China and Japan
Page 15
nese texts that had dis appeared from China still existed in Japan and that
some ancient Chinese customs and music no longer available in China could
be found in Japan. His views of Japan were thus filtered through the eyes
of Japa nese intellectuals who were literate in Chinese and had great re-
spect for traditional Chinese culture.
Huang had become an accomplished poet before he went to Japan, and
while in Japan he was an active participant in poetry events. Well- educated
Japa nese familiar with the Chinese classics took great plea sure in meeting
with both He and Huang, whom they greatly respected. At parties, Chi-
nese diplomats and Japa nese scholars would often drink together as they
exchanged written notes, drawing heavi ly on poems by well- known Chi-
nese poets. Both sides reported greatly enjoying these parties, which also
became occasions for exchanging information. Japa nese officials also used
the occasions to improve their Chinese- language abilities. Among the Japa-
nese who took part in such parties with the Chinese were Sone Toshitora,
who later played a role in associations that managed exchanges of people
between the two countries; Kawashima Naniwa, later an adventurer in
China who played a central role in training the Chinese police; and Miya-
jima Seiichiro, who later became an impor tant spy, gaining information for
Japan during the Sino- Japanese War of 1894–1895. Huang Zunxian became
friends with prominent scholars like Oka Senjin, who later spent a year in
China from 1884 to 1885, and Okubo Toshimichi, the leading statesman
of the early Meiji period who was assassinated in 1878 by disgruntled fol-
lowers of Saigo Takamori, who had led the failed Satsuma Rebellion the
previous year.
Through brush exchanges Huang learned a great deal about Japan and
Japa nese politics. He was shocked to find out how much the Japa nese had
learned about modern science and international be hav ior. However, he was
not uncritical of Japan. He thought that Japan was wrong to distance itself
from China and to rush headlong in the pursuit of Western customs. He
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also disliked the “excesses” of democracy that he saw in Japan and objected
to the Japa nese lust for foreign luxuries, which he believed wasted funds that
could be used for national development. But he was impressed by Japa nese
achievements in government organ ization, public health, and education, and
he felt China should make similar efforts. Huang completed a book of po-
etry about Japan in the spring of 1879, and the Zongli Yamen published it
several months later. In 1887 he completed a detailed book about Japan,
Treatises on Japan, the best- informed Chinese account of Japan from that
era. He passed his manuscript on to Chinese publishers, but they chose not
to publish it at the time. Only a de cade later, after China lost the Sino-
Japanese War and many Chinese were ready to learn about Japan, would it
fi nally be published in China.
Before that time, the officials China sent to Japan were products of the
Chinese examination system that stressed a classical Confucian education,
and their contacts in Japan were largely with Japa nese who admired clas-
sical Chinese studies. The shortage of information the Chinese had on cur-
rent Japa nese affairs, including politics, economics, and especially military
affairs, would put China at a serious disadvantage during the war of
1894–1895.
Japan Begins Facing Outward, 1869–1879
After the Meiji Restoration, Japan’s initial effort to enhance its homeland
security was focused on strengthening its own northern island (then called
Ezo) against threats from Rus sian activities to Japan’s north and from
Sakhalin, Manchuria, and Korea. During the Tokugawa period, Japan had
effective control only of its one domain (the Matsumae domain), located
on the southern tip of the island. The rest of the island was sparsely popu-
lated by some 15,000 aboriginal Ainu people. In 1869 the new Meiji gov-
ernment renamed the island Hokkaido (meaning “the cir cuit in the northern
seas”) and launched a plan to modernize the entire island, led directly by
officials in Tokyo.
The development of Hokkaido would be a model for Japan’s develop-
ment of Taiwan after 1895, and some officials in Hokkaido were transferred
to Taiwan. The officials Japan dispatched to Taiwan had been trained in
Japa nese universities when the dominant goal of education was to mod-
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ernize Japan. Drawing on the Hokkaido model, they later prepared to help
modernize Korea and Manchuria as well.
While Japan was worried about Rus sian encroachment on Hokkaido
from the sea, China was worried about Rus sian encroachment on its North-
east region from the other side of the Sino- Russian land border. Although
Rus sia did not start building the Trans- Siberian Railway until 1891, Rus-
sian efforts to settle more people in Siberia and its plans to build the railway
already worried not only China, Japan, and Korea but also England, France,
and Germany. Until that point, the Qing rulers had not allowed non-
Manchu people to move into their homeland in Manchuria, now called
China’s Northeast. However, to strengthen re sis tance against the Rus-
sians, in 1878 the Qing rulers changed their immigration policy to allow
and even encourage non-Manchus to cross over into Manchuria. Within
years, many mi grants from other parts of China, especially from Shan-
dong and Hebei provinces, began settling in Manchuria. But in contrast to
Japan’s efforts to modernize Hokkaido, a region formerly occupied by the
Ainu and relatively unsettled, the Chinese did not develop detailed plans to
modernize Manchuria, the former royal reserve of the Manchu.
The Ryukyu Issue, 1871–1874
Soon after beginning their development of Hokkaido, the Japa nese moved
to gain control over the Ryukyu Islands to the south of Japan’s four main
islands, and this led to the first real tensions between China and Japan at
the time. From 1862 until the mid-1870s, while Japan was concentrating on
defense, most Chinese leaders were not worrying about actions that Japan
might take outside of its four main islands. In their relatively few contacts
during this period, the Japa nese and Chinese approached each other with
goodwill. After the mid-1870s, however, as Japan began to gain strength, its
efforts to promote trade and expand its defense perimeters began to con-
flict with Chinese definitions of China’s interests.
Since early in the seventeenth century, the Ryukyu (in Chinese, Liuqiu)
kingdom, led by indigenous people, governed a group of small islands, to-
taling some 865 square miles, stretching between Japan’s southern island,
Kyushu, and Taiwan. The Ryukyu kingdom tried to maintain its in de pen-
dence but also to cultivate goodwill with China and Japan. Both the Qing
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dynasty and the Tokugawa bakufu (the shogun’s governme
nt) maintained
a presence in the Ryukyu kingdom. The Ryukyu kingdom provided housing
for Japa nese emissaries, who came regularly for part of the year, and for Chi-
nese emissaries, who came at other times. The Ryukyu kingdom paid
tribute to China, conducted trade with China, and, influenced by Chinese
culture, used Chinese year names for its own calendar. But the Ryukyu lan-
guage was closer to Japa nese than to Chinese, and since 1609, when Japan’s
Satsuma domain sent troops to subdue the Ryukyu kingdom, Satsuma had
been the dominant outside force in Ryukyu affairs.
From 1871 to 1874, Japan used an incident involving the shipwreck of
Ryukyu fishermen off the coast of Taiwan, then a prefecture under China’s
Fujian province, to strengthen its rights to govern the Ryukyu Islands. In
1871, Ryukyu fishermen in four small ships near Taiwan encountered a ty-
phoon, and one ship sank, two were shipwrecked, and one remained afloat.
The surviving Ryukyu fishermen made their way to the Taiwan shore, where
fifty- four of them were killed by Taiwan aborigines. Only twelve fishermen
survived and managed to make use of the one boat still afloat to return to
the Ryukyus. The Japa nese government demanded that China pay compen-
sation for the fishermen killed in Taiwan, since Taiwan was Chinese terri-
tory. With this demand, the Japa nese government was thereby claiming that
the Ryukyu Islands belonged to Japan. For more than two years, the issue
of compensation was unresolved. In 1874 Japa nese officials, irritated by the
lack of response from China to their request for compensation for the lives
of the Ryukyu fishermen, launched a punitive expedition led by Saigo
Tsugumichi, brother of Saigo Takamori. Chinese officials, in response,
explained that China did not have effective control over the aborigines in
Taiwan and added that the Ryukyu Islands were actually under Chinese
jurisdiction. Japa nese forces remained on Taiwan, and the Chinese worried
that further Japa nese attacks might follow.
Okubo Toshimichi and Soejima Taneomi went to China to discuss the
issue with Chinese officials and win the support of other embassies in Bei-
jing. Under this pressure, Chinese officials agreed to pay compensation to
Japan for the Ryukyu sailors, but they later said they were unaware that this
payment provided support for Japan’s claims to sovereignty over the islands.
Li Hongzhang, angry at the Japa nese for betraying the goodwill he had
shown in agreeing to normalize relations with Japan, said that while Eu ro-
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pe ans were honest in their negotiations, the Japa nese were duplicitous and
unreliable.
By the mid-1870s Japan had more military forces in the vicinity of the
Ryukyu Islands than China did and was gradually strengthening its pres-
ence. In 1879, as part of the pro cess of abolishing the feudal domains and
replacing them with prefectures, Japan incorporated the Ryukyu Islands as
a Japa nese prefecture and named it Okinawa. The Japa nese government
then ordered Okinawa prefecture to stop sending tribute missions to China.
Li Hongzhang, who had supported relations with Japan in 1870–1871 and
maintained relations despite the Japa nese attack on Taiwan in 1874, was un-
derstandably furious. In 1880 China refused the proposals of the Japa-
nese mission concerning the Ryukyus, but China did not forcibly resist the
incorporation of the Ryukyus into Japa nese territory.
Japan’s Efforts to Open Korea, 1873–1879
Japan’s interest in Korea had both a security and an economic dimension.
Of all the territories in the proximity of Japan, the area that aroused the
greatest security concerns for the early Meiji leaders was Korea, located at
the vortex between Rus sia, China, and Japan. Korea had been the locus of
two military clashes between China and Japan, in 661–663 and 1592–1598,
and it had been the staging area for the Mongol invasion of Japan (1274–
1281). Late in the nineteenth century, as reports reached Japan of Rus sian,
German, and Chinese ships in the vicinity of Korea, Japa nese strategists re-
ferred to Korea as a dagger thrust at the heart of Japan. Japan worried that
other countries, particularly Rus sia, might use Korea as a base from which
to attack Japan. Japan would be more secure if it could establish a military
presence on the peninsula to prevent other countries from establishing a
base there.
Japan’s contacts with Korea took place through the Tsushima Islands
and Pusan. Since the founding of the Choson dynasty in 1392, Korea had
been even more closed than Japan had been under the Tokugawa, but just
as Japan kept Nagasaki open, Korea also kept one port open, at Pusan.
During the Tokugawa era the Tsushima domain, located on islands halfway
between Kyushu and Korea, was given responsibility by Japan’s rulers to deal
with Korea. Until 1868, the Japa nese official from Tsushima who resided in
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Pusan represented the Japa nese shogun in carry ing on limited communi-
cations between Japan and Korea.
By 1873, Japa nese leaders, who two de cades earlier had been forced by
Commodore Perry to allow foreign trade, not only accepted foreign trade
but embraced it. They looked to the British example for how to build a
strong economy. Japa nese officials sought to import soybeans and wheat
from Korea and looked forward to selling Korea its industrial products, just
as England had exported manufactured products to its colonies to build up
its own economy. At the time, Japan’s largest export item was raw silk. The
blight in France’s silk industry and the destruction of much of China’s silk-
making capacity during the Taiping Rebellion had increased the demand
abroad for Japa nese silk. In 1872 a silk- reeling factory, the Tomioka Silk Mill,
Japan’s first modern industrial plant, was opened. Japa nese businessmen
were looking forward to exporting silk textiles.
In the early 1860s, Japa nese leaders were already discussing how to get
Korea to accept more traded goods. In late 1868, a few months after Em-
peror Meiji launched the new era, a Japa nese representative from Tsushima
was dispatched to Pusan to announce that Japan was replacing the former
representative from the Tsushima domain with a new person representing
the Japa nese emperor. Korea, upset that the Japa nese were using the term
“emperor” and thus giving their ruler a status superior to that of the Ko-
rean king and equal to the Chinese emperor, refused to receive the new rep-
resentative and his mission. The Japa nese, determined to open up trade
with Pusan, later sent two more missions, but the Koreans refused to re-
ceive them as well.
By the early 1870s some young samurai advocated that Japan should
learn a lesson from Commodore Perry, who had used warships to open up
Japan, and send warships to open Korea. Saigo Takamori, the charismatic
Satsuma samurai who had played a major role in the restoration of the em-
peror, became the spokesman fo
r this group of hot- blooded nationalists.
Aware that public opinion in Japan did not support sending warships to
Korea, Saigo offered to go to Korea as an emissary, expecting that he might
be killed by the Koreans, an outcome that would strengthen support for
subduing Korea. Saigo was becoming a symbol of the dedicated patriot
ready to die for his country. In early 1873, taking advantage of the absence
of more internationally minded leaders who were away on the Iwakura Mis-
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Responding to Western Chal enges and Reopening Relations, 1839–1882
sion to the West, Saigo tried to win government support for his plan. The
Iwakura Mission returned before the issue was resolved, and on its return
Count Iwakura Tomomi, Okubo Toshimichi, and others from the mission
were able to block Saigo’s plans. In the meantime, however, Japan’s discus-
sions of subduing Korea had alarmed both the Koreans and the Chinese,
who began to fear that Japan had aggressive intentions.
In September 1875 Japan sent the ship Unyo to the western coast of
Korea, where it provoked an attack by the Koreans and destroyed local can-
nons on the shore before it returned to Japan. The implicit threat was that
if Korea refused to open, Japan would attack. Japa nese military forces con-
tinued preparing for such an attack.
The primary concern for Saigo and his followers was not the opening
of Korea but the impending abolition of the feudal domains, the end of the
samurai class, and the end of the privileges of former samurai. In Saigo’s
view, a mission to Korea might strengthen the position of the samurai. The
government had provided compensation for the samurai when the samurai
class was abolished, but many former samurai were deeply upset when the
stipends offered to ex- samurai were ended with lump- sum final payments.
In 1877 Saigo and some 13,000 followers launched the Satsuma Rebellion.
The new national conscript army, with some former samurai as officers and
nonsamurai as ordinary troops, defeated Saigo’s forces. Saigo, confronting
defeat, followed the samurai ritual and, facing in the direction of the em-
peror, committed suicide by thrusting a sword into his stomach. The public
realized that the era of the samurai had ended, but there was enormous
public sympathy for Saigo and the glorious dedication he displayed in dying