History 101

As promised here's a little write up I've been composing about the military history of Japan. I was going to do the whole thing in one go but there's actually quite a lot you can write about in a 90 year period. I'll probably make this a 3 part project. Most of you will be horribly bored by this but it's actually amazingly fascinating. Take a gander at it at least.

Modern Japanese History (1853-1940) (from a Japanese perspective, Part 1 of 3)

When did the first Sino-Japanese war occur? What major Western country lost a war against Japan? Did you know that more Western countries than just Britain (Hong Kong) have leased parts of China? I have to admit that before I visited Japan, my historical knowledge of the Pacific countries was very limited. I was very interested in the happenings of WWII but I was only concerned with WWII in Europe. While I still have little interest in samurai and temples and what not, I've found the history of Japan (and Asia in general) to be extremely fascinating.

The thing that I find the most interesting is not so much the history itself, but rather how the Japanese view of history tends to be a little askew from ours. This is especially true concerning events that lead up to WWII. Remember the saying, "History is written by the winners"? Well that's a load of bunk. The saying should be rather, the winners are so enthralled by their own version of history that they don't even realize that the losers have written their own.

I learned of the Japanese viewpoint from the museum at the site of the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo. Sound familiar? Probablynot. I had never heard of it before. But what might sound familiar to you is the controversy that arises every year when the Prime Minister visits the shrine in August to pay his respects. You've probably read about it in the paper because every year the Chinese and the Koreans get extremely upset. The reason for this is that in addition to containing the remains of hundreds of thousands Japanese soldiers it also contains the remains of several "Class A" war criminals. So the idea of the official head of state of Japan paying his respects to Japanese war criminals is a slap in the face of every Korean or Chinese who were somehow affected by Japanese imperialism in the 19th and 20th centuries.

This is a general synopsis of Japanese history from the mid-1800's to the begining of WWII. Remember I am only writing what I learned from my trip to the museum-these are not necessarily my beliefs nor do I necessairly agree with them. I was actually surprised by how much of it I actually disagreed with. However my previous sources of Japanese history were the movies The Last Samurai and Pearl Harbor-and I suspect that unfortunately that probably goes for most of us. It's also quite possible that our own history books are a little biased. So who's version of history is correct? Ours or the Japanese? I suspect that quite possibly the answer lies somewhere in the middle (as it almost always does.)

In this article, Japanese history begins in 1853. The Edo period has ended and Japan has just gone through two and a half centuries of isolationism as a result of fears of an invasion from neigboring Manchuria and encroachment by Western powers. America forces Japan out of isolation when Matthew Perry sails into Tokyo harbor with a fleet of 4 ships and requests an audience with the Emperor. He receives no response and leaves. He returns in 1854, this time with 9 ships and forces Japan to sign a treaty. The treaty was unequal to Japan as it gave the US the right to set export tariffs and gave them extraterritoriality. However the Japanese had little choice as they had not the navy to withstand the US's gunboat diplomacy.

In the 1860's Japan goes through a period of modernization. The shogunate is overthrown and the Imperial Court returns to power. Fiefs are turned turned over to the state and an army is established. Universal conscription is adopted and Japan drafts 270,000 men and implements a division system for easy mobility. Japan's focus is quickly changing from domestic defense to overseas operations.

This period of modernization threatened the samurai who were forced to cut off their topknots and were barred from wearing swords. Their proposal to subjugate Korea was also rejected which infuriated the samurai so in the mid-1870's they rebelled. Japan in turn enlisted the aid of Tom Cruise to beat down the samurai, which as we all know, backfired horribly and damaged Hollywood/Japanese relations for the next century. After a period of civil war, the rebellion was quelled.

In the 1880's trouble started to brew between China, Japan and Korea. China considered Korea to be a vassal state and as such they constantly interfered in their affairs. Things started to heat up when internecine conflict started up within Korea itself between the pro-Japan party and the Conservative party. The Conservatives, unhappy with the pro-Japan party staged a military revolt and in 1884 there was a coup d'etat which resulted in military intervention by the Chinese. The Japanese felt threatened because their "line of advantage" had been compromised. Line of advantage in this case seems to be another term for "buffer zone."

In 1894 a rebellion started in Korea and both sides sent forces to "quell" the rebellion. The problem was that both China and Japan supported opposite sides of the rebellion. Another problem was that the intentions of both countries were not pure of heart. Both countries knew the country was in a shambles and were looking for any excuse to invade. Japan sent a force three times the size of China's and they seized the government and reformed it. The new government then gave Japan permission to expel Chinese forces from the country and so the Sino-Japanese war began.

I'm not going to go over the battles because it isn't necessary to know what happened but rather what the outcome was. Just be satisfied that there were lots of guns fired and ships sunk. In the end it was a glorious victory for Japan, who not only expelled the Chinese from Korea but also managed to aquire a huge tract of Chinese territory called the Liaodong Penninsula. According to the museum I went to, the war ended with the Treaty of Shimonoseki and "Korea achieved true independence which Japan had hoped for."(the last part is taken directly from museum information-whether Korea was truly free I don't know.)

It's at this stage we see Western countries interfering in Asian affairs for a second time (first being Americans forcing unfair treaty signings in 1854.) Russia was not happy to see the success of the Japanese as they had a lot of interest in that part of China themselves. They also didn't like the Japanese at their borders. So they got together with France and Germany and convinced them to help pressure the Japanese into returning the captured territory to China (Tri-Partite Intervention.) Japan having just fought a tough war, was in no shape to resist the western countries' demands. As soon as the Japanese pulled out of Liaodong, the Russians occupied it themselves and the French and the Germans received city states in China for their help. So while it might be accurate to say that pre-WWII Japanese were imperialist aggressors, you have to admit that they had excellent teachers and would go on to employ many of the same methods in the 20th century that they learned from Western countries.

The Japanese of course considered the Tri-Partite Intervention to be a slap in the face and soured their relations with much of the world. "Vengeance at all cost" became their new motto. That combined with Russia's southward advance to the Korean penninsuala convinced the Japanese that a Russo-Japanese War would be inevitable.

And so ends the 19th century.