beginning to upgrade its military capabilities. In 1896, with the war over and
Kang in a se nior post in Beijing, things were diff er ent. He was able to pro-
cure funding to establish a translation bureau with the grand aim of trans-
lating 7,750 Japa nese titles into Chinese. How many of these books were
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eventually translated is unclear; we know only that Kang contracted with a
young Japa nese freelancer to translate Japa nese legal codes. But even com-
piling a list of the codes was good publicity. It brought home Kang’s point
that Chinese reformers had a long way to go to understand the mechanics
of the reform pro cess in Japan and elsewhere.
Kang may have been the best- known postwar advocate of thorough-
going reform, but “concerned scholars” of lesser fame— those still com-
peting for jobs within the civil- service system but wishing to change it—
also began to contribute their views through a new venue, journalism. Like
the reform clubs, periodicals aimed at shaping and reflecting public opinion
were a postwar phenomenon. In 1896, as Kang busied himself with trans-
lation, his leading disciple, Liang Qichao, became editor of the newspaper
Shiwubao, one of several fledgling ventures started in Shanghai, often with
foreign financial backing. In the case of Shiwubao, one of the backers was
Zhang Zhidong, whose moves to censor antigovernment content in the
paper led to Liang’s resignation. Liang immediately resurfaced as writer-
publisher of several magazines in Japan. In this case, the Chinese govern-
ment did not ban sales of the magazines in Shanghai and Beijing, appar-
ently judging Liang’s message moderate enough: after all, a well- informed,
responsible citizenry (a “new people”) was the necessary underpinning for
a modern society.
The Hundred Days’ Reform and the Japan Model
In early 1898 Kang Youwei petitioned Emperor Guangxu to assert his power
and set up a Bureau of Government Reor ga ni za tion, to be staffed by re-
form advisers who would remove all the powers of government from the
current power holders and start the pro cess of government restructuring.
To buttress his arguments on the wisdom of such a move, Kang attached
his just- completed work on Meiji Japan and on the reforms carried out in
Rus sia under Peter the Great. While these documents were making their
way to the top— and perhaps to preempt them— Zhang Zhidong presented
the court with a series of essays, titled Exhortation to Study, which won im-
mediate court approval for distribution to provincial officials.
The appeal of Zhang’s work lay in its attempt to strike a balance between
social and po liti cal conservatism—it strongly endorsed strengthening the
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Japa nese Lessons for a Modernizing China, 1895–1937
established order— and a more liberal approach to designing a school system
for the twentieth century. For years, Zhang had supported the idea of com-
bining Chinese humanities and Western science to modernize China’s
school curriculum. What was new in his Exhortation to Study was the em-
phasis on revising the civil- service exam, centralizing education planning,
and promoting a study- abroad program that specifically mentioned Japan.
Arguing the advantages of firsthand observation over mere book learning,
Zhang cited the examples of Japan’s leaders Ito Hirobumi and Yamagata
Aritomo, whose overseas experiences provided critical input to their sub-
sequent ser vice in government. His reasons for proposing study in Japan
over Western countries, in China’s case, were eminently pragmatic: geo-
graph i cal proximity, cost, ease of supervision, language similarities, and the
relative compatibility of their social systems. In short, by Zhang’s calcula-
tion, study in Japan would amount to twice the gain in half the time.
Kang’s proposals were more drastic and certain to roil politics at the top.
Whether the emperor was genuinely convinced by Kang’s pre sen ta tions or
simply tired of playing understudy to his power ful, nominally retired aunt,
the empress dowager, he took unilateral action in Kang’s favor, issuing a
stream of edicts from June 11 until September 21, 1898, in what became
known as the Hundred Days’ Reform. Every thing from the tax system to
military training to the civil- service examination was up for overhaul. Japan
was the reference point for the reforms in education. Only the announce-
ment of a constitutional monarchy was delayed, but as this was a signature
Kang goal, it was clearly on the agenda. How the emperor and Kang could
not have anticipated a reaction to this fundamental chal enge to the dowager’s
conservative faction is difficult to fathom, even allowing for their po liti cal
inexperience. Predictably, the reform movement failed. In a sudden counter-
coup on September 21, the dowager and her supporters rescinded the
reforms, ousted the reformers, executed those they could lay their hands on,
and put Emperor Guangxu, who had backed the reformers, under vir-
tual house arrest. Reform leader Kang and his ju nior colleague, Liang
Qichao, escaped to Japan, where they hoped to gain permanent asylum.
Kang and Liang’s presence in Japan posed a dilemma for the Tokyo gov-
ernment. On the one hand, providing safe haven for po liti cal dissidents
was an international norm Japan wanted to abide by in its new role as the
up- and- coming power in Asia. Thus Tokyo, like London, had countenanced
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the comings and goings of Sun Yat- sen (see Biographies of Key Figures), a
man on the Qing hit list in 1895 for his part in an insurrection gone awry
in South China. Sun was an anomaly, a po liti cal outsider, Hawaii- educated
(at a time when American sugar planters were pressing for a U.S. takeover
of Hawaii), unschooled in the Confucian classics, and a Christian with a
Hong Kong medical degree. As something of a foreigner himself, he had
come to believe that overthrowing the Manchus was the essential first step
in China’s rejuvenation. For Sun, Japan was a second home, a place where
he found Japa nese friends who shared his vision of pan- Asianism and rev-
olution as the route to salvation for the Chinese people, and who were
willing to join him in his relentless fund - rais ing efforts to achieve his goals.
At the same time, Japan was eager to establish closer ties with the Chi-
nese regime in power. Today, Sun Yat- sen has pride of place as “the father
of the nation.” It is easy to forget that in 1898 he was on the po liti cal fringes,
a minor irritant to the government in Beijing. Kang was a bigger prob lem.
He was a po liti cal insider, a power player within the bureaucratic ranks and
therefore more dangerous. Tokyo was well aware that granting Kang
asylum after his 1898 coup attempt would anger the Qing authorities,
possibly jeopardizing Japan’s China interests, which centered on com-
peting with the Western powers for influence over China’s progressive
leaders. Settling Kang’s and Liang’s asylum requests without alienating
se nior figures
such as Zhang Zhidong and Liu Kunyi required someone
highly placed who was comfortable in a negotiating role. The man Tokyo
assigned to the job was Konoe Atsumaro, head of Japan’s upper house of
parliament.
Konoe Atsumaro and “Asia for the Asians” Diplomacy
Given his background, personality, and China interests, Konoe was the most
obvious choice. He was truly a child of the new Meiji state, a melding of
the traditional and modern. He was an imperial prince, head of Japan’s most
prominent regent family, the very standard bearer of the old traditions. He
had been tutored in the Chinese classics by his grand father, tutor to the
previous emperor. At the same time, Konoe represented what was new
about late nineteenth- century Japan: receptivity to outside ideas and insti-
tutional models. He had insisted on going abroad to study, a typical goal of
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Japa nese Lessons for a Modernizing China, 1895–1937
his generation, but in his case a matter of state. Prime Minister Ito Hi-
robumi, a member of the original, groundbreaking Iwakura Mission, had
interceded on his behalf, and as a result, he was off to Austria and Germany
for five years of study. Also typical of those of his generation, Konoe had a
high- minded view of public ser vice, the kind of spirit his con temporary,
Theodore Roo se velt, so valued and exhorted young people to follow. When
Konoe returned to Japan in the fall of 1890, age twenty- seven and with a
law degree from Leipzig University, he took the opportunity afforded by
his rank to play a role in Japan’s new constitutional government, serving as
interim head, then head of Japan’s upper house, the House of Peers.
Konoe was no figurehead. He was an activist politician who threw him-
self into the debates roiling the Diet in 1893 over foreign- controlled tariffs,
and dared to clash with his mentor Ito Hirobumi in the pro cess. In 1895,
he accepted a position as head of the prestigious Peers School (forerunner
of present- day Gakushuin University), shifting the school’s mission from
training military officers to producing diplomats— people schooled in
“peaceful national defense,” as he described them. He championed public
education, including women’s education, not simply with high- minded pro-
nouncements but as an active participant in meetings with educators who
were often at odds with one another over how to build a world- class school
system. Konoe increasingly earned a reputation as a congenial, fair- minded
consensus builder. It was in the context of working with one of Japan’s
teachers’ associations that Konoe met the high- energy president of Tokyo
Teachers College, Kano Jigoro.
Kano is known today as the founder of the Kodokan school of judo,
the man who single- handedly secured a place for his sport and for Japan in
the 1912 Olympics. In the 1890s he was known as a leading figure in educa-
tion policy, head of the institution that set the standard for future teachers
of Japan. This was an impor tant job, with scope for input into all aspects of
general public education, including physical education and schooling for
women. Late in 1896, when he was meeting regularly with Konoe on policy
matters, Kano was in the early stages of an entirely new proj ect. The Chi-
nese and Japa nese governments, only a year after signing the Treaty of Shi-
monoseki, had agreed to launch the first- ever study- in- Japan program for
Chinese students. Kano Jigoro was put in charge. In April he welcomed
the first contingent of thirteen Chinese students—as foreign- looking a
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group, with their queues and long gowns, as any Westerners in Tokyo—
into a special three- year course at the Teachers College. Only seven of them
stuck it out. But within ten years and with continued input on Kano’s part,
the numbers of Chinese students who studied in Japan would swell to the
thousands. It was the first large- scale study abroad program anywhere in
the world.
As Konoe saw it, hosting Chinese students was a welcome first step, but
it had to be placed in an entirely new framework of thinking about China
and the rest of Asia. He staked out his position on Asia policy, and his in-
tention to help shape it, in the January 1898 issue of the widely circulated
magazine The Sun. Considering the many personal friends from his five-
year stay in Germany, his core argument was startling. He questioned the
extent of Western goodwill toward Japan and the Japa nese. He felt that
Japan’s policy makers were naïve in failing to appreciate the real ity that East
and West were on a collision course, with race at the heart of it. “East Asia
is ultimately destined to face a racial strug gle between the yellow and white
races, in the course of which both the Chinese and the Japa nese will be
regarded as the bitter enemies of the white race.”1 To prepare for this even-
tuality, Konoe called on his government to disengage from its current Eu-
rocentric foreign policy and to focus instead on forging a strategic relation-
ship with its natu ral ally, China. Sooner would be better than later, before
the Western nations joined forces to try to colonize East Asia and while
many in the Chinese leadership were in a pro- reform, pro- Japan mood. He
recognized that some in China’s central government remained stub-
bornly wedded to an isolationist view, but he insisted that reform- minded
governors such as Zhang Zhidong saw it as in their best interests to
strengthen ties with Japan. What Japan had to guard against, he warned,
was becoming as arrogant toward the Chinese as the Westerners were.
For someone who wanted to expand the scope of his influence, Konoe
had the best of both worlds. He could claim the outsider’s freedom of ac-
tion while retaining the advantage of the ultimate insider: easy access to
anyone at any level of government and elite society. He was increasingly
mentioned in the press as incorruptible and an ideal candidate for prime
minister. He might have assumed the position, as his son Fumimaro did
later, had he not died unexpectedly in 1904 at the age of forty.
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Japa nese Lessons for a Modernizing China, 1895–1937
But in 1898, energetic and committed, Konoe was a natu ral at bringing
together Japan’s vari ous Asia- first groups, a mix of politicians, journalist-
intel ectuals, business promoters, and hotheaded youths concerned first and
foremost with countering “Western powers advancing eastward” ( seiryoku
tozen) . Konoe had previously headed the Oriental Association, whose mem-
bers had numbered nearly one thousand on the eve of the Sino- Japanese War,
and included Komura Jutaro, a Harvard Law School gradu ate, later foreign
minister; Liberal Party leader and prime minister Okuma Shigenobu; Inukai
Tsuyoshi, a supporter of Sun Yat- sen and a future prime minister; and
Arao Sei, army officer and promoter of expanded trade with China.
In June 1898, just as Kang Youwei’s Hundred Days’ Reform was plunging
China into po liti cal uncertainty, Konoe and his colleagues founded the
&n
bsp; Common Culture Society (Dobunkai) to strengthen bilateral ties, inform
the Japa nese public about Chinese affairs, and coordinate Japa nese busi-
nesses, newspapers, and education proj ects in China. The very name of the
new organ ization indicated a shift in thinking. Previous Asia- first groups
had emphasized location— Asia, the Orient. Dobun, or “common culture,”
in contrast, was qualitative and evocative. Shorthand for “same culture, same
race” ( dobun doshu), Dobunkai gave voice to an idea, increasingly appealing
in postwar Japan, that a China- Japan partnership had something unique
to justify it beyond the usual realpolitik. Konoe’s emphasis on “same cul-
ture” put history, language, and race at the forefront of what it took to create
a successful alliance. It implied reaching out to the Chinese people more
broadly, not only to the Chinese po liti cal leadership. The Japa nese, Konoe
said, should not ascribe to the Chinese people the faults of their corrupt
politicians.
In early November 1898, the Common Culture Association merged with
another Asia lobby group to form the East Asia Common Culture Asso-
ciation, with Korea now added to the agenda. The group’s membership was
broad and diverse enough to merit a grant from a Foreign Ministry discre-
tionary fund, though the bulk of its funding was provided privately by the
organ ization’s new president, Konoe Atsumaro. The group’s intention was
to remain nonpartisan. Some members favored the go- slow pace of China’s
se nior officials, others advocated the Kang- Liang version of constitutional
monarchy, and still others— notably Miyazaki Torazo— advocated Sun
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Yat- sen’s more drastic solution of completely eradicating the imperial struc-
ture. Konoe urged consensus around the very general goal of improving
conditions in China— which is what appeared in the association’s official
platform, along with commitments to maintain China’s territorial integrity
( Shina hozen) and not to interfere in China’s domestic politics.
This was the state of play when Konoe and Kang met for the first time
on the eve ning of November 12 at Konoe’s residence. By Konoe’s account,
they became engaged in a verbal tug- of- war. Konoe opened with a bold
statement: “Asians alone should have the right to solve Asia’s prob lems, . . .
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