Can you provide a quote so we can have a sample argument? I haven’t really seen that here on the Dope.
The article discusses the Racial Equality Proposal, and googling that, it seems to come up fairly often in a number of texts. As you say, the simplistic argument is:
- Adopt the proposal
- Then somehow the world suddenly stops being racist
- Japan wouldn’t be such nasty people because they were just reacting to the world
It does look like this argument pops up frequently, but never with any depth in details.
Incidentally, here is an article which squarely blames the US for WWII. This isn’t written by a liberal, but rather a propaganda publication by ultranationalists in Japan. The Australian author has other wonderful articles denying the Nanking Massacre and applauding the Japanese for ending Western colonialism in WWII.
Nothing I’ve seen is convincing or offers a meaningful argument. If there is one, I’d love to read it.
Your summary is very well written and covers many important issues, hitting many part of the history in depth.
I agree with many of your points, but don’t agree with this conclusion. While the danger to Japan of colonialization by Western powers was indeed a recognized threat in the mid nineteenth century, and which set in motion the events that lead to the Meiji Restoration, by later part of the century or the early part of the twentieth century, there really wasn’t any real danger to Japan itself. Rather Japan felt that it was being denied its rightful place as an imperial power with a sphere of interest in Asia.
As noted, Japan was forcible opened to foreign trade in the mid 1800s and undertook a remarkable transformation from a backward, feudal society to a modern nation in about 60 years. It was during this time that the Scramble for Africa occurred.
Japan was hyper focused on the external world during this time, and saw that the European powers had already grabbed much of the world and was busy taking whatever was left. In Asia, most of the countries other than China were subject to Western powers.
As they became more developed and powerful, they believed they had a right to loot other countries, just like the white powers were doing. From early on, they had their designs on Korea and northern China.
As noted, Japan had entered WWI on the side of the Allies and had as such conquered German territories in Asian. However, more importantly, the German concession in the Shandong Province were also overrun by the Japanese, who took control of it.
In 1915, Japan attempted to exert control over China through the Twenty One Demands.
One of the key goals of Japan at the Paris Peace Conference was for the Western powers to acknowledge the Japan control over Shandong Province. The other was that racial equality proposal, but it wasn’t a proposal for countries to stop colonialism and they certainly had no plans on abandoning their territories. Rather, they wanted Japan to be treated as an equal and be allowed to have its sphere of influence in Asia as a colonial power.
I just don’t see this as realistic in any way. Look at a map of the world in 1919, see all of the colonies in the world, including the Philippines, a colony of the US, and ask if Japan would be willing to forgo its vision as an equal first world power for a piece of paper? Looking at it from their point of view, why should they give up China when none of the other powers were not surrendering theirs?
They would not have given up their concessions in China and certainly would not have abandoned future plans for Manchuria.
We have to look at Japan’s internal politics, including the various ultra nationalistic factions in the Imperial Japanese Army and the role they played in the march to militarism
This is already TLDR, but the seeds of the Kōdōha or Imperial Way Faction (皇道派) and the Tōseiha - Wikipedia Tōseiha or Control Faction (統制派) for example were already planted.
These factions came out of the historical divisions within the army, which were the result of civil war rapid modernization of the Meiji Restoration. (Probably no one is this interested, but one of the two founding fathers of the modern Japanese army, Prince Yamagata, made sure that the senior leadership of the IJA remained in the southern Choshu clique, and blocked officers from other areas from reaching the highest echelon. Included among those was the father of Tojo Hideki, the PM and Army Minister who brought Japan into the war. Tojo’s father came from one of the rebel northern domains which fought against the Choshu-Satsuma alliance in the 1860s.
The radicalization within the army has roots in the domestic issues and not exclusively as reactions to the external world. There isn’t any reason to assume that adopting meaningless(?) cause in a treaty on the other side of the world would have prevented the ultra nationalism movements.
It’s a mistake to ignore the affects of domestic divisions within Japan. The push to eliminate the bakufu shogunate government had less to do with their handling of modernization and much more to do with the dissatisfaction with the status quo in feudal Japan.
After the Tokugawa clan was able to suppress rival clans, their opponents were permanently relegated to a lessor status. However, over the hundreds of years several of the domains had become stronger and were dissatisfied with their status. Among them were Satsuma (Kagoshima) and Chōshū (Yamaguchi).
Without getting too far into Japanese history (if we haven’t already), the internal frictions were the cause of eventual elimination of the bakufu and the start of the Meiji Restoration, rather than simply reactions to external pressures. Satsuma and Choshu were key players in the ensuing civil way, and were on the winning side. Choshu was instrumental in the modernization of the army and kept others from leadership, as explained above.
Another flaw with this alternative history scenario is that it neglects the other perceived humiliations of the Japanese on the world stage, such as the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty and 1930 London Naval Treaty which limited the strength of the Japanese navy compared to the British and US navies.
The road to militarism is far more complex and simple changes would not have made much difference.