Understanding Japan: A Cultural History
Mark J. Ravina
Three Visions of Prewar Japan Lecture 18
In this lecture, we’ll discuss Japan’s road to World War II, but we will not look at that road purely in terms of battles, treaties, and major events. Instead, we’ll look at the lives of three important individuals, each of whom offered a distinct perspective on Japan’s place in the world in the early 20th century. These individuals are
Nitobe Inazo, Shidehara Japanese democracy and international cooperation, although from somewhat different perspectives.
Ishiwara, by contrast, was a diehard militarist.
We can understand the fate of Japanese democracy and Japan’s road to war by 1862, just a few years before the beginning of the Meiji Restoration. He was educated largely in the United States and converted to Christianity. Nitobe’s great accomplishment was representing Japan to the world through his writings and through international organizations, such as the League of Nations. Nitobe’s approach to the world might be
Nitobe studied at Tokyo University, Johns Hopkins, and Halle University in Germany. After completing
educator with deep connections to the West, including an American wife.
his academic work, he returned to Japan and became a professor at Sapporo Agricultural College.
Nitobe’s connections to the West were part of what drove him to write Bushido: The Soul of Japan. Nitobe was interested in establishing ethical and moral tradition, leading people to be stalwart, brave, honest, dutiful, generous, and so on. His book was eccentric, but it was quite popular in the West.
In part because of Nitobe, Japan was seen as progressive and civilized in the West, and this favorable view was one reason that the United States and Britain were supportive of early Japanese colonial efforts in Taiwan and Korea. In essence, Japan was seen as bringing progress to backward places. Moreover, in staking a claim British and American interests.
But then, in 1905, the West’s perspective began to change. The British and Americans were delighted so long as Japan was building a colonial empire at the expense of Russia, but after 1905, it looked as though the Japanese Empire might clash with European and American ambitions. The period between 1905 and 1918 was tense because Japan was now an imperial power, but it was unclear where it sat in the pecking order of great powers.
In the wake of World War I, Nitobe saw an opportunity for Japan to participate in a multinational effort to shape a peaceful and democratic world order. This vision of Japan’s role was bolstered by a surge in idealism and antiwar sentiment.
We’re all familiar with the institutions and agreements that emerged from the generation of postwar idealists: the Paris Peace Conference, the Permanent Court of International Justice, the League of Nations, and the Kellogg-Briand Pact, in which the signatories pledged not to use war to resolve disputes; both the United States and Japan signed the treaty.
Lecture 18—Three Visions of Prewar Japan
In East Asia, postwar optimism produced one of the world’s 1921–1922 Washington Naval Conference. The great naval powers in East Asia—Japan, Great Britain, and the United
one another’s rights to trade in China and would support essence, the great powers agreed that they would compete economically but not militarily.
Nitobe was fully supportive of these military and economic agreements, but unfortunately, by 1929, his idealism faced a serious challenge in Japan. Such men as Ishiwara Kanji were trying to agreements of the Washington Naval Conference.
Japan at the Washington Naval Conference, was similar in orientation to Nitobe, but Shidehara was far more pragmatic. If
Shidehara had married into one of the most powerful business of Mitsubishi. Thus, Shidehara, whether he was serving as foreign of peace through mutual respect; instead, he argued for peace in terms of a business plan.
For example, Shidehara believed that Japan might be able to conquer and hold part of China, but whatever parts Japan did not control would probably boycott Japanese exports. If, instead, Japan helped China establish a stable and independent government, then
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Japanese businesses, including Mitsubishi, would have access to the entire Chinese market.
This attitude also explains why Shidehara pressed for arms control: A naval arms race with the United States and the United Kingdom would be expensive. Shidehara believed that Japan shouldn’t undermine a chance to dominate a huge emerging market by starting an arms race it couldn’t afford.
Shidehara was remarkably committed to a strong China, more so than either the United States or the United Kingdom. We see an example of this in the so-called Nanjing Incident.
In March of 1927, the armies of the Chinese Nationalists and the Chinese Communists together retook the city of Nanjing from a local warlord, Zhang Zongchang. In the process, the soldiers attacked foreigners in Nanjing, including businessmen, diplomats, and teachers.
In response, the United States and United Kingdom sent warships and began attacking Chinese troops with machine guns and high explosives. Japan was asked to join an expedition to reestablish order, but Shidehara, who was then foreign minister, refused. He argued that while foreign troops should protect their own residents, they needed to let Chiang Kai-shek get control of his own army. Foreign intervention would likely make matters worse.
Clearly, Shidehara’s policies were based on peaceful competition for Chinese consumers, rather than military competition for Chinese territory. But even when Shidehara was at the peak of his power as foreign minister, such militarists as Ishiwara Kanji regarded him as weak and dangerous. Starting in 1929, Shidehara’s world gradually unraveled.
Beginning in October 1929, stock markets from New York to London to Tokyo fell and, with them, all optimistic talk of international cooperation and trade.
Lecture 18—Three Visions of Prewar Japan
In the face of economic crisis, the United States implemented strict import restrictions. U.S. trading partners retaliated with tariffs of their own, and world trade collapsed. Shidehara’s vision of relying on free access to large markets in China,
Ishiwara Kanji was a graduate of the Japanese Army War College, where he lectured in military history from 1925 to 1928. During that period, he developed an apocalyptic doctrine that featured a coming World War III between Eastern and Western civilizations, this war would be between Japan and the United States.
Ishiwara observed that military mobilization was growing increasingly extensive over time and that this expansion was erasing the line between civilian and soldier. He predicted that armies would soon be targeting their enemies’ civilian populations using amazing new weapons, including bomber aircraft.
1929. With the end of the Russo-Japanese War, Japan had won control of key railroad lines in Manchuria. The Japanese army there (the Kwantung Army) was supposed to protect those rail lines, but
The Japanese army in Manchuria also had a long tradition of insubordination, even ignoring direct orders from Tokyo, and Ishiwara raised that insubordination to a new level. In 1931, with the helped organize the invasion of Manchuria and the creation of a new puppet state, Manchukuo.
The army’s actions had not been approved by the Japanese government or even discussed in a cabinet meeting; in fact, when
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Kwantung Army had accelerated its plan. The creation of Manchukuo
Such men as Shidehara knew that the army could not be forced to give up territory, and it did not help that back in Tokyo, rightwing extremists were beginning to eliminate their opponents. These groups were a mix of military men and civilians, and they were commonly both anti-communist and anti-capitalist.
Amidst the despair of the Great Depression, these extremist groups became increasingly brazen. They shot one prime minister in 1931 and killed another in 1932; a remarkable number of elected civilian politicians died because they were deemed either too complicit in opposition.
Ishiwara’s creation of Manchukuo ended Nitobe’s and Shidehara’s vision of international cooperation. China insisted that Manchukuo was a puppet state and demanded a League of Nations investigation. When the league commission reported that Manchukuo was an illegitimate state, Japan quit the league.
The invasion of Manchuria closed off the alternative paths proposed by Nitobe and Shidehara, ended Japanese reliance on multinational agreements, and made clear that the U.S.-Japanese rivalry in the perhaps open war. It was certain that for the moment, at least, Ishiwara’s militaristic vision had won the day.
In the aftermath of the invasion, Nitobe was devastated. At a Japanese delegates struggled painfully to explain their nation’s actions in Manchuria. Soon after the meeting, Nitobe collapsed from pneumonia and died shortly thereafter.
The Japanese army did not know what to do with Ishiwara. He was intelligent and charismatic, but he was also consistently insubordinate and so thoroughly enthralled by his own vision of Japan’s future that he was unable to compromise. He was moved around in the army and forced into early retirement in 1941. He died in 1949 at age 60.
Shidehara survived World War II, and his views were vindicated. One of his last public acts would shape Japan to this day: the inclusion of an antiwar clause in the nation’s postwar constitution. With this clause, Shidehara’s prewar vision of Japan was written into law: Japan would be an economic superpower, not a military superpower.
Suggested Reading
Howes, ed., . Nitobe, Bushido.
1. 2.
Questions to Consider
What factors explain the collapse of Japanese internationalism in the 1930s? How are these connected to global trends?
How did domestic and international forces combine to promote Japanese militarism?
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