A similar mix of consensus on basic goals and strategic contention over how to achieve them marked Japanese foreign policy of the 1910s and 1920s. The mainstream parties, with other elites, fervently supported empire abroad. They sought equality with the imperialist powers of the West. In Asia, they wanted to make Japan more than the equal of the other powers, and they pushed the Western powers to recognize a special Japanese interest in Asia. They shared these general goals with military leaders as well as editorial writers in the press. But politicians as much as the military disagreed sharply among themselves on how to achieve these goals.
Several related issues proved most divisive. First, should Japan seek economic and military advantage in China by cooperating with the European powers and the United States, or should it take unilateral actions? Second, should Japan support and work with China’s struggling young government, which had led the 1911 revolution against the Qing dynasty, or should it impose order in China by cutting deals with local warlords who were resisting the weak central government? Finally, should Japan recognize and work with the Soviet Union, or should it seek to destroy or contain it?
In the years from World War I through the 1920s, all these alternatives were pursued.
The outbreak of World War I raised every one of these questions. It presented the Japanese government with golden opportunities to extend its power in Asia. The Anglo-Japanese alliance of 1902 (revised in 1911) led Japan quickly to join the war on the British side in August 1914. By year’s end, Japanese troops had taken control of German possessions including railways and a military base in China’s Shandong peninsula and several Pacific islands.
This course was more than acceptable to Japan’s British ally. It did not particularly trouble the neutral Americans. But matters became more complex when the Japanese government followed by addressing the notorious Twenty-One Demands to China. In
January 1915, Prime Minister Okuma Shigenobu and his ¯ foreign minister, Kato¯ Ko¯- mei, whose government was allied to the Do¯shikai party, presented the young Chinese government led by Yuan Shikai with five sets of specific demands (twenty-one in all).
The fifth group was especially offensive to the Chinese. It would have set up joint Chinese-Japanese police forces in China and required the Chinese government to ac
cept the appointment of Japanese advisors in political and economic as well as military affairs. This would have sent China far along the road toward colonization by Japan.
The Chinese populace reacted with outrage. Anti-Japanese activists launched boy
cotts of Japanese goods and shipping. Yuan resisted the demands and sought inter
national support. When the British and Americans objected to the more radical de
mands, the Japanese agreed to withdraw the claims put forth in group five. Yuan accepted the other demands. Among other things, China agreed to recognize Japan’s control of the former German possessions. China also gave Japan rights to build railways in Shandong, and Yuan recognized that Japan had a special position in south
ern Manchuria.
Japanese military leaders supported the pursuit of economic and strategic power on the continent. But Yamagata Aritomo and others were troubled by the way Okuma ¯ and Kato¯ stirred up anti-Japanese sentiment in pursuit of their goals in China. Of equal or greater concern to Yamagata was Kato¯’s clear intent to increase civilian control of foreign policy and party control of the government. When Kato¯ left his position and the Okuma cabinet resigned because of scandal, Yamagata was able to hold off party ¯ government by putting in place his ally, General Terauchi Masatake.16
With less diplomatic controversy, the new Japanese government continued to risk tensions with the West and press its advantage as the war continued. When the United States entered the war in 1917, it became Japan’s ally. The two governments signed the Ishii-Lansing agreement. Japan agreed to respect China’s independence and prom
ised not to obstruct America’s equal commercial access to China. In exchange, the Americans recognized Japan’s “special interests” in China. In effect, the two countries agreed to recognize each other’s colonial possessions in Asia. In 1918 Japan pushed ahead to secure its “special interests” with the so-called Nishihara Loans to China (named for Prime Minister Terauchi’s representative who negotiated the terms). These were nominally loans from private Japanese banks for economic projects such as railway building. In fact, the Japanese government provided the funds to prop up one Chinese leader against warlord rivals in exchange for further economic privileges in Shandong and Manchuria.
Tensions over the Japanese stake in China carried over into the World War I peace negotiations at Versailles in 1919. Japan joined the peace conference as one of the victorious allies. Its delegates wanted above all to confirm Japanese control over the former German leasehold in Shandong. They also eagerly called for the principle of racial equality to be made part of the founding covenant of the League of Nations.
The American president, Woodrow Wilson, and the other allied leaders allowed Japan to keep its foothold in Shandong, but they refused to include the racial equality clause.
These decisions undermined the idealistic claims of the Western powers that principles of equality and self-determination should anchor the postwar international order. They fueled strong Japanese anger at the hypocrisy of the Western governments.
The Japanese rulers simultaneously provoked Western mistrust by the way it in
tervened against the Soviet Union in an episode known as the Siberian Intervention.
When the Bolshevik movement triumphed in Russia in November 1917, the Japanese government began searching for some means to encourage a counterrevolution to topple Russia’s new communist regime. At the very least, Japan hoped to support an anti-communist regime in the nearby regions of far eastern Russia, which were not yet securely under Bolshevik control. But General Terauchi’s government was un
willing to move alone.
An opportunity to act presented itself in 1918. In March, the British, French, and American governments agreed to send troops to Siberia. Their goal was to protect allied war supplies and pro-czarist troops gathered in Vladivostok. President Wilson asked Japan to join the intervention. Prime Minister Terauchi was only too happy to oblige. Wilson requested the help of seven thousand troops. Japan promised to send twelve thousand and in fact dispatched no less than seventy thousand men! They were still in Siberia in 1922, two years after the other powers had decided the anti-Bolshevik movement was lost and had withdrawn their troops. The Japanese forces continued to support a small counterrevolutionary government in Vladivostok. This hopeless uni
lateral action came under mounting domestic and international criticism. Having gained nothing but the suspicion of the West and the distrust of the Soviet Union and having lost three thousand lives, Japan withdrew its troops and brought them home late in 1922.
The Treaty of Versailles and the Siberian Intervention marked a rocky start down the road of postwar cooperative imperialism. The major powers continued to seek ways to work together throughout the 1920s. As the Siberian venture drew to its close, the Hara government agreed to join an international peace conference in Washington.
One goal of the meeting was to end an emerging naval arms race that set Japan, Britain, and the United States against each other. Hara was committed to an economic policy of reduced government expenditures, so he welcomed this effort. The treaty committed the British, American, and Japanese governments to keep their warship capacities (by tonnage) to a ratio of 5 : 5 : 3,respectively. The Japanese accepted the lower level because the British and Americans promised to build no naval fortifications in the western Pacific. The governments agreed that these ratios would ensure the security of each nation while preventing an arms race.
Throughout the 1920s, the Japanese government streamlined its military forces for strategic as well as economic reasons. Most military leaders supported these efforts.
The government cut manpower and weapons. Military costs fell from a peak of 55 percent of the national budget in 1918 to just 29 percent by 1924. Troop reductions continued over the next several years. In 1925 Ugaki Kazushige, the minister of the army (who served in Kenseikai/Minseito¯cabinets from 1924 to 1927 and again from 1930 to 1931), cut four divisions or thirty-four thousand troops. But much of the money saved was redirected to new commitments to buy modern weapons. Ugaki also implemented policies to build popular support for the military, such as required mil
itary education in middle and higher schools. This approach reflected the lesson learned by the Japanese high command from World War I: Any future war would require the total mobilization of the civilian population and resources.
Parallel to these policies to limit and modernize the Japanese military, the gov
ernment for much of the 1920s pursued a more cautious policy toward China than it had during World War I.
At issue was the question of how best to protect the dramatically increasing Japanese presence and how to deal with the various contenders for political power in China itself. In 1900 no more than 4,000 Japanese civilians lived in China. By 1920, the expatriate community stood at 134,000. The Japanese resided mainly in Manchuria and North China, but by the mid-1920s Japanese businesses had made substantial investments in Shanghai as well, in textile production especially.
These men pursued their business goals in a constantly changing political envi
ronment. The Chinese Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang, had by now inherited the banner of the revolution that overthrew the Qing. But through the mid-1920s its hold on power was uncertain at best. It faced resistance from a growing communist move
ment in the cities and countryside, as well as from regional commanders called “war
lords,” who had mobilized substantial military forces. The warlords were especially powerful in northern China and Manchuria, where the Japanese laid claim to special economic and strategic privileges.
The Seiyu¯kai cabinet under Hara sought to safeguard Japan’s interests by coop
erating with the Western powers as well as the Chinese Nationalist regime. Hara discontinued the Nishihara Loans, which had facilitated Japanese intervention in Chi
nese politics. As part of the 1922 Washington agreements, he negotiated the return of Shandong to China, while keeping long-term rights over key railways. The Kenseikai/
Minseito¯ governments of 1924 through 1927, with the Western-oriented Shidehara Kiju¯ro¯ as foreign minister, continued the conciliatory chorus. On three occasions from 1925 to early 1927, the British or the Americans called on Japan to join in the dispatch of troops to counter perceived threats to foreign interests. Each time, Shidehara refused to send troops.
At the same time, Shidehara was not willing to see Japanese businesses in China rely simply on free access to open markets. Following up on promises made at the Washington Conference, the major powers convened an international meeting on tariff reform in Peking in 1925. Its goal was to restore tariff controls to the Chinese, a power they had lost eighty years before in the Opium Wars. From the outset, Shidehara had reservations about supporting Chinese demands for tariff autonomy. He feared China would use its restored powers to impede Japanese textile exports, and he refused to make key concessions. No agreement was reached, and the meeting ended in failure.
Despite such hard-nosed economic bargaining, Shidehara was sharply criticized at home for “weak-kneed” diplomacy because of his reluctance to send troops to China to confront anti-Japanese agitation. The possibility of a different approach emerged in 1927 when General Tanaka Giichi took over as prime minister of a new Seiyu¯kai cabinet. Tanaka was a career military man, invited to join the Seiyu¯kai as party pres
ident in 1925. He did not directly repudiate cooperation with the West, but he pro
moted a considerably more assertive foreign policy than Shidehara. He sent troops to China on three occasions in 1927 and 1928, ostensibly to protect Japanese citizens and economic interests. In fact, the immediate threats were far less than reported back home. But the Nationalist army, now led by an ambitious leader named Chiang Kai
shek, had taken control of central China by 1927. The prospect loomed that he would
extend his reach to North China and challenge Japanese privileges there and in Man
churia. The Seiyu¯kai and military leaders agreed that Japan should consider indepen
dent action and alliances with local warlords to protect these interests.17
Part of the passion moving people in Japan to oppose diplomatic cooperation with the West in China came from anger at the way America was treating Japanese im
migrants. By the early 1900s, Japanese migrants to Hawaii and the American mainland were approaching one hundred thousand in number. Anti-immigrant rhetoric about the threat of this so-called Yellow Peril was particularly virulent on the West Coast.
Local laws mandated that schools be segregated. President Theodore Roosevelt sought to calm the situation in 1908 by concluding the so-called Gentleman’s Agreement with Prime Minister Saionji. This nonlegislative measure committed the Japanese gov
ernment to limit drastically the flow of emigrants to the United States.
American discrimination against those Japanese already present was anything but gentlemanly. New legislation in California prohibited Japanese from owning land or leasing it long-term. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1922 that no Japanese or other Asian immigrants could become naturalized American citizens. And a new Immigra
tion Act in 1924 superseded the Gentleman’s Agreement by prohibiting Japanese im
migration entirely. Such steps not only contradicted the general spirit of postwar in
ternational cooperation but also specifically undermined American calls for Japan to support an Open Door policy to American interests in Asia. They aroused considerable anger in Japan. In a letter to the U.S. secretary of labor, Japanese ambassador Hanihara Masanao wrote,
The important question is whether Japan as a nation is or is not entitled to the proper respect and consideration of other nations. . . . Themanifest object of the [exclusion clause] is to single out Japanese as a nation, stigmatizing them as unworthy and undesirable in the eyes of the American people.18
But even more important in provoking domestic criticisms of the government’s foreign policy was the trend of deepening resistance in Asia to Japanese colonial rule and imperialism. The great irony is that Japan’s victory in the Russo-Japanese War had initially flamed anti-colonial passions from China and Vietnam to the Philippines, Burma, and India. People in all these lands viewed Japan as an anti-colonial force and took heart at what they viewed as the first modern victory of a “yellow” race over the “whites.” From the turn of the century through the 1910s in particular, thousands of youths from China, hundreds from the Korean and Taiwanese colonies as well as Vietnam, and a handful from places such as India, Burma, and the Philippines sought education in Japan. These students won support for projects of reform in their own countries from many Japanese political figures, ranging from anti-Western nationalists to internationally minded socialists.
But Japanese support for these youthful Asian dreams of liberation evaporated in the face of imperialist realpolitik. When Japan concluded an alliance with France in 1907, for example, the two governments secretly agreed to respect each other’s co
lonial possessions. As a result, the Japanese government forced Vietnamese students to leave the country. In the following years, in the eyes of vast numbers of Asians, Japan’s aggressive policies from the annexation of Korea through the Twenty-One Demands turned the nation from a force for Asian liberation to one of oppression.
In particular, the year 1919 witnessed two momentous anti-Japanese outbursts. In Korea, patriots in exile were thrilled by Woodrow Wilson’s 1918 call for national self- determination just prior to the Versailles peace conference. They tried to send dele
gates from Hawaii, but the Japanese refused them passports. In February 1919 hun
dreds of Korean students in Tokyo formed a Youth Independence Corps and ratified a call for immediate independence. Similar sentiments in Seoul crystallized around the funeral of the former king of Korea, Kojong, who died in January 1919. Antici
pating a huge Japanese police presence at the funeral itself on March 3, nationalist organizers issued a Declaration of Independence on March 1. This sparked peaceful demonstrations of several hundred thousand students, laborers, and others in Seoul, which quickly spread nationwide. The Japanese authorities were stunned at the pow
erful sentiments and careful organization that obviously lay behind these widespread actions. They responded in a panic of violent suppression. Japanese forces killed thousands of Koreans. They arrested tens of thousands. By late April a brutal form of order had been restored.19
Immediately after this, similar massive demonstrations broke out in China. In late April, the great powers rejected China’s appeal at Versailles to retake full control over Shandong from Japan. On May 4, several thousand students demonstrated in Tian
anmen Square. As in Korea, this movement spread to other cities. It was directed in part at the weakness of China’s own government, but fury at Japanese encroachment on China was the driving force. This May Fourth Movement marked a new stage in the power and breadth of popular nationalism in China. Anti-imperialist protests, in
cluding numerous boycotts of Japanese goods, recurred throughout the 1920s. In 1925, the May Thirtieth Movement began with strikes at Japanese-owned textile mills in Shanghai. When British police killed several demonstrators on May 30, a nationwide outburst of anti-Japanese demonstrations, strikes, and boycotts exceeded those of 1919.
Partly in response to these events in China, Japanese political leaders undertook relatively conciliatory efforts to protect economic interests in China for much of the 1920s. In similar fashion, Prime Minister Hara Kei decided that simple repression was the wrong way to sustain colonial rule in Korea. In the wake of the March 1 uprising, he appointed a new governor general, Admiral Saito¯ Makoto, with a mission to restore
“harmony between Japan and Korea.” Saito¯’s new departures came to be called “cul
tural rule.” The essence of his program was a strategy of divide and rule. Colonial administrators were charged to support cooperative Korean leaders and organizations, while isolating and suppressing any sign of anti-Japanese activity.
“Cultural rule” has often been dismissed as cosmetic reform that masked unre
lenting authoritarian control. After Saito¯’s arrival, the Japanese quickly and dramati
cally quadrupled the number of police stations and substations in just one year. The police developed a huge network of spies and informers throughout Korea. In the name of economic development, colonial administrators funded improved irrigation, and production did expand, but most of the increase was exported to Japan. Per capita rice consumption in Korea actually declined.
But Governor General Saito¯’s reforms were slightly more than window dressing.
Saito¯ gradually expanded the number of public schools for Koreans. He recruited more Koreans into the colonial administration. He narrowed the inequality between their wages and those of the Japanese. Koreans were permitted to publish books, magazines,