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Origin of Japanese Interests in Manchuria
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 March 2011
Extract
The origin of Japan's interests in Manchuria may be regarded as the base-point from which during the past half century a variety of economic, political and territorial ambitions has radiated, enveloping today virtually all of Eastern Asia and leading directly to war with the United States and Great Britain. In the historical development of this vast program of overseas expansion, paramount attention is usually centered on the vigorous activity which characterized Japanese relations with the ancient kingdom of Korea during the second half of the nineteenth century. This movement played a vital part in shaping Japanese imperialism, but it is significant to recall that Japan's first bid for an actual territorial position on the continent was not concerned with Korea. The fiction of Korean independence was supported by Japanese statesmen until 1910, when Korea was finally annexed to Japan. On the other hand, Japanese territorial ambitions on the mainland were positively revealed fifteen years earlier by the Treaty of Shimonoseki of 1895 by which Japan appropriated the Liaotung Peninsula of Manchuria as one of the spoils of the Sino-Japanese War. Economic and political factors determined this demand for territory, and were in turn the progenitor of the vast program of continental expansion which has since been the basis of Japanese policy.
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References
1 Japan's conquests on the Asiatic continent in the sixteenth century and the expansionist doctrines of Japanese economic and political writers in the Tokugawa period played no small rôle in preparing the way psychologically for the present period of renewed expansion.
2 Imperial Maritime Customs of China, Trade statistics of treaty ports, 1863–1872 (Shanghai), 4–5Google Scholar, 24–25; Ibid., 1871–1872, 2–3.
4 Ibid., 1878, 10–11.
6 Ibid., 1894, 2.
7 Ibid., 1879, 4; 1890, 7–11; 1891, 2, 7–9; Imperial Maritime Customs of China, Decennial reports, 1882–1891 (Shanghai), 1–2.Google Scholar
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9 Trade and statistics of treaty ports, 1894, 1–3.
10 Ibid., 1895, 614–15.
11 Ibid., 1896, 2; 1898, 2; Decennial reports, 1891–1902, 7–15.
12 Decennial reports, 1891–1901, 3.
13 Japan Weekly Mail. Feb. 3, 1894, 130–31.
14 A noted exponent of this view is a Japanese scholar who bases his argument principally upon Japanese sources; see: Takeuchi, Tatsuji, War and diplomacy in the Japanese Empire (New York, 1935), 109–23.Google Scholar
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16 Particularly active in this respect was the famous Genyosha, a patriotic society founded in 1881 by Toyama Mitsuru. Strangely enough, this organization began its career by crusading for popular rights (minken), but later, especially after the opening of the Diet in 1890 had seemingly attained this goal, the Genyosha devoted all its energy to continental expansion, advocating a war with China and, after 1900, a war with Russia and the annexation of Korea.
17 Japan Weekly Mail, June 16, 1894, 714, 717.
18 Ibid., June 8, 1894, 682.
19 Ibid., July 7, 1894, 2; note also Japan Daily Herald, July 2, 1894.
20 Japan Weekly Mail, July 7, 1894, 9.
21 Ibid., July 28, 1894, 90.
22 Japan Weekly Mail, Aug. 4, 1894, 118.
23 Ibid., Aug. 11, 1894, 128.
24 Japan Weekly Mail, Aug. 25, 1894, 227–28.
25 Ibid., Oct. 6, 1894, 382.
26 Japan Daily Herald, Aug. 17, 1894; see also The Eastern World (Yokohama), Aug. 18, 1894; Japan Weekly Mail, Sept. 15, 1894, 302; Sept. 8, 1894, 278–79.
27 Japan Weekly Mail, Sept. 15, 1894, 302.
28 Ibid., Aug. 25, 1894, 218; Sept. 29, 1894, 354; Oct. 6, 1894; 382; Oct. 20, 1894, 438; Japan Daily Herald, Sept. 22, Oct. 9, 1894.
29 Japan Weekly Mail, Nov. 3, 1894, 502.
30 Japan Weekly Mail, Nov. 10, 1894, 526.
31 Ibid., Oct. 20, 1894, 439.
32 Japan Daily Herald, Dec. 27, 1894.
33 Japan Weekly Mail, Mar. 2, 1895, 242.
34 lbid., Mar. 9, 1895, 274.
35 Ibid., April 27, 1895, 476.
36 Japan Weekly Mail, April 27, 1895, 470.
37 Ibid., Dec. 29, 1894, 726.
38 Ibid., Jan. 5, 1895, 3.
39 Ibid., Jan. 19, 1895, 58; see also: Feb. 16, 1895, 182; Feb. 23, 1895, 215.
40 Even before the Intervention a number of newspapers, including the Nippon, Kokumin and Yamiuri, were suppressed (April 15–16) because they supported the views of the Taigai Koka which had charged that the peace terms did not give Japan sufficient territory. Japan Weekly Mail, April 20, 1895, 457; Japan Daily Herald, March 27, 1895.
41 Japan Weekly Mail, May 11, 1895, 522.
42 Akagi, Roy Hidemichi, Japan's foreign relations (Tokyo, 1936), 167.Google Scholar
43 Japan Weekly Mail, May 18, 1895, 550.