Japan's motivations for empire and its justification

[RF]

It has been suggested to me in a PM by Byron Angel that Japan moved into China prior to WW2 in order to build an empire on the same basis as the British had for two centuries previously, so therefore why shouldn't they have their empire? And what legitimate reason could the US have for opposing them?

Japan's motives for building an empire, starting very late, were very different from the British.

The British started their empire building very slowly, from early Tudor times starting with France and Ireland, to develop trade with other countries. The Spanish saw the English as rivals and shut them out of trading with the Spanish colonies. So the English adopted piracy tactics at Spain's expense, creating a rivalry exacerbated by religous differences arising out of the Christian reformation. Under the Stuart kings Britain started formal colonialisation, to develop colonies as economic entities and to grow trade, providing for imports of raw materials for which there was either no domestic source or at which Britain was at a comparative cost disadvantage in producing. The writings of the early classical political economists such as Adam Smith provided much of the intellectual justification for this process, particulary with his demonstration of the benefits of genuine free trade. Britain had the advantage of industrialising first and in being the first great global trading nation. Its ideas spawned the USA and the development of the north American hinterland.

Japan started its empire building after the Meiji Restoration of 1868 and was first expressed in the sino-Japanese war of 1894/95. In that war Japan seized Formosa and that island became Japan's first colony. In 1905 the Japanese gained more territory, at the expense of Russia, seizing the southern portion of the island of Sakhalin.

In 1910 Japan seized Korea.

The Japanese empire of 1914 would easily have catered for the industrial expansion of Japan. However all of these colonies - Formosa, south Sakhalin and Korea - were never properly invested in in terms of economic production and the provision of infrastructure in the way that the British developed their empire. Japan wanted cheap exploitation of what there was - and no more. The colonies were under military control, with no ideology of free market capitalism at all. Indeed if there was an economic ideology it was one of economic autarky and of keeping other countries trade and money out, just as the Spanish tried with their colonies back in the sixteenth century.

The same militaristic process started on a more intense scale in 1931 onwards, fuelled by greed and a lus for military power. The British Empire was based on conquest and then benevolent liberal rule. The Japanese moved in to their colonies and were hated and reviled by their colonial subjects. In China in the 1930's and 1940's several million Chinese died from engineered starvation, a form of ethnic cleansing largely ignored by the history books.


With such wanton brutality and disregard for human decency, it isn;t surprising that the actions of the Japanese provoked a response. And in doing so the Japanese dug themselves into a hole - WW2.

[RF]

Post Second World War Japan developed as a great trading nation - without the need for empire.

They would have been better off doing that prior to WW2.

[Tiornu]

The key factor to keep in mind is that Japan, by observing developments in Asia, came away with the lesson that a nation either colonizes or is colonized. To the Japanese, expansion was the only viable form of self-preservation. They weren't kidding when they said they attacked Russia in self-defense.

[Dave Saxton]

Another factor adding to Richard's point was the strong "superiority complex" for lack of the correct term (I can't recall the orginal Asian term from my studies) which existed in Asian cultures and in particular Japan. In effect there was a strong "master race" type concept ingrained in the Japanese culture by tradition. If this is understood it becomes more understandable that they would resist any possibility of being subordinate or equal to western powers as they came out of isolation. In fact they consisdered all others as subordinate. The East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere had these elements beyond the economic considerations. Their brutalness in dealing with the conquered had much to do with maturation of such attitudes. If there was ever an evil empire that needed to be brought down it was the pre WWII and WWII Japanese empire.

[Keith Enge]

Japan's policy was unquestionably brutal and ultimately much less than optimal. However, I believe that you are whitewashing British policy which was definitely better than that of Japan but fell far short of your description of "benevolent liberal rule". Great Britain too stepped on native sensibilities and wanted their colonies to conform to British ideas. The colonies were to be a second class citizen version of GB. Japan used military might to get their way; GB used economic might to do the same. GB wanted trade partners but nothing close to equal partners. GB wanted cheap sources of raw materials to make into finished goods which would then be marketed back to the colonies. Industries in those colonies that might eventually become competitors were suppressed.

[Byron Angel]

A list of wars fought by England in the seventeenth century can be found here -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wa ... th_century

A list of the wars fought by Great Britain since the beginning of the eighteenth century can be found here -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wa ... at_Britain

A brief review will divulge that the trading empire of Great Britain was assembled by an endless succession of warfare on every continent around the globe over two centuries.

As to the claim that Japan possessed the ability to become a great economic power based upon its territorial holdings at the end of WW1, I pose the following question. How can a nation of the 1930's have become truly economically powerful when it must (a) import the majority of its steel, oil, and rubber from abroad, and (b) was forced to compete in a world marketplace tightly controlled by a handful of western colonial powers. To argue on th grounds of the post-WW2 economic success of Japan is to (a) ignore the dramatically changed international circumstances brought about by the collapse of colonialism, (b) the willingness of the US to open its markets to Japan in order to develop them as an economically healthy trans-Pacific bastion against Red China, and (c) the ability of Japan to economically develop under a military shield provided and paid for by the USA (in the same manner as Europe BTW).

In closing, it may be apropos to point out that invading the Asian mainland was no sudden inspiration on the part of the 20th century warlords of Japan. Japanese ambitions to seize a position on the Asian mainland harken all the way back to the 16th century at least, with extensive piratical campaigns upon the Chinese coastal provinces and two successive invasion attempts against kingdom of Korea between 1592-1600 or so - invasions undertaken as the very first foreign policy step of Japan after it had finally been unified by Hideyoshi.

B

[Tiornu]

Are we justified in calling Japan's policy generally brutal, or was that simply the manifestation after WWI?

[RF]

British policy which was definitely better than that of Japan but fell far short of your description of "benevolent liberal rule". Great Britain too stepped on native sensibilities and wanted their colonies to conform to British ideas. The colonies were to be a second class citizen version of GB. ... GB used economic might to do the same. GB wanted trade partners but nothing close to equal partners. GB wanted cheap sources of raw materials to make into finished goods which would then be marketed back to the colonies. Industries in those colonies that might eventually become competitors were suppressed.

I was referring to the period of Japsanese colonial expansion here - a period during which Canada, Australia and New Zealand were given home rule (from 1910 onwards) and British policy in India and the other large colonies was benevolent rather than based on brutality or racial ideology.

[RF]

Are we justified in calling Japan's policy generally brutal, or was that simply the manifestation after WWI?

The actions of the IJA during the ''rape of Nanking'' was described as ''indescribable brutality'' by the ambassador of Nazi Germany to China. For the nazies to recognise it as brutal would suggest that most other people would see it as something worse.

[RF]

How can a nation of the 1930's have become truly economically powerful when it must (a) import the majority of its steel, oil, and rubber from abroad, and (b) was forced to compete in a world marketplace tightly controlled by a handful of western colonial powers.

By adopting a culture of free market enterprise and consequently a far better resource allocation and utilisation that properly develops the countries infrastructure instead of piling most of the effort into expanding and glorifying the military. This will raise real incomes and provide for a much larger domestic purchasing market which would certainly have benefitted Japan in the 1930's. Further the absence of militarism would not have led to the degree of anti-Japanese xenophobia in the US and in Asia generally that it was; indeed a friendly policy towards a Kuomintang China could have greatly benefitted Japan by opening up the Chinese market and hinterland to them. They could have succeeded commercially where the military option was a total failure.

[Byron Angel]

Are we justified in calling Japan's policy generally brutal, or was that simply the manifestation after WWI?

IMO, it did without question meet and exceed all standards for brutality.

B

[Byron Angel]

By adopting a culture of free market enterprise and consequently a far better resource allocation and utilisation that properly develops the countries infrastructure instead of piling most of the effort into expanding and glorifying the military. This will raise real incomes and provide for a much larger domestic purchasing market which would certainly have benefitted Japan in the 1930's. Further the absence of militarism would not have led to the degree of anti-Japanese xenophobia in the US and in Asia generally that it was; indeed a friendly policy towards a Kuomintang China could have greatly benefitted Japan by opening up the Chinese market and hinterland to them. They could have succeeded commercially where the military option was a total failure.

..... Do you think that Great Britain could have achieved the same degree of global domination by such means as you propose here? I doubt it.

If I may be permitted to say so, you are suggesting here that Japan should have pursued its "great power" ambitions by following a strategy voluntarily pursued by no other great nation in history. While your proposals may very well have produced real improvement in the Japanese economy, that was not the aim of Japan's leadership. Their goal was to achieve empire status in their own right. I think it would have been a very great deal to expect, especially after the diplomatic snubbing delivered upon them by the great western powers at Versailles, not to mention previous Japanese disappointment in the terms of the Treaty of Portsmouth, in which they felt they had been short-changed of their enticipated fruits of victory in the RJW.

One question worth examination here is how and why Japanese attitudes toward the west changed so dramatically in the thirty years between 1905 and 1935. Behavior of the Japanese toward their Russian captives in the RJW had been scrupulously correct by even the most stringent of western standards. By 1935, this had completely altered. I don't think that "militarism" alone is an adequate answer. My suspicion is that Japan's military, having at first embraced the western ideas of civilized warfare, came away from Portsmouth and Versailles with a profound feeling of betrayal and perhaps even a sense of racial discrimination that drove them to their "samurai" roots for a new ethos.


B

[Tiornu]

The actions of the IJA during the ''rape of Nanking'' was described as ''indescribable brutality'' by the ambassador of Nazi Germany to China. For the nazies to recognise it as brutal would suggest that most other people would see it as something worse.

That was after WWI.

[RF]

..... Do you think that Great Britain could have achieved the same degree of global domination by such means as you propose here? I doubt it.

The fact remains that it did - with the advantage of being the world's first industrialised superpower, backed by an unrivalled naval strength. I believe it was called ''Pax Britannica.''

[RF]

If I may be permitted to say so, you are suggesting here that Japan should have pursued its "great power" ambitions by following a strategy voluntarily pursued by no other great nation in history. While your proposals may very well have produced real improvement in the Japanese economy, that was not the aim of Japan's leadership. Their goal was to achieve empire status in their own right. I think it would have been a very great deal to expect, especially after the diplomatic snubbing delivered upon them by the great western powers at Versailles, not to mention previous Japanese disappointment in the terms of the Treaty of Portsmouth, in which they felt they had been short-changed of their enticipated fruits of victory in the RJW.

One question worth examination here is how and why Japanese attitudes toward the west changed so dramatically in the thirty years between 1905 and 1935. Behavior of the Japanese toward their Russian captives in the RJW had been scrupulously correct by even the most stringent of western standards. By 1935, this had completely altered. I don't think that "militarism" alone is an adequate answer. My suspicion is that Japan's military, having at first embraced the western ideas of civilized warfare, came away from Portsmouth and Versailles with a profound feeling of betrayal and perhaps even a sense of racial discrimination that drove them to their "samurai" roots for a new ethos.

This illustrates the problem of a illiberal society based on a primitive militarism. Japan underwent a rapid industrialisation using imported western ideas and techniques. Up until the advent of WW1 it benefitted the Japanese including the military. But from 1914 one can trace a growing streak of greed and immaturity in Japan's foreign policy - up to that point the empire building was essentially defensive in preserving Japan as an indepedent nation. The declaration of war on Germany, followed by the infamous list of demands on China, which if they had been followed would have reduced China to being a vassal state, crossed a threshold. Japan had little to gain by declaring war on Germany - what they gained (various Pacific island groups) they held, except for Guam which was allocated to the USA. When that little gain was confirmed in the WW1 Peace Treaties, the toys were thrown out of the pram. The other world powers asserted their far eastern interests, where the Japanese began to feel they should be dominant. An inferiority complex developed as Britain refused to continue with the Treaty of London and Japanese power was contained with naval limitations.

Japan was granted the world's third largest navy, to cover a relatively compact area of the world. But their growing immaturity and spite, largely fuelled by the implanting of Prussian military ideas in the originally German trained army, put Japan on a potential collision course with the west. In the 1920's this phenomena was contained, although the Japanese involvement in the Russian Civil War was expressed by the abandonment of the requirements of the Geneva Convention for correct treatment of prisoners of war. The problem was made more acute by the insular nature of Japanese society and most Japanese having little real contact with the outside world. Those civilians who were more widely educated and had lived outside Japan could see this.

The impact of the Great Depression and the collapse of world trade that initially went with it hit Japan very hard. The fact that a succession of rice harvests failed was even more unfortunate. The civilian government had no answers and no room to manoeuvre, as Japan was now isolated. The military filled the vacuam. The rest is now airbrushed out of Japanese history until after 1945.