How and why did Japan become an Imperial Power?

On By bfIn Imperial Decline in Japan and Korea, Uncategorized

Causes

  • Meiji restoration
    • Foreigner hate = wanted to strengthen Japan (resist domination)
    • AIM: Rich country, strong army – economic reforms
    • Throw off asia
    • Martial/Samurai spirit = BUSHIDO = always been a military country
  • Yamagata Aritomo – ex-Samurai who became the founding father of the Modern Japanese army
      • Believed in Social Darwinism
      • Strong eat up the weak
    • THEREFORE = need empire of your own to be strong
  • Precedent of Europeans and Americans
    • Colonialism
    • China in the Opium war (1850s)
    • China in the Sino-French war of 1884 – WHAT NOT to do
      • Failed
      • So Japanese started to think they had to force China and Korea = progress & development (duty to Pan-Asianism)
    • Some believed that Japanese should resent the weakness of neighbours  
      • Fukuzawa Yukichi

Key events

Military reforms

  • Yamagata Aritomo and Military Reforms
    • Prussian model after visiting Germany in 1872’s Iwakura mission
    • 1871: Imperial Army created with 10,000 Samurai
      • Bushido ideas = way of warrior (no surrendering)
    • 1873: Mass conscription (all men >20 for 3yrs)
  • 1882: Imperial rescript, indoctrination (swear to emperor), no political thought – strengthening bond between soldiers and Emperor

Regional influence

  • Imperialist desires in Korea
    • 1876: Treaty of Kanghwa
    • Recognised Korean independence, opened trade, preferential to Japan
    • Angered China (bc Korea was China’s bich)

War – 1894-95: Sino-Japanese War, 1904-1905: Russo-Japanese War

Increasing/consolidating influence

  • 1902: Japan needs allies! Anglo-Japanese Alliance
      • Japan gained an empire + respect
      • Signed military alliance AGAINST Russia
  • 1904: Russo-Japanese War
  • 1910: Japan annexed Korea
    • Forces Korean emperor to stand down
    • Became imperial power
    • Defeated Russia! :O

Historiography

In a 1933 article Trotsky commented that the Meiji Restoration represented “not a ‘bourgeois revolution,’ but a bureaucratic attempt to buy off such a revolution”  Trotsky viewed Japan as a full-fledged imperialist power. Japan was a “repressive state” (revisionist)

Cullen sees the reforms of the Meiji era as well thought out and sensible responses to the realities of the 19th Century world, and in particular the threat from Western Imperialism. (determinist)

Traditional left wing view: Meiji reforms were both oppressive and reactionary (orthodox)

Leave a comment