JAPAN

Europe's "long nineteenth century" coincided with a fundamental transformation in Japanese society, politics, and economics, ending seven centuries of samurai rule and bringing the country into its modern era. A chief cause of this revolution was Japan's encounter with Western, primarily European, imperialism.

background

By 1800, political equilibrium had been maintained in Japan for two centuries. The country had a population of roughly thirty million people and was divided into landed domains held by samurai lords (daimyo). More than 250 such domains existed in 1800, ranging from district-sized parcels to regional territories. At the apex of this political system sat the Tokugawa family, which held approximately one-quarter of all Japanese land either directly or indirectly through house vassals. The head of the Tokugawa held the position of shogun, an investiture by the emperor that made him chief of the military estate. Although in theory subordinate to the emperor, the shogun controlled foreign affairs and kept watch over the daimyo, most of whom were not allied politically with the Tokugawa.

Within his domain, each daimyo was supreme, controlling all human and material resources. Each domain contained one castle town, which served as a political and economic center for the realm. Samurai vassals of the daimyo filled administrative and military functions. Edo (now Tokyo), the castle town of the shogun and de facto capital of Japan, had a population of roughly one million persons in the nineteenth century. Since the late sixteenth century, social order had been kept by dividing the population into a four-tiered system of status groups. At the top were the samurai, the hereditary warrior caste; next were the farmers, who made up around ninety percent of the population; third in rank came artisans; and finally merchants. This Confucian-inspired system was in theory absolute, but the gradual impoverishment of many samurai and the enrichment of artisans and merchants during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, combined with a fair degree of mobility for peasants, made the arrangement more fluid than official ideology acknowledged.

An urbanized, literate society by 1800, Japan had tightly regulated contact with the outer world, a policy imposed by the first Tokugawa shoguns back in the early seventeenth century. For nearly two hundred years, the only Westerners allowed legally in Japan were the Dutch, who were restricted to a small manmade island in the southern port city of Nagasaki. Fear of Christian missionaries allying with anti-Tokugawa daimyo had pushed the early shoguns to prohibit both Christianity and Westerners, except for the Dutch traders. Even during the 1700s, however, Western sciences such as medicine and astronomy, and European styles of painting, were introduced into Japan, usually with official patronage.

the challenge to seclusion

In the last decade of the eighteenth century, this tightly controlled world was challenged by Western maritime powers seeking access to Japanese land and markets. The first threat came from Russian probing from the north down the Kuril Island chain. From the early 1790s, various Russian expeditions sought trading privileges, but were all rebuffed, leading to Russian pillaging of northern Japanese villages in 1806–1807 and the capture of a Russian officer, Vasili Golovnin, in 1811. In addition to these Russian threats, the appearance of both British warships in Japanese waters during the Napoleonic Wars and American whalers led to the promulgation of an 1825 edict to drive foreign ships off Japan's shores. British victory over China in the 1839–1842 Opium Wars further worried Japanese leaders about the growing threat of Western imperialism.

The first treaty signed with a Western nation, however, was with the Americans. Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry (1794–1858) presented U.S. demands for landing rights in July 1853, and returned in March 1854 to complete a treaty. Four years later, Townsend Harris (1804–1878), acting as U.S. consul, signed the first full-fledged commercial treaty with Japan, in July 1858. Great Britain, Holland, Russia, and France quickly followed suit, inaugurating the era of the so-called unequal treaties, which included a provision of extraterritoriality, lack of tariff autonomy, and onesided most-favored-nation (MFN) status. Domestic opposition to the presence of Western merchants in port cities such as Yokohama, which opened for trade in July 1859, led to anti-Western samurai assassinating foreigners and attacking Western targets. In response, the capitals of the most anti-Western (and anti-Tokugawa) domains were bombarded by Britain and the other treaty powers in 1863 and 1864. The resulting political crisis led to conflict between the Tokugawa bakufu (military government) and the two domains of Satsuma and Chôshû, which ended in the military defeat and collapse of Tokugawa power in January 1868.

engaging the world

The victorious domains, led by mid-rank samurai such as Ôkubo Toshimichi (1831–1878), Kido Kôin (1833–1877), and Saigô Takamori (1828–1877), dismantled the Tokugawa bakufu and slowly developed a more centralized government headed by the young Meiji emperor. With the abolishment of the domains in August 1871, attention could be turned to foreign affairs. The first concerted diplomatic effort by the Meiji government was an attempt to revise the 1858 commercial treaties, in the hopes of ending extraterritoriality, regaining tariff autonomy, and extending MFN privileges to Japan. In 1871, a high-level embassy headed by Iwakura Tomomi (1825–1883) left for America and Europe to begin renegotiation. Rebuffed by U.S. Secretary of State Hamilton Fish (1808–1893) and British Foreign Secretary Granville George Leveson-Gower (Lord Granville, 1815–1891), the embassy members spent most of their time abroad until 1873 studying American and European political, economic, and social systems. A radical modernization program was adopted on their return, which was designed to strengthen Japan vis-á-vis the West and eventually achieve revision.

The early 1870s and 1880s were a period of great importation from the West, though it was done selectively. Scottish engineers such as Richard Brunton (1841–1901) built railways and bridges, and installed urban infrastructure; architects such as Josiah Condo (1852–1920) reshaped Tokyo; naval expertise was provided by Great Britain; France and, after 1870, Germany served as the model for the new conscript army; the French legal theorist Gustave Boissonade (1825–1910) helped draft Japan's new civil codes; and Germany's centralized constitution heavily influenced Itô Hirobumi (1841–1909) in the drafting of Japan's, which was promulgated in a European-style ceremony in 1889, followed a year later by the opening of the parliamentary Diet.

This importation of foreign, primarily European, expertise was accompanied by a fertile cultural exchange during the Meiji era. Until 1899, Westerners were restricted to a few foreign settlements in ports and major cities. In some of these, such as Yokohama, Kobe, and Tokyo, Japanese and Westerners readily mixed. Urban Japanese adopted the manners and customs of European daily life in dress, dining, and social activities. Tokyo was transformed in the latter nineteenth century from a small castle town of wooden houses and canals into a modern city of brick buildings and open thoroughfares, symbolized by the European-style balls given by Japan's political and social elite at Condon's architectural masterpiece, the Rokumeikan (Deer Cry Pavilion). Intellectual exchange was fostered by the British-founded Asiatic Society of Japan (1872) and cultural relations developed through bilateral groups such as the Japan Society of London (1890). Japanese art forms also greatly influenced European painters such as Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890) and Claude Monet (1840–1926).

nationalism and imperialism

Despite a flourishing trade in tea, silks, and art, Japanese-European relations were strained by the continued existence of the unequal treaties. Revision of the treaties remained the prime diplomatic goal of the Meiji government. Due in part to the Iwakura mission's failure to renegotiate, Tokyo embarked on a gradual policy of building up its regional power along with its modernization programs.

In 1874, Japanese troops invaded Formosa (Taiwan) to avenge the killing of Ryûkyûan fishermen by Formosan aborigines, thus directly asserting

Japan's interests over territory traditionally identified with China. Tokyo also incorporated the Ryûkyûan kingdom as the prefecture of Okinawa in 1879, giving Japan a presence in southern waters closer to China. Korea, however, remained Japan's key strategic concern throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The 1876 Treaty of Kanghwa was Tokyo's first unequal treaty imposed on another country, raising tensions between Japan and China over influence on the peninsula. An 1884 Japanese-supported coup in Seoul was suppressed but resulted in the dispatch of both Japanese and Chinese troops to the kingdom.

Japan's growing regional strength and widespread domestic modernization pushed the Western powers into renegotiating the 1858 commercial treaties, though Western reluctance to surrender extraterritoriality without a comprehensive Japanese penal code, and the lack of desire to grant Tokyo tariff autonomy, made progress difficult. An 1878 tariff agreement with the United States was scuttled by Great Britain, and both bilateral and multilateral negotiations continued fitfully during the 1880s. By 1887, a draft treaty was reached, but when details of Tokyo's acquiescence in setting up courts including foreign judges were leaked, public outrage caused the resignation of Foreign Minister Inoue Kaoru (1835–1915). Two years later, nationalist fanatics attempted to assassinate Foreign Minister Marquis Okuma Shigenobu (1838–1922) over his role in revision, and negotiations again came to a temporary halt. A renewed effort in the early 1890s under the leadership of Foreign Minister Mutsu Munemitsu (1844–1897) finally resulted in a new commercial treaty with Great Britain in July 1894, followed by agreement with all remaining treaty powers. By the terms of the Aoki-Kimberley Treaty, extraterritoriality would end in 1899 and tariff autonomy would be regained in 1911, thus making Japan the first non-Western country to negotiate a position of equality with the leading European powers.

During these years, however, tensions with China over Korea had intensified. Just two weeks after signing the Aoki-Kimberley Treaty, Japan attacked Chinese naval forces in August 1894. Full-fledged war in northern China broke out, and in 1895, the Ch'ing court sued for peace, acknowledging Japan's predominant position in Korea, agreeing to pay a massive indemnity, and ceding Tokyo control over Formosa and the strategically important Liaotung Peninsula. Despite its position as the new leading East Asian hegemon, however, Tokyo was forced by Russia, France, and Germany to return Liaotung. This Triple Intervention poisoned relations with Russia and raised Japanese fears over St. Petersburg's interests in Korea and northern China.

Various attempts to reach a modus vivendi with Russia failed in the latter 1890s, and Tokyo again began to consider military force as the only guarantor of Japan's national interests. In part to assert its position in Asia, Japan sent the largest contingent of Allied troops to Peking (Beijing) in 1900 to protect the foreign settlement from the Boxer uprising. Tokyo's diplomatic masterstroke was the 1902 Anglo-Japanese Alliance, which made Japan the principal partner of Great Britain in East Asia, isolated Russia, and blocked French support for St. Petersburg (under the Franco-Russian alliance) in case of a Russo-Japanese conflict, since that would draw London in on Japan's side.

With the alliance in hand, Tokyo attempted once more to reach agreement with Russia over spheres of influence in Northeast Asia. When St. Petersburg refused to recognize Japan's special interests over Korea, and in light of Russian control over the building of the South Manchurian Railway, Tokyo launched a surprise attack in March 1904 on the Russian Pacific Fleet anchored at Port Arthur.

The Russo-Japanese War for the first time pitted an industrialized Asian nation against a European Great Power. By 1905, both sides were exhausted by the fighting and welcomed the peace mediation of U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919). By the terms of the Treaty of Portsmouth (1905), Japan received unfettered influence in Korea, a large indemnity, and general recognition that it was now a great power. Tokyo annexed Korea in 1905 and formally colonized it in 1910 after the assassination of governor general Itô Hirobumi, the former Japanese premier, by a Korean nationalist.

In 1912, the Meiji emperor died, ending a remarkable four-decade period of modernization, deepened cultural contact, and increased political and military conflict with Europe, and Japan's emergence as a world power. Having absorbed the lessons of European industrialization, state centralization, and imperialism, Japan was poised on the eve of World War I to expand its influence further in Asia, leading ultimately to global conflict with the West.

See alsoMukden, Battle of; Portsmouth, Treaty of; Russo-Japanese War.

bibliography

Auslin, Michael R. Negotiating with Imperialism: The Unequal Treaties and the Culture of Japanese Diplomacy. Cambridge, Mass., 2004.

Beasley, William G. Japanese Imperialism, 1894–1945. Oxford, U.K., 1987.

Fox, Grace. Britain and Japan, 1858–1883. Oxford, U.K., 1969.

Iriye, Akira. "Japan's Drive to Great Power Status." In The Cambridge History of Japan. Vol. 5, edited by John W. Hall, et al. Cambridge, U.K., 1991.

Keene, Donald. The Japanese Discovery of Europe, 1720–1830. Stanford, Calif., 1969.

Lensen, George Alexander. The Russian Push toward Japan: Russo-Japanese Relations, 1697–1875. Princeton, N.J., 1959.

Sims, Richard. French Policy towards the Bakufu and Meiji Japan, 1854–1895. Kent, U.K., 1996.

Michael R. Auslin