strange twist of fate, it was Prince Su who would save Wang from execution
in 1909 when he was brought to trial for attempting to assassinate the
prince regent. This same inclination to keep all options open characterized
Prince Su’s approach to managing foreign relations. Upon returning to
Beijing in 1901 to find his villa destroyed by rocket attacks during the Boxer
siege and his future precarious, he de cided that teaming up with the Japa-
nese as partners in reform made good po liti cal sense.
Japan was on the rise. In January 1902 Japan and Britain signed the
Anglo- Japanese Treaty, the first- ever treaty between an Asian and a
Western nation on equal treaty terms. The alliance was intended to counter
the influence of Rus sia, which was moving troops over its northern rail route
into Manchuria, the Manchu homeland. Prince Su and his fellow Manchu
princes owned large tracts of land in Manchuria that were certain to be lost
in the event of a Rus sian takeover.
The Prince Su– Kawashima connection was a marriage of con ve nience,
with Kawashima the ju nior partner. Prince Su was out to capture leader-
ship of the Manchu reform faction. Kawashima saw a chance to further ex-
pand Japan’s interests in China while boosting his own career. A rare photo
of the two of them, seated in identical poses and dressed alike in official
Chinese garb, says it all. Kawashima was at his influential best until 1911.
But as antiregime and anti- Manchu sentiment mounted, and revolution
broke out in 1911, the dynamics of their relationship changed. Prince Su, as
part of an ousted regime, became dependent on Kawashima to help the dy-
nasty make a comeback in North China. The institution- building motif
dominant in Kawashima’s life from 1900 to 1911 gave way to the politics of
ethnic separatism, which occupied his career for the next de cade. Kawashi-
ma’s timing was off, however. Facing the po liti cal minefield in China after
1911, Tokyo was inclined to back the international community’s choice of
. 161 .
china and japan
Yuan Shikai— and his successors—to rule China, so there was only tepid
interest in armed intervention on behalf of Kawashima’s Manchu and
Mongol friends. In an ultimate twist of fate, the multiethnic monarchy in
North China that Kawashima supported in vain after 1912 took shape in
the Japanese- administered puppet state of Manchukuo in 1934.
Constructing a New Legal Framework for a New Republic
The same events that dimmed Kawashima’s prospects— the end of Manchu
rule in 1911 and Yuan Shikai’s accession to the presidency of China’s first
republic— presented an exciting new opportunity for Professor Ariga Nagao
of Waseda University at the peak of his distinguished career. Ariga was one
of the creators of the field of international law in Japan. He was a law teacher,
practitioner, and advocate. He deeply believed that through the application
of international law, the world could become a more orderly place. Typical
of his generation, Ariga was well versed in China studies, but he was a Eu-
ro pe anist by inclination and scholarship. A gradu ate of Tokyo University
and a recipient of a grant to study in Germany, he was fluent in German,
French, and En glish, and he was a capable translator of works in diverse
fields, from pedagogy to po liti cal science. He taught “just war” theory at
Japan’s military colleges, and law and comparative politics at Waseda Uni-
versity, where his students included Chinese youths and visiting officials.
Beyond academia, Ariga was founder, editor, and managing director of
Gaiko jiho ( Revue diplomatique), Japan’s first journal of foreign affairs. He
was an active member of the Japa nese Red Cross Society board and a del-
egate in 1899 to the international peace conference in The Hague, where
landmark agreements were signed on the laws of war and dispute resolu-
tion. He served on the front lines in both the Sino- Japanese and the
Russo- Japanese Wars as a legal adviser to the Japa nese Army, a position new
to both Japan and Eu rope, meant to ensure that war was conducted “justly,”
according to agreed- upon rules. In this spirit, Ariga took his own in de pen-
dent look at Japa nese atrocities at Port Arthur in 1895, unafraid to contra-
dict the conclusions of the fact- finding commission authorized by the gen-
eral in charge. Japan, Ariga wrote, had signed on to the Geneva Conventions
absolutely, not selectively, and therefore should accept responsibility.
. 162 .
Japa nese Lessons for a Modernizing China, 1895–1937
The Russo- Japanese War was of a diff er ent order of magnitude from
the short, contained conflict between China and Japan in 1895. The first war
between an Asian nation and a major Western power, it involved the de-
ployment of massive armies, the use of machine guns and trench warfare,
and an estimated half a million casualties— a precursor to the brutality of
World War I. In terms of conduct- of- war issues from the battlefield per-
spective, Japan came off well in the eyes of Western journalists tracking this
“well- watched war.” At the front lines himself, Ariga, as patriotic as anyone,
was sobered by the enormous loss of life and ever more convinced that, how-
ever difficult it was to justify legally, Japan should establish a mandate over
Manchuria to forestall a future threat from Rus sia.
Ariga was a man of international reputation. His French colleagues in
international law recognized him— and Japan—as exceptional in their com-
mitment to international norms. The Chinese were getting someone with
an impressive résumé when, in 1913, they hired Ariga to serve as constitu-
tional adviser to Yuan Shikai, president of China’s first republic. Ariga had
high hopes as he boarded the Tokyo- Kobe train, China- bound, armed with
a suitcase full of sample constitutions and briefed by Sun Yat- sen along the
way. Working with a team of foreign advisers to write a constitution for a
new nation was a once- in- a- lifetime professional opportunity. He was as-
signed to the president’s office, which was staffed by many of his former Chi-
nese students at Waseda.
But drafting a constitution for a Chinese republic was no easy task in a
world in which republics were few and far between, his employer was a mili-
tary strongman, and the foreign advisory group was skeptical of China’s
readiness for representative institutions. Ariga’s own belief was that the doc-
ument should reflect China’s Confucian core values and limit voting power
to the well educated, while at the same time ensuring access to education
as a national right. The constitution that emerged from Ariga’s long hours
of work was a kind of guided democracy under one- man rule, satisfactory
to his colleagues, and even more so to Yuan Shikai, who took it as a green
light to further consolidate his power. For all his knowledge and intellec-
tual sophistication, Ariga was in over his head in trying to read the po liti cal
mind of Yuan Shikai, who was soon embarked on a bid to become emperor.
Nor would Ariga come out a clear
winner in his 1915 clash with his own
. 163 .
china and japan
Foreign Ministry over the Twenty- One Demands, an interventionist policy
he argued against with characteristic vigor, returning to Japan as Yuan
Shikai’s emissary to make the case before Japan’s elder statesmen. In the end,
the demands were moderated, but Ariga was pegged as a po liti cally naïve
academic, Japan’s standing suffered internationally, and rising anti- Japanese
sentiment drove thousands of Chinese students then studying in Japan to
return to China in protest.
Chinese Students, Japa nese Teachers
When Konoe Atsumaro and Zhang Zhidong met in Wuhan in 1899, they
agreed in princi ple to a three- part program of study tours, technical assis-
tance, and overseas training. Remarkably, within several years and despite
the turmoil in Qing politics, all three programs were established and
growing. Although neither centralized nor well coordinated, these activities
were mutually reinforcing and involved a supportive network of like- minded
people. Study- tour officials checked up on Chinese students in Japan, Japa-
nese advisers or ga nized new programs with Japa nese training built in, and
Chinese students returned from abroad provided living proof of what an
eye- opening experience study in Japan could be. In their New Policies,
Zhang Zhidong and Liu Kunyi urged all provinces to send students abroad
on scholarships to study military science, liberal arts, and technical special-
ties. On the Japan side, schools were built for Chinese students and special
programs were expanded. What started out as a trickle of students quickly
became a flood. This appeared to signal a mutually beneficial relationship.
The early 1900s were uncertain times for China’s youth. The civil- service
exam, the traditional path to career success, was being phased out, and by
1905 it had been ended entirely. More problematic— and clear to all in con-
temporaneous photos of occupied Beijing— was the very survival of a weak-
ened China facing stronger foreign militaries readily deployed to preserve
their array of China interests north to south. Now the foreign powers also
included Japan, its China policy hard to read but, for the moment, a useful
example of fast- track modernization. For China’s leaders and young people
alike, studying the Japan model seemed the best way to prepare for the
future. By 1902, as part of a “New Policies effect,” there were already 400 to
500 Chinese students in Japan; by 1903 there were 1,000, and by 1906, in a
. 164 .
Japa nese Lessons for a Modernizing China, 1895–1937
burst of enthusiasm after Japan’s victory over Rus sia, the numbers rose to
perhaps as many as 10,000. These were small numbers in an absolute sense
but a huge percentage of those between the ages of seventeen and twenty-
five who were then receiving a modern education. How to manage this group
of scholarship and privately funded students, some of whom had radical
leanings on arrival and others who were swept into protest politics on the
scene, ultimately became a challenge for authorities on both sides.
Students were enrolled in a whole potpourri of programs and special-
ties, the more so as time went on and they began to go to Japan on their
own funds and to demand short- term, intensive programs. According to the
rec ords of 660 students from 1903, about 40 percent were in liberal arts and
teacher- training programs, notably at Kano Jigoro’s Kobun Institute or
Waseda and Hosei Universities. Another 30 percent were taking a mix of
primary, vocational, and college- level specialized courses. The remaining
30 percent were enrolled in a police studies course at Kobun or were cadets
at the military preparatory school Seijo Gakko, which had admitted its first
Chinese students in 1898. In 1904 China’s Bureau of Military Training an-
nounced a new joint central- government– and province- financed program
to send 100 students a year to Japan for a four- year course of military studies.
In 1932, half of the members of the Nationalist government’s military com-
mission were gradu ates of Japa nese military schools.
Meiji Japan was a law- and- order society, but compared with Qing China
it was open and vibrant, with discussion of new ideas to balance off de-
bates and public protests in the streets. Openness to new ideas was what
had brought Chinese students to Japan in the first place, and in 1900, even
before the New Policies were announced, a handful of Chinese students
had started a small journal to translate and publish Western and Japa nese
works. Ariga Nagao’s Con temporary Po liti cal History was included among
them, along with school lectures and articles from foreign- affairs maga-
zines. With even more students going to Japan, these types of small ven-
tures multiplied. The students began to or ga nize, first an all- student
union, and then provincial clubs, spaces where they not only could socialize
but also compare notes on what they were learning, talk about the challenges
China faced, vent about the state of politics, and criticize the Qing govern-
ment. It was a natu ral next step to publish these discussions, and easy to
do in Meiji Japan, as Liang Qichao had discovered. In 1906 there were six
. 165 .
china and japan
student provincial magazines; the next year, twenty. Total circulation figures
were small (around 7,000), but they compared well with those for Liang’s
magazines and, similarly, they were distributed in Shanghai and widely
shared. They helped supply an increasingly po liti cally aware readership
with new information—on Western po liti cal thought, legal systems, current
events— along with critical commentary, increasingly scathing, on Manchu
rule. Overall, the student publications contributed substantially to a new
phenomenon in China: an opposition press.
Students were drawn to the diversity of ideas they encountered in Japan
and the novelty of bringing them to the attention of the Chinese reading
public. Articles in the provincial journals covered a mix of topics; an essay
on the Rus sian anarchist movement might be followed by an article on the
Meiji banking system and another on the functioning of the brain, all of
them sounding like school reports. However, when it came to politics there
was a single- minded focus on one vexing issue— the source of national
power. What accounted for Western strength? Why had Japan made it in
the world and China had not? How could the Chinese develop a stronger
spirit of nationalism? By fixating on national power, the Chinese students
were following, not leading, a trend. Discussions of social Darwinism and
imperialism as applied to Japan were hot topics in the Meiji press at the time.
In the view of some Japa nese academics, not only were survival- of- the- fittest
strug gles inevitable but becoming imperialist, as Western nations had done,
was an indicator of success and good policy. In fact, in the context of the
times, it was axiomatic that if a nation could expand, it would expand. As
Theodore Roo se velt said in
1899: “ Every expansion of a great civilized power
means a victory for law, order, and righ teousness.”11 For Chinese students,
imperialism became something both to resist and to strive for, while social
Darwinist talk of the fittest races gave them a framework in which to cast the
Manchus as not only incompetent but also racially inferior.
These were big issues for China’s youth, worried about both China’s
future and their own, and increasingly frustrated that their government ap-
peared unable to do anything about either. In the freer atmosphere in
Japan they had a chance to make their complaints public, not only in writing
but in person, at the Chinese legation or at their schools, in small repre-
sen ta tions or in larger protests. Very quickly after 1902, as more students
arrived in Japan, some on scholarships, others privately funded, Zhang
. 166 .
Japa nese Lessons for a Modernizing China, 1895–1937
Zhidong’s study- in- Japan program essentially got away from him, with stu-
dents becoming increasingly critical and accusing him of being a Manchu
apologist in cahoots with Japa nese imperialists. That it became difficult to
supervise and control the students is hardly surprising, given the fact that
this was the first large- scale study- abroad program anywhere. There were
no available models to emulate for counseling students either before they
went to Japan or while they studied there.
Students saw po liti cal slights everywhere. When they read news reports
that the exhibit on Chinese culture at the Osaka Exhibition would feature
Chinese women who had bound feet and smoked opium, they drafted angry
letters to the Japa nese organizers and to China’s representatives in Tokyo,
prompting an investigation. When the Chinese government announced that
only carefully screened scholarship students, not privately funded students,
would be eligible for admission to Seijo Gakko, Japan’s premier military
acad emy, they protested publicly that anyone patriotic enough to undertake
the course should be allowed to enter. What seemed a minor matter esca-
lated into an angry confrontation between several hundred students and the
Chinese minister to Japan, a sit-in at the legation, and a call to the Japa nese
police to oust the protesters. This was clearly less about admissions and
China and Japan Page 26
