Part 4

The Privy Council is likewise a useful piece of machinery for Japan’s ruling group. It is the supreme advisory body to the Emperor. It consists of 26 life members, usually of great age. Cabinet Ministers serve as members of the Council _ex-officio_, but are outvoted by at least two to one. Among other things, the Privy Council ratifies treaties, approves amendments to the Constitution, and passes on Imperial ordinances.

The House of Peers consists of about 400 members, of whom more than 200 are drawn from the nobility, 125 are life appointees, and nearly 70 are elected from the largest taxpayers. It is an extremely aristocratic and conservative body. Yet its powers equal those of the lower house. And its members can become Premiers or Cabinet Ministers.

Lastly, the Army and Navy, with their General Staffs and their representatives on the Supreme War Council, are largely independent of civilian control. The chiefs of the General Staffs and the War and Navy Ministers have direct access to the Emperor. This means that they can go over the Premier’s head to appeal any decision of his to the Emperor. The War and Navy Ministers cannot be civilians. They must be ranking officers in active service. Since they are nominated by the Supreme War Council, the latter body can overthrow a Cabinet by simply ordering them to resign. Or it can prevent the formation of a new Cabinet which it does not like by refusing to offer nominations for the War and Navy Ministries.

THE PEOPLE’S REPRESENTATIVES

As against these aristocratic, bureaucratic and military organs of government, the popular will can be expressed only through the House of Representatives. The position of the House is very weak, especially in comparison with the normal legislature of a full-fledged democracy.

For Ito saw fit to curb the powers of the Diet’s lower house by a series of drastic restrictions. Large fixed, or non-votable, expenditures limit its control over the public purse. If appropriations are not voted, the Cabinet has the right to enforce the preceding year’s budget. Most bills are introduced not by Diet members but by the Cabinet, which also possesses an absolute veto. Moreover, the Cabinet can issue Imperial ordinances which, with few qualifications, have the force of law. It can dissolve the lower house, and thus force an election--an expensive proceeding for the deputies. And for several decades only part of the people could vote. Not until 1925 was full manhood suffrage (age 25) adopted. During elections the Home Ministry has often intimidated the voters. And popular rights are further curbed by a controlled press, a strong centralized police force, a large degree of central domination of local government, and the possibility that one may be arrested and held indefinitely without trial (because Japan has no _habeas corpus_ law).

The development of a Cabinet with independent power, responsible to the lower house of the Diet, would seem impossible under these circumstances. Entrenched positions were held by the aristocrats, the bureaucrats and the militarists. For if they did not control the Cabinet, always a necessary citadel of power, they could be sure of bringing about its downfall. A responsible Cabinet did emerge in the post-war years. But, as we shall see, this period was short-lived. After 1930, largely through the pressure of the militarists, the pendulum swung back.

VIII. Creating a Modern Empire

By 1890, when the first Diet elections were held, the foundations of a new Empire had been laid. In the few short years since 1868, the old feudal society had undergone a profound change. Agriculture was still the key to Japan’s economy, but factory industry and foreign trade were growing in importance. A strong centralized state had come into being. Modern methods were revolutionizing science, education, medicine, law and many other fields. There was an army recruited through universal service and trained in Western ways, and the beginnings of a modern navy.

JAPAN LOOKS ABROAD

The Meiji statesmen were now ready to turn their attention to foreign policy. Even before the Restoration many of the Japanese leaders had favored territorial expansion. During the years of internal reform, however, they had cautiously refrained from rash adventures abroad. A strong movement in favor of a punitive expedition to Korea had developed in 1871-73, but the dominant clan bureaucrats had skilfully prevented the outbreak of war. They had permitted a Formosan expedition in 1874, but had settled the resulting issues peacefully with China. Some small gains had been made. The Bonin Islands were annexed in 1876, and the Liuchiu Islands in 1879. A naval demonstration in 1876 secured to Japan special treaty rights in Korea, which led to more and more intervention in Korean affairs.

But these were not the foreign problems which chiefly occupied the early Meiji leaders. First and foremost, they were trying to change the unequal treaties concluded with the Western powers at the end of the Tokugawa period. These treaties, you will remember, permitted Western nationals to be tried in their own consular courts (the system of extraterritoriality), and fixed Japan’s tariff at the low rate of 5 per cent. The struggle to throw off these irksome restrictions was the central issue in Japan’s foreign relations down to 1894.

FIGHTING THE UNEQUAL TREATIES

The Japanese made many efforts to regain control of both tariffs and courts before they finally won success. An official mission under Prince Iwakura toured Western capitals in 1871-73 but failed to gain treaty revision. As other attempts also came to nothing, an intense popular resentment developed in Japan. In 1889, just when his negotiations for treaty revision were progressing favorably, a bomb tore off Count Okuma’s leg. Success was not won, however, until a new treaty was concluded with Great Britain on July 16, 1894. The other powers soon followed suit. Japan’s law courts had been modernized, and she now enforced new civil, commercial and criminal codes. In 1899, when the new treaties went into effect, all Westerners became subject to Japanese law. These treaties thus brought the extraterritorial system to an end. But they all contained tariff schedules that lasted for 12 years, so that Japan did not secure full control over her own tariffs until the treaties expired in 1911.

WAR WITH CHINA

On July 25, 1894, nine days after signature of the “equal” treaty with Great Britain, Japanese naval forces suddenly attacked and sank a transport carrying Chinese troops to Korea. War was formally declared on August 1. Thus, by an unusual coincidence, Japan was at war with China two weeks after she had won her twenty-five-year campaign for treaty revision.

Japan’s statesmen had correctly estimated the weakness of China, as well as their own degree of preparedness. They did not plunge into war on a hasty impulse. The army and navy were tuned for action. With harsh realism, the Japanese leaders unhesitatingly adopted a program of expansion by force as soon as conditions seemed favorable. Their fight for treaty revision had been a fight for equality with the Western powers. They believed that even fuller recognition of equality would come after a successful war. They were also driven by strong economic considerations. The restrictions of the narrow home market were already irking Japan’s youthful cotton textile export houses, and they were trying to pry their way into the Korean and Chinese markets. Victory in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95 opened both these markets to Japanese manufacturers. It was a significant omen of the future that the new Japan should have discovered, so early in its career, that resort to the sword might help to overcome the handicaps of its late appearance on the international scene.

We should also take note of several other results of Japan’s first modern war. The territorial gains--Formosa and the Pescadores Islands--were a welcome prize. More important was China’s formal recognition of Korean independence, which left Japan practically a free hand in the peninsula. By its new commercial treaty with China, Japan also gained the benefits of extraterritoriality and low tariff rates in that country--the system she hated so heartily when it was applied against herself, as it still was at that time. The war indemnity of nearly $180,000,000, moreover, helped Japan to expand its armaments still further in preparation for the war with Russia in 1904.

THUS FAR AND NO FARTHER

An episode which heightened Japan’s sensitiveness in her foreign relations marked the peace settlement. In the Treaty of Shimonoseki, China had agreed to cede Japan the Liaotung Peninsula in South Manchuria. Germany, Russia and France objected to this territorial cession, and backed their objections by an ultimatum to Tokyo threatening war. Japan was forced to submit, and in exchange for a slight increase in the indemnity, the territory was returned to China. More than the pre-Restoration bombardments of Kagoshima and Shimonoseki, more even than the galling yoke of the unequal treaties, this “tripartite intervention” rankled in Japanese hearts. This sense of humiliation was not lessened in 1898, when Russia secured from China a 25-year lease of the southern tip of the disputed Liaotung Peninsula and proceeded to fortify Port Arthur and join Harbin to Dairen by a new railway line.

WAR WITH RUSSIA

On the whole, however, the gains of the war had proved sufficient to justify the calculations of Japan’s leaders, and to strengthen the forces within Japan that were working toward expansion. In 1900 Japan took part as an equal with the Western powers in quelling the famous Boxer Uprising, in China, and shared in the returns from the Boxer Indemnity which they later imposed as a punishment on the Chinese. The fact that the British thought it worth while to sign an alliance with Japan in 1902 was an additional testimony to her growing prestige. Fortified by this alliance, and by strenuous efforts to build up her military and naval forces, Japan emerged successfully from her clash with Tsarist Russia in 1904-05.

The peace terms did not include the indemnity Japan coveted, largely because she was too exhausted to continue the struggle. But still there were substantial gains. Japan won a protectorate over Korea, which she converted to full annexation in 1910. The Russian leasehold at the tip of the Liaotung Peninsula was transferred to Japan, and also the Russian railway lines in South Manchuria. Finally, Russia ceded the southern half of Sakhalin Island to Japan, and granted important fishing rights in northern Pacific waters to Japanese interests.

The Treaty of Portsmouth, which set forth these terms and in which President Theodore Roosevelt mediated, established Japan as the rising power in the Far East. In 1905, three weeks before the treaty was signed, the Anglo-Japanese Alliance was extended for ten years, with provisions sanctioning Japan’s paramount interests in Korea.

END OF THE MEIJI ERA

In the decade spanned by the two wars, Japan had forged rapidly ahead in her economic development. Her foreign trade, which totaled only 265 million yen in 1895, had jumped to 810 million in 1905 (see chart, page 61). Her steam shipping had shown an even more extraordinary spurt--from 15,000 tons in 1893 to 1,552,000 tons in 1905.

On the political side, the new constitution worked out pretty much as the clan statesmen had expected. For a short time the bureaucrats had some difficulty with the Diet, where a liberal opposition threatened to develop. But they soon checked this tendency. They intimidated or bought off opposition leaders. They embarked on a policy of war and expansion--which the liberals supported. And, eventually, they organized parties headed by members of the bureaucracy itself--in the first instance, Prince Ito.

The Meiji Emperor died on July 30, 1912. During his long reign of nearly 45 years, all the great changes which we have been considering had taken place. From a weak feudal state, Japan had been transformed into a great power. Two years after Emperor Meiji’s passing, the outbreak of the World War ushered in a period of still more ambitious expansion and growth.

IX. Japan and the First World War

The World War gave Japan her great opportunity, which her leaders were quick to seize. The conditions created by World War No. 1 might have been made to order for Japan. They brought all her strategic advantages into play, and were ideally adapted to meet her economic necessities.

Japan was not compelled to fight a full-dress war. The Western powers were more than occupied on the European battlefields, so Japan was given pretty much of a free hand in the Far East. And the line-up of powers in 1914-18 added greatly to the strategic advantage of her geographic location. Britain and Russia were Japan’s allies from the outset, while the United States could not offer firm opposition to Japanese expansion. Thus Japan was able to achieve a great deal with very little effort.

Conditions on the economic side were no less favorable. As Japan’s military and naval operations during the war were relatively slight, the costs were small. On the other hand, her economic gains were exceedingly large. For next to the United States, Japan was the greatest supplier of the warring nations.

MAKING HAY WHILE THE SUN SHINES

It was the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, renewed for the third time in 1911, which gave Japan formal diplomatic cause for entering the war. On August 23, 1914 she declared war on Germany.

After a brief struggle, the German forces at the leasehold of Tsingtao, in Shantung province, surrendered on November 7. A month later the whole of Shantung province was in Japanese hands. Then followed the famous Twenty-One Demands on China. On May 25, 1915, at the point of a gun, China signed treaties and notes incorporating many of these Twenty-One Demands. Among other things these treaties confirmed Japan’s newly won position in Shantung province, and extended her railway and territorial rights in South Manchuria to the end of the century. American protests helped to block the most sweeping demands, which would have made China a Japanese protectorate. Meanwhile the Japanese navy had scoured the Pacific, and had occupied all the German islands north of the equator.

THE SECRET TREATIES OF 1917

During the early months of 1917, Japan turned to diplomacy in order to be sure that she would be able to keep her territorial gains after the war. The United States had not yet entered the war, and the military fortunes of the Allied powers in Europe were at a low ebb. Making good use of this situation, Japan negotiated secret treaties with Britain, France, Russia and Italy. Signed in February and March 1917, these agreements pledged that Japan’s claims to the German islands north of the equator and to the former German rights in Shantung would be supported at the peace conference. But the Japanese did not secure American support of these claims. In the Lansing-Ishii agreement of November 2, 1917, the United States offered merely a qualified recognition of Japan’s “special interests in China.”

The secret treaties with the Allied powers were shrewdly drawn and enabled Japan to come off victorious at the Paris Peace Conference. Her newly established position in Shantung province, as well as the extensions of her rights in South Manchuria, were accepted and written into the Versailles Treaty. The German islands north of the equator were awarded Japan as a Class C mandate, the kind of mandate which came closest to annexation. American opposition to these decisions cut no ice, mainly because of Japan’s secret agreements with the Allies. On only one big issue was Japan defeated at the conference. Her statesmen had demanded that a clause on racial equality be inserted in the peace treaty. This demand was rejected, largely because the Western powers were afraid that it would let down the bars against Japanese immigration to their countries.

FLIES IN THE OINTMENT

But despite the acceptance of her territorial gains at the peace conference, by 1919 Japan’s difficulties were increasing. A student uprising in Peking drove out the pro-Japanese Anfu clique that had controlled the Chinese government. Opposition to the Shantung award was growing in the United States, and the American navy was rapidly becoming the most powerful in the world. Two years later Japan’s position had become still weaker. A boycott was severely reducing Japanese trade in China. The costs of the naval-building race with the United States were a heavy burden. Japanese intervention in Siberia, which continued after the armed forces of the Western powers had been withdrawn, was not succeeding. And expenditure on the Siberian occupation, ultimately totaling about 800 million yen, together with the naval-building costs, was straining the Japanese budget. These various factors were discrediting the Japanese militarists at home, and liberal Japanese were beginning to speak out against them.

SLOWING DOWN JAPAN’S DRIVE

Under these conditions, the United States was able to summon the Washington Conference, at which important agreements on naval limitation and Pacific questions were reached early in 1922. By accepting a battleship ratio of 3 tons as against 5 each for Britain and the United States, Japan was relieved of the costs of the naval race. Her security in Far Eastern waters was further increased by the provision restricting fortification of island bases in the Pacific. The Four-Power Pact, signed by Britain, France, the U. S. and Japan, and pledging respect for insular possessions in the Pacific, replaced the Anglo-Japanese Alliance.

In return for these contributions to her security in Far Eastern waters, Japan made a number of important concessions. By an agreement with China, she restored Shantung province to Chinese control. Japan also signed the Nine-Power Treaty, which pledged all its signatories to respect China’s territorial and administrative integrity and the “open door”--or equal commercial opportunity for all nations--in China.

In later days, some of the provisions of these Washington Conference agreements came to be bitterly attacked in Japan, especially by military and naval extremists. It is an open question as to how far these criticisms were justified. It was chiefly the effectiveness of the Chinese boycott that forced the restoration of Shantung province. Japan’s major concession was in the Nine-Power Treaty, by which she agreed to lay down the sword and accept the results of peaceful commercial competition in China. But there was no machinery provided to enforce this treaty. The naval limitation treaty relieved Japan of the heavy costs of the 1921 naval race and at the same time, even under the 5-5-3 ratio, left her able to dominate the China coast. She was thus in a strategic position to renew her expansionist program--which she did in 1931.

WORLD WAR GAINS

Moreover, the World War settlement for Japan, as finally reached at Washington, was no empty achievement. Japan had not obtained her larger ambitions in China or Siberia, it is true. But the former German islands north of the equator--of great strategic, if not economic, importance--were now a Japanese mandate. Japan’s rights in South Manchuria had become much more firmly established. Her naval and commercial fleets had greatly expanded, she occupied a permanent seat on the Council of the League of Nations, and she was recognized as one of the half-dozen Great Powers. Japan had also made important economic gains, to which we must now turn our attention.

THE WAR BOOM

It was in the economic field, perhaps, that Japan reaped her greatest gains from the World War. For her shops and factories were kept busy supplying the belligerent countries, their colonial populations, and the American market. Her allies controlled the seas, and Japanese ships sailed all of them. This freedom of the seas was an important factor for Japan, who had become increasingly dependent on international trade.

Japan’s war boom was, in many respects, very similar to that enjoyed by the United States. The relative increase in trade was even greater. Between 1914 and 1920 Japan’s total foreign trade increased from 1,187 million yen to 4,285 million, or by nearly four times (see chart, page 61). Through 1918, moreover, exports increased much faster than imports. For Japan this meant a chance to stock up on her reserves of gold and foreign currencies, which had always been low. In the 1914-18 period, exports outran imports by 1,460 million yen. This figure contrasted with an import excess of 1,158 million yen during the preceding 20 years.

What we have said so far applies only to trade in goods. But returns on invisible trade items, such as shipping services, were also high--totaling more than 1,500 million yen for the 1914-18 period. The wartime balances for both types of trade came to more than 3,000 million yen--on the right side of the ledger. As a result, Japan’s financial reserves greatly increased. Extensive loans and investments were made in foreign countries, and large holdings in gold and foreign exchange were piled up.

Japan emerged from the war stronger financially and economically than she had ever been before. Nevertheless, she was to suffer a series of economic setbacks in the post-war period.

X. Go Liberal, Go Fascist?

Even before the war ended, there had been signs of economic distress within Japan. While the profits from the war boom were going into the pockets of a small group, a sharp rise in the cost of living had caused suffering among the masses of the people. Speculators were profiteering in rice, which soared from 20 or 25 yen to more than 50 yen on the five-bushel unit. In the summer of 1918 there were serious “rice riots,” and troops were called out to suppress the demonstrations. During the war, moreover, trade union and socialist ideas had taken root in Japan, paving the way for the growth of labor unions and left-wing parties in the post-war years.

UPS AND DOWNS

Then came the world slump in 1920-21, which led to a sudden collapse of Japan’s war boom. Partial recovery had no sooner set in than it received a sharp jolt from the disastrous earthquake of 1923. To meet these setbacks, Japan drew heavily on the financial reserves accumulated during the war. Reconstruction after the earthquake created another short-lived boom--ended by a bank panic in 1927.

Despite post-war difficulties, however, Japan managed to keep her industry on the up grade. The great advances made during the war were maintained and consolidated. In the post-war slump the number of factory workers had declined, but in 1927-28 they reached the wartime level of 2,000,000 again. Throughout the ’twenties, except for a sharp drop in 1921, Japan’s total foreign trade continued to hold the new average level of 4,000 million yen. Population leaped forward, from about 50 million persons in 1914 to 56 million in 1920, and to nearly 65 million in 1930 (see chart, page 69).

BIG BUSINESS TO THE FORE