i6
Conclusion: The Nature of Japanese
Imperialism
Analyses of imperialism too often treat it as static.
True, those examples which were relatively short-lived can well
enough be considered in this way, but others, including that of Japan,
went through stages of development. Japan’s began with what might
be called a period of‘dependency’, when a strength recognizably
greater than that of the country’s neighbours was combined with
weakness vis-a-vis the other powers. In the decade after 1894
alignment with Britain and the United States was the necessary
concomitant of putting together the rudiments of a Japanese empire.
In the second stage, starting in 1905, Japanese imperialism became
more self-assertive. Like Bismarck’s Germany a generation earlier,
Japan behaved after the Russo-Japanese War as an abrasive latecomer,
seeking equality of esteem not only through an insistence on treaty
rights, but also through the acquisition of spheres of influence.
Finally, after 1930—though there had been indications of it as early as
the First World War—Japanese leaders set out to substitute a Japan-
centred system of imperialism in East Asia for that which they had
inherited from the nineteenth-century West. To do so required both a
restructuring of economic patterns and the promotion of a specifically
‘Asian’ ideology.
One general influence on these developments was the process of
economic modernization within Japan. In 1894 Japanese capitalism
was primarily commercial, despite the presence of important elements
of industry. By 1930 it was industrial. Opinions differ as to when the
shift took place—some scholars put it as early as 1905—but there is
agreement that by 1918, if not before, Japanese expansion had come to
be concerned as much with markets and raw materials for industry as
with trading profit. There were corresponding changes in availability
of capital for export. Yet capital was never plentiful—except, perhaps,
in 1917 and 1918—so it is difficult to argue that Japan’s aspirations
overseas derived even then from a need to find outlets for a surplus of
it. Certainly in the first decade or so of the century Japanese investment in colonies and spheres of influence
relied heavily on borrowing in London and New York. Later it rested in part on contributions from the areas
under Japanese control, whether Manchukuo, or China, or south-east Asia.
A second general influence was that Japanese governments always had to have regard to the fact that East
Asia was a region in which western imperialism had become entrenched before Japan was in a position to
exercise power there. At the end of the nineteenth century the treaty port system constituted an international
framework which could not be ignored. On the one hand, it had been, and possibly still was, a potential threat
to Japan. Thus Japanese imperialism emerged in an atmosphere of wariness with respect to great power
rivalries. On the other, what had already existed defined the attainable. Japanese could work within the
system, or modify it, or, when they were strong enough, seek to destroy it. They could not wish it away.
Similarly, European colonialism was a precondition of Japan’s advance into south-east Asia, in the sense that it
was a phenomenon about which Japanese policy-makers had to take a view. In some respects, therefore, the
New Order and the Co-prosperity Sphere were heirs to Western empire: partly because they incorporated
those ingredients in it that survived, pardy because the West’s experience remained a factor in Japanese
thinking. There never was a time when Japanese empire- builders could start with a tabula rasa.
Politics within Japan, in so far as they concerned foreign affairs, focused on a choice of national objectives
overseas within limits that were determined by these internal and external circumstances. Economic
modernization in the Meiji period was part of a wider programme of reform, undertaken by men
predominantly of feudal origin—that is, ex-samurai—with the object of defending the country from foreign
threat. Brought up as members of a military ruling class, these exsamurai were inclined to give special
attention to Japan’s defence perimeter, hence to securing a foothold in Taiwan, Korea, Kwantung.
Simultaneously, however, a growing knowledge of the West had persuaded them of the need to overcome
Japan’s international weakness by economic means, including the acquisition of commercial advantages in
China.
These two elements were made difficult to reconcile with each other by a divergency within the West’s
imperialism in East Asia. Its economically most advanced exponents, Britain and the United States, continued
to insist on the overriding importance of equal opportunity in China, a policy which became characterized as
the Open Door; but this was unattractive to those powers, like Russia and Germany, which gave greater weight
to more nearly monopolistic rights, secured through spheres of interest. In the rivalry between them,
beginning after 1895, Japan, as a late developer, might logically have been expected to belong to the second
group. Against that, strategic considerations, identifying Russia as a potential enemy, constituted an argument
for working with Britain and America. So did commercial ambition, reinforced as it was by the strong trade
links established with those two countries during the previous thirty years. The result was ambivalence. First
came the Anglo-Japanese alliance and a commitment to the Open Door. Then after 1905, without abandoning
the Anglo-American connection, Japan began to turn towards creating a sphere of influence in Manchuria,
partly to provide a defensive cushion for Korea, partly for the sake of those important business interests which
could only match their Western competitors with government support. With this modification the objectives
of Japanese imperialism came more obviously into line with the stage of national economic growth. In other
words, whereas the first phase of Japanese imperialism was one of dependency, the second accorded much
more closely with the patterns of European imperialism, as exemplified by Germany.
Meanwhile the two main facets of Japanese policy—the development of special rights in Manchuria and the
exploitation of treaty privileges in the rest of China—had acquired separate power bases within the Japanese
bureaucracy. The first, because it was closely related to defence against Russia, became very much a
preoccupation of the army, backed by colonial officials and those companies which were most active in
dependent territories. The second, which involved in particular Japan’s relations with Britain and America,
was a Foreign Ministry concern, though the ministry could usually count on the cooperation of banks and of
firms in the export trade. The distinction between the two is sometimes presented in such a way as to suggest
that the former was imperialist, the latter not; but it is more realistic to treat both as exponents of
imperialism, albeit of different kinds. One consequence of doing so is to identify the change that took place
between 1905 and 1930 as being a gradual strengthening of‘informal’ and ‘economic’ imperialism at the
expense of the ‘formal’ and ‘strategic’ variety. The growth of Japanese overseas trade and investment during
that period parallels the greater weight attributed to commerce and industry in national life.
A corollary was military disaffection. As the Foreign Ministry and its allies set out to modify the treaty port
system, so as to make it serve Japanese interests more effectively—thereby helping to arouse Anglo- American
distrust and focus Chinese nationalist resentment increasingly on Japan—the army sought ways of
implementing the policies it thought necessary to defence by asserting its own ‘autonomy’, that is, by resisting
any interference from the civil authority. The potential for damage which this situation held was for a time
contained by the ability of senior statesmen, the Genro, to preserve discipline with respect to cabinet
decisions; but the nineteen-twenties witnessed the removal of all but one of the remaining Genro from the
scene by death, and the diffusion of political power in Japan between rival institutional claimants (including
the parliamentary parties, representing the emergent bourgeoisie). In these conditions the conflicting aims of
the army and the Foreign Ministry became competitive, not complementary.
Army officers objected to the treaty port structure because it gave other countries a voice, even a deciding
voice, in the disposal of territories which, they believed, Japan had to dominate for the sake of its own
defence. Other Japanese saw a different objection: that it put Japan on the ‘wrong side’ in an exploitative
relationship between the West and Asia. To them, a better alternative would have been Sino- Japanese
partnership. There were many who advanced the idea as a denial of imperialism. To others it was a
reformulation of imperialist intent, anticipating a state of affairs in which China’s markets and resources
would be put at the disposal of Japanese industry in the name of resistance to the West. This was much how it
was seen by men like Terauchi and Nishihara, who first gave concrete form to the notion of‘co-prosperity’.
Thus by 1930 Japanese imperialism comprised three disparate elements: a network of colonies and spheres
of influence, protecting the approaches to the home islands and guaranteeing certain food supplies;
membership of an international system based on treaty rights, conferring trade and investment privileges
throughout East Asia; and an incipient special relationship with China, geared in particular to the needs of
Japan’s industrial economy. The events of the next decade were to bring these ingredients together in such a
way as to make Japan’s case distinctive in the history of empire.
The precipitant was the Wall Street slump of 1929 and the policies of economic autarky which were widely
adopted in response to it. Arguments in favour of ‘co-operative imperialism’ in China were seriously
undermined by the collapse of international trade. Japanese social discontents were much enhanced by it, and
easily blamed on a hostile world enviroment. At the same time, strategic planning acquired an economic
dimension. To Matsuoka, Ishiwara, and the men who thought like them it seemed self-evident that ‘saving’
Japan required not only lines of military defence, such as Yamagata had identified, but also control over
markets and resources, in order to sustain the industry on which modern warfare depended. Within a year or
two the prospect of building an autonomous Japanese bloc to serve these ends had become a central theme in
Japanese politics. It could, after all, satisfy those whose hopes and fears about the outside world were
otherwise diverse: military demands on the subject of defence; business’s need for markets and protection;
and sentimental desires for Asian solidarity. There remained only the task of giving it geographical identity.
Successive advances into Manchuria, China, and south-east Asia between 1931 and 1941, each representing an
elaboration of the basic concept, performed this function.
So bare a summary tends to overstate the degree of co-ordination in the process, but it is nevertheless true
that the Greater East Asia Coprosperity Sphere embodied a specific economic plan, which is highly unusual
among empires. The countries of north-east Asia, comprising Japan, Korea, Manchukuo, north China, and
Taiwan, were to constitute a region in which heavy industry was to be developed. It would be Japan-centred in
the sense that the home islands would be the principal source of capital, technology, and managerial skills,
but there would also be a measure of industrial decentralization. The rest of the area brought under Japanese
rule—most of China and south-east Asia, plus the islands of the south-west Pacific—would serve the
industrial heartland as a source of export earnings and raw materials. This was a natural extension of the idea
of Sino-Japanese co-prosperity, in circumstances which gave Japan both the motive and the opportunity to
apply it on a larger scale.
The division into ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ zones, which was part of this plan, gave economic substance to a long-
standing distinction within Japanese policy between the areas immediately adjacent to Japan and those
farther south. The same distinction was made—with slightly different boundaries—in the arrangements for
dealing with non-Japanese peoples within the Sphere. There was enough commitment to Asian values on the
part of Japanese to make them reluctant to describe what they were creating as an ‘empire’. Yet they believed
that not all Asians were equally qualified to be partners in it. Accordingly they behaved differently in north-
east Asia and in south-east Asia. The inhabitants of the former were, like the Japanese themselves, bred to
China’s classical tradition. On this basis it was possible to appeal to them through education and propaganda
to reform their societies as the Japanese had done, so that like could work wholeheartedly with like. Thus
avoidance of direct Japanese rule in China and Manchukuo derived in part from an awareness of shared racial
and cultural origins. The same approach was open to European governments only in white setdement
colonies.
In south-east Asia, by contrast, the Japanese saw themselves as combining Britain’s role as lawgiver with
France’s mission civilisatrice: the ‘backward’ peoples rescued from colonialism were to be led— cautiously—
towards a measure of independence as they became more ‘civilized’. There were difficulties, however. Japanese
beliefs proved too particularistic to be readily exportable, while ‘Asian’ proved to be in this context a label
almost without meaning, which made it ineffective as an ideological instrument. Hence defeat left behind
remarkably few traces of the Japanese presence, in the sense of transplanted Japanese cultural or institutional
traditions, notwithstanding the influence bequeathed to a few outstanding individuals of Japanese education.
If these were the differences, what were the similarities with other empires? One was the fact of
preponderant power. It is impossible to read the record of Japanese actions without recognizing that in the
last resort Japan commanded. When co-operation was not forthcoming, obedience was the only accepted
substitute. To this might be added the fact of political diversity. Empires do not have blueprints, by and large.
Japan’s was no exception. Differences in the machinery of authority between one part of the Co-prosperity
Sphere and another were to be expected: they reflected the varied historical experience of the region and were
no greater, after all, than those to be found within the British Commonwealth. Constitutionally, the Sphere
was ramshackle.
It does not follow, however, that Japanese imperialism left no significant mark on East and south-east Asia.
Its most evident achievement was to undermine—decisively, as it proved—European colonialism there. Post-
war attempts to restore Dutch, French, and British power faced not only American reluctance, but also better-
organized independence movements in the territories themselves. These owed less to Japanese
encouragement than to the Japanese example, it is true. All the same, wartime propaganda about the Co-
prosperity Sphere, coupled with the replacement of European officials by Asians at many levels in local
administration, had done a good deal to counter the effects of Japanese government coolness towards
nationalist leaders. And government fears that the latter might too readily direct their criticisms against Japan
were in any case pushed into the background once Japan was facing defeat. Thus the Japanese contribution to
the subsequent disintegration of European empires, though it was undoubtedly self-serving, was real.
In China the political issue was not that of formal independence— the country had never been a colony,
either before or after 1937—so much as the resolution of a struggle between Chinese rivals. In this, too, the
Japanese presence played a part. Japanese control of the cities and communication routes reinforced the
Chinese Communist Party’s decision to seek a base in the countryside. By leading the peasants in guerrilla war
against Japan it was able to add the argument of patriotism to that of social justice, with the result that the end
of hostilities found it immeasurably stronger, whether measured in terms of discipline or popular appeal. By
contrast, Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang, cut off from its former centres of support by retreat to the south-
west, returned in 1945 with something of the look of an intruder, backed by foreign arms. Chinese
communists made the most of their opportunity, seizing upon the hatreds aroused by Japan as alien
conqueror and political reactionary, in order to redirect them against domestic enemies.
The fate of Japan’s older colonies, together with Manchukuo, owed more to international circumstance than
to the Japanese legacy or the actions of their own inhabitants. Taiwan and Manchukuo reverted to China, the
one to become the last stronghold of the Kuomintang, the other to be a continuing source of disagreement
with Soviet Russia. Korea was divided by the world’s leaders into two zones, Russian and American. These
quickly acquired governments of contrasting political complexion, their polarity reaffirmed after 1950 by a
savage war. It is difficult to see in this anything for which Japanese imperialism can be particularly praised or
blamed.
One cannot say the same of economic development, however. In north-east Asia, Japan—whatever its
motives—had set out to establish industries, to provide an infrastructure of transport and power supply, to
train a work-force (including to some extent managers and technicians).
What was achieved was inherited by successor states and made a foundation for efforts of their own. It is no
coincidence that Taiwan and South Korea are two of Asia’s most successful recent examples of
industrialization, that the Manchurian provinces have remained a centre of Chinese heavy industry, that Mao
Tse-tung’s Great Leap Forward incorporated elements reminiscent of Japanese industrial policy for China, as
modified during the later months of the war. Even in south-east Asia it is possible to trace influences of the
same kind, though the short life-span of Japanese rule there, plus the disruption associated with attempts to
sever the area’s links with former metropolitan economies, make it more difficult to identify a specifically
Japanese contribution to the diffusion of modem techniques and attitudes that European colonialism had
begun,
These issues are not part of the subject-matter of this book, because they belong to the study of the post-
war world, but it is legitimate for us to note by way of conclusion that the consequences of Japanese
imperialism did not end with surrender in 1945. Nor did the emotions it aroused. Those who look back in
bitterness on the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere can easily persuade themselves, or be persuaded,
that Japan’s close association with the United States, following military occupation, is a variant of ‘dependent’
imperialism; that commercial success in Asia signals an attempt by Japan to restore the inequalities of ‘co-
prosperity’; and that militarism remains just below the surface of Japanese life. Such suspicions are a price
Japan continues to pay for fifty years of imperialist endeavour.
A book which began by discussing explanations of imperialism should end, no doubt, by putting the Japanese
case into a theoretical framework. It is not easy to do so convincingly. It is beyond question that the stages of
Japan’s imperialism reflected those of its economic growth. If a single ‘cause’ has to be found, this comes
closest to it. Yet there was a powerful strategic element in it, relating to the interests of what Schumpeter
would call an atavistic military aristocracy. And one could make a case for saying that external circumstance,
in the shape of the example and the constraints deriving from the West’s imperialism, was a precondition.
Those, like myself, who accept multiple causation, will not find this diversity of argument discouraging. They
can settle for the conclusion that imperialism is like the blind men’s elephant: its nature depends on which
part of it you study.
