The Rise of Imperial Japan
In the mid-19th century, Japan was a country that enjoyed almost total exclusion from the outside world and had managed to avoid the fate that had befallen so many other of its Asian counterparts: domination or even occupation by European powers. Their happy state of internal affairs ended in 1853 when Commodore Perry and a US fleet showed up to deliver an ultimatum. It stated that “positive necessity requires that we should protect our commercial interests in this remote part of the world and in doing so, to resort to measures, however strong, to counteract the schemes of powers less scrupulous than ourselves.” [1]
The intent was clear: The US meant to force trade on the Japanese nation whether they wanted it or not. That happened eight months later when Perry returned with a larger fleet, compelling the Japanese government to sign a treaty with the US under which two ports were opened to US ships and some amount of trade was allowed. Afterward, Japan was forced to sign similar treaties giving the same rights to several European countries. [2] As they did in India and China before, the Americans and Europeans behaved arrogantly and rudely, not giving due respect to the Japanese people and its culture.
This violation of the nation and the subsequent humiliation that went along with it had far reaching consequences. Unable to protect the nation’s sovereignty and dignity, in 1868, the Shogun was overthrown, with new rulers and advisers coming to power. They ruled in the name of the emperor, whose authority, theoretically, was restored. This became known as the Meiji Restoration. The change did not improve the situation in the short term.
Rutherford Alcock, Britain’s first minister to Japan from 1859-1861, expressed the Western attitude towards Asians when he wrote, ‘It is weakness, or the suspicion of it, which invariably provokes wrong and aggression in the East…Hence it is that all diplomacy in these regions which does not rest on a solid substratum of force, or an element of strength, to be laid bare when all gentler processes fail, rests on false premises, and must of necessity fail in its object – more especially, perhaps, when that end is peace.’ [3]
A good example of the use of ‘a solid substratum of force’ was the murder of English merchant Richardson by Japanese reactionaries. The British demanded monetary compensation and the execution of those involved in the presence of British officials. The Japanese couldn’t capture the murderers to present to the British, so a powerful British naval force sailed into Kagoshima harbor to seize Japanese warships in retaliation. Fighting broke out resulting in much of the city being burnt down. Afterward, additional incidents led to more demands for compensation with Japan eventually agreeing to pay 100,000 pounds (14,000,000 pounds in 2022 value). [4] The violence and humiliation involved in these incidents struck deeply at the Japanese psyche resulting in a burning need for revenge.
However, not all of the problems the Japanese had to contend with involved violence. When Yokohama was opened to trade in 1859, the Japanese ran into a problem with their currency. Their ratio of gold to silver in their coinage was 1 to 5, while the global standard was 1 to 15. The Europeans quickly learned how to make a quick fortune by taking payment from the Japanese in gold, converting it to silver abroad, then returning to Japan with three times the money to make more purchases. The Japanese quickly discovered how badly they were being ripped off and adjusted their ratio to the world standard to stop it, but that led to high inflation and a 50% increase in the cost of living in urban areas. [5] Again, the Japanese learned the hard way how the world really worked thanks to the foreigner. Those were lessons they would put to good use in the not-too-distant future.
Not willing to be a victim of American and European aggression forever, the Japanese took strong measures to modernize their country so they could effectively defend themselves. However, they had to find a way that did not lead them to become a colony of a stronger power like so many other peoples had. And they did. To accomplish that, they hired foreign specialists for specific tasks, allowing them to stay in the country for as long as they were useful. Then they were sent home.
Change progressed at a phenomenal pace. The old system was entirely replaced. The samurai’s sword and his top-knot hairstyle were banned [6] as their place in society became obsolete. In 1880, a Western education system was established; in 1890, a new government based on the Prussian model stressing monarchial power was implemented; and the tax system was modernized. They hired the British to develop their navy and the Germans to bring their army into the nineteenth century. Telegraph wires were strung up, rail lines and factories built, and the mining sector expanded. The government developed various industries, then sold them to capitalists. Exports rose dramatically to fuel this rapid development. [7]
The military consumed one-third of the national budget. The Japanese remembered how a strong navy and army allowed the Americans and Europeans to force weaker nations to do their bidding. Now they wanted a piece of that power pie. By 1894, Japan had 28 modern warships and could manufacture her own quick-firing guns and torpedoes. [8]
Japan’s status as a great power was finally recognized by the US and Europeans in 1899 when they gave up the rights and concessions that they had forced on them at the point of a gun after 1854. Even better, the Anglo-Japanese Alliance was signed in 1902, making Japan the first Asian country to enjoy the status of full equality with other colonial powers. [9]
In 1894, Japan moved to become a colonial power in its own right just like the Americans and Europeans. They started with Korea, a land the Chinese claimed control over as a tributary state. This resulted in the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895), a war the Japanese won decisively. The resulting Treaty of Shimonoseki forced China to recognize Korea as an independent state, and ceded Formosa (Taiwan), the Liaodong Peninsula with Port Arthur as well as the Penghu Islands to Japan. However, it did not all go Japan’s way. To her surprise, France, Germany and Russia refused to accept this result and in the Triple Intervention, compelled Japan to give up the Liaodong Peninsula and Port Arthur for a cash indemnity. As upsetting as that was, even more so was Russia’s move to seize the peninsula and Port Arthur as soon as the Japanese had left. Adding more fuel to the fire, France, Germany and Great Britain moved to secure parts of China and expand their own interests there. Winning the war on its own, Japan felt it deserved the lion’s share of the spoils. Now, other non-participating powers took big bites from Japan’s well-earned dessert. This betrayal, as they saw it, left them wanting revenge, something that would not be long in coming.
After negotiations to delineate their spheres of influence broke down, on 8 February 1904, Japan launched a surprise naval attack on the Russian fleet in Port Arthur, then declared war initiating the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. Over the next year and a half, the Japanese destroyed 2 out of 3 Russian fleets, while the Battleship Potemkin Mutiny took place in the 1 remaining force, the Black Sea Fleet, shocking the empire. On the ground, Japan invaded Manchuria defeating the Czarist army there, but they took heavy casualties themselves, limiting their ability to exploit their victory. Ironically, early on in the conflict, Japan offered an armistice that could have ended the hostilities and limited the damage, but the Czar was sure of eventual victory, so he refused. His stubbornness would cost his empire and his court dearly. Economic problems, revolution at home (the 1905 Revolution) and a series of military defeats sealed Russia’s fate. The Czar had to make peace with Japan.
The resulting Treaty of Portsmouth put Korea firmly within Japan’s sphere of influence, led to Russia evacuating Manchuria, allowed Japan to lease Port Arthur and the surrounding area for 25 years, and gave Japan the southern half of Sakhalin Island. Even though Japan gained a lot from the war, its people were very unhappy with the result. The war was such a financial burden that it nearly bankrupted the country. The fact that Russia didn’t have to pay a war indemnity angered many. The mediator of the treaty, United States President Theodore Roosevelt, supported Russia’s position regarding the indemnity. That turned Japanese sentiment against the United States, which would have great long-term consequences.
After the war, Japan was accepted as a great international power. She had defeated a European power in a major war, the first Asian nation to do so. That resulted in a dangerous mindset. The Japanese saw that militarism led to greatness. They also got a taste for the expansionism that the Americans and Europeans had been engaging in for centuries and they liked it. Even if it did not seem obvious at the time, a collision between Japan and the other powers was inevitable. It would become a matter of in what direction the Japanese would make their big move.
There is a little-known but extremely significant aspect of the Russo-Japanese War that few people know and even fewer sources mention. That is the role of Jewish-influenced finance in the war. It proved to be a decisive factor.
Starting in the 1880s, Jews in the Russian Empire faced increasing restrictions and physical violence. Being easy targets, they were blamed for the social and economic problems of the time. Quotas were instituted on them in academia and business, geographic restrictions limited them to small villages/hamlets and bloody pogroms were carried out by ruthless Cossacks units. The Kishinev Pogrom of Passover 1903 was the final straw. [10]
Working with the American Jewish Committee, a Jewish banker named Jacob Schiff decided to wage financial war against Russian Czar Nicolas II in order to force him to abandon his anti-Semitic campaign. A major figure in international finance, Schiff wielded a powerful weapon: money.
He ‘used his influence with friends and family in Europe to commit major Jewish and even non-Jewish financial houses to a banking boycott of Russia. And before long, Russia’s loan requests were in fact systematically denied in most French, English and US money markets. In 1904, after war broke out between Russia and Japan, Schiff lobbied tirelessly among commercial adversaries and cohorts alike to grant high-risk war loans to the Japanese. About $100 million ($3.33 billion in 2022 dollars), suddenly infused, quickly armed the under-equipped Japanese, allowing them to score a series of humiliating victories. Schiff’s loans were officially recognized as the pivotal factor in Japan’s victory, and the Jewish leader was commemorated in Japanese newspapers and history books as a new national hero. [11]
Sources
Black, Edwin. The Transfer Agreement. Washington D.C., USA: Dialog Press, 2009.
Jansen, Marius B. The Making of Modern Japan. Cambridge, Mass., USA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2000.
Snellgrove, L.E. The Modern World since 1870 Second Edition. Harlow, England: Longman Group UK, 1981.
The Rise of Japan | History TodayRise of Modern Japan and its Imperialist Power; between 1890’s to FWW. (historydiscussion.net)
