page_title: Shanghai International Settlement
section_title: Rise of Imperial Japan (20th century)
hierarchical_section_title: Shanghai International Settlement / History / Rise of Imperial Japan (20th century)
caption_attribution_description: English: Hongkou Japantown 中文: 虹口日本人街 日本語: 虹口日本人街
context_page_description: The Shanghai International Settlement originated from the 1863 merger of the British and American enclaves in Shanghai, in which parts of the Qing Empire would hold extraterritorially under the terms of a series of Unequal Treaties until 1941.
  The settlements were established following the defeat of the Qing army by the British in the First Opium War. Under the terms of the Treaty of Nanking, the five treaty ports including Shanghai were opened to foreign merchants, overturning the monopoly then held by the southern port of Canton under the Canton System. The British also established a base on Hong Kong under an extensive lease. American and French involvement followed closely on the heels of the British and their enclaves were established north and south, respectively, of the British area.
  Unlike the colonies of Hong Kong and Macau, where the United Kingdom and Portugal enjoyed full sovereignty in perpetuity, the foreign concessions in China remained under Chinese sovereignty. In 1854, the three countries created the Shanghai Municipal Council to serve all their interests, but, in 1862, the French concession dropped out of the arrangement.
context_section_description: In the 19th century, Europeans possessed treaty ports in Japan in the same way they held those in China. However, Japan rapidly developed into a modern nation, and by the turn of the 20th century the Japanese had successfully negotiated with all powers to abrogate all unequal treaties with it.   Japan stood alongside the European powers as part of the Eight-Nation Alliance during the infamous fifty five-day siege of the foreign embassy compound in Peking. Japan entered the 20th century as a rising world power, and with its unequal treaties with the European powers now abrogated, it actually joined in, obtaining an unequal treaty with China granting extraterritorial rights under the Treaty of Shimonoseki signed in 1895.
  In 1915, during the First World War, Japan overtook Britain as the country with the largest number of foreign residents in Shanghai. In 1914 they sided with Britain and France in the war and conquered all German possessions in China. By the beginning of the 1930s, Japan was swiftly becoming the most powerful national group in Shanghai and accounted for some 80% of all extraterritorial foreigners in China. Much of Hongkew, which had become an unofficial Japanese settlement, was known as Little Tokyo.
  In 1931, supposed "protection of Japanese colonists from Chinese aggression" in Hongkew was used as a pretext for the Shanghai Incident, when Japanese troops invaded Shanghai. From then until the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) Hongkew was almost entirely outside of the SMC's hands, with law and protection enforced to varying degrees by the Japanese Consular Police and Japanese members of the Shanghai Municipal Police.
caption: Hongkew Japantown
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