White Peril/Yellow Peril andJapan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 18501930
Owen Griffiths
Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus
Course Reader no. #13
2014

White Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-1930

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VOLUME EDITOROWEN GRIFFITHS
Mount Allison University

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

White Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-1930

The copyright of all material in this course reader is held by the respective
authors, except where otherwise noted.

The volume editor can be contacted at ogriffiths@mta.ca.

2White Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-1930

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White Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-1930
Introduction

4

Pan-Asianism in Historical Context

15

Sven Saaler and Christopher W. A. Szpilman

17

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

51

Cemil Aydin, “Japan’s Pan-Asianism and the Legitimacy of Imperial
World Order, 1931–1945,” The Asia Pacific Journal March 12,
2008.
The Yellow Peril in War, Economics, and Popular Culture

94

Owen Griffiths

96

Owen Griffiths, “Militarizing Japan: Patriotism, Profit, andChildren’s Print Media, 1894-1925,” The Asia-Pacific Journal,
September 22, 2007.
Daniel A. Métraux

132

Daniel A. Métraux, "Jack London: The Adventurer-Writer who
Chronicled Asian Wars, Confronted Racism—and Saw the Future,"
The Asia-Pacific Journal, 4.3.10, January 25, 2010.
Richard Bradshaw and Jim Ransdell
Richard Bradshaw and Jim Ransdell, “Japan, Britain and the Yellow
Peril in Africa in the 1930s,” The Asia-Pacific Journal 9.44.2,
October 31, 2011.

169

White Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-1930

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The Contradictions of Empire

169

Tessa Morris-Suzuki

171

Tessa Morris-Suzuki, “Migrants, Subjects, Citizens: Comparative
Perspectives on Nationality in the Prewar Japanese Empire,” The
Asia-Pacific Journal, August 28, 2008.
Erin L. Murphy

197

Erin L. Murphy, “Women's Anti-Imperialism, 'The White Man's
Burden,” and the Philippine-American War," The Asia-Pacific
Journal, 27.1.09, July 6, 2009.
Paul A. Kramer

212

Paul A. Kramer, “Race-Making and Colonial Violence in the U.S.
Empire: The Philippine-American War as Race War,” The AsiaPacific Journal, June 2, 2006
Asia-Pacific Journal Articles Recommended for Further Reading244

White Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-1930

5Introduction
The 19th century collision of nationalism and imperialism is one of thedefining processes of modern world history, the consequences of which endure eventoday.1 While much has been written on this subject it is nonetheless instructive toreexamine it from the perspective of Japan’s modern history. Because Japan was the
only country to have been both imperialized and imperializer, its experience
provides a unique perspective on the tensions between the emergence ofnationalism as a defense against perceived foreign threats, and imperialism, which
was a more aggressive way to solve the same problem. This tension expressed itself
in many ways but two in particular stand out in the case of Japan. The first was panAsianism grounded in the assumption that common cultural experiences would
form the basis of political unity. Japanese pan-Asianists dreamed of such unity
under Japan’s leadership to protect against imperialist incursions while also
providing the necessary resources to modernize Asia’s economies and societies. The
second was expansionism, pan-Asianism’s more predatory cousin. It aimed tosecure territory beyond Japan’s borders, to provide access to raw materials andmarkets, to enhance Japan’s status as a great power, and to protect its borders witha buffer zone. Linking these two strategies were the concepts of blood and race that
arose in Europe at the very moment of Japan’s forced emergence on the world stage.
Both pan-Asianism and expansionism offered new ways of thinking about national
and pan-national unity, justifying inclusion or exclusion in these new visions
according to Japanese dictates.
The common thread running through both of these was the seemingly
irresistible force of the West, which simultaneously represented a model for Japan’snationalist and imperialist goals and a clear and present danger to those very same
ambitions. Despite the many competing visions of Japan’s national and imperial
future from mid-19th century onward, the West remained a constant: a model fromwhich to borrow ideas, practices, and institutions selectively; an example of what
great power was; a goad to ever greater imperialist endeavours; a threat to Japan’s
ambitions; and a constant reminder of Japan’s backwardness under a Western gaze.
As Japan proceeded to revolutionize itself and then project its power outward undersuch slogans as rich nation/strong military (fûkoku kyôhei), it became, in turn, athreat to the nations of the West as well as a model for others to follow from China
and the Philippines to India and the Ottoman Empire.2 These responses then fuelled
even grander Japanese visions of pan-Asianism, both benevolent and predatory.

1 Readers are encouraged to understand this collision as a process because it was the

product of many intersecting forces and, most importantly, because it unfolded over time.

2 One example of this was Japan’s influence on pan-Arab nationalism in the Ottoman Empire

at the turn of the 20th century. For a good discussion on this topic, see Renée Worringer,“Japan’s Progress Reified: Modernity and Arab Dissent in the Ottoman Empire,” Japan
Focus, September 2008, ID: 2896,
http://japanfocus.org/data/Japan%20Reified%20Worringer.pdf.

White Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-1930

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In the short century between Commodore Perry’s “black ships” of 1853 and Japan’s
defeat in 1945, a variety of groups and individuals constructed their own visions ofJapan’s pan-Asianist future.3 Despite the lack of official sanction until the 1930s, andthe absence of clear strategies and objectives, these activists all shared a profoundantipathy toward the West.4 Japan’s pan-Asianists believed that without some formof overarching unity, the peoples of Asia – Japan included – would succumb to therapacious greed of the Western nations. In this, the Japanese were not alone. Othersin Asia also shared this image of a materially obsessed, spiritually barren West. In
China, for example, organizations such as the Red Swastika Society (Hongwanzihui)
and the Fellowship of Goodness (Tonshanshe) emerged from the early 20th century
stirrings of Chinese nationalism claiming that humanity could only be saved from ahedonistic West by the spiritual and moral redemption of the East.5 Other Asian
writers went even further in their analysis, identifying nationalism itself as theprincipal cause of human suffering. In a series of lectures delivered in the UnitedStates and published as a book in 1917, Bengali intellectual and Nobel laureate
Rabindranath Tagore argued that nationalism was “one of the most powerfulanesthetics that man had invented.”6 For Tagore, nationalism was a product ofWestern commerce and science that turned out “neatly compressed bales ofhumanity” in its insatiable quest for power.7 He called this the “Nation of the West,”
a mechanistic monster of “organized self-interest” driven to seek power for its own
sake through conflict and conquest. In both book and lectures Tagore devoted achapter to Japan, which he commended for its inner strength and deep sense ofhuman obligation. But he worried that the Japanese were in the process ofvoluntarily submitting to the “trimming of their minds and of their freedom[s]”through “their nervous desire to turn themselves into a machine of power called thenation, and emulate other machines in their collective worldliness.”8 However, Japan
still had a chance to carve a different path, one that would bring East and West
together in a spirit of cooperation, not competition. “Of all the countries in Asia,”
Tagore declared, Japan had the freedom to use what it had gathered from the West.
But with this came great responsibility, “for in your [Japan’s] voice Asia shall answer
3 The term “black ships” is the English translation of the Japanese original kurobune. It

refers to the black smoke pouring from the funnels of Perry’s coal-fired steamships. Thereis some evidence, however, that the term originated in the 16th century, referring to thecolour of the hulls of Portuguese ships that were covered in black pitch.
4 For arguments about the lack of unity among Japanese pan-Asianists and a lack of support
from official circles, see the articles in this reader by Cemil Aydin, and Saaler andSzpilman.
5 For a good discussion of these associations in China, see Prasenjit Duara,“Transnationalism and the Predicament of Sovereignty: China, 1900-1945,” The American
Historical Review, 102:4 (Oct., 1997), 1030-1051. Duara used the term transnationalrather than pan-Asian because many of these Chinese associations preached a redemptive
message that was founded on a combination of Buddhist, Daoist, and Confucian moral
principles, but one that spoke to all humans, not just Asians.
6 Rabindranath Tagore, Nationalism, (1917), Kessinger Publishing, 1998, 57.
7 Ibid., 17.
8 Ibid., 39.

White Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-19307

the questions that Europe has submitted to the conference of man.”9 When Tagore
uttered these words in 1916 Japan had already begun to “emulate” the West with its
own colonial empire. Yet, he still believed Japan could avoid the temptations towhich Europe had succumbed.
Like his Japanese and Chinese counterparts, Tagore believed that pursuing
wealth and power as ends in themselves threatened the future of humanity. The
West had lost its way, he said. Tempted by Indra, Lord of the Immortals, it sought
immortality through wealth and power rather than through penance and humility.
Yet there was still hope in what Tagore called “the spirit of the West,” especially its
universal ideals of justice and, above all, human freedom. In contrast, Japan’s panAsianists and China’s transnationalists argued that only the moral East could
overcome the commercial and mechanistic West.10 Herein lay the origins ofJapanese spirit/Western learning (wakon yôsai).11 Many Japanese, pan-Asianists
among them, believed that a skillful and selective grafting of Western knowledge
onto a foundational and unchanging Japanese essence would result in a powerfulmodern nation, one that would become the light of Asia and an example to theworld. Western science and philosophy (yôsai) could therefore be separated fromthe moral turpitude of the Western nations and be successfully transplanted into thefertile environment of Japan’s own moral traditions (wakon). As a metaphor for
modernity, wakon yôsai was both a solution to Japan’s quest for great power status
and a problem to be overcome. The difficulty was twofold: how to import foreignideas without changing Japan’s essential nature and, at the same time, how toimport those ideas free of the predatory impulses and moral depravity inherent in
the West. In this sense, Japanese pan-Asianism was at its core anti-Western or, at thevery least, fearful that without some form of overarching unity, the peoples of Asia,
Japan included, would weaken themselves and succumb to the rapacious greed of
the Western nations. That insecurity, ironically but understandably, also fueled
Japanese nationalist dreams of imperial dominion over Asia, if only in the name ofnational security.
Often unnoticed in this story is the fact that the West itself was a relatively new
concept, a product of the mid-19th century when Euro-American global domination
truly began in earnest. From this time on, the West came to embody, in the eyes ofboth insider and outsider, the epitome of progress, civilization, modernity, and,above all, power. This claim may seem audacious to those raised in a tradition that
understands the West and Western civilization as timeless concepts dating backhundreds or even thousands of years. Yet, when we examine the etymology of theWest, at least in the English language, we find its origins in the mid-19th century.12
9 Ibid., 74-5.
10 Ibid., 110.
11 The Chinese had their own version of this phrase, Zhong xue wei ti, xi xue wei yong

(Chinese learning as the principle, Western learning for the application), as did a little
later the Koreans, Dongdo seogi (Eastern way, Western tools).
12 According to the complete Oxford English Dictionary, the earliest usages of the West in
the sense we are familiar with today go back only to the mid-19th century. For anWhite Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-1930

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Like all concepts, of course, the West had its antecedents, Christendom, theOccident, and Europe among them. It is also true that many Europeans saw
themselves as superior to other peoples long before European global domination
was manifest. It was only in the 19th century however, during what some historians
have called the second industrial revolution, that the will to dominate was finallyand fully matched by ability. The mass productive forces of industrial capitalism andthe infrastructural power of nation-states, together with rapid advances in scienceand technology, coalesced into an irresistible force that made European, and later
American, global domination possible on a scale unprecedented in human history.
Ideologies that justified domination quickly gained force too. As the epitome ofcivilization, modernity, and progress, the West was the senior partner to thesubordinate East in one of the most powerful binary constructions in human history.
In this sense, it is no exaggeration to say that the West and the East (Asia) not only
grew up together but also emerged from the same geopolitical milieu at the sametime. Earlier, people thought of themselves as Gauls or Swedes, on the one hand, or
as Chinese or Khmer, on the other, but not as members of two fundamentallydifferent civilizations, or even as Europeans and Asians. Just as there were few selfconscious Asians in Asia until about 150 years ago, neither were there many
Westerners in the West. The melding of the will to power with the ability to wield
that power over immense space not only created the West but also the entire
modern world as we know them today.
Here, again, Japan is a most instructive case. Japan’s modern history often
begins with Commodore Perry’s arrival in Uraga Bay in 1853. This is a convenient,albeit incomplete, beginning for Japan’s modern transformation and one that iscertainly flattering to Americans and other Westerners: There but for the grace ofthe West went modern Japan.13 However, as much as this was a beginning, Perry’s
mission was also the end of a succession of British, Russian, and American attempts
to engage Japan dating back to the late 18th century. All these earlier efforts failed –as did the McCartney mission to China in 1792 – for a variety of reasons, not theleast of which was inability or lack of motivation on the part of the Europeans andAmericans to impose their will on the Chinese and Japanese. Fifty years later all that
had changed with the gunboat diplomacy of the first Opium War and Perry’s arrivalin Japan 12 years after that. These were the beginnings of the West as an
unstoppable force in East Asia. The Japanese understanding of this change is aptly
captured by the speed with which they moved from a position of absolute
opposition (sonnô jôi: revere the Emperor/expel the barbarian) to one of resigned

argument that the West as a political idea shorn of its racial edge began even later in the20th century, see Alastair Bonnett, The Idea of the West: Culture, Politics, and History,
Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.
13 This phrase is an intentional play on the original “There but for grace of God goes John
Bradford,” attributed to the English reformer and martyr of the same name. It highlights
one of the major narratives in Japanese and Western writing about Japan until the last 20
years or so that characterized Japan as a follower, a latecomer, and an imitator. In thisstory the West was Japan’s opposite: a leader, a pioneer, and a creator.

White Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-1930

9accommodation (wakon yôsai: Japanese spirit/Western learning) with theWesterners.
One of the most important developments that gave rise to the West was the
rapidly expanding power of science, both in terms of its rhetorical authority and its
practical value. Professionalization, too, assisted this process as new infrastructural
power (the research institute, the academy, and the state) gave scientific inquiry in
all its forms a legitimacy to weigh in on all aspects of human life. From the family
kitchen and the firm to government bureaucracies and the marketplace, scientificthinking reigned supreme and quickly became central to the definition ofWesternness. To think or act scientifically was not simply to be modern andprogressive. It was, in a word, to be Western. While it conflicted at times with thereceived truths of Christianity, science just as frequently meshed with religion into a
progressive story of salvation by promising to lift the pagans of the world out of
their self-imposed ignorance. This is particularly evident in the 19th century
missionary legacy. There is considerable evidence that the peoples of Asia weremore interested in science than in Christianity and, in fact, were able to comfortably
separate the two. As a result, Christian missionaries in Asia were far more successful
in building schools, orphanages, and hospitals based on the progressive scientifictheories then emanating from Europe and America than they were in winning
converts.
In practical terms, rapid advances in scientific discovery and technologicalinnovation, coupled with machine-driven mass production techniques, more thanmatched the rhetorical power of scientific discourse. It was in these fields that theability to project power finally matched the will to do so. This was particularly truein military affairs where the screw-driven ironclad steamship, the breech loading
gun, and the exploding shell gave tremendous advantages to any who could build or
buy them. All of these were developed in the 19th century but constructed on many
incremental improvements from earlier times. Here, again, Perry’s “black ships” area useful measure of the speed with which industrial capitalism and scientificdiscovery were transformed into tools of power. When James Biddle and James Glynsailed to Japan in 1846 and 1849 respectively, they did so aboard sail-driven
wooden warships armed with smoothbore cannon. Matthew Perry arrived in Uraga
Bay in 1853 on the USS Mississippi, a wooden paddle-driven steam frigate
brandishing ten French-made Paixhans guns that fired exploding shells. The
Mississippi represented a dramatic improvement in naval warfare, yet it too wasrendered obsolete within a decade by screw-driven ironclad steamships. Mao
Zedong is usually credited with the phrase, “political power flows from the barrel ofa gun.” However, mid-19th century Japanese didn’t need Mao to interpret what theyexperienced directly from Perry onward. This was the world into which theJapanese were thrown, a decidedly dangerous world in which progress, indeed
survival, was measured in terms of the ability to project power on whatever object anation’s gaze was fixed.
The application of scientific thinking to the world of human affairs led to newjustifications for using such power. The physical sciences provided insight andWhite Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-1930

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understanding into the laws that governed the inanimate world. Similarly, the newly
emerging human sciences seemed to many people to offer comparable insights into
relationships among people as well as those between states. As with the physicalsciences, these ideas about human behaviour, class, and race did not emerge fully
formed but coalesced in the mid-19th century into a powerful discourse about linear
progress buttressed by scientific authority. Among the many questions addressedby Europeans and Americans at that time were those concerning human origins, theage of the world, and the mechanisms by which progress occurred.
Of the new ideas circulating at the time none was more powerful thanCharles Darwin’s evolutionary theory.14 As compelling as it was controversial,
evolution offered an evidence-based explanation for how some species survived,
reproduced, and thrived and others did not. According to Darwin, any slight change
or variation in a species, if useful to it in the endless struggle for existence, would bepreserved and passed on to its offspring.15 This was the principle of natural
selection at work. Thus, not only did organisms change over time – a controversial
enough idea in itself – they did so through the invisible hand of nature, which, byprivileging useful variations, gave reproductive success to some and not others. As
with all ideas, the power of concepts like evolution and natural selection lay not onlyin elegant explanation grounded in evidence but also in the ease with which others
were able to adapt them to new circumstances. Natural selection proved
particularly malleable. Among its many interpretations perhaps the most famous is
Herbert Spencer’s “survival of the fittest,” which is often mistakenly attributed to
Darwin himself.16 However, whereas Darwin originally defined fitness in terms ofreproductive success in the natural world, Spencer and the many who followed thisthread defined it as mental and physical productive success in the human world.

14 Although we credit Charles Darwin as the father of modern evolutionary theory, we

should not forget that Alfred Russel Wallace independently derived the same idea from his
work in the Amazon and Southeast Asia. In fact, knowledge of Wallace’s theory was the
final push that drove Darwin to publish On the Origin of Species in 1859. A year earlier, thenow-famous Darwin-Wallace paper was read at the Linnean Society of London by Charles
Lyell and Joseph Hooker, The full text of this is available at http://wallacefund.info/the1858-darwin-wallace-paper. Readers should also note that both men were deeply
influenced by Thomas Malthus’ An Essay on the Principle of Population, J. Johnson, 1798,
available online at http://www.econlib.org/library/Malthus/malPop.html.
15 Charles Darwin, On the Origins of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservationof Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, 2nd ed. John Murray, 1860, 61-62, available online
at http://darwinonline.org.uk/content/frameset?itemID=F376&viewtype=text&pageseq=1.
16 While Darwin did not use this term in the first four editions of his famous work, he didcite Spencer’s phrase approvingly in the fifth edition, saying it was “more accurate [thannatural selection] and [was] sometimes equally convenient.” On the Origin of Species, 5thedition, John Murray, 1869, 72. Available online at http://darwinonline.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=1&itemID=F387&viewtype=text.

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This move toward analyzing human society through evolution and natural selection
marked the beginning of what we now call Social Darwinism, particularly whenlinked from the 1880s onward with definitions of race that were specifically basedon skin colour.17 Ultimately, these ideas provided new ways of understanding power
and why the West should wield it as it did. It was a moral tale in which individuals,
races, and nations engaged in endless struggle for survival, a zero-sum world with
only winner and losers where the fittest prevailed to write and re-write the story of
progress. This was the West in full bloom, an existing concept now grounded in newscientific theories about racial purity and fitness. Long before the advent of National
Socialism in Germany, Europeans and Americans generally accepted the link
between race and nation, and the idea that imperialism was an expression of anation’s fitness. So too did the Japanese.
In the European story of progress, which meshed so well with Social
Darwinist ideas of struggle and survival, the Japanese found themselves at a distinct
disadvantage as one of the “inferior races.” However, much like Marx and Engels’argument that class struggle was the motive force in historical change, the story of
progress and Darwin’s story of evolution driven by natural selection could provide
both an explanation for Japan’s current position in the world and a blueprint for
improving that condition. To that end, Japan’s Meiji leaders dedicated themselves toforging a strong national polity united by race and culture, powered by industrial
capitalism, and protected by military might. Initially these objectives aimed toeliminate the unequal treaties Japan’s shogunal government was forced to sign inthe wake of Perry’s “black ships.” Diplomatic parity and international respect fromthe great powers would lift Japan from its subordinate position in the European
story of progress and demonstrate to the world that being modern, civilized, andpowerful was not exclusive to the West. By the beginning of the 20th century thesegoals had been achieved. Japan had diplomatic parity, economic and military power,
and a strong national polity. Most importantly Japan’s victories in its wars with
China (1894-5) and Russia (1904-5) and the territories that came with the victor’s
justice of the time demonstrated its ability to project power outward, an absolute
prerequisite for great power status. This was truly a remarkable achievement. In
only 40 years Japan had transformed itself into an industrial hub – about the samelength of time it had taken England to complete the first phase of its own industrial
revolution.
As with the English, the costs of this achievement for many Japanese wereconsiderable. Abuses of labour in the factories, thread mills and mines werewidespread, as was growing poverty and tenancy in the countryside. Another cost,this one very much tied to race, nation and struggle, was that Japan’s success in theinternational arena had made it a threat to the very powers from which it wished togain parity and respect. In the world of all against all, a binary world of grow or
perish, Japan’s ascendancy to near-great power status altered the balance of power
17 For a good discussion of these ideas and particularly Darwin’s place in the 19th century

European intellectual world, see Gregory Claeys, “The ‘Survival of the Fittest’ and theOrigins of Social Darwinism,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 61:2 (Apr. 2000), 223-240.

White Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-1930

12in Asia and, in the eyes of Westerners, turned Theodore Roosevelt’s “plucky little
Jap” into a yellow menace whose buck-toothed, squint-eyed gaze struck fear into thehearts of “good white folk” until well after the Pacific War. This was, of course, the“yellow peril,” a phrase attributed to Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany but one that
resonated powerfully in all the nations of the West and found popular expression inlaws, legislation, education, and the media. At the heart of yellow peril fears lay
visions of teeming Asian hordes overrunning the civilized white world. These
visions lent truth to the idea that race as a biological category mattered. They also
revealed the centrality of skin colour in the definition of race. Finally, yellow peril
rhetoric also blurred the lines between Darwinist and Social Darwinist conceptionsof evolution and selection. The yellow peril preoccupation with reproduction
actually brought it closer to the original Darwinian idea rather than the Social
Darwinist emphasis on productive fitness. The fluid movement between one kind of
fitness and the other, however, illustrates the many ways these concepts could be
adapted to different situations, all seemingly grounded in scientific authority.
Western images of Japan and China revealed this tendency clearly. China was
the object of Western yellow peril fears primarily due to the “fecundity of its loins,”
to use Jack London’s phrase.18 Japan, on the other hand, represented a double threat.
As a formidable military power and the only non-Western participant in the great
power game, Japan had demonstrated both the will to power and the ability to wield
it in the international arena. But a modern, militarized Japan also represented a
special danger because of its potential to awaken the Chinese “sleeping dragon” andunleash its teaming masses. Thus, for many in the West, Japan was the spearhead ofyellow peril fears precisely because of its pan-Asian rhetoric. This was evident inEuro-American writings as early as the 1880s, particularly in future war fiction.19 As
part of the emerging East/West binary, yellow peril and white peril fed on eachother, creating a self-sustaining discourse of fear and loathing. Yellow peril anxieties
were articulated through literature, scientific study, and anti-Oriental legislation, allof which provided compelling evidence to Japanese and other Asians that the West
was a threat to their own existence. As Singhalese Buddhist Anagarika Dharmapala
wrote in 1913, "[i]t is a political trick of the Europeans to keep harping about theyellow peril… It is the white peril that Asiatic races have to guard against."20 In this18 Jack London, “The Unparalleled Invasion,” in The Strength of the Strong, MacMillan, 1910,

60-80. In this chilling tale, set some 70 years in London’s future, he recounts how thenations of the world, led by a brilliant American scientist, exterminate the entire Chinese
race through biological warfare due to fears of China overbreeding. It is the earliest formof fiction I have found that treats both germ warfare and genocide.
19 Future war is also known as military science fiction or simply science fiction. However, it
was a genre of adventure stories for boys in Japan in the early 20th century known as miraisensô (future war). For more on this genre, see my article in this reader.
20 Anagarika Dharmapala, “Japan’s Duty to the World,” quoted in Janaka Perera, “White perilvs. ‘yellow peril’ then and now,” Asian Tribune, September 21, 2009,http://www.asiantribune.com/?q=node/13340. I have not yet found a copy of
Dharmapala’s original article.

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way, yellow peril fears helped to drive pan-Asianist visions of the Japanese andother Asians.
The articles that follow offer a variety of perspectives on Japanese thinking
about pan-Asianism from its earliest formations in the mid-19th century to its
eventual official adoption as Japanese policy in the 1930s. While the approach andfocus of each article differs, they share some understanding that the motive force
behind all forms of Japanese pan-Asianism was a powerful antipathy to the West.
This is what I have called the “white peril” even though in my research thus
far I have found no Japanese use of the term. Of course they did have many
derogatory names for Westerners, from “long noses” and “butter stinkers” to the“evil British and Americans” (aku O-bei) common from the 1920s through the 1940s.
The earliest references to the “white peril” may actually come from the West itself.
The first was a novel by Anatole France entitled The White Stone (Sur la pierreblanche) published in 1905. In the shadow of the excavation of ancient Roman ruinsa group of Frenchmen gathered each afternoon to discuss politics, philosophy andhistory. During dinner, conversation turned to the rise of Europe with one youngman, Nicole Langelier, inverting history by remarking that “[t]he white kingdoms
joined issue over the extermination of the red, yellow, and black races, and for the
space of four centuries gave themselves up madly to the pillaging of the three great
divisions of the world. This is what is styled modern civilization.”21 In an even moredamning indictment, Langelier went on to say that “[i]t was not the yellow men who
hunted up the whites… We created the White Peril. The White Peril engendered the
Yellow Peril.”22 France’s inversion of civilized and barbaric was echoed later thatsame year by American journalist Sidney Gulick who argued that Japan’s victory
over Russia marked the beginning of a new era, “a readjustment [in the balance ofpower] that promises to halt the territorial expansion of white races and to checktheir racial pride.”23 In an almost exact reproduction of France’s fictional character,
Gulick went on to say that “[s]ince the discovery of America, the dream of conquest,of empire and of unearned wealth has intoxicated the white people of the earth andmade them the scourge of all the world…Surely the outstanding fact in the relationsof the West to the East has been the peril to the yellow and brown races through thepresence of the white man, whose assumption has been the theory that might makes
right.”24
These examples powerfully illustrate how the “Nation of the West,” inTagore’s words, became the goad for Japanese pan-Asianism. In a short poem
penned on the last day of the 19th century, nearly 20 years before his lectures onnationalism, Tagore portrayed the West as a monster whose “naked passion of self21 Anatole France, The White Stone (Sur la pierre blanche), trans. Charles E. Roche, The

Bodley Head Limited, 1905, 152.

22 Ibid., 162.

23 Sidney Lewis Gulick, The White Peril in the Far East: An Interpretation of the Significance of

the Russo-Japanese War, Fleming H. Revell Company, 1905, 5.

24 Ibid., 19-20.

White Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-1930

14

love” and “drunken delirium of greed” had burst forth “in a violence of fury from its
own shameless feeding. For it has made the world its food.”25 Here, we see the selfcriticism of Western hypocrisy (France and Gulick) converging with Easternperceptions of Western greed and rapaciousness (Dharmapala and Tagore). This
was the world historical context in which Japanese pan-Asianists operated, a worldin which pan-Asian unity under Japanese leadership became for many the only
protection against the West. However, just as Tagore saw the West consuming itself,
Japanese pan-Asian visions also ran the risk, now all too clear in retrospect, of
becoming just like the enemy they struggled to resist.

25 Rabindranath Tagore, “The Sunset of the Century, 1899. The poem was written in Bengalion the last day of that year and translated and reprinted in English in 1917 in Nationalism.

White Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-1930

15

Pan-Asianism in Historical Context
Pan-Asianism as an Ideal of Asian Identity and Solidarity, 1850–Present
Sven Saaler and Christopher W. A. Szpilman
http://www.japanfocus.org/-Sven-Saaler/3519
April 25, 2011
Japan’s Pan-Asianism and the Legitimacy of Imperial World Order, 1931–1945
Cemil Aydin
http://www.japanfocus.org/-Cemil-Aydin/2695
March 12, 2008
These two articles examine the formation of Japanese pan-Asian visions from theirearliest stirrings in the mid-19th century to the end of the 20th century. Saaler andSzpilman offer a historical account of pan-Asianism that was grounded inassumptions of common culture and language as well as racial ideas imported fromthe West. They also reveal the powerful antipathy many pan-Asian proponents had
toward the West. At the same time, they show that pan-Asianism provided a useful
set of tools that the Japanese used to displace centuries-long Chinese authority.
Their article, an abridged version of the introduction to a two-volume edited book,also provides important historical context for understanding discussions of East
Asian regional and global integration in the 21st century.
Saaler and Szpilman begin by pointing out that pan-Asianism poses a challenge forscholars, not only because of its ambiguity and lack of definition, but also due to thediscrediting of the concept through Japan’s own actions in the 1930s and 1940s.
This is where Aydin’s article fits nicely. He analyzes why Japanese political elites
embraced pan-Asian ideas in the 1930s after having rejected or ignored them,especially as tools of foreign policy, in earlier periods. Aydin explains that panAsianism’s malleability, being both ill defined and unsystematic, transcended
domestic left/right political ideologies, rendering it useful both as a peaceful tool of
Asian unity and as a rhetorical device for Japan’s own imperialist endeavours.
Internationally, the Manchurian Incident of 1931 and Japan’s withdrawal from the
League of Nations in 1933 marked a turning point when Japanese foreign policy
adopted the radical pan-Asianist rhetoric of racial struggle against the imperialist
West. Even here, however, pan-Asianists exhibited little unanimity, with some like
Okawa Shumei arguing against war and for greater trade with the United States.
Both articles provide a wealth of primary voices, Japanese and non-Japanese, allunited to some degree in their opposition to the West. In addition to Okawa andIshiwara Kanji, readers are introduced to the ideas of Rabindranath Tagore, Qurban
Ali, W. E. B. DuBois, and An Chung-gun – Ito Hirobumi’s Korean assassin – whowrote a pan-Asian tract while in prison awaiting his execution. An, along with
Chinese revolutionaries like Li Dazhao, are important to this story not only because
their pan-Asian visions rejected Japanese leadership but also because they illustrate

White Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-1930
the breadth of anti-Western pan-Asian sentiment throughout the entire Asian
region.

16

Saaler and Szpilman: Pan-Asianism as an Ideal

17

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 twovolume collection by the authors of Pan-Asianism. A Documentary History Vol. 1
covers the years 1850-1920; Vol. 2 covers the years 1850-present, link.
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 UnitedStates 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 comesgrowing 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. Yet for all this talk of Asia, there is no consensus on what Asia actually
stands for as a whole. Is the vast Asian landmass a single entity? There has neverbeen—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 in ancient 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 in the sixteenth century. The term is found, written in Chinesecharacters (亜細亜), on Chinese maps of the world made around 1600 under thesupervision of Matteo Ricci (1552–1610), one of the founders of the Jesuit missionin China. However, it took two more centuries before the name gained widecurrency 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 usedby East Asian cartographers and, in reaction to the threat of Western colonialism,
came to represent a specific geopolitical space bound together by suchcommonalities as a shared history, close cultural links, a long record of diplomatic
relations, trade exchanges, and the notion of a “common destiny.” Although thedefinitions of Asia were diverse and often contradictory, the real or perceived
Western threat caused an increasing number of intellectuals, politicians, andactivists throughout Asia to argue for strengthening “Asian” solidarity in relation to“the West.”White Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-1930

18

1808 map of Asia

These arguments about the definition and nature of Asia in reaction to theimpending 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 by endeavors to create an
Asian identity by postulating commonalities and identifying traditions of interaction
and interrelationship. Some thinkers took for granted the existence of an Asian
identity. Others argued that such an identity must be deliberately forged as anecessary 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 acertain degree of uniformity in the development of pan-Asian rhetoric from thenineteenth century down to the present—a pattern discussed below.

White Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-1930

19

In this way, then, a pan-Asian worldview or “style of thought” became establishedand diffused throughout the region. It can be identified in the writings ofintellectuals, 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 ofwhich are of great significance in the history of Pan-Asianism and Asian regionalism,
are included in this collection. They were written or collected in various parts ofAsia, 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 easily accessible form. Each source is accompanied by acommentary 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 important of 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 isthe recently published three-volume anthology, Ajiashugishatachi no Koe (PanAsianist Voices), which merely reproduces snippets of texts seemingly at random
without any critical contextualization. Pan-Asianism, however, receives scantattention in widely available English-language source collections on Asia such as thevolumes in the Introduction to Asian Civilizations series—Sources of JapaneseTradition, Sources of Chinese Tradition, Sources of Korean Tradition and Sources ofIndian Tradition.
The end of the Cold War in 1989 produced a surge of interest in issues ofregionalism and transnational identity in contemporary East Asia. This new interestin contemporary regionalism was followed only a decade later by the recognition of
the long-term historical developments underlying the geopolitical formation of theEast 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
in a stream of book-length publications on various aspects of Pan-Asianism. In
addition, a number of important articles have been published on the subject over
the years. Notwithstanding these publications, 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 developmentof the ideals of Asian solidarity and regionalism in the hope of stimulating further
research and providing the foundations for a synthesis of earlier work. The majordifficulty with researching Pan-Asianism is a linguistic one, for it would be very
difficult, if not impossible, for any one scholar to master all the languages necessary
for a comprehensive study of the subject. So, while the community of scholars
interested in issues of Asian regionalism continues to grow, linguistic difficulties
and the barriers of specialization have prevented them from studying Pan-Asianism

White Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-1930

20

as an ideology that transcends linguistic boundaries and national narratives andexamining the processes of regional integration in East Asia from the perspective ofthe longue dureé. We hope that this collection, with its comprehensive approach,will help scholars to look beyond the scope of their narrow 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 ofthe 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 theregion began to consider the questions of “Asia” and Asian solidarity. With a view togiving the concept of solidarity substance, they began exploring Asian culturalcommonalities and the common historical heritage of the continent. It is of course
true that, as Hamashita 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, centered on China. It was this Sinocentric system(sometimes also known as the tributary system) to which the Western powers hadto 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 the Opium War thatforced Asian writers and thinkers actively to pursue the agenda of a united Asia, anAsia with a common goal—the struggle against Western imperialism.
Ideas of Asian solidarity came in a large variety of forms, as did the geographicaldefinitions underlying claims for regional solidarity. Some forms of the concept
were based on assumptions of racial unity, following, curiously enough, racial
notions that had originated in the West (Hannaford 1996; Dikötter 1997). Others
tended to emphasize commonalities in culture and language (more accurately
written language). This was especially the case in East Asia, often referred to in theWest 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, somethinkers saw the new quest for solidarity as a strengthening of the existing
networks of economic and cultural exchange. Others were inspired by panmovements emerging almost simultaneously in Europe and America. The various
approaches to Pan-Asianism, however, all shared a common emphasis ontransnationalism and Asian unity.
Pan-Asianism was at times used to legitimize Japan’s territorial aggrandizement andcolonial expansion. One of the few detailed studies of pan-movements in general,
Louis Snyder’s Macro-Nationalisms, 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

White Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-1930

21

and nationalism, which were also imported in their modern forms to Asia from theWest in the nineteenth century. The popularity of a transnational Pan-Asianism andthe 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 the absolute character of the “nation.”) To be sure, in a number of
Asian countries protonationalism had already developed before the arrival of theEuropean powers in the region. Within the Sinocentric international order, the elitesof 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 Westerncolonialism and over time developed into national independence movements. Yetagain, these nationalist aspirations and the independence movements they spawned
were characterized by strongtransnational links, alliances that were apparent in theactivities 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-Asian solidarity, developed
networks, and worked together to achieve national independence. Benedict
Anderson has brilliantly traced the process by which the elites of colonized nations
developed a sense of national identity and a desire for independence from theircolonial masters during periods of residence in the metropole. It could be argued
that a similar process was at work in the case of the revolutionary members of Asianelites. Particularly those who found themselves in Japan, whether as students or
exiles, interacted with other Asians and in this way developed a common 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-Asian ideas throughout the continent. Many Asians
now believed that Japan would soon assume leadership in the struggle against thetyranny of the Western imperialist powers. Even in distant Egypt, a delighted Arabannounced 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 to know 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 ofother Asian nations and justified these expansionist policies with pan-Asianrhetoric.
Pan-Asian cooperation was institutionalized in the form of numerous pan-Asian
associations founded all over Asia and was also reflected in pan-Asian conferencesthat took place in Japan, China, and Afghanistan in the 1920s and 1930s. Thesedevelopments showed the diversity and interconnectedness of anti-Western
movements throughout Asia. A few examples will suffice to illustrate thisphenomenon. In 1907, socialists and anarchists from China, Japan, and India joinedWhite Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-1930

22

forces to found the Asiatic Humanitarian Brotherhood in Tokyo. In 1909 Japaneseand Muslim pan-Asianists in Japan established the Ajia Gikai (Asian Congress) withthe 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 theTurks of Central Asia and their liberation from Russian rule. The associationcooperated closely with the Greater Asia Association (Dai Ajia Kyōkai) and otherJapanese pan-Asian organizations.
The transnational character of Pan-Asianism was also apparent in its publishingactivities. Indian pan-Asianists published material in Japan, China, the United States,
and Germany; Japanese pan-Asianists published in China, India, and the UnitedStates. Koreans, too, such as the court noble An Kyongsu (1853–1900), publishedtheir works in Japan. Journals with a clear pan-Asian message—the source of manyof 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 doubtthat a significant number of Westerners were sympathetic to the ideals of Asiansolidarity and Pan-Asianism. At the center of pan-Asian activities in Japan at the endof 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, the famous editor of
the Zeitschrift für Geopolitik, Karl Haushofer (1869–1946), paid tribute to the panAsian movement, seeing it as proof of his theory that international relations would
come to be dominated by regional blocs. Haushofer introduced to his readers thewritings and activities of pan-Asianists such as Sun Yat-sen, Rabindranath Tagore(1861–1941), and Benoy Kumar Sarkar (1887–1949). These Asian activists andrevolutionaries, Haushofer was convinced, reflected a trend toward a future worldorder that would be dominated by large, regional blocs, replacing the existing ordercharacterized by the sovereign nation-state. Another proponent of pan-ideas,
Richard Nikolaus Count von Coudenhove-Kalergi (1894–1972), the founder of thepan-European movement and the publisher of the journal Pan-Europa, also praised
the pan-Asian movement; 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 theMongolian 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
to cultivate the Pan-Mongolian consciousness, in feeling, in thought and above all inaction; harmonize, cultivate and facilitate in every possible way the Inter-Mongolian
race intercourse and understanding by adopting an official and compulsory taught
and used Inter-Mongolian language composed of Words of Chinese, Japanese andWhite Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-1930

23

Siamese languages; Eliminate from your mind and from your dictionaries the word
FOREIGNER, and cultivate the Inter-Mongolian fellowship and community ofinterest; Harmonize your national, political, social, economic and religious life. . . .
[F]orm and organize THE INTER-MONGOLIAN AND INTER-CONTINENTAL
HARMONIZED AWAKENING, in every city, town, village and hamlet.
This bizarre letter was apparently inspired by the Japanese Foreign Ministry’s socalled 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 inJapan or elsewhere in Asia. Nevertheless, Pan-Asianism was stimulated, both
positively and negatively, by Western influences. For example, the Japanesepolitician Kodera Kenkichi (1877–1949), who had studied international relations in
Europe and the United States for almost a decade, justified his advocacy of PanAsianism by constantly referring to the positive role of pan-movements in the West.
In contrast to Kodera, Prince Konoe Fumimaro (1891–1945) chose to stress thenegative aspects of the West by rejecting the universalist pretensions of the Leagueof Nations (founded 1919) when he proclaimed the need for Asian solidarity underJapanese leadership. Both Kanokogi Kazunobu (1884–1949) and Hirano Yoshitarō(1897–1980) were strongly influenced by German ideas, as were 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 a significant 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, theseemingly “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 thinking of some Japanese pan-Asianists who appropriated it faithfully with one
significant change. For them 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 equal terms, insistence on Japanese leadership(meishu) in Asia increased in proportion to the growth and expansion of Japan’s
power in East Asia.
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 politicalturmoil, and had always been as a result of its frequent dynastic changes. In
contrast, Japan, many Japanese elites believed, was qualified to lead Asia because ofits 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White Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-1930

24

leader of the region, and, as its more imaginative supporters asserted, unite thewhole world under the benevolent rule of the Japanese emperor, following theancient sloganhakkō ichiu, or “The Eight Corners of the World [United] under One
Roof.” Rather than drawing on the foundational myths, other pan-Asian writers
justified Japan’s leadership of Asia on the grounds of Japan’s successful
modernization program, an effort they contrasted with the failure of the rest of Asia
in this regard. From this perspective, Japan’s technological advances served as
evidence of 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 for Japan’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 by researchers—not to mention politicians and diplomats—was its fatefulconnection to Japanese imperialism and the role it played as an ideology that
legitimized Japan’s empire-building project in the first half of the twentieth century.
While some commentators insist that Japan never officially pursued a pan-Asian
foreign policy before or even during the Asia-Pacific War (1931–1945), it isundeniable 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 its colonial rule over parts of Asia.
In The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt suggested a close link between
nineteenth-century Pan-Germanism and Pan-Slavism and twentieth-century
totalitarianism and expansionism. “Nazism and Bolshevism,” she contended, “owemore to Pan-Germanism and Pan-Slavism (respectively) than to any other ideology
or political movement. This is most evident in foreign policies, where the strategies
of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia have followed so closely the well-known
programs of conquest outlined by the pan-movements before and during the FirstWorld War . . .”. Although it would be an exaggeration to claim that Pan-Asianism
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 thelegitimization of Japanese colonial rule and empire building in Asia in the first half ofthe twentieth century.
As early as 1910, pan-Asian rhetoric was used by the Japanese government tolegitimize the annexation of Korea. The Annexation Treaty referred specifically tocommonalities between Japanese and Koreans, such as racial origins, a common
history and culture, and a shared destiny. This remained the orthodox way ofjustifying and legitimizing Japanese rule in Korea throughout the colonial period
and was reiterated time and again in both public and private statements. The samepan-Asian rhetoric was continuously reaffirmed and applied to other colonial
territories. For example, in 1939, in the semi-official journal Contemporary Japan, awriter insisted that

White Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-1930

25

contrary to the general assumption held abroad, and even entertained by someJapanese, Chosen [Korea], Taiwan, and even Manchukuo are not Japanese colonies
according to the Western way of thinking. . . . “To make the world one household” isan 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 thattime. . . . Japan’s annexation of the peninsula might be taken as a reversion of the twocountries to their ancient status of being one homogeneous whole.
The assertion of racial and cultural commonalities presented here went hand inhand with the legitimization of Japanese superiority on the grounds that Japan was acountry chosen by the gods. As early as the late 1910s, a number of writers, such as
Kanokogi Kazunobu, Kita Ikki, and Ōkawa Shūmei, spoke of a divine Japanese“mission” to liberate Asia. This high-sounding objective was often difficult todistinguish 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 byno means limited to radical reformists. Even mainstream writers who eschewed
ideologically driven rhetoric and sought to explain international relations in termsof Realpolitik, such as Tokutomi Sohō (1863-1957), urged Japan to establish an“Asian Monroe Doctrine.” In doing so, Tokutomi may have been applying an idea ofWestern 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.

The Asian Monroe Doctrine

In the 1930s, claims thatJapan’s empire was anembodiment of panAsian ideals werevoiced more frequently
and openly than before.
This was due to theimpact of “regional bloc
thinking” that was
highly influential at thetime. For example,
Rōyama Masamichi
insisted in 1934 that“the Pan-Asiatic
movement” was a“decisive influence
responsible for theestablishment of the
Empire.” Though helamented that thismovement lacked “anycoherent programmeWhite Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-1930

26

under any prominent leader,” he nevertheless regarded it as full of promise for the
future. As evidence, he noted with satisfaction that “many small groups of so-called
Pan-Asianists loosely affiliated through study organizations . . . have sprung up likemushrooms during the past two 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 notionof an “East Asian bloc” was also popular with Marxists and socialists, as can be seenin 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.
The intimate connection of Pan-Asianism with Japan’s empire-building ambitions
leads to another central problem of Pan-Asianism—the inherent ambiguity of theconcepts involved. It is clear that, from the outset, pan-Asian thought was riddledwith ambiguity and contradictions that made this ideology capable of being used tolegitimize both the anticolonial struggle against the West and the domination of one
Asian nation by another. This ambiguity is also inherent in the terminology used todescribe 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 noscholarly consensus on the definition of “Asia,” on pan-movements, or on ideologies
with a transnational focus that have evolved over time. Likewise, the question of
how Pan-Asianism is related to other pan-movements is far from settled.
As we have seen, the emergence of Pan-Asianism was inseparable from the rise ofJapan as a major 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 bybringing Japan and China together. Thus, early manifestations of the movement
were characterized by the close cooperation of ideologues, activists, and politiciansfrom Japan, China, and Korea. But the need for cooperation and, thus, compromise
resulted in pan-Asian ideas being characterized by a marked 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 thethreat of the Yellow Peril occasionally used the terms “Pan-Asianism” or “panAsiatic league” in warning of the dangers a united Asia would pose for Western
supremacy. The Japanese government was quick 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 manyoccasions it officially disclaimed any interest in promoting closer relations with its

White Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-1930

27(weak) Asian neighbors. Japanese diplomats were dispatched to Europe and theUnited States expressly to dispel any Western suspicions as to Japan’s pan-Asian
ambitions. For example, in the United States, Harvard-educated Baron Kaneko
Kentarō (1853–1942) dismissed rumors voiced in the “yellow” press that Japan wasaiming to form an Asian federation, as did diplomat Suematsu Kenchō (1855–1920)
in Europe. As late as 1919, Takekoshi Yosaburō (1865–1950) ridiculed the idea of aJapanese-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
their own country, and who do not take their national strength into properconsideration and who, being prompted by certain fanatical ideas, advocate thealliance of the yellow races against the white, an alliance of which Japan should be
the leader, and with that object in view, 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 PanAsianism, the opposition placed a strong emphasis on Pan-Asianism, calling for theunification of the “yellow 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 proWestern policy of the government and, insisting that the West was Japan’s enemy,
called for the formation of an Asian League (Ajia rengō). Ueki held a version of PanAsianism 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 the journal Ajia(Asia) and the antigovernment activist andpolitician Tarui Tōkichi (1850–1922) made similar proposals in the 1880s. It was
not until 1903 that the first acknowledgment of the potential of Pan-Asianism as asignificant 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 an immense force.” However, the impact of this statement may have beensomewhat reduced in Japan by the fact that Okakura had written his book in English
for an Indian and not a Japanese audience.
While the term “Pan-Asianism” entered the mainstream political vocabulary only inthe 1910s, in the nineteenth century advocates of Asian unity could draw on anumber of terms and slogans when propagating their ideals. In the 1880s, theterm 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 thetechnologically advanced West. The term was not without problems, however. For
example, an organization called the Kōakai (Raising Asia Society) was founded inTokyo in 1880. Its membership was predominantly Japanese—they had chosen thegroup’s name—but it included some Koreans and Chinese who objected to the nameon the grounds that it implied—in contrast to successful, modern Japan—that Asia
was backward, oppressed, and downtrodden, and could be saved only by “raising” itWhite Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-1930

28

through Japanese leadership and advice. Following such criticism, the Kōakai wasrenamed Ajia Kyōkai (Asia Association) in 1883. But it was not only Japanese panAsianists who believed in Japanese superiority; many Asians also acknowledged
their political and economic backwardness in relation to Japan. Many Chinese
recognized the failure of modernization, at least implicitly, in their nation,accounting for the formation of political 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 Chinesephrase 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 ahigh degree of interdependence, but, in contrast to the potentially hierarchical Kōa,
it presumed equal relations among Asian nations. Its origin also indicates theinfluence of Chinese classical scholarship on early Pan-Asianism. This phrase wasused by early pan-Asianists particularly in the 1870s and 1880s, but it can be foundin many of the texts presented in this collection well into the twentieth century.
A third influential slogan used to express pan-Asian sentiment and activism that wasvery 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 panAsianist, was a member of Japan’s ruling elite, and by the Tōa Dōbunkai (East Asian
Common Culture Society). The term also appears frequently in Japanese 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 ofraces,” 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 theWest. Parallel with the development of this kind of racial thinking in Asia, the idea of
the “White Peril” also gained ground. It was an inversion 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 to civilization
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 forthe first time to describe Chinese political associations which were promoting“Greater Asianism” (Da Yazhouzhuyi) “in secretly published pamphlets” with theintention of spreading anti-Western sentiment in China”. Ōyama himself rejected
Asianism because he saw the emergence of this ideology as a sign of increasing
nationalistic and xenophobic tendencies in Japan. While Ōyama criticized Asianism
from his position as a liberal intellectual, the Japanese government remained waryWhite Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-1930

29

of pan-Asian proposals because it feared that such tendencies might undermine
Japan’s good relations with the Western powers. Between its signing in 1902 and
1921–1922, when it was superseded by the Washington treaty system, the AngloJapanese 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 World War I when members of the Indian independence movement werecooperating 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–Indian understanding that could eventuallytake a political and anti-British form”. The British intelligence service kept close tabs
on Indian independence activists in Japan (and China) and their Japanese
sympathizers.
If only to avoid alienating its British ally and other Western powers, both theJapanese government and the press tended to be highly critical of pan-Asianschemes. 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 owningland or 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 theJapanese, Californians were acting in the interests not only of the United States but
also of “the whole community of European civilization”. In the debate Chirol, who
had retired from his position at The Times two years before and joined the Foreign
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 Japan for what they regarded as contradictions in its foreign policy:
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 Japanis assigned the leadership in the claim of the ‘coloured’ races against the ‘noncoloured.’” 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 fromother Asiatic races, or as the avowed champion of Pan-Asiatic ideals.
Such criticisms clearly struck a sensitive chord in Japan. Throughout June and July
1913, these statements were discussed at great length by Japan’s leading
newspapers, including the Osaka Asahi Shinbun, the Osaka Mainichi Shinbun, andthe Tokyo Nichinichi Shinbun. The Asahiunequivocally declared that it considered“Pan-Asianism an illusion (kūsō),” while the Nichinichi ridiculed the notion thatJapan 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
made by Mahan and the Times that the terms Han-Ajiashugi (“Pan-White Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-1930

30

Asianism,” Mainichi and Nichinichi) and Zen-Ajiashugi (“All-Asianism,”Asahi) madetheir first appearance in the Japanese 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 thenewspaper articles, these neologisms were used in a derogatory sense.
Yet, little by little, the negative connotations of the term “Asianism” were lost in theaftermath of World War I. The bloodbath in Europe made Japan the dominant powerin East Asia and brought about an upsurge in Japan’s self-confidence. At the sametime, it stimulated international attempts to establish a new world order after thewar, an order that would guarantee peace—if not permanent peace, then at least
peace for the foreseeable future. Within these developments, Japan’s newly foundself-confidence resulted in an outpouring of pan-Asian writings during the last two
years of the war. These writings should be seen as a Japanese contribution to thedebate on how a new international order could guarantee peace. But Japanesewriters were not alone in arguing for the necessity of regional integration. There
were also notably some Chinese commentators who, while critical of Japanese PanAsianism, nonetheless advocated regional integration on the grounds that only aregional, pan-Asian order would result in the achievement of a permanent peace.
When the idea of a League of Nations surfaced during World War I, pan-Asian
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, at least 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 thetwentieth century, the ideology of Pan-Asianism had by 1918 become concrete andwell 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 “AsianMonroe Doctrine” (Ajia Monrōshugi), largely absent from public discourse until then,
now began to appear frequently in newspapers and journals. This proliferation ofneologisms reflected a growth of diverse and sophisticated approaches to the issueof Asian solidarity in all its ramifications. The wide range of responses can begleaned from the flood of articles on Pan-Asianism that appeared during and after
the war. While these works indicated the spread and acceptance of the term “PanAsianism” in Japanese discourse, perhaps more important they also defined
Asianism in concrete terms and demanded that Japan act in accordance with panAsian principles in international relations.
The new popularity of Pan-Asianism in Japanese intellectual discourse and politics
received a boost when news of a new immigration law that would bar Japanese from
immigration to the United States (part of the 1924 Immigration or Johnson-ReedAct) reached Japan. Protests against the act were held through the length andbreadth of Japan, events that in many cases turned into demonstrations of panAsian solidarity.

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31

In this climate of anti-American agitation a number of new associations sprang up
whose names—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 PanAsianism as a result of America’s exclusionist policies was also attested to by a slewof articles on the subject in the Japanese press. For example, the influential
journal Nihon oyobi Nihonjin (Japan and the Japanese) brought out a special 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. Some terms, however, resurfaced in later years, often in different
contexts. The notion of an “East Asian League,” for example, exemplified theentrenchment of the term “East Asia” in Japanese public discourse around the turnof the century. However, after the wave of anti-American protests subsided in 1924,“East Asia” receded from public discourse, only to return to the mainstream
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 the formation of regional blocs.
“All-Asianism” (Zen Ajiashugi), another term for Asianism or Pan-Asianism, waslaunched by Ōkawa 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 andvanished from public discourse in the early 1920s. In any event, all these terms
were used largely interchangeably. Even Ōkawa on occasion used Han Ajiashugi inthe same context as Zen Ajiashugi, and he appears to have made 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 Japaneseleadership of the pan-Asian movement. But the term was not forgotten completely,as it reappeared in the 1930s at a time when Japan was adopting a form of PanAsianism in its foreign policy. By then, Japan had begun to abandon its policy ofcooperation with the Anglo-American powers and was openly pursuing a strategy ofdestroying 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-Asian cause 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 taskof coordinating political, economic, and cultural activities in regard to China. WhileWhite Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-1930

32

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 wasalso involved in the recruitment and management of forced labor and even in theopium trade in China. Such were the powers of this agency that only formal
diplomatic relations with China remained within the jurisdiction of the Ministry ofForeign Affairs. The Kōa-in was integrated into the Ministry of Greater 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 CoProsperity Sphere.
This official endorsement of what is probably the oldest pan-Asian term caused averitable boom in the use of Kōa. Newspapers used the term frequently; journals
incorporating it in their title—such as Kōa Kyōiku (Education to Raise Asia) orsimply 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 the circumstances 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 ascontributing to the policy 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 of senior
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 potentialof Pan-Asianism in military circles. In the atmosphere of social mobilization thatthickened as the war escalated, the League became a central 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 for Constructing East Asia), the Tōa Kyōkai (East Asia Association), andthe Tōyō Kyōkai (Oriental Association), in addition to think tanks engaged inresearch on East Asia, such as the Dōmei Tōa Kenkyūkai (Alliance East Asia
Research Association), the Tōa Chōsakai (East Asia Investigation Association), theTōa 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 the founding of the League, a “Raising Asia Welfare Congress” (Kōa kōsei
taikai) was held in Osaka in 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

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33

Sonpo, which was founded in 1944, reminds us of the former popularity of this panAsian 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 of emphasizing the region’s legacy of Confucian values and thesignificance of Confucianism as a potential basis for the unification of Asians. The“Kingly Way” implied benevolent rule and was used as a fundamental concept tohelp legitimize Japan’s construction of the new state of Manchukuo after 1932.
Japanese “guidance” of this new, ostensibly independent state—in reality it was apuppet 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 well known, under Japan’s “benevolent” guidance Manchukuo became acornerstone of the Japanese Empire. It was ruthlessly exploited to provide materiel
for the Japanese war effort, and this economic 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 ofintellectual debate and policy formulation in Japan, but other Asians also made animportant contribution to the discussion—comment that was sometimes
supportive, sometimes critical. While in China the term apparently made its debut inthe 1910s, in Korea similar terms were used to express similar sets of ideas adecade 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 theidea of close cooperation between Korea, China, and Japan. Although Koreans wereon the whole suspicious of Pan-Asianism as a concept that served to cloak Japanese
attempts to establish their leadership of East Asia, anxiety over a future “race war”
with the West was just as widespread in Korea as in Japan. In fact, one of the firstconcrete 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 hetalked of a united Asia facing the reality of a coming war between the yellow andwhite races. In order to prepare 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.

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As official and public support for PanAsianism as a tool for establishing
Japanese hegemony in East Asia grewstronger in Japan, the likelihood of theacceptance of pan-Asian ideals waned
in other Asian countries. This distrustof Pan-Asianism was particularly
pronounced in East Asia, where theJapanese threat was most palpable. In
Korea, for example, Pan-Asianism was
marginalized. Korea was a special casebecause of its geographical proximity
to Japan. Most Korean intellectuals andpolitical activists had been fairly
skeptical about the idea of Asiansolidarity even in the nineteenth
century, even if some pro-Japanesemodernizers, such as Kim Ok-kyun(1851–1894), had promoted PanAsianism as a useful tool forcooperation with Japan against thethreat posed by imperial Russia. In
spite of Korean suspicions over
An Chung-gŭnJapanese ambitions for the Korean
peninsula, many Korean intellectuals, strongly influenced by social Darwinism
during the final years of the nineteenth century, were convinced that for historicalreasons the Koreans—“a backward and thus inferior race”—had no choice but toform an alliance with China and Japan as a result of Korea’s proximity to its twoneighbors. 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 andadvocated resistance and “self-strengthening” as a way of regaining their
independence. Under Japanese rule, the appeal 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 and Japanesecultures 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 to adhere to the ideal of pan-Asian solidarity even interpreted theoutbreak of war with the United States in 1941 (or the “Greater East Asian War,” asit was officially called in the Japanese Empire) as the beginning of “a real war ofraces—the Yellow against the White”. For these Koreans it was clear that Korea, as
an Asian nation, had to side (temporarily at least) with Japan in this war of the races,
even though Koreans were unhappy with Japanese colonial rule.

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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 atool of Japanese expansionism was voiced as early as 1907, when the scholar andrevolutionary Zhang Taiyan (1868–1936) described Japan as the “public enemy”(kōteki) of Asia. Zhang gave vent to his conviction that Japan was an imperialist
predator rather than a victim of imperialist oppression to which calls for Asiansolidarity could properly be directed. Zhang also questioned the validity of panAsian discourse in general. Rejecting the simplistic scheme of “oppressed yellow
Asians” and “white oppressors,” he stressed the “double enslavement of theChinese”—bondage by Western imperialism and by “foreign,” that is, Manchu, rule.
His argument led him to emphasize the urgent need to establish Chinese
nationalism as a counterforce to Manchu rule. However, these views 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 Pan-Asianism as advocated by its Japanese exponents. In 1919, he harshly
criticized Japanese pan-Asian writings as an expression of Japanese expansionism.
However, while rejecting Japanese forms of Asianism, Li nevertheless conceded thatsome kind of regional cooperation was necessary to counter the threat of Westernimperialism and called for the formulation of a “New Asianism” 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 Japaneseversions 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 aconstructive role in Asia’s fight against Anglo-Saxon imperialism, and a group ofChinese pan-Asianists published a journal, 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.
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 along tradition and resulted in close connections with Japan. A number of Indian
revolutionaries found asylum there, and some even used Japan as a base for theirpan-Asian activities. Among them was Taraknath Das (1884–1958), who frequently
published in Japan under the pseudonym “An Asian.” In works published in Japanand 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 of assertion 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White Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-1930

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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 theireyes on [Japan] as their possible saviour.” Rash Behari Bose (1886–1945), who wasnaturalized as a Japanese subject in 1923, also used his Japanese contacts tocampaign 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 greathopes for Japan as Asia’s savior. He held meetings with Japanese leaders toencourage their support for his nationalist cause and participated in the Assembly of
the Greater East Asiatic Nations in 1943.
The celebrated writerand cultural nationalist
Rabindranath Tagore
was a longtime friend of
Okakura Tenshin andvisited Japan several
times in the 1910s and1920s. During his first
visit, Tagore condemned
Japanese nationalism as
an imitation of Western
practices. However, inGreater East Asia Conference, 1943. Tojo Hideki (center), Subhas 1924, when
Chandra Bose (right), Wang Ching-wei (third left), José Laurel demonstrations against(third right)
the United States Asian
Exclusion Act erupted inJapan, Tagore spoke out on a number of occasions in favor of pan-Asian unity toaudiences of several thousand. Announced at these rallies as “The 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 uponus.” 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 theattacks of the White Races” and motivate them to erect an “Empire of Asia . . . [thatwould] spring roaring into the arena of the world’s politics.”

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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 theWestern powers.
Consequently, Japanesedirected Pan-Asianism
enjoyed great appeal
throughout Southeast
Asia. In the Philippines,
Rabindranath Tagore in Japan, 1916
Japanese pan-Asianists
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 Alejandrino (1870–1951), who had gained his
rank in the struggle against the United States and, after surrendering in 1901, went
on to enjoy a career as a senator. British intelligence reported that “he speaks andwrites 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 more than a front forJapanese propaganda. Alejandrino took a wider interest in Asian affairs and wrote
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 a connection between these
Filipino students and disaffected Indians in Japan.” In Malaya, too, some looked toJapan as a liberating force. For example, the nationalist journalist Ibrahim bin Haji
Yaacob (1911–1979) founded, with Japanese support, the pro-Japanese and panMalay (if not 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 theeconomic exploitation of the region that followed called into question the sincerityof pan-Asian rhetoric. However, even under the Japanese occupation, Pan-Asianism
remained an important factor in Japan’s relations with Southeast Asia. The JapaneseWhite Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-1930

38

certainly milked pan-Asian sentiment to help mobilize the region’s resources for the
war effort. At the same time some Southeast Asians, such as the contributors to theGreater Asia newspaper in Indonesia embraced the anti-Western component of panAsian rhetoric.
However, relations between Japan and the leaders of independence movements inSoutheast Asia remain a controversial subject in Asian historiography. The positionof 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 wascapable of a sober critique of the problems inherent in the Japanese version of PanAsianism. This is made 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 theDai Ajia Kyōkai. In the article, pointedly titled “Does Japan Desire to Return toAsia?,” Hatta predicted the failure of Japanese Pan-Asianism because, in his view, thetwo conditions necessary to ensure its success—a permanent peace between Japanand 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 Westernimperialism were growing, but in the end no significant cooperation between Japanand any western Asian nation materialized. 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 in founding the Ajia Gikai
discussed here. During World War II, hopes for Japanese support were strongly
expressed throughout the Arab world; they were fueled by the founding of theGreater Japan Islamic League (Dai Nippon Kaikyō Kyōkai) in Japan in 1938.
However, although a number of influential individuals, including Ōkawa Shūmei andGeneral Hayashi Senjūrō, were sympathetic to the Arab cause, the failure of theJapanese to advance west of India during the course of the war precluded any
effective cooperation.
The “Greater East Asian War” and Pan-Asianism

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The use of pan-Asian
ideology to legitimize
war and Japanesecolonial rule discredited
the movement. As aresult, Pan-Asianism
came to be widely
identified as an ideology
of colonial rule—
specifically, Japan’scolonial rule over Asian
countries and peoples,
which, the Japaneserulers insisted, wasmore “benevolent” thanWestern colonial rule
Pan-Asian gathering in Tokyo in the late 1930s (participantsbecause Japanese were
include Tōyama Mitsuru, a central figure in the Japanese
fellow Asians. Yet, as
nationalist movement, General Hayashi Senjūrō and Tatar panmuch recent research
Islamist Abdurreşid Ibrahim)
has shown, Japanesecolonial rule was as
oppressive as that of any European power. Like the European imperialists, theJapanese ruthlessly exploited the territories they ruled. They mobilized their subject
populations for the Japanese war effort, and, unlike most Western powers, they
made efforts to assimilate the populations 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 theJapanese proclaimed pan-Asian “brotherhood” and professed to save them from theevils of colonial rule by 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, where people were also forced to choose sides, was a specialcase. For the overwhelming number of Chinese “the war” meant not an “Asian” warof 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 innortheastern 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 the Japanese 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, the Chinese 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).

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40

The Japanese government made concerted efforts to stress the pan-Asian characterof the war. Numerous government statements during the war emphasized the panAsian character of the conflict. However, it should be noted that it was only several
months after the outbreak of hostilities that the Japanese government officially
included the “liberation of Asia from Western imperialism” in its list of war
objectives. Pan-Asian propaganda intensified as the war continued. In 1942, theMinistry of Greater East Asia was founded in order to coordinate and strengthen
intra-Asian cooperation. This move was intended primarily to underline the rhetoricof pan-Asian liberation—but, at this point in the war, “strengthened cooperation”
meant, above all, the mobilization of resources for Japan’s war effort. The worse themilitary situation became for Japan, the more the Japanese government tended to
draw on pan-Asian rhetoric. In this context, the declaration of the “Assembly of theGreater East Asiatic Nations” issued in 1943 sounds like a last, desperate appeal for
pan-Asian unity.
At that time even aliberal intellectual like
Hasegawa Nyozekan(1875–1969), seemingly
oblivious to the looming
disaster ahead, was stillinsisting that the“Greater East Asian
War” must be thestarting point for theestablishment of “aThe Assembly of the Greater East Asiatic Nations, 1943, with
united cultural sphere
Japanese
Prime Minister General Tōjō Hideki in the center and[by] the races of East
representatives from China, Manchukuo, Thailand, India, theAsia.” In similar vein,
Philippines and Burma.
Nishida Kitarō (1870–
1945), one of Japan’s
leading philosophers, in 1943 characterized the war as a holy, pan-Asian struggle toliberate and unify Asia:
The Great East Asian War is a sacred war, 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 Co-Prosperity Sphere, in co-operation with theGermans, 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.
Pan-Asian Solidarity and the Legacies of Pan-Asianism in the Postwar Period

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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 disbandedby the occupation authorities. Pan-Asianism no longer figured in debates on foreign
relations, in Japan or elsewhere. Clearly, there was no room for pan-Asian schemesin the new bipolar world order. This situation did not change 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 thenonaligned 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, andYugoslav 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 the1955 Bandung Conference. The Bandung Conference and the NAM assumed a firmly
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 even fought) Anglo-American world hegemony.
Although Japan did not play a leading role in these developments, in Japan the senseof a pan-Asian “mission” was preserved in other forms. After the devastation
wrought by the war had nullified the achievements of the prewar era and, as somesuggested, turned Japan into an agricultural economy, intellectuals like Shimizu
Ikutarō (1907–1988) felt impelled to proclaim that “now, once again, the Japaneseare Asians”. Pan-Asian themes also survived in leftist critiques of Westernmodernity and in the related claims that Japan must side with the oppressed nationsof Asia in their resistance to the continuing Western imperialist domination of the
non-European 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 thewriter Hayashi Fusao (1903–75).
However, postwar Pan-Asianism was tainted by its association with Japaneseimperialism and aggression. Indeed it became synonymous with it. For the mostprominent 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 of Japanese
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 andthe 1960s. One scarcely need mention that in Korea and China Pan-Asianism wascompletely discredited as an ideology of collaboration with the enemy and thecolonizers. This was the direct consequence of the use of pan-Asian rhetoric tojustify Japanese colonial rule in Korea, and (in wartime China) to justify Japaneseaggression and legitimize the Nanjing puppet government. There are signs,
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.

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In Japan, the first serious attempt to grapple with the thorny question of the legacyof 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 were positive features that were worth
preserving. Pan-Asianism, he never ceased to believe, was much more than mere
window dressing for Japan’s Greater Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. In Takeuchi’sview, 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 asJapan’s “shedding” of Asia (datsu-A), a concept that emerged in the 1880s andbecame highly influential as the antithesis to Pan-Asianism throughout the course ofmodern Japanese history. From this perspective, Japan’s aggression was in effect anapplication of inauthentic (and therefore culpable) Western methods to Asia andthus had nothing to do with the “Eastern spirit” or Eastern cultural practices orpolitical norms. It was a natural, if deplorable, consequence of the westernization ofJapan. This misguided attempt by Japan to depart from pan-Asian principles wascorrected, to some extent at least, 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 tolocate on the ideological spectrum. Although he would not classify himself as arightist, his attempts to restore legitimacy to the discredited term Pan-Asianism
were unusual. Those on the left preferred to talk of Asian solidarity, brotherhood, or
cooperation, which often overlapped with socialist or communist forms ofinternational solidarity, or the solidarity of the nonaligned movement. For theJapanese left, the term “Pan-Asianism” was (and perhaps still is) practicallysynonymous with Japanese colonialism and aggression.
Yet, whether or not they eschewed the term itself, in postwar Japan the left
incorporated pan-Asian elements into its own views. And the continuity between
prewar pan-Asian rightists and postwar left-wing circles should not be overlookedin this context. This (at first sight) surprising continuity has only rarely been
discussed in previous research. The prewar flirtation with national socialism andJapanism by socialists like Asanuma Inejirō (1898–1960) is well known. It is lesswidely known, however, that Marquis Tokugawa Yoshichika (1886–1976), one of
the major sponsors of the rightist movement in the prewar period and a close friendof pan-Asianists such as Ōkawa Shūmei, became a benefactor of the newly foundedSocialist Party of Japan after the war. It appears that Tokugawa’s support for theSocialist Party was motivated to some extent, at least, by pan-Asian motives. These
motives were also apparent in an extraordinary statement by 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 this time would result in victory for the communists (i.e., Asia).

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Another right-wing Pan-Asianist, Tsukui Tatsuo (1901–1989), well known in the
postwar period as an “ultranationalist historian,” is known to have lavished praiseon communist China. In the mid-1950s, a U.S. counterintelligence report accused
Tsukui of bringing a large sum of money from 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 ofregional solidarity ideological differences were less important than blood ties. At agathering of former generals on 20 November 1954, Tsuji is reported as arguingthat 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 American intelligence analyst concluded, “Tsuji, head of theneutralist 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 Union and softon 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, theywould 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 no longer supported, and, on
a number of occasions, he appeared to be closely allied with the Socialist 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 advocateof rearmament. In the 1960s Utsunomiya had been a prominent supporter ofAlgeria’s struggle for independence. 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, anti-American,
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-Asiansentiments, for, as we have seen, in their view Pan-Asianism was irredeemably
besmirched by Japan’s wartime aggression. But whether they recognize it or not, thepolitical left in Japan is heir to the pan-Asian tradition. This is abundantly clear both

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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 members of 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 left-wing politicians such as Doi Takako (1928–), the one-timeleader of the Japan Socialist Party; in statements by activists such as Dr. Nakamura
Tetsu (1946–), who has devoted his life to the cause of helping the needy and sick in
Afghanistan; and in lawsuits challenging Japanese logistical assistance to U.S.
military activities in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere. Most recently, in aremarkable example of this tendency to pan-Asian solidarity, in late 2009 theJapanese cabinet, led by Hatoyama Yukio (1947–), the leader of the Democratic
Party of Japan in coalition with the Social Democratic Party, halted Japanese military
support for American-led operations in Afghanistan and recalled the Maritime SelfDefense 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, panAsian unity is identified as a promising path to avoid domination not only by Japanbut also by China. In 2002, for example, former South Korean President Roh Moohyun (1946–2009) declared that “the age of Northeast Asia is arriving.” At the sametime, regional approaches in East Asia, especially since the beginning of the present
century, have been an expression of increasing discontent with American-led
globalization and a developing unilateral world system. In South Korea, pan-Asianist
regionalism is thus “seen as an attractive alternative to Korea’s dependence on
America.” South Korean and Japanese interests seem to have converged in theserespects. In Japan, from as early as the 1980s, a “New Asianism” has begun toresurface, partly as an offshoot of the so-called Asian values debate of the 1980s, a
discussion initiated by Malaysia’s Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad (1925–) andthe 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
anti-Americanism.
In the 1980s these politicians—and others like them—advocated a set of common“Asian values” (always vaguely defined), based on Confucian virtues, as a counter tothe universalist claims of liberalism, democracy, and human rights, values that weredismissed as alien to the region and inauthentic for Asians on account of their
allegedly Western provenance. However, many Asian politicians and writers, suchas 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

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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 withthe once completely discredited ideology of Pan-Asianism, in combination withstatements by high-ranking diplomats acknowledging the potential 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
to stimulate regionalist approaches. These efforts were, however, always placed
under strain by the strong priority given by the Japanese government to the USJapan Security Treaty. Nonetheless, Japan, as a recent study notes, “has been adriving force of Asian regionalism throughout the post-war period,” particularly inthe economic sphere. Notable in this regard was Japan’s involvement in thefounding of the Asian Development Fund in 1957 and the proposal for an AsianMonetary Fund in 1997. In addition, Japan has also been relatively active in the
ASEAN+3 cooperative network, involving the ASEAN nations plus China, Japan, andSouth 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 toSoutheast Asia. Japan also has been rather passive and reactive with regard to thedevelopment 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 the immediate 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 to terms with its past, writers in Asia as well as in the West warned thatJapanese regionalist initiatives could be interpreted as a resurgence of claims forJapan’s leadership in East Asia, with the objective of creating “a new version of theGreater East-Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere of World War II.” In recent years, the issueof historical memory has become less contentious in Japan, but persistent elementsof “retrospective Pan-Asianism”—the rehabilitation of wartime pan-Asian rhetoric
to whitewash Japan’s wars of aggression and colonial rule in Asia—continue tohinder attempts 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 House and a myriad of academic conferences dealing with (andnot infrequently advocating) regional integration. This suggests that attention to thehistorical legacies of Pan-Asianism and the identification 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

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Pan-Asian styles of thought have always come most to the fore in debates on foreign
policy and on Asian identity. If the many varieties of Pan-Asianism had anything incommon, it was their opposition to the West: opposition to the West’s presence inAsia (i.e., Western imperialism), opposition to Western culture and values, and,conversely, an emphasis on the importance (and in many cases, the superiority) of
Asian culture and Asian values. In fact, it could be argued that anti-Westernism wascentral to Pan-Asianism. In opposition to the “West”—which was, to a large degree,
an invented concept—pan-Asian writers constructed their own “Asia.” Images ofthis constructed Asia varied greatly. They changed over time and took particularforms in different places and in the works of different authors. But all pan-Asianists
assumed the existence 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 Asiaand that pan-Asian writers constantly revised their definitions of “Asia,” blurring
geographical exactitude with interpretations that allowed them to extend theirdefinition of Asia even to some European and African nations.
The perception and creation of cultural unity, brought to an extreme ofsimplification in the slogan “Asia is one,” also remains an important theme of panAsian writers over the past one and a half centuries—and down to the present day.
In 2010, an Internet search (google.com) of the term generates a large number ofhits. Although it is clear that any particular assertion of what constitutes culturalcommonalities (or differences) is highly arbitrary and subjective, it is important toacknowledge 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 this collection show.
Recent research has stressed the importance of historical interconnectedness as anauthentic foundation for forces encouraging the development of regional
integration. The notion of a world system that connected the various states of Eastand Southeast Asia for centuries, before the imposition of Western-based
international law, had sufficient cogency to bind indigenous forces against the threatof external domination. In recent years, these approaches have once again been
attracting attention as a reaction to the emergence of a unipolar world order.

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Enough has already been said about the incorporation of the Western ideas of race
into pan-Asianist rhetoric. References to “racial kinship” were frequent, as the
documents in this collection make clear. However, the Western provenance of theconcept of race made it highly questionable that such an ideology could serve as thebasis 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 otherareas. 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 Japanesecolonial rule.
The complex notion of Asian values—Asian “spirituality” versus the “materialism” ofWestern civilization—is also highly contested and riddled with contradictions. As
we have already noted in the discussion of geographical definitions, the “Asia” of thepan-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 Asian publications, and in the
1930s, Japan allied itself with Germany and Italy—ostensibly since Germany 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, pan-Asianists have generally regarded “the West” as the alien Other. Timeand again, as this collection shows, for pan-Asianists Asia represents
the antithesis of the West. Indeed, these writers regularly define Asia in terms of theWest. This is true of such diverse figures as Okakura Tenshin, Ōkawa Shūmei and, inthe postwar period, Takeuchi Yoshimi, Ishihara Shintarō, and Nakamura 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 antiquity of Asian culture, which is often presented by pan-Asianists as thecradle of civilization, including European civilization. In this connection, much has
been made of the fact that all major religions of 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 save mankind,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, then it 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 Pan-Asianism to which he subscribed
was “a vision of community that sought to transcend the territorial nation-state andredeem and regenerate the world through Eastern spiritual morality.”
Yet, for all this cultural tension, the material advantages of the West and ofmodernity in general became 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

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the majority of Asians, most pan-Asianists never rejected modernity as such. Many
ancient Asian customs and practices were patently useless or anachronistic in themodern world, and, under the circumstances, the chief problem that had to be
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 thewhole culture, lock, stock, and barrel. In an excess of modernizing enthusiasm, someJapanese even wanted to give up their native tongue in favor of English. Needless tosay, such proposals were at best impractical. But were there aspects of Eastern
tradition still of relevance in this Western-dominated world? Above all in the realmsof 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 of commonly held Asian values and a common culture and racial identity,
which together constitute the basis of Pan-Asianism, is closely related to thesentiment of a “common destiny” for Asian peoples. 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., the initiative offormer Japanese Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio to prioritize East Asian
community) or declarations by transnational organizations such as ASEAN, areanything to go by. It is impossible to gauge whether such sentiments will contributeto the realization of closer transnational cooperation or even regional integration in
the future. To be sure, obstacles to regional cooperation in East Asia remain
numerous. They include not only strong expressions of nationalism and the negative
legacies of World War II but also the geography and demographics of Asia. Unlike inthe 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
never be “one,” we may anticipate continued progress in the areas of regional
cooperation and integration, developments that can contribute to the stability andthe prosperity of the region.
About the book: The sources collected are arranged in chronological order. This
allows the reader to trace the development of Pan-Asianism and Asian regionalism
from the mid-nineteenth century down to the present day and provides an insider’sview of intra-Asian debates. The material discussed in each chapter falls roughly into
three often overlapping and never mutually exclusive categories: 1) attempts to define
Asia and assess the region’s contribution to world civilization; 2) calls for Asiansolidarity, integration, and unity; and 3) debates about Asia’s role in world politics
and, above all, about Asia’s relations with Europe.
Sven Saaler is Associate Professor of Modern Japanese History at Sophia University. He
was formerly Head of the Humanities Section of the German Institute for JapaneseStudies (DIJ) and Associate Professor at The University of Tokyo. His book Politics,
Memory and Public Opinionexamines recent history debates in Japan. Together with J.
Victor Koschmann, he edited Pan-Asianism in Modern Japanese History, with

White Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-1930

49

Wolfgang Schwentker The Power of Memory in Modern 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 Kametarônikki (Mitsukawa Kametaro Diaries, Ronsôsha 2011) and Pan-Asianism: aDocumentary History.

White Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-1930

The above articles illustrate the malleability of racial discourse, the contradictions
inherent in such thinking, and the ways that military and economic conflicts
encourage their use. Race, like class and gender, could be used as a call to unity or
exclusion. It could be the cause of conflict or its effect. Sometimes, it could betranscended altogether in the larger interests of geopolitics. Finally, these articles
remind us that many of the ways in which nations and groups depict each other inthe contemporary world have their roots in such earlier practices, demonstrating
once again that history matters.

50

Aydin: Japan’s Pan-Asianism and the Legitimacy of Imperial World Order

51

Japan’s Pan-Asianism and the Legitimacy of Imperial World Order, 1931–1945
Cemil Aydin
One of the most striking aspects of the international history of the 1930s is
the revival and official endorsement of a pan-Asian vision of regional world order inJapan. The pan-Asian discourse of East-West civilizational difference andcomparison was influential in various intellectual circles in Asia. But during the1920s, as a political project of Asian solidarity, it was irrelevant for Japan’s foreign
policy, and it did not have any international momentum or movement. The period
after the Manchurian Incident in 1931, however, witnessed a process by which panAsianist ideas and projects became part of Japan’s official foreign policy rhetoric. 1
After 1933 Japan’s pan-Asian internationalism began to overshadow liberalinternationalism, gradually becoming the mainstream vision of an alternative worldorder. This process culminated in the declaration of the Greater East Asia
Coprosperity Sphere in 1940, a project that relied heavily on the rhetoric of panAsian internationalism. In 1943, seventeen years after the ineffectual 1926 Nagasaki
pan-Asiatic conference that was ridiculed by official and liberal circles in Japan, theJapanese government itself hosted a Greater East Asia Conference to which it invitedthe leaders of the Philippines, Burma, the provincial government of India, theNanking government of China, Manchukuo, and Thailand.
Given that pan-Asianist activists had regularly expressed strong opposition
to Japan’s foreign policy up to the 1930s, and aware of the lack of political clout of
Asianist circles during the 1920s, Japan’s apparent endorsement of pan-Asianism in
its official “return to Asia” after 1933 raises a major question. How can weunderstand the predominance of pan-Asianist discourses in Japanese intellectuals
circles in the 1930s? Why would Japan’s political elite, with its proven record ofcooperation with Western powers based on a realistic assessment of the trends ofthe time, choose to endorse an anti-Western discourse of Asianism as its official
policy during the late 1930s?
Explaining Japan’s Official “Return to Asia”
In the literature, the process of transition from a policy of pro-Western capitalist
internationalism in the 1920s to a very different policy aiming to create a regional
order in East Asia has been attributed to a complex set of interrelated factors, both
contingent and structural. For the sake of clarity, I categorize the explanations of theprevious historiography into two groups, which are distinct but not necessarily in
conflict: those that emphasize domestic political causes of the change and those thatstress changes in the international environment.
According to domestic policy–driven explanations, Asianism was the foreign
policy ideology espoused by the expansionist, militarist, and conservative segmentsof Japanese society. Frederick Dickinson has traced back to the period of World War
I (WWI) the origins of two distinct agendas for Japan’s diplomacy and national
mission, one liberal and pro-British and the other characterized by pro-German,
anti-liberal, and Asianist tendencies. The Asianist and conservative group, mostly
clustered around Yamagata Aritomo, could not implement its policy visions during

White Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-193052

the 1910s because the liberal group prevailed in domestic politics. By identifying
two distinct visions of Japan’s national identity and two corresponding international
policies in response to the opportunities presented by WWI, Dickinson’s study
successfully demonstrates that foreign policy decisions should not be regarded as
automatic responses to international trends and immediate external challenges but
rather be seen as results of the balance of power in domestic politics among groups
that have competing visions of their national identity and mission. According toDickinson, pan-Asianism was one such grand vision, which aimed to establish
Japan’s leadership in Asia by excluding Western powers from the region in the nameof racial solidarity and civilizational harmony.2
Other studies on the 1920s have argued that members of the conservative
antiliberal political camp, often identified with pan-Asianist inclinations, continued
to agitate for an expansionist policy at a time when their voices were overshadowedby the liberalism of the Taishô democracy and the capitalist internationalism of
Shidehara diplomacy. According to Richard Storry’s early work, which offers ahistory of Japanese ultranationalism based on the materials of the Tokyo War
Crimes Tribunal, the persistence and violence displayed by right-wing groups wasable to weaken and eventually to overturn the prevailing atmosphere of Taishô
democracy and liberal diplomacy. For Storry, for example, pan-Asianist thinkerÔkawa Shûmei was one of the Asianist “double patriots” who influenced young
military officers and played a great role in the transition to the expansionist 1930s.3
Christopher Szpilman strengthened this argument in his study of Kokuhonsha, themain conservative organization of interwar Japan, noting that anti-Western andantiliberal trends in Japan had high-ranking supporters and strong organizational
solidarity during the 1920s and thus were able to exert disproportionate influence
as a result of their popularity among the bureaucratic and military elite.4 In his
research on the House of Peers, Genzo Yamamoto further demonstrated the appeal
and predominance of what he described as an “illiberal” agenda among Japan’s top
political elite from the 1920s to the late 1930s, leading to their final triumph indomestic politics paralleling the adoption of an aggressive China policy.5
This focus on the domestic political components of the transition to the pan-Asianist
policies of the 1930s has obvious merit. Asianism, however, could not always be
uniquely identified as the expansionist ideology of conservative antiliberals, asJapan’s liberals also envisioned a special role for Japan in Asia, whether as thedisseminator of a higher civilization to backward areas or as the leading force ineconomic development and political cooperation in the region. Moreover, anaggressive policy in Manchuria was not the monopoly of Japanese Asianists. As
demonstrated by Louise Young, there existed within Japanese society an
overwhelming consensus concerning policy in Manchuria, which cut across the lines
dividing liberals and conservatives.6 The majority of Japan’s political and intellectual
elite, including the pro-Western internationalists, supported the new orientation inforeign policy symbolized by the withdrawal from the League of Nations. For
example, Nitobe Inazô, reputed for his liberal internationalism, was willing to
defend Japan’s policy in China that led to the Manchurian Incident, even to the pointof accepting Japan’s withdrawal in 1932 from the League of Nations, in which he hadAydin: Japan’s Pan-Asianism and the Legitimacy of Imperial World Order

53

served for so many years.7 Another liberal internationalist, Zumoto Motosada, wenton lecture tours in 1931 to Europe and the United States in an attempt to explain
Japan’s position on the Manchurian Incident. During his speeches, Motosada often
referred to the idea of a Japan-led regional order in East Asia separate from theEuropean-based league system. Just five years before the Manchurian Incident,
Zumoto had affirmed Japan’s pro-League internationalism in his critique of theNagasaki pan-Asiatic conference of 1926. Japan’s liberal internationalists apparently
turned to pan-Asianism when they saw a tension between Japanese national
interests and the decisions of the League of Nations.8

Nitobe Inazô at the League of Nations

The Asianist discourse of Japan’s transnational identity had many different versions,
ranging from a doctrine of regional solidarity to anti-Western visions ofcivilizational revival, and it was not limited to conservative circles. For example,
during the 1930s, many Japanese intellectuals who had no previous connection withconservative radical nationalist groups, such as the members of the Kyoto School ofPhilosophy or the semiofficial think tank Shôwa Kenkyûkai, also utilized antiWestern rhetoric and advocated the revival of Japan’s Asian identity.9 This indicatesan area of overlap in the worldviews of liberals and antiliberals with respect toJapan’s Asian identity and its international mission in Asia, as well as their shareddiagnosis of the international system during the 1920s. It also shows that thetheories of the clash of civilizations and Japan’s mission in Asia were part of acommon vocabulary, which would then have different political connotations
depending on the intellectual climate. For example, those promoting U.S.-Japan

White Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-1930

54

friendship would frame their efforts as a dialogue of harmony among the different
civilizations of East and West, thus confirming a vision of the world as divided into
different race and civilization groups beyond the nations. In that sense, manyleading Japanese intellectuals who had no ties to the conservative radical nationalist
groups ended up contributing to the legitimacy of the pan-Asianist program in someway, either through their theories on overcoming modernity and Eurocentrism or
through their search for an alternative modernity in the Japanese and Asian cultural
traditions.10
The second major approach to the question of Japan’s adoption of Asianist rhetoricin foreign policy emphasizes that the structural transformations in the international
system in East Asia complemented changes in the domestic power configurations tocreate a situation that led to the triumph of antiliberal and Asianist projects. Akira
Iriye and James Crowley have argued that Japanese policies during the 1930s werelargely a response to changes in the trends of the times as perceived by the Japaneseelite. A perceived sense of an international legitimacy crisis and Japan’s isolation
after the Manchurian Incident was accelerated by the impact of changed world
conditions. Regionalism became the trend of the time, making the creation of aregional order in East Asia a more feasible policy, in harmony with the flow of world
opinion. As Iriye noted, “by 1931 all indications seem to suggest that the neomercantilist world-view of Matsuoka was more realistic than Shidehara’s rational,
laissez-faire image, which had apparently failed to produce tangible results.”11 The
capitalist internationalism of the 1920s was not only denied altogether by Fascist
Germany and Socialist Russia but also half-abandoned in the concept of the panAmerican trade bloc and economic nationalism of the United States and the idea ofthe sterling trade bloc in England.12 In short, Japan’s policy shift from liberalinternationalism to Asian regionalism could be considered a function just as much ofother powers’ policies in the changing international system of the late 1930s as ofJapan’s own domestic politics.
The end of the party cabinet system in 1932 and the increasing power of themilitary in political decisions created a discontinuity in the history of Japan’s
domestic political order in terms of democratic participation and popular
expression. Japan continued to be a constitutional state, however, with normallyfunctioning domestic politics in accordance with the intricacies of the Meiji
Constitution.13 In his study on the 1930s, Crowley refutes the idea of a conservative
or right-wing takeover of the Japanese leadership by focusing on continuity in the“official mind” and the “decision-making process.” Crowley shows that all the policy
decisions of the Japanese government during the 1930s were made by responsible
political and military leaders in the interest of national defense and national
policy.14
The historiography that focuses on Japan’s response to changes in the international
environment attributes an important role to ideology and culture in shaping
Japanese perceptions of world events, without limiting focus to right-wing or
militarist groups. It is in this context that an Asianist worldview about world
cultures and international order becomes relevant for determining the perceptions

Aydin: Japan’s Pan-Asianism and the Legitimacy of Imperial World Order55

and decisions of Japanese leaders. Iriye has discussed the role of key notions such as
isolation and self-sufficiency in the psychology of Japanese decision makers,
showing how the perception that Japan stood uneasily between East and Westinfluenced the policy-making mood.
In this view, the notions that the elite held concerning the threats and opportunities
presented to Japan by the new global developments should thus be regarded as
more significant than the impact of antiliberal right-wing movements associatedwith pan-Asianism. A similar approach attributes Japan’s turn to anti-Westernism
not to the influence of pan-Asianist groups in particular but rather to the generalcharacteristics of Japanese nationalism. Hayashi Fusao’s controversial assertion thatthe “Pacific War was one phase of an Asian Hundred Years’ War to drive out the
Occidental invader” presents a generalized formulation that portrays Asianist ideas
as a permanent part of mainstream Japanese nationalism.15 This emphasis on theanti-Western historical memory of Japanese nationalism depicts Asianism as awidely held conception about Japan’s transnational identity rather than an
exclusively radical ideology monopolized by ultranationalists or conservatives.
Mark Peattie and James Crowley concur with Hayashi’s assessment of theimportance of anti-Western historical memory embedded in Japanese nationalism
as an ideological factor, although they do not share his revisionist agenda.16
Since we know, however, that mainstream nationalism in Japan had changing
perceptions of the West, it would be inaccurate to characterize anti-Westernism as asingle constant position in the history of Japanese nationalism from the Opium War
to the Greater East Asia War. Moreover, the Japanese intellectual elite remained
closely linked to trends and ideas in Europe and the United States. During the 1930s,
there was no new expansion of the West in Asia to which the surge in Japanesenationalism might be attributed; on the contrary, the West was perceived to be in aphase of global decline and retreat.17 Thus the very assumption that there was aconstant association between Japanese nationalism and resistance to Western
expansion reflects the influence of the official pan-Asianist discourse of wartime
Japan rather than accurately characterizing how images of the West andcivilizational identity interacted with Japanese foreign policy.
Withdrawal from the League of Nations as a Turning Point
There had been pan-Asianists in Japan since the turn of the twentieth century, andsome continued to work for the cause they believed in especially from 1905 to the
1930s, especially under the umbrella of patriotic Asianist organizations such as
Kokuryûkai and Genyosha. These patriotic Asianists represented a minority, if not a
marginal opinion, in shaping Japanese foreign policy. They often complained about
the neglect to which they had been subjected by the Japanese elite. In the aftermathof the Manchurian Incident of 1931 and Japan’s withdrawal from the League of
Nations the following year, however, traditional Asianists found a very receptive
audience for their ideas among Japanese bureaucrats and army officers.
The story told by Wakabayashi Han, a Kokuryûkai Asianist who specialized in theIslamic world, is very telling in this regard. Wakabayashi became interested in theWhite Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-1930

56

Muslim world after a visit to India with the Burmese Buddhist monk andanticolonial nationalist U. Ottama in 1912.18 His discovery of Indian Muslims led him
to undertake further research about Islam in Asia.19 For twenty years, he worked
closely with a small circle of Islam experts within Kokuryûkai led by Tanaka Ippei,
arguing that if Japan could develop closer ties with the colonized Muslims of Asia, itsefforts to become the leader of an awakening and independent Asia could benefit
from Muslim support.20 According to Wakabayashi, however, his small groupneither achieved any result nor received any support from the government, and hebecame pessimistic about its future success.21 Then in 1932 Tôyama Mitsuru andUchida Ryôhei sent Wakabayashi to observe the meeting of the League of Nations in
Geneva that addressed the question of recognizing the state of Manchukuo. There,
Wakabayashi witnessed the decision of Japanese diplomats to withdraw from theleague upon its refusal to recognize Manchukuo. It was only during his trip back toJapan, Wakabayashi notes, that he recognized a change of attitude toward his
group’s Asianist ideas on the part of Japanese military officers. In the long trip from
Europe to Japan, he explained to Isogai Rensuke, a lieutenant colonel in the Japanesearmy the benefits that attention to the Muslim world could bring to Japan’s East
Asian policy. Isogai later contacted Wakabayashi and introduced him to Army
Minister Araki Sadao.22 Wakabayashi’s story of what followed is a narrative oftriumph, as the Japanese army began to implement a pan-Asianist Islam policy inChina and supported the activities of the Kokuryûkai. It is clear from his story thatJapan’s withdrawal from the League of Nations was a turning point in the Japanese
government’s attitude to the pan-Asianist ideas of Japan’s cooperation with Muslim
nationalities against the Western colonial presence. Autobiographical anecdotes ofother pan-Asianist activists exhibit a similar pattern. The most influential panAsianist, Ôkawa Shûmei, had the similar experience of finding a surprising shift inJapanese official policy and intellectual life toward positions more to his liking in the
mid-1930s, more than two decades after his initial commitment of the cause of
Asianism.
Ôkawa Shûmei’s biography during the 1930s took an ironic turn, as he was put on
trial and imprisoned for his involvement in a failed military coup to change Japan’s
domestic politics at the very time his Asianist projects were receiving the support of
the Japanese government. As head of the East Asia Economic Research Bureau of theManchurian Railway Company after 1929, Ôkawa naturally was familiar withJapanese interests in Manchuria. Frequently visiting Manchuria and China, he cameto know the leading military figures of the Kwantung Army personally. From 1929
onward, Ôkawa argued that a solution to the Manchurian problem was essential forboth Asian revival and the reconstruction of Japan. In 1928 Ôkawa met with the
Manchurian warlord Chang Hsüeh-liang in an effort to convince him to form astronger political union with Japan based on “Confucian political values.”23 Both arespected scholar of colonial studies and a radical nationalist, Ôkawa once gave alecture on the necessity of creating an independent Manchuria-Mongolia to an
audience that included top military officers of the 1930s, most notably, Itagaki
Seishirô, Nagata Tetsuzan, and Tôjô Hideki.24 He went on a lecture tour in Japan
before and after the Manchurian Incident, expressing his conviction that Manchuria

Aydin: Japan’s Pan-Asianism and the Legitimacy of Imperial World Order57

was not only a legitimate economic and security sphere for Japan but actually
represented the lifeline of Japan’s national policy.
Like so many other Japanese intellectuals and leaders, Ôkawa was outspoken about
the importance of protecting Japanese interests in Manchuria, and he favoredradical action to secure these interests against the claims of Chinese nationalism.
For Ôkawa, Japan’s “sacrifice” in the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese wars
created the historical legitimacy for its treaty privileges in Manchuria. Criticizing theanti-Japanese movement in China, Ôkawa argued that if Japan did not act to protect
its rights in Manchuria, it would endanger its position in Korea and Taiwan as well.
He condemned the Japanese leaders of the late 1920s for not being able to show thecourage and determination necessary to find a long-term solution to the
Manchurian problem because of their submissive commitment to international
cooperation with the Western powers. His arguments can clearly be construed asoffering encouragement for the radical actions orchestrated by the Kwantung
Army.25 Citing these facts, the prosecution at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal argued
that there was a link between Ôkawa’s pan-Asianist ideas and the Manchurian
Incident, a key step in constructing the ideological background of the tribunal’s
thesis about the long-term Japanese conspiracy to invade Asia.26

Okawa Shumei (left) and Ishihara KanjiWhite Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-1930

58

It is impossible to attribute the Manchurian Incident or post–Manchurian Incident
Japanese policies specifically to the ideology of the pan-Asianists. The fact that panAsianist Ôkawa Shûmei had lectured on the issue of Manchuria and had known
some of the military leaders did not necessarily make him an ideologue of theManchurian Incident, since there were many others, including those identified asliberals at the time, who advocated a similarly radical policy in Manchuria.27 It is
helpful to compare Ôkawa’s arguments on Manchuria with the writings of Rôyama
Masamichi (1895–1980), a liberal intellectual of the time who was well respectedinternationally and influential in Japanese policy circles. Rôyama, who presented hisanalysis of Japan’s relations with Manchuria to an international audience affiliatedwith the Institute of Pacific Relations two years before the Manchurian Incident,
held that Japan’s established interests in Manchuria deserved international
approval.28 In a later policy report on Manchuria, Rôyama placed blame for the
Manchurian Incident on the existing international peace structures and the refusal
to acknowledge the special relations between China and Japan, not on the actions of
the Kwantung Army. Ôkawa’s writings about the need to defend Japanese rights in
Manchuria against Chinese nationalist demands did not differ substantially from
Rôyama’s insistence on the protection of Japan’s vital interests.29

Royama MasamichiAydin: Japan’s Pan-Asianism and the Legitimacy of Imperial World Order59

The nature of the pan-Asianist approach to the Manchurian Incident became
apparent only after the incident, when intellectuals like Ôkawa formulated
laudatory characterizations of the establishment of Manchukuo both as a victory
against the corruption of business conglomerates (zaibatsu) and political parties athome, and as a brave defense of Japan’s continental policy against American, British,
and Soviet opposition.30 Ôkawa retroactively offered a moral justification for the
Manchurian Incident within the framework of a pan-Asianist critique of Japan’s
foreign policy between 1905 and 1931. His interpretation of the incident as acorrection of the misguided course of pro-Western diplomacy, especially since the
Russo-Japanese War, differed significantly from Rôyama Masamichi’s justification of
the Manchurian Incident as a practical response to the changing conditions of theregion. Ôkawa wrote:
Our victory over Russia inspired hope and courage in the countries exploited under
the pressure of the Caucasian colonialists. But, before long, Japan gave in to theFranco-Japanese Agreement and the revised Anglo-Japanese Alliance, actions thatshattered the hopes of noble Vietnamese and Indian patriots who sought
independence for their countries. . . . However, the mistakes in Japanese policy werelater rectified decisively by the foundation of Manchukuo. Japan abandoned
cooperation with the Anglo-Americans, the chief instigators suppressing the Asianpeople. The foundation of Manchukuo was the first step in achieving a great“renascent Asia.”31Ôkawa similarly applauded Japan’s withdrawal from the League of Nations.32 As
shown in the previous chapter, Ôkawa had always regarded the league as an
instrument of Western colonial powers and often urged the Japanese government tocreate a League of Asian Nations as an alternative.33After Japan’s withdrawal fromthe league in 1933, Ôkawa’s ideas seemed in harmony with the policies of theJapanese government for the first time in the history of his Asianist activism, datingback to 1913.

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60

League of Nations Assembly, 1932

As the foreign policy Ôkawa had envisioned began to be implemented, he was put on
trial for his involvement in the May 15, 1932, assassination of Prime Minister Inukai
Tsuyoshi.34 After his arrest on June 15, 1932, the court found Ôkawa guilty ofproviding guns and money to conspirators during the planning stage of theassassination. In February 1934, he received a fifteen-year prison sentence,
however, between appeals and paroles he spent less than two years in prison,
between June 1936 and October 1937.35 Between 1931 to 1935, the dominantvisions of Japanese foreign policy and domestic politics changed so dramaticallythat, by early 1935, Ôkawa no longer needed to work through secretive radicalorganizations to achieve his ideological goals. In February 1935, he marked the endof his career as an activist promoting the Shôwa Restoration in domestic politics andpan-Asianism in foreign policy by disbanding the last organization he established,
Jinmukai.36 Japan itself was approaching the state of military mobilization while
endorsing an Asianist foreign policy agenda, making radical activism for the same
purpose pointless.

Aydin: Japan’s Pan-Asianism and the Legitimacy of Imperial World Order

61

Inukai Tsuyoshi

Although his image had been tarnished by his involvement in the May 15
assassination, shortly after his release from prison, Ôkawa was appointed to headthe continental campus of Hôsei University. In May 1938, he was reinstated to his
position as director of the East Asia Economic Research Bureau in Tokyo. Back in his
position of managing one of the largest research institutes in Japan, he actively
promoted a pan-Asianist agenda with the journal he edited, entitled Shin Ajia (NewAsia). His position as editor allowed him to observe, comment on, and influence
Japan’s Asia policy in the period following the official declaration of the “New OrderWhite Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-193062

in East Asia” in November 1938.37 In his first editorial, published just a month
before the German invasion of Poland, Ôkawa predicted that the outbreak of war in
Europe would usher in a new era in which nationalist movements in Asia would findtheir chance to achieve independence. He also urged the Japanese government tosupport these anticolonial movements with the goal of accelerating their process ofnational liberation and simultaneously creating future allies for Japan. Pointing outthat Japan’s mission in Asia was gaining greater urgency, Ôkawa expressed his hopethat the Japanese public, which was not knowledgeable even about the recent
developments in China, would become better informed about the conditions andpeoples of Asia in general.38
As the Japanese government began to use the slogan “New Order in East Asia” todescribe its foreign policy, Ôkawa became concerned about the Japanese public’s
lack of preparedness, in terms of their knowledge about Asian societies andcultures, for a serious pan-Asian policy. In order to educate young Japanese about
the culture and politics of Asia and prepare them for positions in the service ofJapan, Ôkawa received government funds to establish a special school offering
instruction in Asian studies. The two-year professional school, the most concrete
product of Ôkawa’s Asianist vision, was established in May 1938 as a teaching
institute affiliated with the East Asian Economic Research Bureau in Tokyo, withfunds from the Manchurian Railway Company, the army, and the Foreign Ministry.
All expenses of the admitted students were paid by the school, which was widely
known as the Ôkawa Juku (Ôkawa School), although it was named the Shôwa
Gogaku Kenkyûjo (Shôwa Language Research Institute). In return for receiving
tuition and a stipend for two years, the students were obligated to work for theJapanese government in overseas regions such as Southeast Asia for approximately
ten years. Each year, the school recruited twenty students around the age ofseventeen. In their first year, students had to learn either English or French as theirprimary foreign language, along with an additional language to be selected fromamong Hindu, Urdu, Thai, and Malay. After the second year of the school, Arabic,
Persian, and Turkish were added to the elective language course offerings.
The Ôkawa Juku represented a practical implementation of Ôkawa Shûmei’s longheld pan-Asianist vision of merging a colonial cultural policy with anticolonial
ideology. He aimed to educate a body of Japanese bureaucrats who could
understand the culture and language of Asian peoples and take a position ofleadership among them. According to his students, Ôkawa often noted the apparent
unreadiness of the Japanese Empire for a great pan-Asian cause, underlining theurgency he perceived in his teaching mission. He encouraged students to form
personal friendship with Asian peoples and establish bonds of solidarity that would
last even if Japan lost the war.39
A retrospective assessment of Japan’s wartime cultural policies in newly occupied
Southeast Asia shows that, with a few exceptions, cultural policies were in fact
developed ad hoc by administrators faced with the reality of ruling a large
population they knew little about.40 Ôkawa Juku complemented the other Asianist
program that brought students from Southeast Asia to Japan for training. Most of theAydin: Japan’s Pan-Asianism and the Legitimacy of Imperial World Order

63

graduating students of Ôkawa Juku did find employment in the militaryadministration of the Southeast Asian region during the era of the Greater East Asia
Coprosperity Sphere.41
The content of pan-Asianist education at Ôkawa Juku reflected a synthesis between
the scholarly-idealistic vision of Asian liberation and pragmatic goals of Japan’s
wartime military expansion. Ôkawa himself taught classes on colonial history, the“Japanese spirit,” Islam, and Oriental history. His lecture notes for the classes
entitled “History of Modern European Colonialism” and “Introduction to Islam” later
became the basis for books with these titles. Students praised Ôkawa as a dedicatededucator, citing his informative and clear lectures, his hard work, and his close
relationship with students.42 From time to time, high-ranking army generals such as
Doihara Kenji, Itagaki Seishirô, Matsui Iwane, Tôjô Hideki, and Okamura Seiji would
visit the Ôkawa Juku and lecture students on Japan’s Asia policy.43 Indian nationalist
Rash Behari Bose and Muslim immigrant from Russia Qurban Ali were among thepart-time language and history instructors of the school, giving students a firsthandencounter with the anticolonial nationalist thinking of Asian exiles in Japan. It was
during this time that Ôkawa pioneered Japan’s rapidly growing field of Islamicstudies not only through his own writings but also by supporting young scholars
and purchasing library collections on Islamic studies from Europe in his capacity as
director of the East Asia Economic Research Institute.44

Qurban Ali (standing, second left) with Inukai Tsuyoshi (seated, second left) and Toyama
Mitsuru (seated, second right).

It would be mistaken to assume that, before Pearl Harbor, Japan’s Asianists
advocated war with the United States based on their vision of East-West conflict.

White Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-1930

64

From the time of the Manchurian Incident in July 1937 to the Pearl Harbor attack in
December 1941, for example, Ôkawa Shûmei cautioned against entering into conflictwith the United States while advocating a southern advance by Japan that would
target the colonies of Britain, France, and the Netherlands in Southeast Asia. With
this goal in mind, he urged a quick resolution to the Sino-Japanese conflict.
Particularly as pan-Asianists became aware of an approaching war in Europe, withall the implications that such a war carried for the colonized areas in Asia, theyfound renewed faith in Asia’s ultimate rise to independence; destiny seemed to havepresented Japan with an ideal opportunity to lead the liberation of Asia from
Western colonialism. For pan-Asianists, a southern advance was as much a practical
opportunity as it was a moral imperative, since neither the British nor the Dutch
were in a position to resist Japanese military pressure, particularly if Japan could act
in cooperation with native nationalist movements in Southeast Asia. It is in thisspirit that Ôkawa Shûmei proposed the creation of a Southeast [Asian] Common
Cooperative Region (Tônan Kyôdôken) to secure the political and economic unity ofliberated Southeast Asia with Japan. With this historical opportunity, there could
emerge a new world order based on three regional blocs, Euro-Africa, America, andEast-Southeast Asia.45 Meanwhile, realizing the danger that cooperation between
Europe and America could present to Japan, Ôkawa Shûmei advocated a policy of
keeping the United States neutral.46 He refrained from making anti-American
statements in his editorials and urged the improvement of economic ties, especiallywith joint projects in Manchuria and China, in a bid to secure U.S. neutrality in theevent of a future British-Japanese conflict.
Thus, from 1938 up until the Pearl Harbor attack, Ôkawa Shûmei was involved in a
project of developing trade ties between Japan and the United States. There had
been an economic diplomacy toward the United States that aimed at cooperation in
the industrialization of Manchuria between 1937 and 1940.47 Endorsing Ishiwara
Kanji’s vision of the creation of a self-sufficient military industry in Manchukuo, but
recognizing the insufficiency of the machine tool industry in the region, military andindustrial leaders in Manchuria aimed to attract a higher level of U.S. investment
and technology. In fact, Manchuria became more heavily dependent on American
capital and technology than it was on European investments. Beyond the goal ofindustrializing Manchuria, Ayukawa Yoshisuke, the president of the Manchurian
Industrial Development Corporation and the founder of the Nissan conglomerate,
also hoped to avoid war between the United States and Japan by fostering mutual
economic ties.
Ôkawa Shûmei’s personal commitment to the improvement of economic relations
with the United States stemmed more from his interest in U.S. neutrality than fromconsiderations of economic rationality. He believed it was possible for Japan to
avoid U.S. intervention in its confrontation with the Chinese Nationalist government
and the European colonial powers. It was Ôkawa’s expectation that the strong traderelationships and joint investments they shared with Japan in Manchuria would leadthe Americans to withdraw their support from the Nationalist government of China.
In making these policy suggestions, Ôkawa relied on his assumptions about theAydin: Japan’s Pan-Asianism and the Legitimacy of Imperial World Order

65

American national character as being concerned primarily with business interests
rather than principled foreign policies. He also considered that the United States had
less to lose by giving up its support for the government of Chiang Kai-shek than
Britain did.48 With these assessments and goals, Ôkawa became personally involvedin an effort by the Pan-Pacific Trading and Navigation Company to barter mineralores from China for gasoline from the United States. His project failed as a result ofdifficulties with the intricacies of U.S. trade regulations. Nevertheless, Ôkawa’s
desire to insulate the U.S from Japan’s war in China, in addition to his willingness tomake use of U.S. trade in the development of Manchuria, should be noted as anindication that he was not, at least where practical policy matters were concerned, aconsistent advocate of an inevitable war between the United States and Japan.49
Once the fighting between the United States and Japan began, however, Ôkawa
Shûmei immediately took on the task of offering a historical justification for the war
as Japan’s response to a century of Anglo-American aggression in East Asia. He
preferred the term “Anglo-American aggression” to “Western aggression,” acontemporary expression that allowed pan-Asianist thinkers to exclude Germany
from their anti-Western rhetoric. Even so, when Ôkawa discussed the historical andphilosophical basis of the Greater East Asia War, he again spoke about theconfrontation of East and West as if China did not belong to the East or Germany to
the West. It was during his radio lectures on this topic delivered between December
14 and December 25 of 1941, that Ôkawa credited himself for the prophecy he had
made back in 1924 in his book “Asia, Europe and Japan” of an inevitable war
between Eastern and Western civilizations, represented by Japan and the UnitedStates. He described the books purposes as follows:
first, to let the pacifists reconsider their wrong attitude by clarifying thehistorical significance of war; second, to show that world history, in its true
sense of the word, is nothing but a chronicle of antagonism, struggle andunification between the Orient and the Occident; third, to reveal the culturalcharacteristics of the East and the West which had been blended into thehistory of the world; fourth, to give a logical foundation to Pan-Asianism; last,
but not least, to point out that a war is inevitable between the East and theAnglo-American powers for the establishment of a new world. Moreover, I
tried to clarify the sublime mission of Japan in the coming world war. I
concluded the book as follows: “Now, East and West have respectively
attained their ultimate goals. . . . As history fully proves, in creating a newworld, a life-and-death struggle between the champion of the East and that of
the West is inevitable. This logic proved true when America challenged
Japan.” My prediction proved correct after the passage of 16 years.50
Such self-promoting references to his prediction of Japan’s war with the UnitedStates led to Ôkawa’s indictment at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal.51 During thetrial, he pointed out that his writings in 1924 did not necessarily constitute a plan
for a Japanese attack, as he was merely commenting on the inevitability of war
between civilizations based on the ideas of the Russian philosopher Soloviev.52 In
fact, he offered a more historical reinterpretation of his 1924 clash of civilization

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thesis while under U.S. interrogation. Albeit for opportunistic reasons, pan-Asianists
opposed war with the United States before 1941. Moreover, in the aftermath of the
Immigration Act of 1924, theories of a clash between the USA and Japan was a
popular topic beyond Asianist circles. Yet the easy transition by the pan-Asianists toclash of civilization theories to justify the war with the United States in theimmediate aftermath of the Pearl Harbor attack also signifies the flexible utilizationof the ideas of Eastern and Western civilization, and the historical memory ofWestern colonialism, for the ends of Japan’s own imperial expansion.
Asianist Journals and Organizations
From the Manchurian Incident in 1931 to the end of WWII, Ôkawa Shûmei was only
one of the many intellectual voices trying to clarify the content and goals of theambivalent notion of Asian solidarity and Japan’s Asian mission. Especially after
Japan’s withdrawal from the League of Nations, activities related to the ideals anddiscourse of pan-Asianism gained momentum as support from the government, themilitary, and business circles increased. There was a significant gap, however,between the discourse of civilization reducing all global conflicts to a question of
clashes between distinct races or major civilizations and the reality of the state ofinternational affairs. Around the time of the Russo-Japanese War, a vision of racialsolidarity and civilizational alliance seemed to be an appealing international
strategy for the political projects of the rising nationalist movements, whichperceived a united policy in the West of imperialism toward their Asian colonies.
During the late 1930s, however, the Western world no longer seemed such a unified
front as a result of sharp political and ideological divisions in Europe. And Japan’schallenge to the international order was not based on racial divisions, either. Within
East Asia, the major conflict was not between East and West but between Japaneseimperialism, on the one hand, and Chinese and Korean nationalism, on the other.
From 1933 onward, there was a dramatic increase in the number of Asianist
organizations, publications, and events. They aimed not only at demonstrating thesincerity of Japan’s “return to Asia” but also at guarding against a perceived state ofinternational isolation for Japan after its withdrawal from the League of Nations.
Asianist publications and events also aimed at convincing both the Japanese publicand Asian nationalists that civilizational and racial distinctions were in fact to be
regarded as the primary consideration in international relations. But the empty
repetition of slogans about the conflict between civilizations and races did not
succeed in creating any substantial ideology able to account for the complex global
politics of the 1930s. Instead, Asianism became less and less credible in the face ofJapan’s full-scale war against Chinese nationalism. Realizing this, Asianists pursued
ideological credibility by attempting to revive and reinvent the legacy of the early
Asian internationalism dating back to the period from 1905 to 1914. At the sametime, liberal and socialist converts to Asianism during the late 1930s infused newcontent and vigor into the nearly exhausted concept of Asian community andsolidarity.
The reinvention of pan-Asianist ideology following the Manchurian Incident canbest be seen in the sudden increase in the number of Asianist journals andAydin: Japan’s Pan-Asianism and the Legitimacy of Imperial World Order67

organizations supported by military, political, and business authorities. In 1933, thesame year Japan left the League of Nations, Rash Behari Bose and Qurban Ali, two
Asianist exiles who had lived in Japan during the 1920s, began to receive funding forthe purpose of publishing journals addressed to India and the Muslim World. Rash
Behari Bose published The New Asia–Shin Ajia, a monthly periodical in a dual
English- and Japanese-language format.53 The government of India banned the entry
and sale of The New Asia within the territories it controlled.54 The journal seemed tohave supporters in Southeast Asia, as evidenced by the contact between Indonesiannationalist leader Muhammed Hatta and Rash Behari Bose.55
Almost half the journal was devoted to coverage of news about the Indian
independence movement, taking a tone sympathetic to the radical wing led by
Subhas Chandra Bose.56 Neither Japanese pan-Asianism nor The New Asia, however,received support from such prominent leaders of the Indian national movement as
Gandhi, Nehru, Tagore, and Subhas Chandra Bose, all of whom were very critical ofJapanese aggression in China. Despite the absence of interest in a Japan-centeredpan-Asianist vision among Indian nationalists, the journal referred to the proJapanese statement by Tagore back in 1916, even though Tagore had radicallychanged his views of Japan by the 1930s.57 Even Taraknath Das, the one Indian
nationalist who bestowed great hopes on Japan’s leadership of Asian nationalism
during WWI, wrote to The New Asia that Japan had done nothing to improve IndoJapanese relations for about two decades, expressing skepticism over the
motivations behind Japan’s attempt to “return to Asia” after such a long period of
indifference to nationalist movements.58
The New Asia included international news from the perspective of the East-West
conflict and domestic news on the activities of various Asianist associations in Japan,such as the visits to Tokyo of Asian or African American figures of repute, or theawarding of scholarships to students from Asia.59 The journal refrained frompublishing any news or articles critical of the creation of Manchukuo andmaintained silence on the subject of Chinese nationalism. After discussing the SinoJapanese conflict in a tone of regret, Rash Behari Bose suggested that India should
mediate between the two nations to reach a peaceful settlement.60 With regard to
the clash of civilizations and races, articles in The New Asia emphasized that what
Asians wanted was national liberation, with the possibility of a racial conflict thus
depending entirely on the attitude that the Western powers chose to assume toward
the independence movements:61
The non-white peoples are now conscious of the distressing fact that they have
hitherto been mercilessly exploited and inhumanly humiliated. The intensity of thisconsciousness is the measure of their challenge to the white man. One thing iscertain, and that is that the East and the West cannot coalesce, unless the West fully
realizes its immeasurable folly of race-superiority consciousness, completely
abandons its mischievous policy of exploitation, and immediately makes ample
amends for the untold wrongs it has inflicted on the non-white peoples of theearth.62

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In The New Asia’s editorials on Japanese foreign policy, Rash Behari Bose urged theJapanese government to cooperate with the United States, China, and the Soviet
Union in a move to eliminate British colonial control in Asia. For him, Britain was
the root of all problems in the region, including Japan’s isolation in the international
community. As early as 1934, Behari Bose warned that Japan needed to maintain
good relations with the United States, as only Britain would benefit from a conflict
between that country and Japan: “Britain is not able to fight Japan singly andtherefore waiting for her opportunity, when Japan may be involved in a war with
America. . . . An American-Japanese War will weaken these two great powers whoare serious rivals of Great Britain. Those Americans and Japanese who are real
patriots should do their best to promote American-Japanese friendship.”63
While Rash Behari Bose edited a journal addressing primarily India, Qurban Ali waspublishing Yani Yapon Muhbiri (New Japan journal), which aimed its message at the
Muslim world.[64] Although the journal was in Turkish, the cover page of themagazine included a Japanese subtitle, describing it as “the only journal that
introduces Japan to the Muslim world.” Several Japanese companies provided
support to the small Muslim community in Tokyo for their efforts in the publicationof Yani Yapon Muhbiri, which was seen as an effective means for the creation of an
information network linking Japan and the Muslim world. In spite of the journal’s
limited circulation, the very fact that Tokyo was hosting a magazine published by
Muslims was expected to have propaganda value in cultivating pro-Japanesesentiments within a Muslim audience.
Around the same time that Yani Yapon Muhbiri began publication in 1933, several
other attempts at networking with the Muslim world were promoted with thesupport of the Japanese army in Manchuria. These new attempts benefited from thecontacts Kokuryûkai had established in the Muslim world and the Turkish Tatar
diaspora network in East Asia. In a daring experiment in 1933, a prince from theabolished Ottoman dynasty, Abdül Kerim Efendi (1904–1935) was invited to Japan,
presumably to consider his potential contribution to Japan’s policy toward theMuslims of Central Asia in case of a conflict with the Soviet Union. Although the plan
was soon abandoned, it exemplified the reckless and unrealistic projects that
Asianists were willing to consider at the expense of jeopardizing Japan’s diplomatic
relations with the Turkish Republic.65 In the same year, AbdurreÅŸid Ä°brahim, thefamous pan-Islamist whose travel memoirs more than two decades earlier had
popularized a pro-Japanese image in the Muslim world, currently leading an isolated
and uneventful life in Turkey, received an invitation to visit Tokyo. Ä°brahimcollaborated with the Asianist projects reaching out to the Muslim world until his
death in 1944 in Tokyo.66
It was also in 1933 that several high-level military and civilian leaders establishedthe Greater Asia Association (Dai Ajia Kyôkai).67 The Greater Asia Association not
only promoted regional unity in East Asia but also advocated solidarity among Westand Southeast Asian societies. Konoe Fumimaro, General Matsui Iwane, and General
Ishiwara Kanji were among its prominent members.68 The Greater Asia Association
published a monthly journal titled Dai Ajia Shugi (Greater Asianism), which becameAydin: Japan’s Pan-Asianism and the Legitimacy of Imperial World Order69

the most important pan-Asianist journal during that period, offering a wide range ofnews and opinion articles covering all of Asia, including Muslim West Asia,
Southeast Asia, and Central Asia. Ôkawa Shûmei, Nakatani Takeyo,69 Rash Behari
Bose and many Asianist figures in the military frequently wrote for this journal. The
content and discourse of Dai Ajia Shugi became an influential source in shaping theofficial language of pan-Asianism during the late 1930s, influencing the “New Orderin East Asia” proclamation of the Konoe Fumimaro cabinet in 1938.70

Toyama Mitsuru honors Rash Behari Bose

The discourse of Asian identity represented in Dai Ajia Shugi was perfectly inharmony with the broader Asia view of Ôkawa Shûmei’s ideology, as it seemed toregard India and the Muslim world as just as important as East and Southeast Asia.
Taking this continental Asia perspective, Dai Ajia Kyôkai made an important
contribution to Asianist thought with its introduction of news and information
about the political, economic, and social trends of the entire Asian world, from China
and India to Iran and Turkey.71 In foreign policy, Dai Ajia Shugi was highly antiBritish and, strikingly, not anti-American. Discussions of the conflict and clash ofinterests between England and Japan started as early as 1933,72 and gradually thejournal’s call for a new world order turned to a more radical rejection of European
hegemony in Asia. The journal, however, did not carry any vision of conflict with theUnited States that could have indicated the path to war. Beginning in 1938, it

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actively promoted the concept of “New Asia,” offering enthusiastic intellectual
support for the government’s declaration of the “New Order in East Asia.”73
Despite the journal’s endorsement of cooperation among Asian nations, there wasno genuine dialogue with Asian intellectuals and nationalist movements in the pagesof Dai Ajia Shugi. When it claimed to present an Asian perspective, the journalalways consulted the same small group of exiled nationalists in Japan.74 This
artificial perspective tended to give the journal a self-congratulatory tone, whichbecame typical of Japanese pan-Asianism during the late 1930s; Japanese readers
received the impression that Asian nationalists eagerly looked to Japan forleadership. In reality, expectation of Japanese leadership against Westerncolonialism was much weaker among the nationalist movements of the 1930s
compared to the period in the aftermath of 1905. Still, the journal tried to convince
the Japanese public that pan-Asianism could be a plausible and positive alternative
to the declining Eurocentric world order in Asia.75
In addition to the boom of journals and organizations, an increasing degree of
networking with different Asian countries took place, primarily involving students
and intellectuals. When one of Indonesia’s most prominent nationalist leaders,Muhammad Hatta, visited Japan in 1933, he was showered with media attention andreceived an enthusiastic welcome from the Greater Asia Association as the “Gandhi
of the Netherlands East Indies.” Hatta had previously expressed criticism ofJapanese imperialism in China following the Manchurian Incident; however, after
his trip, he moderated his position on the Japanese “return to Asia” and advocatedIndonesian cooperation with the liberal, progressive, and idealistic segments ofJapanese society, suggesting that Indonesian nationalists should challenge theJapanese to be sincere in their pan-Asianist rhetoric. During his visit to Japan in thefall of 1935, Ahmad Subardjo, another Indonesian nationalist leader, expressed his
belief that Japan’s withdrawal from the League of Nations and the revival of the panAsianist discourse represented a very positive turning point in Asian history. It is
important to note that, despite their cautious approach to Japan’s official Asianism,
neither Hatta nor Subardjo had anything positive to say about the League of
Nations.76 Meanwhile, various Asianist organizations tried to increase the number ofIndonesian students attending Japanese universities, with most of these students
becoming members of pan-Asianist organizations during their stays in Japan.
In 1934 the Japanese government established a semiofficial agency, Kokusai Bunka
Shinkôkai (Society for International Cultural Relations), with the purpose of
introducing Japanese culture to other parts of the world and improving cultural ties
with European, American, and Asian societies.77 Although the initial focus of theorganization emphasized Europe and the United States, Kokusai Bunka Shinkôkai
gradually expanded the funding it devoted to cultural interactions with Asiansocieties.78
As the number of cultural and political associations, journals, and books focusing on
Asia grew dramatically after 1933, the Japanese public’s interpretation ofinternational events began to be shaped more by their consciousness of racialdifference and Asian identity. The best example of the power that an internationalistAydin: Japan’s Pan-Asianism and the Legitimacy of Imperial World Order

71

race identity held over the Japanese imagination was the popular reaction to the
Italian invasion of Ethiopia, when strong pro-Ethiopian sentiments caused problems
for Japan’s diplomatic relations with Italy. The mainstream Japanese media was fullof anti-Italian and pro-Ethiopian commentaries, with references to the conflict as
another instance of the struggle between the white race and colored races.79 Suchoverwhelming sympathy for the Ethiopian resistance caused diplomatic tension
between Japan and Italy, despite the Japanese Foreign Ministry’s policy of keeping
good relations with Italy.80 Meanwhile, the highly pro-Ethiopian public response to
the Ethiopian crisis attracted the attention of African American intellectuals,
prompting a visit to Japan by W. E. B. Du Bois. The warm reception Du Bois met
during his 1936 visit to Manchuria and Japan, combined with his perception of agenuine Japanese public interest in the struggle of Africans and African Americans,convinced him of the sincerity behind Japan’s claim for leadership of the colored
races. Du Bois continued to write about the legitimacy of Japan’s actions in Asia in
the framework of the importance of race in international affairs, even in the face ofJapanese atrocities in China. Predictably, pro-Japanese comments by Du Bois
received great coverage in Japanese papers in a self-righteous affirmation ofJapanese policies.81

Du Bois in Japan

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Overall, the small group of Japan’s Asian collaborators, together with the Asian and
African American intellectuals who expressed support for Japan’s Asianist projects,
were very important in allowing Japanese intellectuals to convince themselves that
their ideas of the New Order in East Asia and the Greater East Asia Coprosperity
Sphere were different from Western imperialism. As Naoki Sakai has pointed out,
the ideologues of Japan’s official pan-Asianism manifested a kind of “narcissism”
that impelled them repeatedly to quote those individuals who praised the Japaneseor who hoped to receive support from Japan against Western colonial rule.82
Through magnification of these manifestations of pro-Japanese expressions, many ofwhich dated back to the decade after the Russo-Japanese War, Japanese leaders
depicted the Japanese Empire as a Coprosperity Sphere that purported to represent
the will of all its colonial subjects.
When Japan first began the process of colonizing Taiwan and Korea and received
rights in Manchuria, its policies could be justified in international law throughreferences to the ideals of progress and development favored by other colonial
powers. In the starkly different international climate of the 1930s, the vocabulary of
benevolent colonialism had to be replaced by the discourse of pan-Asian solidarity
to justify Japanese imperialism. By 1940 there were many Japanese, especially in theyoung generation, who believed in their Asian identity and the discourses of Asianliberation propagated by multiple sources within Japan.83
Asianist Ideology of the 1930s
Pan-Asianism did not have a defined ideology or a systematic doctrine. Formulating
an ideology that was both realistic and intellectually appealing proved to be thegreatest challenge faced by official Asianism in the 1930s. Early pan-Asianism
derived its appeal from its opposition to the intellectual foundations of theEurocentric international order while claiming to be in harmony with Japan’snational interest through the idea of regional leadership in the project of an AsianMonroe Doctrine. In the 1930s, when pan-Asianist ideology took on a more
assertive challenge to the Eurocentric world order, a new generation of intellectuals
struggled to inject a degree of international legitimacy and realism into the idea of
Asianism by modifying the content of the racial conflict thesis with reference toregionalism and geopolitics. Moreover, a strong tide of intellectual critiques ofWestern modernity during the 1930s ended up strengthening the anti-Western
discourse of pan-Asianism.
The charter of Dai Ajia Kyôkai, promulgated in 1933 after Japan’s withdrawal fromthe League of Nations, was a far cry from the cautious language of the early AsianMonroe Doctrine developed during the 1910s:
In culture, politics, economics, geography, and race, Asia is a body of common
destiny. The true peace, prosperity, and development of Asian peoples arefeasible only on the basis of their consciousness of Asia as one entity and anorganic union thereof. . . . The heavy responsibility for reconstruction andordering of Asia rests upon the shoulders of Imperial Japan. . . . now is thetime for Japan to concentrate all its cultural, political, economic, andAydin: Japan’s Pan-Asianism and the Legitimacy of Imperial World Order73

organizational power to take one step toward the reconstruction and unionin Asia. . . . The formulation of the Greater Asia Federation is the historicalmission facing the Japanese people today.84
In the early stages after Japan’s withdrawal from the League of Nations, scholars ofinternational relations such as Kamikawa Hikomatsu and Rôyama Masamichi
criticized the idea of Great Asianism advocated by Dai Ajia Kyôkai, calling it both
unrealistic and anachronistic. They suggested that instead of pursuing an antiWestern vision of Asian solidarity, Japan should create a Far Eastern League using
the League of Nations as its model. This plan was based on a liberal internationalist
agenda without any emphasis on the primacy of race and civilization.85 At that stage,
scholars like Rôyama Masamichi were maintaining their resistance to anincreasingly pervasive Asianist tendency to analyze and reorder Japan’s relations
with the rest of the world in terms of racial and civilizational blocs and conflicts
among them. Rôyama noted that he deliberately decided “not to give a leading
position to the question of race and culture” in his writings and policy suggestions.86
In the end, however, Rôyama capitulated to this convention, offering realpolitik
substance to the slogans of official pan-Asianism. He incorporated the idea of a
distinct East Asian culture in his elaborate support of the New Order in East Asia,
although it is true that the core of his arguments relied more on the concepts ofregionalism.87 Japan’s liberal intellectuals could redefine the idea of East Asian
community (kyôdôtai) as a form of regionalism that would bring about arationalization of economic and social interaction in the region.88
Because of harsh critiques from leading Asian nationalists, such as Gandhi and
Nehru, of Japanese policies in China during the 1930s, official Asianism was basedon highly repetitive references to the events and ideas of the Asian internationalismof the 1905–1914 period, when there was an interest in Japanese leadership in
different parts of Asia. One of the best examples of this attempt to overcome theemptiness of an imposed notion of Asian unity through references to early Asianism
can be seen in the response Ôkawa Shûmei offered to the condemnation of JapaneseAsianism by leaders of the Indian National Congress. Even at the time when Japanwas sponsoring the Indian National Army’s fight against British rule, both Gandhi
and Nehru denounced Japanese colonialism. In an open letter to them, Ôkawa
recounted his experiences during WWI in joining Indian nationalists to campaign forthe liberation of India, regardless of Japan’s pro-Western policy at the time of theAnglo-Japanese Alliance. For Ôkawa, this historical background of Indian-Japanesecollaboration showed that the ideals of official pan-Asianism during the Greater East
Asia War had altruistic historical roots, reflecting a genuine interest in aiding thedecolonization of Asia.89 It was during such a search for the historical roots ofAsianism that Okakura Tenshin was made an icon of pan-Asian thought. All of
Okakura’s works, including a previously unpublished manuscript from his 1901 trip
to India called Awakening of the East, were published in both English and Japaneseeditions between 1938 and 1945.90 In the same quest to reinvent early Asianinternationalism, books by Ôkawa Shûmei, Paul Richard, and Taraknath Das fromthe period of WWI were reprinted after more than twenty years.91

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Okakura Tenshin

It was the presence of new converts from the socialist and liberal intellectual
traditions, however, that injected new energy and vitality to Asianism. In thewritings of Miki Kiyoshi, a leading member of the Shôwa Kenkyûkai, we can see the
Asianist discourse of civilization in its most sophisticated formulation, polished with
the German tradition of the philosophy of history.92 According to Miki, the overWesternization of world cultures and the Eurocentric character of the social
sciences posed a global political problem. Borrowing the self-critique of European
thought during the interwar period, Miki expressed the conviction that Western
civilization was in the process of self-destruction and could no longer dominate thefate of Asia. From this observation, he proceeded to the conclusion that Japan should
uphold its civilizational mission to facilitate Asian unity and cooperation andeliminate Western colonialism. For Miki, Asian cooperation under Japaneseleadership would serve the interests of peace and harmony, as well as liberation andracial equality.93

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Miki Kiyoshi (second left) at a meeting of the Shôwa Kenkyûkai

Miki’s arguments drew on reflections on modernity and Eurocentrism in thewritings of the interwar era in both Europe and Japan. Ultimately, however, they
resembled the ideas of Okakura Tenshin and Ôkawa Shûmei in their basic tenet,
namely, belief in the collapse of the Eurocentric world order and the corresponding
necessity to offer an alternative order based on Asian values and political solidarity.
Other converts to Asianism, such as the famous socialists Sano Manabu, Nabeyama
Sadachika, and Akamatsu Katsumaro, offered their own interpretations of thecontent of pan-Asianist thought.94 These former socialists described theirperception of the world in terms of a division into a proletarian East and a bourgeois
West. It was their belief that the fusion between the West, “reorganized by theproletariat,” and the East, “awakened through the influence of Pan-Asianism,” would
create a new world order that would finally establish world peace and unity.95 Theirretreat from Comintern socialism was accompanied by a shift in allegiance to Asianinternationalism.
What united the ideology of such diverse groups and figures as the Greater Asia
Association, Ôkawa Shûmei, and the new converts to Asianism such as Miki Kiyoshi,
was the discourse of civilization central to all their arguments. Victor Koschmannhave accounted for the differences among these pan-Asianist visions by making a
distinction between esoteric and exoteric versions of Asianism. According to
Koschmann, popular organizations such as the Greater Asia Association presented
the exoteric Asianism that had the power to appeal to Japanese public opinion, while
Shôwa Research Institute intellectuals such as Miki Kiyoshi produced an esotericversion of Asianism that was more relevant to rational policy making andlegitimization in the eyes of the presumed world public opinion. East-West
civilization discourse, however, united both the more sophisticated scholarlyWhite Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-1930

76

elaborations of Asianism and those that appealed to the broader domestic public
opinion. This explains the striking similarities between the pan-Asianist ideas ofÔkawa Shûmei and Miki Kiyoshi, despite their dramatically different intellectual andpolitical backgrounds. Very much like Ôkawa Shûmei, Miki Kiyoshi based hisargument on the conviction that Eurocentrism or Western civilization had to be
overcome, while the civilizational legacy of Asia could become the basis for analternative. Gradually, these ideas turned into well-known slogans, frequently
repeated if not always clearly defined. The following ambiguous formulation by theGreater Asia Association summed up the slogans that were common to all versionsof Asianism: “It goes without saying that the cultures of Europe are incapable ofrescuing themselves any more, much less the world at large. The new potential
power lies with the third civilization. It makes both Eastern and Western
civilizations come alive through ‘musubi’ or harmonious combination. This is what
can produce a new order in China, and Japan may rightfully serve as a catalyst forthis combination.”96
The central tension in world politics, according to this Asianist discourse ofcivilization, was between East and West, and thus Asianism helped serve to reduce
all world conflicts to this reductionist framework. Once the war between Japan andthe United States started, such rhetoric served a very useful political purpose byplacing the focus on the conflict with the Western powers and covering up the senseof guilt some Japanese may otherwise have felt about their country’s aggression in
China. Thus a great number of Japanese intellectuals may have felt relieved after theoutbreak of war with the USA. They could mobilize their ideas for the glorificationand justification of the Pacific War in the name of overcoming modernity and EastWest confrontation. For example, the participants in the famous wartime conference“Overcoming Modernity” utilized a wide array of philosophies and theories to link
Japan’s military conflict with the intellectual attempts to overcome the problems ofEurocentric modernity.97 It was thus the intellectual legacy of early Asianism in theform of a discourse of Asian civilization that created similarities between theideology of old-time Asianists such as Ôkawa Shûmei and that of the new converts to
Asianism during the 1930s, whose disparate beliefs converged in their obsessive
and constant blaming of the imagined West for the problems of the international
order.
Wartime Asian Internationalism and Its Postwar Legacy
Throughout the Pacific War, pan-Asianists like Ôkawa Shûmei devoted all theirenergies to the service of the Japanese state and the project of the Greater East Asia
Coprosperity Sphere. In addition to publishing books and journals advocating theideals of Asianism, Ôkawa continued to head the administration of the East Asian
Economic Research Institute and to run his professional school.98 Among these
efforts, he saw it as particularly important to clarify Japan’s war aims and explain
the origins and goals of the Greater East Asia War. The main Asianist project Ôkawa
closely followed during the war was the establishment of the Indian National Army,an event that gave a sense of final achievement to Ôkawa after three decades ofadvocating Japanese support for Indian independence.

Aydin: Japan’s Pan-Asianism and the Legitimacy of Imperial World Order77

The creation of the Indian National Army (INA) in 1942, with its ranks composed ofIndian soldiers from the surrendered British troops in Singapore, became the mostmemorable project to embody pan-Asianist slogans. The INA was intended to fightalongside the Japanese army against the British forces at the Burmese-Indian
border. It is now clear that the initial success of the Japanese plans for the creationof an Indian army can be attributed more to the contributions of idealistic Japanesefigures on the ground than to any planning in Tokyo.99 Major Fujiwara Iwaichi(1908–1986) gained the trust of Indian officers mainly through his own sincerecommitment to the project of Indian independence. In fact, upon Fujiwara’s
departure, INA commander Mohan Singh soon clashed with the new liaison officer
and attempted to disband the 40,000-man army he had created.100 The objection of
Mohan Singh and other Indian officers to the appointment of Rash Behari Bose to
the top position in the newly created army marked another point of crisis, one thatshows the agency of Indian collaborators in the whole project.101
Subhas Chandra Bose’s willingness to cooperate with Japan, followed by his secretsubmarine trip from Germany to Japan in 1942, saved the Indian National Armyproject, when it faced a crisis provoked by disagreement between the Japanese andIndian sides. Chandra Bose was a well-respected leader of the Indian nationalist
movement who could both gain the loyalty of the Indian officers and assert
authority over the Japanese liaison officers. For a long time, he had advocatedcooperation with anti-British powers in order to win independence for India, incontrast to the policy of passive resistance advocated by Gandhi. He saw a great
opportunity in German and Japanese support for the liberation of India and willingly
collaborated with both powers. Soon after his arrival in Singapore, Chandra Bose
took over the leadership of the INA and formed the Provisional Government of Free
India. Although the actual engagement between the Indian National Army and their
British enemies at Imphal resulted in defeat for the Indian side, the mere existenceof a provisional government and an army had a positive psychological impact on the
Indian nationalist movement as a whole.102
From his arrival at Singapore until his death in a plane crash at the end of the PacificWar, Subhas Chandra Bose visited Tokyo several times during the war. The speech
he made as the leader of the Provisional Government of Free India at the Greater
East Asia Conference in 1943 to the heads of state of six nations of the Coprosperity
Sphere (Japan, China, Manchuria, the Philippines, Burma, and Thailand, allrecognized as independent by Japan) demonstrated the links between the failure of
the League of Nations system and the New Order in East Asia that Japan had
declared its intention to establish in the context of its war aims. Bose began his
speech by recalling his frustration with the League of Nations: ”My thoughts also
went back to the Assembly of the League of Nations, that League of Nations along
whose corridors and lobbies I spent many a day, knocking at one door after another,in the vain attempt to obtain a hearing for the cause of Indian freedom.”103
According to Bose, the Greater East Asia Conference organized by the Japanese
government as an alternative to the League of Nations was receptive to nationalist
voices in Asia in a way none of the European-centered international organizations

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78

had ever been. Meanwhile, he gave several radio speeches and lectured to theJapanese public, helping to enhance the popular Japanese confidence in theliberation mission of the Pacific War.

Subhas Chandra Bose in a Tokyo speech in 1945

What pan-Asianists like Ôkawa Shûmei never realized was that, for nationalist
leaders like Subhas Chandra Bose, pan-Asianism was merely one of the means toreach national independence, not a goal in itself.104 In one of his conversations withÔkawa Shûmei about the future of the Indian national movement, Subhas Chandra
Bose talked about the possibility of receiving Soviet support against the British
Empire if Germany was defeated on the European front. Ôkawa was surprised that
Bose could think of cooperating with the Soviets and asked him why he would
collaborate with the Soviet Union if he was against Communism. In response, Bose
pointed out that he was prepared “to shake hands even with Satan himself to driveout the British from India.”105 It did not occur to Ôkawa that Japan might well be one
Satan with whom Chandra Bose had to cooperate. In fact, Chandra Bose saw Japanas a different ally from Russia or Germany because of the Asian identity common toboth India and Japan. In the end, however, Bose’s nationalist agenda was the main
motive for collaboration, rather than a vision of Asian regionalism under Japaneseleadership. In a sense, the legitimacy of wartime pan-Asianism intimately depended
on the idea of national self-determination.

Aydin: Japan’s Pan-Asianism and the Legitimacy of Imperial World Order79

For Ôkawa Shûmei, on the other hand, Asian decolonization was unthinkable in theabsence of Japan’s unique mission to lead the free Asia. He refrained, however, fromstating specifically what kind Asian federation would replace the old order.
Unsurprisingly, Ôkawa’s vision of the future Asia was ambiguous, and his wartime
writings focused more on the history and ideology of Asianism. The Japanese
government, on the other hand, had to clarify its war aims and postwar visions
much more clearly than Ôkawa did, especially in response to the appeal of theAtlantic Charter. Initially, Japanese leaders defined the first stage of the new worldorder they envisioned for Asia—namely, the expulsion of Western hegemony andthe elimination of Western interests—without specifying clearly what would
happen after the Western powers were gone. They assumed that, once Western
exploitation was over and trade between Asian nations was established, Asia would
develop very fast. They also hoped that the new Asia would cooperate with aGerman-dominated Europe to create a world order based on regional economic
blocs.[106] As Japanese leaders soughtthe further cooperation of local nationalist
movements during the later stages of the war, they eventually clarified their own
war aims as an alternative to the Atlantic Charter.107
As the declarations of the 1926 Nagasaki pan-Asiatic conference had looked similar
to the principles of the League of Nations, so the Greater East Asia Conference
declaration also looked like a modification of the Atlantic Charter, with slightalterations affording sensitivity to the cultural traditions of non-Western societies.
For example, the principles declared on November 7, 1943, in Tokyo affirmed thenational self-determination of Asian societies, with the only major difference fromthe Atlantic Charter being a call for the “abolition of racial discrimination” and thecultivation of Asian cultural heritages.108 During the Greater East Asia War, thefierce competition between the Allied Powers and Japan in propaganda battles andpsychological warfare had accelerated the pace of decolonization. Not only did Japan
feel the need to respond to the Atlantic Charter, but the Allied Powers also had torespond to the pan-Asianist challenge to the interwar colonial order. For instance,
U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS) reports on psychological warfare in Southeast
Asia held that Japan’s Asianist propaganda was generally very successful. In
response, the OSS suggested that the vision of a United Nations organization and a
new world order should be emphasized, taking care not to make any reference tothe continuation of the British, French, and Dutch empires.109 More important, there
was a growing awareness among U.S. wartime leaders, including President
Roosevelt, that they had to counter the widespread pan-Asian notions of solidarity
spread by Japan by offering a new vision of a postwar order that at least recognized
the national demands of India and China. There was also a second concern beyond
the competition with Japan: how to assure the support of China and later India in
the postwar international order. These concerns led to recognition that the preWWII colonial discourses of racial inferiority and the reality of the colonialsubjugation of India and China should not continue, even if Japan were punished bya national-racial isolation.110 It is against the background of this concern with panAsianism that Roosevelt recommended that Churchill give India more selfgovernment in order to improve the war efforts against Japan.111

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As a matter of fact, after the end of the Greater East Asia War, the prewar imperial
order would not be reestablished. When Ôkawa Shûmei listened to the emperor’sradio announcement of Japan’s surrender, on August 15, 1945, he thought that four
decades of his work “toward the revival of Asia [had] disappeared like a soap
bubble.”112 Yet, although it was true that Japanese pan-Asianism as a politicalmovement would disappear, the decolonization of Asia would be completed by the
1950s. More important, the Asianist discourse of an East-West civilizational conflict
would likewise survive the post-WWII period.
The period immediately after WWII witnessed nationalist revolutions fromIndonesia to Vietnam fighting against the returning Dutch and French colonialism.
Even in India, despite Chandra Bose’s death in a plane crash and the dissolution of
his army at the end of WWII, the Indian national movement rushed to the moral andlegal defense of the officers of the Japanese-sponsored Indian National Army, whowere indicted for treason against the British Empire. As Tilak Raj Sareen wrote, thetrial of the INA officers revitalized the nationalist movement in India, actuallycreating a new turning point in the Indian national movement, demoralized after
WWII.113 Meanwhile, at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, the legacy of the prewar
Asian discourse of civilization would be played out in full in the conflict of opinion
between the Indian Radhabinod Pal and the other judges.
Ôkawa Shûmei was indicted as a Class A war criminal by the Tokyo War Crimes
Tribunal based on his role as an ideologue of right-wing pan-Asianism. Both theprosecution and the final verdict used Ôkawa’s writings extensively in theconstruction of their case charging the accused Japanese leaders with conspiracy tocommit aggression, even though charges against Ôkawa himself were dropped when
he was diagnosed with brain syphilis in the early stages of the tribunal. While themajority of judges found the accused Japanese leaders guilty of the charges, Judge
Radhabinod Pal wrote a long dissenting opinion asserting that Japanese decision
making leading up to the Pacific War did not constitute a crime in international law.
It is a testimony to Radhabinod Pal’s expertise in international law and his sharp
political and legal acumen that his long dissenting opinion is now as wellremembered as the Tokyo Tribunal itself. The substance of Pal’s dissenting
judgment derived from his ideas of international law and his commitment to a justtrial untainted by the politics of “victor’s justice.” It is also evident that Pal’s
background in colonial Bengal and his sympathies for the Indian National Armyunder the leadership of Subhas Chandra Bose had an impact on the content of his
dissenting judgment. This background may have also influenced his failure to speakout against the use of his dissenting judgment by Japanese right-wing revisionists.

Aydin: Japan’s Pan-Asianism and the Legitimacy of Imperial World Order

Monument to Radhabinod Pal in Japan81

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82

Richard Minear and John Dower have agreed with many of Pal’s legal arguments intheir discussion of the neocolonial context of the Tokyo Tribunal and their critiqueof the negative impact of the Tokyo trial on both international justice and Japan’s
acceptance of responsibility for the Pacific War.114 As Timothy Brook has
demonstrated, however, Justice Pal’s anticolonial sensibilities led him to refrainfrom making any meaningful judgment on Japan’s responsibility for the Nanking
Massacre.115 Pal’s anticolonial stance led him to withhold comment on Japan’s war
crimes against Chinese civilians in Nanking and elsewhere. The majority of thejudges, on the other hand, condemned Japanese imperialism in the name ofinternational justice at the same time that Western powers were trying toreestablish their colonial hegemony.116 Thus, in a sense, the color lines that panAsianism emphasized were acted out on the benches of the Tokyo Tribunal,
indicating one of the many ways the legacies of the pan-Asianist discourse ofcivilization and race survived in the postwar period, shaping the perception of boththe cold war and decolonization in contemporary history.
Conclusion
Japanese pan-Asianism gained unprecedented official support among the elites of
the Japanese Empire in the aftermath of the Manchurian Incident and Japan’s
decision to withdraw from the League of Nations. The Japanese government
declared its “return to Asia” by appropriating an already existing pan-Asianist
alternative to the Eurocentric world order only when its empire was challenged
internally by nationalist movements and externally by the other great powers. Thevery fact that Japan’s elites saw something practical and useful in the pan-Asianslogans and networks to help justify the multiethnic Asian empire of Japan indicatesboth the continuing intellectual vitality of Asianist critiques of the interwar-era
world order and the potential appeal of the Asianist slogans of East-West relations
and racial identity to broader Japanese public opinion. Pan-Asianism allowed theJapanese Empire to implement more rigorous and inclusive assimilation policies
and exhibit a high level of international confidence and self-righteousness in an era
when imperialism was globally delegitimized. Yet it was partly a nostalgic andnarcissistic ideology, making frequent references to the post-1905 Asian nationalist
admiration of Japan without recognizing the fact that both the nature of nationalism
and the image of Japan had changed dramatically from 1905 to the late 1930s.
Japanese pan-Asianists saw a great opportunity in the unexpected patronage of theirideas by the Japanese government and military authorities after 1933. Throughout
the 1930s, the radical anti-Western tradition within Asianism was focused on theend of European empires in Asia, especially on the weakness of British Empire,without advocating or recommending any Japanese challenge to the United States.
Pearl Harbor was thus an undesirable development for pan-Asianists in Japan, eventhough they rushed to glorify and justify it via a discourse of East-West civilizationalor yellow-white racial conflicts. Meanwhile, new converts to Asianism from different
segments of Japanese intellectual life added practical and policy-oriented content tothe ambivalent slogans of Asian solidarity via social science theories of regional
cooperation and multiethnic communities. Despite its internal paradoxes and its

Aydin: Japan’s Pan-Asianism and the Legitimacy of Imperial World Order83

tensions with the logic of Japanese imperialism, pan-Asianism nevertheless allowed
Japan to conduct a relatively successful propaganda campaign against Westernimperialism in Southeast Asia while motivating numerous idealist Japanese activists
and their collaborators. Pan-Asianist propaganda, accompanied by Japan’s own
imperial expansion during WWII, did contribute to the end of Western empires,
partly by forcing the Allied powers to formulate and promise a more inclusive andnonimperialistic world order at the end of WWII, and partly by stimulating anticolonial thought and confidence in the possibility of defeating European colonizers
among colonized Asian nations.
This article is developed from Cemil Aydin, The Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia:
Visions of World Order in Pan-Islamic and Pan-Asian Thought (New York: Columbia
University Press 2007) pp: 161-189. For more information about the book, please see.
Posted at Japan Focus on March 12, 2008.
Cemil Aydin is assistant professor of history, University of North Carolina, Charlotte
and a post-doctoral Fellow at Princeton University, Near Eastern Studies Department
in 2007-08. Recent publications include "Beyond Eurocentrism? Japan's Islamic Studies
during the Era of the Greater East Asia War (1937-1945)," in Renee Worringer, ed.,Princeton Papers: Interdisciplinary Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Volume XIV: The
Islamic Middle East and Japan: Perceptions, Aspirations, and the Birth of Intra-AsianModernity, January 2007.
Notes
1 The Manchurian Incident of 1931 initiated a process that led to the establishmentof a Japanese-controlled puppet government in Manchuria and Japan’s withdrawal
from the League of Nations. Japan’s Kwantung army guarding the South Manchurian
Railways bombed parts of the railway in Mukden to create a pretext to occupy
Manchuria with the ostensible purpose of providing security against Chinese
nationalists in September 1931. Instead of withdrawing from the occupied
territories, the Japanese government created the puppet state Manchukuo in
February 1932. Nonrecognition of this state by the League of Nations became thereason for Japanese withdrawal from the league in 1933.
2 Frederick Dickinson, War and National Reinvention: Japan in the Great War, 1914–
1919 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001).
3 Richard Storry, The Double Patriots: A Study of Japanese Nationalism (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1957).
4 Christopher Szpilman, “Conservatism and Its Enemies in Prewar Japan: The Case of
Hiranuma Kiichirô and the Kokuhonsha,” Hitotsubashi Journal of Social Studies 30,
no. 2 (December 1998): 101–133.
5 Genzo Yamamoto, “Defending Japan’s Civilization and Civilizing Mission in Asia:
The Resilience and Triumph of Illiberalism in the House of Peers, 1919–1934” (Ph.D.
diss., Yale University, 1999). See also Arima Tatsuo, The Failure of Freedom: A
Portrait of Modern Japanese Intellectuals (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1969). For a previous work on this topic that focuses more on the failure of theliberals to fight the antiliberals, see Toru Takemoto, The Failure of Liberalism inWhite Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-1930

84

Japan: Shidehara Kijuro’s Encounter with Anti-Liberals (Washington, D.C.:
University Press of America, 1978).
6 Louise Young, Japan’s Total Empire: Manchuria and the Culture of Wartime Empire(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998).
7 For Nitobe Inazô’s arguments justifying Japan’s Manchuria policy, see Thomas W.
Burkman, “The Geneva Spirit,” in John F. Howes, ed., Nitobe Inazô: Japan’s Bridge
Across the Pacific (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1995), 204–209. See also George
Oshiro, “The End: 1929–1933,” in Howes, Nitobe Inazô, 255–258.
8 For Zumoto’s defense of the Manchurian Incident before international audiences in
the United States and Europe, see Zumoto Motosada, The Origin and History of theAnti-Japanese Movement in China (Tokyo: Herald, 1932); and idem, Japan in
Manchuria and Mongolia (Tokyo: Herald, 1931). For Nitobe Inazô’s opinion on the
Manchurian Incident, see Nitobe Inazô, “Japan and the League of Nations,” in The
Works of Nitobe Inazô (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1972), 4:234–239; andidem, “The Manchurian Question and Sino-American Relations,” in The Works of
Nitobe Inazô, 4:221–233.
9 For a discussion of Shôwa Kenkyûkai, see J. Victor Koschmann, “Asianism’s
Ambivalent Legacy,” in Peter J. Katzenstein and Takashi Shiraishi, eds., Network
Power: Japan and Asia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997), 90–94. Shôwa
Kenkyûkai (1933–1940) was labeled in the popular press as Konoe Fumimaro’s
brain trust. Especially during Konoe’s tenure as prime minister (1937–1939, 1940–
1941), Shôwa Kenkyûkai was preoccupied with formulating the East Asian
Cooperative Body and the New Order Movement. The membership of theassociation included scholars and journalists from different ideologicalbackgrounds. For the anti-Western ideas of the Kyoto School philosophers, see John
Dower, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (New York:
Pantheon, 1986), 227.
10 Harry Harootunian, Overcome by Modernity: History, Culture, and Community inInterwar Japan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000); Stefan Tanaka,
Japan’s Orient: Rendering Pasts into History (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1993); Kevin Doak, Dreams of Difference: The Japan Romantic School and the
Crisis of Modernity (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1994). There is an
ongoing debate about the relationship of the pro-war nature of the Kyoto School
philosophy and its vision of overcoming modernity. See Ueda Shizuteru, “Nishida,
Nationalism, and the War in Question,” in James Heisig and John Moraldo, eds., Rude
Awakenings: Zen, the Kyoto School, and the Question of Nationalism (Honolulu:
University of Hawai’i Press, 1995), 77–106; Yusa Michiko, “Nishida andTotalitarianism: A Philosopher’s Resistance,” in Heisig and Moraldo, Rude
Awakenings, 107–131; and Andrew Feenberg, “The Problem of Modernity in the
Philosophy of Nishida,” in Heisig and Moraldo, Rude Awakenings, 151–173.
11 Akira Iriye, “The Failure of Economic Expansionism: 1918–1931,” in Bernard S.
Silberman and H. D. Harootunian, eds., Japan in Crises: Essays on Taishô Democracy(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), 265.
12 James B. Crowley, “A New Asian Order: Some Notes on Prewar Japanese
Nationalism,” in Silberman and Harootunian, Japan in Crises, 273.
13 This continuity in change was theorized by Andrew Gordon as the transition from

Aydin: Japan’s Pan-Asianism and the Legitimacy of Imperial World Order85

imperial democracy to imperial fascism. See Andrew Gordon, Labor and Imperial
Democracy in Prewar Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991).
14 “Confronted by a formidable cluster of diplomatic, economic, and military
problems, the Imperial government [of Japan] resorted to a series of potential
solutions: Manchukuo, a Japanese Monroe Doctrine, Hirota’s three principles, anadvance to the South Seas, a national defense state, and the rejuvenation of China”(James B. Crowley, “Intellectuals as Visionaries of the New Asian Order,” in James W.
Morley, ed., Dilemmas of Growth in Prewar Japan (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1971), 395). Similarly, Ben-Ami Shillony has demonstrated that, even at thepeak of the Pacific War, Japan did not deviate from the normal functioning of the
Meiji Constitution. See Ben-Ami Shillony, Politics and Culture in Wartime Japan(New York: Oxford University Press, 1981).
15 Hayashi Fusao, Daitôa Sensô Kôteiron, 2 vols. (Tokyo: Banchô Shobô, 1964–1965),
cited in Crowley, “A New Asian Order,” 297–298.
16 For example, Mark Peattie has argued that Ishiwara Kanji’s views “were part ofthis surging anti-Western nationalism during the interwar period, and his concept ofa Final War must be seen as a reinvigoration of a persistent, if long-muted, theme ofchallenge to the West throughout Japan’s modern history to 1945” (Mark R. Peattie,
Ishiwara Kanji and Japan’s Confrontation with the West [Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1975], 368).
17 For a good example of the perception of Western retreat from Asia, see No-Yong
Park, Retreat of the West: The White Man’s Adventure in Eastern Asia (Boston: Hale,
Cushman, and Flint, 1937).
18 U. Ottama (1879–1939) was an influential figure in Burmese nationalism.
Influenced by both the Indian National Congress and the Japanese model, Ottama
denounced British colonial rule. He was imprisoned by the British authorities for avery long time, ultimately dying in prison. For Ôkawa’s praise of Ottama, see Ôkawa
Shûmei, “Ottama Hôshi o Omou,” in Ôkawa Shûmei Zenshû, 7 vols., ed. Ôkawa
Shûmei Zenshû Kankôkai (Tokyo: Ôkawa Shûmei Zenshû Kankôkai, 1961–1974),
2:913–915.
19 Selçuk Esenbel, “Japanese Interest in the Ottoman Empire,” in Bert Edstrom, ed.,The Japanese and Europe: Images and Perceptions (Richmond, Surrey, U.K.: Curzon,
2000), 112–120; El-Mostafa Rezrazi, “Pan-Asianism and the Japanese Islam: Hatano
Uhô. From Espionage to Pan-Islamist Activity,” Annals of the Japan Association for
Middle East Studies, no. 12 (1997): 89–112.
20 Tanaka Ippei was a scholar of China and Buddhism. He converted to Islam andperformed pilgrimages to Mecca in 1925 and 1933. Wakabayashi describes Tanaka
Ippei as a fighter for “Sonnô Yûkoku,” meaning “Revere the Emperor, and be a
Patriot,” despite the fact that Tanaka became a Muslim and adopted the name Haji
Nur Muhammad in 1918.
21 His brother, Wakabayashi Kyûman, worked for the same cause, operating
undercover as a merchant among Chinese Muslims until he died in Changsha in
1924. For Wakabayashi’s reflections on the history of the Kokuryûkai circle of Islam
policy advocates, see Wakabayashi Han, Kaikyô Sekai to Nihon (Tokyo:
Wakabayashi Han, 1937), 1–3.
22 Wakabayashi, Kaikyô Sekai to Nihon, 3–7. Araki Sadao (1877–1966) was a leader

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in the Imperial Way faction of the army.
23 Ôkawa Shûmei, “Cho Gakuryo Shi o Tazuneru no Ki” (November 1928), in Ôkawa
Shûmei Zenshû, 4:591.
24 Christopher Szpilman, “The Dream of One Asia: Ôkawa Shûmei and Japanese PanAsianism,” in H. Fuess, ed., The Japanese Empire in East Asia and Its Postwar Legacy(Munich: German Institute of Japanese Studies, 1998), 51.
25 Ôkawa Shûmei, “Manmô Mondai no Kôsatsu,” Gekkan Nihon, no. 75 (June 1931),
reprinted in Ôkawa Shûmei Zenshû, 2:649–683.
26 See Awaya Kentaro and Yoshida Yutada, eds., International Prosecution Section(IPS) (Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 1980), 23:396–398. During theinterrogation, Ôkawa conceded that he knew something would happen but notedthat many others at that time had the same knowledge and it was not a secret.
27 For instance, as the biography of Ishiwara Kanji, the military brain of theManchurian Incident, confirms, ideas about a final war and East-West confrontation,
which were very important in Ôkawa Shûmei’s pan-Asianism, were commonly
shared by other European, American, and Japanese thinkers, and Ôkawa was not themain inspiration for Ishiwara’s plans. See Peattie, Ishiwara Kanji, 27–86.
28 William Miles Fletcher, The Search for a New Order: Intellectuals and Fascism in
Prewar Japan (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982), 29–30. For thedetailed arguments of Rôyama on the issue of Manchuria policy, see also Rôyama
Masamichi, Japan’s Position in Manchuria (Tokyo: Institute of Pacific Relations–Japan Council, 1929).
29 Even in June 1931, shortly before the Manchurian Incident, when Ôkawa warned
that a war could break out between China and Japan at a slight provocation andsuggested the necessity of a radical change in policy in Manchuria, his ideas still
were not exceptional enough to single him out as an instigator of Kwantung Army
officers. See Ôkawa, “Manmô Mondai no Kôsatsu,” 679–682.
30 Ôkawa Shûmei, “Nijyû no Nankyoku ni tai suru Kakugo,” Gekkan Nihon, May 1932,
reprinted in Ôkawa Shûmei Zenshû, 4:629–631; and idem, “Manshu Shin Kokka no
Kensetsu,” Gekkan Nihon, July 1932, in Ôkawa Shûmei Kankei Monjo, ed. Ôkawa
Shûmei Kankei Monjo Kankôkai (Tokyo: Fuyô Shohô Shuppan, 1998), 244–248.
31 Ôkawa Shûmei, “Daitô Kyôeiken no Rekishiteki Konkyo,” in Dai Nippon Genron
Hôkokukai, ed., Kokka to Bunka (Tokyo: Dômei Tsûshinsha, 1943), 29–43.
32 For Ôkawa Shûmei’s main article on the withdrawal from the League of Nations,see “Kokusai Renmei to Nihon,” Tôyô, May 1932, reprinted in Ôkawa Shûmei Kankei
Monjo, 232.
33 For Ôkawa’s advocacy of the withdrawal from the league before the Manchurian
Incident, see Ôkawa Shûmei, “Nihon no Kokusai Chii O Kokoromiru,” Daitô Bunka,
May 1929, reprinted in Ôkawa Shûmei Kankei Monjo, 234–243.
34 Inukai was assassinated by a group of radical nationalist army cadets and naval
officers. Ôkawa Shûmei was indicted, and found guilty, of providing material
assistance to this group. It is ironic that he ended up contributing to Inukai
Tsuyoshi’s assasination, as pan-Asianists usually viewed Inukai positively, and the1926 Nagasaki pan-Asiatic conference honored him as one of the Asian politicians
who aided the cause of Asian people’s awakening.
35 The fifteen-year prison sentence Ôkawa received on February 3, 1934, wasAydin: Japan’s Pan-Asianism and the Legitimacy of Imperial World Order87

reduced to five years on October 24, 1935. Because of health problems, he wasallowed to postpone his prison term until June 16, 1936. He was finally paroled on
October 13, 1937. See Ôtsuka Takehiro, Ôkawa Shûmei to Kindai Nihon (Tokyo:
Mokutakusha, 1990), 220.
36 In the aftermath of the Manchurian Incident, Ôkawa established Jinmukai (Societyof Jinmu) as a new nationalist organization in the aftermath of the Manchurian
Incident, with hopes of reaching a larger audience and creating a broader popularbase for his radical nationalist and Asianist movement. Ôkawa Shûmei’s trial andimprisonment must have played a role in his decision to disband the group.
Moreover, after the coup of February 26, 1936, an event that led to the execution of
Kita Ikki as the civilian ideologue of the military conspirators, the authorities began
to show less tolerance for radical nationalist organizations.
37 The journal was published by Mantetsu Tôa Keizai Chôsakyoku in Tokyo from
August 1939 to February 1944.
38 Ôkawa Shûmei, editorial, Shin Ajia 1, no. 1 (August 1939): 2–3.
39 Tazawa Takuya, Musurimu Nippon (Tokyo: Sho Gakkan, 1998), 145–146.
40 See Grant K. Goodman, ed., Japanese Cultural Policies in Southeast Asia During
World War 2 (New York: St. Martin’s, 1991), 2–5.
41 Gotô Ken’ichi, “ ‘Bright Legacy’ or ‘Abortive Flower’: Indonesian Students in Japan
During World War 2,” in Goodman, Japanese Cultural Policies in Southeast Asia
During World War 2, 7–35. See also Grant K. Goodman, An Experiment in Wartime
Inter-Cultural Relations: Philippine Students in Japan, 1943–1945 (Ithaca: Cornell
University Southeast Asia Program, 1962).
42 Students of Ôkawa were the leading figures in Ôkawa Shûmei Kenshôkai andorganized the publication of his collected works and other related materials. See
Harada Kôkichi, Ôkawa Shûmei Hakushi no shôgai (Yamagata-ken Sakata-shi:Ôkawa Shûmei Kenshôkai, 1982).
43 For a personal account of the Ôkawa Juku from the memoirs of students, see
Tazawa, Musurimu Nippon, 129–142.
44 For the evaluation of Ôkawa’s Islamic studies, see Takeuchi Yoshimi, “Ôkawa
Shûmei no Ajia Kenkyû,” in Hashikawa Bunsô, ed., Ôkawa Shûmei Shû; (Tokyo:
Chikuma Shobô, 1975), 391–394.
45 See Ôkawa Shûmei, “Taisen no Zento to Ajia no Shorai o Kataru Zadankai,” Shin
Ajia 2, no. 3 (August 1940): 126. See also Ôkawa Shûmei, “Nanhô Mondai,” inYoshioka Nagayoshi, ed., Sekai no Dôkô to Tôa Mondai (Tokyo: Zenrin Kyôkai,1941), 384–385.
46 Ôkawa, editorial, Shin Ajia 1, no. 1 (August 1939): 3.
47 Haruo Iguchi, Unfinished Business: Ayukawa Yoshisuke and U.S.-Japan Relations,
1937–1953 (Cambridge: Harvard East Asia Monographs, 2001).
48 See Ôtsuka Takehiro, Ôkawa Shûmei: Aru Fukkô Kakushin Shugisha no Shisô(Tokyo:, Chûô Kôronsha, 1995), 160–170; Kusunoki Seiichirô, “Ôkawa Shûmei no
tai-Bei Seisaku,” Nihon Rekishi, no. 474 (November 1987): 54–70.
49 See Ôtsuka Takehiro, “Shôwa Jyunendai no Ôkawa Shûmei,” in Ôkawa Shûmei to
Kindai Nihon, 227–252.
50 Ôkawa Shûmei, A History of Anglo-American Aggression in East Asia, trans.
Yoshio Ogawa and P. B. Clarke (Tokyo: Daitôa Shuppan Kabushiki Kaisha, 1944), 1–

White Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-1930

88

3.

51 For the way the prosecution used this reference, see Awaya and Yoshida,

International Prosecution Section (IPS), 23:319.
52 Ibid., 23:303–306.
53 The New Asia, edited by Rash Behari Bose in Tokyo from 1933 to 1937).
54 The content of The New Asia included many of the arguments expounded byÔkawa Shûmei, unsurprisingly, given the close ties that had existed between Ôkawa
and Bose since 1915. For example, the content in The New Asia, nos. 5–6(September–October 1933): 1, is very similar to the writings of Ôkawa in Fukkô Ajiano Shomondai and Ajia, Yoroppa, Nihon.
55 For news about Muhammad Hatta, see The New Asia, nos. 13–14 (May–June1934): 4.
56 The New Asia, nos. 17–18 (September–October 1934), contains extensive
coverage of Chandra Bose’s ideas.
57 The New Asia, nos. 5–6 (September–October 1933): 3. For Tagore’s critique ofJapan during the late 1930s, see Zeljko Cipris, “Seduced by Nationalism: Yone
Noguchi’s ‘Terrible Mistake’. Debating the China-Japan War With Tagore” Japan
Focus.
58 The New Asia, nos. 7–8 (November–December 1933): 3.
59 News about the visit to Japan of the African American poet Langston Hughes was
accompanied by information about the issue of white discrimination against blacks
in the United States; see Shin Ajia, no. 4 (August 1933): 2. In another instance, the
Pan-Asiatic Cultural Association declared its goal to invite students from Turkey,
Afghanistan, Persia, India, and East Asian and Southeast Asian regions to Japan. See
Shin Ajia, nos. 7–8 (November–December 1933): 4.
60 Shin Ajia, nos. 5–6 (September–October 1933): 2.
61 For a lengthy commentary on the rise of the colored and decline of the whiteraces, see Shin Ajia, no. 17–18 (September-October 1934): 1.
62 The New Asia, nos. 7–8 (November–December 1933): 2. Indicating his color-blind
loyalty to universal principles, Bose wrote about his admiration for Abraham
Lincoln, describing him as the leader who taught the world the meaning ofliberation. See The New Asia, nos. 23–24 (March–April 1935): 2.
63 The New Asia, nos. 13–14 (May–June 1934): 3. See also nos. 17–18 (September–
October 1934): 4.
64 Yani Yapon Muhbiri was edited by Qurban Ali in Tokyo from 1933 to 1938. The
journal often contained didactic articles about the history, economy, and culture ofJapan, as well as carrying news about the Tatar Turkish diaspora living within theboundaries of the Japanese Empire. Since there was a large Tatar Muslim
community in Manchuria, the journal included news about Manchukuo, the Manchu
dynasty, and developments in China as well.
65 For the background of Abdül Kerim Efendi incident and other Muslim activists
who visited Japan after 1933, see Selçuk Esenbel, “Japan’s Global Claim to Asia andthe World of Islam: Transnational Nationalism and World Power, 1900–1945,”
American Historical Review 109, no. 4 (October 2004): 1159–1162.
66 AbdurreÅŸid Ä°brahim looked to Japanese expansion in the north against theSoviet Union with the hope that this would allow the Muslim regions of Central Asia

Aydin: Japan’s Pan-Asianism and the Legitimacy of Imperial World Order89

to achieve independence. Initially, this idea had many supporters within theJapanese army as well. However, clashes between Japanese and Soviet forces inNomonhan, Mongolia, during the summer of 1939 convinced the military authorities
of Japan that Soviet military power could not be easily challenged, strengthening thesouthern advance theory. For the relationship between Kokuryûkai and
AbdurreÅŸid Ä°brahim, see Selçuk Esenbel, “Japanese Interest in the Ottoman
Empire,” in Edstrom, The Japanese and Europe, 95–124; see also Selçuk Esenbel,
Nadir Ozbek, Ä°smail TürkoÄŸlu, François Georgeon, and Ahmet Ucar, “Ozel Dosya:
Abdurresid Ibrahim (2),” Toplumsal Tarih 4, no. 20 (August 1995): 6–23.
67 See Storry, The Double Patriots, 149.
68 In fact, General Ishiwara Kanji’s Tôa Renmei Kyôkai (East Asia League
Association), founded in 1939, was based on ideas also advocated by Dai Ajia
Kyôkai. See Peattie, Ishiwara Kanji and Japan’s Confrontation with the West, 281–
282.
69 Nakatani Takeyô became a prolific writer in Asianist publications of the 1930s.
Nakatani was influenced by Ôkawa Shûmei during his student years at Tokyo
University and later became a member of several organizations led by Ôkawa. He
took a leading position in both Dai Ajia Kyôkai and its journals. For his memoirs, see
Nakatani Takeyô, Shôwa Dôranki no Kaisô—Nakatani Takeyô Kaikoroku, 2 vols.
(Tokyo: Tairyûsha, 1989).
70 Koschmann, “Asianism’s Ambivalent Legacy,” 89–90.
71 For example see, Okubô Kôji, “Shinkô Toruko No Kokumin Shugi Hyôshiki,” Dai
Ajia Shugi 5, no. 5 (May 1937): 5–10. By late 1934, the news section was divided into
five parts, devoted to Manchuria, China, India, Southeast Asia, and West Asia.
72 See “Nichi Ei Shôtotsu no Hitsuyôsei,” Dai Ajia Shugi 1, no. 12 (December 1933):
33–38.
73 See “Shin Ajia Kensetsu No Shin ShinNen,” Dai Ajia Shugi 6, no. 1 (January 1938):
2–19. Both Ôkawa and Rash Behari Bose used the same “New Asia” as titles of theirjournals.
74 In a roundtable discussion on nationalist movements in Asia, four Indians(including Behari Bose), two Annamese, two Indonesians, and one Manchurian
nationalist offered contributions. Naitô Chishû, Mitsukawa Kametarô, and Nakatani
Takeyô, all three close to Ôkawa Shûmei, were among the ten participants
representing the Japanese side of the organization. See “Ajia Minzoku Undo:
Zadankai,” Dai Ajia Shugi 3, no. 3 (March 1935): 51–62.
75 It was only during the Pacific War that the same circle of Japanese Asianists began
to publish an English-language magazine in Shanghai, Asiatic Asia, in order to reacha larger non-Japanese readership with more participation from non-Japanese Asian
intellectuals. Publication began in January 1941 and continued for at least fivemonthly issues.
76 Gotô Ken’ichi, “The Indonesian Perspective,” in Akira Iriye, ed., Pearl Harbor andthe Coming of the Pacific War (Boston: Bedford and St. Martin’s, 1999), 207–219.
77 Akira Iriye, Cultural Internationalism and World Order (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1997), 119–122; Robert S. Schwantes, “Japan’s Cultural Foreign
Policies,” in James Morley, ed., Japan’s Foreign Policy, 1868–1941: A Research Guide(New York: Columbia University Press, 1974), 179–180.

White Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-1930
78 Shibasaki Atsushi, Kindai Nihon no Kokusai Bunka Kôryû: Kokusai Bunka

90

Shinkôkai no Sôsetsu to Tenkai, 1934–1945 (Tokyo: Yûshindô Kôbunsha, 1999). For
example, it was through the support of Kokusai Bunka Shinkôkai that two Muslim
intellectuals, Amir Lahiri and Mian Abdul Aziz, were able to visit Japan to prepare
books advocating Asian solidarity: Mian Abdul Aziz (former president of the AllIndia Moslem League), The Crescent in the Land of the Rising Sun (London: Blades,
1941); and Amar Lahiri, Japanese Modernism (Tokyo: Hokuseido, 1939); idem,
Mikado’s Mission (Tokyo: Japan Times, 1940).
79 For example, the journal Dai Ajia Shugi printed articles on the Italian-Ethiopian
conflict with a pro-Ethiopian character, including those sent by Japanesecorrespondents from Addis Ababa, in each of the twelve months of 1935. There wasalso regular news on Ethiopia in the section devoted to West Asia. For example, see
the five articles on Ethiopia in Dai Ajia Shugi 3, no. 8 (August 1935): 32–53.
80 J. Calvitt Clarke III, “Japan and Italy Squabble Over Ethiopia: The Sugimura Affair
of July 1935,” in Selected Annual Proceedings of the Florida Conference of Historians
6 (December 1999): 9–20.
81 Takemoto Yuko, “W. E. B. Dubois to Nihon,” Shien 54, no. 2 (March 1994): 79–96.
Also see Marc Gallicchio, Black Internationalism in Asia, 1895–1945: The African
American Encounter with Japan and China (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 2000), 74–75.
82 Naoki Sakai, “Tôyô no Jiritsu to daitô-A kyôeiken,” Jokyo, no. 48 (December 1994):
13.
83 For a good example of a Japanese who combined the liberation vision of panAsian identity, sometimes with highly critical views on the policies of the Japanesestate, see Mariko Asano Tamanoi, “Pan-Asianism in the Diary of Morisaku Minato(1924–1945) and the Suicide of Mishima Yukio (1925–1970),” in Mariko Asano
Tamanoi, ed., Crossed Histories: Manchuria in the Age of Empire (Honolulu:
University of Hawai’i Press, 2005), 184–206.
84 Quoted in Thomas W. Burkman, “Nitobe Inazô: From World Order to Regional
Order,” in J. Thomas Rimer, ed., Culture and Identity: Japanese Intellectuals During
the Interwar Years (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 211.
85 Ibid., 212–213. Burkman discusses an article by Kamikawa Hikomatsu, “Asia
Rengô ka Kyokutô Renmei ka?” Kokka Gakkai Zasshi 47, no. 7 (July 1933): 90–100.
86 Rôyama Masamichi, Tô-A to Sekai (Tokyo: Kaizôsha, 1941), 141–142, quoted in
Miwa Kimitada, “Japanese Policies and Concepts for a Regional Order in Asia, 1938–
1940,” in J. White, M. Umegaki, and T. Havens, eds., The Ambivalence of Nationalism:
Modern Japan Between East and West (New York: University Press of America,1990), 149.
87 Rôyama Masamichi, Foreign Policy of Japan, 1914–1939 (Tokyo: Institute ofPacific Relations–Japanese Council, 1941).
88 For an argument that shows the proto-Asianist views of Japanese liberals during
the 1920s, see Han Jung-Sun, “Rationalizing the Orient: The ‘East Asia Cooperative
Community’ in Prewar Japan,” Monumenta Nipponica 60, no. 4 (Winter 2005), 481–
514.
89 Ôkawa Shûmei, “Gandhi wo Tô Shite Indojin ni Atau” and “Nehru o Tô Shite
Indojin ni Atau” (1942), in Shin Ajia Shôron (Tokyo: Nihon Hyôronsha, 1944),

Aydin: Japan’s Pan-Asianism and the Legitimacy of Imperial World Order91

reprinted in Ôkawa Shûmei Zenshû, 2:925–938.
90 For some examples of the flood of publications on Okakura, see Kiyomi Rokurô,
Okakura Tenshin den, (Tokyo: Keizôsha, 1938); Okakura Kakuzô, Okakura Tenshin
Zenshû (Tokyo: Rikugeisha, 1939); and Kiyomi Rokurô, Senkakusha Okakura
Tenshin (Tokyo: Atoriesha, 1942). See also Okakura Kakuzô, Japan’s Innate Virility:
Selections from Okakura and Nitobe (Tokyo: Hokuseido, 1943).
91 For examples of the publication and republication of the books of Das, Paul
Richard, and Ôkawa after the post-1937 Japan-China war, see Taraknath Das, Indo
Dokuritsu Ron (Tokyo: Hakubunkan, 1944); and [Paul] Risharu, Tsugu Nihon Koku,
trans. Ôkawa Shûmei (Tokyo: Seinen Shobô, 1941).
92 For a recent assessment of Miki Kiyoshi’s Asianist ideas, see Harootunian,Overcome by Modernity, 394–399. See also Koschmann, “Asianism’s Ambivalent
Legacy,” 90–94.
93 Crowley, ““A New Asian Order,” 278–279.
94 Germaine Hoston’s study of the writings of post-tenko Sano Manabu shows theimportance of her interest in Eastern spirituality and intellectual tradition, as wellas her belief in Japanese exceptionalism, in leading her to search for a Japanesecontext for adopting certain core ideals of Marxism. See Germaine A. Hoston,“Ikkoku Shakai-Shugi: Sano Manabu and the Limits of Marxism as Cultural
Criticism,” in Rimer, Culture and Identity, 168–190.
95 George Beckmann, “The Radical Left and the Failure of Communism,” in Morley,
Dilemmas of Growth in Prewar Japan, 170.
96 From Miwa, “Japanese Policies and Concepts for a Regional Order in Asia,” 142.
97 Minamoto Ryôen, “Symposium on ‘Overcoming Modernity,’ ” in Heisig and
Moraldo, Rude Awakenings, 197–229.
98 All the books Ôkawa published during the wartime years attempted to define theideology of the Greater East Asia Coprosperity Sphere and Japan’s war aims. SeeÔkawa Shûmei, Dai Tôa Chitsujyo Kensetsu (Tokyo: Dai Ichi Shobô, 1943); idem,
Shin Ajia Shôron; and idem, Shin Tôyô Seishin (Tokyo: Shinkyô Shuppan Kabushiki
Kaisha, 1945).
99 For a description of the ideas of Asian solidarity as they functioned in Japanesecollaboration with Indian and Burmese nationalists, see Louis M. Allen, “Fujiwara
and Suzuki: Patterns of Asian Liberation,” in William H. Newell, ed., Japan in Asia
(Singapore: Singapore University Press, 1981), 83–103.
100 A similar idealist Asianism can be seen in the Japanese cooperation with thenationalist leadership of Burma. As Louis Allen has shown, a conflict emerged
among Japanese officers involved in the Burmese government when Officer Suzuki
Keiji from Minami Kikan took the side of Burmese nationalism and asked for
immediate independence, while General Ishii objected to this on the grounds ofmilitary interest. See Allen, “Fujiwara and Suzuki.”
101 Objection to the leadership of Rash Behari Bose is another indication of theineffectiveness of Japanese pan-Asianists’ political networks. Although Japan’s
Asianist circles had always presented Behari Bose as the representative voice ofIndian nationalism, it became apparent that he did not have a reputation sufficientto play a role in the project of the Indian National Army. See Tilak Raj Sareen, Japanand the Indian National Army (New Delhi: Mounto, 1996), 35–82. See also Fujiwara

White Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-1930

92

Iwaichi, Japanese Army Intelligence Operations in South East Asia During WorldWar II (Singapore: Select, 1983).
102 Sareen, Japan and the Indian National Army, 228–236.
103 Quoted in Joyce Lebra, “Bose’s Influence on the Formulation of Japanese Policy
toward India and the INA,” in International Netaji Seminar (Calcutta: Netaji
Research Bureau, 1975), 361.
104 Ôkawa Shûmei, “Bosu-shi no Raichô,” Shin Ajia 5, no. 7 (1943): 1.
105 Quoted in Lebra, “Bose’s Influence on the Formulation of Japanese Policy,” 368.
106 Akira Iriye, “Wartime Japanese Planning for Postwar Asia,” in Ian Nish, ed.,Anglo-Japanese Alienation, 1919–1952 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1982): 77–91.
107 The best description of Japanese war aims remains Akira Iriye, Power andCulture: The Japanese American War, 1941–1945 (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1981).
108 The Greater East Asia conference did not allow for any representation from notyet-independent regions under Japanese occupation, such as Indonesia andVietnam. Similar contradictions existed in the Atlantic Charter Alliance, which
likewise had not been prepared to envision a fully decolonized Asia. In fact,
immediately after the end of the war, the French, British, and Dutch governments
rushed to reclaim their colonial possessions in Asia.
109 One report made the following suggestion as a means to win support for the
Allied cause: “Play up American and United Nations war aims; play down ourassociation with Great Britain in the East. . . . Do not refer to British Malaya since
many inhabitants of Malaya will not wish to see Malaya revert to its old status under
British control” (Office of Strategic Services, Research and Analysis Branch,“Japanese Attempts at Indoctrination of Youth in Occupied Areas,” March 23, 1943,
microfilm, 10).
110 Christopher Thorne, Allies of a Kind: The United States, Britain and the War
Against Japan, 1941–1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 157–159.
111 Ibid., 242–243.
112 Ôkawa Shûmei, entry for August 15, 1945, Ôkawa Shûmei Nikki (Tokyo: Iwasaki
Gakujitsu Shuppansha, 1986), 391.
113 Sareen, Japan and the Indian National Army, 234–236.
114 Richard Minear, Victor’s Justice: The Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1971); John Dower, Embracing Defeat (New York:
Norton, 1999), 443–484.
115 Timothy Brook, “The Tokyo Judgment and the Rape of Nanking,” Journal of AsianStudies 60, no. 3 (August 2001): 693.
116 Radhabinod Pal became the hero of the revisionist right in Japan in the postwar
period. He himself revealed his long-lasting sympathies to Japan during hiscelebrated visit to Japan in 1966 upon the invitation of Japanese right-wing
revisionist groups. Justice Pal declared how he had admired Japan since his youth
because Japan had “consistently stood up against the West” with “the spirit ofindependence that can say ‘no.’ ” Then, he urged the Japanese people once again toresist the “flood of Westernization” with inspiration from Eastern civilization. For
Pal’s speeches during his 1966 visit to Japan, see Radhabinod Pal, Ai Rabu Japan:Aydin: Japan’s Pan-Asianism and the Legitimacy of Imperial World OrderParu Hakase Genkôroku, ed. Paru Hakase Kangei Jimukyoju (Tokyo: Tôkyô Saiban
Kankôkai, 1966)

93

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The Yellow Peril in War, Economics, and Popular Culture
Militarizing Japan: Patriotism, Profit, and Children’s Print Media, 1894-1925
Owen Griffiths
http://www.japanfocus.org/-owen-griffiths/2528
September 22, 2007.
Jack London: The Adventurer-Writer who Chronicled Asian Wars, Confronted
Racism—and Saw the Future
Daniel A. Métraux
http://www.japanfocus.org/-Daniel_A_-M__traux/3293
January 25, 2010
'Japan, Britain and the Yellow Peril in Africa in the 1930s
Richard Bradshaw and Jim Ransdell
http://www.japanfocus.org/-Daniel_A_-M__traux/3293
October 31, 2011.
These three articles provide insight into the different conditions under which
yellow peril and white peril fears were invoked. My article argues that Japanesestories of real and imagined war written for children revealed adult fears of a Social
Darwinist world in which only the strong survive through an intensely gendered
combination of martial glory and manly sacrifice. The commercial success of thesestories, beginning at the time of the first Sino-Japanese War (1894-5), also
demonstrates how war and patriotism could be turned to profitable advantage formass media. An important component of this formula was to contrast Japaneseheroism with the treachery, cowardice, or incompetence of the enemy. The
Americans, British, and Russians were cast as a “white peril,” duplicitous predators
who, if not stopped, would devour the Japanese homeland. The Chinese, on the other
hand, were depicted in a Japanese style “yellow peril,” as bumbling fools, devoid ofnational pride whose inability to govern themselves was a threat to Japan’s own
national security. These stories contained all of the tropes and rhetorical devices ofyellow and white peril that would be deployed in Japan’s later all-out wars with
China and the West. In this, the Japanese were not unique. They drew from the same
deep well of racial imagery as did their enemies, real and imagined.
Métraux’s article asks us to reconsider the work of Jack London, one ofAmerican’s greatest modern writers. Rather than see him as a mouthpiece foryellow peril fears as many have done, Métraux suggests that London may have been
the opposite, a realist who saw a predatory world driven by war and a rare internal
critic of an arrogant West, blind to its own role in creating the dangers it sought toeradicate. Through London’s fiction and non-fiction we can see the ease with which
yellow and white peril fears could move people to action in the early 20th century.
His work also reminds us of the power of ideas themselves and the important role
media of all types play as purveyors of those ideas.
In yet another take on the yellow peril, Bradshaw and Ransdell analyze how
economic conflict could be articulated in terms of race. Specifically, they examineWhite Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-193095

the rise of yellow peril fears in South Africa, Britain, and Italy due to Japan’s growing
economic presence in Africa. South Africans feared that cheap Japanese textile
imports would undercut and ultimately destabilize the South African economy.
Along with these fears were parallel concerns that Japanese immigrants might beadmitted together with their products. These fears grew increasingly strident after
the Great Depression in 1929, which further reveals the all too human tendency ofseizing on a scapegoat in times of perceived crisis. Japanese industry was also
increasing its economic presence in Ethiopia in the 1930s, bringing it into conflictwith Italy at the very moment Italy sought to expand its colonial empire in East
Africa. After war broke out between Italy and Ethiopia in 1935, however, theJapanese government decided that global political concerns trumped economic
interests. Despite immense popular Japanese support for Ethiopia, Japan’s leaders
ultimately chose to recognize Italy’s annexation of Ethiopia in return for Italy’s
recognition of Manchukuo.

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Militarizing Japan: Patriotism, Profit, and Children’s Print Media, 1894-1925
Owen Griffiths
Introduction: War, Media, and Militarization 1
The January 1922 issue of Shonen kurabu (Boy’s Club) carried the first episode of an
exciting new “hot-blooded novel” (nekketsu shosetsu) drawn from the fertile
imagination of noted children’s writer Miyazaki Ichiu.2 For fourteen consecutive
issues Miyazaki enthralled Japanese children with depictions of Japanese valour andthe Yamato spirit (Yamato damashii) locked in a titanic struggle against a
duplicitous and rapacious foreign enemy. The fate of the navy and of the nation itself
hung in the balance. The Imperial navy fought valiantly against a technologicallysuperior foe but was ultimately destroyed. Then, in Japan’s darkest hour, the nation
was saved by a group of true patriots, led by a child warrior commanding a powerful
new technology. All Japan wept. This was the Future War Between Japan andAmerica, “the greatest naval battle in history.”3

Shonen Kurabu

Miyazaki’s story fascinates the imagination on a number of levels. It reveals themanner in which adults transmitted their fears, aspirations, and values to children
and the role of Japan’s print media in that process. It also provides insight into adultGriffiths: Militarizing Japan: Patriotism, Profit, and Children’s Print Media

97

Japanese understandings of international politics and their intense concern
about Japan’s place in the early 20th century world order. More specifically for the
purposes of this paper, it provides an entrée into the process by which war, real andvicarious, and the martial, manly values it fostered were embedded and normalized
within the very fabric of Japanese society. This process, what I call the militarizationof Japanese society, is the subject of my paper. With Nichibei miraisen in mind, I
trace the lineage of the “war as entertainment” genre back to the origins ofchildren’s print media during the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95 and the wave of
pro-war sentiment that swept Japan and that time. From there, I move forward,
outlining the major influences, domestic and foreign, on the war and future war
genre of children’s stories, of which Miyazaki was a master.4

Shojo Kurabu (Girls’ Club)

Finally, I locate Japan’s experience in the broader historical context of modernity
itself when war and the martial, manly values that accompanied its contemplationand prosecution became central to peoples’ understanding of how nations survived
and prospered. One of the most important expressions of this ethos was future war
fiction, which enthralled and alarmed Euro-American audiences with incessant talesof “The Next Great War.”5 Between 1871 and 1914 some 300 stories of future war

White Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-193098

were published, first in England and then France,Germany and the United States,with the most popular quickly translated into virtually every European language. Set
amid a world of endemic struggle among nations and races, featuring equal doses ofstout hearts, foreign predation, heroic sacrifice, and amazing new technologies,
these stories disclose a particularly martial understanding of modernity defined byscience, progress, competition and, above all, struggle6 Some historians like Jackson
Lears have argued that the turn to martiality in the 19th century was part of a larger
revolt against modernity itself, an attempt to recover “authentic” manly experiencefrom the apparent clutches of commercialism and feminism that appeared to be
besieging the middle classes of America and England[7 The immense popularity of
future war stories, especially those focusing on the folly of military unpreparedness,reveal clearly a deep concern about the soft underbelly of industrial modernity but
even more powerfully do they exhibit an understanding of human nature as
inherently predatory for which militarization and eternal vigilance were essential
for survival.
In all this, Japanese sentiments were remarkably similar to those of their EuroAmerican counterparts. The stories of Miyazaki and other Japanese writers
exhibited distinct features drawn from Japanese history and culture but these, too,need to be understood as products of the same modernity, driven by the emergent
technologies of mass production and consumption and fueled by seemingly
unbounded science and geopolitical insecurity. Thus, Japanese future war fiction
must be grounded in this historical context and read as a case study or example of amodern nation embracing a common body of ideas driven in large measure by thegrowth and development of mass media. Before turning to Miyazaki’s story,
therefore, a word on the centrality of Japanese media and children’s print media inparticular.
My choice of children’s media as the agents of this narrative is informed by a belief
that the best way to understand the values of adults, as well as the often yawing gap
between what they say and do, is to look at the process by which they transmit
knowledge of all types to children.8 As the Chinese scholar Hu Shih observed nearlya century ago, we learn much about a people by observing how they treat theirchildren.9 Hu Shih was referring primarily to the worlds of childrearing andeducation but his comments remain relevant if we expand the meaning ofchildrearing and education to include all adult activities where the child is theprinciple intended audience. Moving beyond the confines of the family, immediate
community, and schoolhouse to the public spaces of print media, we can see thepower the adult world has, in its broadest sense, in shaping and defining that of thechild. This is where children’s print media is most salient.
Together with the formal education of the classroom and the non-formal educationof the home, the informal education offered through children’s print media was theprinciple means by which young Japanese were socialized and prepared for adultsubjecthood10 under the Imperial realm.11 Prior to the advent of electronic mass
media in the second half of the twentieth century, print media was the main vehicle
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entertained. Even when not overtly didactic, print media created compelling rolemodels for girls and boys, much of which focused heavily on a manly, martial ethos.
The many stories of war and future war that graced the pages of children’s
magazines during this period had a significant impact on the development of prewar
Japanese martial identity, one perhaps unnoticed at the time and certainly
unnoticed by subsequent generations of scholars.12
Although children’s print media only began as a modern institution in the 1890s,
publishing houses like Hakubunkan, Jitsugyo no Nihon, and Kodansha quickly
recognized the commercial potential of the vast untapped children’s market. By
Miyazaki’s time, children’s magazine publishers were collectively “entertaining anduplifting” children with hundreds of thousands of copies per month, ranging overhistory, education, science, politics, sports, romance, and of course war.13 Due totheir low cost and portability, children’s magazines transcended geography andclass and therefore performed an important mediatory function linking home,school, and playground. Moreover, because children consumed this media by choicerather than by fiat, magazines reflected children’s subjective preferences to a degree
that purely educational materials did not. Thus, the power of children’s print media
stemmed from its uniquely commercial impulse, its function as entertainment, andits interplay with other forms of socialization and education.
From the 1890s onward, tales of martial glory, sacrifice, patriotism, and foreign
perfidy drove a significant segment of children’ print media, functioning as didactic
vehicles for inculcating the essential tropes of what would become the “patriotic
cannon” to generations of boys and girls. Long before the ubiquitous “humanbullets” (nikudan), suicide bombers (kamikaze), and the “one hundred million”(ichioku) of the Pacific War, adult writers and publishers working from a variety ofmotives nourished the latent national spirit of Japanese children with a steady dietof martial imagery. One consequence of this was a chillingly social Darwinistic visionof the early 20th century world order, one grounded in the zero-sum logic of grow ordie, with a distinctive sense of Japanese particularism as its saviour.
Nichibei Miraisen
Nichibei miraisen is an excellent place to begin an inquiry into the nexus of media
and militarization in early 20th century Japan. It contained all the essential tropes ofmartial, manly virtue first constructed in the earliest beginnings of children’s print
media and then replayed with great frequency thereafter.14 In this sense, Miyazaki
stood at the midpoint of a fifty-year continuum that ran from the 1890s through tothe end of the Pacific War. As Japanese media moved into the first decades of thetwentieth century, surging populations in the cities and higher literacy rates,
especially among the relatively poor and the rural, created vast new potential
markets for all types of visual materials. By the 1920s, print media, although
centring on the metropolises of Tokyo and Osaka, had penetrated virtually every
corner of the archipelago.15

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Nichibei miraisen, republished with new artworks in 2006 in an electronic format

Precise circulation figures are difficult to determine for most children’s media,
but Nichibei reached hundreds of thousands of children through sales of the bookand the magazines alone. By 1925, Kodansha claimed to be printing 400,000 copiesof Shonen kurabu monthly, selling about 275,000.16 Its audience was boys aged 8-16,
but editors always encouraged girls to read the stories, even after Kodansha
startedShojo kurabu (Girl’s Club) in January 1923.17 Through the more informal
methods of lending, borrowing, or trading, circulation for Nichibeiwas likely muchhigher.18 It became so popular that Kodansha reissued it as a single novel in August
1923 with full-page ads in both magazines announcing its impending publication.19
The full-page advertisement in the June 1923 issue of Shojo kurabu carried large
white characters reverse printed on an exploding black ball: “GREAT HOTBLOODED NOVEL.” To the left another headline read: “Those who love thehomeland must buy this!! The great struggle of hot-blooded youth!”20 The booksolidified Miyazaki’s reputation as the premier writer of “hot-blooded novels” andhelped make Kodansha the leading publisher of children’s fiction in the prewar
years with Shonen kurabu and Shojo kurabu leading the way.21 Indeed, Miyazaki helda virtual monopoly over the “hot-blooded” label with both Kodansha andHakubunkan until his mysterious death in 1934.22
Miyazaki’s tale of future war began its serialized run in February 1922, the samemonth Japan’s representatives signed the Washington Naval Treaty with the other“great powers,” which established the “5:5:3” ratio of capital ships for the UnitedStates, the British Empire, and Japan respectively.23 The juxtaposition of fact andGriffiths: Militarizing Japan: Patriotism, Profit, and Children’s Print Media101

fiction was not accidental or new. Riding the wave of public dissatisfaction about the
Washington Treaty to great advantage, Miyazaki drew on the common practice ofusing contemporary political events as the subtext for fiction. As a staunch opponentof Japan’s political and military subordination, he used the pages of Shonen
kurabu to construct both a morality play and an object lesson about the folly of
military unpreparedness. In this, he echoed the sentiments of many in the press, thepublic, and the military who saw Imperial Japan’s twin enemies as “weak-kneed”
politicians and American perfidy. Now, children could see this too. In hindsight we
can see Miyazaki as kind of a middleman, transmitting adult values and geo-politicalinsecurities to children through the fictional medium of “hot-blooded adventure.”
Set about ten years in the future, Nichibei opens in Sasebo Harbour with the navy’s
launching of eight new battleships to complement its eight existing battle cruisers:
The “Hachi hachi kantai” (The 8/8 Squadron).24 The story begins:
The Navy’s hachi/hachi kantai was at last ready. It had taken more than ten years andone third of each year’s total national expenditures… Despite the underhanded anddetestable meddling of the United States, which had overtaken England as the world’s
number one naval power, and the interference of Japanese politicians and theirarguments for arms reduction, the construction of the new squadron had succeeded. …
Throngs of people lined the docks of Sasebo Harbour to see the new ships, joined byover a hundred other vessels. What a brave sight!...25
Miyazaki waxes patriotic as he describes the crush of onlookers – old and young,rich and poor – all “sons of the divine land in whose hearts beats the yamato
damashii unbroken for all ages.”26 As quickly as he stirs the hearts of his young
readers, however, Miyazaki leads them to the sobering realities of contemporaryinternational relations. Not only have the self-aggrandizing wealthy and the selfpromoting politicians tried to hinder the project at every turn but the eight new
ships are not even sufficient in number and strength to counter the immense powerof the US. With its “heart like a tiger and a wolf” the American navy maintains morethan twice that number, all of which burn oil rather than coal.27 Even morethreatening, Miyazaki tells his audience, the Panama Canal, opened in 1914, gives
the US access to the Pacific at speeds unheard of in the days of the Russo-Japanese
War. The potential for Japan’s eventual encirclement is real.28
The adventure now unfolds rapidly as the entire fleet slips its moorings under thecover of darkness and vanishes. Witnessing the departure from a hill above theharbour are retired Admiral Nango and his teenaged grandson Takuji, the story’s
protagonist[29 The old man turns to his grandson and orders him into action asplanned. The next day’s newspaper headlines scream, “Break in Diplomatic
Relations! Outbreak of US-Japan War! Combined Fleet Departs Sasebo!... How will
the Imperial Navy fair against the military might of the United States? And what is
the mysterious plan Admiral Nango and Takuji have set in motion?”30
Episode two treats readers with a brief lecture on modern international relations
before turning to the battle. Still remaining in the fictional framework of future
war, Miyazaki explains that Japan owes a great debt to Commodore Perry forWhite Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-1930

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opening the country in the 19th century, even though he acknowledges there werealso American forces at work to turn Japan into a vassal state. Since then, however,America has treated Japanese immigrants terribly, attempted to wrest control of
Yap from Japan, and generally interfered throughout the Nanyo.31 The Japanese
endured all this, secure in its martial traditions, its yamato damashii, its deep senseof loyalty, and its strong sense of shame. With the rise of American naval power andits attempt to control Japan’s military growth, however, Japan lost its temper and is
now forced into action.32
The first attack comes from the air, as American planes bombard Japan’s ships on
the high seas. Quickly the two forces close and the battle erupts with earsplitting
thunder. After chasing off the enemy while suffering only minor damage, theJapanese navy steams toward Olongapo in the Philippines where the main force of
the American navy awaits. There, the battle resumes with a vengeance, this time on
the land and the sea, as 100,000 Japanese troops storm Manila.33 At the same time
the Japanese navy uses a new type of incendiary to destroy Olongapo’s fortifications
and force the US navy to run. After a full day’s chase, the battle begins anew
and Japan’s Imperial navy pounds its enemy into oblivion. At the very moment ofvictory, however, ten new American ships and dozens of planes, fresh from theirberth in Hawaii, appear on the horizon and the weary Japanese fleet girds itself foryet another battle. Drawing on its last reserves of strength and courage, the hachi
hachi kantai obliterates the Hawaii fleet, but is itself destroyed in the process. As
morning dawns it becomes clear that the “greatest naval battle in history, theJapan/US battle of the Pacific” is finally over.34 Or is it? Just as it seems the war willturn into one of attrition, the surviving sailors get word that the US Atlantic fleet has
already passed through the Panama Canal. Its arrival spells doom for the entire
nation now that it has no navy with which to defend itself.
Here, the story shifts to a Shishigashima (Lion Island), a mysterious island in
the Indian Ocean where hundreds of “hot-blooded” young Japanese men havebarricaded themselves under the command of Azuma Namio. Most of the men are
missing soldiers from the Russo-Japanese War or from the warship Unebi thatmysteriously vanished without a trace in the South China Sea en route to Japan from
France in 1887.35 Azuma found the island when only eighteen and then spent thenext twenty years building a powerful fighting force with ships, aircraft, and a new
secret weapon. Also on the island is the young Takuji from the first episode. It turns
out that Takuji’s grandfather, old Admiral Nango, is a friend of Namio’s father,
Viscount Azuma. So Takuji’s presence on Lion Island is finally revealed as part of theplan set in motion at the beginning of the story. Takuji is eager to execute the plan
but Azuma has restrained him at every turn to this point, arguing that the time was
not right. Now, however, with Japan’s navy destroyed and the US Atlantic fleet now
in the Pacific, all of Japan is in peril. Azuma moves into action. Appointing theastonished Takuji commander, Azuma and Takuji lead a dozen newly designed
submarines, their secret weapon, to hunt down the US Fleet in the stormy Pacific.36
The scene again shifts to the deck of an enemy ship as two American officers boast
about how they can easily sail right up to “the little monkey country of Japan” nowGriffiths: Militarizing Japan: Patriotism, Profit, and Children’s Print Media103

the Japanese fleet has been destroyed.37 As they talk of conquering Japan’s Asian
possessions and possibly even the archipelago itself, massive explosions rock theship and it begins to sink. Suddenly, ships throughout the fleet are sinking. The
Americans panic and begin firing wildly in all directions. “Monsters like giant whitesnakes appear and disappear through the driving rain and massive waves.”38 They
are none other than the new submarines, designed and built by the “iron arms” of
Azuma and led by the young boy warrior Takuji. Unexpectedly, however, disasterstrikes as an errant shell cleaves the command sub in half, throwing Takuji into the“cruel black sea.”39 Compassion for a fallen comrade drives Rear Admiral Soda to
split the submarine squadron. Half will search for Takuji while the others engage the
US Atlantic Fleet in a “decisive battle.” “Can the squad defeat the mighty Americans?
Will Takuji be saved?”
The final episode finds Takuji clinging to a piece of flotsam, fortuitously given him
by another adrift Japanese sailor just before a giant wave separates them. The
selflessness of the sailor is rewarded as the search succeeds and Takuji is saved.
Readers never learn the fate of that valiant sailor. After being taken aboard ship,
Takuji learns that the other half of the squadron has completely destroyed theenemy and saved the nation. Takuji utters quiet thanks and the crew rejoices. Acrossthe Pacific, the Americans react with shock and anger on hearing the news. Someallege that Japan must have violated the laws of naval warfare but no evidence isfound to support this.40 Of course, none will be. In Japan, the entire nation – maleand female, young and old – dance for joy. As Miyazaki brings the story to a close, hetells his young readers, “In the clamour of common madness there is a vast gulf
between fortune and misfortune.”41
Meiji Antecedents of Future War
This abridged version of Nichibei highlights a number of themes common to the
war-as-entertainment genre, all of which trace their roots back to earlier practices.
The first concerns an adult understanding of the international world as one ofendemic conflict where the strong devour the weak, where, as Thucydides said two
millennia ago, “the powerful exact what they can, and the weak grant what theymust.”42 In the world of Taisho Japan, this concept was cloaked in the modern
Spenserian garb of seizon kyoso (the survival of the fittest). Japanese observers ofworld affairs in Miyazaki’s time saw this clearly in the increasing global
acquisitiveness of nations like Russia, England, and America. In fact, they did notneed Thucydides and Spencer to tell them what was happening before their veryeyes. The belief that the strong devoured the weak also served to justify andlegitimize Japan’s own predatory impulses, which many Japanese agreed, or at leastassumed, were simply defensive responses to the predations of the more powerfulnations. Therein lay the need for a “rich country and strong army” and for thedevelopment of science, both of which figured prominently in all forms of children’s
future war and always for the sake of the nation.
Miyazaki reflected this worldview clearly, both in Nichibei and in his postscript
where he addressed his young readers directly:

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Do not expect that mysterious sea snakes will always appear to save the nation. Had
they not done so at that time, Japan, the shining light of the East, the Oyashima of
3000 years of tradition, would have been destroyed… Study hard literary [bun] andmilitary [bu] affairs. You shoulder the burden of responsibility for Japan’s future…
Young Readers! Exert yourselves to the utmost for the sake of the nation (kokka notame ni).43
Miyazaki’s message was clear. The sea snakes were pure fiction. They did not exist
in the great power politics of the early 20th century where martial, manly values
were essential for national survival. Miyazaki’s call to pursue tirelessly the unionof bu and bun was in fact a call to arms, not just in a physical sense but in a spiritual
sense as well. Drawing on Meiji era tropes of Japanese particularlism, Miyazaki’s useof thebu and bun reinforced an image of Japanese uniqueness derived from anearlier indigenous ideal of the cultured warrior and then reworked as a virtue ofnecessity in the modern world of rationalized endemic conflict among nations.[44]In addition to entertaining young Japanese, Miyazaki was also preparing them forthis new world in which they would be central actors, for Japan’s real future lay inthe hands of those who held the magazine. Sounding like a latter-day Yoshida Shoinwith his injunction to put aside childish things and go forth as men of highpurpose, Miyazaki charged his young readers with the weighty responsibility ofdefending the realm from the deadly combination of vacillating leaders anddangerous foreign enemies. Only through eternal vigilance and military
preparedness could Japan’s destiny as a great power could be fulfilled.
The pedigree of these ideas dated back to the heady days of nation building in the
Meiji era. Here, too, fiction played a central role. One of the main prototypes of
future war was the “political novel” and Yano Ryukei’s 1890 Ukishiro
monogatari (The Floating Battleship) in particular. Although Yano wrote Ukishiro foran adult audience, later generations of children it seems read the story with great
enthusiasm.45 Considered by some to be the first work of science fiction in modern
Japan, Ukishiro became a standard for later war and future war fiction: Young, maleuber-patriots embark on a South Sea adventure to “open up a giant territory tens oftimes the size of Japan and offer it to the Emperor…”46 Like Miyazaki’s heroes,
Yano’s adventurers are motivated by a deep dissatisfaction with Japanese passivity
in the face of overwhelming foreign power. When Captain Sakura addresses his men
early in the story, he says:“The Western race carries out its exploits throughout the entire earth while theJapanese people carry out their exploits within their own country. We shouldn’t put
up with such a lamentable predicament… Indeed, we should take this entire earth as
our stage and carry out a great enterprise of singular proportions. Why does Japanalone need to cower in fear and move stealthily about”47
In this fictional address we can see strong parallels to Miyazaki’s own words thirty
years later. A passive nation was at the mercy of external enemies, all of whomwould exploit Japan’s weakness given the chance. Thus, a stout heart was notenough. The men in Ukishiro had that in spades but they also had fantastic weapons

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like raiyaku, a new explosive developed by a Japanese scientist that could destroy
entire islands.Raiyaku helped the men defeat the Dutch and emboldened one of themain characters to say, “With this, we have what it takes to make the British andFrench fleets scatter.”48 Nationalism, imperialism, political passivity, foreign
enemies, and military science, all rolled into aSouth Sea adventure: This became thestuff of children’s print media for decades.
While the roots of children’s future war fiction can be found in the political idealismof 1880s adult fiction, early producers of this media also drew heavily on two older,indigenous traditions, one martial and one other moral. The moral imperative
was kanzen/choaku (rewarding good and punishing evil), which has proved to be a
durable concept in children’s writing throughout the 20th century. A good exampleof this was Iwaya Sazanami’s Shin hakken den (The New Biography of Eight Dogs)
serialized in Shonen sekai in 1898.[49] Based on Takizawa Bakin’s Edo-era
novel Nanso satomi hakken den (Biographies of Eight Dogs), it was a tale of eight
young boys who traveled to a South Sea island and, through a series of daring
adventures, came to rule over it. The original story, set in Edo at the end of the
Muromachi era in mid-16thcentury, was a didactic tale about the power of morality
and the triumph of virtue. Replete with sacrifice, heroism, andmiracles, Nansocentred on the attempts of Satomi Yoshizane, an actual historicalfigure, to restore his family name to its former glory. The eight dogs in the title
represented the eight cardinal virtues of Confucianism and through theirintervention virtue triumphed over vice, allowing Satomi to overcome enormous
obstacles and rehabilitate his family name. Iwaya’s updated version replaced thehistorical figure of Satomi with the geography of the South Seas and turned the dogs
into boys. The didacticism and morality of the original story remained. Looking backmore than one hundred years, it is possible to see a prophetic strain in Shin hakken
den. It certainly seemed to have anticipated the wildly popularmanga series Boken
dankichi of the 1920s and 1930s, a cartoon serial depicting theheroic South Sea adventures of its protagonist by the same name. It is alsointeresting to speculate how many of Japan’s “southern advance” (Nanshinron)proponents of the 1930s and 1940s may have cut their teeth on stories that took as
their premise adventure and expansion in the Nanyo (South Seas).

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Nanso Satomi Hakkenden, the original first print

In its modern incarnation, the martial imperative first intersected with the moral
imperative of kanzen choaku with the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in 1894.
From its inaugural issue on January 1, 1895 until war’s end, Iwaya’s Shonen
sekai carried a variety of stories of the war in each monthly issue, including reports
from the front, accounts of bravery in battle, and tales drawn from Japan’s martial
past. On the cover of the first issue were two illustrations: one of Crown Prince
Munehito (later the Taisho Emperor); the other of the mythical Empress Jingu
subjugating Sankan (the three kingdoms of ancient Korea). Inside were stories of
Jingu’s glorious conquest and of Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s invasion of Korea in the
1590s.[50] No mention was made of Jingu’s questionable historical status or of theultimate failure of Hideyoshi’s invasion, the final act of which he did not live to see.
Jingu was given equivalent historical status with Hideyoshi and their noble acts
established a direct link between past and present, legitimizing and justifying theequally noble efforts of Japan’s Imperial forces. It is here that Hobsbawm’s conceptof “invented traditions” becomes an important tool in understanding the process ofJapanese militarization. The actual existence of these past heroes and whether they

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had done what the stories claimed they did matters less in a practical and analyticalsense than does the process by which these heroes were used to construct andcontinually reinforce a seamless web of continuity with the past. This was what was
actually invented. The process took place at all levels of Japanese society but it took
on a new dynamic in children’s print media because of the intersection ofcommercialism and competition at the very moment war became a central concernof the young nation. Whatever else they thought about the war, media publishers
and contributors discovered that war and patriotism paid.51
Modern Children’s Media in the Crucible of War
Iwaya Sazanami (1870-1933) stands as a giant in the world of modern Japanesechildren’s literature and is considered by many scholars to be the true pioneer of the
field and the first to devote his entire professional life to the development ofchildren’s media.52 At the tender age of nineteen, Iwaya wrote what many consider
to be the first full-length modern novel for children, Kogane maru (The Courageous
Dog Kogane) in 1891.53 It launched Iwaya on a career that would earn him theaffectionate titles of “Uncle Fairy Tale” (Otogi Ojisan) and “Uncle Iwaya” fromgenerations of adoring children by the time of his death in 1933. In addition to his
many koen dowa and his popular collections of Japanese fairy tales (Otogibanashi),
Iwaya also became Japan’s leading authority on Hans Christian Anderson and theBrothers Grimm, on whose works he laboured and lectured for many years.54 His
interest in Northern European folk and fairy tales placed him firmly at the centre ofa growing Japanese interest in German letters among well-educated elite.55 Iwaya’s
intellectual and cultural affinity with Germany was reflected in the attitudes ofanother giant of children’s print media, Kodansha founder Noma Seiji.56 The careersof both men career also suggests a powerful sense of commitment to the values of
education, progress, and a profound attachment to the idea of Japan as a modern,masculine, and martial nation. This sentiment was evident in Iwaya’s fairy tales andstorytelling performances but even more expressly in the pages of Shonen
sekai (Boy’s World) he founded in 1895. Published by Hakubunkan, Shonen sekai was
one of the first children’s magazines in modern Japan and certainly the most popularof its day.57 Unlike earlier children’s magazines, which had small circulations andshort life spans, Shonen sekai was the first long run, mass circulation children’s
publication in modern Japan. Published continuously from 1895 to 1914, and thenin different variations and with some interruptions until 1933, Shonen
sekai educated and entertained at least two generations of Japanese children.58

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Iwaya Sazanami

Even before Shonen sekai’s debut, Hakubunkan published two special issues on the
Sino-Japanese War for children in October and November of 1895, both of which
provide a clear idea of what was to come. Titled Yonen zasshi (Children’s Magazine),and edited by Iwaya himself, these two publications gave up to date accounts ofJapanese bravery and valour. The November issue carried a story entitled “A
Verbatim Account of Hell in the Sino-Japanese War.” This was the heroic tale ofCaptain Matsuzaki Naoomi, said to have been the first Japanese commissioned
officer to die in the Sino-Japanese War on July 29, 1894.59 The story opens with agroup of dead Chinese soldiers on their way to hell. As they approach the River Styx
(Sanzu no kawa), Captain Matsuzaki overhears and surprises them, at which point
they flee across the river in fear. Laughing heartily, Captain Matsuzaki muses that
nothing can be done for them and decides to head for heaven. Drawing heavily
Buddhist metaphors, all of which would have been familiar to Japanese boys, thestory contrasts the brave and cheerful Matsuzaki, even in death, on his way to his
Edenic reward for faithful service to the Emperor/nation, with the scared, bumbling
Chinese soldiers whose only fate is Hell.60 Even Shonen sekai writers on non-military
topics seemed compelled to offer their thoughts on the army’s victories in battle.
Owada Takeki, for example, began his regular column on literature by telling
readers how the recent, decisive victory of the Imperial forces “moved him
deeply.”61
The deification of Captain Matsuzaki was quickly followed by other heroes fromboth the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese wars like theresolute Mitsushima Kan and the indomitable bugler Kikuchi Kohei, whose stories
would be told and retold until the end of the Pacific War. These stories,

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intermingling with the pantheon of past martial heroes, became enormously
popular with both boys and girls, leading publishers to create an entire genre ofserialized historical novels published along side of the adventure novels, patriotic
novels, and war adventures. While these stories ranged across the entire corpus ofJapanese literature, including romance, tales of selfless devotion and sacrificial
death tended to predominate. Collectively, these stories mutually reinforced therelevance of Japan’s manly, martial past and the unbroken continuum of the yamato
damashii, especially the willingness to die happily at a moment’s notice.
An episode in Miyazaki’s Nichibei illustrates the power and endurance of the yamato
damashii over the intervening thirty years. Just before Japanese troops
invade Manila, Lt. Commander Onuki is ordered to destroy an American gun
emplacement. He valiantly leads a hundred “suicide troops” (kesshitai) to take out
the battery. Fierce fighting ensues and the Americans soon learn the truth of theJapanese proverb that “even though the sansho is small, it is very spicy.”62 Ultimately
the battery is destroyed along with all soldiers on both sides except Onuki. Realizing
his mission is complete, Onuki takes down the Rising Sun Flag and, hearing theapproach of more enemy troops, taunts them:“’Hey, Yankees (Yôki)! I expect you’ve heard of Japanese hara-kiri but you’ve never seen
it performed have you. Well, Onuki’s gonna show you!’ With that, he pulled open his
tunic and grasping firmly his precious Japanese sword he thrust it deep into his rightside. The sword sliced through his flesh as he pulled it across his body. Grasping his
beloved flag, he then stuffed it into the gaping wound he had just made. That finefellow died a brave and unparalleled death. When the American troops arrived theyfroze in terror at the sight.”63

Onuki Committing seppuku [64] (Reproduction credit: Peter Manchester)White Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-1930

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To kanzen choaku and the pantheon of past martial heroes, all excavatedfrom Japan’s past, modern media producers added the novelty of the child hero,
especially the boy warrior like Miyazaki’s Takuji. While this practice was notentirely new, as the timeless appeal of Momotaro and Urashima Taro attests, thechild warrior with Yamato spirit and science on his side became a staple ofchildren’s adventure fiction from the 1890s onward. This, too, was pioneeredby Shonen sekai during the Sino-Japanese War. In November 1894, Hakubunkan
published a children’s series called The Child’s Treasure Box (Yonen gyokute hako).
Volume One of the series included a story from Kenyusha member Izumi Kyoka
titled “The Aftermath of a Naval Battle” (Kaisen no yoha). The hero of the story isnine-year old Matsue Chiyodai whose father served as a First Lieutenant on thebattleship Chiyoda, the same ship on from which Kunikida Doppo reported thewar.65 After his father’s departure, Chiyodai and his mother return to her native
home near the sea so as to be closer to his father. On a particularly stormy day,
Chiyodai spies a ship floundering in rough seas. He immediately commandeers asmall boat and recruits a group of seamen to affect a rescue. Their efforts succeed
but on the way back to shore Chiyodai falls into the sea and is lost. The story does
not end there, however, as Chiyodai is somehow then taken captive on a Chinese
ship and brought to the Palace of the Sea God where he meets a young princess. At
the same time, during the Battle of the Yellow Sea on September 7, 1894 (an actual
naval battle of the Sino-Japanese War), Chiyodai’s father is killed in action. Moved by
the heroism of both father and son, the sea princess makes Chiyodai’s father king of
the sea who in turn pledges to protect Japan at all costs.66
Two points are noteworthy here. The first is the fascinating blend of fact (thebattleship Chiyoda and the Battle of the Yellow Sea), fiction (the story of the young
Chiyodai), and fantasy (the Palace of the Sea God, the princess, and elder Matsue’s
reincarnation as the king of the Sea), all of this from the man who later gained fameas a Japanese playwright in the manner of Oscar Wilde.67 This blending of fact,
fiction, and fantasy became a staple in Japanese children’s literature throughout the
prewar years. The second point relates to the centrality of children as the main
protagonists of the stories. Sometimes they were depicted sacrificing and dying fortheir country, as with young Chiyodai. In others the heroism and death of adults,
usually family members, was portrayed through the eyes of the child heroes asin Miyazaki’s Nichibei. Hirotsu Ryuro’s “Heart of a Child” exemplified thispractice.[68] His story centred on nine-year old Ichiro whose father is killed inbattle during the Sino-Japanese War. Like Chiyodai, Ichiro accompanies his motherback to her ancestral home where he also learns of his uncle’s death in battle. Rather
than being filled with remorse and sadness, Ichiro swells with pride knowing that
his father and uncle have died glorious deaths. We then read about Ichiro playing
war games with the Japanese Imperial forces pitted against the Chinese “hog-bristlearmy.” In the meantime, Ichiro’s older sister and aunt dutifully join the Red Cross tohelp ease the pain and suffering of wounded Japanese soldiers.69

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Takuji, the child warrior70 (Reproduction Credit: Peter Manchester)In depicting the deaths of children or adults as acts to be glorified and praised, themedia was not alone. Textbooks also immortalized and beautified death in war.
Most commonly this was portrayed through the protagonist dying happily with asmile on his lips. One volume of the 1900 textbook series Shinhen shumiten (NewTeacher’s Guide to Moral Training) carried a story entitled “A Sailor Named
Mitsushima Kan” (Mitsushima kan no suihei) set during the Battle of Yellow Sea in
the Sino-Japanese War. On hearing of the destruction of an enemy ship the mortallywounded Mitsushima exclaimed, “I’m so happy…then with a bright smile on his lips,
Mitsushima died.”71 Taken together, magazines and textbooks appropriated older
samurai traditions of “dying well” and placed them in the contemporary context ofwartime to create compelling role models to which Japanese boys could aspire.
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War but were rather borne in the victories of modern Japan’s earliest wars, none ofwhich touched directly the young readers who consumed them.
The manner in which the Sino-Japanese War was fictionalized and presented asentertainment for children became the prototype for constructing a manly, martial
ethos throughout the first half of the 20th century. Indeed, the Sino-Japanese War
was the first to be “textualized” specifically for children. Much has been written
about Vietnam as America’s first media war. Those who are old enough can hardly
forget the television images on the nightly news that contributed significantly to theanti-war movement emerging at the same time. The Sino-Japanese War was Japan’s
first media war, the support for which, unlike Vietnam, was almost total. It was the
new nation’s first international conflict and the first to be covered in detail byjournalists from the front. More than one hundred correspondents andphotographers followed the actions of Japan’s Imperial forces in China throughout
the war.72 Among this group were some of Japan’s most famous, or soon to be
famous, literary figures, including Masaoka Shiki who was a staff writer for thenewspaper Nihon Shimbun and Kunikida Doppo, one of the most vocal critics of the
Kenyusha men, who sailed on the battleship Chiyoda as a special correspondent
for Kokumin Shimbun (The Peoples’ Newspaper). The Japanese public, hungry fornews of heroism, sacrifice, or victory, consumed their reports eagerly. The SinoJapanese War should thus be seen as the first major international media event inmodern Japanese history with consumer and producer alike, including Shonen sekai,
all contributing to the wave of pro-war sentiment that swept Japan at this time.73
Tales of war and patriotism proved highly profitable throughout the world of print
media. Just as the war encouraged competition and innovation among producers ofadult magazines and newspapers, so, too, did it drive a similar process in children’s
media. Competition between Hakubunkan’s Yonen sekai (Children’s World)and Shonen sekai and Jitsugyo no Nihon’s Nihon Shonen (Japan Youth) and Shojo no
tomo (Girl’s Friend) led the way in the 1890s, driving innovation and market
expansion and creating a highly commercialized and profitable children’s print
media that had scarcely existed a decade earlier. Into this growing and profitable
field stepped a young Oshikawa Shunro with a new adventure story, modeled on
Yano’s Ukishiro and written while still a student at Tokyo Semmon Kakko (Waseda)
where he studied politics.74 A relative introduced Oshikawa to Iwaya who loved the
young man’s new story and quickly took him under his wing at Hakubunkan.75 Witha preface written by Admiral Ito Yuko, a veteran of the Sino-Japanese War,Oshikawa’s new adventure novel Kaitei gunkan (The Submarine Battleship) made its
debut in 1900.76 The novel was a huge hit among boys 8 to 15. Almost overnight
Oshikawa had created a new genre of children’s stories known as the adventure
novel. Despite a career cut short by personal tragedy and illness, Oshikawa occupies
a preeminent position in the history Japanese children’s media. He exerted a
profound influence on Miyazaki and contemporaries like Abu Tempu, Hirata
Gensaku, and Yamanaka Minetaro, creating the basic format for many kinds offuture war and adventure stories.77

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Kaitei gunkan was actually part of a six-novel series published between 1900 and
1907, all of which took as their point of departure Japanese passivity in the face of
predatory foreign imperialism. Kaitei gunkan traces the exploits of a disgruntled
former naval officer Captain Sakuragi and his hardy band of patriots who build a
new submarine battleship on a secret island. The ship, the denkopan is submersible,
capable of flight and is armed with futuristic torpedoes and a new ramming
technology. Throughout the series, Sakuragi and his men battle the Russians, theFrench and the English, destroying them all. They even fight on the side of Filipino“freedom fighters” against American imperialists. Written before, during and after
the Russo-Japanese War, Oshikawa’s novels rode the rollercoaster of war fever andthen disgruntlement over the treaty that followed. In the process, he introduced
thousands of Japanese boys to adult concerns about Japan’s weakness vis-a-vis thegreat powers and apprehension over an increasingly enervated youth. In theprocess, Oshikawa ignored Japan’s own predatory impulses and re-channeled theminto patriotic sacrifice for a people fighting to secure their destiny.
According to Ito Hideo, Oshikawa’s purpose was to “oppose those who oppressed
freedom” and to inculcate in young readers “the spirit of resistance at all costs”78 Yetneither Ito nor Oshikawa himself acknowledged Japan’s own imperialist endeavours
or its brutal treatment of its own subject peoples. The tendency to lionize one’s own
and demonize the other has many antecedents in Japan and elsewhere. In late Meiji
this kind of binary thinking created a compellingly stark portrait of the international
world that lent apparent truth to the national imperative of grow or die. Oshikawa
revealed this in a non-fiction essay in Boken sekai (Adventure World) a Hakubunkan
publication he helped to found and edit.79 Proclaiming a new age of struggle thatwould last for years to come, “an age of Enlightened warring states,” Oshikawa told
his young readers that Japan’s future depended on “robust thinking and a war-likespirit.”80 Oshikawa specifically focused on the United States as the primary external
foe. He granted that Americans were not devoid of bravery, mentioning Oshikawa
then went on to lament the decline of bushido damashii since the Russo-JapaneseWar, singling out excessive pride, conceit, socialism and naturalism as the principle
domestic evils. The youth of Japan, he said, were being corrupted with thelicentiousness of naturalistic literature and the destructive effects of socialism on
the national polity.83 Oshikawa reserved some of his most scathing criticism for the
mediocre, the small-minded, and the vulgar that he called the enemies of bravery
and martial valour. “They sneer at heroism,” he decried. “They ridicule Japan’s
bushido, they trample on the blood of patriots, and they don’t hesitate to call fools
those who sacrifice for their nation.”84 Sounding much like Miyazaki would ten years
later, Oshikawa called on all young boys to nurture Japan’s millennia-old martial
spirit and prepare themselves to give everything for the country. The message wasclear: The world was a dangerous place where only the strong and the resolutesurvive. Japan must become strong and grow, or die.
The idea of war helping to drive the popularization of mass media in early
20th century Japan should be familiar to those of us who have grown up in North
America since 1945. The nexus of victorious and vicarious war (World War II andWhite Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-1930

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the cold war) and electronic media have created an irresistible and inexhaustible
wellspring of material from which to construct war adventures as entertainment. In
Meiji Japan a similar dynamic emerged only with print media leading the way. In
both cases, war was the catalyst rather than the cause. It created the opportunity forprofit and patriotism to unite in a self-sustaining process fed by perceived
international crisis and by war itself – real and imagined. Of course men such as
Oshikawa and Miyazaki would likely have been outraged at the suggestion that they
were motivated by gain. But it was the prospect of gain, together with anunshakable confidence in nation building, that motivated early publishers ofchildren’s media to develop a children’s market which then provided employment
for these same men. In this war was central.
Cultures Collide: Martiality in America and Japan
Like all things Meiji, children’s print media developed from a fascinating blend ofindigenous styles and practices, critiqued and reconstructed with foreign ideas andimportations. As Oshikawa drew on Yano and Iwaya and then in turninfluenced Miyazaki, Abu, and others, so too did the wave of foreign narratives
flooding Japan at this time influence the thinking of many aspiring Japanese writers.
Iwaya’s acknowledged debt to Hans Christian Anderson and the Grim Brothers,
particularly the idea of excavating a useable past, is one such example. Two more
powerful examples for children’s media were the science fiction of Jules Verne and
H.G. Wells. The works of both men had a profound impact on a wide range of writers
including Yano, Oshikawa and Miyazaki.85 The list of foreign influences on Meiji andTaisho reads like a who’s who of Euro-American fiction and non-fiction[86] but forJapanese writers of future war a more significant influence was Homer Lea’s
1909 The Valor of Ignorance,87 translated in 1911 by Ike Ukichi under thetitle Nichibei senso.88
Lea wrote The Valor of Ignorance to shake Americans out of their complacency andto convince them that the romantic ideal of republican martial virtue expressed in
the militia was hopelessly out of date. Modern wars, he said, required the“conversion of the nation’s potential military resources into actual power… by men
more scientifically trained than lawyers, doctors, or engineers.”89 Disparaging
volunteers as a mediaeval institution,” Lea maintained that the “soul of the soldier”
could not be molded “in twenty-four days by uniforming a volunteer” but took “notless than a dozen men six-and-thirty long months to hammer and temper him into
the image of his maker.”90 This necessitated “a relentless absorption ofindividuality” and “an annihilation of all personality.” Sounding much like Oshikawa,
and later future war writers like Miyazaki and Abu, Lea argued that only throughthis process could a man “reach that pinnacle of human greatness, to seek glory indeath.”91 Animating Lea’s argument was his fundamental belief that nations obeyed
the same laws of birth growth, decline, and death as did all forms of life: “the Law ofStruggle, the Law of Survival.”92 Thus war was “but a composite exemplification of
the struggle of man upward” expressed in the grasping, expansionist nature of thenation itself.93 The chief impediments to success in this struggle werecommercialism and opulence, which bred ‘enervation through luxury” and opened

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the door for all manner of ills including feminism, socialism, and the utter
destruction of the martial spirit.94 For Lea, America was in grave peril and hedevoted the bulk of his book to explaining how Japan could easily defeat America in
the Philippines, Hawaii, and then occupy much of the west coast.95
That Lea’s ideas animated the thinking of military men, including those in Japan,
should surprise no one familiar with history of imperialism. But his book also had aprofound impact on men like Oshikawa and Miyazaki because it articulated atheoretical position that aligned precisely with how the world actually operated intheir eyes. The fascinating aspect about this relationship is that men
like Miyazaki turned Lea’s “fact” into fiction and in doing so strengthened Lea’s
argument about Japanese expansion and gave substance to his prophecies
about Japan-as-predator. Even though Miyazaki turned the tables in Nichibei
miraisen, making America the predator and Japan the prey, he nonethelessacknowledged Lea’s influence in the preface to the Nichibei book where he said,“This story of military operations in the Philippines draws heavily on the work of
Mr. Homer Lea.”96 Equally fascinating is the manner in which the purveyors of war
adventures turned adult concerns about international politics into fiction that
posited a future world of war in which Japan was the underdog and frequently lost
because the enemy was militarily stronger.97 The implication was that Japan could
only survive in hyper-militarized form in which the present day child consumers
would become its future adult saviors. These narratives, according to Kuwahara
Saburo, participated in the creation and romaticization of a unique “child’s spirit”(kodomo damashii), especially from the Taisho era onward.98 Mirroring its
predecessor, yamato damashii, kodomo damashii represented an adult ideal ofwhat yamato damashii could truly be in its most perfect form, particularly its
specific emphasis on children’s purity and unquestioning obedience. In this we can
glimpse a kind of adult crisis consciousness about the instability of the present andan implicit fear about an indeterminate future, especially if the children of thepresent fail to safeguard the nation of the future.
Militarization, Media, and Mirrors
While this is essentially a Japanese story, the process by which it unfolded and theideology that animated it were by no means unique toJapan. Virtually all modern
industrial nations trace their origins back to the crucible of war or revolution, while
their inhabitants derive a significant portion of their identities as citizens or subjects
from these events and their remembrances.99 Japan is no exception. The experiencesof the Japanese people must be understood comparatively as part of a morewidespread modern process whereby national identities were constructed throughthe mass production and consumption of real and imagined war. Herein lay thepower of the print media. War seems to be as old as humanity itself, as are thestories of martial glory and sacrifice that naturally accompany its prosecution. But
only with the creation of mass forms of culture like print media have humansocieties been able to create and disseminate information, including stories of war,on such a massive scale. And it is the sheer scale of production and consumptionthat separates the modern from all other historical eras. Future war was aWhite Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-1930

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particularly powerful vehicle in this process, creating a seamless continuity overtime that grounded children of the present in a shared martial past while preparing
them for an adult future in which they would become the saviors. Japanese future
war reinforced the ideological triad of military preparedness, eternal vigilance, andsacrificial death as the key components of modern Japanese nationalism, one thatwas heavily gendered in favour of the martial and the manly.
Until World War II a wide range of individuals and groups throughout theindustrializing world preached the gospel of militarism and militarization, often in
the stated interests of preserving peace. Since 1945 militarism and militarization
have understandably taken on a more pejorative tone, despite the fact that thegospel of military preparedness was never more systematically spread than during
the cold war: and now again in the current war on terror. C. Wright Mills may havebeen one of the first to recognize this postwar shift in the 1950s when he spoke of a
new “military definition of reality” throughout America, one enabled by war and the“’current ‘emergency’ without foreseeable end.”100 The result, for Mills, would be,“the triumph in all areas of life of the military metaphysic, and hence thesubordination to it of all other ways of life.”101 Mills appeared to be sanguine about
this development, treating it as a natural outgrowth of shifting postwar American
power relations. But a few years later President Eisenhower gave Mills’ idea a
decidedly more ominous tone in his 1960 farewell speech when he warned of thethreat posed to American liberty by the “military industrial complex.”102 “We shouldtake nothing for granted,” he told the American public. “Only an alert andknowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial andmilitary machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security
and liberty may prosper together.”103 It is ironic in the extreme that thesestatements capture almost exactly the sentiments of men like Oshikawa
and Miyazaki (and Homer Lea) a few decades earlier, only in the affirmative.
Believing in a “military definition of reality,” these men actively promoted theascendancy of a “military metaphysic” that would “subordinate” all other forms ofnational existence. Indeed, only “alert and knowledgeable” subjects – children
dedicating themselves to the union of bu and bun – could ensure Japan’s future“security and liberty.” Print media continually reinforced the ideology of militarism
through future war fiction – Mill’s “military metaphysic” – thereby driving theprocess of militarization into virtually every playground, schoolyard andneighbourhood in Japan.
In the last couple of decades, scholars and activists have begun to reexamine andrefine the relationship between militarism and militarization, usually from afeminist perspective. Cynthia Enloe, a pioneer in this area, argues that “[m]ilitarism
is an ideology. Militarization, by contrast is a sociopolitical process… by which theroots of militarism are driven deep down into the soil of a society.”104 Moreover, shemaintains that militarization is “a tricky process” because virtually anything can be
militarized at any time, in war or in peace. Thus, for Enloe, militarization occurs“when any part of a society becomes clearly controlled by or dependent on the
military or on military values.”105 In a similar vein, Michael Geyer, argues that

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militarization is a “contradictory and tense social process in which civil society
organizes itself for the production of violence.”106 More recently, Catherine Lutz
echoes Geyer’s definition in her study of Fayetteville North Carolina, home of Fort
Bragg, focusing particularly on the development of modern war and its relationshipto industrial capitalism and the nation state.107 These scholars demonstrate theimportance of analyzing militarism and militarization in terms of the relationships
between power, gender, and violence and between industrial capitalism and thenation-state. They also demonstrate the utility of seeing both ideology and process
through feminist lenses.
The work of these scholars alerts us to dangers in our own world, but theircomments also apply equally to the world of prewar Japan and, indeed, much of themodern world from the 19th century onward when urban, industrial life appeared to
be undermining national and racial vitality. This fear was so menacing because it
began with an a priori assumption of human nature as inherently war-like and of thenatural world as a site of struggle where only the strong survived.108 Thus, nations
grew or died. There were no other options. Future war fiction articulated this belief
most clearly because it was the very raison d’etre of the genre itself. In Japan wheresuch stories more specifically targeted children, they left a weighty legacy for their
young readers in whose hands the final decision would later be worked out. The“grow or die” mentality also revealed the manner in which militarism expressed
itself ideologically through the employment of such binary structures asstrong/weak, us/them, and masculine/feminine. Men like Miyazaki and Oshikawa
revealed this attitude clearly when talking of the dangers posed by the great
powers. Japan was noble and honourable whereas America had a “heart like a tiger
and a wolf.” Thus, Japan needed to be strong militarily for defensive purposes only.
Those defensive purposes could be conveniently extended, however, to Japan’s own
expansionist aims by appealing to its responsibility to protect the peoplesof Asia from the evil intentions of the O-bei. The a priori explained why war occurred
and why all Japanese had to prepare for that eventuality. It was then throughpreparation that Japanese society became militarized. This meant not only creatinglarger armies and more powerful weapons through the application of science, butalso curbing luxury and over-consumption, bending industrial activity to the will ofmilitary necessity, and guarding against slippage in gender roles.109
This last category is particularly important because in Japan as elsewhere the corevalues of militarism have historically been exclusively masculine and martial,
cohering around the concepts of loyalty, sacrifice, and the shared “authentic” maleexperience of war. Anchoring this is the idea of sacrificial death as the ultimate
expression of these values, what Lea called, “the pinnacle of human greatness.”110
The focus on dying as the ultimate sacrifice in Japanese future war also served to
exclude females, at least until the end of the Pacific War. In prewar Japanese war
adventures there were many girl heroes but few died and never in battle.111 Men
and boys, by contrast, died by the shipload. This form of gendered nationalism
carried right through to the last desperate days of the Pacific War, by which time
everyone was expected to die. Still, echoes of the prewar division of gender based onWhite Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-1930118

who died in battle remained as late as 1945. Kodansha’s New Year’s 1945 issueof Shonen kurabu, for example, carried Bakumatsu era poems about women
dreaming of being reborn as men so they could die for the emperor.112 The February1945 issue even contained a young girl’s letter to the editor in which she said, “If I
were a boy, I too could join the shimpu.”113 It is difficult to know whether letters likethese were actually written by girls or merely fabricated by the magazine’s editors.
Either way, they do reveal a deeply gendered conception of war and death, one thatwas largely monopolized by males.
As Geyer and Enloe have noted militarization occurs wherever a class, caste, orother social group reserves for itself the right and responsibility to use
violence. Monopolizing the right to use violence is a core component of the classic
definition of the state, dating back at least to Max Weber. Charles Tilly has argued
that states or other agents who produce “both the danger and, at a price, the shield
against it” are effectively racketeers.114 This is a reasonable description of whatmany adult producers of children’s media did in Japan and, sadly, what some leaders
continue to do in our contemporary world. The producers of children’s war
adventures created the danger (national destruction) and the solution (martiality
and yamato damashii). The price was, to quote Lea again, the “annihilation of all
personality” in selfless devotion to the nation. Seeing Japan’s print media in thislight also emphasizes the fact that the adult producers were not simply products of
their time but were active participants in its making. Children’s print media createda public and thereafter the two were inseparable, reciprocally reinforcing eachother and driving militarization deeper into Japanese society.115
Men like Iwaya, Oshikawa, and Miyazaki constructed a present and future world forchildren through vicarious war, skillfully blurring the lines between fact, fiction, andfantasy. They did so, as do all peoples, with the materials at hand, drawing
on Japan’s martial past and its rich corpus of heroic fiction and myth, and thenaugmenting it with similar traditions from Europe. Marx himself recognized thistendency fifty years earlier, although in an entirely different context. Hiscommentary on this phenomenon is worth quoting at length:
Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do notmake it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances
directly encountered, given, and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all deadgenerations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living. And just when men
seem engaged in revolutionizing themselves and things, in creating something
entirely new... they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past and borrow fromthem names, battle slogans and costumes in order to present the new scene of world
history in this time-honored disguise and this borrowed language.116
For Marx, this tendency was the bane of human existence, drawing us into the pastat the very moment when we should be breaking with that past in an effort toconstruct a new future. The adult producers of Japan’s print media gave truth toMarx’s claim. They showed no desire to break with the past but incorporated it into
their present to construct a common identity that would provide a bulwark against

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rampant capitalism, socialism, and feminism, indeed, against modernity itself. At thesame time, these men seemed to be unaware of a supreme irony: That the growing
power of print media to militarize society was driven by the same economic andtechnological processes they believed were threatening the nation’s vitality. It isdifficult to say whether any of these men would have likely wished for the“nightmare” that was to come in the 1930s and 1940s but in their relentless drive tocreate an educational and uplifting world for children they certainly madeacceptance of that “nightmare” more likely. Through future war children could live
vicariously for a time because the reality of Japan’s dark valley would not encumber“the brain of the living” for many years to come. In our contemporary climate of a
global war on terror, Japan’s story shows us tendencies that we share in common,through time and space, rather than highlight what makes us different. In
attempting to make this comparison, I am reminded of the words of Helen Mears
who suggested many years ago that Japan, in addition to our studying it for its own
sake, can be a mirror in which we can see our own reflection.117
Owen Griffiths is Associate Professor of History, Mount Allison University. He wrote thisarticle for Japan Focus. Posted on September 22, 2007.
Endnotes:
1 I would like to thank the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC)

for its generous support in providing funding for this project.

2 Miyazaki also wrote many stories for children under the penname Shirane Ryobu.
3 Miyazaki Ichiu, “Nichibei miraisen,” Shonen kurabu, November 1922, 67. Hereafterreferred to as Nichibei.

4 Although I focus principally on Miyazaki in this piece, he was actually one of many

writers of children’s future war. To date, I have uncovered more than 30 future war
stories written between 1915 and 1937, almost all of which were written forchildren. Other writers of this genre include Abu Tenpu, Yoshikawa Eiji, Hirata
Shinsaku, Yamanaka Minetaro, Nanyo Ichiro, and Unno Juzo.
5 This phrase comes from the title of I. F. Clarke’s collection of Euro-American future

war stories. The Tale of the Next Great War, 1871-1914, Syracuse University Press,
1995.
6 The best discussion of this subject is I.F. Clarke, Voices Prophesying War: FutureWars, 1763-3749, Oxford University Press, 1992. For a more American focus on thesame subject, see H. Bruce Franklin, War Stars: The Superweapon and the American
Imagination, Oxford University Press, 1988.
7 T. J. Jackson Lears, No Place of Grace: Antimodernism and the Transformation ofAmerican Culture, University of Chicago Press, (1983), 1994, 98-102.

8 Any use of the term media must always refer to a plurality of agents, whose

reciprocal interactions with the public and with each other is complex, contested,
and competitive. The media can never be usefully understood as a monolithic entity.

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This is especially true during the formative period of its development, as with theprint media in Japan’s Meiji era.
9 Hu Shih, “Tz’u-yu te wen t’i,” Hu Shih wen-ts’un, p. 739, cited in Ping-chen Hsiung, A

Tender Voyage: Children and Childhood in Late Imperial China, Stanford University
Press, 2005, xiv. Hu Shih said that any society could be understood by the way its
people treat their children and their women, and how they spend their leisure time.
10 Despite much public discussion of citizenship during this period, the Japanesepeople under the Meiji Constitution were subjects not citizens. Citizenship only
emerged as a result of popular sovereignty finally being enshrined in the people
under the postwar constitution.

11 This three-fold division comes from Edward Beauchamp, Education and Ideology

in Modern Japan, 1868 – Present,” Asian Thought and Society, 16:48 (1991), 18998. It is useful to distinguish between these three forms of socialization as long as
we recognize that all three stem from a similar set of impulses.
12 Exceptions in Japan are Torigoe Shin, Hasegawa Ushio, and Ueda Nobumichi.

Here, I want to offer my deep appreciation to Hasegawa-sensei and Ueda-sensei for
their generosity in providing me with materials and in taking time to discuss theirresearch when I was in Japan in summer 2006. One general trend I have noticed inJapanese scholarship, Torigoe and Ueda included, is the tendency to evaluate
children’s literature as literature rather than as political and social commentaries.
This is partly due to the fact that most scholars in this field were trained as literary
critics rather than as historians or social scientists.
13 The relationship between formal education and print media during these years isa fascinating and complex subject in its own right, but one to which I cannot dojustice here. However, there are three areas of convergence between the two thatare central to my story. The first is that education and media were both products ofthe same processes of mass production and consumption. The second is theimportant role played by education in creating a readership for all print media
through rising literacy rates. The third is the remarkable continuity between both
institutions in terms of their focus on war, patriotism, and the need for building amartial, manly society. Future war fiction, however, seems to have been exclusive toprint media. The intersection of formal education and print media was best
exemplified in the person of Kodansha founder Noma Seiji (1878-1938). In a 1938
eulogy to Noma, Tokutomi Soho referred to him as Japan’s “private Minister of
Education.” Tokutomi Soho, “Noma shacho tsuitoroku” (A Memorial to President
Noma), Kingu, December 12, 1938, 17, cited in Sato Takumi, ‘Kingu’ no jidai:
Kokumin taishu zasshi no kokyosei (The Age of ‘King’: The Public Nature of National
Popular Magazines), Iwanami Shoten, 2002, viii.
14 Thus far in my research, I have focused primarily on boy’s magazine where themartial, manly ethos was understandably most prominent. However, historical andcontemporary stories focusing on war and foreign perfidy were also prominent ingirl’s magazines. In fact, many writers, Miyazaki included, regularly wrote for both

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types of publications, while publishers like Hakubunkan and Kodansha actively
encouraged girls to read boy’s magazines. To this point, I have looked at both sides
of gender construction only in the context of the Pacific War itself. See, for example,
my “Japanese Children and the Culture of Death, January 1945– January 1946,”
in James Martens, ed., Children and War: A Historical Anthology, New York University
Press, 2002, 160-71.
15 I am currently working on a quantitative assessment of national coverageof Shonen kurabu and Shojo kurabu based on the letters to the editor publishedmonthly in both magazines. These letters, which came from every prefecture, may
not necessarily reflect actual circulation patterns but they do provide insight into
Kodansha’s strategy of representing its magazines as truly national in scope.
16 These are the official figures from Kodansha Hachijunenshi Henshu

Iinkai, Kuronikku Kodansha no hachijunen (Eighty Years of Kodansha), Kodansha,
1995, 116.
17 Kodansha, Shojo kurabu was printing 380,000 copies by 1925 and selling 188,710.

Both magazines sold for 60 sen per copy. Ibid., 116.

18 The editors of Shonen kurabu actively encouraged this practice, regularly using

its Tayori column to instruct young readers to pass on their magazines or to form
reading clubs so they could enjoy the stories together.
19 Miyazaki Ichiu, Nichibei miraisen, Dainihon Yubenkai/Kodansha, 1923.
20 Shojo kurabu, June 1923, ä¸‰ã®A. Shonen kurabu also carried ads in at least

two of its issues for the upcoming book. Given that both magazines were publishedby Kodansha, it is not surprising that the tone and language of the advertisements
was the same. Nonetheless, from a gender perspective, it is interesting to note thatthe same basic message was directed toward both boys and girls.
21 Ueda Nobumichi, “Miyazaki Ichiu no Jidobungaku (“The Children’s Literature of

Miyazaki Ichiu”) Kokusai Jidobungakkan kiyo, No. 8, March 31, 1993, 8. Available infull text online here, accessed May 14, 2006.
22 Miyazaki’s death indeed remains a mystery, although I do hope to determine theconditions under which he died in future research. To date, I have found no recordof his death or burial and, according to Ueda and Hasegawa, he appeared to have left
no family. “Hot-blooded” was one of many genre names publishers like Kodansha
used to distinguish different kinds of stories. Other labels included “adventure
novel” (boken shosetsu), “patriotic novel” (aikoku shosetsu), “military novel” (guntai
shosetsu), historical novel (rekishi shosetsu), and chivalric novel (kyoyu shosetsu).
Until the publication of Sato Koroku’s Kogan bidan (The Stirring Tale of a Fair Youth)in Shonen kurabu in March 1928, no other writer was ever published under the “hotblooded” label. In the 1930s this mantle was passed to the likes of Hirata Gensaku,
Yamanaka Minetaro, Unno Juzo, and Nanyo Ichiro. For a fascinating look at these
war adventures in the 1930s, see Yamanaka Hisashi and Yamamoto Akira(eds.), Kachinuku bokura shokokumin: Shonen gunji aikoku shosetsu no sekai (WeWhite Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-1930

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Children, the Winners: The World of Boy’s Patriotic War Novels), Sekaishisosha, 1985.
Curiously, the authors make no reference to Miyazaki and treat the “hot-blooded
novel” as a product of the 1930s, which it clearly was not.
23 The actual ratio of capital ships permitted under the treaty was as follows: UnitedStates 525,000 tons (533,400 metric tons); the British Empire 525,000 tons
(533,400 metric tons); Japan 315,000 tons (320,040 metric tons); France 175,000
tons (177,800 metric tons); Italy 175,000 tons (177,800 metric tons). See Article IVof the General Provisions Relating To The Limitation Of Naval Armament, signed
February 6, 1922. Taken from Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the UnitedStates: 1922, Vol. 1, pp. 247-266, available online here, accessed July 12, 2006.
24 Of the eight, four were of the Nagato class (Nagato, Mutsu, Saga, and Tosa), twowere of the Ise Class (Ise and Hyuga), and two were of the Fuso Class (Fuso andYamashiro). Taken from Nichibei, January 1922, 49-50.

25 Ibid., 48-49. Here, I want to thank Takahashi Kazuko for her valuable assistancein reading this story. Unless otherwise noted, however, all translations are mine.
26 Ibid., 50.
27 Miyazaki took great pains to highlight Japan’s numerical and technologicalinferiority at the beginning of the story. Japan’s coal-burning ships, for example,
were not only slower than the US diesel-powered fleet but they could also be seenfrom a further distance because of the thick smoke coming from their stacks.
28 Although Miyazaki did not use the phrase “encirclement,” he went into great

detail to explain how the three American fleets could, at a moment’s notice, literally
cut off Japan’s lifeline to the continent. Therein lay the injustice of the Washington
Treaty. Here, we can of course find the roots of “ABCD encirclement” and the“defensive war” used by Japanese officials before and after the Pacific War.
29 Admiral Nango was, of course, none other than Admiral Togo, Japan’s great herofrom the Russo-Japanese War. Miyazaki simply replaced “To” (East) with “Nan”(South).
30 Nichibei, January 1922, 55.

31 Nanyo was the phrase given to the South Seas, which was the site of imagining

empire for many Japanese. For more on the Nanyosee Mark Peattie, “The Nan’yo:
Japan in the South Pacific, 1885-1945,” in Peattie and Ramon H. Myers (eds), The
Japanese Colonial Empire, 1895-1945, Princeton University Press, 1984, 172-176 andKenneth Pyle, The New Generation of Meiji Japan: Problems of Cultural Identity, 18851895, Stanford University Press, 1969, 158. Yap was a small south sea
island Japan had gained control over in the post-Versailles treaties. Its importancelay in the fact that it was a crucial node in the Pacific undersea cable linking Asiawith North America. For an American account of the time, see Charles Noble
Gregory, “The Mandate Over Yap,” American Journal of International Law, 15:3 (July
1921), 419-427. For a Japanese perspective on the eve of the Manchurian Incident,Griffiths: Militarizing Japan: Patriotism, Profit, and Children’s Print Media123

see Keiichi Yamazaki, “The Japanese Mandate in the South Pacific,” Pacific Affairs,
4:2 (February 1931), 95-112.
32 Nichibei, February 1922, 79-80.
33 Ibid., August 1922, 48-49.
34 Ibid., November 1922, 67.
35 The Unebi was a French-built cruiser commissioned by the Japanese navy inDecember 1886. Three months later it disappeared at sea with all hands lost enroute from France to Japan. Miyazaki didn’t tell his readers about the Unebi,
mentioning only its name. In this, he followed a common practice of inserting actual
historical events and actors into fictional stories. He stretched the fantastic here
since any Unebi survivors would have been in their sixties by the time of his futurewar.
36 Ibid., December 1922, 68.
37 Ibid., 72.
38 Ibid., 73.
39 Ibid., 77.
40 At this time, international treaties did not forbid submarine warfare except withregard to merchant vessels, the sinking of which was governed by the same rules as
those covering surface naval warfare. The main treaty covering submarine warfare
was “The Treaty Relating to the Use of Submarines and Noxious Gases in Warfare,”signed on February 6, 1922 as part of the Washington Conference negotiations. This
treaty was never put in force, however, because France did not ratify it. The text of
this treaty is available in full text here. Accessed July 21, 2007.
41 Ibid., February 1923, 87.
42 This phrase comes from Thucydides in his reconstruction of the dialogue between

the Athenians and the Melians after the former had defeated the Melian’s ally
Lucaedamon, reprinted from here, accessed September 15, 2006.

43 Nichibei, February 1923, 88. Oyashima comes from the Nihonshoki and refers to

the original eight islands said to have been created by Izanagi and Izanami. Italics
mine.
44 The idea of Japan as embodying both bu and bun emerged from the Meiji era in

the writings of Shiratori Kurakichi, particularly his concept of “North/South
Dualism,” which sought to create a progressive picture of Japan’s historicaldevelopment as the best of bothbu and bun. For more on this, see Stefan
Tanaka, Japan’s Orient: Rendering Pasts into History, University of California Press,
1995, 94-104.

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45 Torigoe Shin and Nemoto Masagi make this point but without any supporting data

in “Oshikawa Shunro to Tachikawa Bunko” Nihon jido bungakushi (A History ofJapanese Children’s Literature), Mineruba Shobo, 2003, 108.

46 Yano Ryukei. Ukishiro Monogatari. (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1940), quoted in
Xavier Bensky, “Dynamite Don!”: Radical Students, Patriotic Youth, and Science
Fiction Novels in the Meiji Era, A paper presented at the Association for AsianStudies Chicago, IL, 2005, 9. I would like to thank Xavier for providing me with acopy of his paper. Robert Matthew maintains that Ukishiro was the first Japanesescience fiction story in Japanese Science Fiction: A View of a Changing Society, The
Nissan Institute/Routledge Japanese Studies Series, 1989, 10-11.
47 Quoted in Bensky, “Dynamite Don!,” 8.
48 Ibid., 10.
49 This account comes from Hasegawa Ushio, Jido senso yomimono no kindai (Modern

Children’s Wartime Media), Nihon Jido Bungakushi Sosho, No. 21, Hissayamasha,
1999, 15-16.
50 Hasegawa, Jido senso, 18-19.
51 This point is made by James L. Huffman, Creating a Public: People and Press in

Meiji Japan, University of Hawai’i Press, 1997 and Jay Rubin, Injurious to Public
Morals: Writers and the Meiji State, University of Washington Press, 1984.

52 There is some debate among Japanese scholars as to Iwaya’s place as modern

pioneer of children’s fiction. Some reject this title, arguing that Iwaya was not somuch modern pioneer as he was popularizer of older Edo literary traditions
like kanzen choaku. From a historical perspective, however, Iwaya was both. He
helped create a modern print media where none existed before, using Japan’s richliterary and historical traditions as raw materials to construct stories for thechildren of a emerging modern nation. For a discussion of the Japanese debate about
Iwaya, see Torigoe Shin, “Nihon kindai Jidobungaku kitten,” in Torigoe (ed.), Nihon
Jidobungakushi, 1-12. Some have also identified Iwaya as part of vanguard of a new,rising middle class of social reformers, which included Tokutomi Soho, Inobe Inazo,
Abe Isoo, and Hani Motoko. See for example, Mark Alan Jones, Children as Treasures:Childhood and the Middle Class in Early Twentieth Century Japan, unpublished Ph.D.
manuscript, Columbia University, 2000. Social reformer he may have been but
middle class he decidedly was not. Born in 1870 in Shiga Prefecture, Iwaya was theson of Iwaya Ichiroku (1834-1905), a Cabinet Secretary in the Meiji government andlater a member of the House of Peers. As such, we must see Iwaya as a product ofearly Meiji upper class for whom hereditary privilege was de rigueur, and for whom
the concept of progressive development of the Meiji state was unshakable.
53 A tale of a dog who avenges the death of his father by a tiger with the help ofanother canine, Kogane maru reflected Iwaya’s own literary heritage, particularly
the centrality kanzen choaku and his membership in the Kenyusha (Friends of theInkstone), an elite literary group centring around Ozaki Koyo (1867-1904) andGriffiths: Militarizing Japan: Patriotism, Profit, and Children’s Print Media

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counting as its members Izumi Kyoka, Takase Bunen, and Hirotsu Ryuro. The
Kenyusha was the dominant literary group in Japan until Ozaki’s untimely death in
1904, after which it was superceded by the rise of naturalist literature. Detailed
discussions of the Kenyusha can be found in Fukuda Kiyoto, Kenyusha no Bungaku
undo (The Kenyusha Literary Movement), Hakubunkan reprint series, 1985 and Ikari
Akira, Kenyusha no bungaku (The Literature of Kenyusha), Kosensho, 1951.
54 Koen dowa were stories told aloud. Iwaya drew on both indigenous and foreign

traditions to construct his modern versions of these.

55 The powerful Japanese attraction for German philosophy and political theory is afascinating subject in its own right. While there is no space to discuss this here,
readers should note that the attraction was not merely a matter of culturalborrowing for its own sake but reflected a deep Japanese predisposition for German
ideas that was rooted in Japan’s own cultural and philosophical traditions. In
Iwaya’s case, see Ueda Toshiro, Iwaya Sazanami to doitsu bungaku: Otogibanashi no
minamoto (Iwaya Sazanami and German Literature: The Origins of the Fairy Tale)
Dainihon Tosho, 1991.
56 The impact of Noma and Kodansha on the development of children’s print media

comprises a separate chapter of my larger project. For more on Noma and Kodansha
in Japanese, see Sato, ‘Kingu’ no jidai and Noma’s own autobiography Watashi nohansei(Half My Life), Kodansha, 1936, also republished as Shuppan kyojin sogyo
monogatari: Sato Giryo, Noma Seiji, Iwanami Shigeo, (Founding Tales of the Great
Publishers), Shoshi Shinsui, 2005. A hagiographical treatment in English is Shunkichi
Akimoto, Seiji Noma, ‘Magazine King’ of Japan: A Sketch of his Life, Character, andEnterprises, Dai Nippon Yubenkai/Kodansha, 1927. Early postwar assessments ofNoma as the founder of prewar mass culture and Shonen kurabu’s role in thisprocess can be found in Kagawa Tomiko, “Noma Seiji to Kodansha bunka: masu
karucha no soshisha” (Noma Seiji and Kodansha Culture: The Founder of Mass
Culture), Shiso no kagaku (October 1959), 19-31 and Sato Tadao, “Shonen no
rishoshugi nit suite: Shonen kurabu no saihyoka” (Concerning the Idealism of Youth:
A Reevaluation of Boy’s World), Shiso no kagaku (March 1959), 15-31.
57 I have not been able to obtain accurate circulation figures but Shonen sekai’s

longevity alone, compared with that of most other children’s media until the WWI
years, suggests its dominance through the mid-1910s. This was certainly the official
position of Hakubunkan as can be seen in Tsubotani Yoshiyoro, Hakubunkan
gojunenshi (A Fifty-year History of Hakubunkan), Hakubunkan, 1937.
58 Nihon Kokkai Toshokanhen, Zasshi Mokuroku, vol. 3, Nihon Kokkai Toshokan

Henbu, 1981, 1701.

59. Captain Matsuzaki’s exploits were later immortalized just before the second
Sino-Japanese War in 1937 with the publication of Tsuji Zennosuke (ed), Ruishu
denki dainihonshi (Collected Biographies from Imperial Japanese History),
Yusankaku, 1935-1936.
60 The basic storyline comes from Hasegawa, Jido senso, 16-17.

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61 Ibid., 19.
62 “Sansho wa kotsubu demo piriri to karai,” Nichibei, July 1922, 34. Sansho is aJapanese pepper.

63 Ibid., 36-37. Visual images of men committing seppuku were not uncommon in

war and historical novels at this time. I have found examples in both girl’s and boy’s
magazines throughout the 1920s and 1930s.
64 Ibid., 36-37. The original artist for the illustrations in Nichibei was named until the

September 1922 issue when Yamada Rikken’s name appeared in each subsequentissue.
65 Hasegawa, Jido senso, 19. Huffman discusses this as well in Creating a Public, For a

discussion on Kunikida’s place in modern Japanese literary history, see, Edward
Fowler, The Rhetoric of Confession: Shishosetsu in Early Twentieth-Century JapaneseFiction, University of California Press, 1992, 74-75, 86-93, and Jay Rubin “Kunikida
Doppo,” Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1970 andInjurious to Public Morals.
Fowler is only English-language literary scholar I have encountered who discusses
the contributions to children’s literature made by many Meiji writers before theyattained fame as producers of adult fiction.
66 This account is taken from Hasegawa, Jido senso, 19-20.
67 Kyoka’s penchant for the fantastic and the bizarre is revealed in M. Cody

Poulton, Spirits of Another Sort: The Plays of Izumi Kyoka, Ann Arbor Center forJapanese Studies, University of Michigan, 2001. Like many scholars of adultliterature, however, Poulton pays little attention to Kyoka’s work as a children’s
writer.
68 Hirotsu was also a Kenyusha member. The Kenyusha presence suggests a numberof interesting points of analysis I am unable to explore here. It seems clear that
Iwaya actively sought contributions from members of his own group, who were inturn happy to earn some income in the early stages of their careers. In terms oflegacy, children’s fiction draws a fairly straight line from the Kenyusha men who
embraced the concept of playful composition (gesaku) and kanzen choaku. This is incontrast to the naturalist movement that overtook the Kenyusha group, theadherents of whom rarely entered into the field of children’s fiction.
69 Hasegawa, Jido senso, 20-21. This story reflects a gendering trend in children’s

media common to all martial traditions that permitted only Japanese boys toanticipate their fate in battle. Girls and women were relegated to support roles ofnurturer or nurse whose ability to face the enemy in battle had to await their rebirth
as males. This support role was not modern but the creation of new institutions likethe Red Cross gave it a particularly modern focus.
70 Nichibei, November 1922, 66.
71 Quoted in Hasegawa, Jido senso, 98.

Griffiths: Militarizing Japan: Patriotism, Profit, and Children’s Print Media127

72 See Ibid., 19 and James Huffman, Creating a Public, 199-224.
73 This point is made by many including Huffman, Creating a Public andRubin, Injurious to Public Morals.

74 Torigoe says that Kaitei gunkan’s enormous popularity since its publication in1900 may have created renewed interest in Ukishiroamong young readers. Torigoe
Shin and Nemoto Masagi, “Oshikawa Shunro to Tachikawa Bunko,” 108-09.
75 Ibid., p. 111.
76 Oshikawa Shunro, Kaitei gunkan, Hakubunkan, 1900. Ito participated in

the Battle of the Yalu River on September 17, 1894. The battle seems to have been adraw but is noteworthy because it was the first major naval encounter involving
ironclad ships with breech-loading guns.
77 Between 1911 and 1912 Oshikawa lost his two sons to illness, turned to drink anddied in 1914 from acute pneumonia. Although his mentor Iwaya is better known
in Japan, Oshikawa is one of the few writers of children’s fiction known
outside Japan.

78 Ito Hideo, Shonen shosetsu taikei, vol. 2, Sanichi Shobo, 1987, quoted in Torigoe

Shin and Nemoto Masagi, “Oshikawa Shunro to Tachikawa Bunko,” 109.

79 Oshikawa Shunro, “Keikai subeki Nihon” (A Warning for Japan), Boken sekai,

December 1910, reprinted in Meiji daizasshi fukuenpan (Meiji Reprint Series of Great
Magazines), Ryudo Shuppan, 1978, 174-179.
80 Ibid., 174.
81 Ibid., 174.
82 Ibid., 176.
83 Ibid., 177.
84 Ibid., 178. Oshikawa never identified these enemies clearly but he seemed to be

taking aim at the middle classes and all those who supported democratic ideals or
any form of egalitarianism.
85 English and Japanese sources generally agree on the importance of Verne andWells on the development of war adventures and science fiction in but only theJapanese sources have linked this specifically with children’s media. In English, see
Susan J. Napier, The Fantastic in Modern Japanese Literature: The Subversion ofModernity, Routledge, 1996 and Robert Matthew, Japanese Science Fiction: A View ofa Changing Society, Routledge, 1989.
86 A good general discussion of Euro-American literary influences on Meiji Japan isHirakawa Sukehiro, “Japan’s Turn to the West” (trans. Bob
Wakabayashi), Cambridge History of Japan, vol. 5, The Nineteenth Century,
Cambridge University Press, 1989, 432-498.

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87 Lea is a fascinating but relatively unknown character in modern history. Not quite

five feet tall, hunchbacked, and dismissed from West Point due to ill health, Lea
nonetheless managed find the martial life he so desperately sought, leading a ragtag
group of Chinese soldiers against the Boxers in 1900 before fleeing to Hong Kongand Japan with a price on his head courtesy of the Empress Cixi. In Japan Lea sought
out Sun Yat-sen who was so impressed by the little man, he promised to make Lea
his chief military adviser. Sun finally made good on his promise ten years later. With
the proclamation of the Chinese Republic in Nanjing on January 1, 1912, Sun madeLea a full general and his chief of staff. Lea never lived to direct the fortunes of the
new republic however. He suffered a massive stroke en route to America that same
year and died at age 35 in November 1912. Information on Homer Lea in English or
Japanese is thin. There is Eugene Anschel’s Homer Lea, Sun Yat-sen, and the Chinese
Revolution, Praeger Publishers, 1984, although I have not had a chance to consult
this work. In Japanese, see Hasegawa Ushio, Jido senso, 76-77, and Ueda Nobumichi,“Taisho ni okeru nichibei miraisenki no keifu, (“The Genealogy of the Japan-America
Future War Stories in the Taisho Era”), Jido Bungaku Kenkyu 29 (November 1,
1996), accessed here, July 12, 2006. The above storyline is taken from Simon Rees,“Homer Lea: Author of The Valor of Ignorance,” Military History, October 2004,
accessed online here, August 2, 2006. Rees says The Valor sold 84,000 in its
Japanese translation but provides no documentation. Lea also wrote Day of the
Saxon, which documented much the same story only relating
toGermany and England. At the time of his death, Lea was working on The Swarmingof the Slav, about the Russian war-like impulse. Overall, Lea’s works have adecidedly racist and misogynistic edge. In Valor he repeated disparages Jews asmoney mongers, feminists as enervating influences and displays open hostility to
Oriental immigration and the intermixing of the races. This he said would spell
doom for America.
88 Ike Ukichi, Nichibei senso, Hakubunkan, 1911. This information comes from Ueda

Nobumichi, “Taisho ni okeru nichibei miraisenki no keifu” and Rees, “Homer Lea.” The
Valor of Ignorance received mixed reviews in the United States but was read withgreat enthusiasm by the likes of Sun Yat-sen, Douglas MacArthur, General Adna
Chaffee, and Field Admiral Lord Frederick Roberts.
89 Homer Lea, The Valor of Ignorance, (Harper and Brothers, 1909), Simon

Publications 2001, 47.
90 Ibid, 48, 52, 56.
91 Ibid., 52-53.
92 Ibid., 76.
93 Ibid., 82.
94 Ibid., 66.

95 Lea never explained why Japan would want to occupy parts of America. He simply

assumed that the “law” of nations and Japan’s own uber-martiality dictated this.

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Curiously, this was the exact argument of Miyazaki and Oshikawa inreverse. Japan was at the mercy of the United States, according to them, because it
was far behind the US militarily and technologically.
96 Quoted in Hasegawa, Jido senso, 80.
97 Another example of this plotline is Abu Tempu’s future war classic “Taiyo wa

ketteri” (The Sun Victorious) serialized in Shonen kurabu from January 1926 until
Abu’s untimely death in November 1927.
98 Kuwahara, Shonen kurabu no goro: Showa zenki no Jido bungaku (The Age of Boy’s

Club: Early Showa Children’s Literature), Keio Tsushin, 1987, 91-93.

99 By “trace” I mean create in the sense that among all the stories we tell ourselves

about our origins a significant number relate to war. This is particularly true ofnational histories of the last 100 years and also of the manner in which we teach ourchildren in the classroom.
100 C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite, Oxford University Press, 1956, 184-85.
101 Ibid., 223.
102 The entire speech is reproduced here. Cited September 12, 2006.
103 Ibid.
104 Cynthia Enloe, The Curious Feminist: Searching for Women in a New Age of

Empire, University of California Press, 2004, 217-220.

105 Cynthia Enloe, “Beyond Steve Canyon and Rambo: Feminist Histories of

Militarized Masculinity,” in John R. Gillis (ed.), The Militarization of the WesternWorld, Rutgers University Press, 1989, 119, 139-140. See also Enloe, Maneuvers: The
International Politics of Militarizing Women’s Lives, University of California Press,
2000, 3-11. Here Enloe elaborates on the reach of militarization as a social process
and offers strategies by which it can be analyzed and critiqued.
106 Michael Geyer, “The Militarization of Europe, 1914-1945,” in J. R. Gillis (ed.), The

Militarization of the Western World, Rutgers University Press, 1993, 79.

107 Catherine Lutz, “Making War at Home in the United States: Militarization and theCurrent Crisis,” American Anthropologist 104:3, 2002, 725-727.

108 This statement corresponds to Enloe’s first three of seven core beliefs ofmilitarism as an ideology: “a) that armed force is the ultimate resolver of tensions;b) that human nature is prone to conflict; c) that having enemies is a natural
condition.” Ibid., 219. Clearly the interpreters of Lamarck and Darwin have much toanswer for.
109 A good discussion of the perceived dangers new definitions of womanhood andfemininity posed to Japanese conservatives in the 1920s and 1930s is Barbara
Sato, The New Japanese Woman: Modernity, Media, and Women in Interwar Japan,
Duke University Press, 2003.

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110 The focus on death also serves to deflect attention away from the fact that in war

one also kills. To say that one has died for a cause (for “us,” for example) is
psychologically more satisfying and acceptable than to say that one has killed forthat same cause. He who dies is a martyr or hero and retains a degree of humanitythat he who kills does not. And until recently this has meant man against man. In thevast, linked systems of war and its remembrances constructed by most countries in
the last century – Japan,Canada and America included – sacrificial death occupies
centre stage. It is death we mourn and glorify, even when hating war and its costs.
Thus, dying displaces killing and thus enables the intensification of militarization asa process because the public is compelled to remember and always support
sacrificial death. These systems of war and remembrance also include the media andthe images they collectively create as our vicarious experiences of war. Children’s
print media in Japan, for example, served as a valuable means of remembering war,particularly as new, victorious wars were grafted onto those of the past. This
process was particularly important after the Russo-Japanese War because few
adults or children from this time onward had any direct experience with war until
the 1930s. I explore this relationship between dying and killing elsewhere in Owen
Griffiths “What We Forget When We Remember the Pacific War,” Education
About Asia, (Spring 2006), 5-9.
111 Girls’ magazines like Shojo kurabu and shojjo no tomo published no future war

stories that I have found, although they did advertise them to girls. There were,
however, numerous adventures with girl protagonists who were usually motivatedto solve a mystery because of the death of a male relative. One example
is Miyazaki’s Yurejima (Ghost Island), Shojo kurabu, January – December 1925. Ueda
has argued that these stories were too fantastic to be taken as serious science fiction
because girls clearly did not have the physical power to subdue men. This seems toreflect a continued Japanese gender bias since such scenarios are no more fantastic
than boys overpowering men. See Ueda, “Miyazaki Ichiu no Jidobungaku.”
112 Kimata Osamu, "Bakumatsu aikoku josei no uta: Minatogawa kiyoku nagareshi"(Songs of Female Patriots of the Bakumatsu Era: The Minato River flows
purely) Shojo kurabu, January 1945, 5-7.

113 This letter was published by Goto Shosa of the War Ministry’s Information

Bureau under the title "Kamiwashi o miokuru" (Bidding Farewell to the Divine
Eagles), Shojo kurabu, February 1945. 19.
114 Charles Tilly, “War Making and the State as Organized Crime,” in Peter B. Evans,

Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and Theda Skocpol (eds.), Bringing the State Back In,
Cambridge University Press, 1985, 170-171.
115 The reciprocal relationship between print media and the Japanese public is acentral theme in Huffman’s, Creating a Public. Japanese scholars like Torigoe, Ueda,
and Hasegawa, tend to shy away from the idea of print media as a collection of
agents. When asking whether men like Iwaya, Oshikawa, or Miyazaki were
militarists, for example, they evade the hard answer, opting for the simpler, lesspointed one that these men were products of their times.

Griffiths: Militarizing Japan: Patriotism, Profit, and Children’s Print Media
116 Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon, Kessinger Publishing,

2001, 3-4.

117 Helen Mears, Mirror For Americans: Japan, Houghton Mifflin, 1948.

131

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Jack London: The Adventurer-Writer who Chronicled Asian Wars, Confronted
Racism—and Saw the Future (Revised)
Daniel A. Métraux
He stood among the Japanese soldiers wearing a weather-beaten visored cap over
his short, dark hair and a rough hewn jacket covering his broad soldiers, a cigaretteangling away from his square jaw and a camera dangling from his gloved hand. As
they studied documents, the Japanese troops contrasted with Jack London in theirbox hats and high collared uniforms. A photographer present immortalized London
looking like the adventurer and writer that he was, one drawn to the battle like a
missionary to his calling, who skillfully recorded the machinations of great powers
while sympathizing
with the underdogs who
struggled to survive.
Jack London (18761916), easily the mostpopular American
writer a century ago, isstill praised for his
Yukon novels and shortstories such as The Callof the Wild, WhiteFang and To Build a Fire.
However, his visits toJapan, Korea andManchuria; his factual,
hard hitting coverage of
the Russo-Japanese War(1904-05); his astuteshort stories about SinoLondon negotiates passage with a Japanese officer in Korea
Japanese competition;
during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05
his prophetic essays
predicting the rise of the Pacific Rim, and his call for respect and constructive
interaction between Americans and Asians over "yellow peril" hysteria are
undeservedly forgotten. These salient aspects of London's life deserve to beremembered and respected. They evidence his keen intelligence, painfully accurate
vision of the future and the progressive and humane values that are still needed tobridge the East and West.
The Yellow Peril Threatens the West?
Today the term “The Yellow Peril” — but not necessarily the fears and fantasies thatit engenders — has gone out of fashion. But in the late nineteenth and earlytwentieth centuries, Westerners' dreams about the "superiority" of their civilizationcompeted with their nightmares of Oriental hordes swarming from the East to
engulf the advanced West. This was a popular theme in the day's literature andBradshaw, Ransdell: Japan, Britain and the Yellow Peril in Africa in the 1930s

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journalism, which London knew well. The term “Yellow Peril” supposedly derives
from German Kaiser Wilhelm II's warning following Japan’s defeat of China in 1895
in the first Sino-Japanese War. The expression initially referred to Tokyo’s sudden
rise as a military and industrial power in the late nineteenth century. Soon,
however, its more sinister meaning was broadly applied to all of Asia. “The Yellow
Peril” highlighted diverse Western fears including the supposed threat of a militaryinvasion from Asia, competition to the white labor force from Asian workers, thealleged moral degeneracy of Asian people and the spectre of the genetic mixing of
Anglo-Saxons with
Asians.1
Many writers andjournalists in the early
1900s wielded an
unflattering pen whenwriting about Asians,boasting of Anglo-Saxon
superiority over the“yellow and brown”
Asians. The Hearst
newspapers stridently
warned of the “yellow
peril”. So did noted
British novelist M. P.
Shiel in his short story
The Russo-Japanese War saw Japan alter the world balance ofserial, The Yellow
power that the West once dominated, triggering viceral fears of aDanger. One finds
yellow peril
similar views in
Kipling’s poem “TheWhite Man’s Burden” and in some of his stories and novels.
London in the Dock: His Defense is on the Page
John R. Eperjesi, a London scholar, writes that “More than any other writer, London
fixed the idea of a yellow peril in the minds of the turn-of-the-century
Americans…”2 Many biographers quote London, just after his return from covering
the first months of the Russo-Japanese War for the Hearst newspapers in 1904, as
telling a coterie of fellow socialists of his profound dislike for the “yellow man.”
Biographer Richard O’Connor quotes Robert Dunn, a fellow journalist with London
during the Russo-Japanese war, as saying that Jack’s dislike of the Japanese “outdid
mine. Though a professed socialist, he really believed in the Kaiser’s ‘yellow peril.’”3
Are these charges correct? If so, they would cast London as a bigot and alarmist.
In fact, a close examination of London’s writing shows the opposite: he was ahead of
his time intellectually and morally. His Russo-Japanese war dispatches from Korea
and Manchuria around 1904-5 are balanced and objective reporting, evincing
concern for the welfare of both the average Japanese soldier and Russian soldier andWhite Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-1930

134

the Korean peasant, and respect for the ordinary Chinese whom he met. As perhaps
the most widely read of the journalists covering that war, London emerges as one of
the era's writers who sensed that the tide of white “superiority” and Western
expansionism and imperialism was receding.
His positive views of Asians can be traced back a decade earlier to his first publishedstories and later writing such as his essays “The Yellow Peril” and “If Japan Awakens
China” and his short story, “The Unparalleled Invasion” — see below. Even as many
Americans held racist beliefs about Asians, London expressed more liberal views.
Japanese Aggression, Chinese Pride
In addition, as an analyst, London's deep understanding of how the industrial,
politico-strategic and social worlds were profoundly changing surpassed that of his
peers. His fiction and essays explored the appearance of new industrial powers in
the East, as well as Western counter moves and inter-Asian tensions, too. London
shrewdly predicted elements of the coming age of revolution, total war, genocideand even terrorism. This renders his writing painfully relevant. As Jonah Raskin
observed, “In a short, volatile life of four decades, Jack London (1876-1916)
explored and mapped the territory of war and revolution in fiction and non-fiction
alike. More accurately than any other writer of his day, he also predicted the shapeof political power – from dictatorship to terrorism – that would emerge in thetwentieth century, and his work is as timely today as when it was first written.”4
For instance, during and after his time in Korea and Manchuria, London developed acomplicated thesis in his 1904 essay, "The Yellow Peril," envisaging the rise first ofJapan and then China in opposition as major twentieth century economic andindustrial powers.
London's starting point was his suspicion that Japan's imperial appetite exceeded its
swallowing of Korea in the Russo-Japanese War. He anticipated that Tokyo would
eventually take over Manchuria and then attempt to seize control of China in theattempt to use China’s vast land, resources and labor for its own benefit.
London knew that Japan’s strength at the turn of the twentieth century lay in its
ability to use Western technology and its national unity. London and some othercontemporary writers, as well as many politically attuned Asians recognized thatJapan’s defeat of Russia was a turning point in a history of Asian subjugation towhite imperial powers. Japan’s victory called into question as no previous event the
innate superiority of the white race.5
However, London believed that there were severe limits on Japan’s ability to
become a leading world power. However impressive its initial gains, Tokyo would
falter from lack of "staying power." One reason was that it was too small. Although it
had humbled Russian forces, London believed that it was not sufficiently powerful
to create a massive Asian empire, still less to militarily or economically threaten theWest. Seizing “poor, empty Korea for a breeding colony and Manchuria for a
granary” would greatly enhance Japan’s population and strength -- but that was notenough to challenge the great powers.

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Simultaneously, London saw that Asians themselves would be antagonists. He
clearly distinguished between the Chinese and Japanese, at times -- ironically -referring to the Chinese as the “Yellow Peril” and the Japanese as the “Brown Peril.”Japan would launch its crusade promising “Asia for the Asiatics” as its clarion call,but its aggression would catalyze Chinese resistance.6
China's Rise Provokes the White Peril's Germs
In "The Yellow Peril," London's conclusion left the reader hanging. Althougharoused, China's vast potential is hindered. Its leaders hew tenaciously to the past.
Clinging to power and tradition, they refuse to modernize and so China's fate is
uncertain. London does not tell the reader who will prevail. However, in his 1906
short story, “The Unparalleled Invasion,” London develops the theme of China's rise.
The Japanese are expelled from China and are crushed when they try to reassert
themselves there. China then becomes a major power.
Writing a century ago, London warned that the imperial West, blissfully ignorant ofwhat awaited it, was living in a bubble. The shift of power to Asia was the prick thatwould burst it. The transition would be peaceful because Asia’s rise was primarily
economic, but eventually war between East and West was inevitable because China
challenged the economic might of the West. Although critics have read different
messages into the story, the clear irony is that the West is the paranoid aggressor. It
is a White Peril and China is the innocent victim.
But “contrary to expectation, China did not prove warlike [so] after a time ofdisquietude, the idea was accepted that China was not to be feared in war, but incommerce.” The West would come to understand that the “real danger” from China“lay in the fecundity of her loins.” As the 20th century advances, the story depicts
Chinese immigrants swarming into French Indochina and later into Southwest Asia
and Russia, seizing territory. Western attempts to slow or stem the Chinese tide all
fail. By 1975 it appears that this onslaught will overwhelm the world.
With despair mounting, an American scientist, Jacobus Laningdale, visits the WhiteHouse to propose eradicating the entire Chinese population. He aims to drop deadly
plagues from Allied airships over China. In May, 1976, the bombers appear over
China and release a torrent of glass tubes.7 At first nothing happens, then an infernoof plagues gradually wipes out the entire population. Allied armies surround China
and all Chinese die. Even the seas are closed because 75,000 Allied naval vessels
blockade China’s coast. “Modern war machinery held back the disorganized mass ofChina, while the plagues did the work.”8Here, let’s praise London's piece as a stern warning about bio-warfare. He wrote
when strategists were investigating the new concept of germ weapons. London
sounds an alarm over such hazards that world powers ignored as they rushed into
the gas clouds and carnage of World War I. Decades later, Japan would unleash biowarfare against China’s cities in the China-Japan War of 1937-45, and China andNorth Korea would charge the US with waging germ warfare during the Korean War.

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More broadly it is worth reflecting on London’s vision in light of the changes of thelast few decades in East Asia. Above all, this has been a story of the rise of East Asia.
First Japan’s, and later Taiwan’s South Korea’s and China's, wealth and power havegrown spectacularly. East Asia’s resurgence has challenged the status quo ofAmerican and European dominance. Now the exponents of the "China Threat"school insist that this could auger a military challenge that transforms the balance ofpower in Asia and the Pacific.
In short, long before Samuel Huntington, London anticipated a clash of civilizations.
His readers see how the vast cultural differences that divide the West from China
spark hatred and malice in the former. The focus here is not the Chinese danger tothe West, but its reverse. As Jean Campbell Reesman points out, “London’s story is a
strident warning against race hatred and its paranoia, and an alarm sounded against
an international policy that would permit and encourage germ warfare. It is also anindictment of imperialist governments per se.”9
He anticipates that the wars of the twentieth century will exact an unprecedented
death toll among armies and civilians. Indeed, the world can regret London'sprescience. To avoid this fate, London urges the West to understand the new Asiaand to live with non-white peoples in a spirit of brotherhood.
Conclusion: London the Internationalist Still Speaks to Us
London’s views of Asians and the Pacific's other non-white people became morerefined in the last seven years of his life during and after his 1907-1909 trip to theSouth Pacific aboard his decrepit schooner, the Snark. London’s increasingly pannational world view led to his 1915 recommendation of a “Pan-Pacific Club” where
Easterners and Westerners could meet congenially in a "forum" to exchange views
and share ideas as equals. Far from being the thoughts of a racist, they are the visionof an internationalist. In particular, London wanted Americans and Japanese toassociate to promote mutual respect and understanding.
Jack London traveled extensively during his short but active life. He encountered
diverse cultures that he tried to understand. He empathized with the downtrodden
in the United States, Europe, East Asia and the South Pacific. His “Pan-Pacific Club”
essay is his final appeal for the West to overcome stereotypical view of Asians as
inferior peoples who needed Western domination for their betterment. AlthoughLondon died in 1916, the words of this realistic and humane writer still speak to us.
Jack London Reporting From Manchuria[Editor’s Note: The Hearst newspaper empire hired Jack London to be its chiefcorrespondent covering the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905). When London
arrived in Tokyo in late January 1904, he found that the Japanese government would
not allow foreign correspondents near its army as it marched north through Korea
to meet Russian forces in Manchuria. Refusing to spend the war attending banquets,
London raced across Japan searching for a vessel to take him to Korea.

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London astride Belle in Japan137

After considerable
difficulty, he caught up
with the Japanese army
in late winter 1904 in
Korea and accompanied
the troops as theymarched north throughKorea and into
Manchuria to confront
the Russians. London
continued his coverageof the war through Juneof 1904. The following
dispatch followed
Japan’s victory overRussian forces in a tense
battle for control of the
Yalu River between
Korea and Manchuria.

“Beware the Monkey Cage”
ANTUNG, Manchuria. May 10th, 1904. The Japanese, following the German model,
make every possible preparation, take every possible precaution, and then proceed
to act, confident in the belief that nothing short of a miracle can prevent success.
Opposed to their three divisions on the Yalu was a greatly inferior Russian force, but
the Japanese had to cross the river under fire and attack an enemy lying in wait forthem.
By the manipulation of their three divisions, and what of their ruses, they must havesadly befuddled the Russians. At the mouth of the Yalu the Japanese had two small
gunboats, two torpedo boats and four small steamers armed with Hotchkiss-guns.
Also they had fifty sampans loaded with bridge materials. These were intended for apermanent bridge at Wiju; but they served another purpose—first, farther down thestream. The presence of the small navy and the loaded sampans led the Russians tobelieve that right there was where the bridge was to be built. So right there theystationed some three thousand men to prevent the building of the bridge. Thus a
handful of Japanese sailors kept 3,000 Russian soldiers occupied in doing nothing
and reduced the effectiveness of the Russian strength that much.

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Another ruse was thebuilding of a bridge infront of Wiju. This wasin plain view of theRussians on the conicalhill opposite just east of
Kieu-Liang-Cheng, andthey consumed muchtime and powder inshelling it. This was
precisely what theJapanese intended forthe bridge. While it held Woodblock print depicting Japanese victory over the Russians at
Chongju. Kyōko Hasegawa Sonokichi Umezawa horu Illustration
the Russian attention, aof the Russo-Japanese War: Our Armed Forces Occupy Chongju
little farther down the(Nichiro kōsen zuga, wagagun Teishū o senryō su) Ukiyo-e print;
stream the Japanese
Russo-Japanese War 1904 (Meiji 37), March. Museum of Fine
Arts, Boston. Visualizing Cultures.
were at work on
another bridge screenedby small willow trees on the intervening island, and which, when completed, had
never had a shot fired at it.
Have you ever stood in front of a cage wherein there was a monkey gazing
innocently and peaceably into your eyes—so innocent and peaceable the hands
grasping the bars and wholly unbelligerent, the eyes that bent with friendly interest
on yours, and all the while and unbeknown a foot sliding out to surprise yourfancied security and set you shrieking with sudden fright? Beware the monkey cage!
You have need of more than your eyes; and beware the Japanese. When he sits down
stupidly to build a bridge with his two hands before your eyes, have a thought to thequiet place behind the willow-screen where another bridge is builded by his twofeet. He works with his hands and his feet, he works night and day, and he neverdoes one thing expected of him, and that is the unexpected thing.
The night of April 29th and the day of the 30th was an anxious time for the Japanese.
Their army was cut in half, and it was no less than the Yalu that divided it. One-thirdof its force, the Z division, had crossed the river to the right and was in Manchuria.
They had no very accurate knowledge of the Russian strength, and it was notbeyond liability that the Russians might make a counter attack on the Z division anddestroy it. So the X and Y divisions on the south bank were in momentary readinessto prevent this by delivering an attack upon the Russians straight across the river.
But there was no need for this. The Russians were not in sufficient force to attack asingle division, advancing as it was across mountainous country. This, in turn, theJapanese did not know, but they prepared for the possibility as they prepare foreverything.
The Ai-ho river flows out of Manchuria and enters the Yalu valley a mile or more
above Kieu-Liang-Chen. It also flows past that village, close to the Manchurian shore,
thus interposing an obstacle to the advance of the whole Japanese army (even the ZBradshaw, Ransdell: Japan, Britain and the Yellow Peril in Africa in the 1930s

139

division), after it had crossed the Yalu proper. The crossing of the Ai-ho wasseriously menaced by the sixteen guns of the Russian right on the conical hill. The
day’s work for April 30th was to put these sixteen guns out of business. The
Japanese bent themselves to the task. It was an exposed position and aconcentration of fire lasting twenty-five minutes and in which time sixty commonshells were thrown, did the work. The Russian fire was silenced and the guns werewithdrawn that night! Incidentally the Japanese bombed the Russian camp,carelessly situated where it was exposed from the Korean hills, and wrought great
havoc.
On the night of April 30th the X and Y divisions crossed the main Yalu and rested on
the sands, with the Ai-ho between them and the Russians. The X division forming
the Japanese left, faced the Russian right on the conical hill, and the Y division was
extended near the mouth of the Ai-ho; and up the Ai-ho, extended for several miles,
lay the Z division. Opposing these three divisions was a Russian actual fighting force
of about 4,000 men. The Russian line, extending some six or seven miles, was notintact. In fact, because of the lay of the land, the Russians really occupied two
positions—one on and about the conical hill at Kieu-Leng-Cheng, the other at the Aiho, from its mouth several miles up.
Against these two positions, occupied by about 2,000 men, was hurled an army ofthree divisions (probably 25,000 men actually on the spot), backed by a powerfulartillery of field guns and howitzers. Prevented by shell fire and shrapnel from doing
their best to repel the general attack, and being flanked by an immensely superior
force, the Russian left on the Ai-ho broke first and fled in the direction of theHamatan. The Russian right on the conical hill, fought more, tenaciously, thesurvivors in turn fleeing toward Hamatan.

Banri Narazawa Kenjirō Umezawa horu Scene of Our Second
Army Occupying Nanshan in a Fierce Battle at the Fall ofJinzhoucheng (Kinshūjō kanraku waga dainigun no gekisen
Nanzan senryō no kōkei) Ukiyo-e print; Russo-Japanese War
1904 (Meiji 37), Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Visualizing
Culturesguns, delayed by the Ai-ho followed at a gallop.

The Japanese
understand the utility ofthings. Reserves they
consider should be
used, not only tostrengthen the line orprotect the repulsed
line, but in the momentof victory to clinch
victory hard and fast.
The reserves, fresh andchafing from inaction
wild to take part in aglorious day, received
the order for generalpursuit. Right, left andcenter, they took after
the Russians. The fieldWhite Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-1930

140

The retreat became a rout. The Russian reserves, two regiments, had fled without
firing a shot—at least the Japanese have no record of these two regiments. Hamatan
is at the conjunction of three roads, six miles to the rear of the conical hill. Down
these three roads the Russians ran, coming together and passing on to the main
road—the Pekin or Mandarin road. And down these three roads, from left, right, andcenter, came the fresh reserves, and after them the artillery.
In the meantime, however, far from the Japanese right and outstripping the rest of
the pursuit, arrived one company of men in time to cut off fifteen Russian guns andeight maxims. The remnants of the three battalions rallied around the guns. A hasty
position was taken. The rest of the pursuing Japanese did not arrive. But one
company of men stood between the Russians and the Pekin Road. And it stood. Its
captain and three lieutenants were killed. One officer only remained alive. The last
cartridge was fired. Those that survived fixed their bayonets ready to receive acharge. And in the moment, left, right, and center, their pursuing comrades arrived.
The Russians were assailed from three sides. The tables were turned but they foughtwith equal courage. The day was lost; they knew it; yet they fought on doggedly.
Night was falling. As the Japanese grew closer the Russians turned loose theirhorses, destroyed or threw away the breechblocks of their guns, smashed thebreeches of the maxims and then, as bayonet countered bayonet, drew whitehandkerchiefs from their pockets in token of surrender.
One other noteworthy thing occurred in the Japanese pursuit. Midway to Hamatan,
flying on the heels of a rout, in the very heat and sweep of triumph, they dropped aline of reserves to receive and protect them should they be hurled back broken andcrushed by Russian re-enforcements. Hand in hand with terrifying bravery goes thiscold-blooded precaution. Verily, nothing short of the miracle can wreck a plan they
have once started to put into execution. The men furnish the unfaltering bravery,
confident in their knowledge that their officers have furnished the precaution.
Of course, the officers are as brave as the men. On the night of the 30th, when thearmy took up its position on the Ai-ho, it was not known whether that stream wasfordable. Officers from each of the three divisions stripped and swam or waded theriver at many different points, practically under the rifles of the Russians.
“Men determined to die” is the way one Japanese officer characterized thevolunteers who answer in large number to every call for dangerous work. Not
knowing whether the Ai-ho was fordable, three plans were seriously considered.
First, each soldier was to go into action May 1st dressed in cartilage belt andequipped with a rifle and a board, the latter to be used as a means for paddlingacross the Ai-ho. Second, same garb and equipment with a tub substituted for theboard, and third, the strongest swimmers to cross over with ropes, along which,when once fast on the other side bank, the weaker swimmers and non-swimmers
could make their way. In any case, had the river not proved fordable, Kipling’s“Taking the Long-Tong-Pen” would have been repeated on a most formidable scale.
Surely the Russians would have broken and fled perceptibly before so terrible acharge.

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Every division, every battery was connected with headquarters by field telephone.
When the divisions moved forward they dragged their wires after them like spiders
drag the silk of their webs. Even the tiny navy at the mouth of the Yalu was inconstant communication with headquarters. Thus, on a wide-stretching and largely
invisible field, the commander-in-chief was in immediate control of everything.
Inventions, weapons, systems (the navy modeled after the English, the army after
the German) everything utilized by the Japanese has been supplied by the Westernworld; but the Japanese have shown themselves the only Eastern people capable ofutilizing them.
If Japan Awakens China[London wrote this piece in 1909, five years after his return from Manchuria. He
predicts the rise of Japan and its endeavor to transform itself into a major world
power by harnessing the labor of four hundred million Chinese. The Chinese, hesuggested, would in turn eventually overthrow their conservative leaders, drive out
the Japanese and develop a prosperous modern economy. Excerpts.]
The point that I have striven to make is that much of the reasoning of the white race
about the Japanese is erroneous, because is it based on fancied knowledge of the
stuff and fiber of the Japanese mind. An American lady of my acquaintance, after
residing for months in Japan, in response to a query as to how she liked theJapanese, said: “They have no souls.”
In this she was wrong. The Japanese are just as much possessed of a soul as she andthe rest of her race. And far be it from me to infer that the Japanese soul is in thesmallest way inferior to the Western soul. It may even be superior. You see, we do
not know the Japanese soul, and what its value may be in the scheme of things. And
yet that American lady’s remark but emphasizes the point. So different was theJapanese soul from hers, so unutterably alien, so absolutely without any kinship ormeans of communication, that to her there was no slightest sign of its existence.
Japan, in her remarkable evolution, has repeatedly surprised the world. Now theelement of surprise can be present only when one is unfamiliar with the data that go
to constitute the surprise. Had we really known the Japanese, we should not havebeen surprised. And as she has surprised us in the past, and only the other day, may
she not surprise us in the days that are yet to be? And since she may surprise us in
the future, and since ignorance is the meat and wine of surprise, who are we, andwith what second sight are we invested, that we may calmly say: “Surprise is all very
well, but there is not going to be any Yellow peril or Japanese peril?”
There are forty-five million Japanese in the world. There are over four hundred
million Chinese. That is to say, that if we add together the various branches of thewhite race, the English, the French, and the German, the Austrian, the Scandinavian,and the white Russian, the Latins as well, the Americans, the Canadians, Australians
and New Zealanders, the South Africans, the Anglo Indians, and all the scatteredremnants of us, we shall find that we are still outnumbered by the combined
Japanese and Chinese.

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We understand the Chinese mind no more than we do the Japanese. What if these
two races, as homogenous as we, should embark on some vast race-adventure?
There have been no race adventures in the past. We English-speaking peoples are
just now in the midst of our own great adventure. We are dreaming as all raceadventurers have dreamed. And who will dare to say that in the Japanese mind is
not burning some colossal Napoleonic dream? And what if the dreams clash?
Japan is the one unique Asiatic race, in that alone among the races of Asia, she has
been able to borrow from us and equip herself with all our material achievement.
Our machinery of warfare, of commerce, and of industry she has made hers. And sowell has she done it that we have been surprised. We did not think she had it in her.
Next consider China. We of the West have tried, and tried vainly, to awaken her. We
have failed to express our material achievements in terms comprehensible to theChinese mind. We do not know the Chinese mind. But Japan does. She and China
spring from the same primitive stock—their languages are rooted in the same
primitive tongue; and their mental processes are the same. The Chinese mind may
baffle us, but it cannot baffle the Japanese. And what if Japan wakens China—not to
our dream, if you please, but to her dream, to Japan’s dream? Japan, having takenfrom us all our material achievement, is alone able to transmute that material
achievement in terms intelligible to the Chinese mind.
The Chinese and Japanese are thrifty and industrious. China possesses great natural
resources of coal and iron—and coal and iron constitute the backbone of machine
civilization. When four hundred and fifty million of the best workers in the world go
into manufacturing, a new competitor, and a most ominous and formidable one, willenter the arena where the races struggle for the world-market. Here is the raceadventure—the first clashing of the Asiatic dream with ours. It is true, it is only an
economic clash, but economic clashes always precede clashes at arms. And whatthen? Oh, only that will-o’-wisp, the Yellow peril. But to the Russian, Japan was only
a will-o’-wisp until one day, with fire and steel, she smashed the great adventure of
the Russian and punctured the bubble-dream he was dreaming. Of this be sure: if
ever the day comes that our dreams clash with that of the Yellow and the Brown,
and our particular bubble-dream is punctured, there will be one country at least
unsurprised, and that country will be Russia. She was awakened from her dream.
We are still dreaming.

Daniel A. Métraux is Professor of Asian Studies at Mary Baldwin College in Staunton,
Virginia. He recently served as president of the Southeast Chapter of the Association
for Asian Studies and as editor of the Southeast Review of Asian Studies. His books on
Japanese and Asian affairs include The Soka Gakkai Revolution (1994) and Burma’s
Modern Tragedy (2004). His most recent book, The Asian Writings of Jack London:
Essays, Letters, Newspaper Dispatches, and Short Fiction by Jack London was
published by Edwin Mellen Press in 2009. An earlier article on London, “Jack London
Reporting from Tokyo and Manchuria: The Forgotten Role of an Influential Observerof Early Modern Asia," appeared in Asia Pacific Perspectives in June 2008. He wrote

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this article for The Asia-Pacific Journal. The author thanks Victor Fic for editing this
text.
Notes
1 See William F. Wu, The Yellow Peril: Chinese-Americans in American Fiction, 1850-

1940 (Hamden CT: Archon Books, 1982).

2 John R. Eperjesi, The Imperialist Imaginary: Visions of Asia and the Pacific in

American Culture (Hanover: Dartmouth University Press, 2005, 108)

3 Richard O’Connor, Jack London: A Biography (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1964),

214.

4 Jonah Raskin, The Radical Jack London: Writing on War and Revolution (Berkeley:

University of California Press, 2008), 1.
5 John R. Eperjesi, The Imperialist Imaginary, 109.
6 “The menace to the Western world lies not in the little brown man, but in the four

hundred millions of yellow men should the little brown man undertake their
management.” Jack London Reports, 346

7 See Tsuneishi Keiichi, “Unit 731 and the Japanese Imperial Army’s Biological

Warfare Program. See also Stephen Endicott, The United States and Biological
Warfare: Secrets from the Early Cold War and Korea. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1998. Critics have strongly challenged Endicott’s key points
concerning the alleged use of germ warfare in the Korean War.
8 Jack London, “The Unparalleled Invasion“ in Dale L Walker, Ed., Curious

Fragments (Port Jefferson NY: Kenkat Press, 1976), 119.

9 Jeanne Campbell Reesman, Jack London: A Study of the Short Fiction (New York:

Twayne Publishers, 1999), 91.

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Japan, Britain and the Yellow Peril in Africa in the 1930s
Richard Bradshaw and Jim Ransdell
During the 1930s, a dramatic increase in Japanese exports to Africa and Japan’s
growing influence in Ethiopia led many Europeans and South African whites to
evoke the specter of the ‘Yellow Peril’ and to call for measures to halt Japan’s‘penetration’ of Africa. Japan’s close ties with Ethiopia and her growing exports toSouth Africa were of particular concern. Japan and Italy were able to reach an
agreement with regard to their conflict of interest in Ethiopia, but Japan’s relations
with the British Empire suffered as a result of anti-Japanese sentiment in South
Africa.
Growing Chinese economic and political influence in Africa has recently received
considerable attention,1 but this is not the first time that the projection of Asian
power into Africa has provoked great concern. In the 1930s, a rapid rise in Japanese
exports to Africa and Japan’s close ties with Ethiopia invoked cries of the ‘Yellow
Peril’ and led to efforts to stop Japan’s penetration of Africa.2 Barriers to Japanese
exports were erected all over Africa to secure markets for the colonial powers ofEurope, Britain in particular.3 With decline in European exports during World War I,
the Japanese had been able to gain an economic foothold in countries such as theUnion of South Africa.4 This growth of Japanese exports to southern Africa during
the first decades of the 20th century coincided with the growth of South African
economic nationalism, which, in turn, led to public hysteria among European
competitors and domestic business interests over what was perceived as Japanese
economic “dumping.”5 The conclusion of a “Gentleman’s Agreement” with Japan by
Prime Minister Hertzog’s government in the 1930s further antagonized white South
Africans who displayed widespread bi-partisan hostility to the arrangement. Later,
following the Great Depression and South Africa’s gold standard crisis, the economic
concerns of South African whites were compounded with worries over Japan’s
political ambitions in Ethiopia.6
This became a matter of concern from Rome to Cape Town at the time of the ItaloEthiopian crisis of 1934-35, during which Italy feared that Japan would provide
military assistance to Ethiopia, were it attacked. Though this incident initially saw
public outcry on both sides, it ultimately brought Italy and Japan closer together.
The Italian and Japanese governments were able to overcome their clash of interests
in Africa by reaching a compromise regarding their respective spheres of influencein Ethiopia and Manchuria. But for the British, the Japanese activities
in Manchukuo (満州国) combined with the ongoing competition between the twoover exports throughout Africa was a point of tension dividing the two former allies.
Rising Japanese exports to Africa
Although Britain's trade with foreign countries was far greater than its trade with
its colonies, its diminishing overseas sales were most apparent in its
colonies.7 African consumers were particularly attracted to low-priced Japanese
goods. While Japan maintained an adverse balance of trade with British dominions

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prior to the 1930s, it subsequently came to have a favorable exchange with them in
the 1930s.8
The most important new markets for Japanese goods in Africa were the Britishcolonies of East Africa where, in most cases, free entry of Japanese goods wasprotected by treaty. As the following tables indicate, Japanese exports of cotton andrayon textiles subsequently came to constitute a serious threat to British textiles in
East Africa.

British measures to curtail even the rather modest growth of Japanese trade with
British West Africa particularly offended the Japanese.9 This was further
exacerbated by the efforts of British allies, such as the French, to restrict the flow ofJapanese goods into their colonies and dependencies such as Morocco.10 To theJapanese, it appeared clear that the British and other European colonial powers
were selectively discriminating against Japanese goods. The erection of barriers toJapan's exports throughout colonial Africa in places such as Portuguese Africa11 andEgypt12 thus led to further Anglo-Japanese alienation during a time when theworld’s political climate was becoming ever tenser. Still, the greatest point of
economic contention was South Africa.

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Asian-South African relations before the Great Depression
Commercial contacts between Asia and South Africa were first stimulated by thefounding of Dutch East India Company (DEIC) posts in both locations during theseventeenth century. The possibility of exporting animal skins from South Africa toJapan was one of the reasons DEIC employee Jan van Riebeeck offered forestablishing a post in South Africa in 1652.13 Between the late seventeenth and earlytwentieth centuries, a small quantity of goods passed between Japan and South
Africa in Dutch, British (after c. 1800), and Indian (after c. 1870) ships. However, thereal turning point for South African-Japanese trade relations was World War I,
during which Japanese trade with South Africa flourished as Japan replaced theEuropean countries that had become entangled in the conflict on the continent.
Though imports decreased from their wartime boom to less than 4 million yen by
1920, this was still nearly ten times the value of the trade prior to World War I. By
1921 trade relations had deepened and the value of Japanese exports to the Union ofSouth Africa was again experiencing substantial growth. By 1926, a combination offalling costs of cotton thread and favorable exchange rates gave Japanese goods a
new opportunity in South Africa.14 Thus, late 1920s South African protectionists
began to express concern over the extent to which Japanese exports of certain
products (notably silk goods, cotton textiles, and clothing) had grown. Intent on
stimulating the growth of South African industry, the Nationalist-Labor Pact
government led by General Barry Hertzog, who served as prime minister of South
Africa from 1924-1939, enacted a tariff reform in 1925. Further protective
measures included anti-Asian legislation, such as the 1913 Immigration Act, which
had provisions aimed against all Asians, but effectively prohibited Japanese fromresiding and doing business in South Africa. Troubled by this restriction, theJapanese Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce sent Magoichi Nunokawa (孫一布川) in late 1916 to negotiate an agreement that the 1913 Act would not apply to theJapanese, but the British government, which still deeply influenced South African
policymaking, intervened to put an end to the negotiation. Although South Africa
had gained considerable autonomy after the formation of the Union of South Africa
in 1910, British influence, particularly in the realm of foreign policy, was still quite
strong.
Growing fear of a ‘Yellow Peril’The next decade, under PM Hertzog, saw the growth of discrimination in various
forms while the Japanese still struggled to extricate themselves from the anti-Asianlegislation. Hertzog's election campaign of June 1929 focused on the Swart Gevaar or"Black Peril" and advocated increasing discriminatory policies on various fronts.
However, in October 1930, South Africa began to feel the Great Depression. Between
1928/9 and 1932/315 the value of wool exports from the Union fell by over 70
percent. As discriminatory legislation restricted potential buyers, the Union’s need
to attract businessmen who would purchase more wool dictated changes in policy.16
Accordingly, on 2 September 1930, the Union Ministry of Agriculture decided topermit Japanese wool purchasers to enter South Africa. Then, on 16 October 1930,

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the acting Japanese consul in Cape Town, Yamasaki Sakashige (山崎坂重) and acting
external affairs secretary, W.G.H. Farrell, exchanged notes stating that Pretoria
would, upon the recommendation of the Japanese consul, grant a temporary permit
valid for one year to Japanese tourists, students, wholesale merchants andpurchasers of South African goods to enter and reside in the Union. The document
stated that, “no Japanese subject whose admission is recommended by the Consul
for Japan in terms of this understanding will be served on arrival at a Union portwith a notice declaring him to be a prohibited immigrant.”17
Criticism of what came to be known as the “Gentleman’s Agreement” began in March
1931 and continued throughout the summer, the overarching fear being thatJapanese stores would soon proliferate throughout the country. When suchconcerns surfaced during debates in the Assembly on 5 July 1931, interior minister
Dr. Daniel F. Malan, the leader of the Nationalist Party in the Cape, ridiculed the ideathat the Union would be overrun by Japanese retail traders, factory employees andfarm hands, but then disagreed with the critics of the treaty who argued that only
Japanese wholesale buyers should be allowed admittance into the country.18
A few days later a letter in the Rand Daily Mail, a leading Johannesburg newspaper,charged that by the terms of the treaty
A Japanese wholesale firm may establish itself anywhere in South Africa(except the Orange Free State, where by statute, no Asiatics are permitted tolive) and carry on business selling any class of goods, and utilising a hundred
percent Japanese staff. As there is no law to prohibit a merchant who has awholesale license from selling direct to the public, the Agreement means thatthese wholesale traders can do a retail business.19
The same critic mentioned that by the time of the last census, in 1921, there werealready 98 Japanese residents in the Union. At present, he warned, "one of thebiggest merchant princes of Japan is visiting us with an eye to establishingwholesale houses in this country." The Japanese, he added, were busy "spying out
the land.”20
Opposition leader General Jan Smuts voiced yet another objection to the treaty,
asserting that "it would be quite impossible to keep out Asiatic immigrants once [theUnion] had very large trade relations with the East.”21 His wife, Isie Smuts, also
spoke out against the treaty. At a South African Party gathering she condemned it,sayingWe are already having a good deal of trouble with the Indians in this country, andnow the Government proposes to introduce a yellow race into South Africa, thestrongest and most powerful yellow race in the world. Once they are in we shallnever succeed in getting rid of them.22
The press also attempted to demonstrate exactly how the "dumping" of goods fromJapan would damage local trade. After praising South Africa's "flourishing andexcellent boot and shoe industry," a critic noted that Japanese shoes, or "plimsolls,"

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were "selling like hotcakes" after being landed at a cost of between 1s. 6d. and 2s. (c.
$.50) a pair. The "poorer of the coloured folk" in Cape Town, he noted, were buying
them for as little as 3s. (c. 75 cents) a pair. These "plimsolls" were threatening thesale of the locally made velskoen (untanned hide shoes) which sold for 5s. 6d. (c.
$1.35) a pair.23
As this table indicates, Japanese imports also included growing quantities ofclothing, another category of good which South African industry was attempting toprovide. Japanese exports to South Africa were clearly increasing, but except for silk,
they constituted only a small part of the goods entering the Union. Although thequantities as of 1929 did not represent a particularly large percentage of the Union’s
overall imports, quantities in many categories had nearly doubled since 1926. Thus,
South African industrialists feared imports of Japanese goods would continue toincrease and that domestic industries would not be able to compete in the long run.
Japan’s acting consul in Cape Town, Mr. Hongō (本郷), made efforts to offset thisrising tide of anti-Japanese agitation. In response to the rumors that the Japanese
were setting up warehouses all over the Union, he asserted that not a single
Japanese warehouse had been established during the nine months since the signingof the agreement. As for the question of commercial competition, Mr. Hongō placed
the blame on the South African businessmen who, he claimed, competed
unnecessarily among themselves.24
Still, complaints linking the treaty with increased Japanese imports frustrated
members of Hertzog's cabinet. The labor minister, Colonel Cresswell, commented
that those people who had previously been so intent on the government's notraising tariffs were now, for self-serving reasons, raising "a howl" about the treaty
with Japan. Further complaints were then raised regarding "yellow standards ofliving" which, it was claimed, were at the root of the problem. In July 1931, at a
public meeting in Johannesburg, a prominent lawyer and Parliament member,Colonel C. F. Stallard, a strong opponent of Asian immigration, claimed that there"had seldom been a matter which had struck deeper at the roots of the prosperity ofSouth Africa." The Union of South Africa "did not want [an influx of Japanese] people
who could not be assimilated...and live in accordance with civilized standards.”25 In
response to these criticisms, interior minister Malan explained, once again, that theJapanese treaty was unrelated to the rise in Japanese imports.26
Nevertheless, this link endured in the minds of the public and the government founditself having to explain the disadvantages of increasing tariffs. When the "serious
effects to South African industries created by the importations of Japanese rubbersoled shoes," arose during Parliamentary debates, the minister of mines andindustries remarked that the government had no desire to increase the 30 percent
protective duty already in place.27
General Kemp, the agricultural minister, defended the treaty by noting that prices
for many South African consumers would drop. He also emphasized that the treaty
could lead to the capture by the Union of new markets in the East and prompt theJapanese to buy more wool.28 Whatever else was said, it was really this hope that theBradshaw, Ransdell: Japan, Britain and the Yellow Peril in Africa in the 1930s

149

Japanese would purchase more wool which lay behind the conclusion of thecontroversial treaty. And yet, before the year was out, Hertzog's government would
elect not to follow Britain in abandoning the gold standard, a decision which
reduced Japanese demand for South African wool. Thus what the cabinet had hoped
to achieve was undone by its reluctance to allow the South African pound to fall invalue.
The gold standard crisis in South Africa
The initial uproar over the Japanese Treaty died down during the latter half of 1931,
but the underlying anger remained. Thus, following Great Britain’s September 1931
decision to discontinue use of the gold standard, when changes in the relative valueof both Japan's and South Africa's currencies made Japanese goods even cheaper
and South African goods more expensive, the stage was set for a new outbreak ofanti-Japanese demonstrations. These feelings intensified over the next fifteen
months as Hertzog and his ministers ignored growing domestic opposition andrefused to allow the Union to follow Britain in abandoning the gold standard. This
had a devastating impact on foreign demand for export-dependent agricultural
products, wool in particular. On the other hand, Australia, which produced threetimes as much wool as the Union, and which was Japan's primary supplier, left thegold standard as early as February 1931. By the end of that year and in early 1932
the Union's wool became almost twice as expensive as that of Australia's, in terms of
British pounds.29
By mid-1932, after Japan abandoned the gold standard on 13 December 1931, thevalue of the Japanese yen had dropped to half its former level and exports began torise sharply.30 Thus, facing acute financial and political crises, finance minister
Havenga announced the abandonment of the gold standard by the Union on 28
December 1932. Nevertheless, imports of Japanese goods continued to climb.31
Renewed outbursts of Anti-Asian agitation
In 1933 the value of imports from Japan rose higher than ever before, to over 26.7
million yen (c. $6.85 million). This dramatic increase sparked a new wave of antiJapanese demonstrations: politicians called for action, newspapers were filled witharticles advocating different measures to be taken, and eventually a boycott was
initiated.
In September 1933, speakers at the Union's Chamber of Commerce voiced their
hostility to the rise in Japanese imports. One speaker reminded his audience that the
government had not addressed sufficiently the importation of Japanese footwear
until some "seven million pairs of rubber and canvas shoes were actually in the
country and the lower end of the industry was threatened with extinction.”32
Unlike the threat to domestic industry posed by Japanese shoes, due to measurestaken by Hertzog's government in response to this agitation, and its abandonment of
the gold standard, the price of gold began to rise in September 1933,33 and wool
prices were up 33 percent from the year before.34 Concern remained, however,about competition with Japanese products in foreign markets. Coal from Japan,

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150

which was mined in Manchuria, sold in Singapore and elsewhere for a lower pricethan South African coal. A Johannesburg newspaper estimated that South Africancoal would have to be produced for 4s. (c. .83 cents) per ton "at the pit's mouth" inorder to compete with Japanese coal. After leaving the pit, the argument continued,
the coal had to be sent to the coast and shipped to Singapore and yet still sold for16s. (c. $3.32) per ton or less; and "even then the Japanese are in a position toundersell" South African coal.35
The fears of South African whites were not only economic. Since the early 20th
century, multitudes of Japanese emigrants had refueled in South African ports on
their way to settle in Brazil. Having borne witness to this, South African whites wereparticularly aware of the Japanese government's desire to find outlets for what it
termed Japan's "excess population." Thus any suggestion that Japanese interests
might obtain land or concessions anywhere in Africa or Asia, whether inneighboring Swaziland, in Ethiopia, or in East Asia, came to elicit strong reactions
from South African whites. Japanese encroachments in Africa were viewed by South
African whites, in the end, as threats to white supremacy on the continent.
In September 1931 concern in South Africa grew upon hearing news of Japan's
invasion of Manchuria. "It is practically certain that the Japanese military and naval
authorities possess a ready-made plan to people the empty spaces here and inAustralia," it was reported.36 TheRand Daily Mail’s headlines on 24 September were
“3 WHITES KILLED – By Japanese in Mukden – ‘TO ABSORB CHINA’ – Step to World
Domination.”Fears were exacerbated by the pronouncements of certain military enthusiasts andpan-Asianists in Japan. In a book entitled Japan Must Fight Britain, for example,
lieutenant-commander Ishimaru Tōta (石丸藤太) of the Japanese navy had
discussed the strategic importance of the Cape, arguing that "it would be far wiser
for Britain to concentrate on protecting the Cape route" instead of theMediterranean route and that "Great Barriers have grown up between England andher children, [including] South Africa..."37
The sympathy for Japan expressed among non-white South Africans and their
sympathizers further troubled white South Africans. John Henry Baynes ofJohannesburg, describing himself as a European with a “Cape Colored wife” and"leader of the African Proletariat Party," wrote a letter to the Japanese foreign
ministry in April 1931 in which he condemned white South African hostility towards
the "Japanese Commercial Treaty" and praised the efforts of the Japanese to defend
the rights of their colored brothers.38
The ‘Yellow Man’ Looks On
The apprehension of many South African whites was expressed when a South
African, Hedley Arthur Chilvers, published The Yellow Man Looks On in 1933.39 In
this book, Chilvers argued that Anglo-Dutch reconciliation was necessary, and evenadvocated black-white cooperation in the Union, because of the Japanese threat. The
book voiced support for the coalition or United Party government formed byBradshaw, Ransdell: Japan, Britain and the Yellow Peril in Africa in the 1930s

151

Hertzog and Smuts in 1933. Just as the "Black Peril" provided a slogan for Hertzog's
electoral campaign in 1929, the specter of a "Yellow Peril" provided somejustification for Hertzog's controversial decision to join forces with Smuts in 1933.
In his introduction to the book Abe Bailey wrote: "If the white races in Southern
Africa can only agree to work together...they will continue to enjoy the protection of
the British navy."
Publication of
Chilvers’ bookin late 1933
coincided withthe first
reports that
the Japanese
government
was
negotiating
the purchaseof a large
cottongrowing plot
and other
commercial
concessions
A depiction of yellow peril hysteria in a postcard from the earlywith the1900s. Source
Ethiopiangovernment.40
These rumors were taken seriously enough to provoke debate in South Africa's
parliament41 and prompted diplomatic and military intelligencecorrespondence.42 Japan's perceived closeness with Ethiopia soon became a matterof worldwide concern as the Italo-Ethiopian conflict loomed. Thus, in the midst ofJapan's formidable escalation of trade its political influence on the continent ofAfrica became a matter of grave concern to all the European colonial powers andintensified white South African fears of the Yellow Peril.
Japan’s attempt to increase imports of South African wool
The cry of “Yellow Peril” would have incited less fear among white South Africans
had the rapid increase in Japanese exports been complemented by an increase inJapanese purchases of raw wool from the Union; but this was not the case. However,during 1933 the prospect that the Japanese might become important wool buyers
seemed to improve.43 Though South African wool remained more expensive thanAustralian wool, the Japanese were gradually increasing their purchases of South
African wool in hopes of capturing a greater market for their exports.44
A Japanese foreign ministry official, Mr. Shudō (首藤), visited South Africa early in1934 to seek a solution to the intensifying trade dispute. Shudō encountered strong

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anti-Japanese sentiment in South Africa. He and his colleagues were treated very
discourteously at times during their stay in the Union, once being excluded as"Asiatics" from a cinema, and suffered other humiliating discrimination.45
Nevertheless, shortly after returning to Tokyo, Shudō outlined to the commercial
counselor at the British Embassy, George B. Sansom, the steps the Japanese
government had taken to improve the situation. Shudō explained that although
Japan had promised at the time of the "Gentleman's Agreement" (1930) to attempt
to increase its purchase of South African goods, raw wool in particular, it had failed
to purchase more than 10,000 bales per annum during any year since then.46 In
order to alleviate some of the tension, Shudō advised the Japanese government toincrease purchases of South African wool.
The Japanese government then arranged with the Association of Woolen Industries
and others to immediately increase imports of wool from South Africa, agreements
which were partially successful. Japan advanced in the rank of exporters to South
Africa. By 1935 she was in fourth place, behind Great Britain, the United States, andGermany. Japan rose to second place, after Germany, in 1936-7.47 But as a Japanesestudy reported in 1937:
South Africa's policy to promote the buying of wool was far less successful than
expected. At the same time the South African market was flooded by Japanese
products. In contrast, imports of European goods, especially British ones, were
declining sharply and the pro-British element in South Africa thus strongly attacked
the failure of the "Gentleman's Agreement" with Japan and the fact that Japan
purchased such a small quantity of South African wool. In addition, every
newspaper has been running articles on Japanese insincerity and on the unfair
competition of Japanese traders. Anti-Japanese sentiment is increasing dramaticallyas the mood of the people grows more hostile to Japan and its products.48
Thus Japanese expansion in Africa evoked a strong reaction among many whiteSouth Africans in the 1930s. Japanese commercial development threatened theinterests of British and South African manufacturers alike. Furthermore, Japaneseambitions were not, it appeared, limited to an increase in exports. By the early
1930s some South African whites feared that the Japanese harbored politicalambitions in the African continent, and perhaps even colonial intentions. Although
Japan’s economic presence posed the greatest threat to white South Africans
domestically, the growing closeness of Japanese-Ethiopian relations was anothersource of uneasiness.
Japanese-Italian relations before the Italian invasion
Although the economic dimension of Japanese-Ethiopian relations during theinterwar period was far less important than the political aspect, their trade relations
actually predated those of South Africa. It was during the 17th century, under the
Tokugawa Shogunate, that the first diplomatic exchange of gifts between theJapanese government and an African government took place. In 1675 Khodja Murad,an "ambassador of several Ethiopian kings and a merchant in his own right," sent

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two zebras to the Japanese government from Batavia. The Japanese government not
only recognized this gesture but sent "10,000 taels [ounces] of silver and thirty
Japanese garments" to Khodja in return.49
As has been noted, by the 20th century the Japanese had begun trading all overAfrica, much to the alarm of the British and other colonial powers. However, it was
Italy whose relations with Japan suffered the most severe strain in the months
before the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in October 1935. Part of the reason for thiswas the worldwide commercial competition between the two nations.50 In the early
1930s their trade rivalry encompassed Latin America and the Balkans as well as
Africa and Asia. Italians resented Japan's capture of ever-increasing market sharesaround the world at the expense of Italian exports. Moreover, since both countries
specialized in the export of low-cost textiles they were often in direct competition
with one another.
As will be seen, the restoration of cordial relations between Japan and Italy, andtheir conclusion of an eventual alliance, only became possible after the twocountries reached an agreement regarding their respective positions in Manchuria
and Ethiopia.
Japanese official response at the outset of the conflictThough the Ethiopian Crisis would eventually lead to the formation of bonds
between Japan and Italy, at initially brought the two countries into conflict andplaced great strain on their relations. The spark which lit the fire was a November
1934 border dispute between Ethiopia and Italian Somaliland.51 In reaction to thisincident, on 24 December, the Ethiopian Chargé d'Affaires in Rome, Negadras Ghevre
Yesus, asked Sugimura Yotarō (杉村陽太郎), the Japanese ambassador to Italy, if theJapanese government would be willing to supply arms to the Ethiopian
government.52
Formerly Japan's ambassador to the League of Nations,53 Sugimura was a member ofJapan’s controlling faction, an official who, like his superiors, undoubtedly valued
the Italo-Japanese relationship more highly than the Japanese-Ethiopian
relationship. Sugimura explained to Ghevre that he had no authority to commit
Japan to providing weapons to Ethiopia. He emphasized however, that Japan wasinterested in expanding their economic ties.54
When Sugimura met with Premier Mussolini in mid-July 1935, he reportedly
assured Mussolini that Japan had no intention of supplying military aid to either
party, even if war were declared.55 But almost simultaneously, on 18 July, London
papers reported foreign minister Hirota Koki (広田弘毅) , as having suggested thatJapan would act in defense of its interests and nationals in Ethiopia. This, it was
expected, would stiffen Ethiopian resolve to resist Italian demands.56 Sugimura's
unqualified assurances to Mussolini were clearly at odds with the more calculated
and ambiguous diplomatic stance taken by Hirota and Prime Minister Okada
Keisuke (岡田啓介).

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Following this, Sugimura was questioned on the content of his discussion with
Mussolini by a representative of Rengo news services in Rome. Sugimura explainedthat he had told Mussolini that Japan was watching the crisis carefully in light of its
economic interests in Ethiopia. He then attempted to refute rumors aired in thepress regarding the possibility of Japan's intervention in the conflict.57
Italian reaction to the Sugimura affair
The Italian ambassador to Japan, Giacinto Auriti, went to the Foreign Office on theafternoon of 19 July to inquire into the reason for the contradictory statements
issued by Japanese officials. Hirota assured him that the Japanese wished for apeaceful solution, but that Sugimura’s statement of absolute assurance did notreflect the Foreign Office position. 58
Ambassador Auriti then drew attention to anti-Italian articles which had appearedin the Japanese press. In response, the same evening, a spokesman for the JapaneseForeign Minister, Amau Eijiro (尼羽英治郎), called on Luigi Mariani, counselor at
the Italian Embassy in Tokyo, and reminded Mariani that a 6 July article in the
Italian press had claimed that Ethiopia was violating the Italo-Ethiopian treaty of1928 by purposefully favoring Japanese goods in order to stifle Italian influence in
East Africa.59 Amau further pointed out an Italian article, dated 13 July, which statedthat although Japan had occupied much of China, the anti-war Kellogg-Briand Pact
was not yet dead.60 The Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928, which renounced war as an
instrument of national policy, was signed by Japan. Since Italy was on the verge of
invading Ethiopia it was obviously hypocritical to remind Japan that it was a party
to this ineffective pact which, in any case, was backed by little more than the threatof public disapproval were any of its 65 signatory nations to resort to war.
Still, Mariani continued to assert that the import of Japanese goods into Ethiopia
breeched the Italo-Ethiopian Treaty of 1928 because the treaty had stipulated that
Ethiopia would "welcome Italian products." Amau replied that he found it hard tounderstand why Ethiopians or Japanese should be blamed for importing Japanese
products on account of a treaty which stipulated only that Ethiopia would welcome
Italian products.61
Shortly thereafter, when report of the Japanese Foreign Office's denial of Sugimura's
statements reached Rome, it caused an uproar. Faced with contradictory
statements, Italy chose to ignore the more threatening stance of the Foreign Office infavor of Sugimura’s initial pledge of neutrality.62 Thus, Rome announced that they
expected Japan had no political interest in Ethiopia and would remain neutral if war
broke out.63 Encouraged by the Italian government, the Italian public began todemonstrate dissatisfaction with Japan. On 22 July the Japanese Embassy in Romewas surrounded by six policemen and "numerous Fascist Blackshirts." All theleading Italian newspapers then ran front-page stories examining Japanese policy
towards Ethiopia. Some asserted that Japan was attempting to become a championof both the yellow and black races.64 Others accused Japan of trying "to launch a big
economic offensive against Europe" via the Red Sea and the African continent. Theylabeled the perceived expansion of Japanese imperialism worldwide by means ofBradshaw, Ransdell: Japan, Britain and the Yellow Peril in Africa in the 1930s

155

commercial "dumping" as a "peril to the white race." An article by Virginio Gayda
entitled "The Cry of Solidarity of the Yellow with the Blacks" in the widelyread Giornale d'Italiedeclared that:Japan must not think that her methods of imperial conquest and violation of theterritorial and national rights of peoples claiming standards of civilization mucholder and more refined than their own are ignored or misunderstood by thecivilized nations of the world ...However, there are some fixed points on the globe
where such a policy is futile.65
Gayda maintained that Japan deliberately left the League of Nations in order topursue her territorial ambitions in China, "whose civilization cannot be comparedwith that of Ethiopia."66 Gayda seemed to imply that Japan’s aggression towards a‘civilized’ country was more upsetting than Italy’s ‘civilizing mission’ in Africa.
Italian animosity continued, and, on 25 July, anti-Japanese demonstrations werereported in Milan, Genoa, Turin and Bologna. A newspaper founded by Mussolini,
the Popolo d'Italie, argued that Japan's new attitude towards the Italo-Ethiopian
conflict completely contradicted the claim that Japan had no political interest in
Ethiopia. It linked Japan's sympathy for "poor Ethiopia" to Japan's "unlimited
political and economic expansion in Africa as a new hope for campaigning against
Europe." The Messagero asked why Japan could not stay out of the conflict andcharged the Japanese with "hypocrisy, double-dealing and bad faith."67 No antiJapanese demonstrations took place in Rome, but police and Black-shirt guards
were maintained around the Japanese Embassy.
The following day, 26 July, the anti-Japanese campaign by Italian newspapers
suddenly ceased. There were still articles critical of Japanese activities in China, but
the "virulent attacks of the previous two days" were noticeably absent.68 The press
campaign against Japan did not in fact die out but rather, for a few days, overlappedwith a new campaign against Britain. Britain had superseded Japan as Italy's
number-one-enemy. The reason for this can be discerned from an editorial in
the Tevere which suggested that Britain would be faster than Japan to rush
contraband arms to the Red Sea, to which Italy might respond with a "salvo of
cannon."69
Although the anti-Japanese campaign in Italian newspapers died down, the same
day an estimated 15,000 demonstrators in Rome converged on the center of the city
at midnight, many carrying banners and cartoons attacking Japan, Britain, andEthiopia. The number of specialcarabinieri (riflemen) assigned to protect theJapanese and British embassies was strengthened to 200, compared to the previous
allotment of two per site.70 The demonstrations were clearly not spontaneous. They
appeared instead to have been carefully staged to send strong messages to Japanand Britain. When a huge crowd gathered near the Foreign Office on 25 July, forexample, they were "harangued" by the secretary of the Fascist Party, who called for
Italian expansion.71

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By August it became increasingly clear that the British would not stop the Italianinvasion of Ethiopia, and the Japanese government apparently saw no point inantagonizing Italy any further. When Auriti again questioned the Japanese
government in mid-September about its position, vice foreign minister Shigemitsu
Mamoru (重光葵) replied that since Japan's withdrawal from the League of Nations
it had adopted the principle of non-intervention in European political affairs notconnected with East Asia. As long as the rights of Japanese were not endangered,Japan would remain neutral and watch developments closely.72
Japanese public opinion and the Italo-Ethiopian War
In contrast to the cautious, realpolitik stance of Japan’s leaders toward the conflict,
important segments of the Japanese public felt that Italy's aggression should beunequivocally condemned, if not forcibly prevented, by Japan. Support for the
Ethiopian cause came primarily from right-wing patriotic organizations and allied
factions within the military and the government bureaucracy, but also from a large
number of newspaper reporters and the public at large.
This is illustrated by the coverage of the conflict by The Osaka Mainichi and its
English version, as well as the Tokyo Nichi Nichi.73 Even before the Italian invasion,
the Osaka Mainichi hired three Japanese residents in Ethiopia as special
correspondents. In addition, journalists in London, Berlin, and Moscow were
instructed to cover the "European repercussions" of the war and the paper's New
York reporter was even sent to Africa on a special mission. Finally, the services of"all the correspondents of world renown" were engaged to cover the war.74
The August 1935 mission to Ethiopia of the Osaka Mainichi's New York reporter,
Wada Dengoro, is particularly noteworthy. News of his intention to negotiate acontract with the Ethiopian government for the Osaka Mainichi to broadcast to
Ethiopians became a source of concern as far away as the Union of South Africa. The
Union's Defense Department feared that "if the Japs get a footing in Ethiopia of any
kind, there will be no saying how far their influence will extend."75

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157

During this period, Japanese-Ethiopian relations were strong enough that amarriage between an Ethiopian prince and a Japanese woman was arranged. [Left]
Kuroda Masako (proposed marriage between Araya Abeba of Ethiopia and Kuroda

White Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-1930

158

Masako of Japan) [Right] At the home of Mr. Sumioka. Front row, right to left: Araya
Abeba, Foreign Minister Herui, Lij Tafari, and the interpreter, Daba Birru. In theback row are Mr. and Mrs. Sumioka. Picture taken from Herui’s Dai Nihon. “Marriage
Alliance: The Union of Two Imperiums, Japan and Ethiopia?” Paper presented at theAnnual Meeting of the Florida Conference of Historians, (Gainesville, FL: April
1999).
Back in Japan, a meeting of the Ethiopian Society of Osaka had been held at Hotel
New Osaka on 22 July. Many of the attendees had either visited Ethiopia or had
contact with Ethiopian Foreign Minister Herui during his visit to Japan in 1931, theyear following the signing of a treaty of Friendship and Commerce between the twonations. Some speakers, such as the consul in Osaka, Yukawa Chusaburō（湯川忠三郎), stressed the similarities between Ethiopia (Abyssinia) and Japan. Others, suchas the executive director of the Osaka-based Africa Traders' Association, Yamazoe
Shinkichi (山添新吉), spoke for commercial interests, reminding the gathering thatover 50 percent of Ethiopia’s imports of cotton cloth and piece goods came fromJapan.76
Popular support reached a fever pitch as money, letters, and applications fromJapanese wanting to fight for Ethiopia flooded the honorary consulate in Osaka.
Herui described a similar situation in Addis Ababa, as applications from Japanese,some written in blood, arrived en masse. Weeks later, Yukawa, the honorary consul,
attempted to secure passports for four Japanese citizens wishing to enlist in
Ethiopia’s flying corps. Another Japanese commander had offered the volunteers theuse of two planes. One of the volunteers was Yasujiro Kita, a 28-year-old Japaneseliving in Berlin. Concerning the influx of applications, Yasujiro declared, “I am proudof the Japanese spirit of chivalry. I cannot remain idle in face of the news of the
Italo-Abyssinian conflict as long as Japanese blood runs in my veins.”77 Despite thispatriotic fervor, Tokyo did not allow any Japanese to participate, and Ethiopia’s
consul rejected all applications.78
Japanese leaders, struggling to maintain control of policy, became alarmed as public
support for Ethiopia exploded. They decided to clamp down on the activities ofradical groups like the Amur River Society (黒龍会). Police raids in the wake ofthese pro-Ethiopian activities reduced this society to a shadow of its former
self.79 The Home Ministry's crackdown on the pro-Ethiopian activities of patriotic
societies was one manifestation of the controlling faction’s assertion of power at thiscritical juncture. Finally, in February 1936, the failure of a coup by the Imperial Way
Faction (皇道派) further strengthened the hand of government leaders who
proceeded to ally Japan with Germany and Italy.
Manchukuo (Manchuria) and Ethiopia
Following this, on 12 May 1936, with the Japanese government firmly in control offoreign policy, Auriti, called on vice foreign minister Horinouchi Kensuke (堀之内健介) to notify the Japanese government of Italy's annexation of Ethiopia and topromise that Japanese interests would be respected.80 Then, on 27 June foreignBradshaw, Ransdell: Japan, Britain and the Yellow Peril in Africa in the 1930s

159

minister Arita cabled Sugimura in Rome that "while a unilateral recognition of the
Italian occupation of Ethiopia would be in bad taste...the actual situation in Ethiopia
should be recognized as presenting a fait-accompli to all governments."81 Reluctant
to take the lead in affirming this controversial acquisition, Japan delayed recognitionand negotiated with Italy over the new few months.
Finally, in mid-October, 1936, Count Ciano, then Italian Foreign Minister, indicatedto Sugimura that Italy would be willing to establish a legation in Manchukuo if Japanretained its Legation in Ethiopia.82 The Japanese government then asked forassurances that there would be no discrimination against Japanese imports in the
new Italian protectorate. In response, Ciano indicated that he preferred not to
exchange formal notes regarding such an arrangement at that time.83
Shortly thereafter, however, on 25 November, the Japanese Privy Council ratified
the Anti-Comintern Pact, which served to remove any further reluctance on Italy's
part to solidify their hitherto informal agreement. On 2 December 1936 Japan and
Italy thus exchanged notes whereby the former recognized Italy's annexation of
Ethiopia and the latter granted formal recognition to Manchukuo.84
Despite the strong undercurrent of support in Japan for Ethiopia, the Japanese
government retained power throughout this period of crisis in Italo-Japaneserelations and avoided alienating Italy. As Japan moved further away from its former
ally, Great Britain, Japanese leaders were acutely aware of the need to protect theirnation from international isolation by cultivating closer ties with alternative
European powers. Italy, likewise, found itself in need of friends after worldwide
condemnation of its invasion of Ethiopia. Japan and Germany provided natural allies
in such circumstances.
Conclusion
Japanese intrusion into the “white man’s paradise” of Africa fueled concern over the“Yellow Peril” in Great Britain, South Africa and Italy. In South Africa, this anxiety
was sparked by intensifying opposition to the “Gentleman’s Agreement” during theearly 1930s as imports from Japan rose, and as Japanese purchases of South Africanwool failed to grow. Anti-Japanese sentiment within the Union in fact became sowidespread that the Japanese government eventually decided to take measures, incooperation with Japanese business, to assure greater purchases of South Africanwool. These measures were successful to some extent, Japan becoming the second
largest buyer of South African wool by 1937. Only during that year, however, wasthe trade balance in the Union's favor. It was a persistent trade imbalance in favor ofJapan, together with direct competition between Japanese and South African goods,
and the fact that the Japanese political as well as economic influence appeared to be
growing rapidly on the African continent, which strained relations between Japanand South Africa as well as between Japan and the British Empire.
Japan's leaders again faced with a difficult choice with the outbreak of the ItaloEthiopian conflict. Since Japan's occupation of Manchuria in 1931 it was increasingly
cast in the role of an aggressive power and felt a growing sense of isolation from

White Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-1930160

other powers with imperial ambitions. Japanese official response throughout theconflict was thus guarded and non-provocative, though their ambiguity angered the
Italians. Finally, after the Italian government notified the world of its annexation of
Ethiopia, the Japanese managed to reach an agreement with Italy by which it would
grant recognition to Manchukuo and "most favored nation status" to Japan in
Ethiopia in exchange for Japan's recognition of Italy's annexation of Ethiopia. Thisquid pro quo helped to bring the two power into diplomatic, and eventually military,
alliance.

Richard Bradshaw is a professor of history and international relations at Centre
College, Kentucky. His dissertation focused on Japanese-African relations prior toWorld War II and he has written several articles on this topic.
Jim Ransdell is a history and East Asian Studies major at Centre College, Kentucky. He
co-authored an article in the 2010 edition of theSoutheast Review of AsianStudies (SERAS) on Japanese-South African relations in the prewar period and iscurrently working on a book on Japanese-African relations.
Notes
1 See Barry Sautman and Yan Hairong, “Trade, Investment, Power and the China-in-

Africa Discourse,” The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus53, 2 (28 December 2009).
2 Studies of the ‘Yellow Peril’ include Jenny Clegg, Fu Manchu and the Yellow Peril:

the Making of a Racist Myth (Stoke-on-Trent: Trentham 1994): 1-36; Roger Daniels,“The Yellow Peril,” in The Politics of Prejudice: The Anti-Japanese Movement in
California and the Struggle for Japanese Exclusion (Berkeley, CA: University ofCalifornia Press 1999); Heinz Gollwitzer, Die Gelbe Gefahr: Geschichte eines
Schlagworts: Studien zum Imperialistischen Denken [The Yellow Peril: History ofCatchphrases: Study of Imperialist Thought] (Göttingen, Germany: Hubert &Company 1962); Yorim Hashimoto, Primary Sources on Yellow Peril, Series I: Yellow
Peril Collection of British Novels, 1895-1913, 7 vols (Tokyo: Edition Synapse 2008);
Sukehiro Hirakawa, The Yellow Peril: Past and Present (Washington, D.C.: The
Woodrow Wilson Center 1985); Gary Hoppenstand, “Yellow Devil Doctors andOpium Dens: A Survey of the Yellow Peril Stereotypes in Mass MediaEntertainment,” in Christopher D. Geist and Jack Nachbar, eds., The Popular Culture
Reader, 3rd ed (Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green University Popular Press 1983):
171-185; Wang Jiwu, ‘His Dominion’ and the ‘Yellow Peril’: Protestant Missions to theChinese Immigrants in Canada, 1859 – 1967(Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier
University Press 2006); John F. Laffey, “Racism and Imperialism: French Views of
the ‘Yellow Peril’: 1895-1919,” in Imperialism and Ideology: An Historical
Perspective (Montreal, Canada: Black Rose Books 2000); Ute Mehnert, Deutchland,
Amerika und die ‘gelbe Gefahr’: zur Karriere eines Schlagworts in der Grossen Politik,
1905-1917 [Germany, America and the ‘Yellow Peril’: The Career of a Catchphrase in
Big Politics, 1905-1917] (Stuttgart: Steiner 1995); Jacqui Murray, Watching the Sun
Rise: Australian Reporting of Japan, 1931 to the Fall of Singapore (Lanham, MD:

Bradshaw, Ransdell: Japan, Britain and the Yellow Peril in Africa in the 1930s

161

Lexington Books 2004); Yuko Naka, The Black Savage and the Yellow Peril: The
Differing Consequences of the Radicalization of the Black’s and Japanese in
Canada, M.A. Thesis, University of Western Ontario 1997; Greenberry G. Rupert, The
Yellow Peril: or, The Orient vs. the Occident as Viewed by Modern Statesmen andAncient Prophets (Choctaw, OK: Union Publishers 1911); Richard A. Thompson, The
Yellow Peril, 1890-1924 (New York: Arno Press 1978).
3 On fears of Japanese influence in Africa, see Richard Bradshaw, “Japan andEuropean Colonialism in Africa, 1800-1937,” Ph.D. diss, Ohio University (1992);
Ethel B. Dietrich, "Closing Doors on Japan," Far Eastern Survey 7:16 (10 August1938): 181-186; Katsuhito Kitagawa, “Japan’s Economic Relations with Africa
between the Wars: A Study of Japanese Consular Reports,” African Study
Monograph 11:3 (December 1990): 25-141; Kitagawa, “Japan’s Trade with Colonial
Africa in the Interwar Period,” Paper presented at the 32nd Annual Meeting of theAfrican Studies Association (Atlanta, GA: November 1989); Takashi Okakura, Nihon
to Afurika: Meiji Ishin Kara Dainiji Sekai Taisen Made[Japan and Africa: from the
Meiji Restoration to the Second World War] (Tokyo: Dobun-kan 1992); Frederick V.
Meyer, Britain’s Colonies and World Trade (London: Oxford University Press 1948);
Jun Morikawa, Japan and Africa: Big Business and Diplomacy (London: Hurst & Co;
Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press 1997); Morikawa, "The Myth ofJapan’s Relations with Colonial Africa, 1885-1960,” Journal of African Studies 12:1
(1985): 39-46; Phillips P. O’Brien, The Anglo-Japanese Alliance, 1902-1922 (London:
Routledge Curzon 2004); Sara Pienaar, South Africa and International Relations
Between the Two World Wars: The League of Nations Dimension (Johannesburg:
Witwatersrand University Press 1987); Arthur Redford, Manchester Merchants andForeign Trade, Volume 2, 1850-1939 (Manchester: The University of Manchester
Press 1956); Andrew Roberts, "Introduction," in Andrew Roberts, ed., The Colonial
Moment in Africa: Essay on the Movement of Minds and Materials 19001940 (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press 1990); Ann Trotter, Kenneth
Bourne, Donald Cameron Watt, eds., Great Britain, Foreign Office, British Documents
on Foreign Affairs: Reports and Papers from the Foreign Office Confidential Print, Part
2, From the First to the Second World War, Series E, Asia, 1914-1939, 50 vols,(Bethesda, MD: University Publications of America 1991-1996), cf. Vol. II
4 On Japanese-South African Relations see, Chris Alden, “The Changing Contours ofJapanese-South African Relations,” in Chris Alden and Katsumi Hirano, eds., Japanand South Africa in a Globalising World: A Distant Mirror (London: Ashgate 2003): 724; Kweku Ampiah, The Dynamics of Japan's Relations with Africa: South Africa,
Nigeria and Tanzania (London: Routledge 1997); Miriam S. Farley, “Japan Between
the Wars,” Far Eastern Survey 8:21 (25 October 1939): 243-248; Tetsushi Furukawa,“Japanese Political and Economic Interests in Africa: The Pre-War Period,” Network
Africa 7:14 (1991): 6-8; Gaimushō Tsū Shō Kyaku [Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
Department of Commerce and Trade, Second Section], "Afurika Keizai Jijō Tenbō"[The Economic Situation in Africa and its Potential], (1932); Great Britain Public
Records Office, Francis O'Meara to Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, 31 July 1934,
London, FO 371/18173 F 5304; Great Britain Public Records Office, Sir H.F.

White Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-1930

162

Batterbee to Sir George Mounsey, 1 August 1934; C.T. Te Water to J.H. Thomas, 23
May 1934; Staff Officer (Cape Town Intelligence) to Director of Naval Intelligence(Admiralty), 23 May 1934; P. Lieschin to J.H. Thomas, 15 March 1934, London: FO
371/18188. B; Great Britain Public Records Office, (London): FO 371/18173 F 5304;
Katsuhito Kitagawa, “Political and Economic Determinants of Japan’s Ties with
Eastern and Southern Africa: An Historical Overview,” Paper presented at the 35th
Annual Meeting of the African Studies Association, (Seattle, WA: November 1992);
Kitagawa, “Sen Zen Ki Nihon no Minami Afurika e no Keizaiteki Kanshin: ‘Bōeki
Zasshi’ no Chōsa ni Motozuite” [Japanese Economic Interest in South Africa during
the Prewar Era: A Consideration of ‘Trade Journal’ Reports], Shakai Kagaku Kenkyū
Nenpō [Annual Social Science Research Reports] 22 (March 1992): 172-83; William
G. Martin, “The Making of an Industrial South Africa: Trade and Tariffs in theInterwar Period,” The International Journal of African Historical Studies 23:2 (1990):
59-85; Mitsubishi Economic Research Bureau, Japanese Trade and Industry: Present
and Future (London: Macmillan 1936); Jun Morikawa, Minami Afurika To Nihon:
Kankei No Reikishi, Kōzō, Kadai [South Africa and Japan: The History, Structure andProblematic (Nature) of their Relations] (Tokyo: Dobun Kan 1988); Morikawa, “The
Anatomy of Japan's South African Policy,” The Journal of Modern African Studies 22:1
(March 1984): 133-141; J. Forbes Munro, Africa and International Economy, 18801960: An Introduction to Modern Economics History of Africa South of the
Sahara (London: Dent 1976); Terutarō Nishino, “Minami Afurika Zō No Seiritsu
Katei: Meiji Ki No Nihongo Kankōbutsu” [How the Image of South Africa Developed:
Evidence from Meiji Era Publications], Ajia Keizai [Asian Economics] 11:2 (February1970): 90-91; Masako Osada,Sanctions and Honorary Whites: Diplomatic Policies
and Economic Realities in Relations Between Japan and South Africa (Westport, CT. &London: Greenwood Press 2002); Richard J Payne, “Japan's South Africa Policy:
Political Rhetoric and Economic Realities,” African Affairs86:343 (April 1987): 167178; Eric Rosenthal, ed., Encyclopaedia of Southern Africa (London: F. Warne 1961);
Rosenthal, Japan's Bid for Africa: Including the Story of the Madagascar
Campaign (Johannesburg: Central News Agency 1944); Keizō Seki, The Cotton
Industry of Japan (Tokyo: Japan Society for Promotion of Science 1956); Themba
Sono and Human Sciences Research Council, Japan and Africa: The Evolution andNature of Political, Economic and Human Bonds 1543-1993 (Pretoria, South Africa:1993); Jones Stuart and Andre Muller, The South African Economy, 1910-90 (London:
Macmillan 1992); Imao Tadao, Nan A Renpō Gaikan [A General Overview of theUnion of South Africa] (Tokyo: Department of Trade and Commerce 1927); Kojima
Takehiko, Kibō Hō Ni Tatsu-Afurika Kikō [Standing at the Cape of Good Hope: A
Travelogue] (Tokyo: 1940); Union of South Africa, Debates of the House Assembly,
Vols. 17 (1931) and 22 (1934).
5 Rand Daily Mail (RDM), 13 July 1931. The Rand Daily Mail is published by the

Anglo American Corp. in Johannesburg.

6 On Japanese-Ethiopian relations see, Richard Bradshaw, "Japanese Interest in

Africa: A Historical Overview," Swords and Ploughshares 7 (1993): 6-8; Bradshaw,“Japan and European Colonialism…,” 1992; Bradshaw, “Japan and European

Bradshaw, Ransdell: Japan, Britain and the Yellow Peril in Africa in the 1930s

163

Colonialism in Africa: A Review of the Literature,” in Merrick Posnansky andYoshida Masao, eds., Reports of the Japanese-American Workshop for Cooperation in
Africa (Los Angeles: University of California 1995); Bradshaw, “Japan and British
Colonialism in Africa,” in Barry Ward, ed., Rediscovering the British Empire (Krieger
Publishers 2001); Bradshaw, "Nihon to Shokuminchi Afurika: Igirusu Teikokushugio Megutte" [Japan and Colonial Africa: A Focus on British Imperialism], in Kokujin
Kenkyū no Kai [Japan Black Studies Association], ed., Kokujin Kenkyū no Sekai [TheWorld of Black Studies] (Tokyo: Seijishobo 2004): 55-95; S. Olu Agbi, "The Japaneseand the Italo-Ethiopian Crisis, 1935-36," Journal of the Historical Society of
Nigeria 11 (1983): 130-41; J. Calvitt Clarke, Alliance of the “Colored” Peoples of theWorld: Ethiopia and Japan Before the Second World War, (Forthcoming 2011); Unno
Yoshiro, "Dainiji Itaria-Echiopia Sensō to Nihon," [The Second Italo-Ethiopian War
and Japan] Hōsei Riron 16 (January 1984): 190; Okakura Takashi, "1930 Nendai no
Nihon-Echiopia Kankei," [Japanese-Ethiopian Relations in the 1930s] Afurika
Kenkyū 37 (December 1990): 61-62; Takashi and Katsuhiko, Nihon-Afurika Kōryshi…, 1993; Taura Masanori, "I. E. Funso to Nihon Gawa Taio: Showa 10 Nen
Sugimura Seimei Jiken wo Chūshin ni" [Italo-Ethiopian Conflict and the Japanese
Response], Nihon Rekishi [Japanese History] 526 (March 1992): 79-80; Taura,"Nichi-I Kankei to Sono Yotai (1935-36): Echiopia Sensō wo Meguru Nihon Gawa
Taiō Kara" [Italo-Japanese Relations and Their Conditions (1935-36): From theJapanese Response to the Ethiopian War], in Takashi Ito, ed., Nihon Kindai-shi no Sai
Kōchiku (Tokyo: 1993); Masanori, "Nihon-Echiopia Kankei ni Miru 1930s Nen
Tsūshō Gaikō no Isō" [A Phase of the 1930s Commercial Diplomacy in the JapaneseEthiopian Relations], Seifu to Minkan [Government and Civilians], Nenpō Kindai
Nihon Kenkyū [Annual Report, Study of Modern Japan], 17 (1995):158-59; Aoki
Sumio and Kurimoto Eisei, "Japanese Interest in Ethiopia (1868-1940): Chronology
and Bibliography," Ethiopia in Broader Perspectives 1: 713-28; Furukawa Tetsushi,"Japan's Political Relations with Ethiopia, 1920s-1960s: A Historical Overview,"
paper presented to the 35th Annual Meeting of the African Studies Association(Seattle, WA: 20-23 November 1992); Furukawa, "Japanese-Ethiopian Relations in
the 1920-30s: The Rise and Fall of 'Sentimental' Relations," paper presented at the34th Annual Meeting of the African Studies Association (St. Louis, MO: Nov 1991);
Furukawa, "Japanese Political and Economic Interests In Africa: The Prewar
Period," Network Africa 7 (1991): 6-7; “Foreign Minister Heruy’s Mission to Japan in
1931: Ethiopia’s Effort to Find a Non-Western Model for Modernization,” Selected
Annual Proceedings of the Florida Conference of Historians (March 2007):17-28; J.
Calvitt Clarke III, "A Japanese Scoundrel’s Skin Game: Japanese Economic
Penetration of Ethiopia and Diplomatic Complications Before the Second ItaloEthiopian War,” Electronic publication by the XVIth meeting of the International
Conference of Ethiopian Studies (Trondheim, Norway: July 2007); Clarke, "DashedHopes for Support: Daba Birrou's and Shoji Yunosuke's Trip to Japan, 1935," in
Siegbert Uhlig, ed., Proceedings of the XVth International Conference of Ethiopian
Studies (Hamburg: Aethiopistische Forschungen 2005); Clarke, "Seeking a Model for
Modernization: The Japanizers of Ethiopia,” Selected Annual Proceedings of theFlorida Conference of Historians 11 (Spring 2004): 35-51; Clarke, “Mutual Interests:

White Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-1930

164

Japan and Ethiopia Before the Italo-Ethiopian War, 1935-36,” Selected Annual
Proceedings of the Florida Conference of Historians 9 (February 2002): 83-97.
7 William K. Hancock, The Survey of British Commonwealth Affairs, Vol. 2: Economic

Policy, 1918-1939 (London: 1940): Part 1, 211.

8 Osamu Ishii, Cotton-Textile Diplomacy: Japan, Great Britain and the United States,

1930-1936 (New York: Arno Press, 1981): 190.

9 On Anglo-Japanese trade competition in British West Africa see, Hiroshi

Shimizu, Anglo-Japanese Trade Rivalry in the Middle East in the Inter-War
Period (London: Ithaca 1986); Gilbert Hubbard, Eastern Industrialization and its
Effects on the West, With Special Reference to Great Britain and Japan: Japanese
Economic History, 3 vols. (London: Routledge 2000); Frederick V. Meyer, Britain's
Colonies in World Trade(London: Oxford University Press 1944) On Anglo-Japanesetrade competition in Gambia see, Kweku Ampiah, “British Commercial Policies
Against Japanese Expansionism in East and West Africa 1932-1935,” TheInternational Journal of African Historical Surveys 23:4 (1990): 619-641; “JapaneseTrade Competition in the Colonies," 22 February 1934, FO 371/18170 F
982/159/23, PRO.
10 On Anglo-Japanese trade competition in Morocco see, Bird (Casablanca) to

Department of Overseas Trade, 9 January 1934, FO 371/18169, PRO; Edmonds toForeign Office, Dispatch, 17 February 1933, W 2097/175/28: FO 371/17396;
Shackle (Board of Trade) to Roberts, Enclosure, 17 August 1939, W 12118/162/28:
FO 371/24057, PRO; United Africa Company Ltd. to Foreign Office, Dispatch, 22
February 1933, W 2053/175/28: FO 371/17396; M.M. Knight, Morocco as a French
Economic Venture (New York: 1937): 135; Hiroshi Shimizu, Anglo-Japanese Trade
Rivalry in the Middle East in the Inter-War Period (London: Ithaca Press 1986): 82,
185, 160, 164.
11 For information on Anglo-Japanese trade competition in Portuguese Africasee, (Consul-General) Francis O'Meara to Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, 31
July 1934, FO 371/18173 F 5304, PRO; Francis O'Meara to Secretary of State for
Foreign Affairs, 31 July 1934, FO 371/18173 F 5304, PRO; Memorandum on the
General Trade and Economic Position of the Colony of Angola in 1935, Enclosure inConsul-General (Francis) O'Meara (Loanda) to Eden, 16 March 1936, PRO 433/3 W
3644/36/36; O'Meara (Loanda) to Department of Overseas Trade, 31 July 1934,
PRO FO 371/18173 F 5304; Essentially the same information, with more
information on the Japanese trade mission described below, is contained in O'Meara
to Department of Overseas Trade, 19 June 1934, PRO FO 371/18173; figures in"Trade Relations Between Japan and Africa," The Japan Times (Supplement), 31 Oct.
1935.
12 For information on Anglo-Japanese trade competition in Egypt see Richard

Bradshaw, “Japan and European Colonialism in Africa, 1800-1937,” Ph.D. diss, Ohio
University: 1992.

Bradshaw, Ransdell: Japan, Britain and the Yellow Peril in Africa in the 1930s

165

13 Masako Osada, Sanctions and Honorary Whites: Diplomatic Policies and Economic

Realities in Relations Between Japan and South Africa(Westport, CT & London:
Greenwood Press 2002): 27.

14 Nunokawa Magoichi, Minami Afurika Bōeki Jijō as cited in Jun Morikawa, Minami

Afurika To Nihon: Kankei No Reikishi, Kōzō, Kadai [South Africa and Japan: The
History, Structure and Problematic (Nature) of their Relations] (Tokyo: Dobun Kan
1988): 5-6.
15 Dan O'Meara, Volkskapitalisme: Class, Capital and Ideology in the Development of

Afrikaner Nationalism, 1934-1948 (Cambridge: 1983): 37.

16 DRO E.4.3.2.2-2; Richard Bradshaw, “Japan and European…,” 1992; Katsuhiko,“Japan’s Trade…,” in Alden and Hirano, Japan and South Africa... 2003: 25-40.
17 Osada, Sanctions and Honorary… 2002: 39.
18 Assembly Debates, 5 July 1931.
19 RDM, 11 July 1931.
20 Arthur G. Barlow in the RDM, 1933.

21 Hedley A. Chilvers, The Yellow Man Looks On: Being the Story of the Anglo-Dutch

Conflict in South Africa and Its Interest for the Peoples of Asia, 2nd ed. (London:
Cassell and Company 1933): 228-9.

22 "Mrs. Smuts and the Japanese Treaty: Introduction of Yellow Race," The Rhodesia

Herald (Salisbury, Mashonaland: Argus Printing and Pub. Company) 5 Mar 1931.
23 RDM, 13 July 1931.
24 RDM, 15 July 1931.
25 RDM, 14 July 1931.
26 RDM, 17 July 1931.
27 Hansard, XVII, 2 June 1931, 4707.
28 RDM, 8 July 1931.
29 See, T.R.H. Davenport, South Africa: A Modern History (Toronto: University ofToronto Press 1977): 213. 100 pound sterling bought 125 Australian pounds during
this period but only 70-75 South African pounds.
30 Takafusa Nakamura, "Depression, Recovery, and War, 1920-1945," in Peter Duus,ed., The Cambridge History of Japan, vol. 6 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
1989): 464.

31Roger B. Beck, The History of South Africa (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press 2003):

109.

32 RDM ,19 Sept 1933.

White Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-1930

166

33 RDM , 19 Sept 1933.
34 RDM, 15 Sept 1933.
35 RDM, 6 Sept 1933.
36 RDM, 19 Sept 1931.
37 Rosenthal, Japan's Bid…1944: 12.
38 DRO, A 660 1-1-4; Bradshaw, “Japan and European…,”1992.
39 Chilvers, The Yellow Man… 1933.
40 Rosenthal, Japan’s Bid… 1944: 9-10.
41 Hansard, XXII, 7 March 1934.
42 “Sir H.F. Batterbee to Sir George Mounsey,” 1 August 1934, FO 371/18188 B.
43 RDM, 10 Oct 1933.
44 Gilbert Ernest Hubbard, Eastern Industrialization and its Effects on the West With

Special Reference to Great Britain and Japan (London: Oxford University Press
1935): 27.

45 George B. Sansom, (Tokyo) "Japanese Trade with South Africa" Enclosure in

British Minister F.O. Lindley (Tokyo) to John Simon, 5 March 1934, "Trade
Agreement Between Japan and Union of South Africa" PRO FO 2181/159/23.
46 Sansom, “Japanese Trade…” 1934, PRO FO 2181/159/23.
47 Andrew Roberts, "Introduction," in Andrew Roberts, ed., The Colonial Moment in

Africa: Essay on the Movement of Minds and Materials 1900-1940 (Cambridge:
University of Cambridge Press 1990): 11.

48 "Minami Afurika Renpō,” [The Union of South Africa] Nihon Gomu Seihin Yūshutsu

Kumiai Chōsa Kenkyū [Japan Rubber Products Export Association Investigative
Research] 8 (1937): 3.

49 The "onagers" or zebras (valued at f 3,000) arrived in Japan safely aboard theDelftsyhaven. See, E.J. van Donzel, Foreign Relations of Ethiopia 1642-1700:
Documents Relating to the Journeys of Khodja Murad (Leiden: 1979): 48 cE.n. 248.
50 Walter Goldfrank, "Silk and Steel: Italy and Japan Between the Two World Wars,"in Edmund Burke III, ed., Global Crisis and Social Movements: Artisans, Peasants,
Populists, and the World Economy (Boulder: 1988): 224; Jon Halliday, A Political
History of Japanese Capitalism (New York: Monthly Review Press 1975): 128.
51 The Wal-Wal Incident mentioned above.
52 S. Olu Agbi, "The Japanese and the Italo-Ethiopian Crisis, 1935-36," Journal of theHistorical Society of Nigeria 11 (1983): 130-41.

Bradshaw, Ransdell: Japan, Britain and the Yellow Peril in Africa in the 1930s

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53 Sugimura had formerly been deputy secretary-general of the League of Nations(Osaka Mainichi & Tokyo Nichi Nichi (OM&TNN), 12 Sept 1933).
54 Agbi, “Italo-Ethiopian Crisis…,” 1984: 3.

55 OM&TNN, 20 July 1935. The Osaka Mainichi & Tokyo Nichi Nichi is published by

The Mainichi Newspapers Co., Ltd. in Osaka and Tokyo.
56 OM & TNN, 21 July 1935.

57 The Japan Times (JT), 21 July 1935. General Ugaki had arrived in Tokyo on July 8,

shortly before the onset of the Sugimura affair, in order to discuss the question of
Chosen [Korea]'s budget with government officials in Tokyo. He left Tokyo on July
22 and returned to Chosen on 25 July, "General Ugaki To Visit Genro Today Before
Leaving For Chosen," JT, 24 July 1935; "Ugaki Visits Shimoda On Return To Chosen,"JT, 26 July 1935. While in Tokyo Ugaki was reported as stating that the "impending
Italo-Ethiopian war would not be regarded as something on the other bank of theriver," Sugimura to Hirota, 18 July 1935, DRO, File A ET/1-2, cited in Agbi, "ItaloEthiopian Crisis…," 1984: 5.
58 OM & TNN, 20 July 1935; JT, 21 July 1935.
59 "Amau Points Out Cases of Italy's Attack On Japan," JT, 22 July 1935.
60 "Amau Points Out Cases of Italy's Attack On Japan," JT, 22 July 1935.
61 "Amau Points Out Cases of Italy's Attack On Japan," JT, 22 July 1935.
62 "Rome Disturbed by Hirota's Talk To Italian Envoy," JT, 23 July 1935.
63 "Rome Disturbed by Hirota's Talk To Italian Envoy," JT, 23 July 1935.
64 "Japanese Embassy At Rome Is Placed Under Guard; Sugimura To Lodge Protest,"

JT, 24 July 1935.

65 As translated in "Japan Pictured As Peril to White Race By Journals," JT, 24 July

1935.

66 "Japan Pictured As Peril to White Race By Journals," JT, 24 July 1935.
67 "France Favors Treaty to Grant Italy Protectorate Over Ethiopia; Anti-Japan

Demonstrations Seen," JT, 25 July 1935.

68 "Rome Press Attacks British Move," JT, 26 July 1935.
69 "Rome Press Attacks British Move," JT, 26 July 1935.
70 "15,000 Demonstrate Against Japan, Britain," JT, 27 July 1935.
71 "Rome Quiets Down," JT, 28 July 1935.
72 "Japan Stand Neutral, Tokyo Informs Auriti," OM & TNN, 18 Sept 1935.

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73 "This Paper's Network is Completed for News-Gathering in African War," OM &TNN, 5 Oct 1935: "For a full account of the momentous world drama that is about tobe played," the newspaper advertised, "read the Osaka Mainichi and the Tokyo Nichi
Nichi."
74 These included Edward W. Beattie, Webb Miller, Percival Phillips, Leonard

Packard, Alfred Street, Herbert Ekins, and Ladislas Farago, see, "This Paper's News
Front in Africa Vitalized to Meet All Emergencies," OM & TNN, 3 Sept 1935; Ladislas
Farago, "Native Drums Call Tribes to Arms...," OM & TNN, 24 Sept 1935.
75 Wallington (Pretoria) to Wiseman, 6 Aug 1935, PRO, FO 371/19367. It is notknown whether Wada actually entered into negotiations for broadcasting rights.
Wada returned to the U.S. at the end of August, see "Staff Correspondent Back,” 3
Sept 1935, PRO, FO 371/19367.
76 OM & TNN, 24 July 1935.
77 J. Calvitt Clarke, Alliance of the “Colored” Peoples of the World: Ethiopia and Japan

Before the Second World War, (Forthcoming 2011), 235.

78 J. Calvitt Clarke, Alliance of the “Colored” Peoples of the World: Ethiopia and Japan

Before the Second World War, (Forthcoming 2011), 235.

79 See Hugh Byas, Government by Assassination (New York: Knopf Publishers 1942):

200. The Amur River Society is often referred to as the "Black Dragon Society"because the literal meaning of the Chinese characters for the Amur River are "Black
Dragon". The society took the name of the Amur because of its initial goal to prevent
the Russians from extending their influence beyond that river in Manchuria. To callit the "Black Dragon Society" downplays the importance of the river after which it
was named and tends to exaggerate the reputedly sinister, secret nature of thesociety.
80 Auriti called on Horinouchi in the absence of Foreign Minister Arita Hachiro, see,

"Italian High Commissioner At Addis Ababa To Be Told To Respect Japanese Rights,"
OM & TNN, 14 May 1936.
81 Arita to Sugimura, 27 June 1936, DRO File A 461 ET/13-1, cited in Agbi, "Italo-

Ethiopian Crisis…," 1984: 8. Agbi's footnote 44 contains the correct reference, notfootnote 43 as the paper incorrectly indicates.
82 Sugimura to Arita, 14 October 1936, DRO File A 461 ET/1-15, cited in Agbi, "Italo-

Ethiopian Crisis…," 1984: 9, cf. n. 46.
83 Sugimura to Arita, 18 November 1936, DRO File A 461, ET/1-15, cited in Agbi,"Italo-Ethiopian Crisis…," 1984: 9, cf. n. 47.

84 Sugimura to Arita, 2 December 1936, DRO File A 461 ET/1-15, cited in Agbi,"Italo-Ethiopian Crisis…," 1984: 10, cf. n. 48.

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The Contradictions of Empire
Migrants, Subjects, Citizens: Comparative Perspectives on Nationality in the Prewar
Japanese Empire
Tessa Morris-Suzuki
http://www.japanfocus.org/-Tessa-Morris_Suzuki/2862
August 28, 2008
Women's Anti-Imperialism, 'The White Man's Burden,' and the Philippine-American
War
Erin L. Murphy
http://www.japanfocus.org/-erin-murphy/3182
July 6, 2009
Race-Making and Colonial Violence in the U.S. Empire:
The Philippine-American War as Race War
By Paul A. Kramer
http://japanfocus.org/-paul_a_-kramer/1745
June 2, 2006
The contradictions of racial discourse, and their relevance to ourcontemporary world, are well illustrated in this last set of readings. Morris-Suzuki
explains the tensions in Japan’s empire building, especially the distinctions between
formal nationality and civic rights. One could be a member of the Japanese empire,
and therefore a subject of the Emperor, without necessarily having the privileges(voting, office holding) or responsibilities (conscription) of citizenship. Legallyresembling an amalgamation of British and French systems, the expanding Japanesecolonial system of the early 20th century differed from its British and Frenchcounterparts in practice because it had both large inflows and outflows of migrants.
While Japanese migrated to other parts of Asia and elsewhere, hundreds ofthousands of Asians flowed into Japanese territories and the home islands
themselves. In all cases, however, the Japanese, like other colonial empires, imposeda system of unequal rights legitimized by the belief in some kind of natural
hierarchy, often based on race. These practices have left a lasting and often painful
legacy in the contemporary world.
The articles by Murphy and Kramer take us in a different direction by
examining some of the controversies surrounding the American decision toincorporate the Philippines into its own expanding empire at the beginning of the20th century. These articles are important for a number of reasons. First, they
remind us that Japan and America began to build colonial empires at the same time.
Second, they reveal the importance of concepts like race, civilization, and progressin all justifications for empire. Third, they illustrate how powerfully national andracial identities were gendered, and the key role war played in that process. Kramershows how initial American restraint devolved into a war filled with race hatred

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while, at the same time, Filipino leaders anguished over adopting guerrilla tactics
because they would make their people appear uncivilized.
Murphy examines the Philippine-American War from the perspective of its
American opponents, the anti-Imperialists, a diverse collection of men and womenof different classes and races led for the most part by elite white men. She focuses
primarily on the efforts of women to stop the American annexation of thePhilippines and, when that failed, to expose the atrocities of the war itself. In theprocess, we see how their opponents used gender to discredit these women andtheir supporters, employing language and imagery that closely resembled common
forms of racial discrimination. In addition, both articles show how many people inthose days, especially men, understood war as a force of progress, as a way of
weeding out the weak, and, of course, as an expression of manly virtue and honour.

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Migrants, Subjects, Citizens: Comparative Perspectives on Nationality in the
Prewar Japanese Empire
Tessa Morris-Suzuki
Former Prime Minister Mori Yoshiro seems an unlikely champion of a multicultural
Japan. His brief term of office is, after all, perhaps best remembered for the furore heevoked by a speech in which he described Japan as a “Divine Nation headed by theEmperor”. This echo of prewar nationalism stirred fears at home and abroad that
senior Japanese politicians still subscribed to Shinto myths of a unique and raciallysuperior Japan. Yet Mori today is an active participant in the ruling Liberal
Democratic Party’s “Diet Members’ League for Promoting Exchanges of Foreign
Human Resources” (Gaikoku Jinzai Koryu Suishin Giin Renmei), an awkwardlynamed body whose mission is to promote mass immigration by making Japan amagnet for skilled workers from around the world. (Akashi and Ogawa 2008, 69)
Mori’s capacity to combine nostalgia for wartime nationalism with enthusiasm forboosting the number of foreigners in Japan is, however, perhaps not so odd after all.
The inspiration for the activities of the Diet Members’ League is a fear that a lowbirth rate and declining population will irrevocably damage Japan’s power andprestige. For this reason, its members have given a friendly reception to the views of
Sakanaka Hidenori, former head of Japan’s Immigration Bureau, who advocates an
expansion in the size of Japan’s foreigner population to 10 million, or even maybe 20
million (ten times the current size) by the middle of this century, thus creating a“Big Japan” with enhanced global power and prestige. (Sakanaka 2005; Akashi andOgawa 2008)
Public statements by the Diet Members’ League are part of an intensifying debate inJapan about immigration and the place of foreigners in Japanese society. Against abackground of impending population decline and global competition for skilled
labour, the conventional battlelines of the migration debate are being redrawn. Now
some conservative politicians are looking seriously at the need to revise social
policies, and even to reform Japan’s nationality law, in order to adapt to an age ofhigher migration. Meanwhile, leading members of the opposition Democratic Party
have been debating a proposal to give local voting rights to foreign permanent
residents: a proposal which Sakanaka firmly excludes from his vision of Big Japan,
and which LDP politician Hirasawa Katsue describes as “the first step towards theloss of Japanese identity and the dissolution of the heart of the nation state”. (Nishi
Nihon Shimbun, 18 April 2008). Such political crosscurrents highlight a complex
relationship between nationalism and internationalism, between belief in a “unique
Japan” and in “coexistence [kyosei] with foreigners”, and between nostalgia for the
past and visions for the future.
Colonial Origins
These controversies surrounding migration and nationality are deeply embedded inJapan’s colonial history, just as current debates on multiculturalism and citizenshipin Britain and France are deeply embedded in the history of the British and French

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Empires. The prewar past has a bearing on the present for several reasons. First, thepolicies pursued by Japanese governments in the first half of the twentieth century
helped to determine the nature of the foreign presence in Japan today. Many
Koreans in Japan are descendents of migrants from the colonial era. Many membersof Japan’s Brazilian and Peruvian communities, which together numbered over
370,000 in 2006, are descendents of those who emigrated in the first half of thetwentieth century, often under schemes supported by the Japanese state as a meansof strengthening their nation’s social cohesion and international influence.
(Immigration Bureau 2007, 18-19)
Second, the ideas that resurface in present-day debates have a lineage that goesback to the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The legal framework ofJapanese nationality was first set in place at a time when the creation of theJapanese colonial empire was just beginning, and this framework was further
refined and developed as the empire grew. The boundaries of nationality,
subjecthood and citizenship were therefore dynamic and contested. They were also
riven with paradoxes, many of which arose from a central contradiction: the needfor the Empire to unite its diverse subjects into a single loyal body while
simultaneously seeking to divide rulers and ruled into a hierarchy of groups withseparate sets of rights. As the Japanese empire expanded during the Asia PacificWar, colonial subjects in Korea and Taiwan were encouraged to see themselves aspart of the inner circles of a multiethnic Greater Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere [Dai ToA
Kyoeiken], in which increasingly complex layers of rights and duties distinguishedpeoples of the metropolitan core, the formal colonies, quasi-colonies like
Manchukuo and occupied areas. Identity, subjecthood, legal nationality and voting
rights did not necessarily go together, and seldom coalesced into a single national
heart.

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Map showing stages of incorporation in Japanese Empire, 1870-1943

The age of colonial empires, like the present day, was a time of mass migrations, andthe prewar Japanese empire was a space crossed by a complex web of movement. By
1932, there were estimated to be some 825,000 Japanese nationals living in foreigncountries, Japan’s mandated territories and the quasi-colony of Manchukuo, as well
as about a million Japanese settlers in the colonial territories of Korea, Taiwan and
Karafuto. (Allison 1934a) The number of foreigners in prewar and wartime Japanwas relatively small - around 54,000 in 1930 and 39,000 in 1940. (Homusho
Nyukoku Kanrikyoku 1964, 10) This figure, however, did not include the large
number of Korean and Taiwanese colonial subjects who migrated to Japan
particularly from the late 1920s onwards. By 1938 there were probably some
800,000 Korean residents in Japan - over 1% of the total population of metropolitan
Japan [naichi], and by 1945 the number had exceeded two million. (Pak 1975, 9)

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Around 42,000 Chinese labourers were also transported to Japan during the War, ofwhom some 31,000 were still in Japan at war’s end. In addition, there were about
28,000 migrants from the Japanese colony of Taiwan in Japan, making a total
Chinese population of almost 60,000 in 1945. (Vasishth 1997, 132) Japan’s imperial
expansion was also associated with other movements of people between colonial
territories or across the frontiers of empire: mass emigration from Korea to
Manchuria, for example, as well as a smaller flow of immigrants from China to theJapanese colony of Taiwan.
Migration was the lifeblood of empire, and those who governed the empire sought
to maximise the economic and strategic benefits for cross-border movement while
also controlling, channelling and filtering it so as to contain its subversive potential.
The tools they devised for this purpose were often ingenious. Here I shall begin byusing a comparison between the British and Japanese empires to clarify bothcommonalities and distinct features of the Japanese system. I shall then go on tolook at the way in which prewar migrations challenged and sometimes shifted theboundaries of Japanese subjecthood and nationality, before concluding with somereflections on the implications of this history for the current migration andnationality debates.
Imperial Subjects“There are only two nations, East and West”. This quotation, from no less anauthority than Napoleon Bonaparte, forms the opening sentence of a discussion
paper on imperial citizenship written in 1914 by the forum of British foreign affairs
experts known as the Round Table. The document’s authors go on to observe: “inMorris-Suzuki: Migrants, Subjects, Citizens

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this Napoleon’s aphorism is essentially correct, that history has been for the mostpart a settling of accounts between East and West. The chief pieces have been thoseof Europe and Asia, and uncivilized races have occupied the position of pawns in thegame”. (Round Table 1914, 1) The Round Table’s reflections on the evolution of the
British Commonwealth, which they portrayed as “the highest development ofpolitical ideas typical of Europe”, exposed the profound ambiguities and dilemmasof subjecthood and nationality in the colonial world. On the one hand, the might ofan empire is demonstrated by the size of its population. From this point of view it isdesirable to have an inclusive system of membership which defines all inhabitants
as sharing a single nationality. On the other hand, it is necessary to justify the rightof one section of the population to exercise control over others. Hence the tendency
for most colonial empires to develop an increasingly sharp distinction between theformal status of nationality (shared by all or most inhabitants of the empire) andsubstantive citizenship (rights to participate in the political process, which were
unequally distributed between colonisers and colonised.)
The Japanese model of colonialism is often likened to the assimilationist Frenchmodel, which involved an extension of the metropolitan order to the colonies, andcontrasted with the British model, which is seen as involving a higher degree of
autonomy for local people. (See for example Tanaka 1984, 159) This distinction,
however, seems too sharp. France, Britain and Japan all had highly complex imperial
systems in which the strength of metropolitan control and the degree ofassimilationism varied both between regions and over time, and Japan in fact
borrowed and adapted eclectically from both French and British precedents.
The Japanese empire, interestingly enough, acquired its formal legal framework fornationality before the British Empire did. The first Japanese Nationality Act[kokuseki ho] was passed in 1899, and a local version of the Act was extended to therecently-acquired Japanese colony of Taiwan in the same year. When Japan acquired
Taiwan in 1895, Taiwanese residents who did not wish to live under Japanese rule
had been allowed two years to remove themselves and their property from thecolony; those who remained were then deemed to be Japanese subjects. (Tanaka
1984, 156) In the case of subsequent colonial acquisitions, issues of citizenship were
somewhat less clear-cut.
The colony of Karafuto was obtained from Russia in 1905 as part of the spoils of
victory in the Russo-Japanese War, but it was only in 1924 that Karafuto obtained its
local version of the Nationality Law (modelled closely on the 1899 Act). When Japan
assumed control of Karafuto it allowed existing residents to leave the colony, taking
their property with them, if they wished to do so. But in the case of Karafuto those
who remained did not become Japanese subjects, but retained Russian nationality.
In fact, the great majority of the pre-1905 population elected to return to Russia, themain exception being some 2000-3000 indigenous people (Ainu, Nivkh and Uilta).
The status of these indigenous groups remained obscure for many years. It was only
in 1932 that the colonial authorities officially recognised all Ainu inhabitants of
Karafuto as Japanese subjects, and even after that other indigenous people
continued to be treated separately, being enrolled in “native registers” [dojin meibo]

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rather than included in the standard family registration system. In Korea, whichbecame a fully-fledged Japanese colony in 1910, local residents were deemed automatically and without choice - to have become Japanese subjects, but a local
version of the Nationality Law was never introduced, for reasons which we shall
explore a little later.
Britain, on the other hand, did not acquire its first comprehensive nationality law
until the passing of the 1914 Nationality and Status of Aliens Act. It is true that, inthe British case, some important aspects of nationality had been dealt with by the
Naturalisation Acts of 1844 and 1870, but the first of these explicitly did not apply
to the colonies (which were allowed to have their own separate naturalisationlaws), and the application of the 1870 law to the colonies was uncertain. (Parry
1957, 76-82) The Japanese law of 1899 and the British law of 1914 resembled eachother in the sense that they both defined the people of the empire as “Imperial
Subjects”, rather than as “citizens”, and that the status of an Imperial Subject was
defined primarily in terms of allegiance to the Crown or Emperor. The greatest
difference between the two systems, however, was that nationality in the British
empire was based on the principle of ius soli, which grants citizenship to anyoneborn in the nation or colony - in part a legacy of the fact that for long periods ofBritish history a substantial proportion of the ruling class had been of foreignancestry - while Japanese nationality was based on ius sanguinis, which grants
citizenship based on ancestry.
In imperial systems, contrary to the theoretical ideals set out in many texts on
citizenship, formal status as members of the Imperial community did not confer
equal civic rights. In devising its systems for the rule of colonies, Japan was in factstrongly influenced by the British model of the Crown Colony, where political power
rested mainly in the hands of a Governor General, advised by a small appointed
council. (See for example Takekoshi 1907, 37-38) Imperial ideologues generally
justified the inequalities of imperial subjects by means of ideas of social evolution,
which they saw as imposing on “civilized” nations a duty of “trusteeship for thewelfare of backward peoples”. (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1937, 141)
The members of the Round Table, reflecting on Britain’s colony of India in 1914,
wrote: “as a whole the East does not understand the conceptions nor have its peopleacquired the habit which make self-government possible. The gradual introductionof these customs and habits is a work which will take centuries of orderly
government to complete”. (Round Table 1914, 117) This view of the unequal
evolution of different races was reflected in the complex subdivision of the empire
into colonies where legislative power was vested in an appointed Governor alone,those where the Governor was advised by a partly appointed and partly elected
legislative council, those with wholly elected legislative councils and those with
their own systems of government which control most matters apart from externalaffairs.
The idea of social evolution also served as the justification for the inequality of civic
rights within the Japanese empire. In 1918, for example, a government committee
discussed the possibility of granting colonial subjects the right to elect members toMorris-Suzuki: Migrants, Subjects, Citizens

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the Japanese Diet, as well as the possibility of enforcing conscription in the colonies,
but concluded that “the time had not yet come” for such measures. To justify its
conclusions, it compared the colonies with the prefecture of Okinawa, which until
1879 had been the Ryukyu Kingdom – an independent state, though one which paid
tribute both to China and to the Japanese Domain of Satsuma – and had only
gradually been incorporated into the Japanese nation. In Okinawa, conscription andvoting rights had been introduced later than in other parts of Japan. (Tashiro 1974,
794)
These comments point to a second issue which, in addition to the question ofrepresentation, created particular complexities for nationality law in imperial
systems: the question of military service. In traditional citizenship theory, the dutyof military service is seen as being the obverse side of the rights of citizenship, andthis relationship was very strongly emphasised in prewar Japanese writings on thesubject. It seems clear that one of the main reasons for the maintenance of a firm
distinction between subjects from overseas colonies [gaichi] and “mainland”
Japanese [naichi] subjects in the Japanese system was a desire to exclude colonial
peoples from conscription, on the grounds that they lacked the necessary loyalty to
the state. (Tashiro 1974, 791) When all out war arrived, however, this ultimately
proved untenable, and, after energetic recruitment of “volunteers”, by the final
stages of the Asia-Pacific War Japan found it necessary to introduce conscription in
the colonies of Korea and Taiwan, and to link this with promises of increased civic
rights (discussed below).
In the British Empire conscription was enforced only during the First World War
and from 1939 to 1962. During the world wars, Britain relied massively on the
recruitment of Commonwealth troops from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Indiaand elsewhere. In peacetime however, the issue in the British Empire was not one of
excluding potentially “disloyal” colonial subjects from conscription, but rather oneof identifying particular colonial groups (such as the Ghurkhas) who provided
potential sources for the recruitment of volunteer professional soldiers.
The British and Japanese colonial states, however, shared a concern with a thirdproblem of imperial subjecthood: the problem of the movement of peoples. Since all
inhabitants of the empire possessed the same nationality, they would theoreticallyappear to have had the right to migrate and settle anywhere within the empire, but
in fact colonial powers had a very strong vested interest in controlling the
movement of people: on the one hand, preventing migration to areas where they
wished to maintain high wages and restrict ethnic diversity; on the other,encouraging the movement of people to areas with labour shortage. Although theunderlying concerns were the same, the approach to this issue was different in thecases of Britain and Japan.
In the case of Japan, a single coherent framework was used to separate formal
nationality from substantive citizenship: that is, to divide the rights and duties ofsubjects of the colonies [gaichi] from those of “Japanese proper” [naichi], and so todeal simultaneously with the questions of unequal civic rights and conscription, andWhite Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-1930

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with the problem of the potential intermingling of people from different parts of theempire. This framework was the koseki or family register system, which has been
described as creating “states within a state”. (Tashiro 1974, 795) In other words,
while all colonial peoples possessed “Japanese nationality” - Nihon kokuseki - interms of international law, they also had what might be termed a “regional
citizenship” in terms of their family registration [koseki]. Each colony had its own
family registration law, and people were not free to move their registration between
one colony and another, or between the colonized “external territories” [gaichi] and“Japan proper” [naichi].
This system did not in itself prevent the movement of people between different
parts of the empire, but it did ensure that (for example) colonial migrants to Japan
were always distinguishable from the metropolitan population in terms of legal
status. It also made it easier to draw up laws which discriminated between therights of coloniser and colonised in the various overseas territories. In Korea andTaiwan, for example, separate school systems were established for local people(who had Korean or Taiwanese family registration) and for Japanese settlers (who,wherever they went in the empire, retained their naichi registration), though a small
number of places in schools for settlers were reserved for socially elite oracademically outstanding “colonials”. (Tanaka 1984, 160) The description of thesystem as creating “states within a state” seems particularly appropriate because
the rules for changing family registration precisely mirrored the rules for changing
nationality. For example, in marriages between people with family registration indifferent regions of the empire, the wife acquired the family registration of her
husband, just as, in marriages between people of Japanese and foreign nationality,
the wife was assumed to take her husband’s nationality.
In the British empire, there was no such comprehensive set of sub-systems toseparate different categories of imperial subject. As Robert Huttenback has
observed, “owing to its somewhat haphazard growth, the British Empire lacked theadministrative and structural continuity apparent in more planned enterprises suchas the French and German Empires”. (Huttenback 1976, 22) During the 19th
century, many settler colonies were given a substantial measure of self-rule(evolving from the status of “Crown Colony” to “Dominion”), and many went on toenact their own migration regulations. Before the Second World War, moreover,some colonies or former colonies (notably Canada, South Africa and Ireland)
introduced nationality laws of their own, defining the rights and duties of thenationals of their particular territories, who nonetheless remained British subjects.
Other colonies and Commonwealth countries like Australia, however, did not create
their own separate nationalities until after 1945.
Within this complex structure, the interests of colonial governments and themetropolitan power did not always coincide. (Huttenback 1976) In the settler
colonies, a key issue from the mid-19th century onward was the desire to control
and limit the inflow of non-European immigrants, many of whom came from otherparts of the Empire. The obvious way to do this was through the use of crudely
racial classifications. In 1896, for example, New South Wales banned the entry of “all

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persons belonging to any coloured race inhabiting the Continent of Asia or theContinent of Africa, or any island adjacent thereto, or any island in the Pacific Ocean
or Indian Ocean”. (see Lake and Reynolds 2005, 144) However, this approach met
with considerable resistance in Britain itself, in part because it evoked waves ofprotest in Britain’s largest colony, India, and in part because it complicated relations
with other countries, notably Japan.
The New South Wales legislation and race-based labour migration laws in
Queensland drew heated protests from the Japanese government, which felt (asSecretary of State for the Colonies Joseph Chamberlain put it) particular distressthat “Japan should be spoken of in formal documents, such as the colonial Acts, as if
the Japanese were on the same level of morality and civilization as Chinese, or otherless advanced populations of Asia”. 2 It was in response to these sensitivities that in1901 the newly federated Australia passed an Immigration Restriction Act which
made no explicit mention of race, but instead required entrants to Australia to beable to demonstrate knowledge of a European language: a knowledge that would be
confirmed through a dictation test administered by an immigration officer. This
form of language and education test had been introduced in Natal four years earlier,
and was therefore commonly known as the “Natal Formula”. (Huttenback 1976,
141)
The real meaning of the test was very firmly spelled out in the lengthy confidential
notes for Australian immigration officers, produced by the Federal Government tohelp them administer the law effectively. These carefully explain:
It is intended that the dictation tests shall be an absolute bar to admission.
Officers will therefore take means to ascertain whether, in their opinion, theimmigrant can write English. If it is thought that he can, the test must be
dictated in some other European language, one with which the immigrant is
not acquainted…
The dictation test is not to be applied to Japanese, Indians and Hong Kong
Chinese, who are the holders of passports from their governments…
Officers will use their discretion when applying this law. Persons who are
suffering from any serious physical incapacity, and who are without means,
may be regarded as coming within its terms; but Europeans of sound bodily
health, notwithstanding that they have no money, should not be so regarded,
and are to be admitted without restriction. 3
With the aid of such devices, by the beginning of the First World War, Australia,
British Columbia and South Africa had all passed laws which, in one way or another,prevented the immigration of most non-Europeans.
In practice, then, the subjects of the Empire belonged to a multi-layered system,
which served to ensure the inequality of rights and duties between different parts ofthe empire even as it sought to cement a shared identity as members of the imperial
community. As one prewar study described the situation in the British Empire, "inWhite Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-1930

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conferring political rights the state may discriminate between various classes ofsubjects, and in many parts of the Empire it does in fact discriminate, particularly on
racial and economic grounds." (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1937: 309)
Japanese Emigrants and the “Dual Nationality Problem”
Nowadays nationality is often seen as being symbolised by the passport: thestandardised ubiquitous prerequisite for international mobility. It is important toremember, though, that the contemporary form of multiple-use passport only
gradually came into widespread use during the first half of the twentieth century.
Emigrants leaving Japan in the late nineteenth century were expected to obtain
official letters of permission, but frequent references to “illegal” or “unofficial”
migrants suggest that many travelled without official documents. In the interwar
period, Japanese travellers planning to go abroad generally had to obtain a new
passport for each trip: only privileged categories (such as employees of major
companies) could acquire passports for multiple journeys. On the other hand, along-standing agreement with China ensured that throughout the 1920s and 1930s
passport-free travel was possible in both directions between China and Japan.
(Grew 1936) Restrictions on Chinese immigration were therefore enforced, less by
the border controls with which we are familiar today, than by internal controls
which made it difficult for Chinese migrants to obtain work or housing in Japan.
Even the very word imin - the Japanese term which covers both immigration andemigration - did not come into widespread use until the late nineteenth century.
Before that, Japanese emigrés were often referred to by the term dekaseginin “people who go out to earn money” - the same word which was used to describe
seasonal labourers who left their home villages to seek work in other parts of Japan.
(Hata 1970, 14-15) In other words, many of the ideas, rules and institutions which
we now take for granted as marking the boundaries of national populations were
only gradually developed through contact and friction with the modern world order.
In this process, the Japanese state found itself confronting new and unforseen
problems relating to the definition of nationality.
The outflow of Japanese emigrants began on a small scale in the mid-1860s, andgathered pace after the Meiji Restoration of 1868. In that year, 148 Japanese went to
Hawaii on labour contracts, while a further group of samurai from the defeated sidein the Restoration struggle migrated to California. (Daniels 2006, 31; Dresner 2006,53) Early Meiji emigrants were a diverse assortment of people including students
officially sent overseas by the Japanese government, “pseudo-students” from lessillustrious backgrounds who earned their keep while studying or enjoying thenovelties of US or European society, sailors, itinerant entertainers and prostitutes.
Few intended to settle permanently abroad: rather, they saw themselves as earningmoney or acquiring skills which would enable them to create a better life forthemselves on their return to Japan. (Hata 1970; Ichioka 1988, 7-19) Official
attitudes to this exodus varied. Some, like the famous westerniser Fukuzawa
Yukichi, favoured the migration of Japanese geisha and prostitutes, whom he saw asMorris-Suzuki: Migrants, Subjects, Citizens

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potential pioneers of Japanese overseas expansion. From the mid-1880s to the mid1890s, the Japanese government also encouraged the emigration of some 30,000
contract labourers to the plantations of Hawaii, since it saw this as a means of
releasing social tensions caused by economic recession in Japan. (Daniels 2006, 31)
At the same time, however, other Japanese observers lamented the bad image ofJapan projected by “undesirable elements”. In the early twentieth century, attempts
to regulate the behaviour of “undesirable” emigrants became linked to fears of risinganti-Japanese racism in the United States, Canada and elsewhere. But Japaneseconcern at the impact of emigration on national prestige predated by many years
the emergence of anti-Japanese exclusion movements, and this suggests that theprocesses of emigration challenged the unspoken, and perhaps unconscious, imagesof Japanese nationality developed by bureaucrats and politicians in the course of
Meiji period debates on the modern nation state.
The official image of “the Japanese national”, in other words, was shaped not simply
by ethno-racial preconceptions but also by preconceptions of gender, class andlifestyle. To the extent that they represented Japan to the world, emigrants were
expected to represent a Japan which conformed to urban, middle-class ideologies ofofficialdom: they should embody the sober, frugal, hard-working values of amodernising Japan. Late nineteenth-century consular officials complained, notsimply of emigrants who drank, gambled or engaged in prostitution, but also of
those who made spectacles of themselves by going around the streets of foreign
cities dressed in traditional Japanese garb. In the 1880s, for example, the Japanese
consul in New York expressed particular horror at one Matsuda Kojiro, a sumo
wrestler who insisted on dressing in quilted gown, obi sash and wooden clogs withsupreme indifference to the fact that he “looked outlandish and indecent to the eyesof Americans”. (Quoted in Hata 1970, 30)
By the beginning of the twentieth century, the nature of Japanese emigration had
begun to change. The numbers of migrants were now much higher, running ataround 10,000 a year in the early years of the century, and the majority of migrants
were agricultural and other labourers from relatively poor rural regions of Japan,
many of whom were recruited by labour contracting companies. The main
destinations for migration at this stage were Hawaii, Canada and the United States,
but in 1907 an agreement to encourage Japanese migration was reached with thestate of Sao Paulo in Brazil, which was to become a major magnet for emigrants in
the 1920s and early 1930s, and from the period of the First World War onwards
emigration to Southeast Asia also began to expand rapidly.

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Japanese migrants in Vancouver, 1892

By the end of the 1920s there were some 140,000 Japanese residents on the US
mainland, around 134,000 in Hawaii, 130,000 in Brazil and about 30,000 in thePhilippines, Malaya and the Dutch East Indies combined. (Garrels 1930, 4) As thegeographical spread of Japanese emigration extended, so its social character also
evolved. More and more migrants were now beginning to recognise that theirdeparture from Japan was permanent, and Japanese community associations werebeginning to establish schemes to help emigrants purchase land in their new homecountries. (Ichioka 146-153)
In responding to these changes, Japanese bureaucrats continued to see the migrantin patriarchal terms, as a national liability whose behaviour was to be guided andcontrolled so as to present a favourable image of Japan to the outside world. The
state, for example, took a very active role in regulating the “picture bride” system
which proliferated in the United States as male Japanese emigrés to America sought
wives from home. Under this system, emigrant men sent photographs and details of
their lives to friends or relatives in Japan, who selected a bride for them. The
marriage ceremony took place in Japan, with the bridegroom in absentia, and thebride then obtained permission to join her husband overseas.

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Picture brides

The Japanese government sanctioned the system until 1920, when public criticism
in the US caused them to suspend the issuing of passports to “picture brides” boundfor America. It also took it upon itself to intervene in many aspects of the marriage
arrangements. Ordinary labourers were ineligible to sponsor “picture brides” until
1915, and thereafter were given permission only if they could prove that they had
savings of over $800. Women had to enter their names into their prospective
husband’s family register six months before applying for a passport. They could not
be more than thirteen years younger than their husband, and had to submit torigorous health examinations before leaving Japan. (Ichioka 1988, 166-167)
Regulations like these were inspired by two distinct motives. On the one hand, they
demonstrated a genuine if paternalistic concern to protect women from abusive
husbands, but at the same time they were also clearly designed to protect the public
image of the Japanese citizen by imposing an official model of proper marital
relationships. A similar mixture of motives also prompted the passing of the 1896
“Migrants’ Protection Act” [Imin Hogo Ho] whose main aim was to control theactivities of the Japanese labour contracting firms which were responsible forrecruiting a large proportion of Japanese emigrants. Labour contracting companies
were required to post a bond and obtain a licence from the government, to draw up
written contracts with the workers they recruited and to take responsibility forWhite Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-1930

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helping sick or indigent workers return to Japan. At the same time, emigrants who
were not recruited by contracting companies were obliged to name two guarantors
who would assist them if they ran into difficulties overseas. (Ichioka 1988, 47-48)

Labor contractors in Vancouver

The Act marked a new stage in the history of an extremely close relationshipbetween the Japanese state and migrant recruiting companies. In 1917 thegovernment again intervened to force the forty or so existing labour contractors toMorris-Suzuki: Migrants, Subjects, Citizens

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merge into a single firm: the Overseas Development Company [Kaigai Kogyo
Kaisha], and from 1921 onwards the company was supported by annual
government subsidies. (Allison 1934a, 5-6) The symbiotic relationship between
state and labour recruiters is well illustrated by the case of Japanese migration to
Brazil. During the first quarter of the twentieth century, increasing hostility to Asian
immigration in the United States and Canada led to growing restrictions on the
inflow of Japanese workers, and in 1924 America’s racially discriminatory
Immigration Act put an end to labour migration from Japan to the USA.
American exclusionism, coming at a time of considerable economic distress in rural
Japan, encouraged migrants and government officials to look for other destinations.
In 1927-1928 the Japanese government drew up a colonisation plan with theBrazilian government, the local administration of the Sao Paulo region and threelarge Japanese companies: the Overseas Development Co., the Osaka Steamship Co.
and the partly state-owned Oriental Development Co. [Toyo Takushoku Kaisha].
Under this plan, migrants were recruited particularly from the poorer rural districtsof southwestern Japan - including Kumamoto and Fukuoka Prefectures, as well as
Hokkaido and Okinawa - to work on Brazilian coffee and cotton plantations and silk
farms, some of which were directly owned by the Overseas Development Company.
(Suzuki 1969, 172; McClintock 1933)
Both sending and receiving ends of the migration process were carefully regulated.
Migrants who signed up with the Overseas Development Company were usuallytransported to Kobe, where they spent a week or ten days in the Kobe Emigrants’
Hostel, opened in 1928. Here they were given health checks and vaccinations andtheir personal possessions were disinfected. The hostel also provided classes in
Portuguese, sewing, hygiene and physical education, and lectures on religious, social
and agricultural conditions in Brazil. Once their processing was complete, themigrants embarked on a long and circuitous voyage to South America via China,
Singapore, Ceylon, Mombassa and Cape Town - a route determined by thecommercial considerations of the Osaka Steamship Company, which picked up andunloaded cargo along the way. The ¥200 fare per emigrant was wholly paid by theJapanese government, and in 1933 the Osaka Steamship Company was said to haveearned a revenue of ¥2.7 million from the transport of migrants to Brazil.
(McClintock 1933, 14-16)
When they arrived at the port of Santos in Brazil, migrants were met by arepresentative of the Overseas Development Company, who arranged theirtransport to the plantations where they were to be employed. Labour contracts
bound them to work for the plantation, often for six years but sometimes for as longas ten, but in the meanwhile most hoped to save enough money to acquire their own
smallholding or market garden. (Konno and Fujisaki 1994, 62-63) As the US ViceConsul in Kobe observed, after a visit to the Kobe Emigrants’ Hostel, “the Japaneseemigrant to Brazil takes with him a very slender store of the world’s goods: bedding,a few extra kimonos and a thin suit, some pots and pans and a great deal of
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As migrants settled into their new lives, and as the second generation of overseas
Japanese was born, the government faced new problems of defining the boundaries
of Japanese nationality. The 1899 Nationality Law had envisaged that Japanesenationals who became naturalised citizens of foreign countries would lose their
Japanese nationality. This, in fact, was not relevant to migrants to the United States
because racially discriminatory pre-war US citizenship regulations limited
naturalisation to “free white persons” and descendants of slaves. (Ichioka 1988, 1)
First-generation Asian immigrants were therefore denied the right to naturalisation.
Under the ius soli system of citizenship, the children of Japanese migrants, if born on
US soil, did automatically have a right to US nationality. However, Japan’s
Nationality Law stipulated only that people who became naturalised citizens offoreign countries would lose their Japanese nationality, but contained no provision
for people born overseas to renounce that nationality.
As the number of second generation migrants grew, this issue became a growing
problem. For one thing, it meant that the overseas-born children of Japanesemigrants were liable to conscription if they returned to Japan; for another, it fuelledfears amongst host populations that Japanese migrants would never become wholly
reliable citizens of their new homeland, but would always retain a prior loyalty to
Japan. From around 1910 onwards, with a rising tide of anti-Japanese sentiment inNorth America, the question of dual nationality became a topic of increasing debate
both within Japan and amongst Japanese communities overseas, and Japaneseemigré groups began to lobby the government for a change in the law. (See forexample Yoshida 1913).
The response was at first a cautious one: in 1916, the Nationality Law was amended
to allow second generation emigrants to renounce Japanese citizenship, although
adult males could only do so after they had completed compulsory military service.
This was followed, however, by a more fundamental reform, introduced in 1924,
which made it necessary for children born in ius soli nations (specified as the USA,
Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile and Peru) to be registered with the Japanese
consulate within two weeks of their birth if they were to retain Japanese citizenship.
These changes helped to clarify the boundaries of Japanese belonging, but, perhaps
predictably, they failed to silence anti-Japanese sentiments amongst some sectionsof the US population, since these sentiments were based much more on racialstereotypes and fears of economic competition than they were on legal realities. In
the mid-1930s V. S. McClatchy, the Executive Secretary of the exclusionist California
Joint Immigration Committee, was still complaining that “only” one-third of theJapanese born in Hawaii since the revision of the law had chosen to renounce their
Japanese citizenship. (McClatchy 1936)
Colonial Migrants in JapanThe response of the Japanese government to the emigrant issue reveals deep
ambiguities in the official attitude to nationality. At one level, there was a profound
mistrust of the notion of dual nationality, which was seen as creating administrativeMorris-Suzuki: Migrants, Subjects, Citizens

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untidiness and potential conflicts of loyalty. But at another, the government wishedas far as possible to retain some hold over the conduct of emigrants, and wastherefore reluctant to do anything to encourage overseas Japanese to renounce their
original citizenship. But if the status of emigrants created complexities, the status ofJapan’s colonial citizens was even more fraught with paradoxes, inconsistencies andexpediencies.
In relation to the world order - the realms beyond the boundaries of the Japanese
empire itself - colonial subjects were Japanese. If they lived abroad (like thesubstantial number of Koreans who migrated to Latin America), they were expected
to register with the Japanese Consulate as did all other Japanese citizens; if they
competed in the Olympics (like the Korean marathon gold medalist Son Kitei), they
competed for the Japanese team. But within the bounds of the empire itself, a quite
different set of distinctions came into play. Here, colonial subjects were holders of“external territory family registration” [gaichi koseki] as opposed to “internal
territory family registration” [naichi koseki] - a status which could only be changedin the most exceptional of circumstances. As such, their rights and duties, as well as
the regulations covering the recording of their births, marriages and deaths, weregoverned by the local rules of the colony (Korea, Taiwan etc.) rather than by the ruleof metropolitan Japan. The bureaucratic tangles created by this dual system of
belonging are vividly illustrated by the handbooks of case law issued in the pre-war
period to guide courts and officials through the maze of the family registration
system.
What should be done (asks one bewildered official) when a Japanese woman has
married a Korean man in Japan, and registered her marriage correctly under
metropolitan Japanese law, but the head of the husband’s family has not consented
to the marriage, which makes the marriage invalid under colonial Korean
regulations? Could an official in Japan take responsibility for entering an illegitimate
child, born in Japan to a Taiwanese man and a Japanese woman, into the father’s
Taiwanese family registry? When a Korean man (who was born before Korea
became a colony) was adopted as an heir by a Japanese family, should his date ofbirth be entered into the Japanese family register according to the traditional
Korean dating system or according to the Japanese system? (Sakamoto 1938, 62-63)
These, and dozens of similar cases, remind us that despite the discrimination whichpermeated the colonial order, the movement of people through the empire
constantly created human complexities, hybridities and blurred boundaries. In
theory, colonial subjects enjoyed the legal right to enter Japan but (because of theimmobility of family registration) not to equal legal status within metropolitan
Japanese society. In practice, however, the state used a variety of mechanisms tocontrol the flow of migration: at some times, restricting the flow of migrants into
Japan; at others, conscripting labour for work in Japan or other parts of the empire.
In Korea, the agricultural policies introduced by the colonial government created awidening divide between large and small farmers, and produced a growing problem
of rural poverty which drove many Koreans to seek work in the industrial cities ofJapan. During the 1920s, the Korean population in Japan expanded rapidly, from

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around 30,000 to some 300,000, and the government was beginning to introduce
measures to stem the migratory tide. Koreans travelling to Japan began to berequired to obtain “embarkation certificates” from the police in their home regions,and these were only issued when the migrants could prove that they had sufficientmeans to support themselves, or relatives in Japan who could help them findaccommodation and work.
By the late 1930s, though, the situation had shifted again. The escalating war in
China led to growing demand for labour in mines, armament factories and heavy
industry, particularly as increasing numbers of Japanese workers were drafted into
the armed forces. To fill the gap, Japanese companies and government turned
increasingly to colonial Korea. The forced labour [kyosei renko] system introduced
during the war years consisted in fact of a complex and changing maze of ordinances
allowing colonial authorities to recruit workers with varying degrees of coercion.
Under the Labour Mobilization Laws of 1939, companies were able to recruit labourin the colonies; under a revised scheme initiated in 1942, they submitted requests tothe appropriate government authorities, who then vetted them and passed on“quotas” for labour recruitment to colonial officials in various regions of Korea. How
these officials fulfilled their quotas was very much a matter for local discretion, but
might include anything from financial inducements, to threats and promises, tooutright force. A direct system of labour conscription was introduced in 1944. (Pak
1975, 14) Similar methods were used (though on a somewhat smaller scale) to
recruit labourers from Manchuria and North China, and prisoners-of-war from
China were also sent to work in Japan (Vasishth 1997, 130-131; Sugihara 2002)
Most notoriously, a combination of deception and threats was in many cases used torecruit women for employment in military brothels during the Pacific War: about
80% of women conscripted into military prostitution are believed to have comefrom Korea.

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Chinese plaintiffs enter Nagasaki court to demand payment for wartime forced labor, 2004

The lives of colonial migrants to Japan varied greatly according to their social
circumstances. Migrant or conscript labourers generally faced extremely harshworking conditions and received far lower wages than their Japanese counterparts.
Forced labourers in the mines and military-related industries were often held as
virtual prisoners, and risked death if they tried to escape. (Underwood 2006) On theother hand, the substantial numbers of colonial subjects who came to Japan tocomplete their university education were often able to associate relatively easily
with members of the Japanese intellectual elite, despite the underlying inequities of
the colonial order. It should be remembered, too, that migrants were not wholly
devoid of civil rights. In 1918, during a debate on the legal systems of the colonies, anumber of Japanese parliamentarians raised the question of the voting rights of
Taiwanese and Korean residents in Japan. The Japanese electoral law was not basedon the family registration system but rather bestowed the franchise on all “maleimperial subjects” who lived in Japan proper and (until 1925) who paid more than aspecified amount of tax. In 1920 the Ministry of the Interior issued anadministrative ordinance making it clear that this included “male imperial subjects”
from the colonies living in metropolitan Japan. At that stage, the ruling was almost
entirely academic, since hardly any colonial migrants were wealthy enough toqualify for the vote under Japan’s property-based franchise. (Matsuda 1995, 21-25)
The story changed, however, after 1925, when universal male suffrage wasintroduced. A growing number of Korean and Taiwanese migrants to Japan
registered to vote, and in the 1932 general election twelve Korean candidates stoodfor the Japanese parliament, of whom one - Pak Chunkim, from the Tokyo
constituency of Honjo-Fukagawa - was elected. (Matsuda 1995, 102) The inclusion

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of colonial migrants in the Japanese franchise, however, was not a simple victory forcivic rights. For one thing, the proportion of immigrants who enrolled to voteremained very low, in part because the franchise was restricted to males over 25
those who had lived in the same constituency for at least one year. As a result, thetotal number of Korean residents enrolled to vote in 1936 was a mere 41,829.
(Matsuda 1995, 37) Besides, the Korean migrants who became active participants indomestic Japanese politics were drawn from the relatively small pro-Japanese group
who believed that cooperation with colonialism was the best means of winning
concessions from the colonisers. They failed to gain support from those sections of
the politically-aware migrant community who saw their only hope for the future as
lying in the struggle for independence.
Throughout the 1920s, 1930s and early 1940s there were intermittent debates on
the desirability of extending some form of voting rights to colonial subjects, not justin metropolitan Japan but also in the colonies. These, however, came to nothing untilthe very last months of the Pacific War. At this stage, the desperate military situation
persuaded the Japanese government that it was necessary to introduce military
conscription for colonial subjects. As compensation for this new civic duty, it wasalso proposed that the franchise should be extended to the colonised areas of Korea,
Taiwan and Karafuto, who would be allowed to elect (respectively) twenty-thee, fiveand three members to the Japanese Lower House. Even this concession, however,
was heavily hedged around with qualifications. The colonial franchise, unlike thatfor Japanese, would be restricted to men who paid more than 15 yen in direct taxes,
thus excluding a large proportion of tenant farmers and workers. In any event, theelectoral reform, which was passed in May 1945, was too late to have any practicaleffect. Before an election could be held under the revised system, Japan had
surrendered to the Allied forces. (Tanaka 1984, 162)
Across Imperial Boundaries
The creation of the Japanese empire did not simply result in an outflow of Japaneseadministrators and settlers to the colonies and an inflow of colonial migrant
workers into Japan. Instead, it produced much more complex cross-currents whose
consequences (in some cases) are still being felt today. Like all modern empires,Japanese colonialism created a multi-layered structure in which the colonised mightalso participate in the processes of colonisation. In the British empire, many Irish
colonial subjects sought escape from poverty at home by serving in the imperial
army in India. In the Japanese case, Okinawans formed a disproportionately largepart of the Japanese settler population in Taiwan and the Micronesian Mandated
Territories (though as a group they faced the prejudices of colonists from otherparts of Japan). Some Taiwanese and Koreans, in turn, volunteered for service with
the Japanese army or served as auxiliaries with the Japanese occupation forces inwartime Southeast Asia.
In the interwar period, the tight restrictions which prevented the migration offoreign labourers (other than colonial subjects) into metropolitan Japan were notnecessarily applied in the colonies. In Taiwan, for example, a more flexible set of

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regulations allowed a fair amount of coming and going between the island and theChinese mainland during the 1920s. Labour contractors based in Taiwan wereauthorised by the Government General to recruit Chinese labour for work inplantations and other colonial projects, and Chinese labourers were allowed toenter the colony provided that they had a certificate issued by one of these agencies.
In 1924, for example, some 6,800 Chinese labourers and 3,000 other Chinese wereadmitted to Taiwan. (De Vault 1925) A similar situation existed in the northerncolony of Karafuto, where the colonial authorities repeatedly complained of ashortage of labour for development purposes. Apart from the small indigenous
population and a few hundred remaining ethnic Russians, the great majority of thecolony’s population was made up of settlers from Japan (particularly from Hokkaido
and northern Honshu. Yet, because of the harsh climate and tough frontier
reputation of the colony, the government had difficulty in attracting migrants to
Karafuto. Initially, the population expanded rapidly, from around 12,000 in 1908 to
almost 100,000 in 1920, but thereafter the pace of expansion slowed. (Karafuto Cho
1973, 86-90) By the 1930s, the population was around 300,000, but officials andentrepreneurs were finding it almost impossible to recruit enough Japanese
workers for some of the most arduous labouring tasks in the colony.
The most intractable problem was railway construction: particularly the building ofa railway line through the rugged mountainous interior of the island, linking thecolonial capital of Toyohara in the east with the west-coast port of Maoka. This
project, which was completed in 1928, involved particularly atrocious working
conditions, and many labourers died as a result of the extreme cold, landslides,
rockfalls and tunnel collapses. Here again, as in Taiwan, the colonial authorities
chose to supplement an inadequate Japanese workforce with Chinese labourers,
who were recruited by contracting companies for very low wages. An uncertain
number of Chinese, but probably several thousand, were brought to Karafuto towork on the railway in the mid-1920s, although tensions with the Japanese
workforce eventually led to the abandonment of the labour recruitment scheme.
(Karafuto Cho 1973, 1245; Karafuto Cho Keisatsu Bu 1990, 391-393)
In the 1930s, though, and particularly from the late 1930s onwards, growing
numbers of Korean workers were recruited to supplement the Karafuto labour
force. By 1929 there were over 4,000 Koreans in Karafuto, many of them employedin the colony’s coal mines, and after the outbreak of full-scale war in China in 1937
the number soared. The precise number of Korean workers brought to Karafuto
during the war is unknown, but it is thought to have reached a peak of around50,000 - well over 10% of the colony’s population, before declining slightly in the
final months of the war as workers were transferred to metropolitan Japan. The first
postwar census conducted after the Soviet Union gained control of Japanese
Karafuto [now re-incorporated into the Russian region of Sakhalin] found that there
were 23,498 Korean residents (15,356 men and 8,142 women). However, this figureis almost certainly an underestimate, since just six years later the census of 1951
counted 42,900 Koreans in Sakhalin. (Kuzin 1993, 200-201)

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The postwar Japanese government and the allied occupation authorities in Japan
moved fairly quickly to repatriate ethnic Japanese from the colony, but no efforts
were made to evacuate the Koreans, despite the fact that, until the Treaty of San
Francisco came into effect in 1952, they were still “Japanese nationals” underinternational law. (Hirowatari 1993, 101) Apart from a few who managed to flee in
the immediate post-surrender confusion, most remained stranded in Sakhalin.
Today there are some 40,000 Korean residents in Sakhalin, some still seeking toreturn to the Korean homes and families which they left more than fifty years ago in
the belief that they were going abroad to fulfil a one-year or two-year contract. It
was only in 1992 that the Japanese and South Korean governments finally agreed tocontribute to a scheme under which some of the first generation of Sakhalin
Koreans were able to return home. (Underwood 2007)
In the 1920s and early 1930s, however, the largest and most controversial
migratory movement was the exodus of Koreans into Manchuria and North China.
Korea and the adjacent Chinese region of Chientao (Jiandao) had ancient historicalconnections, and there were already over 200,000 Koreans living in the region when
Korea became a Japanese colony in 1910. (Park 2005, 44) During the following two
decades, rural poverty in Korea not only encouraged large-scale labour migration to
Japan, but also prompted a massive flow of landless farmers from Korea into
Manchuria. According to one estimate, by the early 1920s there were half a million
Koreans in Manchuria, the Tumen Region and Eastern Inner Mongolia, as comparedwith just 2,000 metropolitan Japanese. (Hsu 1932, 142) By 1935, the number of
Koreans in Manchuria had exceeded 800,000, and by 1942 it had reached about 1.5
million. (Park 2005, 44) For these migrants, the difficulties of adjusting to a new life
in a harsh environment were aggravated by their uncertain nationality status. In
many cases, they faced discrimination from Chinese authorities because they were“aliens”. Tensions between immigrants and local people were reflected in conflicts
like the Wanpaoshan (Manbosan) Incident of 1931, where Korean tenant farmers in
Manchuria clashed with Chinese landowners: an event which sparked subsequentanti-Chinese riots in Korea.
If Korean migrants to Manchuria attempted to solve their problems by becoming
naturalised Chinese, or later Manchukuo, citizens, however, they encountered a new
problem. The Japanese government, which had substantial economic and strategicinterests in Manchuria, wanted to enhance its claims to a presence in the region. It
therefore continued to regard all Koreans in Manchuria as Japanese subjects,
required them to maintain their Korean family residence, and insisted on the rightfor its consular representatives to attend court cases involving the migrants. (Hsu
1932, 143; Shinobu 1932, 286-287) Statements by Japanese legal experts, in fact,suggest that the desire to maintain a claim over this emigrant group was a major
reason for the failure of the Japanese government to officially extend the provisionsof the Nationality Law to Korea: since the 1899 law made it clear that Japanese
subjects who took up foreign nationality would lose their Japanese nationality, its
application to Korea would have made it all too easy for the emigrants to transfer
their allegiance to China. (see Shinobu 1932, 286-287) Many Koreans in Manchuria

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thus acquired dual nationality, but as Park Hyun Ok observes, this dual nationality“represented the incompatibility of national membership in the Korean andManchukuo states rather than enjoyment of membership in both.” (Park 2005, 137)
Legacies
In a new age of global movement, some of the underlying paradoxes of the imperial
age appear to be resurfacing. Once again, the economic imperatives promoting
large-scale migration interact in complex ways with the political impulse to control,channel and screen, separating “desirable” from “undesirable” and creating multiple
categories of residents with hierarchies of political rights. The dictation test is longdead, but the British government increasingly uses language tests in selecting
migrants, and has even threatened to exclude immigrant spouses who cannot passan English test. Both Britain and Australia, meanwhile, have recently introduced
citizenship tests, based on multiple-choice questions about national culture, forthose seeking naturalisation. Though more sensitive and subtle in their operation
than colonial era antecedents, such “cultural literacy tests” perform a similarfunction – screening out those considered undesirable in terms of class and culture,and reassuring existing citizens that the walls surrounding their nation state arerobustly guarded. And, like the dictation tests of old, the content of such tests can be
carefully adjusted to open doors to certain categories of migrant while closing doors
to others.
In Japan too, the history of migration and nationality in the prewar Japanese Empire
has an important bearing on contemporary politics. The multiple and intersecting
movements of people across the space of empire had lasting implications for Japanand for East Asian society more generally. Today, for example, the return migrationof ethnic Koreans from Manchuria and China is transforming the social make up ofsome urban communities in South Korea. Official figures of “Chinese immigrants” inJapan also include an unknown number of ethnic Koreans from the region that wasonce Manchukuo. (Kwon, Miyajima, Tanigawa and Lee 2006) Efforts by Koreansfrom Sakhalin to return to Korea continue to generate political controversy. Thougha scheme has been established by the South Korean and Japanese governments toassist the return of some first-generation Sakhalin Koreans, this is limited in scope
and fails to fully satisfy demands for resettlement and recompense. (Underwood
2007)
The institutional legacies are equally profound. Debates on local voting rights forforeigners in Japan today often overlook the fact that Korean and Taiwanese men in
Japan had voting rights from the Taisho period until 1945, and that these were
unilaterally rescinded by the Japanese government in December 1945, at the very
moment when Japanese women were given the vote. This disenfranchisement
occurred at a time when the long-term nationality status of Korean and Taiwanese
residents in Japan still remained to be settled. Despite insistence from some legal
advisers to the Allied Occupation that former colonial subjects in Japan should begiven a choice of nationalities, when the San Francisco Peace Treaty came into force
in 1952 the Japanese government unilaterally revoked these residents’ claim toWhite Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-1930

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Japanese nationality. (Kim 1997) These events still cast a shadow over current
debates about the legal rights of the 440,000 descendents of colonial periodmigrants 4 who still live as foreigners in Japan today, and over the identity andcultural rights of the hundreds of thousands more who have obtained Japanesenationality by naturalization. Meanwhile, the issues of dual nationality whichsurfaced in the 1920s and 1930s also have echoes for twenty-first century Japan.
For Japan, the challenge will be to devise responses to the new age of mobility which
will overcome the remaining troubled legacies of colonialism, and create a securebasis of civil and social rights for foreigners, old an new.
Acknowledgments
The research on which this article is based was generously funded by the Australian
Research Council. I should like to that Mark Selden and Paul Kramer for their helpfulcomments on an earlier draft of this article.
Tessa Morris-Suzuki is Professor of Japanese History, Convenor of the Division ofPacific and Asian History in the College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National
University, and a Japan Focus associate. Her book Exodus to North Korea: Shadowsfrom Japan's Cold War has just been published at Rowman & Littlefield.
She wrote this article for Japan Focus. Posted on August 28, 2008.
Notes
1 Holders of Special Permanent Residence (tokubetsu eijosha) are colonial-period

immigrants and their descendents, who are treated differently from others because
colonial period immigrants were Japanese subjects when they moved to Japan, andwere only turned into “aliens” by an administrative fiat of the Japanese government
at the time when the San Francisco Peace Treaty came into force in 1952.
2 Dispatch from Chamberlain, 20 October 1897, in Australian National Archives,series no A8/1, control symbol 1902/51 Part 6.
3 “Immigration Restriction Acts 1901 and 1905, Notes for the Guidance of Officers”,
in Australian National Archives, series no A1/15, control symbol 1922/7119.
4 In 2006 there were 443,044 holders of “Special Permanent Residence”, the status
given to colonial period migrants, mostly from Korea, and their descendants. See
Immigration Bureau, Immigration Control 2007.
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Women's Anti-Imperialism, 'The White Man's Burden,' and the PhilippineAmerican War
Erin L. Murphy
At the Chicago Liberty Meeting in April 1899, organized to protest U.S. imperialist
advances in the Philippines, Jane Addams was the only woman of eight plenary
speakers. There she stated, “To ‘protect the weak’ has always been the excuse of theruler and tax-gatherer, the chief, the king, the baron; and now, at last, of ‘the whiteman’” (Addams 1899). A few months earlier, in late 1898, the United Statespurchased the Philippines from Spain in the Treaty of Paris despite a preexisting
revolutionary movement for independence. Subsequently, the Philippine-American
War broke out, with Filipinos continuing to seek an end to colonial rule, be it therule of Spain or the United States. President Roosevelt officially announced the war
to be over on July 4, 1902, although fighting continued in some provinces through
1913.
With the U.S. military mobilized in the Philippines, U.S. citizens mobilized an
opposition movement in the metropole. The Anti-Imperialist League (AIL), thevanguard of the movement, organized around the Constitutional contradictions ofimperialism and democracy. Those eventually identifying as "anti-imperialists"
included men and women, people of various “races,”1 conservatives andprogressives, elites and laborers, Boston Brahmins and rural populists. The initial
goal of the movement was to stop the U.S. from taking the Philippines as a colony.
After the ratification of the Treaty of Paris in the Senate, the AIL endorsed William
Jennings Bryan as an anti-imperialist candidate for President in the 1900 election,
which yielded another defeat. It then appeared to many anti-imperialists that the
U.S. was on an imperialist course that could no longer be stopped, so they dropped
out of the movement. Those left focused on the news of the U.S. military committing
egregious violence in the Philippines and became determined to expose such"atrocities" to the public. Women made material and symbolic contributions to thismovement at home and abroad. However, their contributions have been previously
disregarded.
Anti-Imperialism and the White Man's Burden
White men from privileged or well-known backgrounds represented the public faceof the anti-imperialist movement, men such as: steel-magnate Andrew Carnegie,labor leader Samuel Gompers, satirist Mark Twain, lawyer-activist Moorfield Storey,
Charles Francis Adams, Jr. (grandson of John Quincy Adams), Harvard philosopher
William James, Yale sociologist William Graham Sumner, and reformers known for
their connections to abolitionism, like William Lloyd Garrison, Jr. However, rank andfile anti-imperialists included many working-class whites, Black and white women,
as well as Black men, all of whom disagreed with the path the United States wastaking in the Philippines.
For example, in February 1899, McClure’s magazine published Rudyard Kipling’s
poem “The White Man’s Burden: The United States and the Philippine Islands.” InWhite Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-1930

198

the midst of debates over the United States’ involvement in the Philippines, thepoem spread quickly. In it, Kipling advised the United States to take its place
alongside Great Britain and make the sacrifices necessary for the civilization of
those “half devil and half child.” However, it was also the inspiration for many antiimperialist counter-poems, serving as a phrase for anti-imperialist ridicule becauseof contradictions between violence and civilization.

“The White Man’s Burden (Apologies to Kipling).” (Source: The Forbidden Book (2004) ed.
Ignacio et al.).

While anti-imperialists were carving out the organization and its agenda, proimperialists were there to oppose them at every turn. In her work, Fighting forAmerican Manhood (1998), Kristin Hoganson notes "imperialists derided the antis'
manliness" (p. 175). Supporters of imperialism did this through depicting antiimperialist men in cartoons as the "aunties," feminizing their opposition to thePhilippine-American War. Feminizing anti-imperialists was meant to delegitimate
their public influence on imperialist policies (Hoganson 1998). Hoganson (1998)
states, "depicting men as women was the most effective way of showing they lacked
the manly character necessary for political authority" (p. 176-177). But even forpro-imperialists, Anglo-Saxon men's supposed "adaptability," previously seen as so
advantageous for progress, now needed to be reconsidered in light of colonial
contact with "savage" Filipinos (Newman 1999). Therefore, during the SpanishAmerican War and the Philippine-American War, martial masculinity hegemonicallyredefined the relationship between gender, race, and nation (Hoganson 1998),
emphasizing white men's independence. This put the masculinities of other whitemen, like anti-imperialists promoting cautiousness, in question with regard to theirclaims to patriotism and citizenship. Targeting governmental policies for changemeant that the AIL’s main audience would be enfranchised citizens (i.e. in 1899,
mainly white men), and pro-imperialists appealed to the same audience. Thoughformulations of it were contested, "the white man's burden" was inescapable.

Murphy: Women's Anti-Imperialism

199"It Won't Come Down" Puck. Oct. 4, 1899. (Source: The Forbidden Book (2004) ed. Ignacio etal.). This image literally shows the tension between the nationalist masculinities of theimperialists, embodied in the physically large, strong, young, white soldiers, and theminiscule, older white anti-imperialists, many dressed as women, apropos the "aunties." Antiimperialist men were called "old women with trousers on," "squaw men," the "'old lady
element' of public affairs," and were said to resemble a "nagging wife" (Hoganson 1998,177).

The intersectionality of anti-imperialists' race, class, and gender informed theirviews (Collins 2000). Therefore, there was no single coherent antiimperialism. Rather, there were multiple anti-imperialisms. For example, in thecontext of "the white man's burden" debates, anti-imperialist leaders had anambivalent take on gender and on women’s roles as anti-imperialists. They spent

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little time discussing women, gender, or themselves as "emasculated" men in theircorrespondence to each other-- a function of their gendered privilege (Kimmel
2006). Their anti-imperialism came from a particular conception of their role
as responsible citizens, carrying out their obligations to keep the nation true to its
democratic legacy. While they espoused freedom, liberty, and self-determination,
they practiced patriarchal control of the resistance. While they tried to prevent thenation from committing violence against racialized imperialist subjects, they kept
Black men and women at the margins.
However, rejoinders to "the white man's burden" filled the pages of Black
publications in various forms of "the Black man's burden" (Gatewood 1975). Some
Black men like Clifford H. Plummer, who was secretary of the National ColoredProtective League and an attorney in Boston, were involved with plans to form aBlack auxiliary to the AIL (Gatewood 1975), and more formed their own
organizations such as the "Colored National Anti-Imperialistic League"2 and the"Negro National Anti-Imperial and Anti-Trust League" (Foner and Winchester 1984:167). Booker T. Washington wrote to the New York AIL declaring his support ofanti-imperialist efforts3 and publicly declared his opposition given already existing"race problems" (Gatewood 1975). Kelly Miller, a professor at Howard University
and a colleague of W.E.B. Du Bois in editing The Crisis, authored a broadside (anextended pamphlet) published by the AIL which stated "The whole trend of imperial
aggression is antagonistic to the feebler races. It is a revival of racial
arrogance."4 The anti-imperialist analyses of Black men ranged from radical tomoderate, but they were all rooted in critiques of spreading race prejudice beyond
the U.S. "race problems" (Gatewood 1975) with Indians, Blacks, and Chinese(Murphy 2005). Led by Ida B. Wells and the African American woman's club
movement, the anti-lynching campaigns at the turn of the 20th century were seen as
anti-imperialism by these women, including Anna Julia Cooper and Ida B. Wells(Carby 1985).
Although anti-imperialist leaders periodically made arguments comparing lynching
Black men at home with torturing Filipinos in the colony, their practices of exclusion
reproduced inequalities across race, class, and gender within the movement. Antiimperialist leaders appreciated and accepted the support of women and women'sorganizations, but they were not open to taking on gender inequality along with
anti-imperialism, though Susan B. Anthony did seek the support of men in the
AIL.5 Keeping gender politics off the table enabled a situation where gendered
contradictions could coexist, explicitly invoking gendered discourses only if
immediate benefits were clear.
Although many women supported anti-imperialism, most of the women directly
involved with the AIL were white and middle-class, a fact that enabled them to makemonetary contributions to the movement. White women from the Midwest and theEast Coast formed auxiliary organizations of the AIL.6 The women's auxiliary of the
Boston AIL petitioned other women for support in 1899. They implored, "We,women of the United States, earnestly protest against the war of conquest into
which our country has been plunged in the Philippine islands. We appeal to theMurphy: Women's Anti-Imperialism

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Declaration of Independence, which is the moral foundation of the constitution you
have swore to defend, we reaffirm its weighty words."7 Other women’sorganizations such as the WCTU, the Congress of Mothers, and the Daughters of theAmerican Revolution (DAR) also took official anti-imperialist stances, offering the
AIL support.8 WCTU leadership educated affiliated women on international affairs
and violence in the Philippines, which they attributed to prostitution and liquor(Papachristou 1990).
Two extraordinary women, Jane Addams and Josephine Shaw Lowell, transcended
the expected roles for women of the AIL. Both of these white women acquired
informal leadership positions as extraordinary "individuals" with valuable
resources. Both had prior experience as reformers, informing their anti-imperialism
and their style of activism, which was familiar to progressives.
Addams is frequently listed as one of the AIL’s most well-known vice presidents. She
lent her name to the anti-imperialist cause as well as spoke at the 1899 Chicago
Liberty Meetings against imperialism. In her speech, “Democracy or Militarism,”
Addams opened, “None of us who has been reared and nurtured in America can bewholly without the democratic instinct. It is not a question with any of us of having
it or not having it; it is a merely question of trusting it or not trusting it” (Addams
1899), illuminating from her standpoint as a middle-class white woman that
democratic values were taken for granted by US Americans. Therefore, she allowed
anti-imperialists to use her social capital to support democracy.
In 1901, Josephine Shaw Lowell was the first woman appointed vice president of the
New York Anti-Imperialist League. Lowell had lived with her husband in military
camps during the Civil War. She subsequently devoted her life to philanthropic andreform work in the New York region. Like Addams, she was a seasoned andconnected reformer when she took on the cause of anti-imperialism.9 As an antiimperialist, Lowell was well into her 60s and deeply involved in the New YorkAIL.10 She gave opening and closing remarks at multiple AIL meetings.11She had themost prolific correspondence with Ordway of any anti-imperialist, making
suggestions as to the best and most effective courses of action. She agitated for more
protests and public demonstrations against imperialism, specifically requestingsomething akin to what had been done during the abolitionist movement.12 She
favored gathering petitions against imperialism in the Philippines with signatures ofprominent Americans, and the New York AIL followed her preference.
However, Lowell was aware of the gendered politics around women's involvement
in anti-imperialist activities. She believed that keeping her name off petitions andother public matters would garner more support for anti-imperialism than taking
credit for her activities. Therefore, Lowell asked to have her name left off petitions
even though she had often conceived of and helped to implement them.13 She also
feigned ignorance at how much money she was donating to persuade Ordway totake her frequent and generous donations.14 Lowell's performance illustrates how
she used her reformer experience as a subject and agent at the intersection of herrace, class, and gender in the service of anti-imperialism by supporting andexploiting the coexistence of gendered contradictions.

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Another woman who provided networks and labor for the AIL was Mary Storer
Cobb of Northampton, Massachusetts, where she helped form a chapter of theAIL.15 With evidence of atrocities being committed by the U.S. military in thePhilippines, most sensationally through the "water cure"16 torture and"reconcentration" camps, the AIL agitated public debate specifically on violence.
This led to a Senate Investigation on Affairs in the Philippines (hereafter referred to
as SIAP), which included lines of questioning on the violence committed by the U.S.
military.17 Cobb's unique contribution was preparing soldiers to go before theSIAP.18 Her work was behind the scenes, yet crucial to the anti-imperialist campaign
to expose violence in the Philippines, which had been the central issue for antiimperialist women, regardless of race, from the outset.
Women in the Public Debate on Imperialism
Mainstream research on social movements tends to focus on a narrowly definedpolitical arena, which often misses the contributions of women made behind thescenes (Ferree and Merrill 2000; Taylor 1999), such as Cobb. Anti-imperialist
women frequently made interventions in the public debate through poems. Kipling's
poem advising the U.S. on the Philippines, "The White Man's Burden" (now infamous
as a euphemism for imperialism), sparked a flood of anti-imperialist poems in
response. At the turn of the twentieth century, poems were a legitimate public
medium for both women and men (Harrington 2002; Nelson 2001). Contributing apoem to a public forum was just as appropriate as a letter to the editor for politicalexpression, with newspapers allotting space specifically for the genre. The poems I
select in this section directly respond to "the white man's burden" and demonstrate
the author as a subject of prior experience and as an anti-imperialist agent.
Women, in particular, were more likely to express their political views throughpoems. The less direct format of poetic imagery allowed these disfranchised citizens
a more conventionally accepted but still public outlet for civic participation. One ofthese women, Alice Smith-Travers, contributed the poem, “The White Man’s
Burden” published in the Black Indianapolis newspaper The Freeman, March 4,1899, focusing on the horrors of violence and the "Judas"-like behavior of the UnitedStates. She wrote,"'Take up the white man's burden!'That causes the heart to quake
As we read again with horror,
Of those burnings at the stake,
Of white caps riding in the night,
And burning black men's homes,
Of the inmates shot as they rush out
And the awful dying groans,
Of crimes that would outnumber
Those in the foreign Isle,Murphy: Women's Anti-Imperialism

203

Committed by heath[sic] people'Half devil and half child.'
Then free those Filipinos[sic] people,
From the accursed rule of Spain,
And put on them the shackels [sic]Of a haughtier nation's reign.
With 'Judas' acts in every form,
Conceivable by man,
And the thirst for blood, and greed for gold
Is surely the white man's plan.19
Smith-Travers’ analysis shows her criticism of “civilization” and “the white man’sburden” as a subject produced through the experiences of witnessing violence as aBlack woman in the U.S. Her clarity on the contradictions of imperialist violence,
through irony, rearticulated imperialism as Anglo-Saxonist
disagreements over (rather than with) “civilization.” Additionally in 1899, Anna
Manning Comfort, a leading white suffragist, connected the problem of the “whiteman’s burden” with lynching, treatment of Indians, and women’s suffrage in her
poem “Home Burdens of Uncle Sam.”20 By 1902, this line of argumentation had been
adopted (or co-opted) by the AIL in the campaign to expose violence in the SIAP.
As an organization the AIL also contributed poems to the debate, including someauthored by women. In 1900, the New England AIL published a volume
entitled, Liberty Poems: Inspired by the Crisis of 1898-1900, whose publication wasunderwritten by Mary Pickering, a substantial AIL donor (Zwick 2005).21 In total,
the volume included 76 poems, with most written by anti-imperialist leaders and 13
authored by women.

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Image 3. Liberty Poems: Inspired by the Crisis of 1898-1900. On the inside cover of thisvolume is a picture of a trench in the Philippines, with dead Filipinos and U.S. soldiers
standing over them. Picture taken by author.

Expressing their standpoint in newspapers, women consistently highlighted theviolence being committed in the Philippines and raised the question of women's
suffrage, pointing out the hypocrisy of (purportedly) spreading liberty abroad while
disfranchising citizens at home. They expressed their indignation concerning "thewhite man's burden" both as citizens without the vote and as women, many of themmothers, with a moral duty to show their abhorrence for violence committed in thename of liberty.22 However, these explicitly gendered anti-imperialisms wereconventional women's issues and outside of the formal agenda of the AIL. Therefore,
they did not disrupt the masculinist practices of the organization, but they did add
another dimension to anti-imperialist debate.
Women's Monetary Contributions
Besides entering the public debate as women with criticisms of violence, womenwith anti-imperialist views were contributing monetarily to the AIL. Between 18981902, the dates recorded in the AIL ledger books, women gave $7,082, which was
29% of the total number of donations to the AIL's funds. Even more significant, inlight of assertions of their noninvolvement and general inattention, is that of thetotal AIL budget between 1898-1902, multi-millionaire Andrew Carnegie--who
contributed $1000 at a time-- contributed $4,400, which was 20% of the total funds,
while women's contributions totaled 33% of the AIL funds, and other men's
contributions totaled $10,236, or 47% of the AIL funds.23

Murphy: Women's Anti-Imperialism

205

Given the relative unavailability of independent expendable income for women
during this period, the fact that women gave more than their representative
numbers demonstrates anti-imperialist women's deep concern and corresponding
mobilization over imperialism. This is an economic example of the rupture between
gendered schemas and resources that exemplifies masculinist ambivalence in the
AIL, showing women's expanded role--nudging along their inclusion--despite theinsistent exclusion of women's leadership in, or public influence over, the AIL.
Women in the Philippines
Women also contributed to anti-imperialist activities from the Philippines. The wifeof a captain stationed in the Philippines first wrote back to a newspaper in the
United States, breaking the story on the military's use of the "water cure" incooperation with her husband. Together they thought it better for her to expose thestory as his wife than for him as a commissioned officer.24 This set anti-imperialists
into a fury of investigations regarding violence used by the military and generalconditions in the Philippines, leading directly to their involvement in the SIAP.
One investigator informing the AIL was Helen Calista Wilson. In 1903, under the
anonymity of "A Massachusetts Woman," she published her impressions on thereconcentration policy while on a fact-finding mission sponsored by a former antiimperialist executive committee member, F. Fiske Warren.25 Warren sponsored her
independently of the AIL, although her information aided AIL activities at home. Her
information on the reconcentration policy published in 1903 was the first
information available to the public demonstrating how the military operations in
the Philippines were affecting the Filipino people, not just insurgents. She latermade more systematic analyses of the policy, sending back reports to the Springfield
Republican, until reconcentration was abandoned in 1906 (Kramer 2006). As with
Addams and Lowell, the AIL used her skills as an "individual" with the ability to
speak Spanish and network both with U.S. colonials, especially other stenographers
and teachers, in the colony as well as elite Filipino families.
One member of such a family, Clemencia Lopez, visited the United States as a guestof the AIL in 1902-1903 (Zwick 2001). She spoke to various groups across the U.S.,
specifically disputing the idea that Filipinos were too uncivilized for selfgovernment. She was living evidence to the contrary according to instructors at
Wellesley College, where she studied English and persuaded other women of theimportance of the anti-imperialist cause (Zwick 2001). Lopez spent almost two
years in the U.S. speaking on conditions in the Philippines. Because the U.S. military
government in Batangas had imprisoned three of her brothers (Zwick 2001), shealso made a special appeal to President Roosevelt on behalf of her family, which was
submitted as evidence in the SIAP. In her farewell speech at a luncheon given in her
honor by the AIL, she said,"When I planned to return to my native land it never occurred to me that my friends
would gather to bid me farewell. Still less could I have expected that the gathering
should be presided over by the friend of John Brown [Mr. Sanborn]; that the wordsof parting should fall from the lips of the son of the Liberator [Mr. Garrison]; that I

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should see among the guests the secretary of Charles Sumner [Mr. Storey]; and that
there should be present in propria persona that aged and honored paladin of liberty,
Gov. Boutwell. These names became famous at a time when the victim was the blackman. Now it is the brown.26
Like other Filipino nationalists, she was familiar with the history of racist exclusionsof U.S. democracy and understood the implications for new racisms on democracy in
the Philippines under U.S. rule. As a woman, she was able to speak out in the U.S.
without posing a threat, while her brothers were considered enemies of the state. In
this context, "masculinist ambivalence" served her particular cause more thanfeminist politics espousing gender equality could have (see Murphy's (2009)"Women's Anti-Imperialism, The White Man's Burden, and the Philippine-American
War: Theorizing Masculinist Ambivalence in Protest" in Gender & Society for theoriginal article giving the theoretical elaboration and application of masculinist
ambivalence).
Masculinist Ambivalence and Contentious Politics
The creative application of prior experience influenced how anti-imperialists argued
against "the white man's burden" and for democracy over time. Initially, theleadership of the AIL argued over ideals of masculine citizenship, middle-class white
women argued over the ideals of civilization, Black men argued against theconflagration of race prejudice, and Black women argued with the existence of
civilization as it was defined. Noting these differences is not enough; thesedifferences were relationally constituted through the experience of being antiimperialist as subjects constituted at the intersection of race, class, and gender. Afterthe defeat of Bryan in 1900 and a period of shared anti-imperialist struggle, white
men increasingly adopted arguments over ideals of civilization and all antiimperialist debates focused on violence such as those Black anti-imperialists had
earlier espoused regarding violence in the metropole (e.g. lynching) and violence in
the Philippines. Pro-imperialists essentially won the debate over masculine
citizenship. Therefore, the more inclusive and democratically based arguments
proved to be the most robust for anti-imperialists over time.
The AIL struggled within the limits of gendered conceptions of citizenship andnation, rather than taking stances that posed challenges to gender inequality. It did,
however, acknowledge the utility of women’s resources and adopt their focus onviolence. Although the well-known anti-imperialist, Edward Atkinson, noted as earlyas 1899 that having influential women in public leadership roles would be beneficial
for gaining the support of organized women's groups in the U.S. (Hoganson 1998),
and Herbert Welsh made efforts to obtain women activists, mentioning to AIL
president, Moorfield Storey, that reputable women would be helpful for organizing
other women,27 no organized plans were made to involve women as a group.
Despite this, over time women were increasingly granted the symbolic office of vicepresident of the AIL.28 Therefore, in 1909 a committee was appointed to "consider
the propriety of inviting women to become members" of the AIL (rather than theauxiliaries they had previously constituted). Following up at a meeting in 1910,

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howevere, the AIL deemed inviting women members "inexpedient" and continued
their formal exclusion.29 Having been feminized by pro-imperialists, white antiimperialist men faced a kind of "double bind" (Einwohner et al 2000) of formally
identifying with anti-imperialist women and further delegitimating anti-imperialismwith the mainstream (although they had already lost widespread support by thistime) and of not fully including women at the risk of alienating them and losing theirresources. Although AIL leaders maintained male-domination as a strategic resource
to secure legitimacy, “Paradoxically, diversity often increases the resources andpower of challengers” (West and Blumberg 1990:21). This was recognized by somewhite anti-imperialist men but not fully embraced, ultimately limiting the appeal of
the AIL. Just as the long list of vice presidents was a symbolic message of antiimperialists' social capital, so was the official exclusion of women as members
symbolic of who was qualified to be an "anti-imperialist" to those outside the antiimperialist movement. Homosocial politics based on "the white man's burden"tightened the boundaries of exclusion around anti-imperialism, even as antiimperialists struggled for democracy.
Conclusion
Anti-imperialists creatively deployed gendered resources without reconciling
gendered contradictions. Masculinist norms were not disrupted, if sometimes
questioned, creating a space where women's informal leadership was acceptable forextraordinary individuals, while women as a group were funneled into activities
already established as gender appropriate, such as planning anti-imperialist
luncheons, hosting Filipino guests, and forming auxiliary organizations. Within the
AIL masculinist ambivalence stifled the possibility of explicitly gendered
contentious politics opposing imperialism through informal inclusion of women's
resources (such as money, social capital, and cultural capital) and formal exclusionsof women's membership. Nevertheless, women were involved in the AIL to such an
extent that the AIL would not have been able to achieve many of its goals without
the monetary resources or the social networks of women. Women's contributions
were key to the successes anti-imperialists did achieve.
Erin L. Murphy, Department of Sociology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,is the author of the "'Prelude to Imperialism': Whiteness and Chinese Exclusion in the
Reimagining of the United States." Journal of Historical Sociology (2005), 18:457-490,
and "Women's Anti-Imperialism, 'The White Man's Burden,' and the PhilippineAmerican War: Theorizing Masculinist Ambivalence in Protest." Gender & Society(2009), 23:244-270. She can be contacted at murphymc@illinois.edu
Notes
1 I enclose race in quotes in the first reference here to underline its sociallyconstructed, time-dependent meaning.
2 Jim Zwick. "Colored National Anti-Imperialistic League." JZ.
3 Letter dated May 14,1901, Box 1, EO.
4 Kelly Miller. "The Effect of Imperialism Upon the Negro Race." Anti-Imperialist
Broadside, No. 11 (Boston: New England Anti-Imperialist League, n.d. [1900]). JZ.

White Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-1930

208

5 Letter dated Jan. 20, 1900, Box 1, EO.

6 Jim Zwick. “Illinois Women’s Anti-Imperialist League.” And “Women’s Auxiliary of

the Anti-Imperialist League.” JZ.
7 Women’s Auxiliary of the Anti-Imperialist League. “Women Make an Appeal/In
Behalf of the Foundation Principles of the Republic.”Springfield Republican, (May30, 1899). JZ.
8 MSLOC; EO; Record Book Vol. I, Anti-Imperialist League. MLC.
9 Newspaper clipping, undated. Herbert Welsh Papers, Special Collections, Hatcher
Graduate Library, University of Michigan.
10 Anti-Imperialist League Papers, Swarthmore Peace Collection, Swarthmore
College.
11 Letter dated October 19, 1899, Box 1, EO.
12 Letter dated November 27, 1901, Box 1, EO.
13 Letter dated January 10, 1902, Box 1, EO.
14 The exact amount is unclear as the New York AIL ledger books are not included inany of the collections. E.g., see letter dated January 25, 1902, Box 1, EO.
15 Jim Zwick. “Suffrage and Self-Determination: Women in the Debate About
Imperialism.” JZ.
16 The "water cure" was an ironic label. The contemporary “water curist” movement
encouraged drinking a lot of water to improve health and wellbeing.
17 Senate Investigation on the Affairs in the Philippines. 1902. Congressional
Hearings.
18 Mary Storer Cobb Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society.
19 Alice Smith-Travers. “The White Man’s Burden.” The Freeman (Indianapolis)(March 4, 1899). JZ.
20 Anna Manning Comfort. “Home Burdens of Uncle Sam.” The Public 2 (May 13,1899). JZ.
21 Jim Zwick compiled “Ladies for Liberty: Women’s Poems Against Imperialism andWar” dedicated to Mary G. W. Pickering, who “paid the entire expense of publishing
the [Liberty Poems volume].” Jim Zwick. “Ladies for Liberty: Women’s Poems
Against Imperialism and War.” JZ.
22 A Mother. “A Lament from Kentucky.” The Woman’s Journal, 30 (Feb. 25, 1899).
JZ.
23 Ibid. These numbers come from my calculations based on the information foundin the ledger books of the Anti-Imperialist League.
24 Correspondence from Herbert Welsh to Storey, January 31, 1902. MSLOC.
25 Helen C. Wilson. “A Massachusetts Woman in the Philippines.” (Boston: Fiske
Warren, 1903). JZ.
26 Clemencia Lopez. “Reply by Senorita Lopez.” A Farewell Luncheon in Honor of
Senorita Clemencia Lopez, October 5, 1903. (Boston: Fiske Warren, 1904). JZ.
27 Letter dated February 4, 1902, Box 1, MSLOC.
28 Dissertation. MLC.
29 Record Books of Anti-Imperialist League, Vol. 4. MLC.
ReferencesMurphy: Women's Anti-Imperialism

209

Addams, Jane. 1899. Democracy or Militarism. The Chicago Liberty Meeting: Liberty
Tracts, Vol I. Central Anti-Imperialist League: Chicago.
Bederman, Gail. 1995. Manliness & Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender andRace in the United States, 1880-1917. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Beisner, Robert. L. 1968. Twelve Against Empire: The Anti-Imperialists, 1898-1900.
New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company.
—. 1973. The Anti-Imperialist as Mugwump: Successes and Failures. in American
Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism, edited by Thomas G. Paterson. New York:Thomas &. Crowell Company.
Carby, Hazel V. 1985. 'On the Threshold of Woman's Era': Lynching, Empire, andSexuality in Black Feminist Theory. Critical Inquiry 12:262-277.
Collins, Patricia Hill. 2000. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and
the Politics of Empowerment. New York: Routledge.
Einwohner, Rachel and Jocelyn A. Hallander and Toska Olson. 2000. EngenderingSocial Movements: Cultural Images and Movement Dynamics. Gender &Society 14:679-699.
Ferree, Myra Marx and David A. Merrill. 2000. Hot Movements, Cold Cognition:
Thinking about Social Movements in Gendered Frames.Contemporary
Sociology 29:454-462.
Foner, Philip S. and Richard C. Winchester (Ed.). 1984. The Anti-Imperialist Reader:
A Documentary History of Anti-Imperialism in the United States. New York: Holmes
and Meier Publishers, Inc.
Gatewood Jr., Willard B. 1975. Black Americans and the White Man's
Burden. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Harrington, Joseph. 2002. Poetry and the Public: The Social Form of Modern U.S.
Poetics. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.
Hoganson, Kristin L. 1998. Fighting for American Manhood: How Gender Politics
Provoked the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars. New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press.
—. 2001. ‘As Badly Off As the Filipinos’: U.S. Women's Suffragists and the ImperialIssue at the Turn of the Twentieth Century. Journal of Women's History 13:9-33.
Ignacio, Abe, Enrique de la Cruz, Jorge Emmanuel and Helen Toribio,
Editors. 2004. The Forbidden Book. T’boli Publishing: San Francisco, CA.
Jacobson, Matthew Frye. 2000. Barbarian Virtues: The United States Encounters
Foreign Peoples at Home and Abroad, 1876-1917. New York: Hill and Wang.
Janiewski, Dolores E. 2001. Engendering the Invisible Empire: Imperialism,
Feminism, and US Women's History. Australian Feminist Studies16:279-293.
Kimmel, Michael S. 2006. Manhood in America: A Cultural History. Oxford and New
York: Oxford University Press.
Kramer, Paul. 2006. The Blood of Government: Race, Empire, the United States, &the Philippines. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press.
Lasch, Christopher. 1958. The Anti-Imperialists, the Philippines, and the Inequalityof Man. The Journal of Southern History 24:319-331.
—. 1973. The Anti-Imperialist as Racist. American Imperialism and AntiImperialism, edited by Thomas G. Paterson. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company.

White Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-1930

210

Murphy, Erin L. 2005. "'Prelude to Imperialism': Whiteness and Chinese Exclusion in
the Reimagining of the United States." Journal of Historical Sociology. 18:457-490.
—. 2009. "Women's Anti-Imperialism, 'The White Man's Burden,' and thePhilippine-American War: Theorizing Masculinist Ambivalence in Protest." Gender& Society. 23:244-270.
Nelson, Cary. 2001. Revolutionary Memory: Recovering the Poetry of the American
Left. New York: Routledge.
Newman, Louise Michele. 1999. White Women's Rights: The Racial Origins of
Feminism in the United States. New York: Oxford University Press.
Papachristou, Judith. 1990. American Women and Foreign Policy, 1898-1905:
Exploring Gender in Diplomatic History. Diplomatic History14:493-509.
Pemberton, Caroline H. 1972 [1899]. Stephen the Black. Freeport, New York: Books
for Libraries Press.
Rydell, Robert. All the World's a Fair: Visions of Empire at American International
Expositions, 1876-1916. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1984.
Schirmer, Daniel B. 1972. Republic or Empire: American Resistance to the Philippine
War. Cambridge, MA: Schenkman Publishing Company, Inc.
Taylor, Verta. 1999. Gender and Social Movements: Gender Processes in Women's
Self-Help Movements. Gender & Society 13:8-33.
Tompkins, E. Berkeley. 1970. Anti-Imperialism in the United States: The Great
Debate, 1890-1920. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Welch Jr., Richard E. 1973. Anti-Imperialists and Imperialists Compared: Racism andEconomic Expansion. American Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism, edited byThomas G. Paterson. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company.
—. 1979. Response to Imperialism: The United States and the Philippine-American
War, 1899-1902. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.
West, Guida and Rhoda Lois Blumberg. 1990. Women and Social Protest. New Yorkand Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wexler, Laura. 2000. Tender Violence: Domestic Visions in an Age of U.S.
Imperialism. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press.
Zwick, Jim. 2001. Foreward. The Story of the Lopez Family: A Page from the Historyof the War in the Philippines, edited by Canning Eyot. Manila: Platypus Publishing.
Archival Sources With Multiple Citations
EO, Edward Ordway Papers Manuscript Division of the New York Public Library.
Ordway was
the secretary for the New York based AIL.
MSMHS, Moorfield Storey Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society. Storey was anantiimperialist leader based in Boston, member of the AIL executive committee, andserved as President after George Boutwell.
MLC, Maria Lanzar-Carpio Papers, Special Collections at Hatcher Graduate Library,
Universityof Michigan, Ann Arbor. Lanzar-Carpio was a doctoral student at University ofMichigan in Political Science through the Pensionada program.
MSLOC, Moorfield Storey Papers, Library of Congress, Washington DC.

Murphy: Women's Anti-Imperialism

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JZ, In Jim Zwick ed., Anti-Imperialism in the United States, 1898-1935. (Sept. 8.
2005). Zwick compiled a significant online archive of anti-imperialist papers, whichwere available in 2005 through Jim Zwick's now obsolete website
boondocksnet.com.

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Race-Making and Colonial Violence in the U.S. Empire: The PhilippineAmerican War as Race War
By Paul A. Kramer
Speaking on May 4, 1902 at the newly-opened Arlington Cemetery, in the first
Memorial Day address there by a U.S. President, Theodore Roosevelt placed colonialviolence at the heart of American nation-building. In a speech before an estimatedthirty thousand people, brimming with “indignation in every word and every
gesture,” Roosevelt inaugurated the Cemetery as a landscape of national sacrifice byjustifying an ongoing colonial war in the Philippines, where brutalities by U.S. troops
had led to widespread debate in the United States. He did so by casting the conflictas a race war. Upon this “small but peculiarly trying and difficult war” turned “notonly the honor of the flag” but “the triumph of civilization over forces which standfor the black chaos of savagery and barbarism." Roosevelt acknowledged andexpressed regret for U.S. abuses but claimed that for every American atrocity, "avery cruel and very treacherous enemy" had committed "a hundred acts of far
greater atrocity." Furthermore, while such means had been the Filipinos' "onlymethod of carrying on the war," they had been "wholly exceptional on our part." The
noble, universal ends of a war for civilization justified its often unsavory means.
"The warfare that has extended the boundaries of civilization at the expense of
barbarism and savagery has been for centuries one of the most potent factors in the
progress of humanity," he asserted, but “from its very nature it has always andeverywhere been liable to dark abuses. 1

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President Theodore Roosevelt addresses a vast Memorial Day crowd at Arlington Cemetery in
May 1902 before assembled veterans and a journalist. In his “indignant” speech, he defended
the U. S. Army against charges of “cruelty” in the ongoing Philippine-American War by
racializing the conflict as one being fought between the forces of “civilization” and “savagery.”(Theodore Roosevelt Collection, Harvard College Library.)

As did Roosevelt, this essay explores the Philippine-American War as race war: a
war rationalized in racial terms before U.S. publics, one in which U.S. soldiers cameto understand Filipino combatants and non-combatants in racial terms, and one inwhich race played a key role in bounding and unbounding American violenceagainst Filipinos. My concern with race is far from new in and of itself. Most of the
war’s historians—whether writing the more traditional, campaign-driven U.S.
literature or more recent and more nuanced local and social histories of the war—
make passing reference to the racism of U.S. soldiers without thorough exploration.
2 Stuart Creighton Miller, in his critical account of the war, places racism at thecenter of U.S. troop conduct. 3 This essay begins from Miller’s starting assumption—that race was essential to the politics and conduct of the war—but also emphasizes
the contingency and indeterminacy of the process by which these racial ideologies

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took shape, against the assumption that these ideologies were reflexive“projections” or “exports” from the United States to the Philippines. Rather, as I willshow, while race helped organize and justify U.S. colonial violence, imperial
processes also remade U.S. racial formations. 4
Exploring this contingency requires attention to two dynamics which have up to
now been largely ignored in existing literatures. The first of these is the contested
character of race during the war. By 1898, Filipinos had been engaging the Spanish
colonial racial precepts that undergirded the Philippine colonial state for at least
two decades; they would continue to do so, in different ways, from the prewar
Republic into the war’s conventional phase and ultimately in guerrilla struggle.
These engagements often took the form of elite quests for recognition, especially theaffirmation of civilizational status as the criteria first for assimilation and politicalrights and, ultimately, for political independence. As I suggest, similar Filipino
campaigns for recognition from Americans—before, during and after the war—
fundamentally shaped both U.S. racial ideologies and Filipino nationalism.
The second source of contingency is the war itself. Racial ideologies and changing
strategies and tactics moved together in a dark, violent spiral. Within both Filipino
and Euro-American political cultures, patterns of warfare were themselvesimportant markers of racial status. “Civilized” people were understood to wage
“conventional” wars while “savage” people waged guerrilla ones. Filipino guerrilla
warfare eventually marked the entire population as “savage” to American soldiers:
rather than merely a set of tactics undertaken for military purposes, guerrilla war
was the inherent war of preference of “lower races.” This racialization of guerrilla
war raised the central question of whether Filipinos, in waging a “savage” war, were
owed the restraints that defined “civilized” war. Ultimately, I will suggest, many U.S.
soldiers and officers answered this question negatively. In many parts of theArchipelago, the war in its guerrilla phases developed into a war of racial
exterminism in which Filipino combatants and non-combatants were understood by
U.S. troops to be legitimate targets of violence. 5 The heart of the emerging U.S.
imperial racial formation was rich in contradictions: the people of the Philippines
did not have sufficient “ethnological homogeneity” to constitute a nation-state, butpossessed enough to be made war upon as a whole.
Questions of Recognition
By 1898, Filipino elites had been struggling against Spanish racism, as a key elementof Spanish colonialism, for at least two decades. 6 An expatriate propaganda
movement in Europe had help up Hispanicized “civilization,” advanced education
and bourgeois sophistication as arguments for greater rights within the Spanish
colonial system. 7 A common editorial stance in the pages of expatriate journal La
Solidaridad faulted some Spaniards—especially the Philippine friars—forrelentlessly denigrating Filipino “advancement” along these lines. 8 This was thestrategy of a cosmopolitan, ilustrado elite with cultural capital to spare, one thatreached its consummation with the triumph of the Philippine Revolution under
Emilio Aguinaldo and the installation of the Philippine Republic in mid-1898. WhenKramer: Race-Making and Colonial Violence in the U.S. Empire

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the Malolos Congress formed, it was done in the name of an emerging “civilization”
finally capable of expressing itself as an independent state. The more radical,
millenarian politics that had animated mass participation in the revolution’s
Katipunan societies were marginalized in Aguinaldo’s Republic. 9
The taking of Manila by U.S. troops following the Battle of Manila Bay introduced atense six-month period characterized by Filipino-American interaction andcompetitive state-building, in which the stakes of recognition had never been
higher. On the ground, relations between Filipinos and American soldiers in andaround Manila during this transitional period were varied. U.S. soldiers foundthemselves in an enticing, disturbing and incomprehensible Filipino urban world;
Filipinos unsure of the invading army’s status were wary of the Americans but eager
for their business. Americans and Filipinos encountered each other in commercial
interactions, especially those involving liquor and sex. As U.S. soldiers consolidated
military control over Manila and its municipal government—from sanitation to law
enforcement—and Filipino soldiers extended the Republic’s control in the wake of
Spanish defeats, they also met as members of rival states-in-the-making. 10
During this period, colliding interests, failed translations, mutual suspicions andquestions of jurisdiction easily boiled into animosity and conflict, especially where
U.S. soldiers became drunk and disorderly or failed to pay their debts. Soldiers
commonly characterized Filipinos as a whole as filthy, diseased, lazy andtreacherous in their business dealings, sometimes applying the term “nigger” tothem. One anonymous black soldier reflected back on this period that thesubsequent war would not have broken out “if the army of occupation would havetreated [Filipinos] as people.” But shortly after the seizure of Manila, white troops
had begun “to apply home treatment for colored peoples: cursed them as damned
niggers, steal [from] them and ravish them, rob them on the street of their smallchange, take from the fruit vendors whatever suited their fancy, and kick the poor
unfortunate if he complained…” 11
At the same time there was a striking amount of mutual recognition in the interval
between wars, as U.S. soldiers came to know individual Filipinos or their families
and visited their churches and homes. Up until the very brink of war, American
soldiers frequented Filipino concerts, dances, ceremonies and dinners, often
recording their admiration for Filipino grace, hospitality and artistic achievement intheir diaries and letters. One striking example was a poem presented at a
Thanksgiving dinner thrown by the 13th Minnesota in Manila in November 1898,
which recalled the recent fall of Manila and expressed the soldiers’ thanks:
We’re thankful that the City’s ours, and floats the Stars and Stripes;
We’re thankful that our cause is one that from these Islands wipes
The degenerate oppressors of a brother human kin
Who now—beneath ‘Old Glory’—a nation’s place may win. 12

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To be sure, there were dark signs here: the U.S. flag as the sole guarantor of liberty;
passive Filipinos as objects of U.S. redemption; the sense that Filipinos still had a“nation” to win ahead of them “beneath ‘Old Glory.’” What was striking in light of
future developments was that Filipinos were still “brother human kin.”
In the last months of 1898, as the Treaty of Paris was being negotiated, Filipinos
sought recognition by launching legal and historical arguments for the sovereigntyof the Philippine Republic and the impossibility of the Islands’ legitimate transferfrom Spain to the United States. These claims were subtly and forcefully expressedby Felipe Agoncillo, representative of the Philippine Republic sent to the UnitedStates to lobby on behalf of Philippine independence before U.S. politicians and thegeneral public. As expressed in his January 30, 1899 “Memorial to the Senate of theUnited States,” Agoncillo’s claim was that U.S. formal recognition of the Philippine
Republic had already been established by U.S. consular and naval dealings with
Emilio Aguinaldo’s government. The army of the Philippine Revolution had
advanced sufficiently against Spanish forces by the time of the U.S. declaration ofwar, he claimed, that Spain had no legal title or right to cede Philippine territory to
the United States. Indeed, Christian Filipino rebellions against Spain had broken out“continuously with greater or less fury for the past hundred years,” while “a large
number of my countrymen,” namely Muslims and animists, had “never been
subdued by Spanish power.” Agoncillo also appealed to U.S. history and politicalinstitutions, inviting American attention “to several notable and exact American
precedents” and urging “the Republic of America” to “adhere to the teachings ofinternational law as laid down by some of its founders.” 13
At the same time, the Republic sought recognition for its sovereignty in“civilizational” standing. This brand of argument was particularly common in the
Republic’s official newspaper, La Independencia, itself meant to be a concrete andmobile representation of the Philippine Republic’s “civilization” and sovereignty
before imagined audiences both within and outside the archipelago. 14 In their firstissue, the editors described "Our Program" as: “demonstrating the ideal and thesupreme aspiration of the country; publicizing the priorities of our government;
requesting recognition of our independence from other nations, grounding
ourselves in the capacity of the race, in the deeds that outwardly reveal our culture
and in the vitality that we demonstrate in governing 26 provinces with more than 3
million inhabitants...” 15 Advertising correspondents in “all the provinces of theArchipelago, London, Paris, Madrid, Singapore, Hong-Kong and Saigon,” its pages inlate-1898 and early 1899 highlighted erudite treatises on “modern” government,
including civil service reform, municipal budgeting, public instruction, moral
reform, public hygiene and “the spirit of association.” 16
One fascinating window onto Filipino efforts at recognition and their reception was
the inland expedition of Luzon taken by two naval officers, William Wilcox and L. R.
Sargent, in November and December 1898. While the two men's task was "of a very
indefinite nature," it was fundamentally a project of recognition: to determine
whether the institutions controlling the Filipino countryside constituted a state and,if a state, whether it was hostile or not to two wandering U.S. naval officers. As

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Sargent put it, they were "to proceed as far to the northward as the character of thecountry and the attitude of the natives would permit, and to return only whenforced to do so." 17
If border control was a state's measure, then the Philippine Republic was up andrunning. Aguinaldo offered the two friendship and verbal consent but no written
passports. As a result, the two relied on local presidentes, who provided them
passports, carriers and safe passage between towns, although at least one had
hesitated to give assistance in fear that "any incident" might "create a wrong andinjurious impression of the good faith of the Philippines…" 18 Some members of therural elite may have seen great advantage in winning over two naive Americans;others may have seen in them only the opening wedge of an invasion. At one town
they might be greeted "by the ringing of the church bells and the music of the band,
and at the next by the critical cross-questioning of the local authorities." 19
In either case, local officers of the Republic lost no chance to represent to visiting
Americans their authority and popular support. Wilcox and Sargent were regularly
treated to elaborate Filipino patriotic celebrations, stirring declarations of
independence, and impressive military drills. "At that time the enthusiasm of thepeople was tuned to the highest pitch," reported Sargent. "In every village, every
man was training in arms. Companies were formed of boys, from eight years of age
upward." A new civil governor "declared the purpose of the people to expend thelast drop of their blood, if necessary, in defending the liberty thus gained against theencroachments of any nation whatsoever." Many times villagers had gathered in thelarge room of the Presidencia, where they were quartered, and "put their wholehearts into the songs in which their patriotism found vent." 20 When asked about thePhilippines' status, "leading townspeople" had answered in unison that they would"accept nothing short of independence." 21

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This photograph of soldiers of the Philippine Republic shows the efforts of the newly
inaugurated state to convey the uniform, organized, “civilized” character of the republic’s
army and its warfare. Wilcox and Sargent encountered many such forces on their late 1898
trip through Luzon (From Leon Wolff, Little Brown Brother: How the United States Purchased
and Pacified the Philippines (Garden City, NY, 1961)), photographs after p. 49).

But even as Wilcox and Sargent worked their way across Luzon, the unstable
political window through which they were traveling began to close. As steamers andtelegraph lines brought word of the Treaty from Hong Kong newspapers, Wilcox andSargent faced stiffer restrictions. “Already the hope was fading that freedom from
Spain meant freedom of government,” wrote Sargent. “The feeling toward
Americans was changing, and we saw its effect in the colder manner of the people,
and in their evident desire to hustle us along the most direct road to Manila.” 22 As
they reached the Western coast of Luzon, and the U.S. Commissioners at Paris
moved towards formal acquisition of the Philippines, the party came under greater
scrutiny and was detained or forced back. They were subject to a new regulationthat travelers not "carry arms, nor approach within 200 meters of a fortification, notmake any plans, or take photographs of them." 23 Their final report, written upon
their return in December, contained tactical data appropriate to war but alsoKramer: Race-Making and Colonial Violence in the U.S. Empire219

recognized the fervor of Filipino revolutionary aspirations and the varied capacitiesof the Filipino people. Perhaps on these latter merits—perhaps due to bureaucratic
inertia—it was issued into the public record as a Senate Document only in 1900, a
year and a half after it was originally filed.
Even as they lobbied abroad and performed locally, Filipinos were highly suspiciousof American capacities to recognize them in light of circulating rumors of race. Prior
to the outbreak of the war, one of the chief Filipino suspicions of Americans had
been their reputation for racial oppression. "One of the stories that received
universal acceptance," reported General McReeve of the pre-war interlude, "wasthat ever since the Americans had liberated their negro slaves they had been looking
around for others and thought they had found them at last in the Philippines." 24
Filipinos that Wilcox and Sargent encountered had been “prejudiced against us by
the Spaniards," charges "so severe that what the natives have since learned has not
sufficed to disillusion them." 25 Two points in particular had stood out regarding"our policy toward a subject people”:... that we have mercilessly slain and finally exterminated the race of Indiansthat were native to our soil and that we went to war in 1861 to suppress aninsurrection of negro slaves, whom we also ended by exterminating.
Intelligent and well-informed men have believed these charges. They wererehearsed to us in many towns in different provinces, beginning at Malolos.
The Spanish version of our Indian problem is particularly well known. 26
Correspondent Frederick Palmer blamed the outbreak of war on these suspicions.
“All prominent Filipinos” that Palmer had spoken with had agreed: “If the status of
the negro, as they understood it, was to be theirs in the new system, they would
have to leave the islands anyway, and they had concluded to make a fight before
going.” 27
While Wilcox and Sargent traveled in the Luzon highlands, U.S. and Spanish
commissioners at Paris settled the disposition of the Philippine Islands, on
December 10, 1898. McKinley had at first supported only the acquisition of coaling
stations and naval bases, but had been persuaded over time to press for the entirearchipelago. While the politics of recognition had been ambiguous in Manila and its
environs, they would be stark and definitive at Paris, where Filipinos had been
excluded from treaty negotiations. McKinley effectively closed the first chapter inthe recognition debate in his statement of December 21, with Wilcox and Sargent
scarcely out of the woods. Authored by Elihu Root and later known as the“Benevolent Assimilation” proclamation, it narrated the American destruction of the
Spanish fleet and the Treaty of Paris and laid a claim to U.S. sovereignty over theentire archipelago. The proclamation was a sketch of bare-bones military
government, laying out improvised ground rules for the maintenance of property
rights, taxation and tariffs. McKinley seemed most concerned, however, with theFilipino recognition of U.S. sovereignty. In an effort to extend U.S. power “with all
possible despatch,” U.S. military commanders in place were to announce “in themost public manner” that the Americans had come “not as invaders or conquerors,

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but as friends, to protect the natives in their homes, in their employments, and intheir personal and religious rights.” It should be the military’s “paramount aim” towin the confidence, respect, and affection of the inhabitants of the Philippines by
assuring them in every possible way that they would enjoy a full measure ofindividual rights and liberties which is the heritage of free peoples, and by proving
to them that the mission of the United States is one of benevolent assimilation,
substituting the mild sway of justice and right for arbitrary rule. 28
Most significantly, however, the proclamation was a formal derecognition of thePhilippine Republic and established the relationship between the U.S. and Filipinos
as sovereign state to passive, individual subjects. The term “assimilation,” by which
the address would come to be known, held more than a hint of malice: the very factthat it required the adjective “benevolent” to soften it implied that there were kindsof “assimilation” that were not.
Race-Making and Colonial Warfare
The much-anticipated outbreak of war in early February 1899, just before the U.S.
Senate’s confirmation of the Treaty of Paris, did not end the Filipino struggle forrecognition. Long into the fighting, Filipino spokesmen revealed a continued
preoccupation with promoting Filipino “civilization” to the wider world as a central
rationale for claims to independence. “We, the Filipinos, are a civilized, progressive
and peace-loving people,” stated Galiciano Apacible in the Spanish-language
pamphlet, “Al Pueblo Americano” [To the American People] translated into English
and published by the Anti-Imperialist League. The pamphlet praised Filipinos’
education, literacy, art and political and religious leadership, urging Americans to“weigh our statements against the misrepresentations under which Imperialism
seeks to conceal its designs.” Following its defeat of Spanish forces, the Republic,
rather than giving in to revolutionary excess, had established an orderly governing
infrastructure, one whose hallmarks of science, technology and education conveyed
its “civilization.”[T]hey reorganized the administrative machinery which had been disturbed byrecent struggles: telegraphs, railroads, and means of communication began to work
regularly; we had adopted the electric light in some of our towns; and we had
established a new university, four high and several primary schools. In brief, the
new nation had entered upon a path of progress which already promised a bright
future. 29
Along with demonstrating their “civilization,” some Filipino leaders conceived of
their struggle as explicitly anti-racial. One anonymous address “To the Filipino
People,” captured by the U.S. Army in pursuit of Aguinaldo in March 1900, affirmed
Filipino bravery and sacrifice and laid claim to divinely-granted freedoms. “We areliving on one planet under the same celestial vault,” it stated, “and if we differ incolor, it is because of the distant latitudes in which we are, and this difference in noway signifies any superiority of the one over the other.” 30

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From its start, the war was challenged by U.S.-based anti-imperialist societies that
had organized together into the Anti-Imperialist League in November 1898. The
organization, which organized in Boston, Washington, Chicago and many smaller
cities, drew on diverse political roots, many of them in earlier reform movements,from civil service reform leagues to single-tax leagues to abolitionism. In party
terms anti-imperialism leaned toward independents and reformers, but brought
together a loose coalition of conservative and white-supremacist Democrats with anolder generation of liberal Republicans. Their initial hope was to turn U.S. public
opinion against Philippine annexation in negotiations with Spain, using extensive
lobbying and educational campaigns; following the outbreak of war in February
1899, they criticized the U.S. invasion as unjust in both ends and means. 31
Not all anti-imperialist argument hinged on the recognition of the Philippine
Republic in national terms (as a state) or Filipinos in racial terms (as civilized).
Indeed, many anti-imperialist claims, especially prior to outbreak of war, had been“internal,” focusing on the negative consequences of “empire” for the United Statesitself, especially the erosion of domestic republican virtue and freedom throughimperial corruption, tyranny and militarism. 32 Many of these concerns were
explicitly racial: annexation of the Philippines would lead to the “corruption” of the
U.S. body politic itself through Filipino citizenship and the “degrading” of U.S. laborby additional waves of “Asiatic” immigrants. 33

This anti-imperialist cartoon by Charles Nelan seeks to illustrate the risks of “incorporating”
the Philippines into the U. S. republican body politic by casting the Philippine population as awhole as “savage” and incapable of exercising political rationality. It suggests that because ofFilipinos’ “incapacity for self-government,” imperialism could threaten the United States’ own
political institutions. (Charles Nelan, Cartoons of Our War with Spain, New York, 1898)

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But some anti-imperialists recognized the Philippine Republic, even after theoutbreak of the war. Embracing a transnational strategy described by Jim Zwick,they assisted representatives of the Republic lobbying in the United States,translated and published their articles in the United States; and eventually carriedout investigations into the conduct of the war. 34
McKinley’s strategy to counter anti-imperialist claims of authority was to appoint
the first of two “Philippine Commissions,” the first arriving in the Islands in early
1899. Also operating on a transnational political terrain, the Commission had two
primary goals. First, within the Philippine context, it was to serve as the crux of the
War Department’s “policy of attraction,” the effort to draw ilustrado and principal
elites away from the Republic. Once settled into the Audiencia, former home of the
Spanish supreme court, the Commission’s daily sessions became the central ritual ofurban, wartime collaboration, where informants exchanged testimony favorable to
U.S. sovereignty for political patronage. 35 As early as May, this arm of theCommission’s work was showing results. There were key ilustrado defections andpolitical placements—especially those of Benito Legarda, Felipe Buencamino, T. H.
Pardo de Tavera and Cayetano Arellano--the inauguration of Pardo de Tavera’s proannexation newspaper La Democracia and the displacement of Mabini’s
irreconcilable faction within the Republic by Pedro Paterno’s more conciliatory one.
The Commission’s second project, however, was aimed at the domestic U.S. public:
to produce an authoritative record of events in the Islands that would justify U.S.
aggression and undermine anti-imperialist argument.
The task of rationalizing the war in its ends and means before the American public
led to the active production of a novel, imperial racial formation by the war’s
defenders. This formation had a dual character, simultaneously and reciprocallyracializing Americans and Filipinos in new ways. Its first half racialized the U.S.
population as "Anglo-Saxons" whose overseas conquests were legitimated by racialhistorical ties to the British Empire. 36 Opponents of the Treaty and war frequently
argued that while U.S. continental empire had involved the legitimate unfolding ofrepublican institutions into empty (or emptied) space, the Philippine annexation
constituted a disturbing “imperial” departure from the U.S.'s exceptional andexemplary traditions, one that would ultimately undermine the nation's moral andpolitical foundations. This apparent violation of U.S. historical laws was answeredwith extra-legal claims of racial essence. Specifically, the war's advocates subsumed
U.S. history within longer, racial trajectories of "Anglo-Saxon" history which folded
together U.S. and British imperial histories. The Philippine-American War, then, wasa natural extension of Western conquest, the organic expression of the desires,
capacities and destinies of "Anglo-Saxon" peoples. Americans, as Anglo-Saxons,shared British genius for empire-building, a genius which they must exercise for thegreater glory of the "race" and to advance "civilization" in general. 37 Unlike otherraces, they “liberated” the peoples they conquered, indeed, their expressions ofconquest as “freedom”, proliferated as the terrors they unleashed became more
visible. Anglo-Saxonist racial-exceptionalism was given its most resonant expression
in February 1899, when, Rudyard Kipling published "The White Man's Burden.” TheKramer: Race-Making and Colonial Violence in the U.S. Empire

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poem condensed race and humanitarian martyrdom, recasting Americans as a"race" with an inevitable imperial destiny. 38
If the first half of the double-sided imperial racial formation “Anglo-Saxonized”
Americans, its second half “tribalized” Filipinos. Contemporary social evolutionary
theory held that societies, in evolving from “savagery” to “civilization,” moved inpolitical terms from “tribal” fragmentation to “national” unity.” [39] Successfully
identify “tribes”—marked by language, religion, political allegiance—and one had
disproven a nation’s existence. Enumerate a society’s fragments, and what mightotherwise have looked like a nation became merely the tyranny of one “tribe” overothers; what might have appeared a state became a problem of imperial“assimilation.” The “tribalization” of the Republic would rhetorically eradicate thePhilippine Republic as a legitimate state whose rights the United States might haveto recognize under international law. 40
This argument was forcefully advanced by the Philippine Commission’s Report, its
first installment issued in January 1900, which represented the most influential
effort to reduce the Philippine Republic to what came to be called the “Single Tribe”
of the Tagalogs. The Report’s section on “The Native Peoples of the Philippines,”
written by zoologist Dean C. Worcester, began by admitting disputes over the“civilization” of the Filipino people.
The most diverse and contradictory statements are frequently met with concerning
the inhabitants of the Philippine Islands, at present collectively known as ‘Filipinos.’
Some writers credit them with a high degree of civilization, and compare them to
the Pilgrim Fathers or the patriots of ‘76, while others regard even the more highly
civilized tribes as little better than barbarians. 41
The Commission set out to “reconcile views which are apparently contradictory”
based on their investigation of Philippine conditions. After a brief review ofopposing views, they presented their conclusions: the Philippine populationconsisted of “three sharply distinct races,” the Negrito, the Indonesian and the
Malayan. Early migrations by the Negritos, a group “near the bottom of the humanseries,” had been displaced by invasions of Indonesians and Malayans with superior
racial constitution and civilization. Out of these three races had sprung “numerous
tribes, which often differ very greatly in language, manners, customs, and laws, aswell as in degree of civilization.” 42
The argument of “tribal” pluralism became the centerpiece of arguments against
Filipino self-government. “The most striking and perhaps the most significant fact inthe entire situation,” began the Commission’s report on “Capacity for SelfGovernment,” “is the multiplicity of tribes inhabiting the archipelago, the diversityof their languages (which are mutually unintelligible), and the multifarious phasesof civilization--ranging all the way from the highest to the lowest--exhibited by thenatives of the several provinces and islands.” 43
While Worcester admitted it was “extremely difficult to arrive at anything
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tribes,” the report was a powerful representation of the Commission’s ability toencapsulate the Philippine population by scientific means, one that gave birth to one
of its most widely-employed “facts”: the number “84” as the total number ofPhilippine “tribes.” 44 In future debates, the figure, meant to convey impossible
plurality, would echo through imperial argumentation in defense of theCommission’s central ethnological and political conclusion: “The Filipinos are not anation, but a variegated assemblage of different tribes and peoples, and their loyalty
is still of the tribal type.” 45
Worcester would be followed quickly into the “tribes” question by anti-imperialist
and Filipino nationalist publicists. In 1900, for example, Filipino nationalist Sixto
Lopez was asked by the New England Anti-Imperialist League to produce “a brief
statement of the facts” on the “tribes” question, “as a native of the country, and as
one who has given some attention to the ethnography of the Archipelago, both by
personal research and by a study of the best works on the subject...” For Lopez, theCommission’s findings had been “entirely incorrect.” The number eighty-four had
been the product of ”imagination, bad spelling, translation, subdivision, andmultiplication.” The Commission had badly transcribed already inaccurate Spanish
records, mistaken the mountain peoples for lowland villagers, confused racial
groups for language groups, and exaggerated the differences between theselanguages. “It would be just as absurd to regard the Americans as one tribe and the‘Yankees’ as another,” he wrote, “and then to increase these two tribes into four ormore by misspelling the word ‘Americans,’ or by translating it into French.” Heclaimed that the “so-called ‘tribes’” were actually a small minority of the Philippine
population, analogous to “the uncivilized or semi-civilized remnants of the Indian
tribes still inhabiting certain parts of the United States.” 46
Even as the administration “tribalized” Filipinos in its campaign to rationalize thewar at home, U.S. soldiers on the ground racialized their opponents with striking
speed and intensity. In the war’s early months, what had been diffuse andfragmented pre-war animosities quickly congealed into novel racial formations atthe very center of U.S. soldiers’ popular culture, capable of defining a wartime
enemy and organizing and motivating violence against that enemy. "A lively hatredof our newly declared enemy was the one enthusiasm of the camp," wrote a corporalin the Montana regulars in July 1899. 47 This race-making process is vividly
illustrated by terminological shifts in the diaries and letters home of U.S. volunteers
during the early months of the war. Although the linguistic starting-points and endpoints differed, many soldiers progressively racialized their terms for the insurgents
specifically, and Filipinos generally, although in few cases did these terms entirely
replace other terms like “insurgent” or “native.”
Andrew Wadsworth, for example, a twenty-eight year old sergeant in the First
Nebraska Volunteers, had observed shortly upon arrival in Manila that “the natives
are bright and intelligent as the average run of people," and admired their art,
musicianship and industriousness. 48 Writing home from "the Field" two weeks after
the beginning of the war, he wrote that "it was a hot time going over some of theKramer: Race-Making and Colonial Violence in the U.S. Empire

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ground... [it] swarmed with the indians but we didn't do a thing to them..." 49 Within
another two weeks, his racism was more matter-of-fact. "[H]ave forgotten whether I
have written any of you folks since we commenced to chase niggers," he wrote offhandedly, "have no doubt read in the papers what we are doing..." 50 Despite risingtensions, Earl Pearsall of the same unit had recorded in his diary on January 5th,
with some regret, that “the insurgents have not been as friendly lately as they havebeen for they have not visited our camp for three or four days.” 51 The day war
broke out, he imagined that “the dusky fellows don’t care for any more of thiswarfare with the Americano.” 52 Less than three weeks later, however, he thrilledthat U.S. artillery had “put the black rascals over the hills.” 53 Early in March, hereported being “attacked by the ‘Gugos’” on the Mariquina road. 54
South Dakota volunteer Louis Hubbard, a leader in his unit’s regimental band, had
accepted the gift of a sword from “one of Aguinaldo’s sergeants” in December 1898
and recruited a Filipino musician, “the finest clarinetist I ever heard in my life.” 55
Two weeks into the combat, he wrote that it was “lots of sport to hunt these black
devils.” [56] Angered by reports of Filipino atrocities against U.S. troops, he wrotethat “[t]hey are just like any savage.” 57 In mid-March he recorded the hope for a
speedy charge on Malolos, “for the quicker we get there and get these ‘gugos’ of [sic]the face of the earth the quicker we will be ready to start for home.” 58

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Photographs of dead Filipino soldiers lying in trenches were often taken by U. S. soldiers andjournalists and included in commemorative albums. Albert Sonnichsen wrote in his memoir of
the “heaps of dead and dying natives… photographed by our people, and exhibited with suchmottoes as: ‘Can the __d Regiment boys shoot? You bet they can. Count the dead niggers.’” (F.
Tennyson Neely, Fighting in the Philippines: A Photographic Record of the Philippine-American
War (London, 1899); Sonnichsen, quoted in Russell Roth, Muddy Glory: America’s “IndianWars” in the Philippines, 1899-1935 (West Hanover, MA, 1981)

This racialization process attracted the attention of U.S. journalists and soldiers on
the ground. Some understood rising pre-war hostility as the inevitable surfacing oflatent “race differences” on all sides. “After the first glamour which surrounded our
troops,” soldier-correspondent John Bass reported to Harper’s in mid-October 1898,“a glamour due to an exaggerated and almost childish idea of the liberty andfreedom we were bringing to the Philippines, the race differences have madethemselves felt, which antagonize the natives and exasperate our men.” 59 Manyjournalists were struck by increasingly widespread use of the term “nigger” by U.S.
troops. “Our troops in the Philippines… look upon all Filipinos as of one race andcondition,” wrote Henry Loomis Nelson, “and being dark men, they are therefore‘niggers,’ and entitled to all the contempt and harsh treatment administered byKramer: Race-Making and Colonial Violence in the U.S. Empire

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white overlords to the most inferior races.” 60 Frederick Palmer, sympathetic to thewar effort, was amused by the soldiers’ “good-natured contempt” toward “the little
brown man,” but regretted the use of the term “nigger,” which “too often” included
groups that were above it, however marginally:
If a man is white; if he speaks English; if he knows his lines as we know them, he isas good as anybody on earth. If he is white and yet does not understand ourcustoms, we insist that he shall have equal rights with us. If he is any other color too
often we include him in one general class called ‘nigger,’ a class beneath our notice,
to which, as far as our soldier is concerned, all Filipinos belonged. 61
H. L. Wells similarly noted that U.S. troops saw the enemy in racial terms.
“Undoubtedly, they do not regard the shooting of Filipinos just as they would theshooting of white troops…” he wrote in mid-1900. “The soldiers feel that they arefighting with savages, not with soldiers.” 62

The race-making process of the early phases of the war was revealed in the U. S.
press in changing images of Emilio Aguinaldo. The first, from May 1898, is in thenature of a portrait; the caption refers to Aguinaldo as “the president of the republicof the islands,” and calls him “brainy,” “patriotic,” and “self-sacrificing,” while theimage notably Europeanizes his features. The second, from March 1899, is a cartoon

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that represents him as a childish, ostentatious dictator being crushed by U. S. force;
his skin tone is darkened here and his features are distinctly “Orientalized.” (Leftimage from Bonnie Miller, “The Spectacle of War: A Study of Spanish-American War
Visual and Popular Culture,” Dissertation, Johns Hopkins University, 2003, 368;
right image from Abe Ignacio, Enrique de la Cruz, Jorge Emmanuel, and Helen
Toribio,The Forbidden Book: The Philippine-American War in Political Cartoons (SanFrancisco, 2005), 25
This "lively hatred" was not, however, simply a "projection" or "export," but a new
racial formation developing on the ground. 63 Its novelty was evidenced by theconsistency with which reporters—imperialist and anti-imperialist--felt compelled
to explain it to their domestic readerships. It was strikingly illustrated by theappearance of a new term, "gu-gu" or "goo-goo," in U.S. soldiers' discourse, almost
certainly the linguistic ancestor of "gook." 64 Veteran Charles A. Freeman, writing in
the 1930s, noted that "[o]f recent years the world [sic] has been shortened to gook,but gu-gu persists in Philippine fiction and fact written by Americans, and applies tothe lower class Filipino." 65 If the term had a sinister future, its origins remain
speculative. The first of two plausible explanations—far from incompatible witheach other—roots the term in local dynamics: the term came from the Tagalog term
for a slippery coconut-oil shampoo, pronounced gu-gu, which may have caught on asense of the enemy's elusiveness. 66 A second account suggests the term was born at
the intersection of immediate sexual tensions and racialized U.S. popular culture, as
older idioms were reworked to suit volatile new surroundings. According toFreeman, among the songs sung by U.S. troops on the long voyage from San
Francisco had been a minstrel tune "'Just because she made ‘dem goo-goo eyes.'"
When American soldiers first "gazed into the dark orbs of a Filipino dalaga" onarrival, they had commented to each other "'Gee, but that girl can make goo-goo
eyes.'" Filipino men had taken the term as an insult; when American soldierslearned this, "it stuck, and became a veritable taunt." 67
Whatever its specific origins, "gu-gu" formed part of a distinctive, new PhilippineAmerican colonial vocabulary that focused hatreds around a novel enemy and lent
American troops a sense of manly, insider camaraderie. The newness, immediacyand localism of U.S. soldiers' racial formation were suggested by the quotation
marks and parenthetical explanations soldiers commonly included near terms like"gu-gu" in their letters and diaries, especially early in the conflict. On occasion,
soldiers explained these terms to what they imagined to be befuddled family
members at home. Peter Lewis, for example, promised in November 1900 to write
home again about his "fights with the 'Guggoes' as the Filipiones [sic] are called." 68
Race-making and colonial warfare were developing together as intimately linked
projects.
Racializing Guerrilla Warfare
If one way to rationalize a war of aggression was to declare the enemy state a“tribe,” one way to end it was simply to declare it over by fiat. November 1899 saw
the war’s first end by U.S. proclamation. General MacArthur reported that there was“no organized insurgent force left to strike at,” and declared that all futureKramer: Race-Making and Colonial Violence in the U.S. Empire229

resistance be characterized as outlawry and the killing of U.S. soldiers murder. 69
General Otis cabled Washington stating that the revolutionaries had been dispersed
and that “claim to government by insurgents can be made no longer under any
fiction.” 70 In fact, Filipino tactics had undergone a dramatic shift toward a guerrillastrategy. Disbanding the regular army in the wake of defeats, Aguinaldo divided thecountry into military zones each under a guerrilla commander, preparing for aregionally dispersed set of smaller campaigns through locally-raised sandatahan
units. It was hoped that in these new settings, tropical disease, impassable roads andunfamiliar conditions would weaken the American advance, while geographic
knowledge and village-level support would sustain guerrilla ambushes and surprise
attacks against isolated American patrols. 71
This guerrilla campaign, in turn, altered the command structure, tactics andknowledge requirements of the U.S. Army. General Otis decentralized his forces tomatch the Filipino army, splitting the army into four departments, his plan toadvance outward into the hinterlands, fighting back Filipino rebels and garrisoning
the towns that supported them. 72 In these regional settings (eventually over 600
scattered posts), often cut off from Manila contacts, local commanders would bynecessity take on greater autonomy, and be forced to adapt their tactics to local
crises.
Guerrilla war involved not merely a set of tactics but a set of understandings: about
the meanings of combat, about the means to victory, about oneself as a combatant,about the nature of the enemy. Although each side perceived it as a radical break, it
held different meanings for Filipino and American troops. For Filipino officers,
schooled exclusively in European conventional warfare, guerrilla warfare waslargely unfamiliar, although at least some Filipino soldiers had encountered it firsthand while collaborating with the Spanish army against Muslims and animists.
Filipino strategists were compelled to explain it using anti-colonial guerrilla
struggles elsewhere. Filipino commanders, for example, took inspiration (mostlikely, unreciprocated) from the struggle of the Boers against the British Empire.
Juan Villamor, advising General Antonio Luna in Ilocos, claimed to have taken his
guerrilla model from the war in South Africa, probably learned through Hong Kongnewspapers. In a speech to raise troops in February 1900, Villamor apparently
noted that this warring style, "such as we are starting today," was "characteristic ofa small nation when fighting a big one," and had produced "the most surprising
successes" in South Africa. 73
One possible explanation for Aguinaldo’s delay in adopting guerrilla strategies andtactics may be the symbolic politics of war and preoccupations with expressions of“civilization.” But there were other political reasons for the delay in adopting
guerilla warfare. As the Republic’s officials knew well, guerrilla war was adecentralized war that empowered local commanders at the expense of the center;it could also involve mobilizing the energy of, and handing power to, a rural base.
This base was largely mistrusted by Aguinaldo's cadre and was itself often
ambivalent about the question of whether Republican “independence” and kalayaan
were the same thing. 74

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But it was particularly difficult to relinquish the quest for recognition. In its bid forinternational esteem and recognition, the Republic's self-representations to theworld had nervously held itself to a standard of "civilization" in which war played asignificant part. Officials of the Republic agreed with the Americans that, among
many other things, “civilized” societies adhered to the laws of "civilized" warfare.
The military drills witnessed by Wilcox and Sargent had drawn on a vocabulary of
republican martial order imbued with notions of a “civilized” fighting force;
Republic newspapers of 1898 had foregrounded the organized, hierarchicalcharacter of the Filipino army and the favorable condition of its Spanish prisoners asadvertisements for its broader "civilization.”
Guerrilla warfare, by contrast, meant scattered organization, loosely-disciplined
troops little distinguishable from "savages," the securing of rural supplies
inseparable from looting, a reliance on concealment and deception that violated
European-American standards of masculine honor in combat. 75 Emilio Concepción,
for example, a captain fighting in Namatay, later recalled that he "was vacillating forsome time" before he reorganized his troops into guerrilla units, for reasons ofhonor. "In reality, when I took that step, I had thought about it well for some days
before, because in principle I believed that if I made myself a guerrilla fighter, I
would stop being a revolutionary, and at that time for me the title of revolutionary
was much more glorious." 76 By winning a conventional war, the Philippine Armywould win the world’s support for independent Philippine statehood; victory inguerrilla battle, however, might mean losing the war for international recognition.
If on the Filipino side, guerrilla war was international politics by other means, on
the American side, guerrilla war was both novel and disturbing. It meant dispensing
with hopes for gallant rushes at the enemy and hunkering down for a protracted
campaign that was both boring and anxious, with soldiers isolated from other units,
in unknown terrain, unable to recognize the line between "amigos" and hostile
peoples. It was little surprise that the term the war introduced furthest into
American English was “boondock,” drawn from a Tagalog term for mountain or
remote area. 77

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For U. S. troops, guerrilla-style warfare in tropical settings was unfamiliar anddisturbing, subjecting them to exposure and disease and making it impossible to tell
the “enemy” from “amigos.” The term “boondock” in American English would
emerge from this disorientation. Filipino villagers and revolutionaries took
advantage of American ignorance and their own local knowledge in prolonging
resistance. (Library of Congress.)"Uncle Sam's cohorts, set down in the Philippines at the beginning of the century,
saw in everything something new, strange and utterly incomprehensible," recalled
one veteran years later. "The enemy existed unseen in the dripping jungle, in themoldering towns and in the smoky clearings on the hillsides, and since a natural
prudence bade him not risk any open encounter, the enemy was not to be found. But
they existed nonetheless." 78 Even as U.S. soldiers relied on Filipinos as guides,
translators, carriers and providers of food and intelligence, they found the task of
distinguishing Filipino soldiers from “friendly” villagers in garrisoned towns, who
declared themselves “amigos,” a frustrating and dangerous one. As Jacob Isselhard
recalled, "[t]he natives of the towns in which these small bodies of our men wereplaced... with that particular faculty of all Orientals to say one thing and meaning
another, professed to be 'mucho amigo' (good friends) to our faces, while secretly
aiding the insurrection with all the means at their command." Those who steppedWhite Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-1930

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forward as guides, for example, “would invariably and purposely get lost on a trail
which led either to nowhere or into well prepared death traps." 79 Erwin Garrett put
the problem succinctly in verse: “’Amigo’ to your face, forsooth, / Or when you
spend the dough, / But a red-handed ‘katipunan’ when / You turn around to go.” 80
The collision between Filipino revolutionary and U.S. Army perspectives on guerrilla
war can best be witnessed in a brief written exchange in late-August 1900 between
Mabini and General James Franklin Bell. 81 Bell had written to pressure Mabini toreconcile himself to U.S. rule and to declare himself against continued resistance, as
had an increasing number of revolutionaries. His argument hinged on the difference
between “civilized” war and its opposites. War, he began, could only be justified by acombatant where success was possible; as soon as defeat was certain, “civilization
demands that the defeated side, in the name of humanity, should surrender andaccept the result, although it may be painful to its feelings.” Combatants who strayedfrom this principle “place themselves in a separate classification” as “incompetent in
the management of civil affairs to the extent of their ignorance of the demands ofhumanity.” In this specific case, the end of conventional war and the dispersal of thePhilippine Army meant that continued Filipino resistance was not only “criminal”
but was “also daily shoving the natives of the Archipelago headlong towards a
deeper attitude of semicivilization in which they will become completely incapableof appreciating and understanding the responsibilities of civil government.”
Civilization meant “pacification” and the acceptance of U.S. sovereignty: “TheFilipino people can only show their fitness in this matter by laying down theirarms…” 82
Mabini countered with a brilliant riposte. 83 Bell’s starting point, he noted, wassimply the claim that might made right, that the U.S. war was “just andhumanitarian” because its army was powerful, “which trend of reasoning not eventhe most ignorant Filipino will believe to be true.” If in real life, he noted, “the strong
nations so easily make use of force to impose their claims on the weak ones,” it was
because “even now civilization and humanitarian sentiments that are so often
invoked, are, for some, more apparent than real.” No one deplored more deeply the“guerrilla and ambush system” the Filipinos had been “forced to adopt”; Mabini had
always considered “the fight that offers equal risks to both combatants more noble
and more worthy of men.” But the Filipinos had been left no choice. The very laws of
war that authorized strong nations’ use of “powerful weapons of combat” against
weak ones were those that “persuade[d]” the weak to engage in guerrilla war,
“especially when it comes to defending their homes and their freedoms against aninvasion.” 84
Guerrilla war was, in other words, tactical rather than ethnological: in this “extreme
case,” the laws of war “implacably order the weak people to defend their threatened
honor and natural rights under pain of being called uncivilized and uncapable ofunderstanding the responsibilities of a proper government.” Civilization meant
neither capitulation nor conciliation, but resistance in the face of domination.
Indeed, for Mabini, resistance to submission itself—even through guerrilla war—
was the only mark of a “civilized” people. The Filipinos, he wrote, “fight to show toKramer: Race-Making and Colonial Violence in the U.S. Empire

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the United States that they possess sufficient culture to know their rights even
where there is a pretense to hide them by means of clever sophisms.” 85 Earlier
Mabini had written, along the same lines, that “[a] humiliating peace is tolerated
only in uncivilized countries.” 86 Asserting the logic of recognition, Mabini hoped the
Revolution would in this way “remind the Americans of the struggle borne by theirancestors against the Englishmen for the emancipation of the colonies which are
now the free States of North America.” At that moment, the Americans had been “inthe same place which the Filipinos are in today.” Contrary to some, Filipino
resistance was “not motivated by hatred of race, but by the same principles sealedwith the blood of [the Americans’] own ancestors.” 87
Mabini was right that, in waging guerrilla war, Filipinos risked “the pain of being
called uncivilized.” Throughout the colonial world, races were characterized by theway they made war. The General Orders No. 100, the Civil War-era regulations thatwere the U.S. Army’s principal reference-point on questions of “irregular” warfare in
the Philippines, relied heavily on racial-historical dichotomies between “civilized”
and “savage” war. While “barbarous armies” and “uncivilized people,” for example,
offered no protection to civilians for example, the “inoffensive citizen” wasprotected in “modern regular wars of the Europeans, and their descendents in otherportions of the globe.” While the Orders authorized retaliation by “civilized nations,”
taken too far this principle quickly led nearer to “the internecine wars of savages.”88
By these lights, those who waged guerrilla war were, by definition, “savage”: Filipino
warfare did not take this form out of ignorance or strategy but out of race.
Conventional wisdom to this effect issued from the top of the U.S. military hierarchyin the Philippines. “War in its earlier form was an act of violence which, from thevery nature of primitive humanity and of the forces employed, knew no bounds,”
General MacArthur declared in a December 1900 proclamation. “Mankind, from the
beginning of civilization, however, has tried to mitigate, and to escape, as far as
possible, from the consequences of this barbarous conception of warlike action...”89
The Filipinos, in refusing these boundaries, had shown themselves to be less than“civilized.” “The war on the part of the Filipinos,” wrote Secretary of War Elihu Root,“has been conducted with the barbarous cruelty common among uncivilized races.”
90

This sense of race as the root cause of guerrilla war was also useful in explaining theguerrillas’ mass support as the U.S. effort ground to a halt in mid-1900. In his
October 1, 1900 report, MacArthur sought to account for what he called, with
begrudging respect, the “almost complete unity of action of the entire native
population.” His conclusion was that Filipino participation was neither rational nor
political. “[T]he adhesive principle comes from ethnological homogeneity,” hestated, “which induces men to respond for a time to the appeals of consanguineousleadership, even when such action is opposed to their own interests.” 91 General
Young concurred. “’The keynote of the insurrection among the Filipinos past,present and future is not tyranny,’” he stated in an April 1901 address, “for we are
not tyrants. It is race.” 92

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U.S. soldiers also increasingly defined the entire Filipino population as the enemy.
Race became a sanction for exterminist war, the means by which earlier distinctions
between combatants and non-combatants—already fragile—eroded or collapsed
entirely. As long as popular support for the rebellion was conceived of as“political”—as a matter of decisions, interests and incentives—within an ultimately
pluralistic Filipino polity, the task of the U.S. Army was to “persuade” Filipinos ofvarious sectors to accept U.S. sovereignty. That this “persuasion” might take terrible,
total forms was something that U.S. officials readily acknowledged. But no such
persuasion was possible where “ethnological homogeneity” governed over reason.
The Filipinos were one united “race”; its “savagery” placed it outside the bounds of“civilized” warfare: the two explanatory halves converged, pincer-like, into racial
exterminist war as the only means to “peace.”
Close ties between race and exterminist warfare can be found in the ever-present
racial terms employed by U.S. soldiers’ in their descriptions of violence against
prisoners and civilians. In 1902, for example, Albert Gardner, in Troop B of the 1st
U.S. Cavalry, composed a would-be comic song dedicated to “water-cure” torture—in which filthy water was poured into the mouths of Filipino prisoners, drowning
them--sung to the tune of the Battle Hymn of the Republic:
1st
Get the good old syringe boys and fill it to the brim
We’ve caught another nigger and we’ll operate on him
Let someone take the handle who can work it with a vim
Shouting the battle cry of freedom
ChorusHurrah Hurrah We bring the Jubilee
Hurrah Hurrah The flag that makes him free
Shove in the nozzel [sic] deep and let him taste of liberty
Shouting the battle cry of freedom. 93
Racial terms were employed in accounts of the shooting of Filipino prisoners, often
disguised as failed “escapes.” William Eggenberger reported hearing at one pointthat the “niggers” would “all the am [sic] prisoners they capture from now on, and ofcorse [sic] we will ring [sic] all the damn necks of the ones we capture too…” 94 He
recorded several occasions of shooting prisoners attempting to “escape,” but later
confessed that
When we capture a suspicious nigger, we generally loose him in the swamps,that is he is lost and he isn’t lost but he never shows up any more. Turn about
is fair play. They do it to us and we do it to them, they killed three of our
fellows with out mercy but we have taken a very sweet revenge and a veryclear revenge to them too. 95
One of the most banal and brutal manifestations of racial exterminism was U.S.
soldiers’ imagination of the war as hunting. The Manila occupation and early
conventional warfare had frustrated U.S. soldiers’ martial masculinity; the metaphor

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of the hunt made war, at last, into masculine self-fulfillment. 96 All at once, alanguage of hunting animalized Filipinos, made sense of guerrilla war to American
troops, and joined them in manly fraternity. “I don’t know when the thing will letout,” wrote Louis Hubbard one week into the war, “and don’t care as we are havinglots of excitement. It makes me think of killing jack rabbits.” 97 Earl Pearsall jotted in
his diary on the third day of the war that “[o]ur boys kept them on the run and shotthem down like rabbits.” 98 John F. Bright described one advance near San Juan
Bridge: “As we advanced they would jump up like rabbits only a few feet from us,
dead game ready to sell their lives as dearly as possible, but we shot them down
before they could do any damage.” 99
Racial terms explicitly linked hunting to exterminism. “There is no question that ourmen do ‘shoot niggers’ somewhat in the sporting spirit,” admitted Wells. “It is lots ofsport to hunt these black devils,” wrote Louis Hubbard just three weeks into thewar. 100 Private George Osborn of the 6th Infantry wrote home from Negros on
January 15, 1900: “Just back from the fight. Killed 22 niggers captured 29 rifels [sic]and 1 shotgun and I tell you it was a fight… we just shot the niggers like a hunter
would rabbits…” 101 In April 1899, Lieutenant Tefler wrote from Marilao that nighttime scouting raids were his men’s only relief from the boredom of guarding arailroad, that it was “great fun for the men to go on ‘nigger hunts.’” 102
Racial-exterminist sentiment of this kind was not uncommon in U.S. soldiers’ songs,
diaries and letters. It was at the very center of the most popular of the U.S. army’s
marching songs, which marked the Filipino population as a whole as the enemy andmade killing Filipinos the only means to their “civilization.”
Damn, damn, damn the Filipino
Pock-marked khakiac ladrone;
Underneath the starry flag
Civilize him with a Krag,
And return us to our own beloved home. 103
One Nebraskan soldier boasted to his parents of his comrades’ bold, aggressive
fighting spirit, restrained only by officers’ reticence. “If they would turn the boys
loose,” he wrote, “there wouldn’t be a nigger left in Manila twelve hours after.” 104
Henry Hackthorn explained to his family that the war, which he regretted, had been
avoidable but “the niggers got in a hurry.” “We would kill all in sight if we could only
receive the necessary orders,” he wrote. 105 A dramatic monologue entitled “TheSentry” written and published by a U.S. soldier, features a sympathetic portrayal of alonely U.S. sentry on watch-duty. “If I catch one of those bolo-men slinking around
me, I’ll just plug the son-of-a-gun full of holes,” he says, just before he istreacherously killed. “I hate the very sight of their black hides.” 106 Eggenberger
reported happily in March 1900 that Macabebes had killed 130 “ladrones” without
one escape. “[L]et the good work go on we will have the damn bug eaters sivilized[sic] if we have to bury them to do it,” he wrote. 107 The year before, he had casually
urged his family to have an old friend write to him. “[T]ell him if he don’t rite [sic] tome when i get back i will take him for a nigger and bombard him, tell him noWhite Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-1930

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Amegoes (friends) will go then, ha ha.” 108 A war of “no amigos” was a war without
surrender.
Race and Atrocity
Just as imperialists had mobilized racial ideologies to defend the war’s ends, so too
was race made to defend its means, undermining moral and legal claims against
American soldiers accused of “marked severities” in the halls of U.S. governance, inpress debates and in courts-martial. 109 When Senate hearings between January andJune 1902 raised the question of U.S. atrocities, the U.S. Army’s defenders repeatedly
held that abuses were rare; that where they occurred they were swiftly andthoroughly punished; and that testimony to the contrary was characterized bypartisan and cowardly—possibly traitorous--exaggeration. But racial arguments, inat least three varieties, were central to the administration’s defense.
The first variant claimed that the Filipinos’ guerrilla war, as “savage” war, wasentirely outside the moral and legal standards and strictures of “civilized” war.
Those who adopted guerrilla war, it was argued, surrendered all claims to boundedviolence and mercy from their opponent. Captain John H. Parker employed this lineof argument in a November 1900 letter to President Roosevelt complaining that the
U.S. Army should not “attempt to meet a half civilized foe… with the same methods
devised for civilized warfare against people of our own race, country and blood.” 110This point was also made at Senate hearings in 1902, when General Hughes
described the burning of entire towns by advancing U.S. troops to Senator Rawlins
as a means of "punishment," and Rawlins inquired: "But is that within the ordinary
rules of civilized warfare?..." General Hughes replied succinctly: "These people are
not civilized." 111
In their effort to depict Filipino combat as "savage," the war's defenders made muchof what they considered Filipino "race war" against whites. Racial exterminism bywhites, it seemed, was merely the inevitable, progressive working out of history;
race war took place only when non-whites resisted white domination, in violation of
the natural order. 112 Evidence of a Filipino "race war" was found in what wasrepresented as an early 1899 military order by General Teodoro Sandiko, adocument reputedly captured by U.S. soldiers. 113 In it, Sandiko allegedlycommanded Filipinos inside the U.S.-occupied city of Manila to revolt in preparation
for an invasion of the city from the outside by the army of the Republic: not only U.S.
soldiers, but all "whites" inside the city were to be killed. While evidence of U.S.
racial exterminist atrocities was cut off by censorship, the "Sandiko order" waswidely promoted in the U.S. press as early as April 1899 as signs of Filipino"savagery." "The war has developed into a race war," wrote John F. Bass of theSandiko order in Harper's Weekly. "After this let no one raise his voice to favor
Aguinaldo's government or army." There was "no choice of methods" ahead, only
the need for a "strong military government, untempered by mercy." 114 Use of the"Sandiko order" intensified with the Presidential race of 1900, finding its way into
Vice Presidential candidate Theodore Roosevelt's speeches, and even into theKramer: Race-Making and Colonial Violence in the U.S. Empire

237

Republican platform. 115 The Filipinos' "race war," it appeared, contrasted sharply
with the war of "civilization" waged by the United States.
If the first argument defined U.S. actions as outside of the moral and legal
framework of “civilized war,” the second explained American atrocities in a way that
distanced them from U.S. initiative. “Civilized” men might reluctantly adopt “savage”
methods to defeat savages, but they could do so without surrendering theircivilization; guerrilla war was tactical for whites, “ethnological” for non-whites. This
argument required emphasis on racial solidarity between domestic U.S. audiences
and American soldiers. Maj.-General S. B. M. Young accused those who had claimed“that our soldiers are barbarous savages… and not fit to be considered as civilized,”
as “abusing their own flesh and blood” for political advantage. He found the antiimperialists more traitorous even than the Civil War’s Copperheads had been; thelatter, at least, had been defending “kindred,” where the current war had been“against a cruel and vindictive lot of savages, who were in no way related to us.” 116
Henry Cabot Lodge expressed similar sentiment in an address before the Senate.
“One would suppose from what has been said here in debate,” he stated, “that it wasan army of aliens and mercenaries; that we had out there in the Philippine Islands
some strange foreign force which we had let loose upon that helpless people.” But
this was not the case. “Why, Mr. President, those soldiers are our own. They are ourflesh and blood, bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh.” If U.S. atrocities were not amatter of “race,” they must be a matter of emulation: Americans appropriated whatlittle “savagery” they had undertaken from their immediate surroundings. “What is
it which has led them to commit these atrocities which we all so much regret andover which we sorrow?” Lodge asked.
I think I know why these things have happened. I think they have grown out of theconditions of warfare, of the war that was waged by the Filipinos themselves, a
semicivilized people, with all the tendencies and characteristics of Asiatics, with the
Asiatic indifference to life, with the Asiatic treachery and the Asiatic cruelty, alltinctured and increased by three hundred years of subjection to Spain. 117
The third argument attributed U.S. atrocities entirely to Macabebe collaboratorsorganized into Scout units. If the “emulation” argument suggested that Americans
were merely imitating “savages,” the third argument was that atrocities had beencommitted almost entirely by cooperating Filipino troops over which American
officers had little or no control. 118 Call it a policy of outsourcing “savagery”: where
the Macabebe Scouts had been earlier hailed as “Filipinos in Uncle Sam’s Uniforms,”
they were represented during atrocity investigations as a kind of mad unconsciousthat could neither be dispensed with nor fully harnessed. In response to reports thatcertain Macabebe units had looted the town of Magallanes and raped women there,
for example, General Wheaton noted that they were “in these outrages, conducting
themselves in their usual and customary manner.” 119 Brigadier-General Frederick
Funston strongly denied his own troops had committed the “water cure,” but it was“common knowledge” that Macabebes had done so “when not under the directcontrol of some officer” and it was “utterly impossible to prevent a few offenses ofWhite Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-1930

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this kind.” Responsibility went only as far as race. Funston had “never heard of its
having been administered to a native by a white man.” 120
The last act of the administration’s political counter-offensive was an (almost) final
declaration of the end of the war. As one Washington Post editorial noted, theMcKinley and Roosevelt administrations had attempted, and failed repeatedly, toend the war by fiat; indeed, it observed, the conflict had been "brought to an end on
six different occasions" since the first declaration of U.S. victory. "A bad thing cannot
be killed too often," it stated. Two months after his address at Arlington, President
Theodore Roosevelt attempted to “kill” the war yet again, declaring the PhilippineAmerican War officially over on July 4, 1902, as if cued by John Philip Sousa
himself.121 Returning U.S. soldiers, freed up by the transfer of military power to the
Scouts and police power to the newly-formed Philippine Constabulary, wereperhaps the most potent if illusory signs to American audiences of an “insurrection”
well-ended.122 But this was a continually beleaguered fiction that sometimes
resulted in unflattering reversals: between 1901 and 1905, parts of the provinces of
Batangas, Cebu, Bohol, Samar, Cavite and Albay would be returned to military
authority in response to persistent “ladronism.” 123 The war’s phantom life after
mid-1902 was best indicated by the Commission’s Bandolerismo Statute ofNovember 1902, which even more than Roosevelt’s declaration, ended the war by
fiat, defining any remaining Filipino resistance to American authority as “banditry”
rather than “insurrection.” Second was the Reconcentration Act of 1903 which, tothe contrary, extended the war in tactical terms by authorizing use of wartime
measures where necessary under civilian authority; liberal use would be made ofthis in subsequent years, in Albay and Bicol in 1903 and Batangas and Cavite in1905. 124 The Commission would pass specific, separate acts shifting authority fromthe military to civilians, officially “ending” the war in these regions in silent,piecemeal fashion until 1913.
As power shifted from the U.S. Army to civilian administrators, a process that wastense and reversible, so too did the racial formation that would organize U.S.
colonialism in the Philippines. On the face of it, the new regime’s racial terms—“tutelage,” “uplift”, “evolution,” “assimilation”—were dramatic departures from thedepths of racial-exterminism, departures that closely corresponded to the needs ofan emerging Filipino-American collaborationist state whose “internal frontiers”
would emerge as the next ground of struggle.

Kramer: Race-Making and Colonial Violence in the U.S. Empire

239This cartoon from Public Opinion of June 1902 offers civilian colonial rule, in theform of the Philippine Bill, as a favorable alternative to war. It does so by dividing
the Philippine population into the “savage” population still resisting, and the“civilized” population collaborating peacefully with U. S. colonial state builders.
Images like these paved the way for a postwar racial state predicated on notions of“tutelage” and “assimilation” and illustrate the political dynamism of race.
If the U.S. military’s distrust of the new administrators, and the frequent refusal of
officers to take part in its new, inter-racial rituals, suggested conflict, there werealso continuities: students needed to be tested and disciplined, children were to besupervised, controlled and punished. “Benevolent” assimilation could always,
implicitly, be withdrawn for the other kind. 125
During the Philippine-American War, U.S. soldiers had borrowed and adapted a
Tagalog word to create “boondock,” a term for a liminal, border region, withconnotations of bewilderment and disorientation. The “boondocks” emerged where
older maps failed, where prior patterns and relationships could no longer berecognized. Making sense of colonial war required Americans to develop a novel
racial formation that could reorient the United States at a crucial transition in its
imperial career. Filipino revolutionaries had attempted to achieve American
recognition through their “civilization” and even in their fighting, but as combat andrace-making became entangled, the two processes fused into racial-exterminist
warfare with devastating human consequences. 126 The legacy of colonial violenceWhite Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-1930

240

would continue to haunt both societies as empire building drew the United States
and the Philippines together in the 20th century.
Paul A. Kramer is an associate professor of history at Johns Hopkins University and iscurrently a visiting professor at the University of Michigan. He is the author of The
Blood of Government: Race, Empire, the United States and the Philippines (Universityof North Carolina Press, 2006). His web site can be found here.
Notes:
1 Theodore Roosevelt, Address of President Roosevelt at Arlington, Memorial Day,

May 30, 1902, (United States: 1902).
2 Traditional historiography on the war minimizes U. S. racial animus and atrocity
and emphasizes the “benevolence” of the U. S. campaign. See John Gates,
Schoolbooks and Krags: The U. S. Army in the Philippines, 1898-1902 (Westport,
Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1973); Brian McAllister Linn, The U. S. Army
Counterinsurgency in the Philippine War, 1899-1902 (Chapel Hill: University ofNorth Carolina Press, 1989); Linn, The Philippine War, 1899-1902 (Lawrence:
University Press of Kansas, 2000); Linn, “Taking Up the White Man’s Burden: The U.
S. Military in the Philippines, 1898-1902,” in Luis E. González Vales, ed., 1898:
Enfoques y Perspectivas (San Juan, Puerto Rico: Academia Puertorriqueña de laHistoria, 1997), 111-142. For more nuanced accounts, see Resil B. Mojares, The War
against the Americans: Resistance and Collaboration in Cebu, 1899-1906 (Quezon
City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1999); Glenn Anthony May, Battle for
Batangas: A Philippine Province at War (Quezon City: New Day, 1993); For a recent
collection of historical essays and artworks relating to the war, see Angel Velasco
Shaw and Luis H. Francia, eds., Vestiges of War: The Philippine-American War andthe Aftermath of an Imperial Dream, 1899-1999 (New York: New York University
Press, 2002).
3 Stuart Creighton Miller, “Benevolent Assimilation”: The American Conquest of thePhilippines, 1899-1903 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982).
4 On the political dynamism of race, see Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial
Formation in the United States from the 1960s to the 1990s (New York, 1994), esp.
chaps. 1—5; Thomas C. Holt, “Marking: Race, Race-Making, and the Writing ofHistory,” American Historical Review, 100 (Feb. 1995), 1—20; Etienne Balibar,"Racism and Nationalism," in Etienne Balibar and Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein,eds., Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities (London ; New York: Verso, 1991);
Barbara J. Fields, “Ideology and Race in American History,” in Region, Race, andReconstruction: Essays in Honor of C. Vann Woodward ed. J. Morgan Kousser andJames M. McPherson (New York, 1982), 143—78. For the argument that U. S. Indianpolicy was the “origin” of Philippine policy, see Walter L. Williams, "United States
Indian Policy and the Debate over Philippine Annexation: Implications for theOrigins of American Imperialism," Journal of American History Vol. 66, No. 4 (1980).
On the broader reconstruction of race in the context of U. S. colonialism in thePhilippines, see Paul A. Kramer, The Blood of Government: Race, Empire, the UnitedStates and the Philippines (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006).
[5] For the purposes of this essay, exterminist warfare is warfare in which non-Kramer: Race-Making and Colonial Violence in the U.S. Empire

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combatants are viewed as legitimate targets during the duration of combat but coexistence is imagined as a postwar goal; I distinguish this from genocide, in which
violence is organized around the deliberate elimination of all members of an“enemy” society. I refrain from the use of the category of “total war” due to thecategory’s vague boundaries. On the concept of exterminism, see Dirk Bönker,“Militarizing the Western World: Navalism, Empire and State-Building Before WorldWar I,” (PhD thesis, The Johns Hopkins University, 2002). On “total war” during thePhilippine-American War, see May, “Was the Philippine-American War a ‘Total
War’?” in Manfred F. Boemeke, Roger Chickering, Stig Förster. eds., Anticipating
Total War: The German and American Experiences, 1871-1914 (Washington, D.C.:
German Historical Institute; Cambridge, U.K. ; New York : Cambridge University
Press, 1999). For an intriguing comparative perspective on these questions see
Helmut Walser Smith, “The Logic of Colonial Violence: Germany in Southwest Africa(1904-1907); the United States in the Philippines (1899-1902),” in Hartmut
Lehmann and Hermann Wellenreuther, eds., German and American Nationalism: A
Comparative Perspective (New York: Berg, 1999), 205-231. On other U. S. race wars,
see John Dower, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War, 7th
printing (New York: Pantheon Books, 1993); Mark Grimsley, “'Rebels' and'Redskins': U.S. Military Conduct toward White Southerners and Native Americans
in Comparative Perspective,” in Mark Grimsley and Clifford J. Rogers, eds., Civilians
in the Path of War (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, c2002), 137-161.
6 On racism in Spanish colonial policy, see Josep Fradera, “Raza y Ciudadanía: El
Factor Racial en la Delimitacion de los Derechos de los Americanos,” in Gobernar
Colonias (Ediciones Peninsula, 1999).
7 John Schumacher, The Propaganda Movement, 1880-1895 (Manila: Solidaridad
Publishing House, 1973).
8 La Solidaridad, 1889-1895, Translated by Guadalupe Fores-Ganzon, vol.s 1-5; Luis
Matheru, Vols. 6-7 (Manila: Fundacion Santiago, 1997). For the case of Rizal, seePaul A. Dumol, "Rizal Contra European Racism: An Autobiography of Jose Rizal
Embedded in Blumentritt's Obituary of Rizal," in European Studies: Essays by
Filipino Scholars (Diliman: University of the Philippines, 1999).
9 Teodoro A. Agoncillo, Malolos: The Crisis of the Republic (Quezon City,: Universityof the Philippines, 1960); Cesar Adib Majul, The Political and Constitutional Ideas of
the Philippine Revolution, rev. ed. (New York; Oriole Editions, 1974 [1967).
10 On the U. S. Army’s attempt to regulate prostitution in the interests of venereal
disease control, see Paul A. Kramer, “The Darkness that Enters the Home: The
Politics of Prostitution During the Philippine-American War,” in Ann Stoler, ed.,Haunted by Empire: Race and Intimacy in North American History (Durham: Duke
University Press, 2006).
11 [unsigned], from Wisconsin Weekly Advocate, May 17, 1900, in Willard Gatewood,"Smoked Yankees" and the Struggle for Empire: Letters from Negro Soldiers 18981902 (Urbana, Chicago and London: University of Illinois Press, 1971), 279.
12 Quoted in Lewis O. Saum, “The Western Volunteer and ‘The New Empire,’” PacificNorthwest Quarterly, Vol. 57, No. 1 (Jan. 1966), 22.
13 Felipe Agoncillo, “Memorial to the Senate of the United States” (Washington, DC,1899), 2, 7.

White Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan’s Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-1930

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14 On the links between “print-capitalism” and nationalist “imagined community,”see Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin andSpread of Nationalism (London: Verso Press, 1991). On the press during thePhilippine-American War, see John Lent, “The Philippine Press During the
Revolution and the Filipino-American War,” Asian Thought and Society, Vol. III, No.
9 (December 1978), 308-321; see also Jesús Valenzuela, History of Journalism in thePhilippine Islands (Manila: Published by the Author, 1933).
15 “Nuestro Programa,” La Independencia, Year 1, No. 1 (September 3, 1898). All
quotations from La Independencia are translations from the original Spanish by theauthor.
16 Advertisement for La Independencia, Year 1, No. 2 (September 5, 1898); See, forexample, “El Espíritu de la Asociación,” La Independencia, Year 1, No. 5 (September
9, 1898); “De Higiene Pública,” La Independencia, Year 1, No. 36 (October 17, 1898);“Los Presupuestos,” La Independencia, Year 1, No. 41 (October 22, 1898); “Apuntes
Sobre Enseñanza,” La Independencia, Year 1, No. 47 (October 29, 1898);“Moralización,” La Independencia, Year 1, No. 63 (November 18, 1898).
17 L. R. Sargent, "In Aguinaldo's Realm," The New York Independent, Sept. 14 1899,
2477.
18 U. S. Senate, Senate Document No. 196, Report of Tour through the Island of
Luzon, 56th Congress, 1st Session, Feb. 23, 1900, 13.
19 Sargent, "In Aguinaldo's Realm," 2479.
20 Sargent, "In Aguinaldo's Realm," 2480-1.
21 Report of Tour through the Island of Luzon, 20.
22 Sargent, 2481.
23 Wilcox and Sargent, 16.
24 "General McReeve's Interview," reprinted in The Anti-Imperialist, Vol. 1, No. 3(July 4, 1899), 18. On discourses of slavery and anti-slavery in Philippine-Americancolonial politics, see Michael Salman, The Embarrassment of Slavery: Controversies
over Bondage and Nationalism in the American Colonial Philippines (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2001).
25 Wilcox and Sargent, 20.
26 Wilcox and Sargent, 20.
27 Palmer, “White Man and Brown Man in the Philippines,” 79.
28 William McKinley to the Secretary of War, December 21, 1898, in "Message fromthe President of the United States," Senate Document No. 208, 56th Congress, 1stSession (1899-1900), 82-3.
29 G. Apacible, Al Pueblo Americano/To the American People (Anti-Imperialist
League, 1900).
30 "To the Filipino People," Exhibit 992, J. R. M. Taylor, ed., The Philippine
Insurrection, Vol. V, 96. Taylor speculates that its author was Emilio Aguinaldo; alikely candidate is Apolinario Mabini.
31 For the best account of the domestic U. S. politics of the war remains Richard E.
Welch Jr., Response to Imperialism. The United States and the Philippine -American
War, 1899—1902 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979). On U. S.
anti-imperialism, see Daniel Schirmer, Republic or Empire: American Resistance tothe Philippine War (Cambridge, Mass., 1972); Robert L. Beisner, Twelve against

Kramer: Race-Making and Colonial Violence in the U.S. Empire
Empire: The Anti-Imperialists, 1898—1900 (New York, 1968); Jim Zwick, ed.,Sentenaryo/Cenennial,
Posted at Japan Focus on June 2, 2006.

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244

Asia-Pacific Journal Articles Recommended for Further Reading
New Syonan and Asianism in Japanese-era Singapore
Vivian Blaxell
http://www.japanfocus.org/-Vivian-Blaxell/2644
January 23, 2008.
Selling Empire: American Propaganda and War in the Philippines
Susan A. Brewer
http://www.japanfocus.org/-Susan_A_-Brewer/4002
October 7, 2013.
Andrea Germer, “Visual Propaganda in Wartime East Asia – The Case of Natori
Yōnosuke
http://www.japanfocus.org/-Andrea-Germer/3530
May 16, 2011.
Blood-Sacrifice in the Politics of a Nation-State. Japanese-Americans Hawai’i During
and After World War II
Teresa Goudie
http://www.japanfocus.org/-Teresa-Goudie/2588
November 24, 2007.
A 1942 Declaration for Greater East Asian Co-operation
Yayoi Koizumi and Zeljko Cipris (trans.) with an introduction by James Orr,
http://www.japanfocus.org/-James-Orr/2692
March 10, 2008.
The Military-Sexual Complex: Prostitution, Disease and the Boundaries of Empire
during the Philippine-American War
Paul A. Kramer
http://www.japanfocus.org/-Paul_A_-Kramer/3574
May 25, 2011.
World War Zero? Re-assessing the Global Impact of the Russo-Japanese War 190405
Gerhard Krebs
http://www.japanfocus.org/-Gerhard-Krebs/3755
May 21, 2012.
Janis Mimura
Japan’s New Order and Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere: Planning for Empire.
http://www.japanfocus.org/-Janis-Mimura/3657
December 5, 2011

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245

When the Geta is on the Other Foot: Xenophobia in the Canadian Immigration Policy
Towards Japan, 1907-1908
Simon Nantais
http://www.japanfocus.org/-Simon-Nantais/2639
January 21, 2008
Japan’s Progess Reified: Modernity and Arab Dissent in the Ottman Empire
Renée Worringer
http://www.japanfocus.org/-Renee-Worringer/2896
September 11, 2008.