce to the reader
poems on the theme “war” while A. Cohen in Kowner/Rethinking comes to the conclusion that
Russia’s artists in contrast to World War I and the October Revolution and unlike what is
generally believed had largely continued to lead their own life without being influenced by theKrebs: World War Zero?

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war. That in Russia already before the beginning of hostilities the dominating negative image of
the Japanese and Asians in general was further cultivated and even strengthened by propaganda
is dealt with by R. Stites in Steinberg so that the enemy appeared as an inferior creature or evenas monkey—exactly like in Anglo-Saxon agitation during World War II. In Russia’s satiric press
the nation having been hurt at bottom in their pride by the Japanese attack gave vent to its rage
by clichés and racism as well (T. Filippova in Steinberg). A. Frajlich in Kowner/Rethinking
examines the impact of the war on Russian poetry: Due to the traumatic experience by war andrevolution the poets yearned for an identification with Europe and had longed for a role for
Russia as a “third Rome”. F. Grüner in Sprotte inquires into the representation of the war in the
Russian press and that particularly in conservative newspapers which did not suffer so muchunder censorship. The opportunity to exert influence, so its conclusion, was extremely limited
but the situation improved due to the readiness for reform after the defeat so that after many
years of muzzling a heyday for the press had begun. The author found in the newspapers - aswell as in statements from the government—no exaggerating war enthusiasm or evenwarmongering but a patriotic-nationalistic tendency grown he concludes from the resentment at
the Japanese surprise attack.
In Japan at that time there was a boom of woodblock prints—for the last time in history - whichfound mass distribution (see J. Ulak in Steinberg). The motives were in first line war heroes andtheir exploits. In contrast to the Japanese efforts to be noticeable in other fields to present the war
as the successful completion of the Meiji modernization here the artists used traditional
technique though photos and films had long existed and paintings in Western style were made.
The purpose was perhaps to rekindle old samurai ethics. Not only Japan, however, was hungry
for pictures: also in Western countries illustrations on the war were eagerly acquired or selfproduced.39
Though there are some related articles in other volumes, particularly in Steinberg and Wolff, N.
Shimazu’s monography is the first full-length study to examine the war from the perspective of
its impact on Japanese society. Some of the articles the author had published earlier elsewhere,
so for example in Steinberg. Using a wide range of sources as diaries and letters N. Shimazu
sheds light on the attitudes of ordinary Japanese people towards the war. She deals with themes
such as conscripts and battlefield death, war commemoration, heroic myths, and war in popular
culture. As S. Lone40 has done in his study on antimilitarism she questions the orthodox view of
Meiji Japan as monolithic, demonstrating that there existed a complex and ambivalentrelationship between the Japanese state and a pluralistic society so that sources of power, andforces of social and cultural change, did not emanate solely from the authority of the state
downwards to the people. In her opinion state-society relationship rather was more symbiotic andinteractive in nature than hitherto understood. In the war-torn society pro-war chauvinists andanti-war activists were opposed to each other, whilst the “silent majority” including theconscripts at the front wrote freely about their fears, worries and hopes from encampments at thefront.
Shimazu pays special attention to the individual soldiers at the front instead of treating them as
an anonymous mass writing in spite of wartime censorship about their thoughts, fears, joys,
sadness and daily life in the trench. Particularly on the battlefield, conscripts longing for theirfamilies and their home town or village the state or emperor were of lesser importance. The
author also judges the Hibiya riot not as an extraordinary outburst of popular nationalism, but as
an expression of underlying social forces that had existed for some time. In contrast to World

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War II she proves that the people’s attitude was markedly different, obvious in the treatment ofprisoners of war, the strength of the anti-war movement and the fact that during the war Japanwas not internationally isolated but was in communication with all major powers and wasobserving international law.
Shimazu demonstrates that the media emerged as a key agency, acting as an intermediary
between state and society. The “modern” war propaganda used photography as well as
cinematography which were directed not only at the public at home but toward foreign countries
as well. In contrast old fashioned prints (nishikie) became also very popular in Japan. The RussoJapanese war is usually seen as a stepping stone to a higher grade of Japanese nationalism but
Shimazu’s study evokes the impression that it also built a bridge to Taishō democracy. So it is
not surprising that the author comes to the conclusion that the 1904-05 war lost its general appeal
in Japanese society during that era. The media attention of the late Meiji years in film,
newspapers, exhibitions and art, however, was revived as an important national memory in the
militaristic 1930s and the creation of Manchukuo was seen as completion of the 1905 war aims
and therefore justified the losses almost thirty years ago.
Revolution and democratic currents
Japan was more democratic than Russia, had a constitution and an elected parliament, politicalparties and a legal opposition, more freedom of the press and a population with a broad
education (Shillony/Kowner in Kowner/Rethinking p. 8). Therefore, for the Russian society thedefeat in the war was the final proof for the bankruptcy of the rule by police and reactionary
bureaucracy. So Lenin in exile rejoiced at the fall of Port Arthur not only as weakening of the
Tsar’s regime but also as triumph of the progressive Asia over the reactionary Europe, and as thevictory of the suppressed against the suppressors (F. R. Dickinson in Steinberg pp. 523-24). It isstrange that Japanese Marxists after World War I criticised the war as “imperialistic” in Lenin’s
sense (I. Chiba in Wolff p. 369). Who after all might be the real Lenin? The coincidence of war
and revolution prevented Russia fighting with all her might against one of the enemies: against
the exterior, Japan; or the interior, the revolting social strata of the people. The long war, which
finally got lost and with all its hardships lead to the first Russian revolution which in Westernimagination is mainly connected with the armoured cruiser Potemkin. J. Kusber inKowner/Rethinking deals with its pendant on land, the unrest among the soldiers after theirdemobilization who often switched over to mutiny and implanted revolutionary spirit into the
population, particularly into the farmers, with implications until 1917. The author had alreadydemonstrated in a monograph the interrelationship of the Russo-Japanese War and the first
revolution in the Tsar’s empire.41 Therefore it is strange that in a recent book on Russia in 1905,
co-edited by Kusber, the war is hardly mentioned and is dealt with in only one single article.42
J. Bushnell in Steinberg views the revolution and the mass strikes as the origin of the path to the
October manifesto in 1905 when the Tsar saw himself compelled to guarantee civil rights and aparliament (Duma) with legislative authority. Nicholas II. had even before that date appointed
the relatively liberal Sergej Witte to the president of the ministers’ council thereby strengthening
his position as head of the Russian delegation at the conference of Portsmouth (see also
Schimmelpenninck in Kowner Rethinking p. 41). Before that time Russia had been the only
European power without a constitution which finally was enacted in 1906 with the Basic law ofState granting voting right, parliament (Duma) and Council of Ministers (Binder-Iijima in
Sprotte pp. 10-11). As a matter of fact, however, the reforms were restricted several months later

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and Witte lost his position (D. Dahlmann in Kreiner; D. McDonald in Steinberg; J. Frankel inKowner/Impact). H. D. Löwe in Sprotte (pp. 41-42) sees a parallel between the changes of1905/06 and the first reform movement caused by the defeat in the Crimea War 1863-66. This
movement, too, grew weary later.
The victory of the constitutional monarchy Japan over autocratic Russia also obviously
strengthened movements for a constitutional policy in third countries so for example in Iran.
Russia was so busy with her interior conflicts and the war that she could no longer back the
Shah’s autocratic regime und could not continue meddling in the affairs of the neighbouring
country as had been the case for several centuries. This new situation strengthened the positionof Iranian revolutionaries who interpreted Japan’s victory as a triumph of democracy and now,
following the model of the Russian revolution viewed as a mass uprising against a tyranny,demanded a constitution and a parliament. The Shah, facing growing unrest, agreed on August 5,1906 willy-nilly but limited the right to vote to a small minority (see Bieganiec in
Kowner/Rethinking; Hirama pp. 134-35).43 It may be permissable to add here that the Shah incontrast to the Japanese constitution had only limited rights since the constitution of Belgium
where the king had only a weak position had been taken intentionally as a model, the more so inthe supplementary constitutional law of 1907.44 While in Japan the pro-monarchical circles had
enforced a constitution it were the anti-monarchical ones in Iran.
The developments in Russia and in Iran were watched by reform-minded officers in Turkey withjealousy and was sensed as a challenge to their own feeling of superiority and pride since the
Ottoman Empire had enacted a constitution already in 1876 and a parliament one year later, butthese reforms were suspended by the sultan in 1878. Turkey had observed the war between
Russia, seen as the greatest enemy of the Ottoman Empire, and Japan with great interest but took
officially a neutral stand and sometimes even an attitude of benevolent neutrality towards Russia
in order not to provoke St. Petersburg and had even introduced censorship on war news. This
policy is described by D. Akarca in Kowner/Rethinking but the author demonstrates that in the
Turkish public and in circles of intellectuals there had been great enthusiasm in favour of Japan,
and that not only because it hit the common enemy Russia but also because of its rise against theWestern world. Also the revolutionary Young Turks’ press in exile rejoiced at “progressive”
Japan’s victory over “reactionary” Russia thereby indirectly attacking also their own
government. The sultan came into a precarious situation: Though he also welcomed the militarydefeat of his arch-enemy Russia, he is said to have regretted the set-back for the autocratic formof government, the more so as he had to fear the spread of revolutionary currents (see also H.
Nezi-Akmeşe in Worringer pp. 67-70). That affected his own country, too, were the Young
Turks enforced the reinstallation of the constitution in 1908.
Aydin in Politics offers a rare, global perspective on how religious tradition and the experienceof European colonialism interacted with Muslim and non-Muslim discontent with Westerndominated globalisation, the international order and modernization. With a comparative focus on
Ottoman pan-Islamic and Japanese pan-Asianist vision of world order from the middle of thenineteenth century to the end of World War II he offers a global history perspective on modern
anti-Western critiques. The Russo-Japanese War receives full treatment but the author comes tothe conclusion that the anti-Western movement in both countries had started much earlier with
the Christian-Islamic tensions in the case of Turkey and the white-yellow antagonism in the caseof Japan. In this strained atmosphere the result of the Russo-Japanese War was felt as a blow ofliberation in both societies. It empowered the claims of non-Western intellectuals in the debates

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about race, the Orient, and progress, and became the strongest evidence against the discourse of
the white race’s permanent and eternal superiority over the coloured races. Therefore, the author
observes the following development until the decolonisation process, beginning with the period
1905-1914, usually viewed as the “awakening” of the East against the Western hegemony, aslogan that became the symbol of an intellectual decolonisation preceding the political one. This
mood led to an increase of pan-Islamic thought in Turkey and pan-Asianist ideology in Japanand to a rise of self confidence in other regions of Asia, where their own underdevelopment was
now viewed only as just a temporary delay in progress that could be altered by a set of reforms,
such as the ones Meiji Japan had implemented in just three decades (Aydin, Politics pp. 9-10).
Though Japanese pan-Asianists were mainly in opposition to their government until the late
1920s they gained influence in the 1930s with their old claims that in face of the superiority of
Asian civilisation against the declining West it was better for Japan to be the leader of a future
free Asia than a yellow race partner discriminated against in the club of white great powers.
Eventually pan-Asianist thought was used to achieve the aims of Japanese imperialism under theslogan invented in Tōkyō: “return to Asia” (ibid. pp. 11, 160-89).
Aydin proves that there were contacts and cooperation between pan-Islamists like Abdurresid
Ibrahim and Japanese pan-Asianists like Tōyama Mitsuru, Uchida Ryōhei and Inukai Tsuyoshi
with an anti-Western orientation already before the Russo-Japanese War and the more so
thereafter (Politics pp. 83-89). The Russians who had fought the war under the banner ofChristianity and had been instigated by Wilhelm II. and other German propagandists in thatsense had to recognize that together with nationalism, three major non-Western world religions,
namely, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism, experienced a reawakening and revival in theaftermath of the Russo-Japanese War (Aydin, Politics p. 78).
Similar to Aydin, Politics, the enthusiasm in Turkey for Japan because of racial reasons is dealt
with by Bieganiec in Kowner/Rethinki. Intellectuals took notice of the victory of an Asian nation
over a European one with sympathy since they accused the Western countries to treat the Turks
together with the “yellow” Japanese as standing at the bottom of the race hierarchy. They saw
now an end had come to this kind of arrogance so that the Turks also would get back their pride.
The evidence seemed to have been furnished that modernization must not necessarily mean
Westernisation (so also Hirama pp. 126-30).45
Worringer in Worringer maintains that the provincial Arab elites under Ottoman rule viewed
Japanese ancestral rites and respect as a pattern for Muslims to imitate in revering their Arab
forefathers. Their admiration for Japan, however, had a bad effect on Turkey because they did
not get cultural recognition as a special group within the empire and a share in real politicalpower. Therefore, their identity as Arabs became more pronounced, and the discourse on
Japanese modernity in the pages of the Arabic press shifted to a politicized critique of Ottoman
failures in comparison with Japanese successes, particularly where education was concerned.
D. Akarca in Kowner/Rethinking mentions that Turkey dispatched an officer as military observerto the Japanese side, Colonel Pertev Demirhan, while Russia refused to grant her consent forsuch an endeavour. For this episode the reader would have welcomed a more detailed narrative:
Japan and Turkey had no diplomatic relations so that a German intervention became necessary.
Pertev was lucky to have at his disposal an influential mediator, General Colmar Freiherr von der
Goltz, who in 1883-96 had been in the service of the Ottoman government for the modernizationof the Turkish army. Goltz was not only Pertev’s former superior but a deep friendship existed

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between them. The German general succeeded to win over the sultan for the idea to dispatch
Pertev to the Far Eastern war theatre. Furthermore, he provided letters of recommendation to theJapanese army in favour of Pertev who was attached to General Nogi’s staff, always stayed near
the front and was even wounded once. From there he led an extensive exchange of letters with
Goltz in German language and visited him on his way back to Turkey in Königsberg. By thisway the German military got first-hand reports about the course of war. Goltz, as much
impressed by the Japanese military achievements as his former student, recommended theTennō’s empire as a model for Turkey since it had been proved that a weaker nation could win
against a stronger one with the necessary fighting spirit. So it is small wonder that an enthusiastic
Pertev himself prophesied that the Ottoman Empire will rise with the same brilliance as Japan in
the near future.46
H. Nezir-Akmeşe in Worringer stresses the obvious cultural significance of military traditions inboth countries, the samurai in Japanese and the warrior ethos in Ottoman societies respectively,
so that it is no surprise that the Ottoman armed forces looked to Japan for ideas on how tointegrate the military into the modern state. Seeing the development in the Tennō’s empire theyheld it possible that in Turkey, too, the army could function as an elite guard to protect thecountry, educate the masses, and guide the state polity into modernity. Many of the figures
influenced by the Japanese example in their earlier days at the military War College were among
the leaders who later founded and nurtured the Turkish Republic after the First World War,including Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and Ismet Inönü. In contrast, before 1908, as the author
stresses, the army had been kept under firm political control by the ruling sultan and any politicalactivity on the part of officers or men had been severely repressed. The turning point came withthe constitutional monarchy, in which the reigning Sultan and his ministers would be controlled
by an elected parliament. The Young Turks saw traditional Turkish moral values, and inparticular, Turkish martial values, such as courage and readiness for self-sacrifice, as the bedrockof a powerful army and nation. Western science, technology, and methods of organization must
be adopted, but Eastern moral values must be maintained alongside them. Japan’s success overthe Russians was invoked as justification for this view. They argued that the Japanese had
combined their indigenous moral values with imitation of Western technical improvements, andthereby achieved their current power and status. This perfect combination of old and new,manifested in the Japanese army, represented a model worthy of emulation (Nezir-Akmeşe in
Worringer pp. 65-66)
The contribution of E. Binder-Iijima in Sprotte on the “oriental question” centering on the
Balkan area also covers Turkey. The author attributes to the Russian defeat in 1905 the Bosnian
Annexation Crisis of 1908/09 which had anticipated the July Crisis of 1914 in many aspects andcan be viewed as path to the First Word War: The Tsar’s navy had now the main base in theBlack Sea where it had their only fleet at its disposal which still deserved the name. To reach theopen sea, however, it had to pass though the Turkish straits. To procure Istanbul’s consent
Austria-Hungary promised to exert pressure against a Russian toleration for the annexation of
Bosnia-Herzegowina. According to the treaty of Berlin signed in 1878 this area was still under
Ottoman jurisdiction and with the Young Turks’ revolution of 1908 the old constitution was
reinforced which included Bosnia-Herzegowina. Russian aims concerning the straits, however,failed due to British opposition and the Russian approval of the annexation of BosniaHerzegowina was followed by a sharp protest from Serbia so that in the end empty-handed St.
Petersburg experienced a “diplomatic Tsushima” (Binder-Iijima p. 13).

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There was a certain enthusiasm for Japan also in China after the victory over Russia. A. Li (inWolff p. 503) even uses the expression “shockwaves” which were running through every level ofChinese society. In the country pride was felt because of the success of the racial related nation
over a European great power so that in contrast Russia earned contempt. The euphoria prepared
the end of the Chinese monarchy which was unable to reform itself. The imperial government
heading for the revolution of 1911 and a phase of modernization was now put on a level with theweakened Tsar’s regime. Many Chinese went to Japan to study at the universities and a row of
officers attended the military academy, so also from 1908-10 did Chiang Kai-shek who later as
leader of the Kuomintang would rule the country for a long period. A militarization of China also
appeared as a path to strengthen the nation. Sun Yat-sen, the father of the Chinese revolution,
rejoiced at the Japanese victory (G. Müller in Sprotte pp. 210-11, 230-31; Hirama pp. 105-11;
Aydin, Politics pp. 72-73). The constitutional movement was given a fresh impetus sinceobviously the fact that Japan was a constitutional state had led to her victory over an autocracyso that she became the model for a “revolution from above” (H. Z. Schiffrin in Kowner/Impact;
G. Müller in Sprotte pp. 216-19; A. Li in Wolff pp. 503-04). On Sun’s movement the first
Russian revolution of 1905, too, exerted great influence. In the same year in China the firstpolitical party was founded and the infrastructure for a constitutional monarchy inaugurated. The
government carried out some reforms, among them the establishment of an elected assembly. In
the meantime Sun Yat-sen was looking for political allies in Tōkyō (H. Z. Schiffrin in
Kowner/Impact; Y. Shichor in Kowner/Impact pp. 213-16).
In Japan the constitutional system was also strengthened by the war. With Prince Saionji
Kinmochi a politician became prime minister who did not belong to the oligarchy dominating
the state until that time but was the president of a political party, the Seiyūkai. Furthermore, fromnow on more consideration was given to public opinion, since the discontent of the people had
exploded in connexion with the Portsmouth treaty. The government became dependent on theLower House more and more which had to approve the budget, first for the warfare and later forthe rearmament in peacetime. Therefore the oligarchs increasingly made compromises andentered alliances with the political parties so that Japan saw a prelude to the “Taishō democracy”
which was to come into being after World War I. These events are described by N. Ovsyannikov
in Kowner/Rethinking, and Itō Yukio wrote a monograph on the question what influence the war
with Russia had on the development of the constitutional state in Japan. He is of the opinion that
if Itō Hirobumi had not resigned from the position as president of the Seiyūkai in July 1903 to
become the President of the Privy Council, his party would have continued the efforts for asettlement of tensions with Russia and perhaps would have avoided war.47 The new prime
minister Katsura Tarō and his foreign minister Komura Jūtarō in contrast were convinced that anunderstanding with Russia would give Japan only a postponement for a conflict which would
have been unavoidable anyway as is treated by Y. Teramoto in Ericson/Hockley who can prove
how much the cabinet came under the pressure of the army so that a war became more and more
likely.
R. Kowner in Kowner/Impact who views the war more as a continuity of the preceding Meiji
policy than a caesura in the Japanese history and therefore differs from most other authors alsostresses how much the military as result of the war again and again intervened in politics andcould enforce a large-scale rearmament, too (pp. 40-42). Without doubt in Japan there was acertain radicalisation noticeable with which Y. Shichor in Kowner/Impact is dealing. Though heperceives some critique on the war from the Socialist camp he comes to the conclusion that inKrebs: World War Zero?

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the same way as in Europe in World War I the national identity had largely overshadowed class
identity. Eventually the fragmentation of the Socialist movement had been the result.
Furthermore, the increasing military successes had weakened pacifism and many former
Socialists had changed sides and entered the nationalist camp. Thereby a national socialist
movement in the true sense of the word had developed whose most prominent ideologue became
Kita Ikki. This agitator later was made responsible for the military coup d´état of February 1936
and was sentenced to death. Also the Christians, Shichor maintains, had become increasingly
patriotic in order not to be regarded as the “fifth column” of the West any more.
On the other hand St. Lone in a monograph recognizes very strong antimilitaristic and pacificvoices in Meiji Japan which had been silenced only temporarily by national passion, particularly
during the war with Russia but had been revived fast after the conclusion of peace, mostly inrural areas where the hardships by conscription, war victims and tax increases were felt morethan in the big cities.48 S. Konishi in Ericson/Hockley finds a similar tendency among
intellectuals finding expression in an anti-war-movement and anarchism. Their circle alsoestablished contacts with mind-mates in Russia like Peter Kropotkin and Lev Tostoi. For them
war and imperialism were just inhuman (similar M.-H. Sprotte in Sprotte). Shimazu in her
monograph also demonstrates that an anti-war movement arose including among other groups
journalists - particularly from the newspaper Heimin Shinbun -, socialists, pacifists andChristians, who had started their anti-war campaign already in 1903 though this camp appears as
a minority. Nevertheless the state had to fear this movement and categorised it as a leftist
opposition, a dangerous “disease” to be contained and eradicated.
It is surprising that according to Shimazu’s conclusion the mood of low level patriotism did notchange during the victorious campaigns and by official hero worship during and after the war.
The soldiers did not feel to be the successors of the glorious samurai class but rather as theunderdogs of the modern state. Their loyalty did not lie with abstract concepts such as state orthrone, but with the family and locality which were concrete sources of individual identity. The
ordinary soldier was not interested in the “honourable war death” of government propaganda but
wanted to survive, in order to return home to continue to fend for his family. Those who survived
received a hero’s welcome while the fallen soldiers got a funeral service and commemoration
ceremonies by local elites and enshrinement into the Yasukuni Shrine by the state.
The impact on Korea and China
Though in the years following the peace treaty it became evident that Korea and China were themain victims of the Russo-Japanese War they are not sufficiently taken in consideration in thevolumes introduced here, perhaps because not many scholars from those two countries areamong the participants. At the beginning of the war Korea out of weakness had no other choicethan to declare her neutrality as S.-H. Lee in Chapman/Inaba describes. This action can beviewed as a continuation of the policy of the previous years hoping that tensions between Russia
and Japan would lead to a balance of power between the two rivals. Lee maintains, however, that
the Korean emperor and his government had trusted too much in protection by Russia, therefore
leaned too much towards the Tsar’s empire and provoked growing pressure from Japan which
forced Seoul to conclude an alliance in February 1904. The expectation that the war would be
limited to Manchuria and on solving the Manchurian problem so that Korea would stay in thewind shadow of the conflict preserving her independence was soon disappointed. Also S. I
(possible reading of the family name also: Yi) in Nichi-Ro sensō characterizes the Korean hopes

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as illusion born out of the wrong estimation that not their own country but only Manchuria had
been the apple of discord leading to the Russo-Japanese War. Eventually, as Lee shows, thecountry was abandoned equally by Great Britain which had no great economic interests there andthe United States which expected better trade chances in a Korea “civilized” by Japan. K.-J. Kim
in Wolff also, as well as W. Seifert in Sprotte stress the expectations the USA entertained in this“civilising” mission.
Including the prehistory of the conflict, D. Ku in Wolff deals with Korea from the end of theJapanese-Chinese War until the protection treaty with Tōkyō (1895-1905), usually called the“lost decade” which the author views as living under the “sword of Damokles”. After theassassination of the queen in 1895 the house of the Korean monarch had sought a rapprochementwith the Tsar’s empire but had thereby, as the result of the Russo-Japanese War demonstrated,
not only backed the wrong horse but also, as the author claims, failed to carry out urgent
necessary reforms. In this period the country also lost considerably sympathies in the AngloSaxon nations which were shocked by the prevailing chaos and the monarch’s incapability sothat Great Britain as well as the United States indicated a growing willingness to tolerate aJapanese predominance. Not only St. Petersburg but also Tōkyō had a “fifth column” at thedisposal in Seoul. N. Kanno in Nichi-Ro sensō demonstrated with the diplomat Yamaza Enjirō
and the entrepreneur Ōmiwa Chōbei and their cooperation as an example of how manifold thesemi-official and unofficial channels between Japan and Korea were. At the very beginning of
the war with Russia Japan violated the neutrality of Korea launching operations from her
territory without provoking any international protest. Following the judgement of D. Ku in Wolff
the house of the monarch understood only too late which danger the war meant for the
independence of the country therefore reacting with optimism and awkwardness. The reader,
however, has to question if there had been any chance at all to save Korean sovereignty since thecountry was betrayed by the whole world.
K.-J. Kim in Wolff presents in greater detail the American attitude which was guided by the wish
for closer cooperation with Japan. Therefore, the United States conceded not only a free hand to
Tōkyō in Korea during the Russo-Japanese war but also severed as the first nation diplomatic
relations with Seoul immediately after the signing of the protectorate treaty in 1905. Decisive
was the principle of the open door declared by the USA in 1899 opposing European colonialism
in demanding equal opportunities for economic activities and trade. The abrogation of theunequal treaties for Korea soon after the conclusion of the protectorate treaty by no means
strengthened the rights of Seoul but secured Japanese rule also at the cost of other great powers(see M. Asano in Nichi-Ro sensō).
H. Seok in Kowner/Rethinking pictures the path to the annexation of Korea in 1910 for thedecisive years from the Russian-Japanese convention in 1907 over a second one in 1910 dividing
Manchuria into spheres of interest granting Russia special rights in Outer Mongolia among otheragreements. Only now Japan could be sure to receive a full free hand from Russia for theannexation of Korea which in the author’s opinion was a mere by-product of the policy ofrapprochement with St. Petersburg. These secret concessions became known only by the
publication of Russian documents after the October Revolution in 1917. The author maintains
that Japan even after the Portsmouth treaty had to proceed cautiously not to risk an intervention
by other nations and be humiliated as during the triple intervention in 1895. How much theannexation of 1910 traumatised the Koreans until today can be understood from the contributionof G. Podoler and M. Robinson in Kowner/Impact. In the retrospective view, the authors

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conclude, the complex arising from that experience had lead to an exaggeration of the opposition
movement and a belittling of the extent of collaboration.
Also China’s neutrality, decided by the government in Peking already at the end of 1903, becamea problem as is shown by Sh. Kawashima in Gunjishigakkai I. The author gives much space tothe considerations of the minister to St. Petersburg, Hu Weide, wether a Russian or a Japanese
victory would be more favourable for his country concerning the recognition of Chinese
sovereignty over Manchuria. He could not imagine that Russia, in case of Japanese superiority,
would easily give up all rights and interests in the contested region so that possibly some room
would be left to play both rivals off against each other, while the extent of Tōkyō’s demands was
unclear. Minister Hu Weide therefore recommended strict neutrality instead of a benevolent
attitude in favour of Japan. After the outbreak of war China on February 12, 1904 declared her
neutrality for her entire territory, i.e. also for Manchuria. The warring posers, however, did notcare about violating China’s sovereignty making foreign territory into battlefields at their will.
The danger arising from the Japanese victory in 1905 was recognized in China only with somedelay. Sun Yat-sen as a Chinese nationalist on a trip through the Suez Canal established bonds ofsolidarity with ordinary Egyptians accepting their congratulations to the Japanese triumph withpride (Aydin, Global pp. 215-16; Aydin, Politics pp. 72-73), viewed the outcome of the war as a
victory of Asia over Europe. The enthusiasm many Chinese intellectuals showed towards Japanis strange in view of the arrogance and disdain the winner nation showed to their “weak” country
and let it understand how much it would be at the mercy of the new hegemonic power due to theweakening of Russia. Their applause is therefore called rather naïve by A. Li in Wolff (p. 491)
the more so as the government in Peking had fully recognized the danger and therefore had urged
a mediation to prevent the war or at least to bring about a quick end. Eventually it had insisted,though in vain, on a participation at the peace conference as is dealt with thoroughly by S.
Hirakawa in Wolff and in Gunjishigakkai I in a rare study on this historic chapter about theofficial policy of the Qing/Manshu-Dynasty which was fighting for survival. Both warring
parties, however, as well as President Roosevelt who feared complication if a nation could bringwishes to bear without belonging to the recognized great powers, declined. Therefore, not even
Chinese observers were admitted. Because of this attitude a massive boycott of American goods
started in China as well as strong pressure exerted on their own government which had no otherchoice than to tolerate the conditions of the Portsmouth treaty. At the same time tensions grew inthe relations because of restrictions on the immigration of Chinese to the United States. President
Roosevelt’s assertion in the context of the Portsmouth treaty that he would struggle with all his
might for the integrity of China had no great value considering the true power conditions in East
Asia. Though Manchuria formally returned to China after the evacuation of Russian troops it wasde facto a tempting vacuum for an aggressive great power like Japan which because of thecession of the Kwantung leased territory and the assignment of the South Manchurian Railway
by Russia largely controlled the Northeast of China (Kreiner in Kreiner pp. 60-61). So it was
small wonder that even those Chinese who were enthusiastic about Japan’s victory in 1905 weresoon disappointed, the more so when a direct link led to the annexation of Manchuria in 1931.
The United States, too, felt deceived by Japan. President Theodore Roosevelt had expected that
Tōkyō would support his principle of the open door, particularly in Manchuria but rather Japan
tried to exclude other countries from economic activities the same way as Russia had done
before. Furthermore, Tōkyō and St. Petersburg divided Manchuria into spheres of interest inwhich there was no space foreseen for the United States. C. Oberländer in Kreiner stresses theJapan, China, and Pan-Asianism

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common interest of Japan and Russia against the open door in China as demanded by the USA. It
is an irony that Tōkyō in its rhetoric before opening the war had justified its growing will to go
to war with the promise to defend the principle of the open door in China against Russian
machinations in order to get the goodwill of America and England as Y. Katō in Wolff explains.
This argument of free trade conditions together with the justification to spread civilization wasused also by moderate Japanese intellectuals like Yoshino Sakuzō to justify an attack against“uncivilized” Russia (Katō in Wolff pp. 222-24). Yoshino later was to become the model liberalof Taishō democracy.
Japanese-American relations after 1905
All authors view the Russo-Japanese War as a watershed on the path for the deterioration of therelations between Tōkyō and Washington (so e.g. D. A. Ballendorf in Gunjishigakkai II) being
diametrically opposed to the quick rapprochement between Tōkyō and St. Petersburg.
Tovy/Halevi in Kowner/Impact see the conflict settled with the Portsmouth treaty as the
beginning of a Japanese-American cold war which lasted over several decades and burst into a
hot war in December 1941 on the control over the Pacific (so also Kowner in Kowner/Impact p.
21) so that the Russo-Japanese War had more influence on the outbreak of the Pacific War thanit had exerted on World War I. One could, however, object to this kind of determinism that over
several decades all options had remained still open. Kowner in Kowner/Impact does not view
Japan’s rise to a great power already by the victory over Russia but rather the Tennō’s empire
was still a regional power in his opinion. Only at the earliest by World War I, which forced theother nations to limit their engagement in East Asia and in which period China disintegrated,Japan became a great power or even a world power in his opinion (p. 30). In any case, however,
one can state that Japan whose existence had been viewed as a curiosity before the war wastreated after the victory over Russia as equal by the great powers which therefore elevated theirlegations in Tōkyō to the rank of embassies.
The change in the attitude of influential Americans from sympathy for the underdog Japan to a
revival of the “yellow peril” is demonstrated by J. Henning in Kowner/Impact. According to theauthor the shock about the victory over white, Christian Russia was deep and led to anti-Japanesemanifestations finally culminating in restrictions for immigration. Y. Hashimoto in Nichi-Rosensō deals with the renewed fear of the “yellow peril” using the writer Jack London as example
who was sent by the Hearst Press immediately before the outbreak of war to Japan, but stayed
only half a year. He was disappointed that the authorities and the military tried to hold him off
the front by all means and apprehended him several times suspecting him of spy activities. At
sight of Russian prisoners of war London developed a “white” solidarity which he obviously did
not lose over many decades. In 1910 he published a book titled The Unparalleled Invasion abouta fictive war of the West against China and her masses, awakened by the Russo-Japanese War
and modernized under Japanese guidance, to be fought in 1976 using biological and chemical
weapons.49 That Jack London’s attitude towards East Asia can be interpreted in a completely
different way is shown by Daniel A. Métraux: London deserves to be remembered as a writer on
Asia and the Pacific who directly confronted Western racism against Asians, denounced suchconcepts as “the yellow peril” and showed great sympathy for Japanese and Chinese in his
literature. London saw that Asia was in the process of waking up and that countries like Japanand China would emerge as major economic powers with the capacity to compete effectively
with the West as the twentieth century progressed. He urged that Westerners make concerted
efforts to meet with Japanese and Chinese so as to understand each other better as equals.50 The

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image of the Japanese which was spread by Jack London’s writings, however, was bad enough touse or misuse the author for a propaganda movie during World War II thirty years after his death.
Director Samuel Bronston’s 1943 film was based loosely on London’s widow Charmian’s 1921
biography of her husband and starring Michael O’Shea, Virginia Mayo, and Susan Hayward.
London’s life was almost restricted in the movie to the months he spent in Korea in 1904 andpresented him as prophesying the growing Japanese militarism that would result in Pearl Harbor.
Furthermore, one of the Liberty Ships was named after him.51
Even the small minority of Japanophiles, most of them American missionaries stressing thealleged higher civilized level of the Japanese compared with the Russians, could not change therising racist motivated fear. J. Henning in Kowner/Impact introduces a couple of strange racetheories, in favour as well as in disfavour of the Japanese. Despite the fact that President
Roosevelt criticized the racist immigration laws on Hawaii and in California, towards which as
regional decisions the administration in Washington was helpless, there are enough indications
that he disliked both Russia and Japan equally and would have liked it best of all if bothcountries would have slaughtered one another thus being totally exhausted as result of the war.
Though the immigration problem bred bad blood it was not this question which led to the deadly
American-Japanese tensions but the fact that due to the results of the war of 1904/05 both wereexpanding imperialist nations in the Asia-Pacific area so that it was natural that they became
rivals. In the preceding years the United States had acquired or conquered there several
territories as there were Alaska, Hawaii, Midway, Guam and the Philippines. Now they were
engaged so much in East Asia that they defied the new great power Japan. Since 1907 the navies
of both states in their strategic planning regarded the other as the most probable enemy (seeHirama pp. 144-56).52 These growing bilateral tensions also made the alliance with Japanproblematic for Great Britain as Seok in Kowner/Rethinking points out and with the renewal of
the treaty in 1911 the United States were exempted as a possible enemy so that there would nolonger be obligation for military assistance by England against the United States in favour ofJapan. So in the long run Great Britain would have to choose between Japan and the USA as
most important partner, and during World War I the decision fell more or less automatically infavour of Washington.
A potential main enemy as constructed in 1907 in the USA as “enemy no. 1” was necessary for
the Japanese navy if only to get the plans for rearmament sanctioned. With the end of Russian
naval power the Tsar’s fleet could not serve as an excuse for naval rearmament any more. The
navy’s plans, however, met with stiff resistance from the rivalling army for which Russia wasstill the probable main enemy and which also struggled for a greater share of the military budget
and that at a time when Japan was financially bled out. This rivalry is dealt with by J. C.
Schencking in Steinberg who particularly describes the endeavour which was temporary
successful to conclude a political alliance with the political party Seiyūkai. Thereby the navy
received parliamentary support for the own budget demands, and with Yamamoto Gonnohyoe
even an admiral was appointed prime minister in 1913. A corruption scandal involving navy
officers who had received bribes from the German Siemens company toppled the cabinet in thenext year. The army thereby had the upper hand but could not dictate politics alone and struggledwith the navy for the superior role in the state, both trying to use the political parties for own
purposes. Schencking opposes the opinion often found in historiography that the navy in contrast
to the army was “unpolitical”.

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Despite the American-Japanese rivalry becoming obvious only very few people predicted thepolicy Japan would follow later leading to the Pacific war, one of the few was the autodidact
Homer Lea already in the year 1909.53 He had, as is known from his foreword, written the
manuscript immediately after the peace treaty of Portsmouth but published it only four years
later to wait and see if his hypothesis would become true. Lea warned of neglecting American
armament facing the growing military danger from Japan which would be enabled to open
hostilities by conquering the Philippines, Hawaii, Alaska and the West coast of the United Statesfrom Washington State to California. As confirmed in December 1941 he even predicted
correctly the landing places for the Japanese invasion on the Philippines. Though he was widely
read in the USA he usually was smiled at as a science fiction author instead of being taken
seriously. After Pearl Harbor he was reputed suddenly as a far-sighted prophet54 and was
immediately reprinted. In contrast to the United States where only very few military officers took
him seriously, in Japan the translation of his book became a bestseller advancing to compulsory
reading for navy officers. A little bit later Lee also criticized the short-sightedness of GreatBritain whose alliance he viewed as a heavy mistake: the drive of Russian expansion would beturned from the Far East to Central Asia and India. Furthermore, in his opinion Japan had
become stronger than the British Empire by the victory of 1905, had won a sphere of influence
including all British territories in the area, and the situation was becoming worse by American
indifference.55 In the publications under review here almost no attention is paid to the Pearl
Harbor prophets who were all fascinated and influenced by the Russo-Japanese War, though inthe science fiction genre a future American-Japanese war became a frequent theme.56 While
Homer Lea is mentioned if only remarked in passing (P. Towle in Kowner/Rethinking p. 328; A.
Hashimoto in Nichi-Ro sensō pp. 219-20, 227; T. Saitō in Ibid. p. 386) other Pearl Harborprophets like Hector C. Bywater57 und Satō Kōjirō58 are not dealt with at all.
The reason for ignoring the impending danger could have been that the Japanese policy for thetime being followed a moderate course. In the first cabinet of Prince Saionji Kinmochi theprominent Hayashi Tadasu took over the position of foreign minister for most of the time during
the critical years 1906-08. His policy is dealt with by Y. Teramoto in Nichi-Ro sensō. Hayashi ischaracterized as an exception among the Japanese policy makers of his time in having reasonable
and rational ideas including a fair treatment of China. He, former minister and later ambassador
to London, despite rising tensions struggled to continue a policy of close cooperation with GreatBritain and the USA. Furthermore, he aimed at preventing isolation of Japan by seeking better
relations with France and Russia. The policy towards the Asian continent, however, was incontradiction to these interests since Tōkyō attempted to fasten the grip on Manchuria.
Therefore, Hayashi’s diplomacy became a difficult act of balance.
The impact of the war on the colonized peoples
An additional reason for deteriorating relations with the Unites States was the fact that theJapanese victory over Russia made a great impression on the people of the US-ruled Philippines
awakening hopes of gaining independence (Hirama pp. 160-69). Not only there, but worldwide
the attention the Russo-Japanese War gained influenced world history by challenging the claimof the white race to dominate other peoples. Asian Intellectuals felt particularly encouraged by
the Japanese victory as a stimulus for pan-Asianist, pan-Islamic, anti-colonial and antiimperialistic ideas. Therefore, the Russo-Japanese War, though itself an imperialistic conflict par
excellence, became the starting point for the fight against imperialism in the colonies and halfcolonized countries like China and Korea (so also A. Iriye in Wolff p. 2-3). As a result in Europe,Krebs: World War Zero?

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despite great admiration for Japan, many voices claimed that their own interests were endangeredby the strengthened empire of the Tennō which had awakened Asia (A. Iikura in
Chapman/Inaba; G. Westerman in Kowner/Rethinking pp. 413-15).
Several contributions in the publications under review deal with the phenomenon of not viewing“white rule” as irrevocable. The mood of awakening among the colonized peoples is in the focus
of Y. Hirama’s monography on the Russo-Japanese war as a turning-point in world politics. In
this study Japan’s military endeavours appear mainly as rebellion against “white colonialism”
having begun already with the Meiji Restoration. Not only the peoples of Asia had been
awakened and inspired to independence movements but also Turks, Arabs and Africans as wellas Finns and Poles. Also the emancipation movement had received a decisive impetus. Hirama
obviously expects gratefulness from other nations towards Japan but he ignores the fact that the
victory of 1905 was a blow for the independence of China and the more so for Korea upon whom
the treaty of protection was enforced in the same year. The author’s excuse is that Korea would
have come under Russian rule without question if the war would have been avoided. He further
maintains that China, because of the Japanese victory in 1905, had got the chance, usedparticularly by Sun Yat-sen and a great number of students, to prepare and organize thenecessary reforms in their fatherland using Tōkyō as base. He further stresses - and obviously
exaggerates—the influence of the Komintern in interwar Asia to justify Japan’s militaryinterventions on the continent (pp. 172-85, 197-99). Hirama views the Japanese proposal of the
Versailles conference to declare the equality of races as a continuity of the “burden of the yellowman” by Japan criticising the refusal by the Western powers. It has a strange smack that he sees
also the expulsion of the colonial powers in the Pacific War as part of this continuity as do thelong-winded explanations that the claim of the Japanese Empire for global rule under the slogan
hakkō ichiu (The eight corners of the world under one roof) had been determined by ahumanitarian spirit in contrast to Western-style racism. Though it is true that Japan in World War
II could use her prestige as an anti-Western power in Southeast Asia to find collaborators,
particularly in Burma and Indonesia, those “liberated” peoples soon recognized that theirsituation had changed from bad to worse. The author does not restrict his study on Japan’s
influence on the independence movements in many parts of the world, but also includes panAsianist ideas after the war with Russia, so for example visible in the case of the nationalistic
leader Ōkawa Shūmei (On Ōkawa’s activities see also Aydin, Politics, pp. 111-24, 150-1, 143-4,
147-50, 152-3, 167-74, 177, 181f, 184-6, 195-6, 199 and on Ōkawa’s interest in Islam Aydin in
Worringer), and on the emerging of nationalist societies in Japan. Ōkawa became famous for his“clash of civilizations” thesis, which sounds so modern, forecasting a military confrontation
between the United States and Japan as early as the mid-1920s (Aydin, Politics p. 112).59
Hirama’s study reminds the reader of the Japanese propaganda from the 1930s to the end ofWorld War II including the tenor of schoolbooks claiming that the Russo-Japanese War was theprologue to the war for Asian liberation, and the Greater East Asia war its conclusion.60 It issmall wonder, therefore, that the same author wrote an article on the “liberation of the coloured
peoples” for a publication by the highly controversial Yasukuni Shrine on the occasion of thecentenary of the Russo-Japanese War. 61
The “jewel in the British crown” of all territories, colonial India, responded with sheer
enthusiasm to the Japanese victory seen as defeat of Europe against Asia (G. Dharampal-Frick in
Sprotte; T. R. Sareen in Nichi-Ro sensō and in Kowner/Impact; St. G. Marks in Steinberg; Y.
Hashimoto in Wolff pp. 396-400) and as a gleam of hope for regaining independence so muchJapan, China, and Pan-Asianism

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longed for. Evidence of leaders of the movement like Mahatma Gandhi who does not appear asvery pacifistic-minded and Pandit Nehru who now viewed Japan as a model and the other Asians
as co-victors speaks for itself. So it was natural that Japanese pan-Asianists closely cooperated
with Indian activists fighting for independence and took care of them while in exile in Tōkyō(Aydin, Politics pp. 111-21). Gandhi as well as Nehru, however, during World War II denounced
Japanese colonialism advanced in the name of Asian solidarity (Aydin, Politics pp. 181-82).
It is an irony of history that the Japanese victory of 1905 so much admired in India lead to arevision of the alliance with Great Britain in 190262, so that Tōkyō’s obligations for support incase of war would not be restricted to East Asia any more but would include India. The British,having become nervous, now feared that Russia could direct her drive for expansion in the
direction of Afghanistan and India. By the treaty revision London got the additional advantage tobe able to withdraw a great part of the naval units from Indian waters back to Europe against thesteadily expanding German fleet. Dharampal-Frick in Sprotte (p. 275) and Hirama (pp. 202-211)
view also the alliance between Japan and the Indian nationalist leader Subhas Chandra Bose of1942 against Great Britain as a consequence of the Russo-Japanese War. T.R. Sareen in
Kowner/Impact as well points out the longevity of the Indians’ enthusiasm who even organized
relief actions for wounded soldiers and bereaved families in Japan. Many students hoping thatindependence was near at hand for their country went to the admired Japan to study there. Afterall, as Sareen maintains, the British recognized the growing “maturity” of the Asians concedingthem more political participation in the administration of the colony. Thus their ally’s victory
became a double-edged sword but it still required two world wars to reach independence for
India.
G. Westermann in Kowner/Rethinking appears somewhat isolated with her judgement on thereactions on the war in colonies like Philippines, Vietnam and Burma. Despite the overt
admiration for Japan the author denies, at least for Southeast Asia, decisive bearings on the anticolonial liberation movements maintaining that also Marxism, Woodrow Wilson’s call for selfdetermination of the peoples and the Indian Congress had exerted great influence. Similar
conclusions concerning Southeast Asia are found in P. A. Rodell in Steinberg, but this author
views just the Philippines and Vietnam as exceptions where the Japanese victory had long-term
effects since only these colonial areas in Southeast Asia had nationalist movements being far
enough developed. The reader has to question anyway if the result of the war, though it did not
evoke spontaneous upheavals in the colonial regions the intellectuals impressed by Japan like
Nehru and Gandhi in India, Sukarno in Indonesia and Ba Maw in Burma, did not over several
decades cultivate thoughts which gradually ripened and only because of the Pacific War had achance to be realized. It will be allowed at this point to quote Ahmed Sukarno, one of the mostprominent leaders of the Indonesian independence movement. He, being strongly impressed by
the Japanese victory over Russia in 1905, prophesied already in the 1920s a great war between
Japan and the Anglo-Saxon nations. This conflict would, as Sukarno maintained, even if Japan
would lose, give the chance of liberation for the suppressed peoples. Egypt, China, India andIndonesia would then take over the leading roles.63
Almost all authors come to conclusions different from those of G. Westermann, namely that is to
say that great segments of the peoples in Southeast Asia from 1905 on developed great selfconfidence and strong nationalism as for example Y. Shichor in Kowner/Impact maintains. For
the Philippinos, however, who had been impressed deeply by the Japanese victory and hadthemselves fought and lost a war for independence against their new American masters some

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years before, the policy of the government in Tōkyō at that time was disappointing: Japan
recognized the rule of the USA over the Philippines as the price for the American recognition ofJapanese supremacy over Korea. Therefore Japan hence reduced contacts with Philippine patriots
to a minimum. The Philippinos themselves from that time on struggled to gain greater rights by apragmatic cooperation with the United States (Kowner in Kowner/Rethinking p. 20). Therefore,
from this time on, the interest of Philippine patriots in the “Japanese model” waned considerably(see also P. A. Rodell in Steinberg pp. 650-52; Hirama pp. 118-20).
Very similar was Tōkyō’s attitude towards Vietnam which was under French domination. The
leader of the anti-colonial opposition movement, Phan Bōi Châu, stressed the importance of theJapanese victory as stimulus for the national awakening of his own people (Aydin, Global p.
216; Y. Shichor in Kowner/Impact pp. 211-12; Hirama pp. 113-18).64 For his cause, however,the Japanese policy was troublesome. Aiming at being accepted as equal to the European nations,Japan as a “Western power” the French colonial empire in Indochina, even banishing activist
Vietnamese students from its territory following a wish from the government in Paris. In 1909,
Phan Bōi Châu also had to leave Japan.
Japan saw even the British rule as a model for her own colonial empire. Prime Minister Ōkuma
Shigenobu uttered in 1910 that the English colonial experience in Egypt could serve as a modelfor the Japanese domination of Korea. It is an irony that Egypt herself saw in the Japanese
victory of 1905 a torch for decolonisation (Aydin, Global pp. 222-23; Aydin, Politics pp. 78-79).
The idea to “Egyptize” Korea can even traced back to the war with China in 1894/95.65
Therefore, the Japanese cooperation with the white imperialist powers was harmful for thecolonized peoples longing for independence and led to ill-feeling since the Tennō’s empire was
accused of having betrayed the Asian brothers (A. Iriye in Wolff p. 3). It might be of interest thatJapan until the war with China 1894/95 saw a similarity between the own situation with that oneof Egypt since both countries suffered from unequal treaties being permanently in danger of halfcolonial dependence.66
M. Laffan in Kowner/Impact describes how Japan in the Muslim world of Southeast Asia
engendered enthusiasm as the “light of Asia” or “Mekka of modernity”. It had appeared as asaviour from Dutch colonialism so that it could count on sympathies after the invasion of 1942,
utilizing a great readiness for cooperation. In other parts of the Islamic world stretching until the
Balkan region the Japanese victory was celebrated as a liberation coup of the coloured peoples
suffering under Western colonialism or tutelage and the Tennō’s empire was viewed as apossible model for modernization instead of the detested West, particularly in the Ottoman
Empire and in Egypt (Aydin, Global; Aydin, Politics; R. Bieganiec in Kowner/Rethinking). So it
is small wonder that S. Ezenbel in Kowner/Rethinking can trace back the cooperation of Japan
with Muslims under pan-Asiatic slogans in the 1930s to contacts started during the RussoJapanese War. How much Japan became the idol of intellectuals in Egypt which could not getout of the British grip for several decades is demonstrated by Bieganiec in Kowner/Rethinking,
St. G. Marks in Steinberg and Hirama (pp. 130-33). Even the hope that the Japanese would
collectively convert to Islam was uttered including the emperor who would then become caliph(Laffan in Kowner/Impact p. 220; Hirama pp. 136-39). Th. Eich in Worringer and Worringer in
Worringer inform how particular Arab writers redesigned the implications of “yellow peril” intoa metaphor of Asian liberation. Particularly impressive was the proof that Japan had modernizedwithout giving up her own culture and heritage (ibid. p. 4).

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Though official Tōkyō disassociated itself with the coloured peoples in order not to revive thefear of the yellow peril, several nationalist societies were founded in Japan propagating panAsian aims and claiming leadership for the Tennō’s empire (Aydin, Global pp. 220-23). Suchideas could become official policy only one generation later. S. Saaler in Chapman/Inaba deals
with the “clash of races” from the yellow peril propaganda over pan-Asianist thoughts and theracist immigration policy in the United States to the race conflict of the 1930s, dominating
politics at that time. The obsession of the Japanese to be recognized by the West as civilized incontrast to “barbarian” Russia is dealt with by N. Shimazu in Steinberg. Now in contrast to thepre-1904 years the “yellows” became the civilized people and the “whites” the wild ones. It is an
irony of history that Russia whose defeat in 1905 was celebrated with enthusiasm by thecolonized peoples after World War I and even more after World War II claimed herself to be theadvocate of the “coloured” races against “white imperialists”.
And what about Africa?
Most publications emphasize the novelty that in the Russo-Japanese War for the first time an
Asian nation defeated a European great power. Most of the authors, however, do not seem torealize that it was in no way the first victory of a “coloured” nation over a “white” one. That
pioneer work was rather achieved by Ethiopia in 1896 in the decisive battle of Adua in the war
against Italy. The Italians at that time had to endure the mockery of the other Europeans
including the Russians. Among the colonized peoples, however, Adua produced the same result
as later in 1905 by the Japanese victory so that for the new world order arising in the 20th century
both events should be regarded as a double-pack: an impetus for a global anti-colonial and antiWestern movement.67 In the publications under review here, however, Africa is with minor
exceptions ignored. Thus Hirama (pp. 10-11) in a general way refers to the impact of the RussoJapanese War on the development of an anti-colonial respectively emancipation movements in
Africa and among Afro-Americans, while K. Hildebrand in Kreiner (p. 36) mentions the Russian
mockery on the expense of the Italians because of their defeat at Adua. M. Berg in Sprotte (p.
253) points to the fact that a spokesman of the Afro-Americans like the intellectual andprominent fighter for civil rights W.E.B. Du Bois had rejoiced at the Japanese victory which had
after all frightened the white oppressors in Europe and America. Therefore, until the 1930s many
Afro-Americans had not regarded Japan as the aggressor or rival of the USA but as the
predominant power against white colonialism in Asia.68
W.E.B. Du Bois, who often mentioned that he was born in the year of the Meiji Restoration, i.e.
1868, set his hope in an African-Asian partnership as becomes clear from the following quote:“... the fire and freedom of black Africa, with the uncurbed might of her consort Asia, areindispensable to the fertilizing of the universal soil of mankind, which Europe alone never would
nor could give this aching world.”69 For Du Bois the development for the time ahead waspredetermined by the result of the war of 1905, namely that the brown and black races would
join the upheaval of the Asians unleashed by Japan. He viewed pan-Asianism and panAfricanism as two sides of the same coin and was convinced that the political fronts in the world
would be determined by the white/coloured borderline.70 Other Afro-Americans also showed
enthusiasm for Japan since 1905, assuming common interests and hoping for Japanese leadershipof an alliance of coloured peoples. Even the strange theory sprang up that the Japanese people
were descendants of dispersed Africans.71 Marcus Garvey, the more radical Afro-American
activist, who was born on Jamaica and became the spiritual father of the Rastafari movement
named after the Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie72 also demonstrated great enthusiasm forKrebs: World War Zero?

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Japan in his campaigns. He lived many years in the United States where he was to lead anorganization for the emancipation of the Afro-Americans. Garvey attracted the black masses
much more than Du Bois and other protagonists for the rights of the Afro-Americans and for
pan-Africanism. In connection with the Russo-Japanese War he called for a bond of the black
people and the Japanese.73 The US-authorities observed his movement with great mistrust, notonly because he mobilized the black masses but also because he declared his solidarity withJapan.74 So it was small wonder that one of the Pearl Harbor prophets, General Satō Kōjirō, in
his scenario of a Japanese invasion of the USA included in the planning an insurrection of ten
million Afro-Americans under the leadership of Marcus Garvey.75 In 1927, however, Garvey
was deported back to Jamaica.
Similar to 1905 facing the Japanese victory some European observers viewed the battle of Aduain 1896, which by the way had found some attention in Japan,76 as a menace to the white
supremacy in the world and the Italian defeat as disadvantageous for all of Europe which perhaps
would in the near future be conquered by the awakened Africa.77 It might be pure coincidence
that the officer Enrico Caviglia who researched the war of 1904/05 as Italian observer on theJapanese side had participated in the battle of Adua.
The great idol of the Africans, Afro-Americans and the black population of the Caribbean Sea all
longing for liberty and civil rights was naturally the Empire of Ethiopia, which was, besides USprotected Liberia, the only independent country in Africa. It was opened to the West almost at
the same time as Japan in the mid-nineteenth century after both countries had been secluded
since the 17th century as protection against the dominating influence of the Portuguese and theJesuit missions. Ethiopia thereafter was also modernizing though not with the same speed andsuccess as Japan. For the unity of the nation and struggling for progress the worship of a divine
emperor played an important role in both countries. Ethiopia finally developed a sense of
comradeship with the Tennō’s empire due to the parallel history and similar situation in theworld, though that feeling can be traced only from the 1920s on when Japan’s rise was taken as amodel for the own modernization to be forced.78
Japan’s first diplomatic contacts were possible after Ethiopia became a member of the League of
Nations in 1923. In 1927 both countries concluded a Treaty of Friendship and Trade and three
years later an ambassador extraordinary from Japan took part in Haile Selassie’s coronation
ceremony in Addis Abeba. In 1931 Foreign Minister Heruy Wolde Selassie spent seven weeks inJapan where he was very impressed by the modernization of the country. At this time Japanesenationalists with pan-Asiatic ideals sympathized with Ethiopia dreaming of a future day when
they together with the African country would begin the fight against colonialism and imperialism
against the white world.79
A group of Ethiopian intellectuals, called the “Japanizers” and led by Foreign Minister Heruy
pursued a policy of reforms since World War I oriented at the Japanese model.80 Part of thisefforts was the introduction of a constitution in 1931 which was largely taking the Meiji
constitution of 1889 as a model and the founding of a parliament with two chambers though with
precious little rights.81 With the constitution the position and the prestige of the emperor were
elevated, not least by the declaration included therein of a mythically explained origin. While in
the Japanese constitution Emperor Jinmu was named founder of the dynasty which ruled thecountry in an unbroken line, in Ethiopia this position was taken by King Solomon of Jerusalem,
the alleged father of Emperor Menlik I—whose alleged mother was the Queen of Sheba -, theJapan, China, and Pan-Asianism

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founder of the Ethiopian kingdom. Even in the revised Ethiopian constitution of 1955 thispassage remained. While Emperor Jinmu was the descendent of the sun goddess Amaterasu,
Menelik as well as his father Solomon were descendants of David, to whose house also Jesus
Christ belonged. So in contrast to the occidental divine right as base for legitimation of Europeanmonarchies a divine nature is attributed to the Tennō as well as to the Ethiopian emperor so that
their rule and legitimacy are completely different from those in other countries.
Obviously Emperor Haile Selassie hoped to strengthen his prestige abroad by introducing
constitutionalism and a parliamentary system, thereby securing the independence of his country.
His reform policy following the Japanese model may be traced back to the admiration of his
father, Ras (= Prince) Makonnen, the hero of Adua, had shown to the Tennō’s empire after the
victory over Russia which had proved that a nation outside of Europe was in culture and technics
equal to the West and could defy it.82
In the year 1931 or 1932 Lij Araya Abebe, a young Ethiopian nobleman and relative of theemperor, made the plan to marry a Japanese woman. The idea met with favour in Tōkyō and thesearch for a suited candidate began. Among the numerous applicants Kuroda Masako, daughterof Viscount Kuroda Hiroyuki, was chosen. Obviously she was a young lady with a sense foradventure who joyfully agreed so that the news could be announced in the press in January 1934.
The plan was given up, however, soon afterwards, not the least out of fear of international
implications for Ethiopia. All neighbouring colonial powers—Italy, France and Great Britain—
had reacted with embarrassment to the plan.83 It seems that because of the same reasons, under
the pressure of the government in Tōkyō, negotiations of a private Japanese company held with
Foreign Minister Heruy in 1933 on the acquisition of vast estates were discontinued. This land
would have allowed growing of rice, vegetables, tea, coffee and tobacco as well as organising acertain amount of immigration from Japan would have been possible.
According to Haile Selassie’s autobiography the plan of leasing land to Japanese was a mere
rumour without any foundation and arising from Italian propaganda only,84 but some foreignobservers believed in the authenticity of the project.85 Anyway, it cannot be denied that Japandue to the successful trade had become the most important partner for Ethiopia for imports ofvarious goods as well as for the export of cotton. Therefore, Japan was watched with the greatest
mistrust by Italy which had to fear most from the competition.86
It can also be noticed that in many countries the assumed menace of a fraternization of “yellows”
and “blacks” against “whites” was feared and the mere existence of Ethiopia was perceived as a“storm centre” which as an independent country threatened to attract the colonial areas to follow
the model, becoming a danger for Western imperialism as a combination of “yellow peril” and“black peril”. Therefore, the aggression of Italy in 1935 could expect a certain tolerance despite
lip-service in the League of Nations demanding to observe the independence of Ethiopia or evenappeared as a preventive measure against a foothold by Japan. British King Edward VIII. evendeclared frankly to Italian Ambassador to London Dino Grandi, at the time when the Abyssinian
conflict was heading to its close, that Mussolini’s war was a necessary surgical operation to heal
Africa from a centuries-old infective focus holding the prospect of English-Italian cooperation
concerning colonial politics. 87 In February 1936 London had refused Haile Selassie’s appeal to
Edward VIII. to take over a protectorate or mandate over Ethiopia so that the country could
remain independent from Italy.88

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On a particularly low level semi-official writers from racist Germany agitated against Ethiopia as
well as against Japan89, and that at a time when Hitler delivered weapons and military equipment
to Haile Selassie, aimed at an alliance with Mussolini and opened the path to conclude the
Antikomintern Pact with Tōkyō.
In 1934/35, before the outbreak of the war, official Japan assumed such an unclear attitudeconcerning the rising tensions between Ethiopia and Italy that in Rome mass protests against
Japan were organized90, while in the Japanese public, the press and in right-wing organizations
Ethiopia enjoyed great sympathies during its defence against Italian imperialism. For example
the nationalist society Kokuryūkai (Amur Society) which since some time had stressed theinterconnections of pan-Asianism and the situation of Africans in the colonies of the white
powers in 1935 and early 1936 led a campaign in its organ Dai Ajia Shugi (Great Asianism)
against the Italian war in Ethiopia. Mussolini was blamed for treating the Ethiopians,
descendants of Arabs with Asian roots, with contempt despite their long glorious history andculture.91 The conflict was considered the origin of a racial world war being ahead.92 It wasstressed that one of the motives for the war was revenge for Adua,93 and that the EthiopianJapanese economic relations was felt as menace by the European powers.94 In the same journal
indignant diplomat Kajima Morinosuke criticized in the name of Japan as the leader of the
suppressed coloured nations of Asia the passivity of Great Britain and the League of Nations
being responsible for Mussolini’s triumph in Ethiopia. Japan had demonstrated, as Kajima wrote,in her war of 1904/05 against Russia how to resist the expansion policy of a white power andhow much rearmament was a must for coloured people.95
The official Japanese policy changed only near to the end of the conflict so that Tōkyō tended
more and more towards Mussolini since the emergence of the “Axis” with the totalitarian powersof Europe appeared in outlines. On January 1, 1936 the Japanese government inaugurated alegation in Addis Abeba while an Ethiopian consulate general had already existed in Osaka forsome time. Mussolini’s Abyssinia war, however, soon terminated the diplomatic relations which
had been taken up hesitantly. Therefore, the legation in Addis Abeba was converted to a
consulate general in December 1936 so that the conquest by Italy was de facto recognized.
Mussolini reciprocated by opening a consulate general in Mukden, i.e. in the Japanese puppet
state of “Manchukuo”.
In 1935 when Mussolini’s war of revenge raged in Ethiopia one of the most prominent
propagandists of the Afro-Americans, Du Bois, expressed his hope that Japan would act as thelogical leader of all coloured peoples.96 At the end of 1936 he spent several weeks in the Tennō’s
empire where he was received by high official representatives of the country and by privateorganizations. The Japanese-Chinese war which broke out in the next year rocked the AfroAmericans’ belief in the existence of a non-white united front, but Du Bois often showed
sympathy for Japan for bringing China to reason which allegedly was as the “Asian Uncle Tom”
too obsequious towards the West, though basically he would have preferred an alliance between
the two great “yellow” nations against the white world. Furthermore he reproached Westernpoliticians who criticized Tōkyō for their earlier passivity during the Italian war of aggression
against Ethiopia. He declared not to understand why the Chinese people showed a greater
hostility towards Japan than against the West and made the white powers responsible for the war
which broke out between Japan and China in July 1937. Later, during the Pacific War hedenounced the internment of citizens of Japanese origin after Pearl Harbor as racism.97

Japan, China, and Pan-Asianism

86

In contrast to Du Bois, another Afro-American publicist, George Padmore, who belonged to thecommunist camp and was born on the British Caribbean island of Trinidad warned Ethiopia of arapprochement with the imperialist nations. So far he was in unison with the Soviet Union but
when Moscow a little bit later encouraged Italian aggression justifying the war in Africa thebreak with the Afro-Americans and with Padmore occurred. 98 The Soviet intention was to keep
Mussolini in the anti-German camp and to prevent a possible Japanese expansion in East Africa.
Out of sheer opportunism Stalin denied support for the anti-imperialistic fight of an African
people instead stressing the interests of the “white” people against the yellow peril threatening
from Japan. 99
Italy took revenge on Ethiopia because of the defeat at Adua in 1896 having become a national
trauma exactly 40 years later while Stalin justified his entrance into the war against Japan inAugust 1945 breaking a pact of neutrality with the humiliation Russia had suffered from in 1905
(see Sh. Yokote in Wolff p. 106 and in Ericson/Hockley p. 121; Wolff in Ericson/Hockley p.
130), also exactly 40 years after. Documents in Russian archives declassified in the 1990s
suggest that the main reason for the Soviet entrance in the war in 1945 had been in fact revenge
for the defeat of 1905 and the consequences thereof. 100
It shall still be added that the Japanese and the Ethiopian emperors are the only non-whites who
until now have been incorporated into the British Order of the Garter: Meiji 1905 (see N.
Kimizuka in Gunjishigakkai I), Taishō 1912, Shōwa (Hirohito) 1929 (expelled 1941,
reincorporated 1971), Haile Selassie 1954, Akihito 1998. On October 14, 1975 the order held amemory service for Haile Selassie who was murdered in that year.101
By the way, Emperor Haile Selassie was the first head of state who after World War II, in 1954
respectively 1956, who rendered a state visit to the vanquished nations Germany and Japan, theformer allies of Italy. Thereby, at least this chapter of the history of the twentieth century found aconciliatory end.
Gerhard Krebs, born in 1943, taught at universities in Tokyo, Freiburg, Trier and Berlin andworked in research institutes in Tokyo and Potsdam. Now living as a free historian in Berlin. His
books include Japan’s Deutschlandpolitik 1935-1941. 2 Vols., Hamburg 1984; Das moderne
Japan 1868-1952, München 2009; Japan im Pazifischen Krieg, München 2010.
Notes
1

This is an updated version of a review article originally published in German as:“World War Zero oder: Der Nullte Weltkrieg? Neuere Literatur zum Russisch-Japanischen Krieg
1904/05,” Nachrichten der Gesellschaft für Natur- und Völkerkunde Ostasiens/Hamburg (OAG),
183-184, 2008, pp. 187-248.
Also: http://www.uni-hamburg.de/Japanologie/noag/noag183_184.html
I am grateful to Steve Barnett for correcting my English manuscript.
2

Ōe Shinobu, Sekaishi toshite no Nichi-Ro sensō [The Russo-Japanese War as World History](Tōkyō: Rippū Shobō 2001).

Krebs: World War Zero?

87

3

Yamamuro Shinichi, Nichi-Ro sensō no seiki: rensa shiten kara miru Nihon to sekai [TheCentury of the Russo-Japanese War: Japan and the World Viewed from the Perspective of Chain
Reaction] (Tōkyō : Iwanami Shoten 2005).
4

Christian Müller, “Anmerkungen zur Entwicklung von Kriegsbild und operativ-strategischem
Szenario im preußisch-deutschen Heer vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg,” Militärgeschichtliche
Mitteilungen, 57, 1998, pp. 384-442, here pp. 298-402.
5

See S. P. MacKenzie, “Willpower or Firepower? The Unlearned Military Lessons of the RussoJapanese War,” David Wells und Sandra Wilson, Eds., The Russo-Japanese War in Cultural
Perspective, 1904-1905 (Basingstoke: Macmillan 1999), pp. 30-40.
6

See also Sönke Neitzel, “Das Revolutionsjahr 1905 in den internationalen Beziehungen,” Jan
Kusber and Anderas Frings, Eds., Das Zarenreich, das Jahr 1905 und seine Wirkungen:
Bestandsaufnahmen (Berlin: LIT 2007), pp. 25-29.
7

On Shiba Ryōtarō see also Shiba Ryōtarō to Nichi-Ro sensō kenkyūkai, Ed., Shiba Ryotarō to
Nichi-Ro sensō [Shiba Ryotarō and the Russo-Japanese War], 2 Vols. (Tōkyō: Ōbirin Daigaku
Hokutō Ajia Sōgō Kenkyūjo 2008, 2010); Harald Meyer, Japans Bestseller-König: Eine
narratologisch-wirkungsästhetische Erfolgsanalyse zum Phänomen Shiba Ryōtarō. München:
iudicium 2010; Shimazu, Society pp. 273-80.
8

In the section on the Japanese-Chinese War one would have expected rather the book-length
study of Rolf-Harald Wippich than his small publication mentioned: Japan und die deutsche
Fernostpolitik 1894-1898 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag 1987).
9

See in first line Ian H. Nish, The Anglo-Japanese Alliance: The Diplomacy of Two Island
Empires, 1894-1907 (London: Athlone Press 1966); ibid.: The Origins of the Russo-Japanese
War (London: Longman 1985).
10

British Documents on Foreign Affairs: Reports and Papers from the Foreign Office
Confidential Print. General Eds.: Kenneth Bourne et al., Pt. 1, From the Mid-nineteenth Century
to the First World War, Ser. E, Asia, 1860 – 1914. Ed.: Ian H. Nish, Vols. 7-12 (Frederick, Md.,
University Publications of America 1989-93).
11

Included are:Ian Hamilton, A Staff Officer’s Scrapbook, Vols. 2, 3 (Originally London: Edward Arnold 1905,1907).
M. Barin, With the Russians in Manchuria = Vol. 4 (London: Methuen 1905).
Military Correspondent of The Times [Charles à Court Repington], The War in the Far East
1904-5 = Vol. 5 (London: Murray 1905).
Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett, Port Arthur: The Siege and Capitulation = Vol. 6 (Edinburgh:Blackwood 1906).

Japan, China, and Pan-Asianism

88

Eugene S. Politovsky, From Libau to Tsushima: A Narrative of the Voyage of Admiral
Rojestvenky’s Fleet to Eastern Seas, Including a Detailed Account of the Dogger Bank Incident= Vol. 7 (London: John Murray 1906).
(Captain) Vladimir Semenoff, The Battle of Tsushima Between the Japanese and Russian Fleets,
Fought on 27th May 1905 in Vol. 8 (London: John Murray 1912).
Lieutenant-general A. A. Ignatyev, A Subaltern in Old Russia in Vol. 8 (London: Hutchinson &Co. 1944, pp. 153-288).
12David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, Toward the Rising Sun: Russian Ideologies of Empire
and the Path to War with Japan (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press 2001.
13

So the expression of K. Hildebrand in Kreiner p. 28. A. Li in Wolff (p. 491) mistakenly speaks
about the German control over Liaodong (Liautung). Correct is: over Shantung. Die Liautungpeninsula was rather “leased” in 1898 by Russia and fell in 1905 to victorious Japan.
14

Wada in Wolff pp. 30-31.

Wada published a facsimile of the memorandum in Yamagata Shinbun December 7, 2009(http://www.yamagata-np.jp/news_core/index_pr.php?kate=Main&no=2009120701000184).
15

Neitzel pp. 28-29.

16

Menning in Steinberg p. 147 mistakenly assumes that a declaration of war preceded
immediately before the assault on Port Arthur. Actually the declaration of war followed on
February 10, 1904, that means two days after the attack.
17

On the model character of the Russo-Japanese War for the Pacific War see the opinion of
Army Minister Tōjō Hideki expressed in an interview with Prime Minister Konoe Fumimaro on
October 13, 1941 in Konoe’s Memoirs (The Memoirs of Prince Konoye, Tōkyō : Okuyama
Service 1945, p. 57) and the testimony of Sejima Ryūzō, at that time Major in the strategy
division of the general staff (Moto-Daihonei-sanbō no Taiheiyōsensō. Sejima Ryūzō Intabyū[The Pacific War of a Former Staff Officer. Interview with Sejima Ryūzō.] Tōkyō: Tōkyō
Shinbun Shuppankyoku 1995), pp. 40-41. On the Portsmouth peace conference as a model for an
early peace in the Pacific War see Yoshida Shigeru, The Yoshida Memoirs: The Story of Japanin Crisis (Boston: Houghton Mifflin 1962), pp. 23-24, 246.
18

Sir C.C.P. FitzGerald, “Die Flottenlage im Fernen Osten”, Deutsche Revue, 29,1, 1904, p. 343.

19

Satō died on March 4, 1942, not in 1941 as Tadokoro (p. 323) maintains so that Satō would
not have lived at the time of Pearl Harbor.
20

In the meantime Smethurst has also published a long biography of Takahashi including athorough description about his activities during the Russo-Japanese War: From Foot Soldier toFinance Minister: Takahashi Korekiyo, Japan’s Keynes (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press 2007), chapters 8 and 9.

Krebs: World War Zero?

89

21

In Wolff p. 187 is, probably by mistake of the translator, the year of Bloch’s death as 1904
wrong. The correct year 1902 is found in Gunjishigakkai II, p. 294.
22

Shelford Bidwell and Dominick Graham, Fire-Power: British Army Weapons and Theories of
War 1904-1945 (London: George Allen & Unwin 1982), p.2.
23

Ian Hamilton, A Staff Officer’s Scrap-Book during the Russo-Japanese War. 2 Vols. (London:
Edward Arnold 1905, 1907), here Vol. 2, p. 97. A shorter one volume editions exists, London:
Edward Arnold 1912.
24

Ian Hamilton, Tagebuch eines Generalstabsoffiziers während des russisch-japanischen
Krieges (Berlin: Siegismund 1910).
25

Hamilton 1905, Vol. 1, p. 143; Hamilton 1910, p. 95.

26

Ian Hamilton, Compulsory Service: A Study of the Question in the Light of Experience(London: John Murray 1910), p.121.
27

Schlieffen to Chancellor von Bülow June 10, 1905, Die Große Politik der europäischen
Kabinette 1871-1914. Sammlung der diplomatischen Akten des Auswärtigen Amtes. Vol. XIX, 2:
Der Russisch-Japanische Krieg (Berlin: Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft für Politik und Geschichte
1925), pp. 423-24.
28

See also in German: Nakai Akio, “Deutsche und schweizerische Beobachter auf dem
Schlachtfeld – 100 Jahre nach dem Russisch-Japanischen Krieg”, Geschichte, Politik und ihre
Didaktik, 33, Heft 1-2, 2005, p. 85-92.
29

On the German policy see also Rolf-Harald Wippich, “Nis-Shin – Nichi-Ro sensō to Doitsu”[Japanese-Chinese and Japanese-Russian War and Germany], Kudō Akira and Tajima Nobuo,
Eds., Nichi-Doku kankeishi 1890-1945 (The History of Japanese-German Relations, 1890-1945],
Vol. I (Tōkyō Daigaku Shuppankai 2008), pp. 133-83, especially pp. 157-83.
30

Iikura Akira, Ierō periru no shinwa. Teikoku Nihon to “kōka” no gyakusetsu [The Myth of the
Yellow Peril. Imperial Japan and the Paradox of the “Yellow Peril”] (Tōkyō: Sairyūsha 2004).
31

On the relations for the time after 1907 see Joseph P. Ferguson, Japanese-Russian Relations,
1907-2007 (London: Routledge 2008).
32

For example Alex Marshall, “Russian Intelligence during the Russo-Japanese War, 1904-05,”
Intelligence and National Security, 22, 2007, pp. 682-98.
33

See thereon Inaba Chiharu, “Japanese Intelligence Operations in Scandinavia During WorldWar II. Cryptographic Cooperation with Finns and Onodera’s Activities in Sweden,”
Scandinavian Journal of History, 33, 2, June 2008, pp. 122-138; Gerhard Krebs, “JapaneseMediation Attempts Between Poland and Germany 1938/39,” Agnieszka Kozyra and Romuald
Huszcza, Eds., To Commemorate 75 Years of the Japanese Language Teaching at Warsaw
University. Proceedings of the Warsaw Symposium on Japanese Studies, 23-26 November, 1994
(Warsaw: Department of Japanese and Korean Studies, Oriental Institute Warsaw University,
Academic Publishing House DIALOG 1999), pp. 77-99.

Japan, China, and Pan-Asianism

90

See also the review article of Ch. Inaba in Nichi-Ro sensō pp. 456-59.
34

See Bandō Hiroshi, Pōrandojin to Nichi-Ro sensō [The Poles and the Russo-Japanese War](Tōkyō: Aoki Shoten 1995).
35

On the rather poor Russian successes in the field of intelligence during the war see Alex
Marshall, “Russian Intelligence during the Russo-Japanese War, 1904-05,” Intelligence andNational Security, 22, 2007, pp. 682-98.
36

Lloyd C. Gardner, Imperial America. American Foreign Policy since 1898 (New York:
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 1976), p. 40.
37

Rosen of course had not just left his position as minister to Japan to become ambassador to theUSA (as Saul p. 497 maintains) but had lost his position in Tōkyō with the outbreak of war
severing diplomatic relations in February 1904.
38

Chanchun under the name Hsingking [New Capital] became the capital of the Japanese puppet
state Manchukuo in 1932.
39

See for example the exhibition publications Der Russisch-Japanische Krieg 1904/05 im
Spiegel deutscher Bilderbogen. Herausgegeben von Inaba Chiharu und Sven Saaler (Tōkyō:Deutsches Institut für Japanstudien 2005); Frederic Alan Sharf, Ed., A Much Recorded War: The
Russo-Japanese War in History an Imagery [Exhibition, Organized by the Museum of Fine Arts,
Boston, from January 1, 2005 to March 28, 2006] (Boston: MFA Publications 2005).
40

Stewart Lone, Provincial Life and the Military in Imperial Japan: The Phantom Samurai(London: Routledge 2009).
41

Jan Kusber, Krieg und Revolution in Russland 1904-1906. Das Militär im Verhältnis zu
Wirtschaft, Autokratie und Gesellschaft (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag 1997).
42

Jan Kusber and Andreas Frings, Eds., Das Zarenreich, das Jahr 1905 und seine Wirkungen:
Bestandsaufnahmen (Berlin, LIT 2007). Therein only S. Neitzel on military questions, see above.
43

See also Roxane Haag-Higuchi, “A Topos and Its Dissolution: Japan in Some 20th Century
Iranian Texts,” Iranian Studies, Vol. 29, 1-2, Winter/Spring 1996, pp. 71-83.
44

Said Amir Arjomand, “Constitutions and Struggle for Political Order: A Study in theModernization of Political Traditions,” European Journal of Sociology, 33, 1992, pp. 39-82, here
p. 55; Cyrus Schayegh, Constitutionalism and Autocracy in Modern Iran (Genève: Université deGenève 2001), pp. 40-41.
45

On the enthusiasm in Turkey after the Russo-Japanese War and its influence on the Young
Turks’ revolution in 1908 see also Renée Worringer, Comparing Perceptions: Japan as
Archetype for Ottoman Modernity, 1876-1918 (Ph. D. Thesis University of Chicago 2001), pp.
184-221; ibid., “‘Sick Man of Europe’ or ‘Japan of the Near East’? Constructing Ottoman
Modernity in the Hamidian and Young Turk Eras,” International Journal of Middle East Studies,36, 2, 2004, pp. 207-23.

Krebs: World War Zero?

91

46

Pertev Demirhan, Generalfeldmarschall Colmar Freiherr von der Goltz. Das Lebensbild eines
großen Soldaten. Aus meinen persönlichen Erinnerungen (Göttingen: Göttinger Verlagsanstalt1960), pp. 66-93; Colmar von der Goltz, Denkwürdigkeiten (Berlin: Mittler 1919), pp. 271, 273.
Thereon also: Handan Nezir Akmeşe, The Birth of Modern Turkey: The Ottoman Military andthe March to WW I (London: I.B. Tauris 2005), pp. 28-31, 72-79.
47

Itō Yukio, Rikken kokka to Nichi-Ro sensō [The Constitutional State and the Russo-JapaneseWar] (Tōkyō: Mokutakusha 2000).
48

Lone, op. cit.

49

A similar vision is found in a German publication during the Russo-Japanese War warning
against the yellow peril: The plan of the Japanese is, to force now the Tsar’s Empire to give up
the superiority in East Asia, so that the Japanese take over that role themselves, teaching andguiding the Chinese masses and eventually expel with their support all Europeans from East Asia
(Carl Tanera, Der russisch-japanische Kampf um die Vorherrschaft im Osten, Lahr: Groß &Schauenburg 1905, p. 3).
50

Daniel A. Métraux, “Jack London, Asian Wars and the ‘Yellow Peril,’” The Asia-Pacific
Journal, 4-3-10, January 25, 2010. Japan focus (http://japanfocus.org/-Daniel_A_M__traux/3293).
51

Jeanne Campbell Reesman, Jack London’s Racial Lives: A Critical Biography (Athens: The
University of Georgia Press 2009), pp. 103-06.
52

See also Edward S. Miller, War Plan Orange: The U.S. Strategy to Defeat Japan, 1897-1945(Annapolis: Naval Institute Press 1991).
53

Homer Lea, The Valor of Ignorance (New York: Harper 1909).

54

See Clare Boothe’ foreword in the new edition of 1942 (New York and London: Harper &Brothers).
55

Homer Lea, (New York: Harper 1912), pp. 85-99.

56

H. Bruce Franklin, War Stars: The Superweapon and the American Imagination (Oxford:
Oxford University Press 1988) pp. 39-45.
57

Hector C. Bywater, The Great Pacific War: A History of the American-Japanese Campaign of
1931-33 (Boston: H. Mifflin Company 1925).
58

Satō Kōjirō, Nichi-Bei sensō yume monogatari [The Fantasy of the Japanese-American War](Tōkyō: Tokuma Shoten 1921).
59

See also Yukiko Sumi Barnett, “India in Asia: Ōkawa Shūmei’s Pan-Asian Thought and His
Idea of India in Early Twentieth-Century Japan”, Journal of the Oxford University History
Society, 1, 2004, pp. 1-23.
60

Goto Ken’ichi, Tensions of Empire: Japan and Southeast Asia in the Colonial andPostcolonial World (Athens: University of Ohio Press 2003), p. 279.

Japan, China, and Pan-Asianism

92

A tendency similar to that one of Hirama is found in Nakamura Katsunori, Nichi-Ro sensō shōrino sekaishi ni oyobashita eikyō [The influence exerted by the victory in the Russo-Japanese War
on World History] (Ōsaka: Kokumin Kaikan 2005).
61

Hirama Yōichi, “Daitōasensō e no michi – Soren to Beikoku, soshite Chūgoku,” [the Path to
the Greater East Asia War – the Soviet Union and America as well as China] Yasukuni jinja
Yūshūkan, Nichi-Ro sensō hyakunen zuroku [The diagram of the Russo-Japanese War of 100
years] (Tōkyō: Yasukuni jinja 2005), pp. 68-70. On the role of Yasukuni Shrine in the context ofthe 1904-05 war see Shimazu, Society pp. 147-54.
62

See as newer publication on the alliance Phillips Payson O’Brien, Ed., The Anglo-Japanese
Alliance, 1902-1922 (London: RoutledgeCurzon 2004).
63

Gotō Ken’ichi, Shōwaki Nihon to Indoneshia. 1930nendai “nanshin” no ronri – Nihon-kan no
keifu [Japan and Indonesia in the Shōwa Era. The Theory of the “Southern Strike” and the
Genealogical Tree of the Japan View in the 1930s] (Tōkyō: Keisō Shobō 1986), pp. 345-46;
ibid.: “Returning to Asia”: Japan-Indonesia Relations 1930s-1942 (Tōkyō: Ryukei Shyosha1997), pp. 301-304.
64

Another Vietnamese intellectual, Phan Chau Trinh, visited Japan in 1906 together with Phan
Boi Chau and held talks among others with the reformer Fukuzawa Yūkichi. See Vinh Sinh, Ed.,
Phan Chau Trinh and his Political Writings (Ithaca: Cornell University Press 2009), pp. 16-20.
65

Richard Albert Bradshaw, Japan and European Colonialism in Africa, 1800-1937 (Ph. D.
Thesis Ohio University 1992), pp. 150-56.
66

Ibid. pp. 115-47.

67

So also Bahru Zewde, “The Italo-Ethiopian War of 1895-6 and the Russo-Japanese War of
1904-5: A Comparative Essay,” Abdussamad H. Ahmad and Richard Pankhurst, Eds., Adwa.
Victory Centenary Conference 26 February - 2 March 1996 (Addis Ababa: Addis Ababa
University 1998), pp. 299-318; Erich Müller, “Abessinien im weltpolitschen
Entscheidungsraum,” Max Grühl, Abessinien. Die Zitadelle Afrikas (Berlin: Graf von SchlieffenVerlag 1935), pp. 9-17.
68

On the release of the awakening mood among Afro-Americans due to the battle of Adua seeJames Quirin, “African American Perceptions of the Battle of Adwa, 1896-1914,” Siegbert Uhlig
et al., Eds., Proceedings of the XVth International Conference of Ethiopian Studies, Hamburg
2003 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz 2006), pp. 343-47.
69

W.E. B. Du Bois, The World and Africa: An Inquiry into the Part Which Africa has Played in
World History (New York: International Publishers 1965), p. 260.
70

Thereon also Bill V. Mullen, “Du Bois, Dark Princess, and the Afro-Asian International,”
Positions, 11,1, Spring 2003, pp. 218-39; Marc Gallicchio, The African American Encounter
with Japan and China: Black Internationalism in Asia, 1895-1945 (Chapel Hill: The Universityof North Carolina Press 2000), pp. 39, 44.

Krebs: World War Zero?

93

71

Gerald Horne, Race War. White Supremacy and the Japanese Attack on the British Empire(New York: New York University Press 2004), pp. 43-47; Reginald Kearney, African American
Views of the Japanese: Solidarity or Sedition? (Albany: State University of New York Press
1998), pp. 18-91; William R. Scott, The Sons of Sheba’s Race: African-Americans and the ItaloEthiopian War, 1935-1941 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1993, pp. 143-44; Gallicchio,pp. 14-15.
72

Ras (= Prince) Tafari was the original name of Haile Selassi [Power of the Trinity] until his
coronation in 1930.
73

See out of his numerous writings for example A. Hill, Ed., The Marcus Garvey and Universal
Negro Improvement Papers, 9 Vols. (Berkeley: University of California Press 1983) particularly
Vol. 1, p. 312 and Vol. 4, p. 235.
74

Gallicchio pp. 44-48; Gary Y. Okihiro, Margins and Mainstreams: Asians in American
History and Culture (Seattle: University of Washington Press 1994), pp. 127-28.
75

John J. Stephan, Hawaii Under the Rising Sun: Japan’s Plans for Conquest After Pearl
Harbor (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press 1984), p. 60.
76

Bradshaw pp. 296-97.

77

Paul Gordon Lauren, Power and Prejudice: The Politics and Diplomacy of Racial
Discrimination (Boulder: Westview Press 1996), p. 72.
78

Massay Kebede, “Japan and Ethiopia: An Appraisal of Similarities and Divergent Courses,”
Fukui Katsuyoshi et al., Eds., Ethiopia in Broader Perspective. Papers of the XIIIth International
Confererence of Ethiopian Studies, Kyōto, 12-17 December 1997 (Kyōto: Shokado Book Sellers
1997), Vol. 1, pp. 639- 51.
79

Aoki Sumio and Kurimoto Eisei, “Japanese Interest in Ethiopia (1868-1940): Chronology andBibliography,” Fukui Vol. 1, pp. 713-28, here p. 715; Bradshaw pp.315-18.
80

Addis Hiwet, Ethiopia from Autocracy to Revolution (London: The Author 1975), pp. 67-77;
Salvatore Tedeschi, “La carrière et les idées de Heruy (1878-1938),” Luigi Fusella et al.. Trois
essais sur la literature éthiopienne (Paris: aresae 1984), pp. 39-104; Bradshaw pp. 300-11; Baruh
Zewde, “The Concept of Japanization in the Intellectual History of Modern Ethiopia,”
Proceedings of the Fifth Seminar of the Department of History (AAU) (Addis Ababa: Addis
Ababa University 1990), pp. 1-17; Reidulf K. Molvaer, Black Lions: The Creative Lives ofModern Ethiopia’s Literary Giants and Pioneers (Lawrenceville, NJ: The Red Sea Press 1997),
pp. 1-27; Hidéko Faerber-Ishihara, Les premiers contacts entre l’Éthiopie et le Japon (Paris :aresae 1998); ibid., “Heruy, le Japon et les ,japonisants’,” Alain Rouaud, ed., Les orientalistessont des aventuriers. Guirlande offerte à Joseph Tubiana par ses élèves et ses amis (Paris: Sépia
1999), pp. 143-49; J. Calvitt Clarke III, Alliance of the Colored Peoples: Ethiopia & Japan
before World War II (Woodbridge: James Currey 2011), pp. 44-48.
81

Baruh Zewde, The Concept; Clarke pp. 37-38.

Japan, China, and Pan-Asianism

94

82

Hans Wilhelm Lockot, The Mission: The Life, Reign and Character of Haile Selassie I. (NewYork: St. Martin’s Press 1987), pp. 32-33, 124f; Bradshaw pp. 298-300.
83

Yamada Kazuhiro, Masukaru no hanayome – maboroshi no Echiopia ōji-hi [The Bride of theMaskal Flower – the Vision of an Ethiopian princess consort] (Tōkyō: Asahi Shinbunsha 1996),
pp. 230-33; Clarke pp. 83-91; Report of Military Attaché Cortlandt Parker, Tōkyō, March 19,
1935, U.S. Military Intelligence Reports: Japan 1918-1941 (Bethesda: University Publishers ofAmerica 1986), Microfilm Reel 15, pp. 126-28.
On Italy’s fear of a Japanese economic engagement in Ethiopia see also: I documenti diplomatici
italiani. 7th Series, 1922-1935, Vol. 11 (Roma, La Liberia dello Stato 1952), Nos. 42, 148, 204.
84

Edward Ullendorf, Translater, The Autobiography of Emperor Haile Selassie I. “My Life andEthiopia’s Progress, 1892-1937”(Oxford: Oxford University Press 1976), pp. 208-09.
85

Report of Military Attaché William C. Crane, Tōkyō, January 17, 1934, U.S. MilitaryIntelligence Reports: Japan 1918-1941, Microfilm Reel 15, pp. 129-131.
86

See I documenti diplomatici italiani. 7th Serie, 1922-1935, Vol. 11, Nos. 42, 148, 204.

87

Grandi to Mussolini April 29, 1936, I documenti diplomatici italiani. 8th Serie, Vol. 3, No.
796.
88

George W. Baer, “Haile Selassie’s Protectorate Appeal to King Edward VIII.,” Cahiersd’études africaines 9,2, 1969, pp. 306-12.
89

H.W. Bauer, “Japans Vordringen in Afrika und in der Südsee – ein Schlag gegen das
Herrschaftsrecht der weißen Rasse,” Afrika-Nachrichten 15, 10, 1934, pp. 249-51; ibid., “DieJapaner in den ostafrikanischen Ländern – Folgen auf die Eingeborenen,” Afrika-Nachrichten 15,
11, 1934, pp. 288-89; Hans Gerd Esser, “Weiß gegen Schwarz. Eine rassenpolitische
Betrachtung zum Abessinien-Konflikt,” Afrika-Nachrichten 16, 8, 1935, pp. 200, 202;
Maximilian Claar, “Japan und Abessinien. Ein Vorstoß des japanischen Imperialismus,”Deutsche Rundschau, 60, February 1934, pp. 83-88; Anton Zischka, Der Kampf um die
Weltmacht Baumwolle (Berlin: Wegweiser-Verlag 1936), pp. 102-12; ibid., Italien in der Welt
(Leipzig, Wilhelm Goldmann Verlag 1937), pp. 277-79; ibid., Abessinien, das letzte ungelöste
Problem Afrikas (Leipzig, Wilhelm Goldmann Verlag) 1935, pp. 171-77, 195, 219; Major a.D.
Paul Schnöckel, “Abessinien in der Weltpolitik,” Deutsche Kolonial Zeitung 47, 3, März 1935,
pp. 51-51; Roman Freiherr von Procházka, Abessinien: Die schwarze Gefahr (Wien,
Saturnverlag 1935), pp. 7-8, 12, 69-71, 96-101; Max Grühl, Die Wiedergeburt des Imperiums.
Entscheidungskampf im Mittelmeer? Eine geopolitische Abhandlung (Berlin, Graf vonSchlieffen-Verlag 1937).
90

Bradshaw pp. 330-58; Valdo Ferretti, Il Giappone e la Politica estera Italiana 1935-41(Milano: Guiffrè Editore 1983), p. 27, 41-49; Clarke pp. 109-115; Aydin, Politics p. 179.
91

Shimonaka Yasaburō, “I-E funsō mondai to Nihon” [The Problem of the Italian-Ethiopian
Conflict and Japan], Dai Ajia Shugi, August 1935, pp. 32-25, here p. 34. The Ethiopians had
immigrated from Southern Arabia 2000-3000 years ago.

Krebs: World War Zero?

95

92

Utsunomiya Kiyo, “Hakujin teikokushugi no kokujinkoku gōryaku hishi” [Secret History of
the Pillage of the Black Men’s Country by the Imperialism of the Whites], Dai Ajia Shugi,
August 1935, pp. 39-41, here p. 39. Utsunomiya Kiyo was the pen name of Naval Captain
Inuzuka Koreshige who became known for his anti-Semitic writings under this pen name. From1939 to 1942 Inzuka was commissioner for Jewish problems in Japanese occupied Shanghai.
93

Murakawa Kengo, “I-E funsō no sekaishiteki igi” [The Importance of the Italian-Ethiopian
Conflict for World History], Dai Ajia Shugi, October 1935, pp. 2-5, here p. 4.
94“Echiopia mondai to Nihon” [The Ethiopian Problem and Japan], Dai Ajia Shugi, September
1935, p. 102.
95

Kajima Morinosuke, “Echiopia no higeki to Ajia minzoku” [The Tragedy of Ethiopia and thePeoples of Asia], Dai Ajia Shugi, May 1936, pp. 30-34.
Kajima Morinosuke himself has written a book on the Russo-Japanese War in his series on
Japanese diplomatic history: Nichi-Ro sensō [The Russo-Japanese War] (Tōkyō: Kajima Heiwa
Kenkyūjo 1970). English and German language editions are available.
96

W.E. B. Du Bois, “Inter-Racial Implications of the Ethiopian Crisis,” Foreign Affairs, 14, 1,
October 1935, pp. 82-92, here pp. 87-88.
97

David Levering Lewis, W.E.B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century,
1919-1963 (New York: Holt 2000), pp. 414-19, 461-70; Gallicchio pp. 73-76; Aydin, Politics p.
179; Takemoto Yūko, “W.E.B. Dyubois toNihon” [W.E.B. Du Bois and Japan], Shien, 54, 2,
March 1994, pp. 79-96.
98

Clarke p. 148.

99

See also J. Calvitt Clarke III, Russia and Italy against Hitler: The Bolshevik-Fascist
Rapprochement of the 1930s (New York, Greenwood Press 1991), pp. 168-69, 190.
100

Boris Slavinsky, The Japanese-Soviet Neutrality Pact: A Diplomatic History, 1941-1945(London: RoutledgeCurzon 2004).
101

Edward Ullendorf, From Emperor Haile Slassie to H. J. Polotsky: An Ethiopian and Semitic
Miscellany (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz), pp. 1-10.

Japan, China, and Pan-Asianism

96“Sun Yat-sen’s 1911 Revolution Had Its Seeds in Tokyo”
Sato Kazuo, intro. Joshua Fogel
November 23, 2007
http://japanfocus.org/-Sato-Kazuo/2587
In the early 20th century Japanese Pan-Asianists were often explicit supporters of
movements of national liberation. They supported Filipinos trying to free themselves from
Spanish and American colonialism and Chinese trying to free themselves from the Unequal
Treaties, Manchu rule, and China’s general “backwardness.” Yet even then the story wascomplicated.
Sato Kazuo, in “Sun Yat-sen’s 1911 Revolution Had Its Seeds in Tokyo,” not only
describes some of Sun’s activities but gives a concrete example of the contradiction at theheart of Japanese Pan-Asianism by discussing two of Sun’s friends. Miyazaki Tōten isrightly remembered as a democrat who wanted to “promote reforms in Japan as well as therest of the world through the revolution in China.” Sun was also aided, however, by
Utsunomiya Tarō who saw the 1911 revolution as a chance to split China into smaller units
that could more easily be dominated by Japan. At that point there was no clear consensus
among Japanese on what Japan should become, but all sides used China to project theirvisions of a Japanese future.

Sato: Sun Yat-sen’s 1911 Revolution Had Its Seeds in Tokyo

97

Sun Yat-sen’s 1911 Revolution had Its Seeds in Tokyo
Sato Kazuo
Introduced by Joshua Fogel
In four years, China will be celebrating the centenary of the 1911 Revolution which toppled not
only the Qing dynasty but imperial rule itself, a system that can be traced back 2,132 years when
“China” was a much smaller place. In order to understand the central role played by a handfulof extremely energetic (and in some cases equally eccentric) Japanese, it is helpful toconsciously try to forget much of what has occurred in the intervening century, especially thetwo decades leading up to the Marco Polo Bridge Incident in 1937 and commencement of the
Sino-Japanese War. A motley group of activist Japanese, men whose activities were notnecessarily coordinated, but who felt impelled to risk their lives for the Chinese cause, early on
identified Sun Yat-sen (Sun Zhongshan) as the leader to bank on and offered him theirwholehearted support. Native Anglophones have for the past half-century been in the unusually
lucky position of having the best book on this subject in their native tongue. This is Marius
Jansen’s The Japanese and Sun Yat-sen, a book that can be read today with the same freshness
as when it was first published.
As reporter Sato notes, most of these Japanese who actively worked with Sun were motivated bya pan-Asian fear of the encroaching West. Their proto-anti-imperialism, to coin a term, was theglue that linked them to one another and to Sun, despite the latter’s ongoing attachments to avariety of Westerners in the hopes of attracting money for his revolutionary cause. Best known
today is the name of Miyazaki Toten who at age 33 (East Asian style) composed his famous
diary, Sanjusan nen no yume (My Thirty-Three Year Dream), still one of the indispensable
sources on Sun and the 1911 Revolution. We are fortunate to have this diary in English
translation by Jansen and Eto Shinkichi, and a reading of it reveals much more than bombs anduprisings and the like. We learn a lot about Miyazaki and why his family may have been as
impoverished as his granddaughter reports to Sato—he was squandering money on alcohol andgeishas with reckless abandon. He wrote the diary in the early years of the 20th century, when
the Chinese revolutionary movement was at a very low tide with Sun in the midst of a long exile,
and it was supposed to recount his continued failures and, to be frank, self-pity—hence, alifetime of unrealistic dreaming.

Japan, China, and Pan-Asianism

98

Jansen begins his book on Sun Yat-sen in 1929 when his remains were being reinterred at theirpresent site in Nanjing, and he looks at the Japanese in attendance at the moment, Inukai
Tsuyoshi among them. Only three years later Inukai, while serving as Japan’s prime minister,would be murdered by rightwing terrorists, one of whose leaders was with him on that day in1929. The point is that the anti-imperialism that spurred young men to support Sun and theChinese revolution had several inchoate sides a century ago and those political differences
would not become manifest until several decades later.
Not mentioned in this excellent article is Yamada Yoshimasa (1868-1900), the first Japanese todie in battle on the revolutionary side against Qing forces. To commemorate his sacrifice, when
Sun visited Japan in 1913, he placed a stele by Yamada’s former home in Tokyo in his honor.
Reading press reports of problems in contemporary Sino-Japanese relations, be they political or
economic, the first thing one tends to think of is the truly horrific decades of the 1930s and1940s. It is well to occasionally remember that better times prevailed at the turn of the lastcentury—not so as to forget those harsher times but as a basis for establishing firmer groundfrom which to move forward.
Joshua Fogel
Links to Japan run deepA plaque at the foot of bronze statues of Sun Yat-sen and Toten Miyazaki refers to their “sincere friendship.”Photo by Kazuo Sato in the courtyard of the Nanjing Historical Remains Museum of Chinese Modern History

About a century ago, the wheel of history took a major turn with the Xinhai Revolution in China.
The dynastic government stretching back more than 2,000 years was overthrown, which led to
Asia’s first republic.
The revolution had strong Japanese connections because many of the movement’s leaders wereeducated in Japan and received Japanese support. Meanwhile, there were already rumblings
emanating from the Imperial Japanese Army that wanted to capitalize on the rising tide ofrevolutionary turmoil with an eye on northeastern China (the former Manchuria).
It was raining at night in Beijing a few hours after Abe Shinzo, Japan’s first prime minister to beborn after the end of World War II, abruptly announced his resignation in Tokyo. It was Sept. 12
and I was sitting in my hotel room near Tiananmen Square, blankly watching a long report on
China Central Television about candidates vying to become Japan’s next prime minister.
Toward the end of the program, a facilitator asked commentators what they thought about future
relations between China and Japan. One scholar said he believed that basic relations would
remain the same because the two countries were increasingly becoming interdependent

Sato: Sun Yat-sen’s 1911 Revolution Had Its Seeds in Tokyo99

economically. Yet, Japanese face a psychological issue in how to deal with a rising China, he
added.
A “psychological” issue? I asked myself. Surely, I thought, that leads to the question of how toview China and what sort of relations we should have.
Around the time of the Xinhai Revolution of 1911 roughly a century ago, Japan faced the samequestion in a different context. What kind of answer were Japanese trying to find back then? I
decided to follow the path of two Japanese who were deeply involved in the revolution.
Throughout his life, Miyazaki Toten strongly believed that to resist incursions by the UnitedStates and European powers, China needed to become a strong nation and he supported therevolutionary Sun Yat-sen. There were no such thoughts as “interests in mainland China” or“Japanese expansion” in Miyazaki’s mind. Many Japanese who supported Sun were nationalists
who were fixated on interests in China, and who were later called rightists. Yet, Miyazaki wasdifferent. In that sense, he was an exceptional individual.

Miyazaki and Sun (seated)

How Chinese people feel about the role he played is demonstrated in the Nanjing Historical
Remains Museum of Chinese Modern History. The building was used as the provisionalpresidential palace for Sun after the Xinhai Revolution, and his office and living quarters arepreserved as they were in his time. It can be thought of as a Sun memorial hall. Buses disgorge
more than 2 million tourists to the museum each year.
In the courtyard, four small bronze statues stand on plinths about 1 meter high. One of them
depicts Miyazaki walking alongside Sun and close to it is a statue of Homer Lea, an American
who advised Sun on military matters. The statues bear the Chinese characters for “sincere
friendship.”Japan, China, and Pan-Asianism

100

Homer Lea

“Important events for Sun Yat-sen are depicted in those four statues,” said Liu Xiaoning, vice
curator of the museum, who guided me on the tour. “These statues are of his friends who
supported his revolution throughout their lives. He had many Japanese friends, but Miyazaki
Toten was the one who provided the most support during the early stages of the revolution.”
Certainly without Miyazaki, Sun’s revolutionary movement would have followed a moredifficult path. About 110 years ago, Sun quietly entered Japan on the run from the Qing
government. When Miyazaki encountered Sun, he realized this was a man who could actuallychange China. Miyazaki introduced Sun to Inukai Tsuyoshi and other key Japanese politicians,
paving the way for Sun to operate from Japan. Furthermore, Miyazaki helped establish the
Chinese Tongmenghui (United League) in Tokyo in 1905, which became a turning point in therevolutionary movement.
The Tongmenghui was formed by merging various Chinese revolutionary groups in Tokyo.
Wang Xiaoqiu, a professor at Peking University, explains that the establishment of theTongmenghui can be viewed as the beginning of the Xinhai Revolution. “Through the formationof the group, its leadership, code of operating and organizational abilities were established,” hesaid. “That provided the foundation for the Xinhai Revolution.”
Dedication to revolution
What kind of man was Miyazaki?
The house in which he spent his later years still stands in Tokyo’s Nishi Ikebukuro district.
Several pine trees that he planted in the garden now tower over neighboring houses.
“He was such a dynamic man,” said 82-year-old Miyazaki Fuki, Miyazaki’s granddaughter. “Ishouldn’t say that he didn’t take care of his family properly, but whenever he came into any
money, he spent it all on promoting the revolution,” she said. “So the family lived in extreme
poverty.”
She talked about various episodes she had gleaned from Miyazaki’s wife Tsuchiko and his son
Ryusuke, Fuki’s father.
When Ryusuke attended the institution that later became a part of the University of Tokyo, he
could not afford to buy a cape, which his fellow students wore. Eventually, he was given one. He
was surprised by the gift but quickly realized what it was intended for: to hide explosives.
She also said that when Sun stayed at Miyazaki’s house, Chinese counter-revolutionary agentscame knocking. Tsuchiko quickly realized the danger they were in and shooed Sun and Ryusuke

Sato: Sun Yat-sen’s 1911 Revolution Had Its Seeds in Tokyo101

out through the back door. As the two were killing time at a nearby shrine, Halley’s comettraversed the night sky. Sun turned to Ryusuke and remarked, “This is a sign that the revolution
will be successful.”
Still, a question still lingers. Why was Miyazaki so devoted to supporting the Chinese
revolution?
“Miyazaki believed in democratic rights and his goal was social equality,” explained Kubota
Bunji, dean of the Faculty of Global Policy Management and Communications at Yamanashi
Prefectural University, who has spent years studying the Xinhai Revolution. “To promote social
reform in Japan, he tried to help China achieve revolution and modernization to block incursions
by the United States and European nations. He was hoping to maintain Japanese independence
and promote reforms in Japan as well as the rest of the world through the revolution in China.”
Unofficial mission
At this juncture, I think it’s appropriate to introduce another Japanese revolutionary. Kaneko
Shintaro was born in Noda Village, Niigata Prefecture (now part of Kashiwazaki). He joined theChinese revolutionary army immediately after the Xinhai Revolution and was later killed inbattle.
Kaneko was an infantry captain well-versed in Chinese affairs. He was once invited by the Qing
government to teach at a military academy. After the Russo-Japanese War, he went into thereserves and served as mayor of Noda. Shortly after he finished his term, an uprising occurred in
Wuchang (now Wuchang district in Wuhan City). Before long, he left his village without saying
a word to his family.

Kaneko Shintaro

Kinebuchi Takeji, a Kashiwazaki resident who has been studying local history, researched
Kaneko’s era and completed a thesis in 1974. Around that time, he came across letters andreports in local newspapers that shed new light on his subject.
In letters Kaneko sent from China to his wife, he told her that he would use four aliases, addingthat they would likely meet again if he accomplished his goals. Otherwise, he implored her toconsider him as a silent force behind the scenes, or even as being dead. Kinebuchi suspected that
Kaneko wanted to go to China when he learned about the uprising and joined the revolutionary
army with a secret mission for the Japanese army.
Learning about a relative of Kaneko’s from Kinebuchi, I went to Nagaoka in Niigata Prefecture.

Japan, China, and Pan-Asianism

102“I heard that he joined Sun Yat-sen’s revolution,” said Kaneko’s grandson Kazumasa Omiya as
he flipped through a photo album Kaneko had kept. “I was told that while there was no official
military order, he went to China at the behest of a high-profile individual.”
Who was the “high-profile individual” and why did he send Kaneko? Kaneko’s name sank into
the darkness of history with key questions unanswered.
Independent states eyed
My encounter with materials to solve the riddle was nothing but sheer coincidence. It came while
I was reading Utsunomiya Taro ‘s diary, which was published this past April. When the Xinhai
Revolution erupted, Utsunomiya was an army major general and second division chief in chargeof intelligence for the General Staff Office.

Utsunomiya Taro

Here are some of Utsunomiya’s diary entries:
Saturday, Nov. 4. Summoned Koyama Shusaku, asked him about second reserve infantry
captain Kaneko Shintaro, who is eager to go to the Qing Dynasty. Decided to send him to
Qing to join the revolutionary army (at my personal request), and asked Koyama toarrange for Kaneko to visit my house tomorrow morning.
Sunday, Nov. 5. Kaneko Shintaro visited my home early in the morning. I outlined myview that it was necessary to block the south and the north to conclude a peace and build
one or more countries in the south. Gave him 2,000 yen to go to Qing. He left, thinking toinitially join the revolutionary forces in Wuchang.
Upon personally meeting Kaneko, Utsunomiya decided to dispatch him to the revolutionary
forces as part of his personal mission. Utsunomiya instructed him to impede the Qing
government and the revolutionary army from signing a peace treaty, and help establish an
independent country in southern China that was under the influence of the revolutionary forces
and covered his expenses. In effect, Utsunomiya privately deployed the soldier without the
involvement of the government or army leaders.
What kinds of “personal views” did Utsunomiya share with Kaneko?
Five days after the revolution started in Wuchang, Utsunomiya awoke in the early hours andhastily jotted down policies for China that had been on his mind so he could get the General Staff
Office to work on his plan.
His strategy had four main points:

Sato: Sun Yat-sen’s 1911 Revolution Had Its Seeds in Tokyo





103

Because it was difficult to control China as a whole, it would be ideal to split it into
several independent states to “save” the territory;
After the ongoing civil strife, it was possible China could split into two states run by
the Manchu and Han races;
To be seen helping the Qing Dynasty while secretly supporting the revolutionary
forces, and reconciling them at the appropriate time in a manner so as to split thecountry into two nations; andTo establish special relations with each as a protectorate or ally.

The impetus for this was the so-called Manchurian and Inner Mongolian issue of Japan’s goal ofpermanently retaining leased territories in Dalian and Lushun, and its control of the South
Manchurian Railway it gained through the Russo-Japanese War.
As the first infantry adviser, Kaneko led the revolutionary forces. But the battle in Wuhan was
bitterly contested and the Qing government’s forces made a strong comeback. The revolutionary
troops were defeated with a loss of about 1,000 lives. Among them was the 47-year-old Kaneko.
In February 1913, Utsunomiya visited Hanyang (now Hanyang district in Wuhan City), chose avenue to honor Kaneko, and left brandy as a token. I walked around Hanyang searching for the
spot, but was unsuccessful.
In the end, Utsunomiya’s China policies were not adopted by the government. The government
at that time focused on cooperating with the United States and Britain and shied away fromadventurous strategies. While he was unhappy with the way things turned out, Utsunomiya
obeyed the government’s decisions.
However, when the revolution entered a turbulent period, the Japanese army sent many military
officers to China to gather information so it could formulate its own policies regarding this vast
region. The idea of having Manchuria become an independent nation, and settle the Manchurian
and Inner Mongolian issue at the same time was also passed down like embers buried in ashes.
Utsunomiya Taro (1861-1922)
Born in the Saga Domain. He was an elite member of the army who graduated from the Military
Academy and the Army War College. He worked mainly in the intelligence division of theGeneral Staff Office. He was one of the leading Choshu Domain opponents in the army. He wona pledge from Iwasaki Hisaya, head of the Mitsubishi conglomerate, to provide 100,000 yen (theequivalent of several hundred million yen today) for expenses related to intelligence andespionage operations in relation to the Xinhai Revolution. He also was in close contact with
Inukai Tsuyoshi, who later became prime minister, and gave him 10,000 yen when he traveled toChina. At the time of the March 1 independence movement in Korea in 1919, he was commanderof the Japanese army there.
Utsunomiya’s first son was the late Utsunomiya Tokuma, who was a member of the Upper
House and tackled issues of arms control and friendship with China and South Korea.
Miyazaki Toten (1871-1922)
Born in Kumamoto Prefecture. Strongly influenced by the concept of democratic rights, hescrambled to support the Chinese revolution along with his elder brother Yazo. He introduced
Sun Yat-sen in a series of newspaper columns called “33-Year Dream” in 1902, connecting him

Japan, China, and Pan-Asianism

104with revolutionaries in Japan and China. Miyazaki was a ronin who never assumed a government
post throughout his life but often wrote for newspapers and magazines. In his later years, hebecame a traditional rokyoku storyteller, but he seems to have been a poor performer, according
to granddaughter Fuki. When Mao Zedong was a young man, he once asked Miyazaki to delivera lecture. Taught by his mother that the ultimate disgrace for a man is to die on tatami mats, he
had an eventful life.
Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925)
Chinese revolutionary and politician. He founded the Kuomintang and developed the Three
Principles of the People: nationalism, democracy, and the people’s livelihood, a philosophy tolead the revolution. Sun is still revered across China today, and on the 140th anniversary of hisbirth in 2006, President Hu Jintao praised Sun as an outstanding patriot, a national hero andforerunner of China’s democratic revolution.
When Sun was 13, he went to Hawaii where his eldest brother had found success after
immigrating there, and returned home at 18. After studying medicine, he founded the secret
revolutionary organization Revive China Society in Hawaii in 1894, and plotted his first armed
uprising the following year, but failed. He lived in Japan in exile. According to Li Tingjiang, aprofessor at Chuo University, Sun visited Japan on 14 occasions and spent a total of nearly 10
years in this country.
Fact File: Xinhai Revolution
After the Boxer Rebellion in 1900, Han intellectuals began to believe that using armed
revolution to overthrow the Qing Dynasty controlled by Manchu Chinese was the best way torestore the nation.
Such revolutionary groups established the Chinese Tongmenghui or United League in August
1905 in Tokyo, and attempted military actions in various places in China. On Oct. 10, 1911,
some military units in Wuchang under the influence of the Tongmenghui rose in revolt.
The action quickly spread to other areas south of the Yangtze River, and revolutionaries
established a provisional government in Nanjing. On Jan. 1, 1912, a revolutionary government
was established with Sun Yat-sen as the provisional president and the country was named theRepublic of China.
Meanwhile, the Qing Dynasty brought military official Yuan Shikai out of retirement in an
attempt to bring the revolutionary army under control.
However, Yuan orchestrated a peace treaty through arbitration by Britain. As a result, Emperor
Pu Yi abdicated on Feb. 12, 1912. On March 10, Yuan succeeded Sun as provisional president.
The revolution’s name arose because 1911 fell in the Xinhai year in the Chinese calendar.
This is a slightly edited version of an article that appeared in the International Herald
Tribune/Asahi Shinbun on October 29, 2007. Posted at Japan Focus on November 23, 2007.
Joshua Fogel is Professor of history, York University, Toronto and a Japan Focus associate.

Robins: Japanese Visions of Lu Xun in the Light of the Magic Lantern Incident

105“Japanese Visions of Lu Xun in the Light of the Magic Lantern Incident”
Christopher Robins
February 4, 2007
http://www.japanfocus.org/-Christopher-Robins/2344
While many Chinese studied in Japan, Lu Xun was iconic both because of his status
as China’s most important modern writer and because of the impact his time in Japan hadon his life. Lu Xun was preparing to be a medical doctor until his teacher showed a slide oflistless Chinese prisoners at the end of his anatomy class. Lu was shocked by hiscompatriots’ passivity and the laughter they induced from his Japanese classmates, and helater wrote that this experience convinced him to abandon his studies of modern medicine
and return home to awaken the Chinese people. This became known as the Magic Lantern
Incident, and it is probably the best known story of nationalist awakening for modern
Chinese.
Christopher Robins’s “Japanese Visions of Lu Xun in the Light of the Magic Lantern
Incident” looks at how Japanese have used the memory of this incident to understand theirrelationship with China. Japanese have long been fascinated with Lu’s traditional,
Confucian, teacher-student relationship with his anatomy teacher Fujino Genkurō, but
Robins also looks at Sekibetsu, a novel published by Dazai Osamu in early 1945. Dazai
recruited a fictional version of Lu Xun as a spokesman for the Japanese Empire even though
this radically misrepresented the real Lu’s actual stance. His Lu was impressed withJapan’s “unique feeling of purity” and the anatomy lesson did not turn Lu into a radical
nationalist, but rather disgusted him with western science and made him look towards
Japan for leadership. In the play Shanghai Moon, first performed in 1991, Inoue Hiashi
presents a Lu who is in need of spiritual healing from his Japanese friends. Just as Chinese
use the figure of Lu Xun to think about the meaning of modernization in China, Japanese
use him to think about the Japan-China relationship—and do so in a self-flattering way.
While Lu Xun was one of China’s most famous anti-imperialist figures, the stories of Fujino
Genkuro put him in the context of a Confucian teacher-student relationship with aJapanese, melding the respect he felt as an individual for his mentor with the idea that
China should venerate Japan. Sekibetsu is crude late-war Japanese propaganda, but even
Shanghai Moon, a product of the post-Cold War deepening of ties between China and Japan,
presents Lu as someone who owes an “eternal debt to the Japanese people.”

Japan, China, and Pan-Asianism

106

Japanese Visions of Lu Xun in the Light of the Magic Lantern Incident
Christopher Robins
Abandoning Medicine to Minister to the Chinese Spirit through Literature
In January of 1906 in the northeastern Japanese city of Sendai, China’s most famous modern
writer, Lu Xun (Zhou Shuren 1881-1936), claimed to have experienced a life-changing epiphanythat led him to abandon his medical studies and “devote himself to the creation of a literature thatwould minister to the ailing Chinese psyche.”1 The now famous “magic lantern (slide) incident”
allegedly took place at the end of Lu Xun’s bacteriology class at the Sendai Medical School. The
lesson had ended early and the instructor used the slide projector to show various images tostudents from the recently concluded Russo-Japanese War (1904-05). Lu Xun later recounted
that the Japanese medical students were roused into a patriotic frenzy by scenes of the war,
culminating in reverberating chants of “banzai!” One scene showed a Chinese prisoner about tobe executed in Manchuria by a Japanese soldier and the caption described this man as a Russianspy (see image 1). Lu Xun reported that rather than the sight of a fellow Chinese facing death, it
was the expression on the faces of the Chinese bystanders that troubled him deeply. Although
they appeared to be physically sound, he felt that spiritually they were close to death.

Image 1: Portrait of the “magic lantern incident”

Through the lens of Chinese nationalism after World War II and the victory of the communists in
1949, the slide incident came to represent Lu Xun’s prescient decision to reject Japan’s bellicose
nationalism and Western-style science in favor of a politically-motivated literature. Lu Xun’s“conversion” to a life of literature suggests a quasi-religious renunciation of his past life and the
beginning of a process of spiritual and political purification following his extensive contact with
China’s longstanding national nemesis.

Robins: Japanese Visions of Lu Xun in the Light of the Magic Lantern Incident

107

As an intellectual who was both sharply critical of traditional Chinese social institutions andactive in socialist literary and political circles until his death in 1936, Lu Xun’s apotheosis as anational icon within the Chinese Communist Party was swift and enduring. On the firstanniversary of Lu Xun’s death, Mao spoke to an assembly at the North Shaanxi Public School in
Yan’an and assessed Lu Xun’s influence on China as comparable to Confucius: “The value of Lu
Xun in China is that he should be regarded as the number one sage of China. Confucius was thesage of the feudal society; Lu Xun is the sage of the New China.”2 In 1940 Mao showered Lu
Xun with praise for his role in the May Fourth New Culture movement and paved the way for hiselevation to the status of national hero and party stalwart:
Lu Xun was the greatest and most courageous standard-bearer of this cultural force. The
chief commander of China’s cultural revolution, he was not only a great man ofunyielding integrity, free from all syncophancy… he was also the bravest and mostcorrect, the firmest, the most loyal and the most ardent national hero, a hero without
parallel in our history. The road he took was the very road of China’s new national
culture.3
Thanks to the adoption of many of Lu Xun’s stories as part of the official People’s Republic ofChina public school curriculum, the details of his early life and his identity as a national hero
became firmly enshrined in the memories of millions of Chinese citizens. A number of Lu Xun’s
short stories and essays, including the story “Mr. Fujino,” also became familiar to Japanese
students after they were included in the public school curriculum after the Pacific War in the
1950s.4
The Canonization of Fujino-sensei
The story of Lu Xun’s life in Japan has long fascinated Japanese readers as a means ofunderstanding his transformation into China’s greatest modern writer. Lu Xun’s descriptions of
his time in Japan appeal to Japanese readers not only because of his famous epiphany following
the slide incident, but also because of the countervailing narrative of Lu Xun’s relationship withhis former anatomy teacher and mentor at medical school, Professor Fujino Genkuro (18741945).
Fujino is recalled fondly in several of Lu Xun’s works, including a vignette based on his
relationship with the professor entitled “Mr. Fujino,” written in 1926. Lu Xun was the first
Chinese student to study at the Sendai Medical School, and during his first semester of study,
Professor Fujino offered to review and correct his lecture notes for him on a weekly basis. The
description of Fujino’s appearance in Lu Xun’s account of the same name created an endearing
portrait of a somewhat absent-minded and rumpled professor devoted to distraction in his work.
Professor Fujino was in charge of anatomy. His skin was dark and he wore an arching
moustache and nearsighted glasses on his gaunt face. He spoke very slowly with a lilting
cadence in his voice and his unkempt western-style clothes were carelessly attired. He
was the kind of person who would sometimes forget to put on his tie.5

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Image 2: Photograph of Professor Fujino

Before Lu Xun withdrew from the medical school in Sendai and moved to Tokyo to enroll inGerman language classes, Fujino gave Lu Xun a photograph of himself and wrote the Chinesecharacters sekibetsu (regrettable parting) on the back (see image 2). The story of theirrelationship was not widely known until after Lu Xun’s death when his works began to be
introduced to Japanese readers. At that point Fujino was discovered living in relative obscurity in
his hometown in Fukui Prefecture. After Fujino died in 1945, his heretofore modest life became
so intertwined with the fame of his former student that his house in Awara City became a
museum, and a memorial in Fukui City was dedicated to the memory of their relationshipinscribed with the word sekibetsu.
For Japanese fans of Lu Xun, Professor Fujino’s photograph that hung over Lu Xun’s writing
desk encapsulates the legacy of his experience in Japan. The photograph suggests Lu Xun’s
lifelong devotion to his former teacher and a lingering awareness of an unsettled debt. This
theme is expressed in the following excerpt from “Mr. Fujino,” where Lu Xun describes hisreaction to receiving the photograph from Fujino.
At the end of the second semester, I visited Fujino-sensei and notified him that I wanted
to quit medical studies and planned to leave Sendai. A look of sadness seemed to comeover his face. Two or three days before leaving I was invited to his house and he gave mea photograph. The two Chinese characters, “sekibetsu,” were written on the back.
Although I said that I would give him my photograph, unfortunately, I couldn’t afford it
at that time. He eagerly requested that I send him a photo if I had one taken, and he asked
me to send him letters periodically to keep him abreast of my situation from that point on.
Yet, as time passed, it became harder to write and make amends; I just couldn’t take up
my brush. The situation is still the same up to the present—I didn’t send one single letteror photograph. I don’t know why, but even today I reminisce about him frequently. Of allof the teachers whom I revere, he was the one person who gave me the greatest
encouragement and inspiration. His picture alone hangs on the east wall facing my deskin my home in Beijing. In the middle of the night when I’m bored with my work and I
feel like quitting, I look up at his dark and gaunt face in the lamplight. Even now, when I
gaze upon that face that looks like it is about to hold forth in that harsh tone of voice, it
pricks my conscience and gives me courage. At that point I light up a cigarette, and once
again, continue writing literature deeply detested by “saints and virtuous scholars.”6

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For many Japanese readers, and undoubtedly Chinese readers as well, Fujino’s photographstands as a kind of devotional icon, an undying symbol of the teacher’s lasting influence upon his
student. Lu Xun’s inability to reciprocate Fujino’s kindness and maintain contact over the years
seems to fuel a lingering sense of guilt and inadequacy that spurs him to work harder. The
inscription on the photograph conveys a special intimacy that transcends the strictly formal
relationship between teacher and student.
The first translations of Lu Xun’s work into Japanese appeared in Beijing in the 1920s, and theseworks were then collected into a book published in Japan in 1924 with an introductory essay
written by the progressive political thinker Yoshino Sakuzo (1878-1933).7 Lu Xun’s association
with the progressive political movement during the relative freedom of the late 1920s and early
1930s seems to have enhanced the reception of his works in Japan.
When Lu Xun died from tuberculosis in 1936, newspapers in Japan published extensive coverageand featured essays on his life and work by a number of Japanese writers and critics. By thistime, the proletarian literary movement in Japan had been thoroughly suppressed by thegovernment and nearly all of the Japanese writers with socialist sympathies had publicly
renounced socialism (tenko). Lu Xun enjoyed tremendous popularity among these proletarian
writers, including the famous writer, poet, and critic Nakano Shigeharu (1902-1979), who wrote
a biography of Lu Xun in 1939.8
Another writer drawn to Lu Xun’s life and work was Dazai Osamu (Tsushima Shuji, 19091948). Like Nakano, Dazai ran afoul of the Japanese authorities for his left-wing politicalactivities in the early 1930s. By the end of 1932, Dazai joined the long list of Japanese writers
with socialist agendas who had publicly disavowed participation in the movement.9
Lu Xun as a Mouthpiece for Wartime Japanese Propaganda
Ironically, it was Dazai—a fellow writer who professed respect for Lu Xun’s work andprogressive modernizing agenda—who wrote a novel about Lu Xun’s time as a medical student
in Japan, depicting his decision to give up medicine as rooted in personal humiliation andinspired by the models of modern Japanese political philosophy and literature. Dazai betrayedand distorted the spirit of Lu Xun’s political viewpoints in his propaganda novel entitled
Sekibetsu, published in 1945. This novel was one of a small number of novels commissioned by
the wartime Japanese government to express the ideals of the Greater East Asia Joint
Declaration, an outcome of the Greater East Asia Conference of November 5-6, 1943. Originally
Dazai was chosen to write on the theme of “Independence and Amity.”10
The first-person narrator of Sekibetsu is a doctor in his sixties from a small country castle town
in the North Country of Tohoku (northeastern Japan). It has been forty years since the narrator
was a fellow medical student with the young Zhou Shuren (Lu Xun) studying at the Sendai
Medical School. The narrator, whose name is Tanaka, recounts how he was inspired to write his
own reminiscence of Lu Xun’s time in Sendai after being interviewed by a newspaper reporter
about his acquaintance with the late distinguished author. The narrator—an alter ego for Dazai—
disingenuously distances himself from the propagandistic tone of the reporter’s article, which
was entitled “Pioneers in Amity.” Tanaka describes his own motivation in writing about Lu Xun
as pure and politically unbiased.

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That sort of piece with a social and political purpose cannot help but be written in thatway. It’s inevitably different from the portrait that I have in my heart; you could say thatsince I’m writing this as a decrepit old country doctor who longs for a long-lost friend,more than for a social or political purpose, it is my fervent prayer to carefully record forposterity the image of that person.11
Tanaka first meets Zhou (Lu Xun) aboard a boat headed for the famous sightseeing spot of
Matsushima along the coast of Miyagi Prefecture. Tanaka notices Zhou wearing the same school
uniform; they exchange greetings, and end up sharing a room together in a seaside inn. During
their long discussions through the night, Zhou laments the plight of contemporary China. He
claims that China is drunk with meaningless self-praise as a country with a long-gone glorious
past, while blind to the present and destined for the same fate as neighboring India. Zhou assertsthat the rulers of the current Qing Dynasty are lazy. As part of his effort to shake China out of its
malaise, he states his wish to become the next Sugita Genpaku (1733-1817). Genpaku was ascholar of Dutch language during the Edo Period who translated texts on medicine into Japaneseand helped physicians keep abreast of Western learning during Japan’s long era of isolation.
Genpaku represents a figure who helped to lay the groundwork for Japan’s modernization
process that would come later.12
Over the course of this one evening Zhou outlines his worldview and discusses the history of
China’s colonization during the nineteenth century by an array of Western powers including
England, France, Russia, and Germany. He also mentions America’s growing imperialist
ambitions in the Pacific, with the recent annexation of Hawaii and the acquisition of thePhilippines from Spain. He does not mention Japan’s colonization of Taiwan or thecontemporary battle with Russia in Northeast Asia. Zhou does describe the rising tide of politicalactivism among Chinese intellectuals, many of whom enjoyed political sanctuary in Japan; herefers to intellectuals and political activists such as Liang Qichao (1873-1929), Kang Youwei(1858-1927), and Sun Yatsen (1866-1925). Both Liang and Kang fled to Japan from China after
the failed Hundred Days Reform in 1898, a reform effort modeled on the Meiji Restoration andaimed at establishing a constitution, a parliament, and a reformed educational system.
Zhou’s recollection of how he felt when he first came to Japan in 1902 underscores his
impression of Japan’s superiority in contrast to contemporary China. Zhou first went to Japan to
study Japanese language at Kobun College in Tokyo on a Qing government-funded scholarship.
I rode a train headed for Shinbashi and when I took a look out the window, I sensed thatJapan had a unique feeling of purity that was not to be found anywhere else in the world.
The rice paddies and farming fields, perhaps unconsciously, were beautifully andperfectly arranged. Then there were the rows of factories with their black smoke fillingthe sky. It felt like there was a refreshing breeze blowing through each and every one of
the factory buildings. I had never seen this brand new order and air of vitality in China.
After this, whenever I went for a walk in downtown Tokyo early in the morning, I saw
the figure of a woman in every house with a new towel covering her head and a sash
holding up her sleeves, busily taking a duster to the shoji. Indeed, when I saw this intent
and appealing figure bathed in the morning light, I began to think of this as a symbol ofJapan; I felt like I had understood a glimpse of the true nature of a sacred nation. I easily
experienced a similar admirable feeling of purity like that one, based on a quick glance at
the area between Yokohama and Shinbashi. In other words, just a little was enough. The

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dark shadow of ennui wasn’t malingering anywhere. I was happy that I came to Japanand my chest thumped with joy. I was so excited that I couldn’t sit down, even though
there were plenty of seats, during the one hour ride from Yokohama to Shinbashi I stoodup nearly the whole time.13
In contrast to his breathless admiration for the industrious Japanese people and their land
brimming with productive fields and factories, Zhou speaks disparagingly of his fellow Chinese
in Japan. His disdain for other Chinese also manifests itself as a kind of self-loathing. Zhou
explains how ashamed he was of his queue. The Manchu-led Qing government required all
males to wear the queue and shave the front of their pates. He describes how he and his fellow
students would coil up their braids and put them inside their school caps, but they couldn’t help
being embarrassed when they were forced to remove those caps.
When Zhou went to Sendai in 1904, as the only Chinese and first foreign student to attend the
medical school, he encountered both a warm reception from school officials and locals, andcondescension and mistrust from some of his fellow students. In Dazai’s novel, Tanaka supports
Zhou through his friendship, but as time passes, Zhou faces hostility and skepticism from many
classmates and even Fujino himself. The hostility comes for two reasons: many students distrustand disdain Zhou because he is Chinese, and they also come to believe that he has received
preferential treatment from Professor Fujino. In the highly competitive environment of medical
school this is no small matter.
A number of issues threaten to divide the friendship between Tanaka and Zhou. One arrogant
classmate from Tokyo named Tsuda Kenji remarks to Tanaka that Zhou, who was sent to study
in Japan on a government-funded scholarship, could very well be a Chinese spy. He also asserts
that, considering the fact that nearly every one of the Chinese students in Japan were politicalactivists, they might be tempted to spy for Russia to gain political or military influence in an
attempt to overthrow the Qing government. Tsuda, who is one of the class officers, emphasizes
that this is Fujino’s view and that he expressed his concerns about Zhou during a class meeting.
Tsuda says that “we need to be on guard; friendly on the one hand and watchful on the other.
That’s why I take that foreign student into my boarding house and help him out, while at thesame time, I try to do things in accordance with Japanese foreign relations.”14 Tanaka and Tsuda
argue, and finally Tsuda angrily accuses Tanaka of being a traitor and a juvenile delinquent.
The next day Tanaka asks Fujino about this and the professor admits that he did discuss thepresence of Zhou during one of the class meetings, but that he had emphasized the need for all of
the students to help him so that he can return to China and improve medical science there.
Tanaka presses him further and Fujino is vague, but he points to an article in the newspaper
about a chrysanthemum viewing party held at the Akasaka Detached Palace. With a grave
expression, Fujino asks, “Doesn’t it give you confidence to see the light of the nation shining
brightly from such a distance?” He adds obliquely, “I don’t know if I should speak of thesuperior benevolence of the kokutai (body politic), but I feel this even more deeply during timesof war.”15 Tanaka seems to interpret Fujino’s cryptic comments as a firm affirmation of theJapanese emperor-centered ideology.
Fujino asks Tanaka if he and Zhou are friends. Tanaka replies quickly, “No, we’re notparticularly good friends, but I’m thinking I’d like to become closer to him.” Tanaka mentions
how he and Zhou had discussed politics and philosophy. At that, Fujino mumbles almost tohimself, “Revolutionary ideas…” Fujino then ruminates about his own family and his often

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tumultuous relationship with his brother. Then, in a statement that echoes the rhetoric of theGreater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere, he states his belief that all of the Orient is one family.
Here Fujino’s political stance is made clear and he cannot be construed as having a naive attitude
toward a potentially dangerous ideologue such as Zhou.
Rewriting the Magic Lantern Incident: From Resolution to Humiliation
In Sekibetsu, the magic lantern incident is largely discounted as the actual motivation for Lu
Xun’s decision to quit his medical studies. In the afterword to Sekibetsu, Dazai explains that herelied on Oda Takeo’s biography of Lu Xun (Ro Jin-den) published in 1941 as well as Takeuchi
Yoshimi’s definitive biography (Ro Jin) which came out in 1944. Takeuchi was the first toquestion the authenticity of Lu Xun’s claim that he abandoned his medical studies to write
literature after seeing the slide of the Chinese prisoner being executed. This was a popular
anecdote conveyed in Oda’s biography as well as others, but Takeuchi dismissed this as lacking
in historical evidence:
Lu Xun did not leave Sendai armed with the great ambition that he would salvage thespiritual poverty of his fellow countrymen through literature. It was more likely that hetook leave of the city smitten by a feeling of humiliation and indignation. He must nothave had the luxury to think, “Although medical science has failed me, I will do muchbetter in literature.”…In any case I am inclined to conclude that the slide incident had no
direct bearing upon his transfer to literature.16
It seems that Dazai was persuaded by Takeuchi’s view since Sekibetsu’s narrator, Tanaka,
expresses similar skepticism about the role of the magic lantern incident in shaping Lu Xun’s
future ambitions. Tanaka says of the incident:
I think that the explanation that everyone has been talking about recently is not exactly
correct; that due to the so-called “magic lantern incident,” doubts (about Westernscience) suddenly arose in Zhou’s heart. According to some, Lu Xun wrote his
recollections of Sendai in his later years and it did seem that, indeed, he resolved to makethe transition from medicine to literature due to this magic lantern incident. Yet I think
that, for his own reasons, he was writing these things as a way of dealing with his past ina shorthand fashion. It seems that often people have to communicate the main points of
their history after it has been thoroughly reconstructed in this way.17
Tanaka offers a number of alternative explanations for Zhou’s sudden change of heart, including
the suggestion that Zhou became dazzled by the glory of contemporary Japanese literature.
Tanaka assigns the greatest influence on Zhou to an anonymous letter that was sent to him during
the fall semester of his second year in Sendai. On the first page of the letter was scrawled theadmonition: “Repent your evil ways!” The letter accused Zhou of receiving the answers to thetests from Fujino when he corrected his lecture notes. Tanaka interprets this situation as
infinitely more serious than the slide incident; he even speculates that this could spark an
international scandal if thousands of Zhou’s outraged fellow Chinese students in Japan were tocome to his aid and question the integrity of the Sendai Medical School.18 Not only does thishave the potential to impugn the honor of the Japanese medical students, but just as significantly,
Tanaka sees this as the source of great humiliation for Zhou and the primary impetus behind his
decision to abandon medical studies. In contrast to the slide incident in which his moral

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conscience is pricked, the insulting and accusatory letter ostensibly sows the seeds of shame andalienation.
Dazai’s rewriting of Lu Xun’s famous narrative of dramatic epiphany deflates the original toneof firm resolution and moral indignation and emphasizes instead resignation in the face ofadversity. As a wartime propaganda novel, this seems to achieve the desired effect in suggestingthat Lu Xun—an icon of Chinese modernity and progressive political consciousness—isincapable of rational, principled, independent agency, but rather, must be more concerned with“saving face” when threatened with humiliation. Near the end of the novel, Zhou discusses themagic lantern incident and credits it with kindling a new personal commitment to changing
China’s national character, yet his prescriptions for China’s ailments could never be accepted bycontemporary Chinese nationalists. In recalling the famous slide incident, he contrasts the
Chinese bystanders with the Japanese soldiers and expresses his pessimism for China’s political
future.
When I saw this I couldn’t just stand there and watch. The people of my country are stillin a degenerate state. Our ally Japan has united its nation and is fighting bravely and I
don’t understand what’s behind the fellow who became a military spy for the enemy—he
was probably paid a lot of money—yet to me, more than that traitor, I really couldn’t
stand the idiotic faces of those people gathered around watching in a daze. Those are thefaces of the Chinese people today. It’s a problem of the spirit. The important thing for
China today is not physical strength; didn’t all of those onlookers have perfectly goodbodies? My conviction has deepened that for those people, the most important thing is
not medicine at all: it’s a spiritual revolution. It’s the improvement of the national
character. If things continue as they are now, China will not be able to establish the honorof becoming a real, permanently independent country. Even if they expel the Qing,
restore the Han, and establish a constitution, since the source of the product is still thesame, isn’t it hopeless?19
Rejecting the West and China, Embracing Japanese-Style Modernity
Zhou’s speech suggests that China’s problems are endemic and intractable. Although Zhou
diagnoses China’s problem as spiritual, he concludes that the remedy lies neither in Westernreligion nor the Chinese Confucian tradition. After visiting a Methodist church with a fellow
classmate named Yashima, Zhou finds that he cannot stomach listening to a sermon about Moses
leading his people out of Egypt, and he concludes that even though Moses was able to lead his
people to the promised land, they were forced to endure forty long years of suffering and cursed
him when it was all over. Zhou is skeptical that the common people can be saved in this way;that this can alleviate their deep suffering and slave-like mentality. He also voices his view that
Confucianism is useless as a socio-political philosophy, since it all comes down to the rites
which “the Confucian scholars teach as the final mode of behavior, but instead, princes insult theretainers and fathers bind sons in hypocritical customs and force them into degeneracy.”20
After rejecting Western Christianity and Chinese orthodox Confucianism, Zhou decides that hecan find inspiration for helping China modernize from the Japanese National Learning(kokugaku) scholars who paved the way for the Meiji Restoration: scholars such as Keichu(1640-1701), Kamo no Mabuchi (1697-1769), Motoori Norinaga (1730-1801), and Hirata
Atsutane (1776-1843). He tells the narrator that it was not scientific knowledge that enabled thereforms of the Meiji era, but rather, the spiritual enlightenment of those writers as well as

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Confucian historians like Rai San’yo (1780-1832). He asserts that they provided the fuel for the
miracle of the Meiji Restoration. Zhou praises the spiritual values of the Edo intellectuals whilecondemning the Western emphasis on science as lacking an ethical consciousness: “It was
extremely dangerous to utilize the hedonism of science to save one’s own citizens. Withaggressive intent, this was the approach taken by Westerners to subjugate the people of othercountries. The most important thing in cultivating civilization in one’s own country is to firstenlighten the spirits of the people.”21
In this way, Dazai presents Lu Xun as an anti-Western polemicist after the model of Japanesenationalists from the 1930s to the end of the Pacific War. This ideological position generally
promoted the Japanese spirit (yamato-damashii) as superior to the cold rationalism of Westernscience and enlightenment. The abstract goal of disentangling the nature of Japan’s modern
national identity from Western influences culminated in the famous symposium on “Overcoming
Modernity” in July 1942. This wartime gathering of Japanese intellectuals produced an array of
opinions concerning the problem of Japanese modernity. General consensus viewed the West as
synonymous with modernization, and its powerful influence was generally viewed as merely an
importation of form with little spiritual or cultural relevance to Japan. In this sense, Westernmodernity was viewed as a hindrance to the development of Japanese spiritual purity. The
following statement from the symposium by the literary critic Nakamura Mitsuo reflects thisview:
How badly have the heartless demands of the times twisted the spirits of those who had
no choice but to accommodate themselves to it! Surely this is the most serious question
our country’s modernity puts to us.22
The emphasis on spiritual cultivation as a means of inoculating the Japanese people against thedangers of Western rational materialism was also extended as a higher ideological goal for all of
Asia in the vaunted Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.
The root of the morality of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere lies in passing on
to each people the moralische Energie of Japan, raising their spiritual level to a height
where they can cooperate with Japan, and in this way setting up a moral relationshipamong different ethnic peoples that can support the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity
Sphere.23
Contrary to Dazai’s portrayal, Lu Xun was not a jingoistic nationalist who embraced thebinarism of East versus West, spiritualism versus materialism. After leaving medical school in
Sendai in March of 1906, he returned to Tokyo to enroll in the German Institute, ostensibly to
study German language. In July of the same year he returned briefly to Shaoxing to marry awoman named Zhu An who was chosen for him by his mother. He soon returned to Tokyo,
leaving his bride behind, and during the next three years he and his brother Zuoren translated,
mainly through the medium of Japanese, a wide range of stories into Chinese from Russia,
England, America, France, Finland, Poland, Serbia, Bosnia, Hungary and other European andEastern European countries.24 Lu Xun had intended to go to Germany to study, but he had toabandon this plan and return to China in August of 1909 in order to support his mother andbrother back in Shaoxing.25
Dazai’s propagandistic agenda in Sekibetsu provides a window on the idealized view of the SinoJapanese relationship from the wartime Japanese perspective of the 1940s. In this imaginedRobins: Japanese Visions of Lu Xun in the Light of the Magic Lantern Incident

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world order, Japan serves as a bulwark against Western imperialism in Asia and presents itself toChina as a role model for modernization, integrating Western knowledge without jettisoningsome vaguely conceived notion of pan-Asian cultural values guided by Japanese spiritual
principles.
In Sekibetsu, Lu Xun’s break with his former teacher is presented as a source of future regret andthe dynamics of that relationship suggests symbolic parallels with the historical relationshipbetween China and Japan in the modern period as construed from the Japanese side: China as thestudent to Japan the teacher. Lu Xun acknowledges that he “betrayed the kindness of that teacher(Fujino),”26 suggesting that he felt later in life that it was impossible to make amends orreciprocate for the debt incurred. As the embodiment of a progressive political consciousness in
China, Lu Xun is a figure who represents—from the Japanese historical perspective—a vitalbridge for modern ideas between the two countries.
Dazai’s portrayal of Lu Xun’s regretful attitude towards his relationship with Fujino and Japansuggests an allegorical mea culpa regarding China’s awkward steps toward modernity seen in
retrospect, that is, implying that had China followed the Japanese nationalist model, she may
have avoided the rocky path toward political independence in the twentieth century, from thefounding of the Republic in 1912 to the political chaos that may have enticed Japan’s militarists
to exploit the situation to their advantage.
Lu Xun’s Eternal Debt to the Japanese People: The Twilight Years in Shanghai
Nearly fifty years after Sekibetsu was written, the contemporary Japanese author Inoue Hiashi (b.
1934) presented his own fictionalized version of Lu Xun in the play Shanghai Moon, performed
in January of 1991.27 Inoue, a prolific playwright, director, novelist, and public intellectual, isperhaps best known in Japan for his bestselling satirical novel The Kirikirians (1981) thatskewered the Japanese state, and for his popular children’s puppet show on NHK daily
television, Popping-up-Gourd Island (Hyokkori hyotan-jima [1964-69]). Among a wide range of
topics—he has published roughly 185 books as of 2006—Inoue has a penchant for writing plays
and novels about modern Japanese canonical authors, some of whom shared his own progressive
political leanings. These include Natsume Soseki (1867-1916); Higuchi Ichiyo (1872-1896);
Ishikawa Takuboku (1886-1912); Miyazawa Kenji (1896-1933); Dazai Osamu; Yoshino Sakuzo,
and Hayashi Fumiko (1903-1951).28
From the early 1990s to the present, most of Inoue’s plays have portrayed individuals struggling
to maintain their humanity in the face of the overwhelming material and ideological forces
during the time from the early 1930s to the end of the Pacific War. Inoue’s interest in thistumultuous period seems rooted in his own early childhood growing up in a small farming
community in southern Yamagata.
Inoue’s father, Shukichi, who died when young Hisashi was only five years old, was an aspiring
writer and local political activist. When Shukichi returned to his hometown in Yamagata after
studying in Tokyo in the early 1930s, he began to run a general store while supervising tenant
farmers as the eldest son of a local landowner. After marrying and settling with his wife Masu
from Tokyo, Shukichi began producing socialist propaganda billets on three mimeographmachines hidden in various places on the property.

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In a newspaper article from the Yamagata Shinbun dated May 21, 1931, Shukichi’s name ismentioned as one of the leaders of a group of 83 individuals who were arrested for communist
insurgency. Shukichi was a founder of a theatre troupe called the Reimei-za (named after the
Reimei-kai [The Illumination Society], a pro-democracy group founded by Yoshino Sakuzo and
Fukuda Tokuzo [1874-1930] in 1918).29
Shukichi’s activities earned him cold stares and rebukes from the defenders of the status quo inthe town. After his death, Inoue’s mother would come to be ostracized from the Inoue family andthe community for her own outspoken political views and unconventional demeanor. Just before
the beginning of the Pacific War in November of 1941, the literary critic and Sinologist Ozaki
Hotsumi (1901-1944) was invited by the town mayor to give a lecture. Ozaki was an outspoken
critic of the war in China, and when he addressed the audience, Masu Inoue was one of the few
who nodded in agreement while most muttered their disapproval. Six months after the speech,
Ozaki was arrested with the German Richard Sorge (1895-1944) on the suspicion of sendingclassified Japanese information to the Soviets. In spite of the fact that Ozaki was arrested as atraitor and a spy, Masu sent a series of letters to him in prison.
On the night after the Pearl Harbor attack, Inoue’s small town of Komatsu held a pro-war rally
during which Masu publicly expressed her skepticism about the feasibility of winning a war
against the U.S. Many in the community subsequently labeled her an “anti-national(hikokumin).” Once the Sorge Incident became public, her persona non grata status was elevated
to “woman spy.”30
Although Inoue Hisashi’s plays and novels tend not to have overt political messages, many of his
semi-fictionalized portraits of recent historical figures suggest a mischievous iconoclasm
designed to subvert the foundations of Japanese conservative political ideology. In the case of hisplay Shanghai Moon, however, Inoue seems less interested in elucidating Lu Xun’s own politicalphilosophy and more intent on producing a portrait of Lu Xun’s Japanese friends and supportersthat reflects a forgotten facet of Japan’s involvement in China during the war. Inoue said in a
newspaper interview that when he wrote Shanghai Moon, “Japan was performing very poorly in
the international community and getting lambasted for being able to think only about money.
Still, I thought that the people of a given country were not all the same and I felt that it waswrong to make generalizations about all Japanese people.” For this reason, he wanted to present
a positive example of Japanese people from history showing compassion toward Lu Xun right up
to the very end of his life.31
Inoue’s portrait of Lu Xun focuses on the year 1934 in Shanghai when Lu Xun and his commonlaw wife, Xu Guangping (see image 3), took refuge at the famous Uchiyama Bookstore to avoid
persecution as by the Nationalists (Guomindang) led by Chiang Kai-shek.

Image 3: 1926 photograph of Xu Guangping (1898-1968)

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Following Chiang Kai-shek’s April 1927 coup in Shanghai and the massacre of Communist
sympathizers that followed, Lu Xun lived in constant fear of political assassination or capture by
the Nationalists until his death. Although Inoue’s play ostensibly takes place from August 23 to
September 16, 1934, he integrates and conflates events that occurred in the years 1930, 1931,
1932 and 1934.32
Following the 1927 coup, Lu Xun’s immediate response was to drop out of sight, and he decided
not to “speak, teach, or voice opinions.”33 By 1929, Lu Xun began to return to writing andreemerge as a political voice for the socialist movement in China. He joined the League of LeftWing Writers and became the titular head after its inauguration on March 2, 1930. The league
was subsequently suppressed by the Chinese government, and the Zhejiang Provincial
Government ordered Lu Xun’s arrest. During the spring of 1930, Lu Xun was compelled tocover his tracks, moving to various addresses, until finally seeking refuge with his wife on thethird story of a building just opposite the Uchiyama Bookstore in May of the same year.34 The
setting of Inoue’s play is a storeroom on the second story of the Uchiyama Bookstore, run by
Uchiyama Kanzo and his wife Miki. The bookstore was located in Shanghai on the north side of
the International Settlement in Hongkou (known informally as the Japanese Concession) at theend of North Sichuan Road, a bustling commercial street.
Like the setting, the cast of characters is limited in Shanghai Moon: It consists of Lu Xun (age53), Xu Guanping (36), Uchiyama Kanzo (age 49), Uchiyama Miki (age 41), Sudo Iozo (age 50)
and Okuda Aizo (age 39). In Act One, Scene One, entitled “Irregular Heartbeat,” the actor
playing Lu Xun reads from seven letters written by Lu Xun that help to introduce the historicalsetting and characters. The third letter describes his old friend, Uchiyama Kanzo, and his
bookstore:
Many customers who come to gather here worship the personality of that person. Of
course, I too am one of those fans. If you were to describe Kanzo’s character in a single
word, it would probably be “simple.” Those who don’t know him might merely see him
as a fool. You see, his business policy is basically, “Whether they’re Japanese or Chinese,
people who read books can’t be bad.” For this reason, customers were allowed to not
only read books while standing up, they were even offered chairs and treated to tea.
There was never any policy about preventing shoplifting and customers who came inwithout money were given books on credit. Even when the charge account reachedupwards of hundreds of yen, there was never a dour look. Considering this objectively,
one couldn’t help but call him a fool. Yet, when customers are trusted to that extent, theyalso respond to that trust with deep devotion. They start by taking special care in turning
the pages of the books, then they begin forgetting about trying to shoplift, and despiteother temptations, when some money comes in, they try to pay off their debts on the
charge account. This is how the Uchiyama Bookstore became one of the biggest
bookstores in Shanghai.35
Kanzo moved to Shanghai with his wife shortly after they were married in March of 1916. Hefirst established the bookstore in 1917 on North Sichuan Road at a different address from the one
where the store would later prosper from 1929 to 1945. Kanzo and Lu Xun first met in theoriginal bookstore in October of 1927, and their friendship continued until Lu Xun’s death nearlyten years later.36 (See image 4.)

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Image 4: Lu Xun and Uchiyama Kanzo

The presence of the other Japanese main characters, Sudo Iozo and Okuda Aizo, underscores thefundamental plot of Shanghai Moon: curing Lu Xun of his physical and spiritual afflictions.
Sudo is a retired Japanese army doctor who opened his own clinic in Shanghai in 1932. In 1934
he was Lu Xun’s main physician, treating his numerous ailments, including incipient
tuberculosis.37 (See image 5.) Okuda is a dentist and he is there to assist in treating Lu Xun’svarious dental problems. However, according to one source, Lu Xun’s dental difficulties at thistime were that he didn’t have any: his ill-fitting false teeth were allegedly causing him to lose
weight.38

Image 5: Sudo Iozo (1876-1956)

Robins: Japanese Visions of Lu Xun in the Light of the Magic Lantern Incident

119Japanese Intervention to Heal the Chinese Literary Icon’s Body and Soul
Inoue takes many liberties with the facts of Lu Xun’s life in an effort to expose Lu Xun’s many
psychological and physical afflictions. In contrast to Dazai’s novel, Inoue’s play cleverly
exploits the irony that while Lu Xun was attempting to cure the ills of the Chinese spirit and raise
political consciousness through literature, his physical health was deteriorating to the extent that
it was negatively affecting his writing and threatened to put him out of commission permanently.
Inoue exaggerates Lu Xun’s vehement rejection of medicine and science when he portrays him
as having uncontrollable phobias toward all doctors and dentists. This is played to comic effect,
but Inoue also uses this as an opportunity for Lu Xun to divulge his deepest emotions from thepast, when Sudo and Okuda secretly anaesthetize him with nitrous oxide in an effort to treat his
illnesses.
Just as in Dazai’s novel, Lu Xun’s “regrettable parting” from Fujino-sensei is presented as amajor source of psychological angst. In Dazai’s novel, Lu Xun praises the superiority ofJapanese-style modernization and political thought. In Shanghai Moon, Lu Xun begins to lose
his literary voice and must be resuscitated through the intervention of modern Japanese scienceand technology, as well as something akin to group therapy.
When Doctor Sudo first appears in Scene One, Uchiyama’s wife Miki mentions the fact that Lu
Xun detests doctors. Sudo finds it hard to believe that Lu Xun hates doctors, considering his
previous aspiration to become one himself when he was a medical student in Sendai. Kanzo thenremarks to Sudo that Lu Xun had stopped frequenting his favorite crab restaurant in the French
Concession since the fall of the previous year, when a medical clinic had opened up next door.
Kanzo reports that Lu Xun’s latrophobia (fear of doctors) is so sever that he has never once stoodin front of the medical section in the bookstore. Kanzo adds that doctors are on the top of Lu
Xun’s list of most detestable things, followed by dentists and then Chiang Kai-shek’s
Guomindang in descending order.39 Miki and Kanzo concoct a plan to make Lu Xun believe that
Sudo is simply a fan of his literature, and they hope to have him visit frequently in the future andbecome a regular member of their literary salon as a pretext to check Lu Xun’s health.
After Sudo is introduced to Lu Xun for the first time, Sudo immediately begins his covert
examination of Lu Xun’s vital signs. For example, when they first shake hands, Sudo holds Lu
Xun’s hands for an unusually long period of time. When the author asks why he is still holding
his hand, Sudo replies that he is just overwhelmed at finally meeting him. Meanwhile, Sudo has
secretly taken his pulse and determined that Lu Xun has an irregular heartbeat. Although Lu Xun
remains unaware of Sudo’s ministrations, he begins to reminisce about his medical studies with
Fujino-sensei and his earlier attraction to Western thought.
Lu Xun: It’s certainly true that the occidental way of thinking about things is wonderful.
At one time I too was drawn to it.
Sudo: Do you mean to say that you think differently now?
Lu Xun: (nodding his head) I’ve come to realize that not all Western thought is somarvelous. For example, brutality—do you know what I mean?
Sudo: Do you mean cruelty?

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Lu Xun: Yes, it could be that Westerners are no longer able to control this cruelty.
Thanks to the great powers of Europe, China finds itself in this terrible semi-colonialstate and this cruelty clearly rears its head as these powers try to make foreign countries
into their own colonies. Of course, Orientals are cruel as well, but the nature of Western
cruelty is different. It’s founded on ideas from evolutionary theory such as the survival of
the fittest. This heartless and unforgiving cruelty is based on the idea that it is just andgood if the stronger ones triumph and survive while the weaker ones are defeated andfade away.
Sudo: I see, I think I understand some of your ideas . . .
Lu Xun: (then with firmness) And Japan learned this cruelty from the West.40
Lu Xun is fully aware of the threat to Chinese sovereignty that the Japanese presence represents.
He declares that he has been long arguing for the expulsion of the Japanese and that Shang Kaishek and the Nationalists are annoyed with the Communists’ anti-Japanese position. Lu Xun
asserts that the Nationalists are trying to appease the Japanese temporarily so that they can first
eradicate the Communists before turning their attention to the foreign invaders. He then producesa photograph of Fujino-sensei from a handkerchief and muses that there is a part of him thattrusts the Japanese. Looking at Kanzo and then Sudo, he says, “If there were one, two, or three
Japanese people like this Fujino-sensei, then I could trust the Japanese.”41
In Scene Two, “Toothache,” it seems that Lu Xun’s trust has been misplaced because all of theJapanese characters, Uchiyama Kanzo and his wife, Sudo, and Okuda, the dentist, have beenplotting to catch him off-guard and anaesthetize him so that the doctor and dentist can examine
and treat him. In this scene, Okuda pretends to be an artist painting Lu Xun’s portrait. Fromcasual conversation, Okuda learns that Lu Xun has a perennial sweet tooth and warns him that hewill certainly get cavities if he continues eating so much sugar. Soon Sudo and Kanzo appear.
Kanzo tells Lu Xun that his young son, Haiying, was sick to his stomach and that he had called adoctor for him. Lu Xun comments that he himself has no need for a doctor; that he understands
his body perfectly well. Sudo observes Lu Xun carefully and asks him why he seems to be so
afraid to get close to doctors: he wonders whether there isn’t some hidden reason for this deep
anxiety associated with doctors. Lu Xun counters that he has explored every nook and cranny ofhis heart through his literature, and he doesn’t believe that there are any secrets lingering there.
Mr. Sudo, if I can, I’d like to show you what’s inside my heart. It’s a desolate scene: adesert in the moonlight with nothing but sand as far as the eye can see. I’ve written andwritten myself out to the extent that there’s only four or five useless blades of witheredwild grass growing there that might make material for some odd sketches. Do you thinkthat there might be any secrets rolling about in there somewhere?42

Image 6: Lu Xun, Xu Guangping and Haiying

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Lu Xun’s Innermost Soul is Bared through the Magic of Science
Stage direction: Okuda puts the gas mask over Lu Xun’s nose and signals to Kanzo.
Responding to these signals as from a symphony conductor, Kanzo manipulates theknobs. Miki takes out a washbasin, pours hot water and takes out disinfectant.Guangping
puts a kind of bib on Lu Xun and holds him firmly.
Once Lu Xun is incapacitated by the nitrous oxide, Okuda and Sudo examine him and argue witheach other over about how to begin treatment. After being completely immobilized for a shortwhile, Lu Xun suddenly becomes semi-conscious: he then attempts to get up and begins
addressing Dr. Sudo as Fujino-sensei.
Lu Xun (speaking now in a groggy and distressed tone of voice): When I went to say
words of farewell at your home, the home that you could see at the top of the hill amongthat sea of rooftops in Sendai, I told you a lie. Please forgive me (as if he is taking on all
the sins of the world). At that time, I said, “I’m going to stop my medical studies at thispoint because I want to study biology.” That was a lie. In my heart, my ambition was towrite literature. In your desire to bring new medical studies to China, you always
encouraged me in a kindhearted way. I repaid your heartfelt compassion with lies. I feel
terrible about that.43
Still in a drug-induced haze, Lu Xun then turns to Guangping and apologizes to her with a lookof deep sorrow. Guangping is confused and Lu Xun says, “I completely thrust my mother onyou. Zhu An, I made you into a worthless housekeeper for your whole life. . . I made you into awidow while you were still alive!” Here Lu Xun mistakes Guangping for his legal wife that hemarried in 1906. Three years his senior, Zhu An was a distant cousin of Lu Xun’s and his
mother, Lu Rui, initiated the negotiations for their betrothal. It seems that they were formally
betrothed in the spring of 1902 before Lu Xun first left for Japan. Lu Xun had resisted the unionand he reportedly would not consent unless Zhu An unbound her feet and went to school. (Seeimage 7.)

Image 7: Zhu An (1878-1947)

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When Lu Xun moved to Tokyo from Sendai some four years later, he received a telegram fromhis hometown of Shaoxing with the message, “Mother ill, return with all speed.” Lu Xun
promptly returned to find that his mother was fine; it was a ruse to lure him into his own
wedding that had been prepared for the auspicious date of the sixth day of the sixth lunar month.
Lu Xun dutifully complied with the ceremony, in spite of the fact that Zhu An had not met his
preconditions. He slept with Zhu An only once on their wedding night and then reportedly
moved into his mother’s room before hastily returning to Tokyo. Throughout his marriage to Zhu
An, Lu Xun generally ignored and neglected her, although he did support her financially since
she played an important domestic role and aided his aged mother over the years. Lu Xun’s
attitude can be summed up in his dismissive comment about Zhu An made later in life: “She isn’t
my wife, she is my mother’s.”44

Image 8: Lu Rui, Lu Xun’s motherInoue’s Lu Xun voices his regrets about his treatment of others in the past, but his deepest sourceof lingering guilt stems from his perceived betrayal of Fujino-sensei. The anesthesia triggers a
psychological regression in which Lu Xun’s consciousness of the present is subsumed byemotion-laden memories of the past. In this delusional state, the only person Lu Xun recognizes
is Kanzo; he doesn’t even remember his own nom de plume. Kanzo cannot reason with him
enough to guide his way back to the present reality. In the final tableau of Scene Two, Kanzo
says, “I’m Kanzo and you (sensei) are Lu Xun.” Lu Xun responds, “Who is he?” Then he points
to a model of a human skeleton on the stage as the lights grow dim.
In Scene Three, entitled “Chronic Suicidal Longing,” Lu Xun disappears from the stage.
Guangping emerges and reports on his condition to the other characters. She complains that hestill thinks that she is Zhu An. Sudo and Okuda speculate about the root cause of his symptoms
and conclude that he has suicidal tendencies. Beyond their assessment that Lu Xun’s “body is anest for pernicious maladies, a veritable department store of diseases,” Sudo speculates that Lu
Xun’s sense of guilt for betraying the trust of Fujino-sensei and living longer than others who
have since died had manifested itself as a desire to “apologize through the act of dying.” Sudo
asserts further that Lu Xun’s hatred of doctors is tantamount to a kind of “passive suicide.” Heargues that “Lu Xun has been living with this in his head the whole time: ‘I’ll never receive anytreatment for sickness whatsoever. If I can die without taking any, I can meet death honestly; inRobins: Japanese Visions of Lu Xun in the Light of the Magic Lantern Incident

123

that way I can at least apologize for my…’”45 After further discussion, both men decide that it isnecessary to act out the roles of these key figures from Lu Xun’s life to facilitate a catharsis of
his debilitating burden of guilt.
Sudo (as Fujino-sensei): Between you and me, I’m going to call you by your real name.
Zhou Shuren, I understand that over your writing desk you always hung on the wall that
picture of Fujino Genkuro that I gave you as farewell gift. Thank you. I thank you fromthe bottom of my heart.
Lu Xun (in the midst of fear, a slight look of fond nostalgia emerges): Sensei…
Sudo: Zhou-kun, more than finding illnesses of the body and curing them, you thoughtthat first you would uncover the maladies of the heart. Hmm, it’s probably good that you
thought of this. I think I’ll give you a passing grade.
Lu Xun: A passing grade!
Sudo: If you came up with this idea during one of my lectures it makes me feel proud.
You see, that means that I send a famous doctor of the heart out into the world.
Lu Xun: Does that mean that you’ll forgive me?
Sudo: Do you think that between you and me there’s a need for something likeforgiveness? Zhou-kun, listen closely to a doctor’s order and become healthy. I pray thatyour literary fortunes will become ever greater. Why don’t you even come over to Japanfor a visit?
Through this process of role playing and transference, Sudo and the others attempt to help Lu
Xun unburden his conscience and return to the present. His recovery is not immediate, but in
Scene Five (“Aphasia”) Lu Xun greets Kanzo, Sudo, and Okuda, and recounts how he suddenly
recovered his senses while the three of them were traveling in Japan. Lu Xun explains that after
his recovery, Guangping told him what had transpired during this regression and how Sudo andthe others had made heroic efforts to cure him. Not only does Lu Xun recognize his wife andfriends, he now has a fresh outlook on the world:
Lu Xun: The next morning, an unusual thing happened; my eyes opened at the same timeas the sunrise. I casually opened the window (the one facing the street side) and wasastonished. The rays of the sun beat down and seeped into my body. For the first timesince I was born I thought that I wanted to embrace the sun. I wonder why this happened
so suddenly; ever since I was little, I always liked the moon much more than the sun.
Sudo (to Okuda and Kanzo): Sensei wants to live! Those monsters and the chronicsuicidal impulses have vanished from Sensei’s heart! … The debt on Sensei’s heart has
been paid off!46
Now that Lu Xun has changed his perspective on the past, he is eager to follow the advice of his
Japanese friends regarding his health and psychological well-being. Symbolically, Lu Xun’s
relationship with Japan has also been restored to a harmonious state, and he no longer seems toharbor misgivings about the past. The revived reciprocal nature of this relationship isunderscored when Sudo reports that he too witnessed a slide show of a Chinese prisoner being
executed just after the Russo-Japanese War when he was in high school. In Sudo’s case, heJapan, China, and Pan-Asianism

124

viewed a similar slide in his German language class. It was not the sight of the apathetic Chinese
bystanders that affected him; rather, it was the sight of the Japanese soldiers joking and drinking
as the man was being put to death. In the background of the photograph, Sudo noticed the face ofan older cousin, a cousin who would later die in battle. According to Sudo, it was this shocking
incident that led him to abandon his plan to study German literature in college, and he resolved
to study medicine instead: the obverse of Lu Xun’s career path.
At this point in Inoue’s play, Lu Xun undergoes another life-changing epiphany and is poised toflee the chaos and danger of Shanghai and take refuge in Kamakura, Japan, with his Japanesecompanions. He even expresses his ardent wish to finally write a novel entitled Shanghai Moon.
This ambition is short-lived, however; Lu Xun is soon afflicted with an odd case of aphasia.
Whenever he speaks, syllables of nouns and verbs become garbled in strange and often comic
ways. For example, when he tries to call Kanzo by name, he repeatedly mispronounces the firstsyllable and calls him “Kidney (jinzo),” “Heart (shinzo),” “Lungs (haizo),” and “Innards(naizo).”47 Near the end of the play Lu Xun overcomes this condition, and he concludes that bothof his afflictions constituted a kind of self-punishment for his own lack of courage andrevolutionary zeal.
Lu Xun: As for scrub brush (tawashi=watashi=me), that is, straw sandals(waraji=watashi=me), I have boiled (nitsuketa=mitsuketa=found) the root cause of myown illness (no longer upset by his chronic paraphasia). I think that straw sandal (I) havealways tried to slip out (nugeta=nigeta=run away) at the most critical point. Before therevolution straw sandal (I) slipped out (ran away) from the scene of the pork cutlet(katsudon=katsudo=action). And straw sandal (I) also slipped out (ran away) when thosepeople who had the same carelessness (soso=riso=ideals) as they shouted out and were
just about to rush in. The young people go to their deaths (under the slogan of) “creating
a better world!” But all I did was continue to run away. Indeed, it was for that reason that
I was afflicted with the condition of mistaken identity and those other illnesses. So in
spite of all of these failures, I am still trying to get out of Shanghai. That’s why I’ve
gotten this case of aphasia. I think that both the mistaken identity syndrome and theaphasia were a kind of punishment that I gave myself…48
Although Lu Xun’s recovery was temporary, the play ends on an optimistic note and it seems
that even if Lu Xun does not write his coveted novel, his remaining days will be productive ones.
Although Lu Xun was never a member of the Chinese Communist Party, it is striking to see thisliterary giant within the Chinese socialist movement being nursed back to psychological andphysical health by Japanese citizens during a period when the Japanese government’s official
stance was so virulently anti-communist, not to mention arrogantly belligerent toward China ingeneral.
Inoue’s play concludes in a way that seems designed to invite a reevaluation of Japanese
influence on Chinese intellectual life and literature. A more richly nuanced portrait of SinoJapanese historical relations seems long overdue; at the same time, Shanghai Moon represents
yet another attempt to reclaim Lu Xun’s legacy as something that was nurtured not only by hisexperience in Japan, but also through his lifelong contact with Japanese friends and associates.
The longing of Lu Xun fans in Japan to feel their affection reciprocated seems satisfied near theconclusion of the play when Lu Xun makes his final speech expressing his gratitude toward his
Japanese friends in Shanghai. Lu Xun agrees that he will receive X-rays and any other medical

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or dental treatment that might be necessary. Sudo is pleased to see this change of attitude and heconveys his appreciation: “Thank you, Lu Xun-san.” Okuda, Kanzo and Miki also express theiradmiration as they bow in unison toward Lu Xun.
Lu Xun: It is I who must bow my head in respect. Each and every one of you cured me
through your ways of living, through the way the story of our lives have been woven
together. All of you are exceptional doctors. (Looking at Guangping) You too,
Guangping.49
Shanghai Moon is an attempt to consolidate Lu Xun’s status as a Japanese canonical author andit presents a reenactment of Lu Xun’s identity crisis that was allegedly sparked by the magic
lantern incident. In Shanghai Moon, Lu Xun once again struggles to decide where he belongs:
with his fellow Chinese who resist Japanese imperialism, or with his dear Japanese friends whocounter totalitarian ideology with individual compassion. All four of his friends demonstrateselfless devotion and Christian-like charity that elevates them above the historical taint of theirnationality.
Like Dazai’s Sekibetsu, Inoue’s portrait of Lu Xun serves a useful didactic role when it
accurately reflects the historical record, yet it seems primarily designed to present a sympathetic
portrait of these open-minded and admirable Japanese citizens rather than illuminate Lu Xun’s
essential character. Likewise, the depiction of Lu Xun’s tortuous delusions, regressions, andaphasia suggests an external projection of traumatic symptoms from the repressed guilt ofJapanese historical memory.
When the audience in Shanghai Moon identifies with the four Japanese friends whom Lu Xunrefers to as “exceptional doctors,” by extension, they are also intended to feel a sense ofsolidarity with Fujino-sensei and vicarious satisfaction with the notion that this relationship has
been symbolically restored to its previous state: the bond between the selfless, compassionate
teacher and his grateful and obedient student.
Christopher Robins is currently teaching at Vassar College. He has translated a collection ofshort stories by Inoue Hisashi entitled A New Reading of the Tales of Tono under review for
publication.
Notes
1

Lu Xun: Diary of a Madman and Other Stories, translated by William A. Lyell (Honolulu:
University of Hawaii Press, 1990), xi.
2David Holm, “Lu Xun in the Period 1936-1949: The Making of a Chinese Gorki,” in Lu Xun
and His Legacy, ed., Leo Ou-fan Lee (Berkeley, California: University of California Press,
1985), 165.
3

Op. cit., 166.

4

Translations of “Mr. Fujino,” “A Small Incident,” “Storm in a Teacup,” and “My Old Home”
were included in the Japanese junior high school kokugo (national language) curriculum after the
1950s. More than 20 million Japanese read “My Old Home” as part of their high school
education. See Maruyama Noboru, “Lu Xun in Japan,” in Lu Xun and His Legacy, 240.
5

Oda Takeo, Ro Jin den (Biography of Lu Xun) (Tokyo: Daiwa shobo, 1966), 40.

Japan, China, and Pan-Asianism
6126

Numano Seisuke, Ro Jin to Nihon (Lu Xun and Japan) (Bungeisha: 2004), 31-32.

7

In Shimizu Yasuzo, Shina shinjin to reimei undo (Chinese new people and the enlightenment
movement) (Osaka: Osakago shoten, 1924), cited in “Lu Xun in Japan,” 218.
8

Nakano’s biography of Lu Xun (Ro Jin den) was less a comprehensive biography than anargument for the necessity of one. Nakano was imprisoned for two years between 1932-34 forleftist activities and was released after becoming a political “convert.” Cited in “Lu Xun inJapan,” 224-225.
9Phyllis I. Lyons, The Saga of Dazai Osamu: A Critical Study with Translations (Stanford,
California: Stanford University Press, 1985), 32.
10

Donald Keene, “Japanese Writers and the Greater East Asia War,” The Journal of AsianStudies, 23:2 (Feb., 1964), 219-220.
11

Daizai Osamu, Sekibetsu, in Dazai Osamu zenshu, vol. 7 (Chikuma shobo, 1989), 189.

12

Sekibetsu, 210-212.

13

Sekibetsu, 222-223.

14

Sekibetsu, 247.

15

Sekibetsu, 250.

16

Takeuchi Yoshimi, Ro Jin (Lu Xun) (Tokyo: Nihon hyoronsha, 1944; rpt., Tokyo: Miraisha,1961), 70. Cited in “Lu Xun in Japan,” 226-227.
17

Sekibetsu, 302

18

Sekibetsu, 277-278.

19

Sekibetsu, 315.

20

Sekibetsu, 295.

21

Sekibetsu, 298-299.

22James W. Heisig and John C. Maraldo, eds., Rude Awakenings: Zen, the Kyoto School, and theQuestion of Nationalism (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994), 216.
23

Rude Awakenings, 309-310.

24

Leo Ou-fan Lee, Voices from the Iron House: A Study of Lu Xun (Bloomington, Indiana:
Indiana University Press, 1987), 22-23.
25

David E. Pollard, The True Story of Lu Xun (Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press,
2002), 37.
26
27

Sekibetsu, 316.

First performed January 9, 1991, at the Taira Municipal Hall (Iwaki City) in Fukushima
Prefecture. Published serially in the magazine Subaru, beginning in March 1991, and in bookform with Shueisha the same year.

Robins: Japanese Visions of Lu Xun in the Light of the Magic Lantern Incident

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28

The titles of these Inoue Hisashi works are Wagahai wa Soseki de aru (I am Soseki [Natsume
Soseki] (1982); Zutsu katakori Higuchi Ichiyo (Higuchi Ichiyo with a headache and stiff neck)(1984); Nakimushi namaiki Ishikawa Takuboku (The cheeky crybaby, Ishikawa Takuboku)(1986); Iihatobo no geki ressha (The Iwate theatre train [Miyazawa Kenji]) (1980); Ningen
gokaku (Passing as human [Dazai Osamu]) (1990); Ani ototo (Older and younger brother[Yoshino Sakuzo]) (2003); and Taiko tataite fue fuite (Blow the flute and beat the drum [Hayashi
Fumiko]) (2002).
29

Inoue Hisashi, Hon no unmei (The fate of books) (Bungei shunju, 1997), 18-20.

30

Inoue Hisashi, “Hahagimi no nokoshi tamaishi kotoba (Words bequeathed to me by mymother)” in Bungei Shunju, August 1991, 214.
31

Inoue Hisashi, interview with the Yomiuri Shinbun, September 16, 1991.

32

See brief introduction, Inoue Hisashi, Shanhai Mun (Shanghai Moon) (Tokyo: Shueisha,1991), 5.
33

Leo Ou-Fan Lee, “Literature on the Eve of Revolution: Reflections on Lu Xun’s Leftist Years,
1927-1936,” Modern China, Vol. 2 (July, 1976), 281.
34

Oda Takeo, Ro Jin den, 143.

35

Inoue Hisashi, Shanghai Moon, 19.

36

Yoshida Hiroji, Ro Jin no tomo: Uchiyama Kanzo no shozo (Portrait of Uchiyama Kanzo, Lu
Xun’s friend) (Tokyo Shinkyo shuppansha, 1994), 113.
37

Koizumi Yuzuru, Hyoden: Ro Jin to Uchiyama Kanzo (Critical biography of Lu Xun andUchiyama Kanzo) (Tokyo: Tosho shuppan, 1989), 263. Sudo, who was born in Okayama
Prefecture in 1876 and died in 1959, was actually 58 years old when he was in Shanghai with Lu
Xun in 1934. See Izumi Hyonosuke, “Rojin no shiin Nihonjin ishi hinan wa gimon,” (Doubts
about accusations against a Japanese physician regarding the cause of Lu Xun’s death,” Asashi
Shinbun, June 4, 1984.
38

See Koizumi, 263.

39

Shanghai Moon, 32.

40

Shanghai Moon, 40-41.

41

Shanghai Moon, 41.

42

Shanghai Moon, 53.

43

Shanghai Moon, 73-74.

44

See David E. Pollard, The True Story of Lu Xun, 55-67.

45

Shanghai Moon, 99-100.

46

Shanghai Moon, 134-135.

47

Shanghai Moon, 186.

Japan, China, and Pan-Asianism
48

Shanghai Moon, 200-201.

49

Shanghai Moon, 202.

128

Cipris: Seduced by Nationalism

129“Seduced by Nationalism: Yone Noguchi’s ‘Terrible Mistake’: Debating the ChinaJapan War With Tagore”
Zeljko Cipris
November 17, 2007
http://www.japanfocus.org/-Zeljko-Cipris/2577
One of the most significant Pan-Asian figures outside of China and Japan was
Rabindranath Tagore. Indian Pan-Asianism had little practical connection to that of China
and Japan, as Japanese Pan-Asianism tended to mean only East-Asianism, but Tagore, whotraveled in both China and Japan, was a globally famous writer, playwright, composer, andpoet who became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature (1913).
Tagore was a perfect Pan-Asian interlocutor between the two countries, and Zeljko Cipris’s“Seduced by Nationalism: Yone Noguchi’s ‘Terrible Mistake’: Debating the China-Japan War
With Tagore” looks at a series of letters he exchanged with the Japanese poet and former
internationalist Yone Noguchi in 1938. Noguchi claimed that the Japanese invasion ofChina was an attempt to save the Chinese people and their ancient culture from the evils of
Chiang Kai-shek who had killed thousands of Chinese by blowing the Yellow River dikes (tostop the Japanese), and, Noguchi claimed, sold his country to the West, diverging from“oriental ethics.” Tagore refused to give this interpretation any credit, denouncing imperial
Japan’s betrayal not only of Pan-Asian but of universal values. The letters reflect thecomplete absorption of Noguchi’s flavor of Pan-Asianism into Japanese imperialism, muchas did Dazai Osamu’s fiction, discussed in the previous article.

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Seduced by Nationalism: Yone Noguchi’s ‘Terrible Mistake’: Debating the China-Japan
War With Tagore
Zeljko Cipris
Believe me that I am never a eulogist of Japanese militarism, because I have many differenceswith it. But I cannot help accepting as a Japanese what Japan is doing now under thecircumstances, because I see no other way to show our minds to China. Of course when China
stops fighting, and we receive her friendly hands, neither grudge nor ill feeling will remain in
our minds. Perhaps with some sense of repentance, we will then proceed together on the great
work of reconstructing the new world in Asia.
—Yone Noguchi
If you can convince the Chinese that your armies are bombing… that they are only being
subjected to a benevolent treatment which will in the end “save” their nation, it will no longer benecessary for you to convince us of your country’s noble intentions. … Do you seriously believethat the mountain of bleeding corpses and the wilderness of bombed and burnt cities that is every
day widening between your two countries, is making it easier for your two peoples to stretch
your hands in a clasp of ever-lasting good will?
—Rabindranath Tagore
In the summer and autumn of 1938 a brief and impassioned exchange of letters took place
between two old friends, Japanese poet and academic Noguchi Yonejiro (a.k.a. Yone Noguchi,
1875-1947) and Bengali poet, novelist, composer and painter Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941).
The two men had known each other for more than twenty years, since May 1916 when Tagore,
who had won Asia’s first Nobel Prize in literature three years earlier, arrived in Japan on a threemonth visit and was received with warm and tumultuous enthusiasm.1 One of the members of thewelcoming committee that greeted Tagore was Yone Noguchi, an internationally known poetand professor of English literature at the Keio University in Tokyo.
As a young man, Noguchi had lived and worked for eleven years in San Francisco, New York,and London, becoming the first Japanese author to publish poetry and novels in English, andforming friendships with such literary luminaries as William Butler Yeats and Ezra Pound. He
returned to Japan in 1904 (having fathered a son with an American woman), resumed his literary
activities and gained a considerable reputation as an interpreter of Japan to the world and of theworld to Japan. During the liberal 1920s Noguchi published some of his poetry in left-leaning
journals such as Kaizo, but as the political atmosphere shifted to the right, Noguchi followed suitand by the 1930s his work exhibited prominent nationalistic overtones.2 This was not unusual:many Japanese scholars, artists, and intellectuals made similar adjustments, trying toaccommodate themselves to the steadily increasing domestic repression and overseas aggression.
In addition, Noguchi, with his well known cosmopolitan past may have felt it especially prudent
to demonstrate that he was just as patriotic as anyone else. He succeeded in winning thegovernment’s trust to such an extent that he was sent on a tour of India between 1935 and 1936
to explain Japan’s international conduct to the citizens of this major Asian nation.
Rabindranath Tagore—who visited Japan two more times, in 1924 and 1929—greatly admired
the Japanese people. What deeply impressed him was not only the widespread courtesy, serenity,
and aesthetic sensitivity that he encountered during his visits, but also the fact that Japan had

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been the first Asian nation to industrialize, and to shake off the yoke of Western imperialism. As
a citizen of a country still colonized by Britain, Tagore, like many other Asians, felt inspired andinvigorated by Japan’s successful assertion of independence which had helped the people of Asia
to regain self-confidence, and made Japan an object of respect and emulation. However, an
aspect of Japan that Tagore found worrisome was its tendency toward aggressive nationalism,
traces of which he detected and criticized as early as 1916.3 In the succeeding decades this trend
only grew worse, gradually transforming Japan into just another imperialist power, and changing
it from a positive example into a fearsome menace. Indeed, Tagore viewed Japan’s aggression in
China as removing it from the ranks of Asia and placing it in the same camp as the imperialist
west. In criticizing Japan, Tagore elevates Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang to great heights
as China’s savior.
It is hardly surprising that the nationalist Noguchi and the essentially internationalist Tagore
found themselves in sharp disagreement concerning the nature of the Sino-Japanese War that
erupted on a limited scale in September 1931 and burst into full-fledged warfare in July 1937.
When Noguchi initiated their correspondence about the war in July 1938 it was in an evident
attempt to enlist his world-famous friend into supporting Japan’s cause. His effort showed how
little he understood his fellow poet: it had no chance of success because Tagore, a consistentanti-imperialist, never condoned imperial adventures of any nation, no matter how lofty orplausible the justifications.
The content of Noguchi’s letters displays little independent thought, faithfully echoing his
nation’s officially sanctioned narratives as formulated by the government and transmitted by thedominant print and broadcast media. He insists that the war is not an act of aggression against the
Chinese people but a selfless mission to liberate them from the tyranny of Chiang Kai-shek andfrom foreign oppression as well as from the threat of communism. He stresses how united andself-sacrificing his compatriots are in supporting the heroic troops whose ultimate aim is to bringpeace, freedom, and prosperity to all of Asia. Conceding that the war has its tragic aspects, heconsiders them a sad but unavoidable part of an overall constructive and benevolent enterprise.4
Tagore accepts none of this, and is palpably pained by the apparent ease with which his gifted
and cultured friend has been taken in by government propaganda. Tagore sees nothing nobly
motivated about the war whatsoever, only the massive devastation, massacres and misery of animperial onslaught rationalized with dishonest and hypocritical pretexts. Beneath their mostly
polite and friendly surface, the two men’s letters seethe with anger, frustration, mutual
disappointment, and sadness. The four letters—two from each writer—make it abundantly clearthat their views are utterly irreconcilable.

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Rabindranath Tagore

The exchange of letters seems to have brought the two poets’ friendship to an unhappy end: there
appears to have been no further correspondence between them. Tagore died in August 1941, at
the age of eighty. In 1942, following the outbreak of a wider war, Noguchi—like some otherJapanese poets—went on to write hysterically belligerent verses calling for the slaughter ofBritish and Americans. After the war, not long before his own death, Noguchi sadly admitted
that he had “made a terrible mistake in supporting his country during the war.”5 The confession
was made to his long-neglected Japanese-American son, the great sculptor Isamu Noguchi.
“A terrible mistake”—the words deserve pondering in a time when the siren song of nationalism
is once again being broadcast at rather loud volume in many quarters in Japan and elsewhere.
The Letters
41 Sakurayama
Nakano, Tokyo
July 23rd, 1938
Dear Rabindranath,
When I visited you at Shantiniketan a few years ago, you were troubled with the Ethiopian
question, and vehemently condemned Italy. Retiring into your guest chamber that night, I
wondered whether you would say the same thing on Japan, if she were equally situated like Italy.
I perfectly agreed with your opinion and admired your courage of speaking, when in Tokyo,
1916, you censured the westernization of Japan from a public platform. Not answering back toyour words, the intellectual people of my country were conscious of its possible consequence,Cipris: Seduced by Nationalism

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for, not only staying as an unpleasant spectacle, the westernization had every chance forbecoming anything awful.
But if you take the present war in China for the criminal outcome of Japan’s surrender to theWest, you are wrong, because, not being a slaughtering madness, it is, I believe, the inevitablemeans, terrible it is though, for establishing a new great world in the Asiatic continent, where the“principle of live-and-let-live” has to be realized. Believe me, it is the war of “Asia for Asia.”
With a crusader’s determination and with a sense of sacrifice that belongs to a martyr, our young
soldiers go to be [the] front. Their minds are light and happy, the war is not for conquest, but thecorrection of mistaken idea of China, I mean Kuomingtung [Kuomintang] government, and for
uplifting her simple and ignorant masses to better life and wisdom. Borrowing from othercountries neither money nor blood, Japan is undertaking this tremendous work single-handed andalone. I do not know why we cannot be praised by your countrymen. But we are terribly blamedby them, as it seems, for our heroism and aim.
Sometime ago the Chinese army, defeated in Huntung [Honan] province by Hwangho [Yellow]
River, had cut from desperate madness several places of the river bank; not keeping in check theadvancing Japanese army, it only made thirty hundred thousand people drown in the flood andone hundred thousand village houses destroyed. Defending the welfare of its own kinsmen or
killing them,—which is the object of the Chinese army, I wonder? It is strange that such an
atrocious inhuman conduct ever known in the world history did not become in the west a targetof condemnation. Oh where are your humanitarians who profess to be a guardian of humanity?
Are they deaf and blind? Besides the Chinese soldiers, miserably paid and poorly clothed, are ahabitual criminal of robbery, and then an everlasting menace to the honest hard-working people
who cling to the ground. Therefore the Japanese soldiers are followed by them with the paper
flags of the Rising Sun in their hands; to a soldierly work we have to add one more endeavour inthe relief work of them. You can imagine how expensive is this war for Japan. Putting
expenditure out of the question, we are determined to use up our last cent for the final victorythat would ensure in the future a great peace of many hundred years.
I received the other day a letter from my western friend, denouncing the world that went to Hell.
I replied him, saying: “Oh my friend, you should cover your ears, when a war bugle rings too
wild. Shut your eyes against a picture of your martial cousins becoming a fish salad! Be patient,
my friend, for a war is only spasmodic matter that cannot last long, but will adjust one’s
condition better in the end. You are a coward if you are afraid of it. Nothing worthy will be done
unless you pass through a severe trial. And the peace that follows after a war is most important.”
For this peace we Japanese are ready to exhaust our resources of money and blood.
Today we are called under the flag of “Service-making,” each person of the country doing his
own bit for the realization of idealism. There was no time as today in the whole history of Japan,
when all the people, from the Emperor to a rag-picker in the street, consolidated together with
one mind. And there is no more foolish supposition as that our financial bankruptcy is a thing
settled if the war drags on. Since the best part of the Chinese continent is already with us infriendly terms, we are not fighting with the whole of China. Our enemy is only the Kuomingtung
government, a miserable puppet of the west. If Chiang Kai-shek wishes a long war, we are quite
ready for it. Five years? Ten years? Twenty years? As long as he desires, my friend. Now one
year has passed since the first bullet was exchanged between China and Japan; but with a freshmind as if it sees that the war has just begun, we are now looking the event in the face. After theJapan, China, and Pan-Asianism

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fall of Hankow, the Kuomingtung government will retire to a remote place of her country; but
until the western countries change their attitude towards China, we will keep up fighting withfists or wisdom.
The Japanese poverty is widely advertised in the west, though I do not know how it was started.
Japan is poor beyond doubt,—well, according to the measure you wish to apply to. But I thinkthat the Japanese poverty is a fabricated story as much as richness of China. There is no country
in the world like Japan, where money is equally divided among the people. Supposing that weare poor, I will say that we are trained to stand the pain of poverty. Japan is very strong inadversity.
But you will be surprised to know that the postal saving of people comes up now to five
thousand million yen, responding to the government’s propaganda of economy. For going on,
surmounting every difficulty that the war brings in, we are saving every cent and even making
good use of waste scraps. Since the war began, we grew spiritually strong and true ten times
more than before. There is nothing hard to accomplish to a young man. Yes, Japan is the land ofyoung men. According to nature’s law, the old has to retire while the young advances. Behold,the sun is arising, be gone all the sickly bats and dirty vermins! Cursed be one’s intrigue andempty pride that sin against nature’s rule and justice.
China could very well avoid the war, of course, if Chiang Kai-shek was more sensible withinsight. Listening to an irresponsible third party of the west a long way off, thinking too highlyof his own strength, he turned at last his own country, as she is today, into a ruined desert towhich fifty years would not be enough for recovery. He never happened to think for a momentthat the friendship of western countries was but a trick of their monetary interest itself in his
country. And it is too late now for Chiang to reproach them for the faithlessness of their words ofpromise.
For a long time we had been watching with doubt at Chiang’s program, the consolidation of thecountry, because the Chinese history had no period when the country was unified in the real
meaning, and the subjugation of various war-lords under his flag was nothing. Until all thepeople took an oath of co-operation with him, we thought, his program was no more than a table
talk. Being hasty and thoughtless, Chiang began to popularize the anti-Japanese movement
among the students who were pigmy politicians in some meaning because he deemed it to be amethod for the speedy realization of his program; but he never thought that he was erring fromthe Oriental ethics that preached on one’s friendship with the neighbours. Seeing that his
propagation had too great effect on his young followers, he had no way to keep in check theirwild jingoism, and then finally made his country roll down along the slope of destruction.
Chiang is a living example who sold his country to the west for nothing, and smashed his skinwith the crime of westernization. Dear Rabindranath, what will you say about this Chiang Kaishek?
Dear poet, today we have to turn our deaf ears towards a lesson of freedom that may come from
America, because the people there already ceased to practice it. The ledger-book diplomacy ofEngland is too well known through the world. I am old enough to know from experience that no
more worse than others. Though I admit that Japan is today ruled by militarism, natural to theactual condition of the country, I am glad that enough freedom of speaking and acting is allowed
to one like myself. Japan is fairly liberal in spite of the war time. So I can say without fear to belocked up that those service-crazy people are drunken, and that a thing in the world, great andCipris: Seduced by Nationalism

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true, because of its connection with the future, only comes from one who hates to be a common
human unit, stepping aside so that he can unite himself with Eternity. I believe that such a one
who withdraws into a snail’s shell for the quest of life’s hopeful future, will be in the end a true
patriot, worthy of his own nation. Therefore I am able not to disgrace the name of poet, and to try
to live up to the words of Browning who made the Grammarian exclaim:“Leave Now for dogs and apes! Man has Forever”.
Yours very sincerely,
Yone Noguchi.

Sketch of Noguchi

Uttarayan
Santiniketan, Bengal
September 1, 1938
Dear Noguchi,
I am profoundly surprised by the letter that you have written to me: neither its temper nor its
contents harmonise with the spirit of Japan which I learnt to admire in your writings and came tolove through my personal contacts with you. It is sad to think that the passion of collective
militarism may on occasion helplessly overwhelm even the creative artist, that genuine
intellectual power should be led to offer its dignity and truth to be sacrificed at the shrine of thedark gods of war.

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You seem to agree with me in your condemnation of the massacre of Ethiopia by Fascist Italy
but you would reserve the murderous attack on Chinese millions for judgment under a different
category. But surely judgments are based on principle, and no amount of special pleading canchange the fact that in launching a ravening war on Chinese humanity, with all the deadly
methods learnt from the West, Japan is infringing every moral principle on which civilisation isbased. You claim that Japan’s situation was unique, forgetting that military situations are always
unique, and that pious war-lords, convinced of peculiarly individual justification for theiratrocities have never failed to arrange for special alliances with divinity for annihilation andtorture on a large scale.
Humanity, in spite of its many failures, has believed in a fundamental moral structure of society.
When you speak, therefore, of “the inevitable means, terrible it is though, for establishing a new
great world in the Asiatic continent”—signifying, I suppose, the bombing on Chinese womenand children and the desecration of ancient temples and Universities as a means of saving China
for Asia—you are ascribing to humanity a way of life which is not even inevitable among theanimals and would certainly not apply to the East, in spite of her occasional aberrations. You arebuilding your conception of an Asia which would be raised on a tower of skulls. I have, as you
rightly point out, believed in the message of Asia, but I never dreamt that this message could be
identified with deeds which brought exaltation to the heart of Tamer Lane at his terrible
efficiency in manslaughter. When I protested against “Westernisation” in my lectures in Japan, I
contrasted the rapacious Imperialism which some of the nations of Europe were cultivating with
the ideal of perfection preached by Buddha and Christ, with the great heritages of culture andgood neighbourliness that went to the making of Asiatic and other civilisations. I felt it to be myduty to warn the land of Bushido, of great Art and traditions of noble heroism, that this phase ofscientific savagery which victimised Western humanity and had led their helpless masses to a
moral cannibalism was never to be imitated by a virile people who had entered upon a glorious
renascence and had every promise of a creative future before them. The doctrine of “Asia forAsia” which you enunciate in your letter, as an instrument of political blackmail, has all thevirtues of the lesser Europe which I repudiate and nothing of the larger humanity that makes us
one across the barriers of political labels and divisions. I was amused to read the recent statementof a Tokyo politician that the military alliance of Japan with Italy and Germany was made for“highly spiritual and moral reasons” and “had no materialistic considerations behind them”.
Quite so. What is not amusing is that artists and thinkers should echo such remarkable sentimentsthat translate military swagger into spiritual bravado. In the West, even in the critical days of
war-madness, there is never any dearth of great spirits who can raise their voice above the din ofbattle, and defy their own warmongers in the name of humanity. Such men have suffered, butnever betrayed the conscience of their peoples which they represented. Asia will not bewesternised if she can learn from such men: I still believe that there are such souls in Japan
though we do not hear of them in those newspapers that are compelled at the cost of their
extinction to reproduce their military master’s voice.
“The betrayal of intellectuals” of which the great French writer spoke after the European war, isa dangerous symptom of our Age. You speak of the savings of the poor people of Japan, theirsilent sacrifice and suffering and take pride in betraying that this pathetic sacrifice is being
exploited for gun running and invasion of a neighbour’s hearth and home, that human wealth ofgreatness is pillaged for inhuman purposes. Propaganda, I know, has been reduced to a fine art,
and it is almost impossible for peoples in non-democratic countries to resist hourly doses ofCipris: Seduced by Nationalism

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poison, but one had imagined that at least the men of intellect and imagination would themselves
retain their gift of independent judgment. Evidently such is not always the case; behindsophisticated arguments seem to lie a mentality of perverted nationalism which makes the“intellectuals” of today to blustering about their “ideologies” dragooning their own “masses” into
paths of dissolution. I have known your people and I hate to believe that they could deliberately
participate in the organised drugging of Chinese men and women by opium and heroin, but they
do not know; in the meanwhile, representatives of Japanese culture in China are busy practising
their craft on the multitudes caught in the grip of an organisation of a wholesale human pollution.
Proofs of such forcible drugging in Manchukuo and China have been adduced by unimpeachable
authorities. But from Japan there has come no protest, not even from her poets.
Holding such opinions as many of your intellectuals do, I am not surprised that they are left
“free” by your Government to express themselves. I hope they enjoy their freedom. Retiringfrom such freedom into “a snail’s shell” in order to savour the bliss of meditation “on life’s
hopeful future”, appears to me to be an unnecessary act, even though you advise Japanese artists
to do so by way of change. I cannot accept such separation between an artist’s function and his
moral conscience. The luxury of enjoying special favouritism by virtue of identity with aGovernment which is engaged in demolition, in its neighbourhood, of all salient bases of life,
and of escaping, at the same time, from any direct responsibility by a philosophy of escapism,
seems to me to be another authentic symptom of the modern intellectual’s betrayal of humanity.
Unfortunately the rest of the world is almost cowardly in any adequate expression of its
judgment owing to ugly possibilities that it may be hatching for its own future and those who arebent upon doing mischief are left alone to defile their history and blacken their reputation for alltime to come. But such impunity in the long run bodes disaster, like unconsciousness of disease
in its painless progress of ravage.
I speak with utter sorrow for your people; your letter has hurt me to the depths of my being. I
know that one day the disillusionment of your people will be complete, and through laborious
centuries they will have to clear the debris of their civilisation wrought to ruin by their own
warlords run amok. They will realise that the aggressive war on China is insignificant ascompared to the destruction of the inner spirit of chivalry of Japan which is proceeding with aferocious severity. China is unconquerable, her civilisation, under the dauntless leadership of
Chiang Kai-shek, is displaying marvelous resources; the desperate loyalty of her peoples, united
as never before, is creating a new age for that land. Caught unprepared by a gigantic machineryof war, hurled upon her peoples, China is holding her own; no temporary defeats can ever crush
her fully aroused spirit. Faced by the borrowed science of Japanese militarism which is crudely
western in character, China’s stand reveals an inherently superior moral stature. And today I
understand more than ever before the meaning of the enthusiasm with which the big-hearted
Japanese thinker Okakura [Kakuzo or Tenshin] assured me that China is great.
You do not realise that you are glorifying your neighbour at your own cost. But these areconsiderations on another plane: the sorrow remains that Japan, in the words of Madame ChiangKai-shek which you must have read in the Spectator, is creating so many ghosts. Ghosts ofimmemorial works of Chinese art, of irreplaceable Chinese institutions, of great peace-loving
communities drugged, tortured, and destroyed. “Who will lay the ghosts [to rest]?” she asks.
Japanese and Chinese people, let us hope, will join hands together, in no distant future, in wiping
off memories of a bitter past. True Asian humanity will be reborn. Poets will raise their song andJapan, China, and Pan-Asianism

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be unashamed, one believes, to declare their faith again in a human destiny which cannot admitof a scientific mass production of fratricide.
Yours sincerely,
Rabindranath Tagore
PS. I find that you have already released your letter to the press; I take it that you want me topublish my answer in the same manner.

Sketch of Tagore

41, Sakurayama
Nakano, Tokyo
Oct. 2nd, 1938
Dear Tagore,Your eloquent letter, dated Sept. 1st. was duly received. I am glad that the letter inspired me towrite you once more.
No one in Japan denies the greatness of China,—I mean the Chinese people. China of the olden
times was great with philosophy, literature and art,—particularly in the T’ang dynasty. Under
Chinese influence Japan started to build up her own civilization. But I do not know why weshould not oppose to the misguided government of China for the old debt we owe her people.
And nobody in Japan ever dreams that we can conquer China. What Japan is doing in China, it isonly, as I already said, to correct the mistaken idea of Chiang Kai-shek; on this object Japan instaking her all. If Chiang Kai-shek [alters his course]; on this object Japan is staking her hands
for the future of both the countries, China and Japan, the war will be stopped to once.
I am glad that you still admire Kakuzo Okakura with enthusiasm as a thinker. If he lives to-day, I
believe that he will say the same thing as I do. Betraying your trust, many Chinese soldiers in thefront surrender to our Japanese force, and join with us in the cry, “Down with Chiang Kai-shek!”
Where is Chinese loyalty to him?
Having no proper organ of expression, Japanese opinion is published only seldom in the west;
and real fact is always hidden and often camouflaged by cleverness of the Chinese who are aborn propagandist. They are strong in foreign languages, and their tongues never fail. While theCipris: Seduced by Nationalism

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Japanese are always reticent, even when situation demands their explanation. From theexperiences of many centuries, the Chinese have cultivated an art of speaking for they had been
put under such a condition that divided their country to various antagonistic divisions; and being
always encroached by the western countries, they depended on diplomacy to turn a thing to theiradvantage. Admitting that China completely defeated Japan in foreign publicity, it is sad that she
often goes too far and plays trickery. For one instance I will call your attention to the reproduced
picture from a Chinese paper on page 247 of the Modern Review for last August, as a living
specimen of “Japanese Atrocities in China: Execution of a Chinese Civilians.” So awful pictures
they are—awful enough to make ten thousand enemies of Japan in a foreign country. But the
pictures are nothing but a Chinese invention, simple and plain, because the people in the scenes
are all Chinese, slaughterers and all. Besides any one with commonsense would know, if he stops
for a moment, that it is impossible to take such a picture as these at the front. Really I cannot
understand how your friend-editor of the modern Review happened to published them.
It is one’s right to weave a dream at the distance, and to create an object of sympathy at theexpense of China. Believe me that I am second to none in understanding the Chinese masses whoare patient and diligent, clinging to the ground. But it seems that you are not acquainted with the
China of corruption and bribery, and of war lords who put money in a foreign bank when theircountry is at stake. So long as the country is controlled by such polluted people, the Chinese
have only a little chance to create a new age in their land. They have to learn first of all themeaning of honesty and sacrifice before dreaming it. But for this new age in Asia, Japan isengaging in the war, hoping to obtain a good result and mutual benefit that follow the swords.
We must have a neighbouring country, strong and true, which is glad to co-operate with us in ourwork of reconstructing Asia in the new way. That is only what we expect from China.
Japan’s militarism is a tremendous affair no doubt. But if you condemn Japan, because of it, you
are failing to notice that Chiang’s China is a far more great military country than Japan. China is
now mobilizing seven or eight million soldiers armed with European weapons. From cowardiceor being ignorant of the reason why they had to fight, the Chinese soldiers are so unspirited in
the front. But for this unavailability you cannot forgive Chiang’s militarism, if your denial isabsolute and true. For the last twenty years Chiang had been trying to arm his country under thewestern advisers; and these western advisers were mostly from Italy and Germany, the countriesof which you are so impatient. And it should be attributed to their advice that he started war;though it is too late to blame the countries that formally provided him with military knowledge,
it is never too late for him to know that the western countries are not worthy of trust. There is nocountry in the world that comes to rescue the other at her own expense. If you are a real
sympathizer of China, you should come along with your program what she has to do, not passing
idly with your condemnation of Japan’s militarism. And if you have to condemn militarism, thatcondemnation should be equally divided between China and Japan.
It is true that when two quarrel, both are in the wrong. And when fighting is over, both theparties will be put perhaps in the mental situation of one who is crying over spilt milk. War issituation of one who is crying over spilt milk. War is atrocious,—particularly when it isperformed in a gigantic way as in China today. I hope that you will let me apply your accusationof Japanese atrocity to China, just as it is. Seeing no atrocity in China, you are speaking about
her as an innocent country. I expected something impartial from a poet.

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I have to thank you that you called my attention to the “Modern intellectual’s betrayal of
humanity,” whatever it be. One can talk any amount of idealism, apart from in reality, if hewishes, and take the pleasure of one belonging to no country. But sharing patriotism equally withthe others, we are trying to acquit the duty of talk [of] Heaven when immediate matter of theearth is well arranged.
Supposing that we accept your advice to become a vanguard of humanity according to yourprescription, and supposing that we leave China to her own will, and save ourselves from being a“betrayal of the intellectuals,” who will promise us with the safety of Japanese spirit that we
cultivated with pairs of thousand years, under the threat of communism across a fence? We don’t
want to barter our home land for an empty name of intellectuals. No, you mustn’t talk nonsense!
God forbid!
Admitting, that militarism is criminal, I think that, if your humanity makes life a mutilated mudfish, its crime would never be smaller than the other. I spent my whole life admiring beauty andtruth, with one hope to lift life to a dignity, more vigorous and noble; from this reason, I face inmadness, with three wild eyes, promised me with a forthcoming peace. And also at Elephanta
Island; near Bombay, I learned from the Three-headed Siva a lesson of destruction as inevitable
truth of life. Then I wrote:“Thy slaughter’s sword is never so unkind as it appears.
Creation is great, but destroying is still greater,
Because up from the ashes new Wonder take its flight.”
But if you command me to obey the meekness of humanity under all the circumstances, you areforgetting what your old Hindu philosophy taught you. I say this not only for my purpose,
because such reflection is important for any country.
I wonder who reported to you that we are killing innocent people and bombing on theirunprotected towns. Far from it, we are trying to do our best for helping them, because we have somuch to depend on them for co-operation in the future, and because Bushido command us tolimit punishment to a thing which only deserves it. It was an apt measure of our Japanesesoldiers that the famous cave temples of the 5th century in North China were saved from savage
rapacity of the defeated Chinese soldiers in fight. Except Madame Chiang with frustrated brain,
no one has seen the “ghosts of Chinese institutions and art, destroyed”. And if those institutions
and art, admitting that they are immemorial and irreplaceable, had been ever destroyed it is but
the crazy work of Chinese soldiers, because they want to leave a desert to Japan. You ought toknow better since you are acquainted with so many Japanese, whether or not we are qualified to
do anything barbarous.
I believe that you are versed in Bushido. In olden time soldiery was lifted in Japan to a status
equally high as that of art and morality. I have no doubt that our soldiers will not betray andtradition. If there is difference in Japanese militarism from that of the west, it is because theformer is not without moral element. Who only sees its destroying power is blind to its otherpower in preservation. Its human aspect is never known in the foreign countries, because they
shut their eyes to it. Japan is still an unknown existence in the west. Having so many things todisplease you, Japanese militarism has still something that will please you if you come to know
more about it. It is an excusable existence for the present condition of Japan. But I will leave thefull explanation of it to some later occasion.

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141

Believe me that I am never a eulogist of Japanese militarism, because I have many differenceswith it. But I can not help accepting as a Japanese what Japan is doing now under thecircumstances, because I see no other way to show our minds to China. Of course when China
stops fighting, and we receive her friendly hands, neither grudge nor ill feeling will remain in our
minds. Perhaps with some sense of repentance, we will then proceed together on the great workof reconstructing the new world in Asia.
I often draw in my mind a possible man who can talk from a high domain and act as a peacemaker. You might write General Chiang, I hope, and tell him about the foolishness of fighting in
the presence of a great work that is waiting. And I am sorry that against the high-pitched natureof your letter, mine is low-toned and faltering, because as a Japanese subject I belong to one of
the responsible parties of the conflict.
Finally one word more. What I fear most is the present atmosphere in India, that tends towillfully blacken Japan to alienate her from your country. I have so many friends there, whose
beautiful nature does not harmonise with it. My last experiences in your country taught me how
to love and respect her. Besides there are in Japan so many admirers of your countrymen withyour noble self as the first.
Yours sincerely,
Yone Noguchi.

Uttarayana
Santiniketan, Bengal
October, 1938
Dear Noguchi,
I thank you for taking the trouble to writer to me again. I have also read with interest your letter
addressed to the Editor, Amrita Bazar Patrika, and published in that journal.* It makes themeaning of your letter to me more clear.
* The following is the text of the letter referred to:
Dear Editor,
Dr. Tagore’s reply to my letter was a disappointment, to use his words, hurted me to the depthsof my being. Now I am conscious that language is an ineffective instrument to carry one’s real
meaning. When I wanted an impartial criticism he gave me something of prejudiced bravado
under the beautiful name of humanity. Just for a handful of dream, and for an intellectual’s
ribbon to stick in his coat, he has lost a high office to correct the mistaken idea of reality.
It seems to us that when Dr. Tagore called the doctrine of “Asia for Asia” a political blackmail,he relinquished his patriotism to boast quiescence of a spiritual vagabond, and willfully
supporting the Chinese side, is encouraging Soviet Russia, not to mention the other westerncountries. I meant my letter to him to be a plea for the understanding of Japan’s view-point
which, in spite of its many failures, is honest. I wonder whether it is a poet’s privilege to give
one whipping before listening to his words. When I dwelled on the saving of the people of Japan
at the present time of conflict, he denounced it as their government’s exploitation “for gun

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running and invasion of a neighbour’s hearth and home.” But when he does not use the samelanguage towards his friend China his partiality is something monstrous. And I wonder where ishis former heart which made us Japanese love him and honour him. But still we are patient,believing that he will come to senses and take a neutral dignity fitting to a prophet who does notdepart from fair judgment.
“Living in a country far from your country, I do not know where Dr. Tagore’s reply appeared inprint. Believing that you are known to his letter, I hope that you will see way to print this letter ofmine in your esteemed paper.
Yours sincerely,
Yone Noguchi.”
I am flattered that you still consider it worthwhile to take such pains to convert me to your pointof view, and I am really sorry that I am unable to come to my senses, as you have been pleased
to wish it. It seems to me that it is futile for either of us to try to convince the other since yourfaith in the infallible right of Japan to bully other Asiatic nations into line with your
Government’s policy is not shared by me, and my faith that patriotism which claims the right tobring to the altar of its country the sacrifice of other people’s rights and happiness will endanger
rather than strengthen the foundation of any great civilization, is sneered at by you as the“quiescence of a spiritual vagabond”.
If you can convince the Chinese that your armies are bombing their cities and rendering theirwomen and children homeless beggars—those of them that are not transformed into “mutilated
mud-fish”, to borrow one of your own phrases—if you can convince these victims that they are
only being subjected to a benevolent treatment which will in the end “save” their nation, it will
no longer be necessary for you to convince us of your country’s noble intentions. Your righteous
indignation against the “polluted people” who are burning their own cities and art treasures (andpresumably bombing their own citizens) to malign your soldiers, reminds me of Napoleon’s
noble wrath when he marched into a deserted Moscow and watched its palaces in flames. I
should have expected from you who are a poet at least that much of imagination to feel, to whatinhuman despair a people must be reduced to willingly burn their own handiwork of years’,
indeed centuries’, labour. And even as a good nationalist, do you seriously believe that themountain of bleeding corpses and the wilderness of bombed and burnt cities that is every day
widening between your two countries, is making it easier for your two peoples to stretch yourhands in a clasp of ever-lasting good will?
You complain that while the Chinese, being “dishonest”, are spreading their malicious
propaganda, you people, being “honest”, are reticent. Do you not know, my friend, that there is
no propaganda like good and noble deeds, and that if such deeds by yours, you need fear no“trickery” of your victims? Nor need you fear the bogey of communism if there is no
exploitation of the poor among your own people and the workers feel that they are justly treated.
I must thank you for explaining to me the meaning of our Indian philosophy and of pointing outthat the proper interpretation of Kali and Shiva must compel our approval of Japan’s “dance ofdeath” in China. I wish you had drawn a moral from a religion more familiar to you and appealed
to the Buddha for your justification. But I forget that your priests and artists have already madesure of that, for I saw in a recent issue of “The Osaka Mainichi and The Tokyo Nichi Nichi”

Cipris: Seduced by Nationalism

143(16th September, 1938) a picture of a new colossal image of Buddha erected to bless themassacre of your neighbours.
You must forgive me if my words sound bitter. Believe me, it is sorrow and shame, not anger,that prompt me to write to you. I suffer intensely not only because the reports of Chinese
suffering batter against my heart, but because I can no longer point out with pride the example ofa great Japan. It is true that there are no better standards prevalent anywhere else and that the socalled civilized peoples of the West are proving equally barbarous and even less “worthy oftrust.” If you refer me to them, I have nothing to say. What I should have liked is to be able torefer them to you. I shall say nothing of my own people, for it is vain to boast until one has
succeeded in sustaining one’s principles to the end.
I am quite conscious of the honour you do me in asking me to act as a peace-maker. Were it in
any way possible for me to bring you two peoples together and see you freed from this deathstruggle and pledged to the great common “work of reconstructing the new world in Asia”, I
would regard the sacrifice of my life in the cause a proud privilege. But I have no power savethat of moral persuasion, which you have so eloquently ridiculed. You who want me to be
impartial, how can you expect me to appeal to Chiang Kai-shek to give up resisting until theaggressors have first given up their aggression? Do you know that last week when I received apressing invitation from an old friend of mine in Japan to visit your country, I actually thought
for a moment, foolish idealist as I am, that your people may really need my services to ministerto the bleeding heart of Asia and to help extract from its riddled body the bullets of hatred? Iwrote to my friend:“Though the present state of my health is hardly favourable for any strain of a long foreign
journey, I should seriously consider your proposal if proper opportunity is given me to carry out
my own mission while there, which is to do my best to establish a civilised relationship ofnational amity between two great peoples of Asia who are entangled in a desolating mutual
destruction. But as I am doubtful whether the military authorities of Japan, which seem bent
upon devastating China in order to gain their object, will allow me the freedom to take my own
course, I shall never forgive myself if I am tempted for any reason whatever to pay a friendly
visit to Japan just at this unfortunate moment and thus cause a grave misunderstanding. You
know I have a genuine love for the Japanese people and it is sure to hurt me too painfully to go
and watch crowds of them being transported by their rulers to a neighbouring land to perpetrateacts of inhumanity which will brand their name with a lasting stain in the history of Man.”
After the letter was despatched came the news of the fall of Canton and Hankow. The cripple,
shorn of his power to strike, may collapse, but to ask him to forget the memory of his mutilation
as easily as you want me to, I must expect him to be an angel.
Wishing you people whom I love, not success, but remorse,
Yours sincerely,
Rabindranath Tagore
Zeljko Cipris teaches Asian Studies and Japanese at the University of the Pacific in California
and is a Japan Focus associate. He is co-author with Shoko Hamano of Making Sense ofJapanese Grammar, and translator of Ishikawa Tatsuzo’s Soldiers Alive and of A Flock of
Swirling Crows and Other Proletarian Writings, a collection of works by Kuroshima Denji.

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Zeljko is currently translating Japanese proletarian writer Kobayashi Takiji, and completing
work on a book called Greetings to the Continents: An Anthology of Asian Revolutionary
Literature. This Japan Focus article is dedicated to Shane Satori and Ljubomir Ryu.
Notes
1

Nobuko Yamasaki, ‘The Letters between Tagore and Noguchi, 1938,’ in Patrick Colm Hogan
and Lalita Pandit, eds., Rabindranath Tagore: Universality and Tradition (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh
Dickinson University Press, 2003), 42.
2

Masayo Duus, The Life of Isamu Noguchi: Journey Without Borders. Translated by Peter Duus
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 131. Although the book is about Yone’s son, it
contains some valuable information about the father as well.
3

Amartya Sen, Tagore and His India, 14-15.

4A full transcript of the letters (though marred by typographic errors) is available online under
the title Poet to Poet: Tagore-Noguchi correspondence on Japanese aggression, 1938.
5

Hiroaki Sato, Yone Noguchi: Accomplishments & Roles, 6.

Lary: China and Japan at War

145“China and Japan at War: Suffering and Survival, 1937-1945”
Diana Lary
November 29, 2010
http://www.japanfocus.org/-Diana-Lary/3449
The War of Resistance Against Japan, also known as the Second Sino-Japanese Warof 1937-1945, devastated much of the Chinese countryside and its major cities. The war
brought more Chinese into contact with Japan than ever before. Earlier contacts weresometimes peaceful interactions, ranging from intellectuals reading Japanese books toworkers laboring in Japanese textile mills. After 1937 the contact primarily meant that
ordinary Chinese were likely to be bombed, turned into refugees, or in some other way
suffered direct violence under Japanese occupation, in some cases at the hands of fellow
Chinese. In “China and Japan at War: Suffering and Survival, 1937-1945,” Diana Lary
outlines the impact of the war on Chinese society. These years still have a profoundinfluence on contemporary Chinese attitudes towards Japan because the war has also had aprofound impact on Chinese national identity. The Chinese Communist Party came to
power in part because of the war, and the Party claims their resistance to Japan as a key
source of legitimacy.

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China and Japan at War: Suffering and Survival, 1937-1945
Diana Lary
The Resistance War (Banian kangRi zhanzheng) of 1937-45 was one of the greatest upheavals in
Chinese history. It was a time of courage and sacrifice and a time of suffering and loss. Virtually
the entire country was engulfed by war. All of China’s major cities were occupied, as were theeastern and northeastern regions and much of the southeast. The national government was forced
to move inland. Almost every family and community was affected by war. Tens of millions ofpeople took flight. Between 20 million and 30 million soldiers and civilians died during the war.
Wars are the fracture lines of social history. We use the phrases ‘pre-war’, ‘ante bellum’, and‘post-war’ in looking at European or American history as a recognition of the fundamental
changes that wars produce in societies. Wars are often the death knell of an old social order, thegrim handmaidens for the birth of new ones. This process does not happen in a planned orsystematic way on a political or ideological blue print. The hallmark of war is chaos. War attacks
the social fabric and brings loss of cohesion and fragmentation to systems and institutions that
seemed solid and resistant to change in times of peace.
Here I propose to consider the effects of the war on Chinese society—not at why the war
happened or at how it was fought or who was to blame for it. This means viewing the war
through the eyes of the people who were on the receiving end of aggression, the Chinese in all
their variety and their different circumstances, the people whose society was turned upside down.
The pretext for war, the casus belli, may not be reflected in what follows. Japan attacked China
in 1937 in the name of containing communism, preventing its export from the USSR in to
China. China never gave much credence to this justification for the invasion, not least because
Japanese forces made only one aggressive move against the USSR, at Nomonhan in Mongolia, in1938. The result was disastrous for Japan. Rather than attack the communist Soviet Union, Japan
attacked the anti-Communist Guomindang (GMD) which ruled China. By the end of the war thepretext of attacking communism was not only threadbare but contradictory; by 1945 the Chinese
Communist Party (CCP), far stronger than it had ever been, was poised for success in thesubsequent Civil War. The political beneficiary of the war was the CCP; it came to power in theaftermath of the war, hardened by the war, andready to take on the GMD.
The Resistance War left a devastated society.
The regional variations were great, but this did
not mean that any regions escaped the impact of
the war. This damage was the pre-condition the
CCP needed to launch the new society, one that
Mao would later describer as `poor and blank(yiqiong erbai)’, a clean slate on which to launch
their visions of a new world. And the war also
gave the CCP the tool it needed to get the people
behind it—mass mobilisation. The first acts ofpolitical mobilisation with the form of resistanceto Japan can be traced to the May 4th Movement(1919), followed by stronger forms after theJapanese forces on the march at NomonhanLary: China and Japan at War

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1931 seizure of Manchuria. At the start of the war the GMD and the CCP both took up
mobilisation in the name of national resistance; by the end of the war the CCP, operating mainlyin occupied areas, where the need for mobilisation for resistance was greatest, had made its
version of nationalism and socialism into a huge movement.
The Japanese threat to China had been growing for so long that when it actually materialized, theinvasion itself was not a shock. What was a shock was the scale of the attack, the fierceness ofthe fighting, and the devastation of the bombing. The onslaught produced a great wave of
patriotism. The war was at the start a patriotic war, a war of resistance in which much of the
population was involved.
The patriotic slogans came from the top, but they reflected mass feelings. The early months offighting had a tremendously stimulating effect. For the first time, patriotism transcended
regionalism, localism, and familism. The war was seen as a race war in which Chinese werebeing attacked as a people by aggressors who seemed to regard the Chinese as a lower order. A
new national spirit (guoqing) blossomed. All the efforts of intellectuals and students to raise thespirit of nationalism, efforts that had been going on since the May 4th Movement in 1919, now
came to fruition—and at a far higher pitch than anyone had imagined possible.
The Japanese invasion made most Chinese into nationalists; the old responsibilities to the familycame second. Deng Yu, who died in August in the failed defence of Beiping, left a message tohis mother before he went off to fight: ‘I cannot fulfill filial piety and loyalty to the country at
the same time. Please pardon me if death befalls me.’The national spirit and the unity forged at the level of the state bloomed at the same time that the
bedrock of society, the family, was being broken down by the chaos of war. The upheaval andflight, the abandonment of home and possessions, and the sudden impoverishment anddestitution created by the war were seen as sacrifices for the nation.
The fighting and bombing in the second half of 1937 set off massive civilian evacuations andflights in to exile. The waves of refugees paralleled the spring of the fighting. More than 100,000
people fled into the foreign concessions in Shanghai in October and November as the Japanese
attack on the Chinese parts of the city intensified. All through the lower Yangzi, civilian
populations fled in panic as the fighting camecloser.
Bombing was the trigger for much of the panic
flight. The day after bombs fell on Fenyang(Shanxi), the patrician Ji family took to theroads, leaving a life of comfort and high status,
heading for Wuhan. Eight-year-old Ji Chaozhu
made the long journey mostly on foot:We had to share sleeping kangs withsmelly strangers, and eat our meals on thedirt floors of their tiny cottages, shooing
away the dogs and chickens that pestered
everyone for scraps. No one in our family
had ever known anything less thanChinese nationalist troops in action against Japan

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privilege and prosperity. I could see in my parents’ exhausted faces the toll this wastaking, but they remained stoic through the inconveniences and discomfort.
Many people fled out of fear of what would happen to members of their families. Young girls
were especially vulnerable to the incoming forces. Their parents would try to get them out ofplaces about to fall to the Japanese, hearing rumours of what happened in many of the major
cities that were occupied in late 1937. In Suzhou, more than 2,000 young girls were taken awayas ‘comfort women’—or sex slaves—after Japanese troops took the city in November. The
rumours about the danger posed to women were blood-curdling, enough to get families to flee inpanic.
Some of the people who fled from the areas occupied by Japanese troops left not because they
were panic-stricken but because they refused to live under the enemy. Some of these people werestudents and other young people leaving to fight for China. Older intellectuals fled because theyknew they would be in trouble under the Japanese. The remnant Chinese armies withdrawn fromthe North also intended to resist, as did the evacuees from Shanghai—merchants, factory owners,
workers, journalists and actors—and moved inland to defy the invaders.
The total number of refugees produced by the war is difficult to calculate. Figures given after the
war vary from 20 million to nearly 100 million, or almost a quarter of the population. It was oneof the greatest upheavals in Chinese history. It tore the fabric of society to ribbons.
The war brought to Chinese society a universality of suffering. At its end so many people had
been killed or deeply injured—soldiers, their families, the victims of bombing and of scorchedearth actions, the survivors of the economic chaos, the forced labourers, the comfort women, theorphans—that much of the whole society was suffused with loss. There were bitter
recriminations against the few who had not suffered, or were in better material circumstances—because their `happy’ situation was a by-product of their accommodation with the occupiers or of
profiteering.
At the end of the war Chinese society was riddled by mistrust. The natural trust between
individuals and groups that had been the glue of traditional society was gone, broken by the war,
eroded, undermined, and betrayed in a myriad of ways. The old social elites had either
disappeared from the occupied areas or had lived with the Japanese in various degrees ofaccommodation. In the unoccupied areas, social trust had been undermined by separation,
deprivation and loss of morale. The loss of trust was epitomised by the growth of official spying,whether the Japanese secret police, or the GMD’s and CCP’s spy systems. The optimistic,
positive atmosphere of the early 1930s seemed to be lost forever. The atmosphere of mistrust
was intensified under the early CCP, in a welter of political movements that demanded victims
and forced people to distrust each other—while making it easier for people to attack those withwhom they no longer felt personal connections. The excesses of the Mao Era had their
beginnings in the Resistance War.
The war destroyed much of the cohesion of Chinese society. This cohesion was already under
threat in the early years of the Republic, as the old order weakened under the assault of
militarism, political change and modernity. The war accelerated the process dramatically. The
family declined in size. Functions that families performed for their members fell in to disuse—
communal housing, the provision of financial support, and aid in times of need. Periodic tasks ofritual significance could not be performed during the war: the choice of spouses for children by

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their parents, the naming of children, the proper burial of the dead. Family celebrations of the
New Year, or the sweeping of the graves were often impossible in wartime; the expense, theabsence of key members and the impropriety of enjoyment in war made it difficult to holdcelebrations that solidified families and communities.
Counterpoised against the catalogue of social losses is a loftier, transcendent conception of the
impact of war, which sees society uplifted by the courage and sacrifice of individuals. Warfare
makes heroes. `Baptism by fire’, `steeled in battle’, are some of the many sayings, in English andChinese, that suggest that war and the loss and suffering it brings is positive, that people comeinto their own when they are faced with challenges and danger and then go on to transcend them.
This is the basis of ideas of heroism, on which in turn are based rewards for bravery and heroism,
medals, commemorations, war memorials.
Few Chinese soldiers were recognized as heroes
at the end of the war. There was a general
reluctance to name or celebrate heroes, or tocommemorate the dead. Perhaps the scale was
too vast. A more likely reason is that both the
GMD and the CCP, by now the only two players
in Chinese politics, were preoccupied with theirown internecine struggle. The war ended with
the imminent threat of civil war, not withrecognition of the dead or with the return ofheroes to their grateful homes.
For ordinary people there was not much tocelebrate. China was not gripped by the wild joy
Communist 8th Route Army grows grain. Gu Yuan
that flooded over many of the nations that were
woodblockon the winning side in the Second World War.
At the end of the war in China one of the most common feelings was simply relief for the people
that had survived when so many had not. The reasons for survival were often mundane. Location
was a critical one. People were more likely to survive if they lived in a northern city, or in
Manchuria or Taiwan, places where the Japanese occupation was less harsh than elsewhere,
wartime survival was not difficult—the problems came afterwards, when the people who had
stayed had to explain themselves to those who had fled. Age was another key reason. Youngcivilians were more resilient, more likely to be able to flee, to escape from the enemy. Youth wasa double-edged sword. Young men were also more likely to be drafted in to the army, or taken
for slave labour. And wealth, at least at the start of the war, was a key factor in survival. The
wealthy could afford to flee; they were more likely to have connections away from home, evenin the foreign concessions. Perhaps the key reason for survival was resilience, the ability toovercome hardships. The resilience that many people showed came in part from dredging deep into the Chinese tradition of endurance. This was the strength of the Chinese people. But what was
clear, even amongst those who demonstrated great resilience, was that very few people had
escaped the impact of war.
The transcendence of trauma has been an almost commonplace feature of modern Chinese
history. The endurance and toughness with which millions of people have endured terrible
hardships and still kept going, with dogged determination, is something that fills foreignJapan, China, and Pan-Asianism

150

observers with admiration. Many millions of Chinese survived the war, as proud, tough people.
These were the ones who went on to be on the winning side in the civil war, and the less-certain
ones who stayed on in China in 1949, not quite knowing what the future would bring, but
assuming that it must be better than what they had just been through. The people who left theMainland in 1949 were just as determined to survive, but they were terribly battered by theirexperiences in the civil war. And they were at first devastated by how much they had lost. But
the worlds they created in Taiwan and Hong Kong turned out, over the duration, to be two quite
different but equally successful combinations of the Chinese tradition and modernity.
The most momentous outcome of the war was the communist victory, the victory of the socialist
revolution. Mao Zedong was clear about this. In 1972, on the first visit of a Japanese leader toChina since the war, Mao responded to Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei’s stilted efforts at a veiled
apology by virtually thanking him for Japan’s invasion of China. ‘If Japan hadn’t invaded China,
the Chinese Communist Party would not have been victorious; moreover, we would never be
meeting today. This is the dialectic of history.
The desperation of the war set the stage for a
confident, tough, remorseless revolutionary
movement to take over the nation that had
rejected it so decisively a little over a decade
before, whose then government had harried it
almost to distinction. The communists had
steeled themselves after their defeat in Jiangxi
and the calvary of the Long March never to bebeaten again, never to be humiliated again. The
war gave them the opportunity to prepare
themselves to take over the whole nation.
The social damage and dislocation of the war
Mao and Tanaka, 1972
was fodder for the CCP. The old elites had lost
so much of their wealth and prestige during the
war that they were virtually ‘on the scrap heap of history’. Does this suggest that the war was aclass war as well as a war of resistance, a war in which the proletariat triumphed over the old
elites? Joshua Howard, in his ground-breaking Workers at War: labor in China’s Arsenals,
1937-1953, suggests that it was. A more conventional view, current now among Chinese
historians, is that during the war, patriotism subsumed class warfare. Another class-based
interpretation is that the leaders of the old society were associated with abject failure during the
war because they were overstretched to the point of collapse by the war, and they failed thepeople they were supposed to lead, at least to the extent that they could not protect them from theinvading Japanese.
The war did give the CCP structural assistance in the class struggle. Beyond the losses of the war
were all the things that did not happen because of the war—the loss of careers, the loss of once
secure futures, the investments that were not made. These ‘phantom’ losses left a great numberof disappointed people, whose dreams and ambitions had been destroyed by the war.
Michael Ondaatje compared the war in Europe to a chasm, a deep rift that demarcated twoworlds. In China, the chasm of the war was just as deep. The old world was gone for good, thenew one in uncertain gestation. The sufferings of the war ingrained a tough, hard survivor

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mentality which put individual or small family survival ahead of the larger family andcommunity.
The legacy of war is still working itself out in the memory and experiences of the Chinese
people.
Diana Lary is Professor Emerita in the Department of History at the University of British
Columbia. This article is drawn from her most recent book The Chinese People at War. Human
Suffering and Social Transformation, 1937-1945. A specialist on military history, her books
include The Scars of War: the impact of war on Chinese Society (with Stephen MacKinnon),
China’s Republic, and China at War: Regions of China, 1937-1945 (with Stephen McKinnon andEzra Vogel).

Japan, China, and Pan-Asianism

152“Collaboration in the History of Wartime East Asia”
Timothy Brook
July 5, 2008
http://japanfocus.org/-Timothy-Brook/2798“Collaboration and the Politics of the Twentieth Century”
Prasenjit Duara
July 4, 2008
http://www.japanfocus.org/-prasenjit-duara/2799“New Perspectives on Chinese Collaboration”
Margherita Zanasi
July 24, 2008
http://japanfocus.org/-Margherita-Zanasi/2828
Chinese historiography on the 1937-1945 war tends to divide Chinese into virtuous
resistors and evil traitors, and this dichotomy has bled back into earlier periods as well.
Timothy Brook edited a special issue of Japan Focus looking at collaboration throughout theJapanese Empire. Collaboration is a tricky term that can encompass everything from
actively working with the occupier to passive acceptance of overwhelming force, although
Brook defines collaborators as people who “exercise power” in the context of an occupying
force. Brook’s own contribution, “Collaboration in the History of Wartime East Asia,” andthose of Prasenjit Duara, “Collaboration and the Politics of the Twentieth Century,” andMargherita Zanasi, “New Perspectives on Chinese Collaboration,” are reprinted here.
Zanasi looks at the changing meaning of collaboration and how the experience of war
helped create the “resistentialist” narrative that still dominates Chinese understandings ofthe entire Japan-China relationship. Like the other authors, she stresses the point thatdefinitions of wartime collaboration owe as much to postwar politics as to wartime
realities. Duara looks at the experience of Manchukuo and also at the Taiwanese-born Ang
Lee’s 2007 film Lust/Caution and its sexualized representation of the conflict between
collaboration, resistance and agency. Brook looks at Japanese who opposed the war andgoes beyond a simple traitor/patriot dichotomy to understand how a variety of Chinese
dealt with Japanese occupation. Even in the worst period of Japanese oppression, Chinese
relations with Japanese authorities were more complex than postwar readings would
suggest. One of the main reasons for this complexity is that many Chinese accepted or atleast acquiesced in the Japanese vision of a new Asia.

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Collaboration in the History of Wartime East Asia
Timothy Brook
On 30 October 1940, six days after meeting with Adolf Hitler in the railway station at Montoire,
Philippe Pétain announced on French radio that “a collaboration has been envisioned between
our two countries.” Since then, “collaboration” has been the word by which we denigrate
political cooperation with an occupying force. Pétain’s choice of language to characterize thearrangement he made with Hitler—he claimed he would shield France from the greater threat ofmilitary occupation—was not of his own devising. The French army had signed an armisticewith Germany four months earlier that committed French officials “to conform to the decisionsof the German authorities and collaborate faithfully with them.”1 This first iteration was vague
and innocent; Pétain’s was not, and less and less could be. As war and occupation subordinatedFrance’s economy and polity to German control, collaboration unravelled into a tangle ofcompromises that few could anticipate at the outset of the war.
The purges of the winter of 1944-45, which consolidated the new postwar regimes acrossEurope, sealed the fate of the word. It also permitted it to expand, to refer to what Henrik
Dethlefsen, writing of the term’s charged history in Denmark (where the government decided toaccept German tutelage), has called “the necessary adaptation of the whole society” to existing
political conditions. Dethlefsen has argued that this is “a type of social behaviour which is
general and which occurs in all periods of history,” and that it should not be inflated to the pointof ignoring the peculiar dynamics of collaboration and reducing all who lived under occupation
to the degraded status of “collaborators.” He suggests we restrict it to what he terms its politicaldefinition: “the continuing exercise of power under the pressure produced by the presence of an
occupying power.”2 This is to say, those who collaborate must exercise power to be said to havedone so.
The study of collaboration has become a rich field of research and spculation in the ongoinghistory of the Second World War in Europe, but collaboration was hardly unique to Europe.
Three years before Pétain’s meeting with Hitler, collaborative arrangements were being worked
out at the far end of the Eurasian continent, in the hinterland around Shanghai at the mouth of the
Yangtze River, between Chinese and Japanese. Japan through the 1920s and 1930s had beensteadily encroaching on the Chinese mainland, occupying the northeast (Manchuria) in 1931 andthen moving down into the Beijing region in July 1937, in both instances to internationalcondemnation. Unable to bring the Chinese government to heel, Japan opened a second and far
more violent front around Shanghai in August 1937. The Yangtze Delta—25,000 square miles ofdensely populated alluvial land extending from Shanghai upriver to the national capital in
Nanjing—became the battleground for what Japan would call the New Order in East Asia. Afterthe initial military onslaught that fall and winter, the shock of invasion was transmuted into thedaily reality of military occupation, and conquest shifted to collaboration. Collaboration would
not begin at the top as it had in France, where a hastily reorganized regime came forward to deal
with Hitler. It began, rather, at the bottom, in the county towns dotting the landscape acrosswhich the Japanese army rolled westward from Shanghai that winter toward the capital, Nanjing.
There, at the local level of a new regime that would gradually be brought into being, Chinese
elites came forward to enter into agreements with agents of the occupying Japanese army to“exercise power under the pressure produced by the presence of an occupying power.”Japan, China, and Pan-Asianism154

It was a terrifying and devastating presence. Japanese soldiers treated Chinese soldiers andcivilians with astonishing violence during their invasion of the winter of 1937. The disregard forthe conventions of war has left an extraordinary archive of memories. These memories converge
with particular force on a single memory, the capture of the national capital on 13 December.
This atrocity quickly became known in the English-speaking world as the Rape of Nanjing[Nanking]. That memory is still alive today and, together with the guerrilla resistance, is at thecenter of the popular conception of what Chinese call their Anti-Japanese War. But it is not the
only story that can be told about those eight long years of occupation and armed resistance,
which ended with Japan’s surrender to the United States in 1945. There were other ways of
responding to the invasion, other ways of surviving the occupation. One of these, almost entirely
unstudied, was to collaborate.
Collaboration and the History of War as Resistance
The history of local collaboration between Chinese and Japanese is not a story most Chinesewish to hear, or would even recognize as their own. Collective memory recalls this time instead
as a period of Japanese atrocity and Chinese suffering. This is a compelling version of the story,
and one which everything written about the period reinforces: the same heroes and villains, thesame desperate plight of Chinese civilians, the same gross misconduct on the part of Japanesesoldiers, repeating itself, as it did in real life, over and over. To tell the story in any other way
would seem merely to confirm Japan’s wartime propaganda about the common cause that theyellow races should make against the colonialist white race, and so to collude in the project thatthat propaganda did not dare name, Japan’s self-assigned right to colonize China. And yet many
saw no alternative to going along with what the Japanese wanted, either because they regarded
compliance as a more realistic survival strategy or, in a few cases, because they actually
welcomed the conquerors as bringers of new solutions to China’s problems. Contemporary
Chinese consciousness has no way of making sense of such people, especially of that minority
who declared themselves willing to combine a Japanese allegiance with their Chinese identity.
Chinese historians of the war have had to acknowledge that at least a few collaborated, but thisacknowledgment requires a remedy of logic. One logic of explanation has been that anyone’s
decision to collaborate must rest on purely personal connections tying certain Chinese to Japan.
These connections are assumed sufficient to explain their collaboration. Such connections areoften not hard to find. The head of the Nanjing municipal government under the Japanese had adegree in law from Hosei University in Tokyo, for example, and the head of the firstcollaborationist regime in Shanghai had studied political economy at Waseda University.
Studying in Japan meant that they had at least a common language with the occupier, which
made them likely to be the first people whom Japanese agents approached in their search for
local contacts. Explaining collaboration on the basis of such ties closes off any need to delve
more deeply into the problem of what actually motivated these people. But the problem is notthereby solved, for the simple reason that the exceptions to this rule outnumber the examples. On
the one hand. many Chinese who had personal ties with Japan chose to resist. Ma Chaojun,
Nanjing’s mayor in 1937, had studied aviation in Japan, yet he chose to flee west with theretreating Nationalist government rather than collaborate. On the other, most of the lesser elites
who worked with the Japanese at the local level had never visited Japan. Unlike the powerful
who congregated in Shanghai and Nanjing, lesser county elites led lives that were purely local,
pursuing what opportunities were at hand and dealing with problems that did not extend far
beyond their horizons. Searching for prior connections to Japan diverts attention from the wide

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spectrum of real conditions and motivations that induced some Chinese to work with theJapanese.

Wang Jingwei hosting Nazi visitors as head of State of thecollaborationist regime with its capital at Nanjing from 1940

Every culture burdens collaboration as moral failure. What could otherwise be described more
simply as the political arrangement of dependency under the condition of military occupation isnever permitted to remain simple or purely descriptive. It invariably shifts to the language ofmorality, which, in Teemu Ruskola’s nice phrasing, gives voice to “normative systems that posita pre-given moral subject and then elaborate guidelines for proper actions by that subject.”3 The
moral subject the word “collaboration” brings into being is a national subject first and foremost.
The grounding assumption of the word is that this moral subject must act to maintain and protectthat nation and no other, regardless of whether another position—which might better be termed“ethical” than “moral” (in the sense of understanding not the norms that guide the moral subject,
but the norms that construct him)—can post a higher claim. For those in the grip of national
identity, especially when the national cause strides the path of justice, it is almost impossible toconceive of collaboration as a legitimate alternative to patriotism.
This inconceivability is not unique to Chinese who look back at the Second World War. Rebecca
West passionately expressed the same connection in The Meaning of Treason, a book she wrote
cumulatively between the British treason trials of the late 1940s and the spy trials of the early
1960s. The notion that some Britons might choose to transfer their loyalty to Germany or theSoviet Union and advance those nations’ interests over Britain’s was, she declares flat out, “anugly business, and it grew uglier in the handling.” In her view, citizenship is a contract of honorthat protects the individual, and the duty to respect that obligation is beyond ambiguity. Her
indictment against men who were put on trial for treason after the war, such as Leonard Blackand John Amery, both of whom ended up in Germany working for the Nazis, appears reasonable
when the people involved have distateful personalities or cling to odious political ideals. Black
had “a long history behind him of inextricably confused idealistic effort and paid politicaladventure”; Amery “had no intelligence, only a vacancy around which there rolled a snowball of
Fascist chatter.”4 Their weakness, venality, and anti-Semitism make it easy for her to declare
patriotism the only morally defensible stance to take in the face of Hitlerian and Soviet politics.
To be fair, West takes pains to understand her subjects’ moral formation in relation to thecircumstances of their lives; indeed, she was able to build up far more informed portraits of her
traitors than I have been able to assemble for Chinese collaborators. She finds much to help
explain why the men who were put on trial worked for the German cause during the war. YetJapan, China, and Pan-Asianism

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none of it is sufficient, in her eyes, to justify the choice they made, given that most people in thesame circumstances made a very different choice—and for her the natural one.
For the historian rather than the polemicist, collaboration is a difficult word to use. Its inarguable
moral force sensationalizes the acts of those who fall under its label and lends the topic anenergy that only wartime occupation can excite. The capacity of the word to judge, even before
we know upon what basis those judgments are being made, interferes with them as well. As soon
as the word is uttered, it superimposes a moral map over the political landscape it ventures to
describe and thus prevents the one from being surveyed except in terms of the other. Historians
may legitimately ask how the moral subject that collaboration presupposes is fashioned, but not
retrospectively judge that subject’s acts. We cannot rest content to accept the superimposedlandscape as historical reality, but nor can we pretend it does not exist. Our task is rather to lookthrough the moral landscape to the political one underneath and figure out what was going on.
The idea of separating the moral and the political—which work at different discursive registers
while deploying much the same language—is alien to historians trained to put history to national
discursive use. The looking-through that historians of Vichy France began to do in the 1980s, forinstance, produced findings that went against many of the assumptions on which the French had
relied since the war to insulate themselves against moral reproof. The new perspective excited apopular aversion to the Vichy regime when it exposed the degree to which French authorities had
worked for German interests, most notably in assisting the Nazis’ program to exterminate Jews
in France. It also undermined the comfortable legacy of resistance to which French people felt
entitled to lay claim by revealing that most did not work to resist the German occupation, andthat many in fact abetted it. At one level, these findings confirmed the popular understanding that
resistance had been the morally correct choice. In that sense, the attack on résistancialisme—theconviction that all French resisted—did not alter the value of loyalty as a transcendent virtue toan ideal of France that sustained the postwar generation. And yet the attack did put those who
lived through the war on notice, unfairly or not, that they had failed to live up to the moral
standards they had all along claimed as their heritage from the war. This unpleasant andunwelcome revelation could only come out once the generation that had benefited from the mythof resistance passed away. France is still preoccupied with sorting out the legacies of that war.5
Compared to the French, the Chinese are at a much earlier stage in coming to terms with theiroccupation. On the one hand, they continue to feel aggrieved that Japan has never clarified its
responsibility for the Pacific War nor provided compensation for acts of aggression and atrocities
committed in China against Chinese. On the other, many Chinese are unprepared to look behind
their collective memory of suffering and resistance to ask what most in the occupied zone didduring the war. The myth of resistance has been a powerful moral weapon in the arsenals ofviolence that political elites on both sides of the Taiwan Strait have used to sustain their postwar
dictatorships. Each party claims it alone defeated the Japanese, and each stakes its moral
legitimacy—and its right to rule—on that claim. The consequences for thinking about the war do
not end there, however. The misgovernment of China during the postwar decades has only
deepened the sense of national humiliation that many Chinese have carried with them since theoccupation, and which they have sought to spend down by attacking any object other than the
Chinese state. To dislodge the popular image of the war and shift some of the weight of blamefrom external invaders—and so to begin to take responsibility for what Chinese did to Chinese
during the twentieth century—threatens to expose the interests of political elites, whether
revolutionary or otherwise, who promote these beliefs.

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For these reasons, the moral landscape of the Japanese occupation has remained unassailable in
the Chinese historiography of the war. One way of telling the story in a way that takes account ofsuppressed memories is by going below the superstructure of ideology and looking instead at
what went on at the most local level of the occupation state. There, collaboration may at times
have involved the considerations of national honor and personal integrity that haunted themetropolitan politicians of the new regime; but most of the time, collaboration involved dealing
with more mundane problems such as supplying food, organizing transportation, and arranging
security—the sorts of tasks that local elites and local officials have to address under any politicalconditions to ensure social reproduction and to maintain themselves in power. Adopting aperspective from below turns collaboration into a problem to be investigated, not a moral failure
to be tagged and condemned. This is not to say that moral considerations have no place in the
study of collaboration, but it is to advise that we look more closely at the conditions within
which individuals made choices.
Suspending established judgments on collaboration by going to the local level is not altogether
an innocent strategy. It changes the way the story gets told. General Matsui Iwane’s lightning
campaign from Shanghai to Nanjing in November-December 1937 is still a story of brutal
invasion, but it can segue into a story of a post-conquest restabilization in which some Japaneseand some Chinese negotiated a working relationship under a new structure of authority.

Gen Matsui Iwane leads victory parade in Nanjing on December 17, 1937.

It yields a history in which the aggressor sometimes appears as a sympathetic civilian working torepair the damage the army has done by recruiting locals to help with that work. It discovers thevictim resurfacing as a pragmatist seeking accommodations that will allow him to re-establish
his livelihood, shield his compatriots, and even build what the propagandists would soon becalling “New China.” At the beginning, when local conditions were fluid and no one knew how
far the Japanese would go in their offensive, even whether they would stay or leave, a few
gambled on the shift and threw their lot in with the invader. As the situation across the Yangtze
Delta stabilized in Japan’s favor in the spring of 1938, the incentives to cooperate with the newJapan, China, and Pan-Asianism

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rulers increased. And so, for all manner of reasons, many worked out accommodations with theoccupation state.
The Language of Collaboration
The complexity of this sort of accommodation can be illustrated by a letter I came across in the
Shanghai Municipal Archives. The letter was sent by a group of Shanghai residents to thecollaborationist municipal government in January 1939 on a matter affecting the administrationof their local area. The letter writers identified themselves as members of an entity calling itself
the Huangpu West Residents’ Association (Huangpu River borders the east side of old
Shanghai). They knew well for whom the letter had to be written—the Japanese—even if it wasaddressed to a Shanghai official, and so strove for appropriate rhetoric. “Looking at trends acrossthe globe, we need to grasp the spirit of New China and engage in the work of collaboration,”they declared. “Not only is Japan’s culture quite advanced and its financial power great, but its
people are sufficiently firm and sincere that they can serve as good neighbors and guides in the
project of joining our vast territory with their fine culture.” The letter writers do not blush or holdback as they launch themselves deeper into this act of political performance: “The committed
and benevolent Japanese who are wholeheartedly participating in this project have a deep love ofChina. It is because of their participation that our two great East Asian peoples can walk alimitless path toward co-prosperity and mutual support.”6
Our first reaction to such sycophantic rhetoric will be to condemn the authors as collaborators
who have thoroughly compromised themselves with the occupiers. They do not even bother toeuphemize Japan, as official texts during the occupation often did, as the “friend-country”(youbang). Jumping to the quick conclusion that they were sunk in hopeless collaboration isexactly the sort of judgment I suggest we suspend. We need not assume culpability or gullibility
on anyone’s part in this document, either the writers of the letter or the municipal official towhom they were writing. This was a transaction between two parties, not a testimonial from one
to the other. Someone in the chain of communication may have believed what was written, but
we have no evidence of that. Nor need we think that they believed what they wrote in order towrite it. Look at this rhetoric instead as an exchange. Managing needs and interests within the
new order might well mean parroting the hyperboles of Japanese propaganda in order to get what
one needed. Guaranteeing that one’s language was politically appropriate to the occasion for
asking and giving favors was simply what one did to get things done in the new environment.
Whether the residents of Huangpu West actually thought such things is beside the point, which isthat cooperation with the Japanese, or with the Chinese proxy administration, was the modus
vivendi for those who stayed behind in occupied China. Occupation creates collaboration, but theneed to collaborate in turn creates the appearance of collaborating as well as its reality. Those
who chose the appearance over the reality may be hard to detect when we can only scan thesurfaces of sources that are partial, in both senses of the word. So too, those who appear to havechosen the reality of collaboration may have been engaging in a calculus of options and risks
different from the simplicities that hindsight, and the nationalist narrative that thrives on it, hands
to us. All of which suggests to me that there are more ambiguous stories to tell about theoccupation than those we have accepted or assumed.
Collaboration is a word for which there is no precise equivalent in Chinese. Whether taken inthis narrower political sense, or permitted to expand out into the broader sense of simply goingalong with the occupier, which has come to dominate the popular pejorative use of the word,

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Chinese lacks a word that has been coded in the way “collaboration” has in European languages.
In translating the phrase in the Huangpu West residents’ letter so that they declare themselves
ready to “engage in the work of collaboration,” I narrowed the term they used into something
less than what it says in Chinese. Their term is hezuo, a neutral expression meaning “to work
together.” It implies a relationship of equality, or at least of mutuality, between two parties acting
in pursuit of a common goal. Hezuo in Chinese carries none of the negative tone we associatewith the word “collaboration” when we use it in the context of war. Inasmuch as “working
together” is what “collaboration” literally means in English, hezuo would seem to be an
appropriate translation; “cooperation” also conveys the sense of this word. This is what the letter
writers wanted to say, for they were set on projecting just the kind of cooperative and mutually
supportive relationship that Japan as occupier hoped to have with compliant Chinese. They were
not challenging the terms that Japan as a military invader imposed on the possibility ofcooperation. Hezuo is the language of compliance. It is just like the language that Pétain used—
except that in using it, he imbued the term with a distinctly negative connotation. For reasonsthat remain to be explored, the meaning of the word hezuo did not ramify, either during the war
or after it, into “collaboration”. The very idea that Chinese might collaborate with Japanese was,and has continued to be, regarded as unthinkable.
A fuller phrase, qin Ri hezuo, appears in the May 1939 declaration of principles of the Greater
Shanghai Youth Corps, a paramilitary body organized by Japanese military officers: “feelingclose to Japan and cooperating with it.”7 The collaborators and the Japanese also used tixie or“mutual support.” This term appears as the fourth principle of the Great People’s Association, an
official pro-Japanese mobilizational organization: the full phrase is Zhong-Ri tixie, or “mutual
support between China and Japan.” The same document also uses xieli, or “assistance,” when it
announces that the association’s mission is “the work of assistance and mutual support” (xieli
tixie zhi gongzuo). When Kato Kozan, a pacification agent in Zhenjiang downstream from
Nanjing, looked back on his team’s work in a Nanjing newspaper article in mid-1939, he waspleased to report that he heard the words qinshan (“feeling close”), tixie (“mutual support”), andhezuo (“working together”) on everyone’s lips.8 This was the language of the new order, and it
was not intended to signal anything to be ashamed of. Had Kato been able to eavesdrop on theconversations in Zhenjiang from which he was carefully excluded, he would have heard a
different term, the one by which most Chinese still refer to collaborators: the bluntly
unambiguous hanjian, “traitor to the Han Chinese,” an all-purpose term for evil, deception, andtreason. The term leaves no middle range between innocuity and damnation, no space in whichambiguity might arise, no reason to look back and ask what might actually have been going on.
Collaboration as Analytical ShiftWith the flood of interest since the 1980s in wartime collaboration in Europe have come disputes
as to where the boundaries of the word “collaboration” lie. At its broadest extreme, the word isallowed to cover all manner of cooperation, active or passive, shown to the occupier; anything, infact, that enables an occupation to continue. At the far opposite extreme lies the narrowest
definition that restricts the use of the word to supportive engagement in the tasks and ideology ofthe occupier, for which the more specialized “collaborationism” has been proposed.9 The first
definition has the disadvantage of leaving no alternative position for ordinary people who had nochoice in the matter: everyone under the condition of occupation becomes a collaborator. The
invention of “collaborationism” to tag willing collaboration protects most people under an
occupation state from the charge of selling out their country, but it does not make the more usualJapan, China, and Pan-Asianism

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type of collaboration—selling not to the highest bidder but to the only authority doing thebidding—disappear as a problem. Indeed, differently construed, this isolation of activists as aseparate category has left the way open for a universal condemnation of everyone who survived
the war. Pushed to an extreme, all Germans become “Hitler’s willing executioners,” as one
historian of the Holocaust has argued. The same logic could be used to charge the majority ofFrench who accepted German rule as “Pétain’s willing collaborators.”10 Widespread complicity
gets totalized into an explanation for the Holocaust that looks in the mirror of the Final Solution
and sees Germans as the Final Problem—and, if we look deeply enough, the Vichy French as
well: pure victims getting the pure victimizers they require. To deem all guilty of the crimes thatwar permits is to erase any possibility of understanding the terrible ambivalences of living under
war regimes and the tremendous ambiguities involved in making sense of everyday social action.
When all distinctions among actions and motives disappear, we confuse how individuals actedwith what we think they could have done, and so move to an absolute moral register where
hindsight overlooks the contingencies and dangers that directed real-life choices.
Less aggressively phrased, however, this interpretation asks us to take seriously the day-to-day
survival of a tyrannous regime as something that resulted at least in part from the work that theoccupied did. As Michael Marrus and Robert Paxton have phrased this challenge, no occupying
power “can administer territory by force alone. The most brutal and determined conqueror needs
local guides and informants. Successful occupations depend heavily upon accomplices drawn
from the disaffected, sympathetic, or ambitious elements within the conquered people.”11 Herethey lean toward the more limited definition of collaboration, without however limiting those
who fall within the category to an extreme and evil few.
I have no desire to use the Chinese case to argue for or against any particular definition ofcollaboration. Dethlefsen’s political definition, though serviceable, is somewhat hampered forhaving been formulated in relation to Denmark’s rather unique wartime history, in which a
foreign occupying power left the existing government in place when it took control. China’s
wartime experience was much starker than Denmark’s, or Vichy France’s at least before 1942and probably after as well. A full military invasion such as Japan’s ruled out any possibility of
the “exercise of power” “continuing,” and it stepped up the effect of “the presence of an
occupying power” to something stronger than “pressure.” All this placed collaboration in the
Chinese case on a steeper moral gradient than in Denmark, where soft accommodation was
mostly tolerated at the time, even if it came under retrospective moral condemnation later. On
the Yangtze Delta in the winter of 1937-38, harder choices had to be made, and those who
decided to climb that steeper moral gradient more readily found themselves compromised andexposed.
To apply the concept of collaborationism to the Chinese who worked with the Japanese may be
to misconstrue the role of ideology in the Chinese setting. The leaders of the occupation state did
make statements expressing support for Japan’s pan-Asianist pitch, but it is very difficult to findstrong evidence that more than a few took Japanese war aims seriously. Those who were
motivated to support Japan’s claims did so generally from the desire to dislodge the National
Government under Jiang Jieshi, not to import Japanese ideas for home use. Chinese collaborators
appear to have been much more instrumental about their collaborationism than were the Japanesein their invitations to collaborate—which is perhaps why the Chinese language has not gone to
the trouble to create the same discriminations of meaning that the word “collaboration” has inEnglish. No collaborator imagined China’s relationship with Japan under occupation as anything

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but provisional, something to be waited out until full sovereignty returned to Chinese hands;
their own, needless to say.
Using the concept of collaboration thus produces many difficulties for the historian of twentiethcentury East Asia, but I consider the trouble this causes worth the effort if it helps encourage acollective effort to shift the history of that time away from nationalist narratives that foretell
triumph or doom and toward a more complex narrative that is capable of speaking of thesuffering on all sides.
Rather than look for complexity among competing terms and definitions, it might be better tolook within the plastic sphere of complicity with state power in the very broadest sense; that is,regardless of whether that power is foreign or domestic. The creation and reproduction of a state
under occupation is something more convoluted than a handful of morally aberrant puppets
facilitating the imposition of an external authority. Its intellectual foundations lie deeper, in theunderstanding Chinese have developed over at least a millennium about how local authority andelite representation are constrained by, but must also coexist interactively with, state authority.
Given the scale of the Chinese polity, state authority was always positioned well outside thelocality. If it often consisted of a ruling house and aristocracy that was Mongol or Tungusic, thatwas largely a matter of indifference at the local level, once conquest had been completed.
Whether this observation helps or hinders an understanding of what was at stake during theJapanese occupation of China depends less on the motivation of collaborators, which is often
used as the litmus test for deciding whether someone was betraying “China,” than on the
structural environment within which collaboration had to take place. I suggested earlier thatoccupation creates collaboration. It does so by presenting certain elites with opportunities notavailable to them under normal political circumstances, whether for good or ill. But such logic
sends us off in search of motives and away from the broader issue of what collaboration consistsof in the Chinese context. More saliently, Japan’s wartime occupation of China createdcollaboration by suspending the normal channels of political mobility and politicalcommunication and requiring that they be replaced by an entirely new system, albeit in imitationof the old, and an entirely new body of personnel, though again drawing on personnel involvedin previous regimes. It is for this reason that I have chosen to approach occupied China not interms of a collaboration state, that is, one which existed purely to collaborate with the occupier. I
prefer to refer to it as an occupation state: a political regime installed to administer occupied
territory in the interests of the occupying power, which is slightly but significantly different.
Collaboration is a necessary part of its political repertoire but is not coterminous with thestructures and sanctions of the occupation regime, in which there must always be the occupiers’
direct presence. Opponents applied such terms as “puppet” (kuilei) to the occupation state and its
collaborators, banishing them into the netherworld of hanjian traitors, but this is not how thecollaborators chose to identify their decision to hezuo or cooperate with the powers that be. Theirself-identity may have been a fraudulent device to paper over the prestige and money with which
the occupier rewarded them for their service, but venality is not necessarily the sole or defining
mode that brings some people into a relationship of service to the occupation state.
A more open understanding of collaboration shifts the fault lines in the moral landscape ofoccupation from a small set of bad elements, isolated and idealized as a type, to a broader andmore intricate pattern of interaction and accommodation without condemning everyone. The
Chinese of the Yangtze Delta were never Matsui’s willing executioners, even if many did end up

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going along with the powers that were, and a very few flourished, inside the occupation state.
Whether this interpretation makes everyone, or no one, or someone, a collaborator is somethingthat you, the reader, will want to decide on in relation to your own ethical judgment. All I ask of
the reader is to suspend judgment as to who is guilty of what for having worked with whom until
after we have seen them at work. We might consider suspending the expectation that we arecalled upon to judge at all, except in cases of self-advancement won at the blatant cost of the
lives and dignity of others. We might look not simply for who has dealings with the Japanese,but for the harm or good they do through those dealings.
Given the violence of the occupation and the high cost for those who resisted, some colleagues
have found the suggestion to include a story of collaboration alongside the more familiar tale ofresistance offensive. But it seems to me that, with the ever greater distance of time, collaboration
and resistance no longer stand as the utterly discrete categories they once were, at least in termsof the practices they induced. And in terms of who did what at the time, I believe we are likelier
to understand those who worked with the Japanese if we go looking down in the thickets ofambiguity rather than up at either of the familiar trees of collaboration or resistance.12
Consider one large source of ambiguity that the historical record tends to disclose when
examined closely, and that is the impact of unknowable consequences. For example, detonating aland mine to blow up a troop truck carrying two dozen Japanese soldiers is an act of resistance,
but when it produces retaliation resulting in the massacre of hundreds of innocent villagers in thevicinity, should that retaliation be extraneous in an evaluation of the attack? Is the righteousness
of resistance so great that the responsibility for precipitating retaliatory violence can be shrugged
off as unavoidable collateral damage? Or do the consequences convert this sort of resistance into
an act that collaborates with the violent hegemony of occupation, inasmuch as it presented theJapanese army with an excuse to inflict suffering without need of justification or concealment?
The “patriotic” interpretation of a guerrilla attack—as an act of terrorism that succeeded in tying
down troops and exposing the fraudulence of Japanese claims of being in control—is strong
enough in most people’s minds to push an argument that reverses the significance of events backfrom their consequences. And yet the gesture traded well over a hundred lives to have its effect.
I invoke ambiguity not to doubt the clear fact that some collaborated and some resisted, but toquestion the interpretations history has attached to what might once have been the truth. If I
argue against the old certainty of the resistance-collaboration polarity, it is with the hope of
opening a path for historical exploration that avoids the judgments that have kept collaborationfrom becoming the major topic it should be in twentieth-century Chinese history: to ask thatthese judgments be suspended when we do the work of history. Let me note four of thejudgments that have inhibited the study of collaboration in the history of wartime China.
Four Ways Truth Disappears with History
The first judgment is the nationalistic one: that most Chinese for patriotic reasons did notcollaborate with the Japanese during the war, and that the few who did were craven, criminal, or
corrupt. It is not difficult to understand this way of looking at the war. Resistance to Japan has
been one of the defining myths of twentieth-century China. It marks the rise of China as
something other than a defeated power. It enables Chinese to escape from the reputation forweakness that a century of difficult international encounters has given it. It allows Chinese tocelebrate a national unity of purpose that has not been seen since the brief flurries of the 1911
Revolution or the May Fourth Movement of 1919. Given the weight of national pride that

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resistance is made to carry, most Chinese naturally find it difficult to digest the evidence ofcollaboration, except when narrowly defined as a temptation to which only the few fell. Postwar
cultures elsewhere, however, have had to come to terms with the fact that collaboration went oneven as resistance was pursued, and have had to come up with ways of absorbing thiscontradiction. Chinese have yet to face this challenge. When you speak for the nation, history isalways on your side. When you allow discourse to determine narrative, “truth disappears withhistory.”13
The second judgment that inhibits the history of collaboration is the partisan-political one: thatcollaboration and resistance were internally determined by the struggle between politicalcompetitors. In the history of wartime France, this struggle is referred to as la guerre francofrançaise.14 This way of explaining collaboration shifts the charge against the Vichy regime andits supporters from colluding with the German outsiders to promoting an indigenous antirepublican and anti-democratic right. The account of the occupation as a civil war accepts thatcollaboration occurred, but indigenizes the causes and outcomes—in some cases to rescue Vichy
with explanation, in others to damn it for its political reaction. One might think of occupied
China in similar terms, as a Sino-Chinese war fought out on the backdrop of foreign occupation,
the most important consequences of which were entirely internal to China’s political future. But
the analogy is not salient. At least until 1942, the Vichy regime was a fully French regime thatwas neither a creation nor entirely a creature of the Germans. True, it pursued a distinctive
politics that consciously strove to roll back the policies and ideals of the Third Republic andrestore an earlier imagined ethos: resistance was on the left, collaboration on the right. In
wartime China, on the other hand, both the Nationalists and the Communists operated resistance
regimes. Neither capitulated to Japan, and the core of the struggle with Japan was not thestruggle between them. They left conservative restorationism to the various collaborationist
regimes Japan sponsored in Nanjing and Beijing, none of which was able to establish itself as a
viable alternative as a state. The Sino-Japanese war was only weakly a Sino-Chinese war, thoughthat blossomed once the war of resistance was over. Both regimes have subsequently charged theother with spending more energy on la guerre sino-chinoise than on the anti-Japanese war, andhave depicted the other’s wartime story as a tale of sordid compromise and self-interest and its
own as devoted service to the nation and the people.15 This rivalry distracts us from seeing
anything interesting or important on the part of collaborators.
The third sort of judgment that inhibits the study of collaboration—and this is rather counterintuitive—is what I would call the humanitarian judgment. This judgment understands war as
wasteful and pointless violence, and criticizes collaborators for helping to promote war orcontribute to its rewards. The nationalist and the partisan keep the memory of the war alive inorder to confirm national identity and reinforce political allegiance. For the humanitarian, on theother hand, the distance that is always opening up between 1945 and the present is a stretch of
busy decades of wars, revolutions, and genocides for which the body count continues to mount.
These postwar calamities have encouraged many to argue that the signature events of violence of
the Second World War cannot be isolated from what followed, that that history did not end in1945, and that we are still paying a high mortgage on that moral debt. A continuous history of
atrocity thus runs in mimic parody alongside the normalizing narratives of modernization,
democratization, and rights consciousness.
The Rape of Nanjing is one of these signature events. Some seek to downgrade Nanjing’s status
as an atrocity by explaining the outbreak of violence as the outcome of battle fatigue or shortJapan, China, and Pan-Asianism

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supplies, though my research indicates that the predations of the soldiers continued the pattern ofdevastation that Matsui’s troops had already inflicted on civilian populations further east. Others
have chosen to elevate the Rape to the status of another Holocaust, doing so in order to agitate
for what they regard as unpaid judicial redress on China’s behalf, but as well to publicize thedangers of war.16 From this perspective, collaboration conspires in atrocity, and no good defense
can be raised against the charge.
The humanitarian judgment against the Vichy regime in France has argued that, far fromshielding the French people, collaboration yielded up Jews to Nazi extermination. Making theconnection between the Holocaust and collaboration spurred new research on Vichy in the
1980s, just as the political agitation that grew up around the Rape of Nanjing in the 1990s hascreated new knowledge and awareness of that event. Yet the connection between atrocity andcollaboration may be more convenient than substantive. The commission of atrocities certainly
raised the stakes for those who considered it expedient, useful, or necessary to work with theoccupier; it also affected the viability of collaboration by generating widespread repugnance forthe occupier and unwillingness to go along with his plans. But these are the responses that
extreme actions elicit at particular moments, not indicators of what the conditions ofcollaboration may have obliged in practice, nor what the cost of collaboration may be at other,less violent moments. The humanitarian judgment responds to the injustice of war, yet it cannot
furnish a history of collaboration, only an opportunity to reimagine the identities we assemble
around our judgments of who was right and who was wrong in a conflict.
This brings us to the fourth way of judging collaboration in the guise of explaining it, andmaking it disappear, and that is what I will broadly phrase as the moral judgment. Moralcondemnation is never far from the other three modes, all of which claim morality as thefoundation for the cases they make against collaboration. The moral judgment is resilient in theface of the deconstructions to which the other three judgments are vulnerable. Nationalism,
political partisanship, and humanitarianism can be dismantled as inadequate bases for evaluating
collaboration by reducing them to their particular interests, as I have just done. Even so, in theminds of those who stand apart from such claims and interests, the moral dismissal ofcollaboration stays alive as a value that places steadfastness above capitulation, honor above
expediency. As I noted in an earlier citation of Teemu Ruskola’s analysis of Orientalism’s
effects on our understanding of Chinese law, the word “collaboration” brings into being a moral
subject who grasps the moral obligation not to collaborate with wartime occupiers. From anational perspective, this subjectivity is unexceptional. Producing it is not the historian’s role,
however; it is the propagandist’s. The purpose of propaganda is to set up and validate what
Ruskola describes as “normative systems that posit a pre-given moral subject and then elaborate
guidelines for proper actions by that subject.” History does not fashion moral subjects, nor
produce moral knowledge. The historian’s task is not to make fault claims against historicalactors in the past or against readers in the present. Instead, it is to investigate the norms andconditions that produced moral subjects in the place and time under study. It is useful to ask whysome Chinese chose to cooperate with the Japanese, but it may be more important to inquire why
cooperation made sense to people at that time.
Making Historiographical Space for Collaboration
The value of stepping back from these judgments on collaboration is not to claim thatcollaboration was as good or as bad as any other choice being made that winter. It is to realize

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that each choice had to be made, and made through a calculation of the benefits and losses that
individuals thought they could decipher at the time, before the full consequences of their actions
could be known. Without question, many of those choices were venal in inspiration anddestructive in impact, and the historian is not disqualified from documenting that venality andtracking the damage these choices led to, and declaring them to be such. It would be facetious tosuggest that the historian must suspend personal distaste for the worst collaborations, particularly
when the consequences of their collaboration were as stark as they were in a place like Nanjing.
On the other hand, the historian is also responsible for documenting all that was not venal anddestructive when other motivations came unto play and other consequences into view; in otherwords, to detect ambiguity in what a superficial reading might otherwise dismiss as confirmationof the norms by which a culture, then or now, has constructed its moral subjects.
Most vulnerable to moral judgments at the time were the educated elites, who were expected toserve the Republic and so held responsible in a way that ordinary people were not. Theirobligation to make the correct choice was heightened, though also made easier, by the fact thatthey could afford the valor of removing themselves from the battlefield as poorer people could
not, finding refuge in the international concessions in Shanghai or sitting out the war in Sichuan
or Yunnan. Their exit left a far less privileged group behind to reconstitute the post-conquest
economy and rebuild state administration in the face of a rapacious occupation army, apolitically divided resistance, and a devastated populace enduring food and housing shortages.
Calculating whether to collaborate could involve a mixture of personal salvation from thedangers of war, personal greed for the windfalls of power, or personal revulsion for any of theparties seeking power. To condemn these people under the banner of greed or treason, withoutlooking more closely at actual circumstances, however, is to reproduce the political terrain on
which they were forced to act: to mistake resistance for resistancialism.17
Contrary to standard views, many ordinary people seem to have been relatively indifferent to themoral claims of resistance and collaboration, and to have declined to be active partisans of either
cause. Too far down the social hierarchy to take part in what Henrik Dethlefsen specified as “thecontinuing exercise of power under the pressure produced by the presence of an occupying
power,” most ordinary people got on with their lives, struggling to earn enough to survive,
paying the taxes they could not evade, schooling their children in curricula they could notcontrol, and living and working within state institutions they had neither devised nor approved.
Robert McClure, a Canadian medical missionary writing from Henan in 1938, declared that thepeasants of his acquaintance were “used to being conquered” by whichever political faction
captured power in the province. “To people accustomed to this method of government the dangerof a Japanese ‘capture’ was not anything to be scared of.” He added that “one must assume that
the Japanese were aware of this condition too.”18 Indeed, they were: Mantetsu employees doing
rural surveys claimed that the villagers were as indifferent to the Nationalists as to the Japanese,and by extension to the collaborators as well.19 The notion that the peasants regarded all state
power as external and coercive was a convenient lesson for the Japanese to discover. It was alsoless than true, for as events showed, not all peasants collaborated with the occupation, and many
kept the resistance alive. But it was a rationalization that helped some Japanese convince
themselves that the occupation state was equally plausible as a government of these people,
equally good or evil. It also permitted them cynically to manipulate the tokens of legitimacy andpopular representation without apology.

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Spokesmen for the resistance during the war worried, reasonably enough, that the occupied
might be prone to accept the circumstances in which they found themselves. They knew thatsome were voicing an equal-evil argument in rejecting both collaboration and resistance; and notjust peasants. Urbanites were particularly susceptible, and even likely to rephrase it as an equalgood argument: let any regime stand that did not oppress them. As one voice appealing forresistance put it, “Some compatriots in places that have not been trampled by the enemy don’teven think of the enemy as having invaded, that it is just another change in regime and we canstill go on living peacefully and taking pleasure in our work, enjoying life as before.” The notionthat such capitulation would leave people’s lives unchanged was “a dream.”20 This author was
writing in anger, warning that the costs of submitting to Japan were high. But he was writing too
in fear; and what he feared was time. Time has a capacity to recast the exceptional as theordinary, the intrusive as the diurnal, conquest as merely the next regime. It can quietly
overpower the claim that submission to military domination is an illusion and make resistanceseem like the illusion. Hindsight shows us now that time was on the side of the resistance. The
resistance could wait out Japan’s hopeless ambition to dominate all of East Asia and the Pacific.
It could wait out as well the slow, seeping losses the Japanese military was suffering on thecontinent, confident that Japan’s client states would eventually fall regardless of who was put
forward to be the leader of the nation. This was not clear at first, but became so soon enough.
Time was not on the collaborators’ side. The high rate of turnover among committee members
indicates that most found working for the occupation state harder going than they anticipated.
Some were able to lodge themselves in comfortable bureaucratic niches in the occupation state,and some were able to protect their business or family interests by doing so. Many more, unable
to master the complexities of wartime politics and unwilling to stay on the invader’s side when amore appealing option emerged, withdrew or were forced out. As events unfolded, collaboration
proved to be politically unstable and morally awkward for both sides of the relationship. For theoccupier, successes were largely apparent, costs mounted, and resistance interfered with the
installation of a new order of any substance. For the occupied, the costs were also prohibitive,
and the complicities and rivalries that collaboration let loose hampered the sort of politicalprocess that a regime has to undergo in order to claim legitimacy. Under such conditions,collaboration emerged as the losing option.
However complicated the reasons some people found to collaborate, their activities produced
ambiguous effects and entailed difficulties in practice that the myth of heroic resisters andcringing collaborators cannot penetrate. Ambiguity does not mean inexplicability, nor doesdifficulty mean that collaboration contributed nothing to the power of the occupying forces.
What ambiguity and difficulty mean is that we cannot deduce the causes that prompted people toact from the moral claims we impose, nor evaluate their actions solely in relation toconsequences the actors could not anticipate. Easing apart historical acts from the assumptions towhich nationalist sentiment has bound them, or from the moral presuppositions has left them torust, concedes to events an indeterminacy that places them always beyond anticipation. Who
could know, at the beginning, that the occupation state would not outlast Japan’s defeat by one
day, or that four years after that defeat, it would be replaced by a Communist state for which thecosts of elite collaboration, with the Japanese, the Nationalists, or itself, would run even higher?
Timothy Brook is concurrently Principal of St. John’s College, University of British Columbia,
and Shaw Professor of Chinese at Oxford University.

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This article is excerpted and revised from Collaboration: Japanese Agents and Local Elites in
Wartime China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), pp. 1-13, 240-48. Posted at
Japan Focus on July 5, 2008.
Notes
1

See Gerhard Hirschfeld’s introduction to Collaboration in France: Politics and Culture during
the Nazi Occupation, 1940-44, co-edited with Patrick Marsh (Oxford: Berg, 1989), p. 2.
2Henrik Dethlefsen, “Denmark and the German Occupation: Cooperation, Negotiation or
Collaboration?,” Scandanavian Journal of History 15:3 (1990), pp. 198-99.
3

Teemu Ruskola, “Legal Orientalism,” Michigan Law Review 101:1 (October 2002), p. 225.

4

Rebecca West, The Meaning of Treason (reprint, London: Phoenix Press, 2000), pp. 94, 102,
114.
5

On the myth of resistance in postwar France, see Henry Rousso, The Vichy Syndrome: History
and Memory in France since 1944 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991); Alan
Morris, Collaboration and Resistance Reviewed: Writers and the Mode Rétro in Post-Gaullist
France (New York: Berg, 1992); and Éric Conan and Henry Rousso, Vichy: An Ever-Present
Past (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1998).
6

Letter from the Huangpu West Residents’ Association to the Shanghai municipal government(14 January 1939), archived in the Shanghai Municipal Archives (Shanghai shi dang’anguan),File R18-126.
7

Shanghai Municipal Archives, File R18-689.

8

Kato Kozan’s memoir, “Congshi xuanfu gongzuo zhi huigu” (My reminiscence of doing
pacification work), appeared serially in the Nanjing xinbao (New Nanjing daily) on 2-3 July
1939.
9

On “collaborationism,” see Stanley Hoffman, Decline or Renewal: France since the 1930s(New York: Viking, 1974), p. 27.
10

The phrase “Hitler’s willing executioners” is the title of the controversial book in which
Daniel Goldhagen argues that moral responsibility for the Holocaust falls not on a limited subsetof Germans but on the German people as a whole; Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary
Germans and the Holocaust (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1998), p. 9.
11

Michael Marrus and Robert Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews (reprint, Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1997), p. xii.
12

“Thickets of ambiguity” is taken from Roderick Kedward’s introduction to Vichy France andResistance: Culture and Ideology, coedited with Roger Austin (London: Croom Helm, 1985), p.
5.
13Michael Ondaatje, Running in the Family (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1982), p. 53.

14

Rousso, The Vichy Syndrome, pp. 6-8.

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15

For a more balanced assessment of the indirect negotiations between the Nationalist regime
and the Japanese that is the exception proving the rule, see Huang Meizhen and Yang Hanqing,“Nationalist China’s Negotiating Position During the Stalemate, 1938-1945,” in Chinese
Collaboration with Japan, 1932-45: The Limits of Accommodation, ed. David Barrett and Larry
Shyu (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), pp. 56-76.
16

For attempts to analogize the Rape of Nanjing to the Holocaust, see Joshua Fogel, The Nanjing
Massacre in History and Historiography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000).
17

See Rana Mitter ‘s critique of the effect of resistancialism on assessments of the Japanese
occupation of Manchuria; The Manchurian Myth: Nationalism, Resistance, and Collaboration inModern China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), p. 226.
18

Robert McClure’s comment appears in an undated letter in the United Church Archives(Victoria College, University of Toronto), Finding Aid 186, Box 8, File 141. McClure’s
movements behind Japanese lines induced the Japanese army in April to offer a reward for his
capture; see Munroe Scott, McClure: The China Years (Toronto: Canec, 1977), p. 214.
19

Chugoku noson kanko chosa (Studies of Chinese village customs) (reprint, Tokyo: Iwanami
shoten, 1981), vol. 1, pp. 101-102.
20

Zhang Yibo, Zhenjiang lunxian ji (A record of Zhenjiang under occupation) (reprint, Beijing:
Renmin chubanshe, 1999), p. 37.

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Collaboration and the Politics of the Twentieth Century
Prasenjit Duara
Ang Lee’s 2007 movie, Lust, Caution (Se, Jie ) based on a short story by Zhang Ailing, is a
deeply unsettling exploration of enmity and collaboration filtered through the medium of theerotic.* The Chinese head of the Japanese Secret Service in 1942 Shanghai, Mr Yee, develops asexual relationship with the winsome Mrs Mak who is a secret agent for the resistance and seeks
to lure him to his assassination. The film maker skillfully utilizes the torrid sexual encounters
between the two to register their ever-changing and volatile feelings of lust, hatred, violence andlove.
In one scene, Mrs Mak, whose true name is Wong Chia Chi, is very confused and overwhelmedby the gradual overtaking of her real self by her performance as lover. She reports to hersuperiors in the resistance, “He knows better than you how to act the part. He not only gets insideme, but he worms his way into my heart. I take him in like a slave… Every time when he finallycollapses on me, I think, maybe this is it, maybe this is the moment you’ll come and shoot him,right in the back of the head, and his blood and brains will cover me!”Lust/Caution

But it is not only Wong Chia Chi who is seduced by the enemy. The steely Mr. Yee himself
admits as much in a tavern filled with drunken Japanese officers. Responding to her commentthat he actually wants her to be his whore, he says, alluding to the Japanese, “So you see, I know
better than you how to be a whore.” Lust, Caution may be read as a critique of ideologies such as
imperialism or nationalism, and the instrumentalization of people that they entail. It focuses noton alternatives ideologies, but on the seething realities that ideologies miss, on the confusions ofwill and desire, the necessities of survival and other bodily matters.
Although presented in a less intimate register, Timothy Brook’s essay, and the fuller account in
his book,1 also seeks to explore collaboration through the complex tissue of motives, actions andresults: how people intended to behave, how they actually behaved, and what consequences

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resulted from their choices in the face of a ruthless occupation and war. Where the nationalist
sees a stable, if not Manichean, distinction between imperialist and nationalist, invader andinvaded, occupier and occupied, the historian must explore the unstable multifaceted terms of therelationships at the level of individual and social choice.
Brook argues that collaboration and resistance have been judged harshly not only by nationalist
yardsticks but by norms of humanitarianism and other moral expressions that also do not dojustice to the historical record. At the local- or even micro-level we see how a single act could
have unimagined repercussions, as when lower level “collaborators” succeed in derailing theentire edifice of the occupation’s administrative structure; or when the resistance of the guerillaforces to the occupation could subject an entire population to devastating Japanese military
recrimination. Brook also pays equal attention to the mentality of the Japanese agents who try to
recruit Chinese supporters at the lowest levels of this enterprise. We are left to decide just how
self-delusionary was the Mantetsu agent who saw himself fulfilling the great mission of saving
China and Asia in the face of the unimaginable horrors perpetrated by his military.

South Manchurian Railroad, symbol of Japanese power and industrialization

Brook’s book is worth reading because his provocative conclusions, presented here, derive froma close empirical study following demanding methodical procedures of historical investigation.
Brook hews closely to his principal sources and texts, which he both utilizes and interrogates. He
cross-examines Chinese and Japanese, collaborative and denunciatory, occupier and resistor
texts, often with regard to the same phenomenon, if not the same event or person to challenge thereader’s comfortable assumptions.
The study gives us a picture, first of all, of how the Japanese military and associated agencies
sought to establish administrative power. It provides a crucial piece of the story of the mostambitious effort at building a regional empire in twentieth century Asia at the ground level.
Although Brook selects his cases from the lower Yangtze valley including Shanghai andNanjing, they allow us to see the patterns of similarity and difference quite well and even hint at
systematic differences along an urban-rural continuum.
It is instructive to compare collaboration in Central China with that in Manchukuo and Hong
Kong, two places where I have done some research. Two aspects seem to have been crucial to
the Japanese pattern of soliciting collaborators among the Chinese: the rhetoric of pan-Asianism

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and the massive expansion of government and state-sponsored institutions or a kind ofimperialist state-building. Both were integral to the new imperialism, which I have discussed
elsewhere;2 it reflected a new relationship between the imperial power and the colonized. The
conquered was to be actively mobilized for the imperialist’s long term project of regional
domination under the rhetoric of sameness or brotherhood (pan-Asianism) rather than differenceor othering between colonizers and colonized. State expansion was a necessary part of thisstrategy for purposes both of mobilization and surveillance of the occupied population.
In Manchukuo, where warlordism preceding the Manchurian Incident of 1931 had produced
significant alienation, the Japanese were able to not only rout the Guomindang and militaryopposition early, but also enlist the support—whether through active or passive co-operation—of
significant segments of the elites who had not yet been exposed to a high degree of Chinese
nationalist consciousness. Over time, the occupation regime, in this case, the Guandong Armyand its agents, came to be engaged in a contradictory program. On the one hand, it created largescale opportunities for Chinese to participate in government and other state-sponsored or
supported projects under the rhetoric of pan-Asianism. These included the infamous Concordia
Society (Kyowakai) and the vast networks of redemptive societies, such as the Red Swastika or
the Morality Society which were tied in myriad ways to the Social Welfare Department and otherjiaohua (enlightening) agencies of the government. On the other hand, the domination by
Japanese elites and power structures, their extractive policies and their racist attitudes towards
Chinese made the situation intolerable for growing numbers of Chinese. As the heavy demandsof the war fell increasingly on the puppet-state, especially after Pearl Harbor, Chinese alienationfrom the regime became mass-based.
Despite the late date of the Japanese invasion and occupation of Hong Kong (December 1941)
when (in hindsight) the Japanese empire was foredoomed, the military utilized similar techniques
to generate passive support. The astonishing speed with which the Japanese were able to wrest
control of so much of Asia from the Western powers had a considerable impact on local
populations in the initial stage. In Hong Kong, as in Manchukuo and Central China, Japanese
local agents initially mobilized local “peace restoration” committees called Rehabilitation
Advisory Committees. The rhetoric of reformist pan-Asianism was utilized both to bring theelites into a framework for collaboration as well as gain some measure of popular acquiescence
for the takeover.
To US Consul Robert Ward, who left Hong Kong just before the takeover, the ideological appealof pan-Asianism was most threatening. He saw this appeal, particularly to the poor anddispossessed, of overturning the European dominated world order in terms similar to the way
analysts regard the appeal of Muslim fundamentalism today. In perhaps the most dramatizedepisode of pan-Asianism, the Japanese military forced British men to pull rickshaws carrying
Chinese and Indians. For the professional classes, Ward notes the importance of the tremendous
expansion of the institutional infrastructure of government offering jobs and responsibilities
which contrasted sharply with the situation under British colonial rule before 1942.3
The rhetoric of pan-Asianism was crafted differently in each case. In Manchukuo, the concord ofnationalities was designed to draw in elites from the minority communities to combat thepolitical effects of Han Chinese numerical preponderance and win minority communities to the
new Japanese order. This did not mean completely writing off the Han Chinese. Pan-Asianism
was also expressed through the regime’s active sponsorship of Confucianism and the redemptiveJapan, China, and Pan-Asianism

172

religious societies. In Hong Kong, pan-Asianism brought in the Eurasian elites such as Robert
Koteval and others into the regime, but the Chinese high elite were more reluctant collaborators.
They began to withdraw even more as it became clear that the Japanese were never going to beable to achieve their goal of creating Hong Kong as economic, ethnic and ideological hinge
between the northern and southern parts of their empire. As the war proceeded, the influence of
the China faction within the Japanese army was eclipsed by the dominance of the Southeast Asiagroup which saw the colony rather more as a portal and supply base for penetration into
Southeast Asia.

Participants at the 1943 Greater East Asia Conference include Tojo Hideki (center),
Wang Jingwei, to his right, and Subhas Chandra Bose of India, far right

While we may reject pan-Asianism as a cynical ploy, we cannot reject its importance in shaping
the terrain in large areas of Asia in the years 1937-45. By providing a working format for manygroups, at least in the initial stages of the occupation, it worked functionally as a means ofintegrating the Japanese empire. Religious and historical cultures which did not necessarily
regard the nation-state as the ultimate or terminal community could operate within thisframework as long as their values and interests were not seriously violated. Brook provides
considerable evidence that religious and popular rhetoric and traditions represented an importantsource for legitimacy which occupation regimes tried with some success to mobilize. This was acentral plank of the Japanese strategy that originated in Manchukuo and was wrapped up in panAsianist rhetoric.
This impact is discernible at two levels: in popular, especially rural culture, and in a more
middle-class synthesis of tradition and modernity—such as the Red Swastika Society that Brook
often mentions—which lay behind the flourishing redemptive societies numbering in thethousands all over China and among Chinese overseas. I cannot agree with Brook’s rather
dismissive understanding of this Japanese strategy as being directed only at ultra-conservativeand old people and, thus, by implication, lacking historical significance. To be sure, the Japanesemilitary was overly manipulative of this strain of culture and ultimately became too brutal evenfor these societies to endure. But the appeal to older Chinese traditions and their constituencies
was not an ignorant stab in the dark. Consideration of the role of religious groups in a morestable period in Manchukuo (before 1937) reveals that the followers often believed that their
universalist religious goals were more important than identification with the nation-state.4
Moreover, they also believed that the Manchukuo state supported these ideals better than the
KMT or Communist regimes. When the statist and militarist goals of the Japanese regime
trampled on their religious ideals they also abandoned their support for the regime.

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Thus, despite the domination of nationalist morality in understandings of mid-twentieth century
occupations and resistance, other ideologies and ideals—religious in this case—were hardly
missing. While in the Chinese case these ideals were often, though not always, co-opted by theJapanese imperialists, this was not always the case. In contemporary Iraq, instead of nationalist
resistance the resistance is deeply embedded in myriad religious and ethnic causes, interests andideals, each of which is apparently more valued than the territorial nation of Iraq. In thissituation, the distinction between collaborator, non-collaborator and resistor appears to have beenradically obliterated as brutally witnessed by the rise in the death-toll everyday. Reflection on
Iraq may also allow us to re-think the Chinese and Southeast Asian wartime situations in termsof the relationship between nationalist and religious ideologies and movements.
But the situation in Iraq is also likely to make some critics of nationalism a little nostalgic for the
clarity it was able to impose on a messy situation. We may have reached the point in history
where neither imperialism (whether with its “civilizing mission” nor pan-Asianism) nor
nationalism is capable of generating coherent ideologies that can mobilize or fulfill popular
aspirations. What we have today is exactly what the filmmaker Ang Lee and some critical
historians have found to have been the seething reality underlying the pieties of nationalist andimperialist rhetoric (and practice). Only, the pieties—even the new ones—are in shreds, and thesituation in many contemporary hot spots represents a war of all against all. Moreover, it ishardly a situation where an imperialist power can divide and rule; rather in Iraq, the superpoweris being hounded if not (yet) chased out by the fierceness of a divided resistance.
Have we reached a point in the globalization and localization of the world, where global andlocal interests articulate to make intermediate movements such as nationalism impossible? Has
collaboration itself become such a moving target that it can no longer be defined? Has it become
something of which teenagers might say, “That’s so twentieth century!” Do we have theresources in our historical repertoire and conceptions to grasp it? Can we formulate alternative
moral standards to judge and understand human loyalties?
Prasenjit Duara is professor of History and East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the
University of Chicago. He is the author of Sovereignty and Authenticity: Manchukuo and theEast Asian Modern.
Notes* Many thanks are due to Haiyan Lee for her astute and helpful comments on the first draft.
1

Timothy Brook, Collaboration: Japanese Agents and Local Elites in Wartime China Harvard
University Press, Cambridge Mass, 2005.
2

See for instance, Prasenjit Duara “The New Imperialism and the Post-Colonial Developmental
State: Manchukuo in Comparative Perspective” Japan Focus Jan 30, 2006.
3
4

Robert Ward, Hong Kong under Japanese occupation, 18-33.

See Prasenjit Duara, Sovereignty and Authenticity: Manchukuo and the East Asian Modern,Rowman & Littlefield, Boulder, Co. 2003, chapters 3 and 4.

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New Perspectives on Chinese Collaboration
Margherita Zanasi
The question of moral judgment looms large over every discussion of World War II
collaboration, at times clouding and distorting our understanding of this complex issue, as
Timothy Brook poignantly remarks in his contribution to this journal’s recent symposium. This
moral question is certainly relevant and should not be dismissed, since collaboration came to be
more or less directly associated with the civic and human rights infringements perpetrated by theoccupying forces.1 Always complex, this question becomes murkier when linked to the rhetoricof patriotism and to postwar political agendas, as is the case with the “resistentialist” postwar
narrative that has dominated the debate on collaboration until recently.2 This narrative has
mythologized resistance and enshrined it as the only patriotic, moral, and honorable response toforeign occupation, gliding over difficult moral dilemmas raised by some strategies and practicesof resistance. In the process, it has polarized the debate on collaboration by offering only two
opposite and monolithically-conceived categories: moral and patriotic resistance versus unethicaland treasonous collaboration. It has therefore left no conceptual tool for gaining a more nuanced
understanding of behaviors that do not fit this pre-established and rigid dichotomy, such as“nationalist” or “state-building” collaborationism—referring, respectively, to attempts at
protecting nation and population from the occupying forces and at state building in the face ofthe complete and bewildering disappearance of the preexisting order, as in the cases discussed by
Brook.3 Finally, this resistentialist narrative has constructed a universal image of collaboration,
which tends to reduce various forms of this phenomenon in different countries to a common
denominator, obliterating all political, social, and cultural differences.
In order to overcome this ideological impasse and gain a more accurate understanding of thecircumstances of collaboration, Brook shifts our attention to the local level and to the earlystages of Japanese occupation, when no centralized collaborationist government was yet in place.
His intention is to set aside, what he calls “the considerations of national honor and personal
integrity that haunted the metropolitan politicians.” He wants, instead, to throw light on practicalproblems, such as food distribution, that people faced daily under occupation and on the “statebuilding collaborationism” that these problems generated. Bringing to light these difficult-toclassify instances of collaboration—that fall outside of the meganarrative of postwar
resistentialist patriotism—is a crucial step in gaining a more nuanced understanding of Chinese
collaboration.
Overcoming the imposed ideological agendas of postwar resistentialism, however, also requiresthat we restore collaboration to its original temporal dimension by approaching it as a processdeveloping by stages, each belonging to different political and historical moments. This approach
can help us keep wartime collaboration and its postwar narrative distinct—rather than continuing
to use the latter to explain the former. The first was a wartime response to crisis that took prewar
political, social, and cultural frameworks and used them to build creative and improvised
solutions to the collapse of the known order. The latter developed at the intersection between thepolitics of memory and the construction of new sources of political legitimacy in the postwar
period that were in turn shaped by new political dynamics that emerged in the wake of thesweeping changes brought about by the war.

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Collaboration as an Evolving Process
If we approach World War II collaboration as an evolving process we can distinguish roughly
three main phases. The first phase can be defined as the road to collaboration, during whichcollaborators framed goals for working with the occupying forces. Both in Europe and in China,
these expectations and goals varied widely, going beyond outright self-interest or selfpreservation (although these were certainly important) and including difficult to classify aims,
such as “nationalist” or “state-building” collaboration. This was a moment of negotiation
between collaborators and occupying forces, in which the occupiers, as both Brook and Prasenjit
Duara illustrate, created the space—rhetorically, politically, and administratively—forcollaborators to operate.4 The choices made at this stage were based on what appeared to be a setof viable options at a time when the Allies’ victory was at best a remote possibility andeverything about the future appeared murky. Collaborators like Pétain and Wang Jingwei—themain leader of the collaborationist Reorganized Nationalist Government, or RNG (1940-1945)—
for example, worked on the assumption that the war was lost and some kind of peace was soon tofollow.5

Wang Jingwei in 1941 photograph with Nazis. Wang always flew the Nationalist flagand claimed to represent the true embodiment of the party

They therefore planned to preside over national reconstruction in an occupied country, rather
than over a continuing war. They could not know with certainty the nature of the future Nazi orJapanese occupation. The continuation of the war, for example, strained both Germany’s andJapan’s resources, thus increasing—rather than decreasing, as the two leaders had expected—
their demands on the occupied nations. Local collaborators, as Brook remarks, worked to rebuild
the polity in an occupied state. They acted under the assumption that it was possible to bringsome normalcy to daily life and rebuild the infrastructure for the local community to functionJapan, China, and Pan-Asianism

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properly. Their local perspective contributed to their acting from the point of view of the “hereand now”—rather than trying to give primacy to long-term political possibilities. The goal ofrebuilding the state under circumstances of occupation, rather than of collaborating with anenemy during a protracted war against fellow citizens, was, therefore, one of the many factorsthat affected decisions to collaborate at different political levels.
The actual experience of collaboration can be regarded as a second phase, when expectations
were put to a test and their validity and effectiveness were revealed. Some of the Vichy
collaborators—Vichy was a complex political formation and included diverse groups withdifferent collaborationist goals, including sympathy with the Third Reich’s political program—must have felt their nationalist expectations and goals slip away as it became clear that they werepowerless to resist German’s demands. Vichy attempted strenuously to remain autonomous from
Germany, but this attempt ultimately failed.6 Consequently Vichy increasingly slid toward,
borrowing Roderick Kedward’s expression, “highly derivative [Nazi-style] solutions.”7 In theend, it became clear that the original “nationalist” and “state-building” goals were a mirage.
We still know very little about the Chinese collaborationist regimes and the various groups thatparticipated in it. It is clear that the main leaders of the Reformed Government shared anti-GMD
feelings.8 On the other hand, many of the RNG leaders belonged to the Wang political faction
within the GMD, originally known as the Reorganization Clique, and presumably followed
Wang for reasons that included factional loyalty and shared political visions. Other RNG leaders,such as Zhou Fohai, were not so closely associated with Wang and their motivations remain
unclear. In spite of some important works, the spectrum of collaborationist goals and the internal
political dynamics of both the Reformed Government and the RNG still remain largely
unexplored.9 It is clear, however, that some of the RNG leaders who held “nationalist
collaboration” goals, saw them slip away. At his trial in Suzhou (April 6, 1946), Chen Gongbo—
the acting chairman of the RNG after Wang’s death in November 1944—admitted that he hadsoon come to realize that he had no power of negotiation with the Japanese and therefore hecould not achieve his original collaborationist goals.10 At this stage, confronted with thebrutalities the Japanese perpetrated on their fellow citizens, even the local elites motivated bymore pragmatic goals must have come face to face with ethical questions—if not with wider
issues of national politics, patriotism, and national identity. They must have asked themselves
whether it was possible to find a reasonable balance between costs (participating, even if
marginally, in an authoritarian regime) and returns (such as the extent to which one could
actually protect nation and people or restore normalcy to the local community). Above all, manymust have come to recognize that peace was not going to come soon and that the Allies could
actually win the war. We are therefore faced with the questions of what kind of readjustment andpolitical evolutions these new perspectives triggered individually and within the various
collaborationist organizations (national and local) and what kind of new ethical issues theygenerated.
The third phase covers the years immediately following the end of the war when collaboration
trials enshrined a narrative of resistance and collaboration that became hegemonic. This was atriumphalist victor’s narrative that recast the narrative of the war from the perspective of theAllies’ victory. It also built on years of Allied war propaganda that had simplified the narrativeof war and the political issues it involved. This is not to say that the resistentialist narrative ofcollaboration did not contain any truth. It accurately denounced the authoritarian and brutal
nature of the Nazi, Japanese, and collaborationist regimes while being reticent about the less than

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sterling war records of the Allies and the resisters. It avoided, for example, references to German
and Japanese violent retaliations triggered by resistance or mention of such controversial Allied
war strategies as firebombing. In Europe it built on a longtime political struggle against Fascism
and authoritarianism (although it tended to identify this struggle and wartime resistance with theleft only, ignoring other political groups that had also played important roles in both).11 Above
all it resonated in the frustration and resentment of the brutality the occupation generated in the
majority of the population in the occupied areas and gained strength on the collaborationist
regimes’ failure to maintain autonomy and shield the local population, a failure, that shifted theirrole, in the eyes of most, from protectors to perpetrators.12
This resistentialist narrative, above all, looked toward the construction of new sources ofpolitical legitimacy for the postwar nation. The trials of the main surviving leaders of the RNG(in Suzhou from April 1946)—like the trial of Pétain in Paris (late July 1945)—were part of awider process for establishing, retroactively, the legitimacy of Jiang Jieshi’s leadership (DeGaulle’s in the case of France) before and during the war and thus consolidating his position at
the head of the postwar government. The trials became rituals for discrediting alternative
narratives of war and resistance and reaffirming a unified and linear one, while erasing thememory of the uncertainties on how to respond to foreign occupation that had characterized theearly stages of the war in both France and China. At his trial, Chen defended his collaborationist
choice on the ground that his motivation was not to destroy the nation, but to save it—a defense
strategy similar to the “Shield and Sword” defense presented, equally unsuccessfully, by Pétain
at his Paris trial. Chen thus implied that the unsatisfactory result of his efforts should not obscure
his patriotic intention.13 Since treason—having acted against the interest of the nation—was themain charge brought against him, defending the nationalist spirit of his choice appeared to him(and to the other RNG leaders who went to trial in Suzhou) the most important point in his
defense. At Suzhou, however, having acted against the nation became synonymous with having
acted against Jiang. The trials moved from the assumption that Jiang’s government had all along
been the “central” (zhongyang) and legitimate government—forgetting how contested Jiang’s
leadership over party and country had been before the war—and, a priori, sanctioned any action
toward the Japanese decided outside of Jiang’s jurisdiction as illegitimate and treasonous,
regardless of its intention. As a consequence the prosecution did not even engage Chen’snarrative or try to evaluate whether he had really attempted to save the nation from the Japanese.
A Changed Political Environment
The consolidation of Jiang’s leadership over Nationalist China well exemplifies the dramaticchanges the war brought to the Chinese political landscape. Sources of political legitimacy had
shifted dramatically and salient prewar political features such as the factional struggle over the
GMD leadership and warlord politics had lost their resonance. Political strategies based on
prewar political repertoires were therefore discredited. For example, the claim of some RNG
leaders that they were using the Japanese invasion to challenge Jiang Jieshi’s leadershipappeared now particularly irrelevant. In 1938, Wang Jingwei had evoked Sun Zhongshan’s
1920s collaboration with Guangdong warlord Cheng Jiongming to present collaboration as partof a legitimate political strategy to establish GMD rule over China. One of his goals, Wang
claimed, was to bring down Jiang Jieshi and restore Party and country to the correct politicallegacy left by Sun, which he (Wang) embodied and Jiang had betrayed. It is difficult toaccurately gauge how convincing this argument appeared in 1938-1940—the years ofnegotiations between Wang and Japan. At that time it would have already been apparent to manyJapan, China, and Pan-Asianism

178

that Japan was no warlord and allying with it could bring far more ominous consequences thanWang’s previous attempts to use warlords for the same political goal.14 Rana Mitter’s work on
Manchuria, however, illustrates that warlord politics continued to intersect with choices ofresistance and collaboration.15 The Xi’an incident, whose role in Jiang’s decision to resist Japanis still largely unclear, also played out at the intersection of warlord dynamics with internal GMD
disagreements (between Jiang Jieshi and Zhang Xueliang) and national politics.16

Jiang Jieshi (left) and Zhang Xueliang at Xi’an

The interplay between warlord-politics, faction-struggle, and collaboration/resistance was,therefore, a familiar feature of the prewar political discourse. The war, however, swept away thewarlords—with the exception of some border regions—and firmly established Jiang’s leadership.
The Cold War furthered this process by introducing a new polarizing political narrative that
portrayed a tightly unified GMD struggling against an equally centralized CCP. Factions,warlords, and challenges to Jiang’s political legitimacy disappeared from Chinese political
discourse, and could no longer be convincingly deployed to explain collaborationist choices.
The postwar political landscape was also transformed by the process of political globalizationthat brought China into closer alignment with the Allies’ political propaganda and their politics
of retribution.17 Chinese collaborators would have certainly met with punishment even without
the example of the Western European collaboration trials. These trials, however, and especiallythat of Pétain, came to supply the terms of reference for Nationalist hanjian (the Chinese termcommonly used for collaborators) policies, acted as external sources of political legitimacy, andhelped shape the way that hanjian were punished. Glossing over important differences, media
and political leaders in Nationalist China appropriated basic themes of the French resistentialist
discourse, reconstructed them into universal tropes that went beyond the undeniable realities ofthe shared historical experience of occupation, and redeployed them to explain Chinese
collaboration and justify its punishment.18 In this way, Nationalist China could exploit the global
visibility of the European collaboration trials to carry out its own political agenda. On the other
hand, it contributed to the process of globalization of the discourse on collaboration—by
equating China’s and France’s war experiences and making Pétain relevant for China—and tothe construction of an oversimplified and monolithically conceived image of collaborators thatobliterated diversity and local variation.
A Comparative Approach
Taking a comparative approach and exploring the extent and limit of collaboration as a global
experience is essential for going beyond this oversimplified globalizing narrative and for proving
the impossibility of discussing collaboration as a universally valid category. As both Brook andDuara clearly demonstrate, collaboration was a creative relationship between occupier andZanasi: New Perspectives on Chinese Collaboration

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occupied and therefore it necessarily developed differently within different relationshipframeworks. The relationship between Germany and Vichy, for example, was significantly
different from that between Japan and the Chinese collaborators, since they grew out of different
political backgrounds. As Brook remarks, in China, collaboration developed from below while inFrance it developed from above. This meant that in France, the central government did not
retreat in the face of foreign occupation and the Germans were not met with the total politicaland administrative vacuum the Japanese met in China. The French central authorities could thus
delegate Vichy to work out those pacification policies that in China became a responsibility ofJapanese pacification agents. If we want to push the comparison between France and China
beyond the scope of Brook’s study, however, we need to reframe its parameters. Vichy, in fact,
only controlled a small portion of French territory, the largest portion being directly occupied by
the Germans. Would this occupied area, rather than Vichy, constitute a better comparison for
China, or at least for this early collaboration from below? This question is not easily answered
and its purpose is mostly to reveal the difficulty of comparing collaboration in the two countries.
Several considerations in fact arise. While similar forms of collaboration from below probably
characterized the occupied area in France and the early stages of the war in China, the situation
under Vichy and the RNG surely differed significantly. The RNG was considerably weaker than
Vichy—and the same is probably also true for the Reformed Government. It appears that the
RNG never developed the ability to extend its direct control down to the local level in the same
way that Vichy did. Even with respect to food procurement, in spite of the RNG’s attempts togain control over the system of “material control”, Japan remain deeply involved and still
directly collected grains in large areas of RNG territory.19 Collaboration from below thus
probably survived in China even after the establishment of centralized collaborationist
governments. We are then left with the question of the extent to which the initial differences
between Vichy and the RNG influenced long-term collaboration in the two countries. Was the
RNG’s weakness a result of the fact that it had to build a new administrative structure from the
top in the 1940s, while Vichy, a relatively seamless continuation of the prewar government,
continued to preside over the existing administrative structure? Was the German presence lessfelt in Vichy France than the Japanese presence in RNG China, where Japanese troops remained
omnipresent and heavily involved in daily operations that touched the lives of the common
people, such as grain procurements? And how did these differences affect popular views ofcollaboration?
Another difference between France and China lies in their prewar political situations. The Paris
trial benefited from the fact that it could look back at the prewar debate on democracy andfascism, even if that debate came to be misrepresented by the resistentialist narrative.20 Although
the GMD deployed the Western European resistentialist discourse in support of its punishment ofhanjian, it was itself an authoritarian state that embodied fascist elements. After the war it had
immediately resumed the anti-communist purges that it had initiated in the prewar years, with
open disregard of basic civic and human rights. As a consequence, the GMD used a very
simplified version of the resistentialist discourse, focusing almost exclusively on issues ofnationalism and political loyalty and steering safely away from anti-fascism.21 This strategy of
only evoking selected themes from Allied ideology was made possible by the fact that, during
the war, the Allies’ propaganda had itself relied on a vague depiction of Jiang’s GMD as one ofthe paladins of democracy fighting against fascism (an oversimplification that was also extended
to the Soviet Union). Jiang had all along relied on the ambiguity of his international reputationand even in the postwar period continued to draw legitimacy from his alignment with the Allies,Japan, China, and Pan-Asianism

180

while being extremely vague about his “democratic” tendencies and never directly addressing theissue of fascism.22
The moral judgment on collaboration officially promoted in postwar Nationalist China was thus
constructed at the crossroad between local nationalist sentiments and a globalizing political
discourse. While ethical considerations certainly played a more visible role in the postwar
politics of memory, as also illustrated by Heonik Kwon, they were never, in fact, separate fromthe political terrain. Moral issues were always present in the ideologies and rhetoric of both theinvaders and the collaborators, as Duara notes. Even at the very local level studied by Brook,
Japanese pacification agents and local elites who worked with them might have used thisideology simply as a convention, but it still posed questions concerning the conceptual andlegitimizing framework without which any cooperation was impossible. Even at the personallevel, the authoritarian and often genocidal policies of the regimes’ collaborators faced musthave required them to rationalize the reasons that made their response acceptable.
The terms retroactively imposed on the moral question by the postwar resistentialist narrative are
obviously no longer adequate, as Brook rightly remarks. Restoring an historical dimension to thedifferent stages of collaboration and using a comparative approach can contribute to a better
understanding not just of the original political landscape of collaboration, but also of the terms inwhich ethical issues came to be formulated and experienced during the war and the role they
played in the original political circumstances of collaboration.
Margherita Zanasi is Associate Professor of Modern Chinese History in the Department ofHistory at Louisiana State University. She is the author of Saving China: Economic Modernity in
Republican China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 2006) and of “Globalizing Hanjian:
The Suzhou Trials and the Post-World War II Discourse on Collaboration,” The American
Historical Review 113.3 (June 2008).
Notes
1

The close connection between human rights issues and the postwar moral judgment oncollaboration is illustrated by the sudden change in French public opinion on collaborators. As
news of the Holocaust began to emerge in the immediate postwar, the number of French who
supported severe punishment for collaborators increased dramatically.
2“Resistentialism” is a term generally used to characterize the postwar discourse on
collaboration in France, but is extended here to include different forms of mythologizing ofresistance in other countries including China. Henry Rousso, The Vichy Syndrome: History andMemory in France Since 1944 (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1991); Eric Conanand Henry Rousso, Vichy: An Ever-Present Past, Contemporary French Culture and Society(Hanover: University Press of New England, 1998).
3

For a discussion of collaborationist nationalism outside of the debate that developed in the
1990s in European history, see Collaborationist Nationalism in Occupied wartime China” in
Timothy Brook and Andre Schmid, Nation Work: Asian Elites and National Identities (AnnArbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000); Margherita Zanasi, Saving the Nation: Economic
Modernity in Republican China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006) (chapter 7) andZanasi, “Globalizing Hanjian: The Suzhou Trials and the Post-World War II Discourse on
Collaboration,” The American Historical Review 113.3 (June 2008).

Zanasi: New Perspectives on Chinese Collaboration

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4

Prasenjit Duara, Sovereignty and Authenticity: Manchukuo and the East Asian Modern(Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2003) and his contribution to this journal
symposium.
5

Burrin, “Vichy,” in Pierre Nora ed. Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past. Vol. 1
Conflicts and Divisions (New York, 1998); Zanasi, “Globalizing Hanjian.
6

Simon Kitson, The Hunt for Nazi Spies: Fighting Espionage in Vichy France (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2008); Robert O. Paxton, “Vichy vs. the Nazis,” The New York
Review of Books 55.3(March 6, 2008), p. 39-40.
7I refer here to Kedward’s analysis of Vichy, which, however, can easily be extended to the lastyears of the RNG. See H. Roderick Kedward, “Introduction” In Kedward and Austin eds., Vichy
France and the Resistance: Culture and Ideology, 2-3.
8

Brook. “Collaborationist Nationalism.”

9

Brooks, “Collaborationist Nationalism”; Duara, Sovereignty and Authenticity; Parks Coble,
Chinese Capitalists in Japan’s New Order; Hwang Dongyoun, “Wang Jingwei, the Nanjing
government and the problem of collaboration,” Thesis (Ph.D.), Duke University, 1999.
10

Zanasi, “Globalizing Hanjian”; Chen Gongbo, “Zibaishu.”

11

Rousso, The Vichy Syndrome.

12

We know that, for example, the French initially supported Vichy but soon changed their views
as Vichy’s inability to resist German pressures became apparent. Kedward, Occupied France:
Collaboration and Resistance 1940-1944, 2-3, and 17; Burrin, France under the Germans; Pierre
Laboire, L’Opinion Française sous Vichy, 228 on.
13

Zanasi, “Globalizing Hanjian”; Chen Gongbo, “Zibaishu.”

14

Wang first allied against Jiang Jieshi with Feng Yuxiang and Yan Xishan in 1930, only tosuffer military defeat at the hands of Jiang. Later, in 1931, he began a difficult collaboration with
Chen Jitang in Canton.
15

Rana Mitter, The Manchurian Myth: Nationalism, Resistance, and Collaboration in Modern
China (Berkeley, Calif.; London: University of California Press 2000).
16

In the city of Xi’an in December 1936 warlord Zhang Xueliang, at the time a general of the
GMD army, kidnapped Jiang in cooperation with the Communists and elicited from him theassurance that he would declare war on Japan. What qualifies this incident as an event of“warlord politics” is not simply the fact that Zhang Xueliang was a warlord, but that it employedelements of “warlord” political dynamics, such as kidnapping and geographical power bases.
17

I borrow this term from Deák István, Jan Tomasz. Gross, and Tony Judt, The Politics ofRetribution in Europe: World War II and Its Aftermath (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
Press, 2000).
18
19

For a discussion of aspects of this shared experience see Zanasi, “Globalizing Hanjian.”

For a more detailed explanation of “material control” in the RNG see Henriot, Christian,“Rice, Power, and People: The Politics of Food Supply in Wartime Shanghai (1937-1945).”

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Twentieth-Century China 26, no. 1 (Nov. 2000): 41-84.; Wang Ke-Wen, “Collaborators andCapitalists: The Politics of `Material Control’ in Wartime Shanghai.” Chinese Studies in History
26, no. 1 (Fall 1992): 42-62; Zanasi, Saving the Nation (chapter 7). For a discussion of theJapanese role in the direct procurement of grains in the RNG see Yuan Yuquan. “Riben qinlue
zhi paozhe de shangtonghui.” In Shanghai wenshi ziliao xuanji. Shanghai: Shanghai renminchubanshe, 1987.
20

We cannot forget the political importance of this aspect of the resistentialist discourse, at leastin Western Europe (Eastern Europe’s discourse on collaboration assumed different dimensions).
For a comparison of the politics of retribution in Western and Eastern Europe see Deák et al.,The politics of Retribution in Europe. The importance of the resistentialist narrative ofresistance, collaboration, and anti-authoritarianism is illustrated by the political weight it still
exercises, as exemplified by a 1990s Italian political debate, with resonance throughout Western
Europe and North America. For that debate see, among others, Norberto Bobbio, Renzo De
Felice, and Gian Enrico Rusconi, Italiani, Amici Nemici, I libri di Reset (Milano; Roma: Reset ;Donzelli, 1996); Nicola Tranfaglia, Un passato scomodo: fascismo e postfascismo (Roma:
Laterza, 1996); and Silvana Patriarca, “Italian Neopatriotism: Debating National Identity in the
1990s,” Modern Italy 6, no. 1 (2001): 21-34.
21

In this sense, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)—which vied with the GMD in claiming thepolitically important legacy of the resistance and was therefore constructing its own narrative of
war—was better positioned to deploy Western European resistentialism, since it better resonatedwith its antifascist propaganda. However, the CCP’s politically authoritarian nature and its
increasing distancing from the Allies in the postwar years, affected the CCP discourse on
collaboration, leading to the construction of its characteristic blend of patriotism and socialism.
For a discussion of Communist propaganda and the construction of its distinctive resistentialist
myth, see Parks Coble, “China at War, 1937-1945: Remembering and Re-remembering China’s
War of Resistance” Paper presented at the Historical Society for Twentieth-Century China
Biannual Conference “Chinese Nation, Chinese State,” Singapore, June 26-28, 2006)’ see also
his “China’s ‘New Remembering’ of the Anti-Japanese War of Resistance, 1937-1945,” The
China Quarterly 190 (June 2007), pp. 390-410.
22

This strategy also characterized Jiang’s handling of the Cold War in support of his militaryconfrontation with the CCP (1945-1949). References to anti-Communism at this time were
sufficient to align him on the United States side without need to expatiate on antiauthoritarianism.

Hayashi: The Battle of Singapore

183“The Battle of Singapore, the Massacre of Chinese and Understanding of the Issue in
Postwar Japan”
Hayashi Hirofumi
July 13, 2009http://www.japanfocus.org/-Hayashi-Hirofumi/3187“New Syonan and Asianism in Japanese-era Singapore”
Vivian Blaxell
July 23, 2008
http://www.japanfocus.org/-Vivian-Blaxell/2644
While China was at the center of Japan’s war, by 1942 Japan had occupied much ofSoutheast Asia, home of many ethnic Chinese. Often Chinese nationalists in those places
were potential leaders of resistance to Japan. On the other hand, Japanese authorities knewthat educated Chinese could be useful in subordinating other Southeast Asians to theJapanese empire, since they had played this role for European imperialists. Hayashi
Hirofumi’s “The Battle of Singapore, the Massacre of Chinese and Understanding of theIssue in Postwar Japan” and Vivian Blaxell’s “New Syonan and Asianism in Japanese-era
Singapore” both discuss the complexities of Japanese occupation in Southeast Asia.
Hayashi shows that killing ethnic Chinese was explicit Japanese military policy because
Chinese were assumed to be innately opposed to Japanese empire, showing the military’s
skepticism about Pan-Asianism. Nonetheless, as Blaxell shows, other Japanese
simultaneously worked to win the support of two groups, Chinese and Eurasian Christians(usually part Chinese) through construction of two model villages, New Syonan and Fuji
Village. In both cases, the actual ways that Japanese Singapore functioned was far morechaotic and contingent than high-level policy would suggest. The ironic contrast between
Japanese war crimes happening side-by-side with Japanese attempts to find Chinese allies
to build a new Asia was common everywhere.

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184

The Battle of Singapore, the Massacre of Chinese and Understanding of the Issue in
Postwar Japan
Hayashi Hirofumi
Shortly after British forces surrendered in Singapore on 15 February 1942, the Japanese militarybegan operation Kakyou Shukuseia or Dai Kenshou,b known in the Chinese community ofSingapore as the Sook Ching (“Purge”),c in which many local Chinese were massacred.1
Although the killings have been investigated extensively by scholars in Malaysia and Singapore,
this article draws on Japanese sources to examine the events.

Chinese inspected by Kempeitai following the capture of Singapore

The first point to be considered is why the massacre took place, and the second is how themassacre has been presented in postwar Japan. Although even ex-Kempeitai officers involved
have admitted that the killings were inhumane and unlawful, little attention has been paid to theepisode in Japan. While there has been valuable research carried out on the Japanese militaryadministration of Malaya and Singapore, no detailed Japanese study of the killing has appeared.
Moreover, while the Singapore Massacre is well known to scholars, similar killings in the Malay
Peninsula only came to the attention of the Japanese public in the late 1980s after I discovered
documents relating to the Japanese military units involved.
Why did the Japanese Military Massacre Chinese in Singapore?
On the night of 17 February 1942, Maj. Gen. Kawamura Saburo, an infantry brigade
commander, was placed in charge of Japan’s Singapore Garrison. The next morning, he appearedat Army Headquarters and was ordered by 25th Army commander, Lt. Gen. Yamashita
Tomoyuki, to carry out mopping-up operations. He received further detailed instructions fromthe chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Suzuki Sosaku, and Lt. Colonel Tsuji Masanobu. Kawamura thenconsulted with the Kempeitai commander, Lt. Col. Oishi Masayuki. The plan to purge theChinese population was drawn up in the course of these meetings. Under this scheme, Chinese
males between the ages of 18 and 50 were ordered to report to mass screening centers. Those
deemed anti-Japanese were detained, loaded onto lorries, and taken away to the coast or to otherisolated places where they were machine-gunned and bayoneted to death.2 My survey of official
documents of the Japanese military revealed two sources that specified the number massacred.
One is Kawamura’s diary that shows the figure as 5,000.3 The other is an issue of theIntelligence Record of the 25th Army (No.62, dated 28 May 1942) prepared by the staff sectionof the 25th Army.4 This secret record states that the number missing as a result of bombing andHayashi: The Battle of Singapore

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the purge was 11,110. This second record is important because it was drawn up as a secretdocument shortly after the purge took place. However, it includes both bombing and purge
casualties and offers no basis for the figure.
In Singapore it is generally believed that the number killed in this event was about 50,000.5
However, on the basis of materials available in Japan, Singapore, and the UK, I find no basis forthis figure. Although I can not present exact figures, my estimation is that a minimum of 5000
died; I can offer no figure for the maximum. The issue of numbers remains unsettled.
The mass screening was carried out mainly by Kempeitai personnel between 21 and 23 February
in urban areas, and by the Imperial Guard Division at the end of February in suburban districts.
Most accounts of the killings include a map that shows the island divided into four sections, andexplain that the Imperial Guards, the 5th Division, and the 18th Division carried out the mass
screening in suburban districts.[6] However, on 21 February, the 25th Army ordered both the 5th
and 18th Divisions to move into the Malay Peninsula to carry out mopping-up operations.7 Theorder assigned the Imperial Guard Division to conduct a mass screening of non-urban areas ofSingapore, with the 5th and the 18th Divisions responsible for the rest of the Malay Peninsula.
According to war diaries and documents relating to these two divisions, neither played a role inthe mass screening in Singapore. The 1947 British war crimes trial in Singapore8 prosecuted thecommander of the Imperial Guard Division, Lt. Gen. Nishimura Takuma, on charges related to
the Singapore Massacre, but not the commanders of the 5th or 18th Divisions. This version of
events is correct, and the conventional mapping of the massacre is incorrect.

Kempeitai headquarters: the old YMCA Building

It is important to note that the purge was planned before Japanese troops landed in Singapore.
The military government section of the 25th Army had already drawn up a plan entitled,“Implementation Guidline for Manipulating Overseas Chinese” on or around 28 December
1941.9 This guideline stated that anyone who failed to obey or cooperate with the occupation
authorities should be eliminated. It is clear that the headquarters of the 25th Army had decided
on a harsh policy toward the Chinese population of Singapore and Malaya from the beginning of
the war. According to Onishi Satoru,10 the Kempeitai officer in charge of the Jalan Besar
screening centre, Kempeitai commander Oishi Masayuki was instructed by the chief of staff,
Suzuki Sosaku, at Keluang, Johor, to prepare for a purge following the capture of Singapore.
Although the exact date of this instruction is not known, the Army headquarters was stationed in
Keluang from 28 January to 4 February 1942.

Japan, China, and Pan-Asianism

186

Rebuttal of the Defense
Let us consider the justification or defense for the actions of the Japanese army presented bysome Japanese writers and researchers. One of the major points is that the Chinese volunteer
forces, such as the Dalforce, the Singapore Overseas Chinese Anti-Japanese Volunteer Army,fought fiercely and caused heavy Japanese casualties. This is supposed to have inflamed
Japanese anger and led to reprisals against local Chinese.11 About 600 personnel from among the
1,250-strong Dalforce volunteers were sent to the front. Some 30 per cent of Dalforce personnel
either died in action or were killed during the subsequent Purge.12 It is generally said in
Singapore that the Dalforce personnel fought fiercely.13 Whatever their bravery, however, theirrole seems exaggerated in Singapore accounts. The volunteers of Dalforce were equipped onlywith outdated weapons. Japanese military histories make no reference to Chinese volunteers
during the battle of Singapore, and report that the opposition put up by British forces was weaker
than expected. The greatest threat to the Japanese was artillery bombardment.14
During the war crimes trial of 1947, no Japanese claimed that losses suffered by Japanese forcesat the hand of Chinese volunteers contributed to the massacre. As noted above, the 25th Army
had planned the mass purge even before the battle of Singapore. This sequence of events clearly
rebuts the claims.
A second point raised is that the Chinese in Malaya were passing intelligence to the British andthat Chinese guerrillas were engaged in subversive activities against Japanese forces during the
Malayan campaign, for example by flashing signals to British airplanes. The Kempeitai of the25th Army was on the alert for such activities during the Malayan campaign, but made only twoarrests. Kempeitai officer Onishi Satoru said in his memoirs that they had been unable to findany evidence of the use of flash signals and that it was technologically impossible. Thus, this lineof argument is refuted by a military officer who was directly involved in the events.15
A third explanation offered for the massacre is that anti-Japanese Chinese were preparing for anarmed insurrection, and that law and order was deteriorating in Singapore. They claim that apurge was necessary to restore public order, and this point was raised at the war crimes trial in
Singapore.16 One piece of evidence cited by the defense during the trial was an entry in
Kawamura’s personal diary for 19 February that purportedly said looting still continued in thecity. The same evidence was presented to the Tokyo War Crimes Trial. However, the diary
actually says that order in the city was improving.17 The extract used during the trials was
prepared by a Japanese army task force set up to counter charges made during war crimes trials
by the Allied forces. Clearly the evidence was manipulated.
Otani Keijiro, a Kempeitai lieutenant colonel in charge of public security in Singapore from the
beginning of March 1942, also rejected this line of defense, severely criticizing Japanese
atrocities in Singapore.18 Onishi stated that he had not expected hostile Chinese to begin an antiJapanese campaign, at least not in the short term, since public security in Singapore was
improving.19
The fourth argument is that staff officer Tsuji Masanobu was the mastermind behind themassacre, and that he personally planned and carried it out. Although Tsuji was a key figure inthese events, I believe that researchers have overestimated his role. At the time of the war crimes
trials, Tsuji had not been arrested. As soon as the war ended, he escaped from Thailand to China,
where he came under the protection of the Kuomintang government, having cooperated with

Hayashi: The Battle of Singapore

187

them in fighting the communists. He later secretly returned to Japan in May 1948 where he wasprotected by the US military, namely G2 of GHQ.20 In this situation, the defense counsel of thewar crimes trial of 1947 attempted to pin all responsibility on Tsuji, who could not be
prosecuted. This point will be discussed in more detail below.
Let us now examine the reasons why the Japanese in Singapore committed such atrocities. I limit
the discussion to internal factors of Japanese military and society.
First, it should be noted that the Japanese occupation of Singapore began a decade after the startof Japan’s war of aggression against China. After the Manchurian Incident in 1931, Japan
invaded and occupied Manchuria, setting up the puppet state of “Manchukuo” in 1932. The
Japanese army faced a strong anti-Japanese campaign and public order remained unstable. The
military responded by conducting frequent punitive operations against anti-Japanese guerrillas
and their supporters. Under normal circumstances, those arrested in these operations should havebeen apprehended and brought to trial for punishment. However, Japan forced Manchukuo toenact a law in September 1932 that granted authority to army officers, both Japanese andManchurian, as well as police officers, to execute anti-Japanese activists on the spot without
trial. This method of execution, which denied judicial due process to Chinese captives, wasusually called Genju Shobun (Harsh Disposal) or Genchi Shobun (Disposal on the Spot) by theJapanese military.21 With this law in place, the Japanese military and military police killedsuspects without trial or investigation. Those killed were not only guerrillas but also civilians,
including children, women, and the aged. Such inhumane methods were legalized in Manchuria.
From 1937, Genju Shobun was applied regularly throughout the China-Japan War, with civilians
denied the right of trial and Chinese soldiers denied prisoner of war status.22
Yamashita Tomoyuki, the 25th Army commander who directed the invasion of Malaya, played
an important role in the evolution of Genju Shobun. As chief of staff of the North China Area
Army in 1938-1939, he formulated an operational plan for mopping-up in northern China thatdrew on the Genju Shobun experience, having earlier been stationed in Manchuria as Supreme
Adviser to the Military Government Section of Manchukuo.23 At the time, the Chinese
communists had a number of base areas in northern China. In 1940, following Yamashita’stransfer, intensive cleanup operations called San guang zhengce (Kill All, Loot All, Burn All; J.
Sanko seisaku) were launched involving unbridled terror during which numerous people incontested areas were massacred or driven from their villages. Yamashita was the link thatconnected Japanese atrocities in Manchuria and North China with those in Singapore.24
During the final phase of the war, Yamashita was appointed commander of the 14th Area Armyin the Philippines, where he surrendered to US forces at the end of the war. While he had
experienced trouble with anti-Japanese guerillas in the Philippines, he commented to the deputy
chief of staff that his policy of dealing harshly with the local population in Singapore had madethe local population there become docile.25
The army order that began the purge in Singapore and Malaya was issued to the Singapore
Garrison Commander, Kawamura by Army Commander Yamashita. When Kawamura presented
Yamashita a report on the operations of 23 February, Yamashita expressed his appreciation for
Kawamura’s efforts and instructed him to continue the purge as necessary.26 Yamashita was nota puppet of Tsuji but an active instigator of the Singapore Massacre.

Japan, China, and Pan-Asianism

188

A third important point is that the headquarters of the 25th Army included other hardliners aside
from Tsuji and Yamashita. A notable example was the deputy chief of the military governmentof Singapore and Malaya, Col. Watanabe Wataru.27 He was the mastermind behind the forcible
donation of $50 million and the “Implementation Guidance for Manipulating Overseas Chinese”,
which set out the fatal consequences of non-compliance. His earlier career included time spent as
chief of a secret military agency in both Beijing and Harbin. He delivered a speech at the Army
Academy in 1941 advocating strong pressure against those who “bent their knees” to the British
and thereby betrayed East Asia. The lesson he derived from his experience in China was thatJapan should deal harshly with the Chinese population from the outset. As a result, the Chinese
in Singapore were regarded as anti-Japanese even before the Japanese military landed.
In this and other senses, Japanese aggression in Southeast Asia was an extension of the SinoJapanese War.
Fourth, among Japanese military officers and men there was a culture of prejudice toward theChinese and other Asian people. These attitudes had deepened following the Sino-Japanese Warof 1894-95 and were embedded within the Japanese population as a whole by the 1930s.
A final consideration is the issue of “preventive killing”. In Japan, preventive arrest was
legalised in 1941 through a revision of Chian Iji Ho [Public Order Law], which allowed
communists and others holding dangerous thoughts to be arrested and held in custody even if nocrime had been committed. A number of detainees were tortured to death by the police, notably
the Tokko special political police. The Singapore Massacre bears a close parallel to this methodof preventive arrest and summary execution.
Clearly, then, the Singapore Massacre was not the conduct of a few evil people, but wasconsistent with approaches honed and applied in the course of a long period of Japaneseaggression against China and subsequently applied to other Asian countries. To sum up thepoints developed above, the Japanese military, in particular the 25th Army, made use of the purge
to remove prospective anti-Japanese elements and to threaten local Chinese and others in order toswiftly impose military administration. However, Japanese violence proved counter productive.
Strong anti-Japanese feelings were ignited in the local population and not a few younger people
joined anti-Japanese movements. The result was that Japanese forces never succeeded inresolving these difficulties in the years prior to defeat in 1945.
Narratives of the Singapore Massacre in Postwar JapanThe Campaign to Undermine the War Crimes Trials in the 1950s
Although the Singapore Massacre generated scant interest among the Japanese people in the
postwar era, there has been some discussion of the incident. Singapore Garrison Commander
Kawamura Saburo published his reminiscences in 1952, at a time when Japan was recovering its
independence.28 This book contains his diaries, personal letters, and other materials. In one letterto his family, he expressed condolences to the victims of Singapore and prayed for the repose of
their souls. The foreword to the book was written by Tsuji, who had escaped punishment after
the war. For his part, Tsuji showed no regrets and offered no apology to the victims.
During the 1950s, the Japanese government, members of parliament, and private organisations
waged a nationwide campaign for the release of war criminals held in custody at Sugamo Prisonin Tokyo.29 Both conservatives and progressives took part in the campaign, arguing that minor

Hayashi: The Battle of Singapore

189

war criminals were victims of the war, not true criminals. A Japanese government committee
was in charge of recommending the parole and release of war criminals to the Allied Nations.
The committee’s recommendations are still closed to the public in Japan, but can be read in thenational archives of the UK and USA.
As an example of the committee’s recommendations, in 1952 the British government was asked
to consider parole for Onishi Satoru, who took part in the Singapore Massacre as a Kempeitai
officer and was sentenced to life imprisonment by a British war crimes trial.30 The
recommendation says that the figure of 5,000 victims of the Singapore Massacre was untrue andthat his war crimes trial had been an act of reprisal. Although this recommendation was not
approved by the British government, it reflects the Japanese government’s refusal to admit thatmass murder had occurred in Singapore.31 Among many Japanese, the war crimes trials were,and still are, regarded as a mockery of justice, or victor’s justice.
Japanese Response to Accusations by Singaporeans in the 1960s
Beginning in 1962, numerous human remains dating from the Occupation were found in various
locations around Singapore. Prolonged discussions between the Singaporean and Japanese
governments relating to these deaths led to a settlement in 1967. This was reported in theJapanese press, but only as minor news. For example, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun quoted aJapanese official involved in the negotiations as saying that no executions by shooting occurredin Malaysia.32 The Asahi Shimbun reported that it was hardly conceivable that the Japanesemilitary committed atrocities in Indonesia and Thailand.33 Another Asahi report criticized theChinese Chamber of Commerce in Singapore for stoking hatred by propagating stories ofbarbarity by the Japanese military during the war.34

Personal mementoes of Singaporeans excavated during the 1960s
and presently exhibited in the Sun Yat-sen villa

In 2003, the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs released documents relating to the negotiations
between Singapore and Japan during this period.35 The Japanese government had made use of areport prepared in 1946 by an army committee chaired by Sugita Ichiji, a staff officer with the25th Army. To counter war crimes charges, the report admitted that there had been executions,but insisted that there were mitigating circumstances.36
The figure of 5,000 executions, according to a written opinion by an official at the Ministry ofJustice who was in charge of detained war criminals, was an exaggeration: the correct figureJapan, China, and Pan-Asianism

190

might be about 800. The Asahi Shimbun reported this number with apparent approval.37
Additional figures come from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which accepted that the Japanesemilitary had carried out mass killings in Singapore, but some Japanese foreign ministry
documents state that the number of victims was 3,000, while others use 5,000. One ex-foreign
ministry official sent a letter to the Foreign Minister saying that Japan should repent andapologize in all sincerity, but this attitude was exceptional among officials.

Changi Beach, site of largescale executions

During negotiations with Singapore, the Japanese government rejected demands for reparations
but agreed to make a “gesture of atonement” by providing funds in other ways. What theJapanese government feared most was economic damage as a result of a boycott or sabotage by
the local Chinese should Singapore’s demands be rejected. The agreement with Singapore wassigned on the same day as a similar agreement with Malaysia. Singapore was to receive 25
million Singapore dollars as a gift and another 25 million Singapore dollars in credit, while
Malaysia was to receive 25 million Malaysia dollars as a gift.38
To the last, the Japanese government refused to accept legal responsibility for the massacre or tocarry out a survey of the deaths. The mass media in Japan did not examine what had happened in
Singapore and Malaya during the war. It is no exaggeration to say that the Japanese media at thattime showed no inclination to confront Japan’s war crimes or war responsibility.
Publications in the 1970s
There were, however, some honest responses in subsequent years. In 1967 Professor Ienaga
Saburo, famous for his history textbook lawsuit against the Japanese government, published abook entitled The Pacific War that dealt with the Singapore Massacre.39 In 1970, the monthly
journal Chugoku [China] published a feature called, “Blood Debt: Chinese Massacre in
Singapore”, the first extended treatment in Japan of the Singapore Massacre.40 The piece wasmostly written by Professor Tanaka Hiroshi.
The 1970s also saw publication of reminiscences by some of those directly involved in the
Massacre, and by people who witnessed or heard about it, including Nihon Kempei Seishi [TheOfficial History of the Japanese Kempeitai] by the Zenkoku Kenkyukai Rengokai [Joint
Association of National Kempei Veterans],41 Kempei by Otani Keijiro, and Hiroku Shonan
Kakyo Shukusei Jiken [Secret Memoir of Singapore Overseas Chinese Purification] by Onishi
Satoru. Onishi Satoru was a Kempeitai section commander who took part in the Massacre. In his

Hayashi: The Battle of Singapore

191

book Onishi admitted that the “purification” was a serious crime against humanity, but heclaimed that the number of victims was actually around 1,000.42 Otani’s book severely criticizes
the Japanese military, denouncing the “purification” as an act of tyranny and criticizing it from ahuman perspective.43
Although veterans’ associations usually justify or deny that inhuman acts had taken place, theJoint Association of National Kempei Veterans has admitted that the massacre was an inhuman
act.44 A few writers who were stationed or visited Singapore during the war have also publishedmemoirs in which they record what they had heard about the Singapore Massacre.45 On thewhole, nobody denied that the Japanese purge in Singapore was an atrocity against humanity andhistorians began to pay attention to the episode. However, it failed to catch the attention of theJapanese people.
Research in the 1980s and 1990s
The situation changed in 1982, when the Ministry of Education ordered the deletion of passages
relating to Japanese wartime atrocities in Asia from school textbooks, and instructed textbook
writers to replace the term “aggression” with less emotive terms, such as “advance.”46 Thisdecision was severely criticized both at home and abroad, and a growing number of historians
began to conduct research into Japanese atrocities, including the Nanjing Massacre.47
In 1984, while the textbook controversy continued, a bulky book called Malayan Chinese
Resistance to Japan 1937-1945: Selected Source Materials was published in Singapore. Sectionsof this volume were translated into Japanese in 1986 under the title Nihongun Senryoka no
Singapore [Singapore under Japanese Occupation], allowing Japanese to read in their own
language Singaporean testimony concerning wartime events.48 The main translator was Professor
Tanaka Hiroshi, mentioned earlier as the author of a magazine article on the Singapore Massacre.
Another significant publication was a 1987 booklet by Takashima Nobuyoshi, then a high school
teacher and now a professor at Ryukyu University, entitled Tabi Shiyo Tonan-Ajia E [Let’s
travel to Southeast Asia].49 Based on information Takashima collected during repeated visits to
Malaysia and Singapore beginning in the early 1980s, the booklet discussed atrocities andprovided details of the “Memorial to the Civilian Victims of the Japanese Occupation” and of an
exhibition of victim mementos at the Sun Yat-sen Villa. The volume served as a guidebook forJapanese wishing to understand wartime events or visit sites of Japanese atrocities. In 1983 hebegan organising study tours to historical sites related to Japanese Occupation and to places
where massacres occurred in Malaysia and Singapore.
In 1987, I located official military documents in the Library of the National Institute for Defense
Studies, Defense Agency that included operational orders and official diaries related to themassacre of Chinese in Negri Sembilan and Malacca in 1942. Newspapers throughout Japan
reported these findings, the first time that public attention focused on the killings in Malaya.50
The documents revealed that troops from Hiroshima had been involved in atrocities in Negri
Sembilan and this information came as a major shock to the people of Hiroshima, who had
thought themselves as victims of the atomic bomb and had never imagined that their fathers or
husbands had been involved in the massacres in Malaya.51
In 1988, several citizen groups jointly invited Chinese survivors from Malaysia to visit Japan,
and staged meetings where Japanese citizens listened to their testimony. A book that includedJapan, China, and Pan-Asianism

192

these statements was published in 1989.52 Also in 1988, the Negri Sembilan Chinese AssemblyHall published a book in Chinese called Collected Materials of Suffering of Chinese in Negeri
Sembilan during the Japanese Occupation, and the following year Professor Takashima and I
published a Japanese translation of this volume.53 Another source of information was the history
textbook used in Singapore by students in junior high school, Social and Economic History ofModern Singapore 2, which was translated into Japanese in 1988. The material concerning theoccupation attracted the attention of Japanese readers, particularly teachers and researchers.54
As might be expected, there was a backlash to these initiatives. It was claimed that Japanese
troops killed only guerrillas and their supporters, and that the number was much smaller thanreported. Responding to these allegations, I published a book in 1992 entitled Kakyo Gyakusatu:
Nihongun Shihaika no Mare Hanto [Chinese Massacres: The Malay Peninsula under Japanese
Occupation]55 that substantiated in detail the activities of the Japanese military in Negri
Sembilan during March 1942, when several thousand Chinese were massacred. Since then there
has been no rebuttal by those who would not concede the massacres in Malaya apart frompersonal attacks and contesting of trifling details that have no effect on the central argument.56
In 1996, the Singapore Heritage Society’s book, SYONAN: Singapore under the Japanese, 19421945 was translated into Japanese.57 This book comprehensively introduced Japanese readers to
the living conditions and suffering of Singaporeans under the Japanese occupation. Further
information appeared in a book I published entitled, Sabakareta Senso Hanzai: Igirisu no
Tainichi Senpan Saiban [Tried War Crimes; British War Crimes Trials of Japanese]. This
volume contains an account of the Singapore Massacre based on British, Chinese and Japanese
documents.58
The Rightist Backlash and the School Textbook Issue Since 2000
In the 1990s, some Japanese high school history textbooks began to provide information on themassacres in Singapore and Malaya, although they devoted only one or two lines to the events.
More recently, chauvinistic campaigns and sentiment have become rampant in Japan. A number
of ultra right books now claim that the Nanjing Massacre is a fabrication, that the Japanesemilitary took good care of comfort women, and so on. Under pressure from the Ministry of
Education, the Liberal Democratic Party, and other neo-nationalists, statements in school
textbooks about Japanese atrocities have become less common, and the Minister of Education
said in 2004 that it was desirable that descriptions of Japanese atrocities be dropped.59 Moreover,teachers who explain Japanese aggression and army atrocities are often subjected to criticism bylocal officials or municipal education boards.
Descriptions of the Singapore massacre in high school history textbooks are particularly rare.
According to research in the 1990s, just 8 out of a total of 26 textbooks mentioned the event.60
The most widely used textbook states simply that “atrocities took place in Singapore andelsewhere.”61 Other textbooks say that the Japanese army massacred tens of thousands ofoverseas Chinese in Singapore and Malaya, but even these descriptions are limited to one or twolines, and give no details. Anyone who dared set a question about the atrocities for a university
entrance examination could expect attacks not only from right-wingers but also from MPs
belonging to the ruling Liberal Democratic Party.
The situation is similar with regard to junior high school history textbooks. In the eight textbooks
approved by the Ministry of Education in April 2005 for use from 2006, descriptions of Korean

Hayashi: The Battle of Singapore

193

forced labor have all but disappeared, as has the term “comfort women”. Overall, references toJapanese aggression and atrocities have been drastically reduced under pressure from the
Ministry of Education, the Liberal Democratic Party, and the right-leaning mass media. If thecurrent ultra-nationalistic trend continues, it seems likely that even the few descriptions of theSingapore massacre that do exist will be eliminated.

Civilian War Memorial in War Memorial Park, Singapore

Conclusion
Work by Singaporean and other researchers has produced valuable information about theSingapore massacre, yet it seems to me that there is room for further research. In particular, what
seems lacking is collation of documents in English, Chinese, and Japanese. While Singapore
citizens have accounts of the Massacre and the suffering caused by the Japanese occupation,
students in Japan are unable to imagine what happened in Singapore and Malaya during theJapanese Occupation. Few Japanese students have any opportunity to learn about the
Occupation, and the many Japanese who visit Singapore each year generally are unaware of thekillings or of the wartime suffering of Singaporeans. It is difficult to redress the balance, but if
Japan is to achieve full reconciliation with the people of Singapore and other Southeast Asian
countries and gain their trust, steps in the right direction must be taken.
Hayashi Hirofumi is professor of politics at Kanto-Gakuin University and the Co-Director of theCenter for Research and Documentation on Japan’s War Responsibility. His books include
Okinawasen to Minshu (The Battle of Okinawa and the People), Otsuki Shoten, 2001 and Ianfu,
Senji Seiboryoku no Jittai: Chugoku, Tonan-Ajia, Taiheiyo Hen (The Comfort Women andWartime Sexual Violence: China, Southeast Asia and the Pacific), Ryokufu Shuppan, 2000. He
wrote this article for The Asia-Pacific Journal.
NotesaKakyō Shukusei (華僑粛正)Japan, China, and Pan-Asianismb

Dai Kenshō (大検証)c

Sook Ching (肃清- Purge)

194

1

The Japanese term “Shukusei” was used by the Japanese Army at the time. In the Chinese
community of Singapore it is usually called “Sook Ching” (mandarin “Suqing”).
2

For details on the decision-making in the 25th Army, see Hayashi Hirofumi, Sabakareta Sensō
Hanzai [Tried War Crimes: British War Crimes Trials of Japanese](Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten,1998) and ‘Shingaporu Kakyō Shukusei [Massacre of Chinese in Singapore]’ Nature-PeopleSociety: Science and the Humanities, Kantō-Gakuin University, No.40, Jan. 2006.
3

Kawamura’s diary is preserved in the National Archives of the UK in London.

4

This document is preserved in the Library of the National Institute for Defense Studies[LNIDS], Defense Agency, Tokyo.
5

For example, Singapore Heritage Society, Syonan: Singapore under the Japanese 1942-1945(Singapore: Singapore Heritage Society, 1992), National Archives of Singapore, The Japanese
Occupation, 1942-1945 (Singapore: Times, 1996), p. 72.
6

For example, National Archives of Singapore, The Japanese Occupation, 1942-1945, p. 68.

7

The operational order of the 25th Army and the order of the 5th Division dated 21 February
1942 in LNIDS.
8

In this trial seven officers were prosecuted. Among them two were sentenced to death, whileother five were sentenced to imprisonment for life. This is one of most famous war crimes trials
held by the British in Singapore.
9“Kakyō Kōsaku Jisshi Yōryō [Implementation Guidance for Manipulating Overseas Chinese]”in LNIDS.
10

Onishi Satoru, Hiroku Shonan Kakyo Shukusei Jiken [Secret Memoir Overseas Chinese
Massacre in Singapore] (Tokyo: Kongo Shuppan, 1977), p. 69 and p. 78.
11This claim is prevalent among researchers in Japan. It is believed even by those who are notright-wingers. I have not clarified who put forward this reason for first time.
12

The Dalforce file in “British Military Administration, Chinese Affairs, 1945-1946” (National
Archives of Singapore).
13

Numerous books contain such assertions, particularly books in Chinese.

14

Rikujo Jieitai Kanbu Gakko [Ground Staff College, Ground Self-Defense Force], Mare
Sakusen [The Malay Campaign] (Tokyo: Hara Shobo, 1996), pp. 240-1.
15
16Ōnishi, Hiroku Shonan Kakyō Shukusei Jiken, pp. 87-8.

Furyo Kankei Chōsa Chuō Iinkai [Central Board of Inquiry on POWs], “Shingaporu ni okeru
Kakyō Shodan Jōkyō Chōsho” [Record of Investigation on the Execution of Overseas Chinese in
Singapore], 23 Oct. 1945 (Reprinted in Nagai Hitoshi (ed.), Sensō Hanzai Chōsa Shiryō[Documents on War Crimes Investigation] (Tokyo: Higashi Shuppan, 1995).

Hayashi: The Battle of Singapore
17

See Hayashi Hirofumi, Sabakareta Senso Hanzai, p. 224.

18

Otani Keijiro, Kenpei [The Military Police] (Tokyo: Shin-Jinbutsu Oraisha, 1973), p. 189.

19Ōnishi, Hiroku Shonan Kakyō Shukusei Jiken, p. 86.

195

20

The intelligence files on Tsuji are preserved in Boxes 457 and 458, Personal Files of theInvestigative Records Repository, Record Group 319 (The Army Staff), US National Archives
and Records Administration.
21

Asada Kyoji and Kobayashi Hideo (eds.), Nihon Teikokushugi no Manshu Shihai[Administration of Manchuria by the Japanese Imperialism] (Tokyo: Jicho-Sha, 1986), p. 180.
22

See Ōnishi, Hiroku Shonan Kakyō Shukusei Jiken, pp. 88-92.

23

Bōeichō Bōei Kenkyusho Senshi-bu [Military History Department, National Defense College,
Defense Agency], Hokushi no Chian-sen, Part 1 [Security Operation in North China] (Tokyo:
Asagumo Shinbunsha, 1968), pp. 114-30.
24

See Chalmers Johnson, Peasant Nationalism and Communist Power. The Emergence ofRevolutionary China, 1937-1945 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1962), pp. 55-58; Yungfa Chen, Making Revolution: The Communist Movement in Eastern and Central China, 19371945 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), pp. 98-116; Edward Friedman, Paul G.
Pickowicz and Mark Selden, Chinese Village, Socialist State (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1991), pp. 29-51.
25

Kojima Jo, Shisetu Yamashita Tomoyuki [Historical Narrative Yamashita Tomoyuki] (Tokyo:
Bungei Shunjusha, 1969), p. 325. See also Yuki Tanaka, “Last Words of the Tiger of Malaya,
General Yamashita Tomoyuki,” The Asia-Pacific Journal, September 22, 2005.
26

Kawamura’s diary. See also Hayashi, Sabakareta Senso Hanzai, p. 220.

27

See Akashi Yoji, “Watanabe Gunsei” [Military Administration by Watanabe], in Akashi Yoji(ed.), Nihon Senryōka no Eiryo Mare Shingaporu [Malaya and Singapore under the Japanese
Occupation, 1941-45] (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2001).
28

Kawamura Saburo, Jusan Kaidan wo Noboru [Walking up Thirteen Steps of Stairs] (Tokyo:
Ato Shobo, 1952).
29

See Hayashi Hirofumi, BC-kyu Senpan Saiban [Class B & C War Crimes Trials] (Tokyo:
Iwanami Shoten, 2005), ch. 6.
30

FO371/105435(National Archives, UK).

31

He was released in 1957.

32

Nihon Keizai Shimbun, 3 Nov. 1966.

33

Asahi Shimbun, 20 Sept. 1967.

34

Asahi Shimbun, 18 Sept. 1963.

35

These documents are open to the public at the Diplomatic Record Office of the Ministry ofForeign Affairs.

Japan, China, and Pan-Asianism
36

See footnote no.14.

37

Asahi Shimbun, 29 Sept. 1963.

196

38

Hara Fujio, “Mareishia, Shingaporu no Baishō Mondai” [Reparation Problem with Singapore
and Malaysia], Sensō Sekinin Kenkyu [The Report on Japan’s War Responsibility], No. 10, Dec.
1995.
39

Ienaga Saburō, Taiheiyō Sensō [The Pacific War] (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1967).

40“Kessai: Shingaporu no Chugokujin Gyakusatsu Jiken” [Blood Debt: Chinese Massacre in
Singapore], in Chugoku [China], vol. 76 (Mar. 1970).
41

Tokyo: Private Press, 1976.

42Ōnishi, Hiroku Shonan Kakyō Shukusei Jiken, pp. 93-7.

43

Otani Keijirō, Kempei, p. 189.

44

Zenkoku Kenyukai Rengōkai, Nihon Kempei Seishi, p. 979.

45

For example, Terasaki Hiroshi, Sensō no Yokogao [Profile of the War] (Tokyo: Taihei
Shuppan, 1974), Nakajima Kenzo, Kaisō no Bungaku [Literature of Recollection], vol. 5(Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1977), Omata Yukio, Zoku Shinryaku [Sequel: Aggression] (Tokyo:
Tokuma Shoten, 1982), and so on.
46

See Rekishigaku Kenkyukai [The Historical Science Society of Japan], Rekishika wa naze
Shinryaku ni kodawaruka [Why Historians adhere to Aggression] (Tokyo: Aoki Shoten, 1982).
47

Composed of historians and journalists, Nankin Jiken Chōsa Kenkyu Kai [The Society for the
Study of Nanking Massacre] was established in 1984. It remains active, although the scope of
research has been extended to Japanese atrocities in China and the rest of Southeast Asia.
48

Tokyo: Aoki Shoten, 1986.

49

Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1987.

50

This article was prepared by the Kyodo News Service and appeared in newspapers on 8 Dec.
1987.
51

As mentioned before, the 5th Division conducted purges throughout the Malay Peninsular
except Johor. The headquarters of the Division in peacetime was situated in Hiroshima andsoldiers were conscripted in Hiroshima and neighboring prefectures.
52

Sensō Giseisha wo Kokoro ni Kizamukai [Society for Keeping War Victims in our Heart],
Nihongun no Maresia Jumin Gyakusatu [The Massacres of Malaysian Local Population by theJapanese Military] (Osaka: Toho Shuppan, 1989).
53

Originally published in 1988. The Japanese translation was as follows: Takashima Nobuyoshi& Hayashi Hirofumi (eds.), Maraya no Nihongun [The Japanese Army in Malaya] (Tokyo: Aoki
Shoten, 1989).
54

Ishiwata Nobuo and Masuo Keizo (eds.), Gaikoku no Kyōkasho no nakano Nihon to Nihonjin[Japan and Japanese in a Foreign Textbook] (Tokyo: Ikkosha, 1988).

Hayashi: The Battle of Singapore
55

197Tokyo: Suzusawa Shoten, 1992. For arguments of right-wingers, see Chapter 8 of this book.

56

See, for example, two articles by Hata Ikuhiko in the journal Seiron, August and Oct. 1992 andProfessor Takashima’s and my responses in the same journal in Sept. and Nov. 1992.
57

Tokyo: Gaifusha, 1996.

58

Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1998.

59

See Hayashi Hirofumi, “Nihon no Haigaiteki Nashonarizumu wa Naze Taitō shitaka” [WhyJapanese Chauvinistic Nationalism has gained strength] in VAWW-NET Japan (ed.), Kesareta
Sabaki: NHK Bangumi Kaihen to Seiji Kainyu Jiken [Deleted Judgment: Interpolation of the
NHK TV Program and the Politicians’ Intervention] (Tokyo: Gaifusha, 2005).
60

Zenkoku Rekishi Kyōiku Kenkyu Kyōgikai [The National Council for History Education](ed.), Nihonshi Yōgo-shu [Lexicon of the Japanese History Textbook] (Tokyo: Yamakawa
Shoten, 2000), p. 291.
61

Shōsetsu Nihonshi [The Details of Japanese History] (Tokyo: Yamakawa Shoten, 2001), p.
332.

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New Syonan and Asianism in Japanese-era Singapore
Vivian Blaxell
I see the lines of imperial flags on the southern isle and think, oh how dazzling theEmperor’s reign!
I see the exotic stars of the Southern Cross in my window at dawn, but the rooster’s callsounds just the same
I see the strange sight of a soldier with a gibbon for a pet; yet in time regard it quite
without suspicion.
Tanaka Katsumi, Syonanto [Singapore], 19441
Introduction
On the east coast of the Malay Peninsula between Mersing and Endau, a few kilometers in fromthe silvery beaches along the South China Sea, one comes to Kampong Hubong. It is still and hot
here. Isolated. Rice fields lie fallow. Coconut palms, bougainvillea, hibiscus, and tall grasses
tumble together in the fields. Small buildings of stucco and timber, gone grey with age andmonsoon rains, line one side of a short paved street. A couple of Chinese men sit in the shade of
the shophouses. They yak in the Hokkien dialect. A red dog yawns.
These days Kampong Hubong is a cul-de-sac on the map of Malaysian modernization. But once,for just two short years between 1943 and 1945, Kampong Hubong was closer to the core ofthings: a new community called New Syonan that emerged from the conditions of Japan’s
occupation of Singapore, and acted as a highway for the delivery of imperial Japanese ideology
about Asian unity and cooperation.

Kampong Hubong was once New Syonan

Japanese Singapore: The Conditions of Possibility
New Syonan came from a particular historical chronotope: the Japanese occupation ofSingapore. British Malaya fell to the Imperial Japanese 25th Army on January 31, 1942. Pushed
down the peninsula by a lightning quick Japanese force of about 60,000 men, many of themriding bicycles, the much larger British army, supplemented by “colonials,” dropped back indisarray on the great British redoubt of Singapore, second only to London in its importance to
British global strategy. The Argyll regiment blew up the causeway connecting the island to themainland as they went. But to little avail. On February 15, 1942, the British surrendered andBlaxell: New Syonan and Asianism in Japanese-era Singapore

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Singapore became a part of Japan’s Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, part of theJapanese Empire.
The Japanese military command and new civil authorities immediately set about turning
Singapore into a Japanese imperial city, the capital of Japan’s empire in Southeast Asia [Nanpo],
and they began by re-naming it, Syonan-to, Light of the South. Hotels were given Japanesenames. The Raffles Library and Museum was renamed Syonan Hakubutsu-kan and headed firstby the vulcanologist, Tanakadate Hidezo, and then by Tokugawa Yoshichika, an aristocrat,
relative of the emperor, descendant of the last shogun. Mansions vacated by the British or madevacant by military evictions became homes for senior Japanese officers and civilian
administrators. Churches became ammunition dumps. Commercial air service began between
Fukuoka and Singapore via Hong Kong and Saigon.
In Japanese-era Korea, Taiwan and Manchuria, Japan radically transformed urban centers;
redesigned and rebuilt them to represent the ideals at work in Japan’s modern visions of itself
and its empire, or simply built new cities on Japanese imperial lines next to existing urban
centers. But no grand designs for Singapore’s transformation existed or could have been
implemented given the short time of Japan’s control of the city and significant problems with
supply of labor and materiel for construction required to pursue the war effort. The mostsignificant structures added to the city were religious. Except for some stones carved out to retain
water for ritual hand washing, little remains today of the Syonan Jinja, a secluded Shinto shrine
erected in tropical forest at MacRitchie Reservoir, but photographs from the time show amedium sized shrine with traditional Shinto buildings of unvarnished wood and thatch set in an
expanse of white gravel next to one of the jungle waterways in the area.

Sketch of the Syonan Jinja

Syonan Jinja was built largely by the labour of Allied prisoners of war: a cause for celebration in
Japan of the “New Asia” liberated from European imperialism and the tables turned. The August
26, 1942 edition of the weekly photographic magazine, Shashin Shuho, sold at most Japanese
news outlets and bookstores, has a cover photograph of a bare-chested POW wearing a “digger”
hat, burnishing the brass fittings on a post of the Japanese-style arched bridge leading to theshrine grounds, and an inside photo spread of POWs toting construction materials and winchinga torii gate into position, all accompanied by a brief but swaggeringly victorious text.

Japan, China, and Pan-Asianism

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A POW builds Syonan Jinja.
Source: Shashin Shuuhou, Number 235. Japan Center for Asian Historical Records. Accessed 14/11/2007

The Syonan Chureito, a shrine and memorial dedicated to the war dead on the summit of Bukit
Batoh Hill, was a grander affair, memorializing the battle for Singapore. The ashes of Japanese
troops killed in the campaign rested here beneath a 15-meter wooden cylinder topped in a rather
phallic fashion by a brass cone.

Opening ceremony at Syonan Chuureitou.
Source: Shashin Shuuhou, Number 242, October 14, 1942. Japan Center for Asian Historical Records.
Accessed 14/11/2007

Yet, if the urban space and landscape of Singapore did not change very much during Japaneserule, the culture and collective consciousness of the city did, re-forming in response to mundanechanges, minor surprises and to unimaginable horrors. It was these changes that made theestablishment of the new community, New Syonan, where Kampong Hubong now stands near
Endau, possible. The city went onto Tokyo time. A new currency came into circulation, quickly
becoming known as “banana money” because of the banana pictures on the notes. Japanese
movies played in the cinemas. Radios broadcast the Japanese national anthem and news bulletins
in Japanese. Newspapers that had reported the daily grind of King-Emperor George VI and his
consort Elizabeth, now reported the Tokyo palace meetings and appointments of Emperor
Showa, the Empress, and the Empress Dowager. A new form of popular entertainment emerged
called getai, and Japanese soldiers urinated in the streets of the city; an unremarkable habit inJapan but uncouth for Singaporeans accustomed to British ways. Relaxed Japanese attitudes
about public male nudity resulted in numerous incidents of Japanese soldiers stripping off andtaking a bath beneath standpipes in the street, terrifying local Chinese women in particular who
thought they were about to be raped.

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British Singapore had been infamous for its sex trade; Japanese rule introduced new elements tothe city’s existing business of servicing men’s sexual desire. The military authorities installed“comfort women” in requisitioned properties and turned them into “comfort stations” at Tanjong
Katong Road, Wareham Road, Branksome Road, in the York Hotel, in the Anglo-Chinese
School at Cairnhill Road, and in houses at Bukit Pasoh Road. Local Chinese women were themilitary’s first choice and comprised the majority of women forced into sexual servitude, but“comfort stations” in Singapore also included Korean and Indonesian women, as well as someJapanese women reserved for the officers.2 Lines of Japanese soldiers waiting stolidly for theirturn on the bodies of “comfort women” became a common sight. Enterprising local boys
gathered up used condoms outside the comfort stations, washed them, put them in bamboo tubes,
powdered them, rolled them up and resold them to Japanese soldiers.3

Shophouses on Bukit Pasoh Road where comfort women once worked

Approximately 3,000 Allied civilians were incarcerated under miserable conditions at Changi
Prison, built by the British to house 600. The Japanese authorities imprisoned around 50,000
Allied soldiers at the Selarang Barracks near Changi.

Selarang Barracks

Japan, China, and Pan-Asianism

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Close to 850 died.4 For the Chinese, Malay, Indian, and Eurasian people of Singapore, the time
under Japanese rule was especially difficult, far more difficult than it was for Allied civilianinternees and POWs. Looters and suspected looters were decapitated, their heads exhibited near
the General Post Office at Fullerton Square and near the Cathay Cinema on Dhoby Ghaut.5
Forgetting to bow to a Japanese soldier provoked verbal abuse at the very least and a beating at
worst. Labourers, conscripted by force and transported from Java to work on Japanese projects in
Singapore, were left to starve and die on the streets once their work was done or once they could
work no more. “The plight of the Javanese destitutes,” wrote Lee Kip Lee in his diary of 1944,
is becoming worse. There are more of them straying in the streets, with ribs sticking out,
hollow eyes, dirt crusted on their skins and nobody caring a damn for them. They aremodern slaves, brought over here to toil and discarded when they are unfit. There aresome of them gathered by Rochor Canal where, during the evenings, they group around afire and cook their meal of odds and ends.6
And then there was the sook ching, a Hokkien term meaning “purge by cleansing” about which
Geoffrey Gunn and others have written so acutely.7 The sook ching was the greatest and most
systematic of Japanese barbarisms in Singapore. Almost as soon as Singapore became Syonan,
the military police and the 25th Army rounded up Chinese males, haphazardly interrogated themto determine if they were supporters of Chiang Kai-shek’s anti-Japanese government in China,
members of triads, communists, and making decisions based upon the flimsiest of evidence—tattoos or literacy—transported them to the beaches at Changi, Punggol, or Sentosa, where now
children swim and Singaporeans barbecue and spend the weekends in tents. There, the“undesirables” were shot, often as a group tied together with wire so that the dead dragged thestill living down into the warm sea where they drowned. The sook ching continued in Singapore
for some time after Japan took the city and re-occurred on October 10, 1943. Thousands weremurdered, including women and children caught up in what the Japanese command called the
Syonan Daikensho, the Great Singapore Inspection.
But, in Singapore, as in so many other parts of Japan’s empire, Japanese brutality coexisted witha different operation of power, one that aimed to be constructive rather than destructive in theeffort to constitute the Japanese Empire, now reconceived by Tokyo as the Greater East Asian
Co-Prosperity Sphere. This binary conduct of the Japanese imperial project bore similarities toEuropean and American imperialisms in which violence and oppression often went hand in handwith pious constitutive practices. The mission civilisatrice of imperial France is a case in point.
French imperial ideologues and colonizers paired subjugation with the burden of transformingcolonized populations into “civilized” subjects through enlightenment projects.
For Japan, the civilizing mission emerged from its claim to be better able to deliver modernity toits subject peoples in Asia. There is not much of a departure from the European civilizing
rhetoric in this. But where European colonial enlightenment discourse and practices were
founded in, and reinforced, the otherness and difference of the imperial subject, Japan’s imperial
rhetoric and constitutive practices in Asia were predicated on an intricate vision of difference andotherness within unity and sameness. Narratives about cultural, moral, and sometimes racialsimilarities between Japanese and other Asians consorted in Japan’s imperial discourses withcritique of both Western imperialism in Asia and of Asian responses to it to produce anemancipatory project led by Japan for all Asians: Pan-Asianism or Asianism. The resultant
complex interplay of Japanese ideology about Japanese superiority to other Asians and JapaneseBlaxell: New Syonan and Asianism in Japanese-era Singapore

203

rhetoric about Asian unity and liberation from European imperialism produced idealistic
Japanese cultural and economic experiments all over Southeast Asia during the period ofJapanese rule.
The Asianist zeal of cabinet policy statements recommending cultural and economic
development in service to the overarching goal of creating a cohesive and tight knit autarky in
Asia patronized by Japan did not stay long in the rarefied atmosphere of Nagatacho,8 and by thewinter of 1942 hundreds of Japanese school teachers, some of them war widows, were leaving
their homes in Kumamoto, Nagasaki, Tokyo, or Okayama to embark on voyages to Rangoon,
Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, and Jakarta, there to improve the local education system and create
good Japanese subjects in the far reaches of the empire.9 Young Japanese men moved to Sumatra
to train the locals in the techniques of nation construction, civic pride, and military organization.
Japanese painters, musicians, writers, theatre and cinema directors [bunkajin] traveled to theSouthern Regions both to represent the new parts of the empire to a domestic audience in Japanand to promote a Japanese inspired cultural renaissance.
The idea of Asian independence, renewal and cooperation put stars in the eyes of some Japanese.
The projects they fostered in Southeast Asia bore the freight of their education and belief in panAsian principles, and the little Chinese village of Kampong Hubong, just a few kilometers southof Endau, a somnolent dead end now, was once a site for the working out of these Japanese ideas
about Asian unity, cooperation and independence, for it was there that the new community of
New Syonan was established for Singapore’s Chinese citizens. Fuji Village, a similar community
for Singapore’s Eurasian community and Chinese Christians, was set up at Bahau in thehinterland of Negri Sembilan north of Melaka.

Neither New Syonan nor Fuji Village were exceptional in their time and place. Hara Fujio has
identified over 30 new communities for Chinese scattered throughout the Malayan peninsula andthe adjacent islands.10 Marginalia and anecdotal traces in the historical records also suggest that

Japan, China, and Pan-Asianism

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the Japanese authorities in Singapore and Malaya set up new communities for Malays and at
least one for Singapore’s Indians on Pulau Bintan, an island in the Riau group between
Singapore and the coast of Sumatra. Hara argues that these new communities were products ofJapan’s fear of Chinese anti-Japanese resistance and/or of the need to tackle widespreadshortages of food, and the paucity of historical documents about the communities enumerated inHara’s survey oblige us to accept this point. But New Syonan and Fuji Village are exceptional
for the volume and quality of historical documents, both oral and textual, recording theirfounding and development. These documents permit us a nuanced account of New Syonan andFuji Village, their histories, the discursive genealogy of their foundation, and their place in thesimultaneously unifying and dividing practices of Japan’s Asianist visions and policies.
New Syonan and Fuji Village
Shinozaki Mamoru is a well-known character in the history of Japanese-era Singapore. He
played a pivotal role in the establishment of the communities at Endau and Bahau. An enigmaticand somewhat unconventional figure, Shinozaki was the son of a coalmine owner from Fukuoka.
Raised primarily by his devoutly Buddhist grandmother, as a youth Shinozaki mixed withprohibited left wing groups, and spent an atypical “bridge” year in unrecorded activities before
studying journalism at Meiji Daigaku. Prior to the arrival of the 25th Army, Shinozaki worked in
Singapore as a press attaché at the Consulate-General of Japan. In 1940, the British authorities
charged him with three counts of espionage, convicted him on two and imprisoned him at Changi
Gaol in November of that same year. Shinozaki always denied the charges, but British records
examined by Brian Bridges suggest that Shinozaki was probably involved in advance guard
Japanese intelligence operations in Singapore and Malaya in the years immediately before theoutbreak of hostilities.11 A significant number Japanese residents were. Liberated from prison by
the 25th Army, Shinozaki immediately took a post as principal advisor to the militaryadministration of the new colony, then as an education officer, before taking up the position ashead of the city welfare department, Kosei-ka Cho.
Shinozaki was not one of those teachers, planners, military trainers, or agricultural specialists
inspired by Asianist ideals to work on the Japanese emancipatory project in the Southern
Regions. Indeed, there is no record of Shinozaki having ever been a member of an Asianist
organization or clique in Japan, and he certainly had no stars in his eyes about the violent andoppressive activities of Japanese imperialism, having lived in Shanghai during the first half ofthe 1930s and witnessed the sook ching in Singapore. His postwar writings on the Japaneseperiod in Singapore never question the “rightness” of Japanese imperialism in Southeast Asia.
And, as we shall see, as an imperial bureaucrat, the language of his public and private
communications to the people of Japanese-era Singapore is imbued with the figures, metaphors,
tropes, and rubrics of Japanese Asianism. His policies and actions during the period comply with
Asianist principles circulating in imperial theory and practice since the founding of the Japanesepuppet state of Manchukuo in 1932.
Nevertheless, as a bureaucrat in the new regime, Shinozaki tried to serve both the agenda of thelocal Japanese military authorities and to shelter the Chinese and Eurasian communities fromJapanese brutality. The Kosei-ka Cho handed out hundreds, perhaps thousands, of “good citizen”
passes to Chinese and other Singaporeans in an attempt to protect them from sook chingroundups and other persecutions. Shinozaki acted as “point man” for the establishment of theOverseas Chinese Association (OCA) and the Eurasian Welfare Association, organizations heBlaxell: New Syonan and Asianism in Japanese-era Singapore

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claims were designed to collaborate with Japanese policies and thereby ameliorate the treatmentof Chinese and Eurasian Singaporeans.12 And he was instrumental in the founding, development,
and maintenance of the two new communities for Singaporeans at Endau and Bahau.

Shinozaki Mamoru

In August 1943 the city government, Syonanto Tokubetsu-shi, received a military directive fromthe 7th Area Army Headquarters. According to Shinozaki, the directive was a battle order of thehighest priority couched in the most urgent of terms and requiring the evacuation of 300,000
people from the city, close to a third of the total population of Singapore at that time. Yet thedirective left the mode of evacuation, the final destination, and the disposition of the evacuees
unstated. The new mayor of Singapore, Naito Kanichi, sought a solution from the Kosei-ka Cho
and from Shinozaki in particular. In his memoir, Shinozaki claims that the forced emigration of
more than 100,000 Italians to new communities designed by General Badoglio in the Libyan
desert during the late 1930s inspired him to devise a similar plan for Chinese Singaporeans, but
the vision for New Syonan seems to have come from several figures in addition to Shinozaki,
especially Dr. Yap Pheng Geck, a local Chinese businessman and officer of the Straits
Settlement Volunteer Force.13
It was a team of Japanese and local Chinese, too, that went with Shinozaki to scout suitable sites
for the new community in the state of Johor across the causeway from Singapore and finallyfound “this ideal valley not far from the sea amidst the Malay padi fields, very close to the sea
where there’s good fishing” near the town of Endau, as one informant put it. The “ideal valley”
belonged to Malays, but that presented no impediment to Shinozaki and his Chinese colleagues.
It was swiftly expropriated as the site for New Syonan.
But it was the Japanese alone—Shinozaki, his team at the Kosei-ka Cho, and idealists at Army
headquarters—who made New Syonan possible. These Japanese planners knew that something
would have to be added to the plan for New Syonan in order for it to attract Chinese settlers fromSingapore in any significant numbers. Good land, proximity to the sea, a guaranteed supply of
rice, cash payments for the first six months, four acres of land for each settler, and materials forhousing and agriculture would not be enough to draw Chinese Singaporeans out of the city.
When asked why he had moved to New Syonan, Gay Wan Guay replied: “I wanted peace ofmind.” And he went on to explain that like most Chinese men in Japanese-era Singapore, he wasconstantly afraid of making some inadvertent error, of unwittingly committing some crime, somediscourtesy, that would result in his arrest and punishment by the Japanese authorities.14
Shinozaki understood these fears. Working with the leaders of the Overseas Chinese Association
he planned New Syonan as a community free of Japanese control and secured a promise from theJapan, China, and Pan-Asianism

206

army that the kempeitai would be kept away. The strategy worked. The first settlers made the220-kilometer trek to New Syonan in September, 1943.
The city government orchestrated a public relations campaign to encourage emigration. Frontpage articles lauding New Syonan and foregrounding its freedom from Japanese control beganappearing in the local newspapers. In December, 1943, Mrs. Chu Chi Kit returned from a visit to
New Syonan and in an interview described the community as “a grand place” and a “bigattraction to housewives as the cost of living is low, and the healthy and bracing climate assuresthem that they will have no worries with regard to sickness or ill-health.” A few weeks later,
reports about the establishment of a New Syonan banking agency controlled by the Overseas
Chinese Association underscored the independence of the community: “—this step will appeal to
the settlers as they, the principal patrons, will thus be able to appreciate that the agency belongs
to them and is being run for their sole benefit.” And in the middle of March, 1944, Singaporeanslearned that “One of the most popular dance hostesses in Syonan, Miss Chan Pui King, better
known as Pak Sim, is now cultivating her own plot of land in New Syonan.”15 New Syonan wasreported to be safer and better supplied with food than Singapore. People moved. One year after
the founding of the new community the population had reached 12,000. Convoys of settlers left
Singapore for New Syonan regularly and—every time a convoy went up, it was full to the brim. We had to hang our bicycles
outside, by the side of the lorry. I remember I had my bicycle wheel ripped off, and a
total loss of a bicycle for nothing. And no place inside the lorry for it. And I was perchedright on top. I don’t know how I survived.16
Life at New Syonan seemed to flourish. The initial dwellings were rough, made out of tough,brown opeh leaves, but by March 1944, inhabitants could live in long barrack style houses withthatched roofs and timber walls set out in a Malay-style lorong pattern of narrow dirt lanes on aneat grid. Every family at New Syonan had two rooms in a barrack, each about 1.2 square metersin area, along with access to a shared kitchen, bathroom, lavatory, verandah, and backyard for
raising chickens and ducks. The new banking agency turned into a branch of the Overseas
Chinese Banking Company [OCBC]. A school opened for the children. A pasar malam [nightmarket] opened. There were coffee shops, a small stage for performances of both Chinese andwestern music, and a legendary Chinese restaurant in Singapore, “Wing Choon Yuen,”
established a branch at New Syonan. “My mother went [to New Syonan] with some of her
relatives. And also they were quite happy over there. They have a lot of food, fishes [sic],
everything” remembers Robert Chong.17
Though New Syonan may have been an improvement on Singapore, it was no arcadia. Japanesesupport for the community did not run to money. Shinozaki charged the Overseas Chinese
Association with fiscal responsibility for the cost of setting up and developing the place, but
funds were hard to find since the Chinese in Singapore had forked over a $50 million cash
payment to the Japanese authorities in 1942 as an “apology” for its anti-Japanese activities. The
labour of building and then maintaining the community was even harder than finding the funds
to pay for it. Roads in from the Endau to Mersing highway had to be built by hand through thickvegetation. Land had to be cleared for cultivation. The work of clearing jungle, plowing land,seeding it, irrigating, raising crops, harvesting, building barracks, schools, and other structures
was very hard for many of the city dwellers.

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Tan Kim Ock recalls being close to tears when confronted with his new parcel of land at New
Syonan: “The plot was a wood. The trees had all been chopped down and were lying in a messy
heap—The trees were tall and huge and the heap was about two storeys high.”18 Richer
immigrants attempted to replicate the class relations of Singapore and hire wage labourers to do
the heavy work while they sat around drinking tea and playing mahjong. But the business ofraising enough food to feed a population that grew to more than 12,000 by September 1944 was
too demanding to permit a leisure class, and the dissonant sight of permed and made-up city
women working the fields like peasants was not at all unusual.19 Though the feared kempeitai
kept away from New Syonan as promised, the atmosphere could still be tense: many settlers
suspected informers among them and feared Shinozaki’s visits; members of the Japanesegarrison at Mersing took to dropping by and demanding the best of the fishing catch forthemselves. Disease does not appear to have been a problem, but attacks by resistance guerillasof the Malayan Peoples’ Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA) were. The MPAJA regarded New
Syonan as a community of collaborators. In 1944 the guerillas mounted a number of attacks on
New Syonan. Several leaders of the community and of the Overseas Chinese Association were
wounded and some were killed, including Wong Tat Seng, chief of New Syonan security. The
MPAJA also assassinated Wong’s successor, Lo Po Yee. Settlers began to request return toSingapore, but the attacks ceased when Shinozaki promised to supply rice to the MPAJA in
return for an agreement to leave the settlement alone.20
News of the success of the New Syonan community prompted the head of the Catholiccommunity in Singapore, Bishop Adrian Devals, to approach Shinozaki about setting up asimilar community for Eurasians. The Japanese authorities governing the Malay state of Negri
Sembilan already had plans for a huge resettlement scheme designed to address problems in thefood supply, and it offered land to the Eurasians and Chinese Catholics of Singapore very near
Bahau, a small Malay town in the foothills between Melaka and Port Dickson on the west coastof the peninsula. Shinozaki recalls having serious reservations. The soil at Bahau was mostly
clay and unsuitable for effective agriculture. The water supply was insufficient to sustain asizeable population. More importantly, the Japanese authorities in Negri Sembilan refused toallow the Fuji Village community to govern itself. But the plan went ahead over Shinozaki’s
concerns. The government embarked on another public relations campaign and glowing reports
about life for Eurasians at Fuji Village appeared in the daily newspapers quoting anonymous
sources: “I am delighted with Bahau,” said one, while according to the Syonan Shimbun anothersettler flexed his biceps and said, “During the first week, we found the work pretty hard but now
we are accustomed to it and are getting our muscles too.”21 The truth was, however, that the newcommunity at Bahau was an unmitigated and prolonged disaster.

Syonan Shimbun

Part of the problem for the settlers at Fuji Village seems to have been their sense of priorities:
one of their first projects was erection of a church and altar. In the oral testimonies held at theJapan, China, and Pan-Asianism

208

National Archives of Singapore, former residents of the Chinese community at New Syonan tend
to explain the failure of Fuji Village in ethnic and cultural terms, suggesting that the Chinese at
New Syonan were naturally imbued with the pioneering spirit of their forefathers who came from
China to Southeast Asia with nothing, and thus better able to build a community from scratch,whereas in these accounts the Eurasians at Fuji Village were innately dependent and too longaccustomed to easy living for the endeavour to succeed. But what definitely defeated the peopleof Fuji Village was the challenge of unaccustomed manual labour and ignorance of agricultural
techniques. As well, the project was under-funded.
The Japanese authorities in Negri Sembilan refused to supply rice or vegetable seedlings. And
the land upon which the new village was situated turned out to be a breeding ground for malarial
mosquitoes, fierce swarms of insects that had already seen off a group of Japanese soldiers trying
to build an airfield there. Malaria and other insect borne diseases killed many. Malnutrition killedsome. Even Bishop Devals, the founder of Fuji Village, gave his life to the project, dying oftetanus in 1945 after accidentally lacerating his foot with an agricultural hoe. Between theautumn of 1943 and the Japan’s surrender in September, 1945, at least 300 and perhaps as manyas 1,500 settlers at Fuji Village died. At war’s end, while some Chinese chose to stay on in New
Syonan, the surviving people of Fuji Village took the first train back to Singapore, a testament to
the relative success of one and the failure of another.
Asianism and New Syonan
The strategic aim of Japanese plans for new agricultural communities in Malaya was to alleviate
severe food shortages. In this, both New Syonan and Fuji Village failed. The populations of thetwo communities never approached the numbers specified in Japanese plans, and the foodproduced in both was never enough to make either community self-sufficient. But Shinozaki’s
support for New Syonan in particular never wavered, and we must ask ourselves why? In his
memoirs Shinozaki represents his decision to implement New Syonan in uncomplicatedhumanitarian terms, and his conduct in Japanese-era Singapore is often seen in those same terms
today.22 But this is too simple. Shinozaki and the Kosei-ka Cho staff worked in the ambivalent
yet pivotal space between the two core projects of Japanese imperialism: violent subjugation andstrategic necessities on the one hand, pan-Asianist unity, cooperation and emancipation on theother. For example, Shinozaki’s issue of “good citizen” passes to Chinese rounded up during thesook ching was sometimes open-handed and unconditional. On other occasions, however, helinked issue of a pass to cooperation with Japanese policies and needs. When the sook chingroundup caught Chinese community leader, Lim Boon Keng, in its net in March 1942, Shinozaki
offered him a pass on the condition that he head the establishment of the Overseas Chinese
Association.
In his memoirs, Shinozaki insists the OCA was designed only to protect the Chinese community,
and the OCA is often remembered as an agent of protection in the oral testimonies about theperiod. Yet, the OCA created by Shinozaki to protect Singapore’s Chinese community was also
used to extort $50 million from local Chinese as an “apologia” for anti-Japanese activities.
Similarly, Shinozaki’s enthusiasm and support for New Syonan and Fuji Village was aboutsomething other than straightforward humanitarianism. The problems of food supply in
Singapore were critical; the need to reduce the city population drastically was imperative.
Singapore’s population had ballooned in the weeks prior to Japanese conquest and did not
decline after Japanese occupation began. The war in China dragged on, while the southern frontBlaxell: New Syonan and Asianism in Japanese-era Singapore

209

extended to New Guinea and New Britain just north and east of Australia. American naval powerin the Pacific recovered more quickly than Japanese planners had foreseen, and Japan’s supply
lines soon began to shred. By the middle of 1943, Japan was having trouble feeding its troops letalone a city of approximately 1 million. Solutions to the provisioning of civilians in Singapore
had to be found. The evacuation directive from the 7th Area Army headquarters could have been
implemented in other and more effective ways. The option of transporting vast numbers ofSingaporeans to anywhere in the empire and simply dumping them, or transporting them to workin Japanese mines or on Japanese construction sites, such as the notorious Burma Railroad, wasopen to the Tokubetsu-shi and had precedent. But Shinozaki and his staff at the Kosei-ka Chochose another way to invest in the imperial project. They chose to invest in the constitutive,
emancipatory part of Japan’s project in Southeast Asia.
We can detect the discursive capital funding Shinozaki’s investment in his own account of why
he acted as he did in Singapore. During the negotiations about the establishment of the Overseas
Chinese Association, Lim Boon Keng queried his motivation. Shinozaki replied:
I have many friends in China. I have lived in China for four years. I respect Chinese
culture—the Chinese are Japan’s old teachers. We have learnt many things from China’s
past. My name means “Cape of China”. Sino means China and Zaki means Cape. And
my first name is Mamoru, which means to protect.23
Here in the manipulation of friendship, the past and the symbolism of names we find traces of
the Japanese Asianist unifying assumption and a logic for the founding of New Syonan. Kita
Ikki, the ultranationalist and pan-Asianist executed for his complicity in the abortive officer’s
coup of February 26, 1936, justified Japanese colonialism in Korea in terms of shared history,
shared cultural patterns, and shared blood. Later, colonial theorists and political front men
expanded Kita Ikki’s construal of the Japanese imperial relationship with Korea to account forTokyo’s takeover of Manchuria after 1931: shared geography, history, culture, and blood. When
the Kwantung Army invaded China in July, 1937 and Tokyo announced its New Order in East
Asia in 1938, Japanese imperial theorists and policy makers, such as public intellectual Miki
Kiyoshi and Foreign Minister Matsuoka Yosuke, to name just two, had already decided that
China was not a nation state, but a civilization tied to Japan by history, culture, and faint tracingsof descent—a common culture and a common race—thereby domesticating the wild problem ofJapan’s invasion of a sovereign state. By the time of the establishment of the Greater East Asian
Co-Prosperity Sphere in Southeast Asia in 1942, this unifying theme was an old story,
doxological, and it should not be surprising to find its marks in the activities in Singapore of
Shinozaki Mamoru.
The logic of Shinozaki’s policies in Singapore also enacted imperial benevolence, a centralprinciple of Japanese colonial theory in the late 1930s, drawn from concepts of Japanese imperial
rule found in the 8th century Kojiki refurbished as a part of Japan’s East Asia vision, andencoded in the January 1941 Field Service Code: “Imperial benevolence is extended to all
without favour, while the Imperial virtues enlighten the world.”24 Japanese benevolence was,however, contingent upon cooperation. It was an act of power: a Japanese sort of noblesse
oblige. Protection is benevolence administered by the powerful on the part of the powerless. The
protection represented by Shinozaki’s given name “Mamoru” functions to naturalize the power
relations contained in the imperial code of benevolence. It elides the taint of strong and weak
which is itself the mechanism upon which the Japanese assumption of superiority and leadershipJapan, China, and Pan-Asianism

210

in Asia, emerging from Japanese reworking of Social Darwinism, was grounded. Shinozaki’s
assumption is in error. His specific error is also the general error of this sort of Japanese Asianist
discourse: benevolence encoded as protection cannot successfully elide nor pacify the powerladen operations of self and other in Japanese-Asian relations: in this case, Japanese brutality in
Singapore. Nonetheless, in the end, in Shinozaki’s account, culture, history and geographicalproximity unite Chinese and Japanese, while benevolence as protection provides a sort ofConfucian morality for it all, and it is this mix of the unifying move with imperial benevolence
that made New Syonan epistemologically possible.
The operations of Asianist discourse and rhetoric within Shinozaki’s thinking had policy impact.
In his framing of the foundation of New Syonan and Fuji Village, Shinozaki dissected Singapore
into ethno-cultural communities for resettlement in Malaya: Chinese to New Syonan; Eurasians
and Chinese Catholics to Fuji Village where the two groups lived in separate communities. In
this dissection based on ethnicity and culture, the establishment of New Syonan and Fuji Village
complied with an existing imperial model for management of plurality within unity.
Prior to World War 1 the unifying principles of Japanese imperialism and colonialism held sway.
Despite discussions about Japanese superiority and the ineluctable difference of others, Japan’s
first colonies, Hokkaido and Okinawa, became almost instantly unified with the Japanese state in1869 and 1879 respectively. In 1911 Tokyo annexed Korea and turned all Koreans into Japanese
subjects/citizens, no matter their actual place of residence. Taiwan (1895) and Japan’s
Micronesian island territories (1920 as a League of Nations mandate) remained as distinct
colonial political units but were both at somewhat different points on a trajectory toward thesame place: toward becoming Japanese, toward unity. But empire by annexation and assimilation
became more difficult for Japan after World War I.25 The Wilsonian vision of self-determining
nation-states first formally mooted in a presidential address to the United States Congress inJanuary 1918 now put 19th century modes of empire building under serious question.
Japanese discourses of Asian unification remained in circulation, but by the 1930s Japan’sGreater East Asia rhetoric called for a different sort of empire: a regional and independent union
or consortium of ethnic nations; a league of differences looking upward to Tokyo but liberated
from the western yoke to develop their own abilities, while always progressing in accord with theneeds of the imperial center. Foreign Minister Matsuoka Yosuke’s 1940 vision of the Greater
East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere called for coexistence and co-prosperity [kyozonkyoei] among
the ethnically defined nations of the sphere under conditions determined and imposed by Japanas the senior and “better” member of a unified autarky characterized by internal differences. In a
Wilsonian move, Matsuoka also emphasized the right of all peoples within the autarky to
freedom of action, describing opposition to it as unnatural [fushizen].26
The first and most notable application of this vision of an empire of self-determining, ethnic
states in a Japanese-led regional consortium came with the establishment of the Japanese puppet
state of Manchukuo in 1932. But in the formation of Manchukuo Japan encountered an
additional layer of diversity that needed an Asianist resolution, and it is this sort of resolutionthat Shinozaki brought to bear on the foundation of New Syonan and Fuji Village, for Shinozaki
was an imperial bureaucrat, and as Kevin Doak notes, the theoretical discourse on ethnic
nationalism had deeply influenced “sectors of the imperial Japanese bureaucracy.”27 Like
Singapore in 1943, Manchuria was populated by diverse ethno-cultural groups. Not only did thepuppet state have to have its own identity and its own freedom of action within the confines ofBlaxell: New Syonan and Asianism in Japanese-era Singapore211

the regional consortium, a domestic order that took internal diversity into account was also
required. The solution in Manchuria was to use ethnography, psychology, history and racialscience to define a set of internal ethnic nations, to assign each domestic nation an identity and arole in the puppet state and to construct a net of discourse within which each ethnic nation could
understand itself, its entitlements and duties. Ignoring and excluding Russians, Germans, Jews,
Ukrainians, Poles, Tartars, and other groups, Japan defined five ethnic nations within the
territory that would soon become Manchukuo: Chinese, Manchus, Mongols, Koreans, andJapanese.28
The rubric of gozoku kyowa [harmony of five ethnicities] was used to explain and guidemanagement of Manchukuo’s domestic diversity. It is generally considered that gozoku kyowa
originated in the deliberations of the young Japanese living in Manchuria who formed the Youth
Association of Manchuria in 1928, but they did not cut the concept from whole cloth, for gozoku
kyowa drew on and responded to Sun Yat-sen’s unifying nationalist principle for Republican
China, also pronounced gozoku kyowa in Japanese, but using different characters for kyowa andmeaning something like “the republic of five ethnicities.”29 In application, ethnic categorization,
gozoku kyowa, self-determination and ethnic nationalism came together in Manchukuo tounderpin the formation of ethnically delimited communities charged with specific roles in the
project of Japanese imperialism. And it is here that the genealogy of New Syonan and Fuji
Village begins, for the communities in Malaya and the communities in Manchuria shared several
characteristics. In Manchuria, Manchu and Mongol lands were expropriated to provide land for
self-sufficient agrarian communities for Japanese or for Koreans; in Malaya, Malay lands wereexpropriated to provide lands for self-sufficient agrarian communities for Chinese or Eurasians
or Chinese Catholics. The communities in both Manchukuo and in Malaya were exclusive totheir ethnic constituencies. And both sets of communities were explicitly charged withfacilitating Japan’s imperial project, and both were implicitly charged with demonstrating the
logic of Japan’s Asianist visions.
New Syonan provided a Southeast Asian demonstration of the workability of ethnic diversity
within regional unity. It was ethnic [Chinese], independent [self-governing] and cooperative[contributing to the wider goals of Japan’s imperial imagination] and integrated into the verticalstructure of the Co-Prosperity Sphere model [ultimately answerable to Japan and owing its very
existence to the needs of Tokyo]. The plan for New Syonan as an independent community for
Chinese established under the Japanese leadership of Shinozaki and his staff was thus a momentof Asianist praxis. As such, New Syonan possessed considerable rhetorical value, and Shinozaki
understood that value very well: in a speech given at New Syonan and reported in the Syonan
Shimbun of January 7, 1944, Shinozaki declared that the community would stand as “apermanent landmark” to “Chinese goodwill and cooperation” not just in Malaya, but throughout
Asia and the world. As such, New Syonan would also stand as an empirical example of Japan’s
new order in Asia.
Shinozaki and his Kosei-ka Cho staff do not seem to have felt quite the same Asianist enthusiasm
about the Eurasian settlement at Bahau, Fuji Village. Perhaps the mixed genetic ancestry andheterogeneous cultures of Eurasians presented epistemic challenges to Asianist ideology about
ethnic nations. Perhaps too, the refusal of the Japanese authorities in Negri Sembilan to permit
Fuji Village the required Asianist measure of self-determination made it harder for Shinozaki tosing its praises. But, whatever the foundations of his disappointment in Fuji Village may havebeen, Shinozaki continued to practice imperial benevolence until the end of the war, secretlyJapan, China, and Pan-Asianism

212

sending supplies of rice and other materiel to the struggling community. For like many of thepan-Asianist idealists in Japanese-era Southeast Asia, Shinozaki was not much deterred by thesigns of Japanese brutality and indifference all around him. Setbacks to his personal pan-Asian
agenda and the conclusive failure of Japan’s great pan-Asian enterprise did little to disillusion
him it seems.
Just days after Emperor Showa announced Japan’s surrender to the Allied powers on August 15,
1945, Shinozaki wrote two letters to the people of New Syonan, now held in the National
Archives of Singapore. Though his letters have an elegiac tone, both the egalitarian spirit and theinequitable power relation of Japanese pan-Asianism still circulate in them, not much abated. In
the first letter Shinozaki articulates the idealistic Asianist vision of regionalism, independence,and development: “New Syonan still belongs to the Chinese people.” Shinozaki writes before
exhorting the community to “please carry on your good work in New Syonan and make it apermanent success.” But later that same day [August 18, 1945] Army headquarters called him in
and attacked him for informing the people of New Syonan and Singapore about the end of thewar without permission from the military command. Threats were made against his life. Perhaps
this experience accounts for the changed tone of Shinozaki’s second letter to New Syonan,
written on August 19. In it he recovers the vertical structure of the Greater East Asia CoProsperity Sphere, enjoining the people of New Syonan to obey their leaders and accept theprotection of the “Nippon Military” “until the last moment” before expressing the hope that they
will “always bear in mind the Dai Toa spirit” by which he means of course, the simultaneous
independence and cooperative obedience required of all units in the Co-Prosperity Sphere.30
Concluding Remarks
In the current discursive welter of public and academic histories, personal testaments, foreign
policy scandals, and media exposés about the character of Japan’s rule in Asia, most of it
concerned with Japanese war crimes, oppressions, exploitation and crises of Japanese historicalconsciousness, it comes as some relief to discover New Syonan and Fuji Village, and thetestament they bear to the other Japanese way of doing empire. This is not to suggest that theconstitutive and optimistic planning behind the new communities in Malaya were any less about
imperial control than slave labour and mass killings. But the story of Singapore, Shinozaki
Mamoru, and New Syonan does point us toward recognition of certain emancipatory possibilities
inherent in Japan’s imperial project. Asianist and Pan-Asianist discourses in Japan were not only
rhetorical subterfuges for a real Japanese imperial agenda. They were a new way of “doing”
imperialism; a way that existed alongside subjugation and exploitation, indeed consorted withthem at times, and found expression in the establishment and development of new communities
like New Syonan.
Vivian Blaxell is Associate Professor at Fatih University in Istanbul.
Notes
1

Translated from a high resolution JPEG of Tanaka Katsumi, Minami no hoshi [Southern Stars]
and an HTML version of the same text at Accessed October 22, 2007.
Poetic Japanese is not one of my strengths and I would like to thank Professor Muta Orie, Himeji
Dokkyo Daigaku, for her invaluable help with the translation. Of course, all infelicities oftranslation and poetic expression are my own.

Blaxell: New Syonan and Asianism in Japanese-era Singapore

2132National Archives of Singapore, Oral History Project, Japanese Occupation of Singapore,
Robert Chong OHC000273, and Raymon Thien Hui Huang OHC002164. Also Hayashi
Hirofumi, Maree hanto ni okeru nihongun ianjo ni tsuite [Japanese Military Brothels in the
Malay Peninsula] Shizen - Ningen—Shakai, No 15, Kanto Gakuin University Department of
Economics, 1993.
3

Lee Geok Boi, The Syonan years: Singapore Under Japanese Rule 1942-1945. Singapore:
National Archives of Singapore, 2005, p. 201.
4

The number of Allied POWs who died in Japanese camps in Singapore is quite low comparedto mortality figures in camps in other parts of the region. Changi, as the Singapore POW camps
became known, has become synonymous with Japanese atrocities against POWs in late 20th
century historical consciousness, but the historical record tells a rather different story. See, forexample the Australian War Memorial encyclopedia.
5

National Archives of Singapore, Oral History Project, Japanese Occupation of Singapore,
Taman bin Haji Sanusi OHC000195; Ong Chye Hock OHC000168.
6

National Archives of Singapore, Private Records, Accession No. 57, Microfilm No. NA1124.

7

See Geoffrey C. Gunn, “Remembering the Southeast Asian Chinese Massacres of 1941-1945.”
Journal of Contemporary Asia, Vol. 37, No. 3, pp. 273-276.
For Japanese accounts of the sook ching in Singapore see, for example, Takashima Nobuyoshi,
Nihon no Haisen to Higashi Ajia (Japan’s Defeat and East Asia), Vol. 11 in Dainiji Sekai Daisen(The Second World War), Tokyo: Taihei Shuppansha, 1985, pp. 64-72.
8

For such policy recommendations, see for example, Daitoa kyoeiken kensetsu ni tomofu
bunkateki jiko ni seki shi joshin no ken [Recommendations on cultural matters in conjunction
with building of Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere], Imperial Rule Assistance Association,
Cabinet No.3 Investigation Committee, 26 September, 1941. Japan Center for Asian Historical
Records, National Archives of Japan, Reference code: A04018583900. www.jacar.go.jp
Accessed October 8, 2007.
9

Syonan Shimbun, 23/2/1943.

10

Hara Fujio, “The Japanese Occupation of Malaya and the Chinese Community” cited in Paul
Kratoska, The Japanese Occupation of Malaya: A Social and Economic History. Honolulu:
University of Hawaii Press. 1997, p. 277.
11

Brian Bridges, “Britain and Japanese Espionage in Pre-War Malaya: The Shinozaki Case.”
Journal of Contemporary History, Vol.21, No. 1, pp. 23-35.
12

For details of Shinozaki’s activities in Singapore see both the Japanese version Shingaporu
senryohiroku—senso to ningenzo. [A Memoir of the Occupation of Singapore—The Human
Face of War.] Tokyo: Hara Shobo, 1976, and the somewhat redacted English translation of his
memoir about Japanese-era Singapore, Syonan—My Story: The Japanese Occupation ofSingapore, Singapore: Marshall Cavendish, 2006. See also numerous oral accounts by
Singaporeans held in the Oral History Project, Japanese Occupation of Singapore, National
Archives of Singapore.

Japan, China, and Pan-Asianism

214

13

National Archives of Singapore, Oral History Project, Japanese Occupation of Singapore,
Robert Chong OHC000273.
14

National Archives of Singapore, Oral History Project, Japanese Occupation of Singapore, Gay
Wan Guay OHC000374.
15

Syonan Shimbun, 22/12/1943; 31/12/1943; 16/03/1944.

16

National Archives of Singapore, Oral History Project, Japanese Occupation of Singapore, Gay
Wan Guay OHC000374.
17

Robert Chong, op.cit.

18

Quoted in Paul Kratoska, op.cit, p. 279.

19

See relevant sections on New Syonan in Yap Pheng Geck, Scholar, Banker, Gentleman
Soldier: The reminiscences of Dr. Yap Pheng Geck, Singapore: Times International, 1982. Yap’s
memoir should be approached with caution since a cloud of “collaborator” hung over him after
Japan’s surrender, as it did over many of the OCA leaders. However, unlike some of Yap’s
memories of New Syonan, his image of rich Chinese working the fields at New Syonan isconsistent with many of the oral testimonies about the community held in the Singapore National
Archives.
20

Shinozaki Mamoru, Shingaporu senryohiroku—senso to ningenzo. [A Memoir of the
Occupation of Singapore—The Human Face of War.] Tokyo: Hara Shobo, 1976, pp. 50-55. And
corroborated in many of the oral testimonies about the community held in the Singapore National
Archives.
21

Syonan Shimbun, 11/01/1944; 20/01/1944.

22

For examples of this popular and uncomplicated interpretation of Shinozaki’s actions in
occupied Singapore see, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinozaki_Mamoru and also
ourstory.asia1.com.sg/neatstuff/tanss/ssjap.html
23

Shinozaki Mamoru, Syonan --- My Story: The Japanese Occupation of Singapore. Singapore:
Marshall Cavendish, 2006, p. 33.
24

Tokyo Gazette Vol. 4., No.9, January 8, 1941, pp. 343-346. Accessed October 18, 2007.

25

Dick Stegewerns puts the change at 1910 in “The Japanese ‘Civilization Critics’ and the
National Identity of Their Asian Neighbours, 1918-1932: The Case of Yoshino Sakuzo” Li
Narangoa and R. B. Cribb, eds. Imperial Japan and National Identities in Asia, 1895-1945.
London: Routledge, 2003, pp. 107-128.
26

Toa shinchitsujo kensetsu to zaishi beikoku ken’eki 3 [Establishing the New Order in East
Asia, and US interests in China, 3, Record of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 1940. Japan Center
for Asian Historical Records, National Archives of Japan, Reference code: B02030598400.
www.jacar.go.jp/ Accessed November 18, 2007.
27

Kevin M. Doak, “The concept of ethnic nationality and its role in Pan-Asianism in imperial
Japan.” Sven Saaler and J.Victor Koschmann, eds. Pan-Asianism in Modern Japanese History:Blaxell: New Syonan and Asianism in Japanese-era Singapore

215

Colonialism, regionalism and borders. Asia’s Transformations Series, New York and Abingdon:
Routledge, 2007.
28

Mariko Asano Tamanoi, “Knowledge, Power, and Racial Classification: The ‘Japanese’ in‘Manchuria.’” The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 59, No. 2, May 2000, pp. 249-250.
29

Yamamuro Shin’ichi, “Manshukoku” no nori to seiji—josetsu“ [“The principles and politics of“Manchukuo”—An Introduction], Jinbungakuho (Humanities Bulletin), Kyoto University, Vol.
68, March 1991, pp. 136-137. Accessed December 9, 2007.
30

Letters from Shinozaki Mamoru to the people of New Syonan. National Archives ofSingapore.

Japan, China, and Pan-Asianism

216“The 1960 ‘Anpo’ Struggle in The People’s Daily: Shaping Popular Chinese
Perceptions of Japan during the Cold War”
Erik Esselstrom
December 27, 2012
http://japanfocus.org/-Erik-Esselstrom/3869
The final reading is Erik Esselstrom’s essay “The 1960 ‘Anpo’ Struggle in The
People’s Daily: Shaping Popular Chinese Perceptions of Japan during the Cold War.” After
World War II and the victory of the Chinese Communists in 1949, the U.S. government
enlisted Japan as an important Cold War ally in the effort to “contain” China. While thisarrangement was in some ways favorable to Japan, it was extremely unpopular among
Japanese citizens who wanted to create a less antagonistic relationship with China.
The renewal of the U.S.-Japan Security Agreement (against the USSR and China) in
1960 caused huge anti-American protests in Japan, and these protests were covered
extensively by China’s main official newspaper, the People’s Daily. The treaty confirmed
Japan’s connection to an American world-system, just as the People’s Republic of China waspart of a communist world-system. The Chinese coverage of the treaty, however,emphasized the commonality between the Chinese and Japanese masses. This would havebeen a recognizable theme for anyone who remembered wartime Chinese propaganda,
which often mentioned the sufferings of the Japanese people. During the war both
Nationalist and Communist propaganda had emphasized the suffering of ordinary Japaneseand their common interests with the Chinese masses. This may have been in part toencourage high morale. Written pieces tended to imply that the Japanese empire was on
the verge of collapse from within, and so China was soon to be victorious in the war
regardless of what the situation at the front looked like. Others, like the cartoon below
from 1939, seem to be influenced by international ideas of pacifism:

Esselstrom: The 1960 “Anpo” Struggle in The People’s Daily

217

This type of humanization of ordinary Japanese would seem utterly out of place inmost twenty-first-century Chinese depictions of the war, but it still fit with Communist
depictions of ordinary Japanese as late as 1960. While the People’s Republic still
considered Japan an imperialist nation, it was less important than the USSR or the USA in
Beijing’s representation of China’s relationship with foreigners. Nonetheless, the renewalof the security treaty between the United States and Japan in 1960 finalized a radical
political disjuncture between China and Japan. Ironically, since the 1980s the twocountries have grown much closer economically and culturally, but popular understandingof their relationship still reflects the radical division of 1960. This has been especially truesince the Tiananmen Massacre of 1989, which led the Chinese government to focus more
on an identity built around China’s history of national suffering in which Japan took prideof place as the foremost enemy.
Pan-Asianism has not gone away. There has been much discussion in recent years
of Asian Values and the things that hold Asia together, although unity is now imagined as
taking place under Chinese leadership. The term Pan-Asianism itself, however, and the
pre-war Pan-Asian theorists are now held in low esteem, especially in China. The idea of aninterconnected Asia has a long history and Asians interested in international interactions
are likely to return again and again to the history of Pan-Asianism for inspiration.

Japan, China, and Pan-Asianism

218

The 1960 “Anpo” Struggle in The People’s Daily: Shaping Popular Chinese Perceptions ofJapan during the Cold War
Erik Esselstrom

Figure 1.1 Japanese protester at the left holds a sign that reads ‘Oppose the new security
treaty, Down with the Kishi Cabinet! Dissolve the Diet!’ to the enthusiastic approval of theChinese demonstrator at the right whose sign proclaims ‘Oppose the Japan-U.S. military
treaty, Support the struggle of the Japanese people’

Introduction
Rising China-Japan friction in 2012 has centered on territorial claims over the Diaoyu/Senkaku
islands. Like many such clashes since the early 1990s, it is bound up with unresolved legacies of
the Asia-Pacific War. As much valuable research on the politics of memory in contemporary
East Asia has demonstrated, the politicized anger and bitterness that characterize the ChinaJapan relationship today have a complex archeology in which popular tempers were not always
so enflamed.2 For example, during the 1950s and 1960s the United States, not Japan, was by far
the primary geopolitical and ideological enemy of the PRC. In that context, as the CCP aimed tolure Japan from its American geopolitical embrace, China’s leaders also sought to persuade theChinese people to “forgive and forget” matters of the Japanese invasion, and ultimately recast

Esselstrom: The 1960 “Anpo” Struggle in The People’s Daily

219

popular Chinese perceptions of Japanese society from those of wartime enemy to regional
geopolitical ally.3
This essay takes as its subject one example of this re-conceptualization of Japanese society in
Chinese political ideology—editorial cartoon representations of the 1960 protests against the
renewal of the U.S.-Japan Security Agreement (“anpo jōyaku” 安保条約).4 Widely recognized
as the largest popular anti-government demonstrations in postwar Japanese history, the Anpo
protests are most often analyzed strictly within the context of U.S.-Japan relations.5 Looking atthese events from a Chinese perspective opens up a number of useful interpretive vantage points.
While the core editorial attack launched in these cartoons is aimed squarely and primarily at theUnited States, particularly striking is the manner in which the CCP employed these images totransform popular Chinese perceptions of Japan in ways that reflect the altered geopoliticalenvironment of the early postwar era in East Asia.6
Scholars such as Chang-Tai Hung have produced excellent work on both individual cartoonists
and the broader function of political cartoons in wartime Chinese society, and certainly theseexamples from The People’s Daily in 1960, some sketched by well-known artists such as Fang
Cheng方成, are worthy of the same level of deep analysis.7 Such treatment, however, rests
beyond the scope of this essay. The aim here is to provide a specific case in point of how the
Chinese Communist Party employed editorial cartoons during the summer of 1960 to shape
popular opinion concerning the U.S.- Japan relationship. As Kevin McKenna has noted in his
study of editorial images of the United States in Pravda, Moscow’s primary media outlet during
the Cold War, political cartoons “became particularly powerful tools of persuasion in a
totalitarian society where the state controlled and coordinated the entire communication
system.”8 While the political and social environments of the PRC and the Soviet Union in 1960
defy simple comparison, The People’s Daily can be examined in a similar manner as Pravda,
namely in that both were critical tools through which leadership in Beijing and Moscow
delivered party-approved messages to the general public. While how those messages werereceived by the reading public is difficult (if not impossible) to determine, analyzing the content
of the messages nonetheless sheds light on the political and social objectives of the authorities
projecting them.
The series of editorial cartoon examples from the summer of 1960 featured here illustrate threemain themes, all of which are inherent in Chinese political and social rhetoric of the era: theinevitable failure of American geopolitical strategy, the advance of a revolutionary future thatwill tear down the feudal past, and the irrepressible power of mass movements. The CCP
employed these thematic visual representations of anti-U.S. and anti-government protests inJapan for two primary reasons: 1) to legitimatize its leadership in both domestic and international
spheres in the eyes of popular Chinese society; and 2) to cultivate of a perception of postwar
Japanese society among the Chinese public that differentiated conservative, U.S.-backed politicalelites from the Japanese masses, whose interests were ideologically similar, if not identical, tothose of the Chinese people.9
The CCP’s emphasis in this manner on a positive relationship with popular Japanese society
during the early 1960s is strikingly different from what one finds in China since the early 1990s.
More precisely, whereas the party relies upon the power of popular memories of victimization
during the war against Japan to bolster nationalism in the contemporary PRC, during the early
1960s memories of the Japanese invasion did not need to serve the same political purpose.10 That

Japan, China, and Pan-Asianism

220

is not to say, of course, that the war against Japan was entirely ignored before the 1990s. For
example, the CCP routinely employed historical representations of the war throughout the early
Cold War era, for example, in which the Communist party played a more significant role than the
Guomindang in defeating Japan in order to discredit the Nationalist regime on Taiwan. The
position of the United States as China’s main ideological opponent during the summer of 1960,
however, made it possible for the CCP to depict Japanese society in a more complex and multidimensional light than is the case today. As one recent study suggests, “a willingness to
downplay contentious memories of the wartime past in order to maximize the economic andstrategic benefits of closer relations” is a recurring pattern of behavior in China’s postwar foreign
policy concerning Japan.11 This essay is one exploration of that pattern.
The Inevitable Fall of American Puppet Regimes
One of the most common themes at work in these images is that of Japanese Prime Minister
Kishi Nobusuke ( 岸 信介) facing the identical fate of South Korean President Syngman Rhee(李承晩). Rhee had ruled South Korea with an iron (and fiercely anti-Communist) fist after
being installed as President by the United States in 1948. After widespread popular protests
against the elections that had reaffirmed his position in the spring of 1960, Rhee fled into
Hawaiian exile in late April. Chinese cartoonists made quick use of this episode in characterizing
events that began to unfold in Japan in May.

Figure 2.12

Figure 3.13

Figure 2 shows Prime Minister Kishi walking the plank, so to speak, of police brutality (警察暴力), pistol in one hand, club in the other. Kishi steps in line with the bloody footprints of one

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who has already walked this path, Syngman Rhee, who is shown falling headfirst into the abyss.
Kishi blindly follows, seemingly oblivious to the dangerous fate that awaits him. In a moregruesome depiction of the same notion, Figure 3 shows the interior of a burial tomb where Rheehas already been laid to rest (the captions reads—‘to be buried with those who came before’ 陪
葬的先来). Kishi is being brought inside by a masked mortician to take his place next to thelargest sarcophagus in the center of the tomb—the one waiting empty for the leader of theAmerican empire ( 美帝国主文). The figure to the left is Prime Minister Adnan Menderes(曼德列斯) of Turkey, an association to be explained momentarily.

Figure 4.14

Figure 5.15

Other examples build on the comparisons to Syngman Rhee and link events in Japan torevolutionary actions in numerous parts of the world. Figure 4 depicts a row of pillars, with
American capitalists hiding behind them, being knocked down by the battering rams of popular
action. The faces visible on the pillars are those of Syngman Rhee and Kishi Nobusuke, andcorresponding teams of anti-Rhee South Korean (南朝鮮人民反対美李集团的斗争) and antiKishi Japanese (日本人民反対岸信介政府的斗争) protesters can be found below along withthe caption that reads - “an unstoppable force” (势不可当). The image also includes sombrerowearing revolutionaries from South America (南美人民反独裁政府的斗争), a team of darktoned Africans in the distance, and anti-Menderes Turks (土耳其人民反対曼德列斯政府) in thecenter. Similarly, Figure 5 depicts a collapsing human pyramid of puppet regimes supporting the
U.S. capitalist at its apex. Kishi is positioned at the center with “South American bases 南美基地” on his shoulders and South Korea (the U.S.-Rhee bloc 美李集团) and Turkey (again labeled
specifically as Menderes 曼德列斯) under his feet. A kick from the South Korean people sets thetower shaking.
While the South Korean connection has been explained, the link with Turkey is less obvious.
The Turkish Prime Minister, Adnan Menderes, had come under fierce pressure from theJapan, China, and Pan-Asianism

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country’s military establishment in early May 1960 in the form of demands for political reforms
and an end to corruption. While the coup d’état that later drove Menderes from power was hardly
a popular revolution, Menderes was considered to be pro-American by his political opponents in
Turkey, thus resistance to his administration could be employed in China as an example ofwidespread dissatisfaction around the world with U.S.-backed governments. It is notunreasonable to assume that memories of Turkey’s involvement in the Korean War a decade
earlier might also have given the Chinese reason to celebrate any opposition to the governmentof President Celâl Bayar and his Prime Minister Menderes.16 Figure 6 reflects this by suggesting
the volcano of popular energy then erupting in Japan was one part of a worldwide seismic eventthat included eruptions in South Korea and Turkey (the caption reads: “in the days when theworld is turned upside down 在天翻地夏复的日子里”). The cartoon also references the recently
publicized U-2 incident, in which a secret American reconnaissance plane had been shot downover the Soviet Union on May 1, 1960. That pilot Francis G. Powers’ aircraft was permanently
based in Turkey perhaps adds to the logic of including Turkey within this group of U.S. satrap
regimes around the world. The United States, represented by a hapless Eisenhower, is being
blown sky high by these volcanic explosions of popular resistance to American-backed puppet
leaders.17
After a military coup drove Menderes from power in late May, it seemed that prognostications ofanti-American movements around the world were proving true. Figure 7, published after thecoup in Turkey, reflects this by showing a cowering Eisenhower, labeled again as the ‘leader ofthe American empire’ ( 美帝国主文), having the teeth of his puppets Rhee in Korea and
Menderes in Turkey pulled out by the calipers of the people in both nations, with Japan in thecenter to follow. In fact, the comic in Figure 3 (published before the coup), which depicts
Menderes lying dead in a tomb, proved eerily prescient—Menderes was later executed in
September 1961 after a trial by the military junta that unseated him.

Figure 6.18

Figure 7.19

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223

What all these examples share is an emphasis on the notion that U.S.-backed regimes around theworld will not—indeed, cannot—survive, because they stand in opposition to popular will.
Linking events in South Korea, Turkey and Japan to this general principle of Maoist
revolutionary thinking was a useful tool for illustrating the universality of the CCP’s strategic
vision. Moreover, it encouraged the viewer to see the fate of popular resistance to U.S.
aggression in Japan as linked to that of China’s own popular struggle against foreign
imperialism.
Kishi as Fascist Thug and Feudal Clown
Prime Minister Kishi Nobusuke provided the emblematic comic depiction of Japan during thesummer of 1960. Not only was Kishi Japan’s top leader, but he had been jailed as a war criminal
during the U.S. occupation period because of his influential position within Japan’s imperial
administrative machinery of control in Manchuria. Having been released in 1948, however, Kishi
was soon politically rehabilitated, like many other previously jailed war criminals, with the endof the US occupation in 1952.20 Kishi was thus known in China for having played a key role inJapan’s brutal wartime occupation, making him a particularly inviting target for ridicule.
Moreover, Kishi had personally spearheaded the effort to renew the US-Japan Security Treaty in
1960, making him the primary domestic target of most Anpo-related protests in Japan. By
focusing on Kishi, the CCP could thus draw a clear distinction between Japan’s conservative
political elites and the Japanese people as a whole. Doing so made it possible to condemn theJapanese government and its American backers while simultaneously cultivating sympathetic
support for the Japanese people.
There are two common themes in these depictions of Prime Minister Kishi—fascist thug andfeudal clown. Returning to the image in Figure 2, Kishi is donning garb that looks remarkably
similar to that of a Nazi SS officer (complete with a German luger-style pistol), with his highstepping march in black boots perhaps reinforcing the same impression. More explicitly, in
Figure 8 Kishi presides grandly over the Diet session in which the U.S.-Japan Security
Agreement has been successfully ratified, but the hall is emptied by Kishi’s club-wielding policegoons driving the last remnants of opposition out of the room. The caption reads sarcastically,“‘unanimously’ passed” (‘一致’通过 ). Moreover, Kishi’s kimono is lined with swastika trim,
making the Nazi reference less than subtle. In short, the message is that Kishi has employedfascist violence to crush popular will and ram through his pro-U.S. agenda, depicted here as theAnpo treaty wrapped around a missile.

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Figure 8.21

Figure 8.21

With equal consistency, however, Kishi is also depicted as a kimono-clad, geta-wearing relic ofJapan’s feudal past, as seen in the images below. In part, of course, this is meant to make Kishi
look foolish, weak and incompetent. The consistency with which Kishi is shown in ‘traditional’
Japanese garments and footwear, however, also suggests that he represents a feudal

Figure 9.22

Figure 10.23

Figure 11.24

Figure 12.25

past that will soon be overcome by a revolutionary future. Such a feeling is reflected well in
Figure 13, which juxtaposes a kimono-clad Kishi against the more ‘modern’ looking six hundred
million Chinese workers whose advance compels him to scamper away in his wooden sandals
alongside Eisenhower in his suit and tie. In Figure 14, while Kishi appears in a Western suit, theseal with which he is trying to ratify the security agreement is topped with a sword-wielding
Japanese militarist of the 1940s, again implying that Kishi represents the continuation of prewar
militarism in postwar Japanese society, as the caption reads—“catch the hand of evil 抓住罪悪的手.”

Esselstrom: The 1960 “Anpo” Struggle in The People’s Daily

Figure 13.26

225

Figure 14.27

In each of these examples, there is a unifying concept. The popular Japanese struggle against
renewal of the security treaty is more than just a contemporary political confrontation; it is also abattle between the progressive revolutionary vanguard that will determine Japan’s future and thereactionary elements of Japan’s feudal tradition that desperately cling to power in opposition to
it. Such dramatic depictions of the danger posed by the insidious persistence of conservative,
counter-revolutionary elements in society would have likely resonated powerfully within a
Chinese social environment so recently wracked by the anti-Rightist campaigns of the late 1950s.
Popular Protest as a Force of Nature
In many of these cartoons Japan’s physical geography is appropriated to depict popular anger
toward the Kishi cabinet in dramatic and recognizable ways, such as in these uses of Mt. Fuji
imagery28 The scene featured previously in Figure 6, for example, shows President Eisenhower
being blasted skyward by an eruption of Fuji, with volcanic explosions in South Korea, Turkey
and several other unidentified locales in the distance. Figure 15 takes a different approach,focusing on Kishi instead of the U.S. President, but the underlying message is identical. Kishi isperched atop a Japan (represented figuratively by Mt. Fuji) that is simmering with popular antiAmerican struggle ( 日本人民反美斗争) sure to explode at any moment, burying Kishi and theAnpo treaty with it. Similarly, in Figure 16 Kishi vainly attempts to cap the explosive power of
the Japanese people (again represented by Mt. Fuji) with his club of ‘police brutality’ ( 警察暴力) in the service of the Anpo treaty carried upon his back. The caption reads: “What a pathetic

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pillar of support” (可怜的支柱 ). In all three examples, the volcano embodies popular
revolutionary energy that cannot be suppressed.

Figure 15. 29

Figure 16.30

A different use of Mt. Fuji is employed in Figure 17. Here the mountain is shown in the distancebehind the peace memorial statue in Nagasaki commemorating those who perished there in theatomic attack of August 9, 1945. The mountain serves as a metonymic symbol of Japan (as Mt.
Fuji is, in fact, not visible from Nagasaki), complete with cherry blossoms, while the ominous
American bomber flying overhead carries a massive bomb labeled ‘U.S.-Japan military alliance’(日美軍事同盟). The caption at the right can be read as ‘Here we go again’ (又来了), an
unambiguous suggestion that the U.S.-Japan alliance will likely bring nuclear disaster to Japan athird time.

Esselstrom: The 1960 “Anpo” Struggle in The People’s Daily

227

Figure 17.31

Even more striking is the use of tsunami imagery to represent the unstoppable energy of popular
action against the Kishi regime and its American backers. More than just a general sense of thepower unleashed by tidal waves, the images referenced a specific event. In early May 1960, a
massive surge triggered by a high magnitude earthquake in Chile slammed upon Japan’s
northeastern coast, the same region devastated by the March 11, 2011 tsunami, leaving dozens
dead and thousands more homeless. Soon thereafter, cartoonists in The People’s Daily
appropriated imagery of the disaster to dramatize the political and social disturbances then taking
place in Japan. Figure 18, for example, shows crowds of Japanese protesters standing on the
coast, fists raised high and banners flying, as giant waves sweep the United States (and its
weapons) from the islands, and a massive hand plucks Kishi (in kimono and wooden clogs) fromthe swirling foam below. The caption reads: ‘The Security Treaty’ provides no security ( ‘ 安全条約 ‘ 不安全). In Figure 19, enormous fist-shaped swells emblazoned with the monikerJapan, China, and Pan-Asianism

Figure 18.32

228

Figure 19.33‘Japanese People’ (日本人民) lift Kishi up ever higher as he desperately tries to ride the waves
on his flimsy wooden club/canoe of ‘police brutality’. Like a volcano, a tsunami possesses
unfathomable power, but the tidal wave also carries with it an association of relentless forward
movement, making it an especially effective visual metaphor of revolutionary action in 1960.
Broader SignificanceA brief comparison with several images from contemporary American sources highlights thedeeper meanings behind the many examples from The People’s Daily explored here. First,
Figure 20 makes clear from a U.S. perspective that the greatest threat facing Japan is expansiveEsselstrom: The 1960 “Anpo” Struggle in The People’s Daily

Figure 20.34

229

Figure 21.35

Soviet communism, represented by ferocious bear claws grasping the hammer and sickle, and the
U.S.-Japan security agreement makes it possible for a towering Uncle Sam to protect Japanesesociety from that danger. For the Japanese to think they can do it without American help, is madeto seem a laughable proposition. Figure 21 goes even further by suggesting that Japanese society
will commit national suicide, depicted here by the act of seppuku (ritual death bydisembowelment) using a Soviet-style hammer and sickle, if the security treaty is abandoned. In
fact, in this comic Kishi is cast in the heroic role of preventing the fatal swipe of the blade.
In Figure 22, as in the previous example, the hammer and sickle of the Soviet Union is theprimary instigator behind the protests in Japan, as the hapless protester is spurred to action solely
by the prick of the blade, while the caption sarcastically labels it a “spontaneous uprising.” Also
worth noting, however, is that the wooden clogs (geta) worn by the protester in this case, here
shown to be the Socialist Party, represent his backwardness and incompetence much as such
footwear was used in People’s Daily depictions of Prime Minister Kishi. For the American
audience, then, Japanese demonstrators are an unruly and un-’civilized’ mob, while for the
Chinese audience Japan’s political leadership represents feudal remnants of the past.

Japan, China, and Pan-Asianism

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Figure 2236

The notion that popular Japanese anger over the security agreement and its autocratic ratification
has a legitimate foundation is dismissed out of hand in all three of these representations.
Interestingly, China is also largely irrelevant in these depictions from the U.S. side; American
cartoonists depicted Anpo protesters as stooges and dupes of Soviet agitation. Moreover, thedimension of class struggle so dominant in Chinese depictions is entirely absent from theAmerican examples. While these comics cannot be taken as a direct statement of U.S. policy inEast Asia, they nonetheless reflect a fairly common sentiment in American political and public
opinion at the time—sinister Soviet intrigue lay behind most, if not all, anti-American
movements in East Asia and around the globe.37
PRC cartoonists, by contrast, depict the real aggressor in East Asia in 1960 as the United States,
as in the following two cartoons. Both embrace a critique of police brutality as it was widely
employed against popular demonstrations during the summer of 1960 in Tokyo. Figure 23 shows
Prime Minister Kishi’s face on the head of a police Billy club being snapped in half byEsselstrom: The 1960 “Anpo” Struggle in The People’s Daily

Figure 2338

231

Figure 2439

the power of popular struggle against his government in the form of the righteous fist of theJapanese people delivering a blow to the Anpo Treaty. Notably, U.S. President Dwight
Eisenhower is gently pushing Kishi under the fist with a caption reading: “Hold out as long as
you can!” In Figure 24, Kishi and Eisenhower merge into one as they stand together under amilitary helmet labeled ‘ anpo’ (安保), while clubs reign blows upon them with the caption
reading ‘neither safe 不安, nor secure不保’ , a clever play on the term anpo by making both of
its component parts negative. In both, the United States, of course, is the main target of criticism,with Japanese society at large portrayed as the weak victim of American manipulation.
To understand why this was such a dominant theme in the sources explored here, we must
remember that images in The People’s Daily were intended primarily for domestic consumption.
Why then did the CCP devote so much space in its flagship newspaper to the celebration of these
seemingly revolutionary events in Japan during the summer of 1960? Indeed, front page
headlines such as this one—“The Chinese and Japanese People Rise Up Together, Down with
American Imperialism!”—were quite common for several weeks in May and June of that year.

Figure 2540

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232

The CCP anchored its legitimacy as the ruling party of China in part in its role as a leader of
revolutionary movements in Asia and beyond. Perhaps then, by illustrating to the Chinese people
that anti-American movements were breaking out around the world in 1960, a trend madepossible by PRC leadership, the success of the party in both transforming China and inspiring
popular resistance in neighboring societies such as South Korea and Japan could be reinforced.
Such a message was important at a time when the disasters of the Great Leap Forward were
evident to many (although not discussed openly), since one of the core goals of the GLF had
been to rocket China forward to a position of leadership in global affairs. Moreover, 1960 saw
the further deterioration and ultimate collapse of relations between the PRC and the Soviet
Union. The image of a united Asia, under ostensible Chinese leadership, standing up to defeat
American-backed authoritarian regimes could provide a weapon in ideological polemics against
the Soviet Union. Through these cartoons the reader could see that the USSR was no longer thevanguard of world revolution—that role now belonged to the PRC.
The most striking of these cartoons, however, is the visual representation of domestic strife inJapan using revolutionary imagery that was easily accessible and understandable to the general
Chinese audience—inevitable success of revolutionary forces, bitter conflict between progressive
and reactionary elements, and the irrepressible force of mass movements. Since the Korean War,the CCP had sought to drive a wedge between Japan’s political elites under the thumb of
American power and the Japanese ‘masses’ who could be seen as victims of America’s Cold
War strategy of remilitarizing Japan.41 By dramatically depicting the mass uprising of Japanesecitizens in a bitter struggle to free themselves from American dominance during the summer of
1960, the CCP could continue this redirection of popular anger away from Japan and toward the
U.S., and even cultivate a feeling of popular unity between the peoples of China and Japan,
While this general strategy of “people’s diplomacy” as articulated by key party leaders such as
Zhou Enlai has long been recognized by historians of the era, these cartoons from The People’s
Daily provide a specific and highly illustrative example of precisely how this message wascommunicated to the Chinese people. Furthermore, while it was only a brief episode in the longterm reconstruction of postwar China-Japan relations, these sources remind us nonetheless that
the Anpo crisis of 1960 was an event of import in East Asian international affairs beyond just the
U.S.-Japan relationship.
It is also worth noting that many of the images and themes prevalent in Chinese editorial
cartoons concerning the 1960 Anpo struggle can be found in Japanese editorial cartoons of thesame time. In fact, at times they were identical, as in the case below of a People’s Daily cartoonthat was reprinted from an original drawn by Nasu Ryōsuke 那須良輔 for the Asahi Shinbun朝日新聞. The cartoon shows a dark-suited American spy, complete with cowboy hat andholstered revolver (and labeled as a U-2 spy plane) being helped over a wall by Prime Minister
Kishi in order to carry out his espionage missions in China and the Soviet Union. Such a critiqueof Japanese state duplicity with aggressive American interference in Asian affairs wasEsselstrom: The 1960 “Anpo” Struggle in The People’s Daily

Figure 26.42

233

Figure 27.43

something shared quite comfortably by the Chinese Communist Party and many progressive
intellectuals, writers, politicians, artists and cartoonists in Japan in 1960.
Indeed, during the late 1950s and early 1960s, many people in China and Japan hoped to embark
on a path toward reconciliation to protect their shared national interests against a powerful U.S.
aggressor. That these commonalities served to bind together certain elements of both societies
during the early Cold War is worth remembering, especially at a time when political andterritorial disputes pitting China against Japan over the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands threaten todestabilize the entire region. While political elites in both societies continue to perpetuate
negative popular images of the other for the sake of placating certain domestic constituencies,
these examples from the summer of 1960 remind us that the content and aims of suchmanipulation can change quickly in response to altered geopolitical conditions.
Erik Esselstrom is Associate Professor in the Department of History and Director of the AsianStudies Program at the University of Vermont. He is the author of Crossing Empire’s Edge:
Foreign Ministry Police and Japanese Expansionism in Northeast Asia (University of Hawai’i
Press, 2009).
Notes
1

Renmin ribao人民日報, June 15, 1960. All visual materials from The People’s Daily provided
in this essay were scanned from original issues of the paper held in the central library ofHitotsubashi University in Tokyo. I thank Professor Aono Toshihiko and his colleagues at
Hitotsubashi for sponsoring my appointment there as Visiting Associate Professor.
2

The literature is too vast to summarize here, but one excellent example that includes analysis ofhistorical memory in numerous Asian societies is Sheila Miyoshi Jager and Rana Mitter, eds.,

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234

Ruptured Histories: War, Memory and the Post-Cold War in Asia (Harvard University Press,
2007).
3

See Rana Mitter, “Old Ghosts, New Memories: China’s Changing War History in the Era of
Post-Mao Politics” Journal of Contemporary History 38:1 (January 2003): 117-131; James
Reilly, “Remember History, Not Hatred: Collective Remembrance of China’s War of Resistanceto Japan” Modern Asian Studies 45:2 (2011): 463-490.
4

A useful recent study of the general history of Chinese political cartoons is Tao Ye陶治,
Chūgoku no fūshi manga中国の風刺漫画 (Hakuteisha 白帝社, 2007).
5

The classic work on the Anpo protests is George R. Packard, Protest in Tokyo: The Security
Treaty Crisis of 1960 (Princeton University Press, 1966). A recent study is Linda Hoaglund’sfilm, ANPO: Art X War - here.
6

A valuable discussion of how popular Chinese perceptions of the United States changed during
the immediate postwar years is Hong Zhang, America Perceived: The Making of Chinese Imagesof the United States, 1945–1953(Westport: Greenwood, 2002).
7

See Chang-Tai Hung, “The Fuming Image: Cartoons and Public Opinion in Late Republican
China, 1945 to 1949” Comparative Studies in Society and History 36:1 (January 1994): 122-145,“War and Peace in Feng Zikai’s Wartime Cartoons” Modern China 16:1 (January 1990): 39-83,
and War and Popular Culture: Resistance in Modern China, 1937-1945 (Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press, 1994).
8

Kevin McKenna, All the Views Fit to Print: Changing Images of the U.S. in Pravda Political
Cartoons, 1917-1991 (New York: Peter Lang, 2001), 15. An older but highly useful study on
Soviet era political cartoons is Michael Milenkovitch, The View From Red Square: A Critique of
Cartoons from Pravda and Izvestia, 1947-1964 (New York: Hobbes, Dorman and Co., 1966).
9Both of these points are consistent with the basic principles of China’s ‘people’s diplomacy’strategy concerning Japan in the 1950s. See He Yinan, “Remembering and Forgetting the War:Elite Mythmaking, Mass Reaction, and Sino-Japanese Relations, 1950-2006” History & Memory
19:2 (Fall/Winter 2007): 43-74.
10

See Parks M. Coble, “China’s ‘New Remembering’ of the Anti-Japanese War of Resistance”
The China Quarterly 190 (June 2007): 394-410.
11

James Reilly, Strong Society, Smart State: The Rise of Public Opinion in China’s Japan Policy(New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), 55.
12

Renmin ribao, May 23, 1960.

13

Renmin ribao, June 24, 1960.

14

Renmin ribao, May 5, 1960.

15

Renmin ribao, May 6, 1960.

16

John M. Wander Lippe, “Forgotten Brigade of the Forgotten War: Turkey’s Participation in
the Korean War” Middle Eastern Studies 36:1 (January 2000): 92-102.

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235

17

For a contemporary discussion of the incident, see Qunicy Wright, “Legal Aspects of the U-2
Incident” The American Journal of International Law 54:4 (October 1960): 836-854.
18

Renmin ribao, May 22, 1960.

19

Renmin ribao, May 30, 1960.

20

Mark Driscoll provides an especially damning portrait of Kishi’s role in overseeing Japanese
exploitation of Chinese labor in Manchukuo in Chapter Eight of his Absolute Erotic, Absolute
Grotesque: The Living, Dead and Undead in Japan’s Imperialism, 1895-1945 (Durham, NC:
Duke University Press, 2010).
21

Renmin ribao, May 17, 1960.

22

Close-up from Figure 17. Renmin ribao, May 22, 1960.

23

Close-up from Figure 5. Renmin ribao, May 6, 1960.

24

Close-up from Figure 16. Renmin ribao, May 30, 1960.

25

Close-up from Figure 19. Renmin ribao, May 25, 1960.

26

Renmin ribao, June 23, 1960.

27

Renmin ribao, May 17, 1960.

28

For additional discussion of Mt. Fuji imagery in wartime Japan and beyond, see H. Byron
Earhart, “Mt. Fuji: Shield of War, Badge of Peace” in The Asia-Pacific Journal Vol 9, Issue 20
No 1, May 16, 2011 (here), as well as Earhart’s book, Mt. Fuji: Icon of Japan (University ofSouth Carolina Press, 2011).
29

Renmin ribao, May 25, 1960.

30

Renmin ribao, May 22, 1960.

31

Renmin ribao, May 29, 1960.

32

Renmin ribao, May 15, 1960.

33

Renmin ribao, June 3, 1960.

34

The Japan Times, June 15, 1960.

35

The Japan Times, July 8, 1960.

36

The New York Times, June 12, 1960 (reprinted from the original cartoon in the The Greensboro
Daily News)37

In considering other comparative possibilities, it might prove fruitful to examine editorial
cartoons in Pravda during the late 1950s when popular protests against U.S. missile deployments
in West Germany were fairly widespread. While I have not examined those sources (andspecifically relevant examples are not discussed in McKenna’s All the Views Fit to Print), I
would not be surprised to find the CPSU making similar use of those West German protests fordomestic propaganda value just as the CCP was doing with protests in Japan in 1960. I thank myJapan, China, and Pan-Asianism

236

colleagues Susanna Schrafstetter and Alan Steinweis for suggesting this possibility to me after
reading an early draft of this paper.
38

Renmin ribao, June 10, 1960.

39

Renmin ribao, May14, 1960.

40

Front page of Renmin ribao, May 12, 1960.

41

He, “Remembering and Forgetting the War,” 47.

42

Renmin ribao, May 13, 1960.

43

Asahi Shinbun, May 9, 1960.