China and Japan

by Ezra F. Vogel

  Yoshida Shigeru, the preeminent Japa nese leader from 1946 to 1952, during

  and immediately after the Allied Occupation, set Japan on its new po liti cal

  course after World War II. As elected prime minister for most of the time

  from 1946 to 1954, Yoshida, a former elite- track diplomat, made an effort

  to represent Japan’s national interests to the Allied Occupation officials. Yet

  he knew the Occupation officials had ultimate power and he willingly ac-

  cepted and implemented most of their policies. Concerned that many po-

  liti cal leaders voted in under the new system of demo cratic elections might

  not have the knowledge or perspective to govern wisely, Yoshida helped re-

  cruit former se nior bureaucrats who were knowledgeable about govern-

  mental affairs to become politicians. These ex- bureaucrats, a group known

  as the “Yoshida school,” sought to maintain Japan’s alliance with the United

  States. They supported economic growth through a government- guided

  market economy and they managed affairs with sufficient success that within

  two de cades after the war, the vast majority of Japa nese citizens had be-

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  come members of the middle class. For four de cades after the war, most

  of Japan’s prime ministers were members of the Yoshida School, including

  Ikeda Hayato, Sato Eisaku, Fukuda Takeo, Ohira Masayoshi, and Miyazawa

  Kiichi.

  Yoshida was born in Yokohama and at a young age was adopted by a

  rich childless merchant, Yoshida Kenzo. He lived a privileged aristocratic

  life and was educated at elite schools and Tokyo Imperial University. He

  married the daughter of Count Makino Nobuaki, the adopted son of Okubo

  Toshimichi, the leading statesman during the first de cade of the Meiji pe-

  riod, which gave him a very high status within the bureaucracy.

  When he was a Foreign Ministry official, Yoshida was considered a

  member of the Anglo- American school and he had great re spect for the

  British po liti cal system. But he spent more years serving in China than serving

  in English- speaking countries. His first overseas assignment was in the Japa-

  nese consulate in Shenyang, from 1907 to 1908. He served as consul in

  Dandong (then called Andong) on the border with Korea from 1912 to 1915,

  and then he was assigned to Ji’nan, in Shandong province, in 1918. He was

  consul general in the port city of Tianjin from 1922 to 1925 and in Shenyang

  from 1925 to 1928.

  During his first assignment in Dandong, he wrote reports expressing his

  opposition to the Twenty- One Demands that Japan had presented to China

  in 1915. He wrote that it was necessary to build China’s trust and cooperation

  and that the “Shina ronin” (China drifters), who were then engaged in in-

  trigue and espionage in China, made it difficult for the Japa nese to develop

  friendly trade relations with China. After Yoshida voiced his opposition to

  the Twenty- One Demands, he was criticized within the ministry and as-

  signed to work in rec ords instead of receiving a plum assignment in Wash-

  ington. Yoshida attended the 1919 peace conference at Versailles, where he

  was persuaded that national power was more influential than idealism. He

  also became cynical about U.S. expressions of idealism when there was so

  much discrimination against the Japa nese in California.

  In the 1920s Yoshida quickly grew pessimistic, believing that no Chi-

  nese leader would be able to unify China and provide effective leadership.

  Late in the de cade he expressed frustration with Zhang Zuolin because

  Zhang did not manage things well and his statements could not be trusted.

  Having concluded that China’s leaders did not respond to expressions

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  of friendship unless backed by force, he favored a firm policy toward

  China.

  As Japan’s ambassador in England from 1936 to 1938, Yoshida persisted

  in seeking ways to restore good relations with England. But once Japa nese

  troops moved into North China on July 7, 1937, any chance of success dis-

  appeared. Yoshida returned to Tokyo in 1938.

  In 1942 Yoshida concluded that Japan could not win the war, and he

  began working with others to try to negotiate a settlement. The group was

  known to Japa nese police as Yohansen (Yoshida Anti- War). He worked with

  Prince Konoe Fumimaro, who was briefly prime minister in 1940–1941, to

  prepare the “Konoe Memorial,” which Konoe was fi nally allowed to pre sent

  to the emperor on February 14, 1945, urging the emperor to surrender. At

  the time, the emperor did not agree to end the war, and on April 15, 1945,

  Yoshida was arrested for supporting Konoe’s attempt to bring about Japan’s

  surrender.

  On April 10, 1946, in the first postwar election for the Diet, Hatoyama

  Ichiro’s Liberal Party won a substantial plurality and it was expected that he

  would become the first postwar prime minister. However, Occupation offi-

  cials had already pro cessed the papers for the purge of Hatoyama, who in

  the 1930s had praised Hitler and Mussolini. After receiving the purge order,

  Hatoyama, who knew Yoshida well, asked Yoshida to form the new govern-

  ment. In May 1946 Yoshida became prime minister. General Douglas Ma-

  cArthur, head of the Allied Occupation, and Yoshida found that they could

  work well with each other. Yoshida was prime minister between 1946 and

  1954, except for the period from April 1947 through November 1948 when

  he was out of office because of losing the election.

  In the view of the Allied Occupation officials in 1946, Yoshida was the

  best pos si ble choice to be prime minister. He had a good command of En-

  glish and he was considered to be pro– Anglo- American. He had been im-

  prisoned by the militarists for his efforts to end the war, and he had unusual y

  good relations with Joseph Grew, the respected U.S. ambassador to Japan

  from 1932 to 1941. Grew’s wife had been good friends with Yoshida’s wife, and

  the Grews were a great help to Yoshida’s wife in her last months, when she

  was suffering from a terminal il ness. After Pearl Harbor, when Grew was

  confined in Japan before being repatriated, Yoshida, at some personal risk,

  sent food and other items to Grew. With this background, Yoshida was a

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  natu ral choice for the Americans, who were looking for a prime minister with

  whom they could communicate and in whom they had confidence.

  On September 20, 1945, Yoshida, as foreign minister, had his first

  meeting with MacArthur. At scarcely five feet tall, Yoshida was a head

  shorter than MacArthur, but when meeting him he displayed the natu ral

  poise and dignity of a member of the meritocratic elite from an aristocratic

  family. During this first meeting with MacArthur, as the American gen-

  eral paced the room giving Yoshida what the Japa nese called a “sermon,”

  Yoshida broke into a slight laugh. When MacArthur inquired why, Yo-

  shida said he felt as if he was Daniel listening to a lecture inside a lion’s

  cage. MacArthur reportedly first glared and then laughed.

 
During the meeting, Yoshida made a point that he would later repeat

  many times in many diff er ent ways—to have democracy, one first had to

  improve economic conditions. It was not until 1947 that U.S. policy in Japan

  began to emphasize economic growth. Also at this meeting, Yoshida sug-

  gested that MacArthur should meet the emperor, and a meeting with the

  emperor took place one week later.

  As an out spoken aristocrat, Yoshida was not a populist and was not even

  popu lar with the elected Diet members who came from humbler back-

  grounds. In March 1953 he lost an election after he yelled at a Socialist

  Diet member, “Bakayaro! ” (You idiot!). Yet Yoshida was respected by much

  of the Japa nese public for speaking to the Occupation authorities frankly

  and with dignity, even when Japan was in a weak position.

  In his years as prime minister during the Occupation, Yoshida accepted

  the real ity that foreign and domestic policy were to be determined by the

  Allied forces, but he continued to make the case that Japan should be al-

  lowed to rebuild its economy. He argued in favor of allowing Japan to in-

  crease its trade with China, against punishing so many “war criminals,” and

  against breaking up Japa nese companies because it would prevent economic

  growth— all with little success. However, what is known as the “Yoshida

  doctrine” allowed the United States to provide for Japan’s military security

  so Japan could reduce its military expenses and focus on economic recovery.

  Yoshida was a smart, per sis tent negotiator who managed to end the

  Occupation without making a commitment to build a large military.

  Early in his career Yoshida had been a firm believer in the Anglo- Japanese

  alliance that lasted until 1922. The alliance was based on Britain and Japan’s

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  common fear of Rus sia, even long before the Rus sian Revolution. To Yoshida,

  the U.S.- Japan alliance also made sense, for he believed the greatest danger

  to Japan was still Rus sia, even though it was now Soviet Rus sia instead of

  Imperial Rus sia.

  Yoshida argued that allowing Japan to develop trade with China would

  help pull China away from the Soviet Union, but U.S. officials would not

  yield. Yoshida retained his deep interest in China and wanted to develop

  peaceful relations. He believed that more trade between China and Japan

  would be good for both countries, and that Great Britain’s decision to es-

  tablish diplomatic relations with Communist China in January 1950, within

  months after the establishment of Communist rule, was wise, and the failure

  of the United States to do likewise was unwise. He did not have the power

  to force the U.S.- led Occupation to allow Japan to expand trade with China,

  but he wanted as much trade as the United States would allow and to pave

  the way for a time in the future when more trade would be pos si ble. In the

  meantime, he sought to continue trade with Taiwan, making use of Japan-

  Taiwan ties that had been built in the half- century of Japa nese occupation.

  After the Allied Occupation ended on April 28, 1952, Yoshida remained

  in office for another two and a half years. During that time, he lived up to

  the letter he had written to U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles in

  December 1951, promising that he would maintain relations with Taiwan

  and not move closer to mainland China.

  While in office after the Occupation, Yoshida made no great policy

  changes except when, in 1954, the “police reserves” that had been earlier es-

  tablished were converted into a new Self- Defense Force, with an autho-

  rized 152,115 troops. After retiring, Yoshida retained his informal role as

  statesman, welcoming to his home both politicians and foreign visitors.

  When MacArthur died in April 1964, Yoshida, at age eighty- six, traveled

  to the United States for the funeral, signifying the per sis tence of a close re-

  lationship between the two men and between the two countries. Yoshida

  died three years later.

  For further reading, see John Dower, Empire and Aftermath: Yoshida

  Shigeru and the Japa nese Experience, 1878–1954 (Cambridge, Mass.: Council

  on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1979); Richard B. Finn, Win-

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  ners in Peace: MacArthur, Yoshida, and Postwar Japan (Berkeley: University

  of California Press, 1992).

  Zhou Enlai, 1898–1976

  Henry Kissinger described Zhou Enlai, the legendary Chinese premier and

  foreign minister, as “one of the two or three most impressive men” he ever met,

  “infinitely patient, extraordinarily intel igent, subtle.” Zhou studied in Japan

  for nineteen months from 1917 to 1919, just when Chinese nationalism was

  growing, He was in France from 1920 to 1924, as it was recovering from World

  War I and evaluating the significance of the Rus sian Revolution. Zhou joined

  the Chinese Communist Party in 1921, the year it was founded. After the es-

  tablishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, he served as premier,

  with responsibility for foreign affairs, from 1949 until his death in 1976. Zhou

  had a remarkable capacity to remember and manage details while devising

  national strategy and finding ways to work with other nations.

  Zhou Enlai grew up in a middle- class, well- educated family, with four

  brothers. His parents allowed him to be adopted by his father’s younger

  brother, who was dying of tuberculosis, so his uncle would have an heir.

  Zhou’s stepmother, Madame Chen, doted on him and provided him with

  an excellent Confucian education in which he excelled, but she died when

  he was ten years old, a year after Zhou’s natu ral mother died. Zhou’s natu ral

  father moved away, but another of his father’s brothers, who had no children,

  took an interest in Zhou’s education and brought him along when he moved

  to Shenyang, where Zhou attended the city’s best primary school. The uncle

  then brought Zhou with him to Tianjin, where Zhou passed the entrance

  examination for Nankai Middle School— one of China’s best middle

  schools, modeled after Phillips Acad emy in the United States— which

  Zhou attended from age fifteen to nineteen. The school was a highly struc-

  tured boarding school. Students lived in dormitories, rose early, took classes

  in modern subjects, ate together, and developed strong feelings of camara-

  derie. Zhou thrived there, wrote for the school newspaper, had a lead role

  in a school play, was covaledictorian of his class, and won a graduation prize

  for an outstanding Chinese essay. He was much beloved and respected by

  the faculty and his fellow students.

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  Before Zhou went to Japan in 1917 he was already familiar with Japa-

  nese life, since some 200,000 Japa nese lived in Shenyang when he was in

  school there. In Tokyo, Zhou soon moved from a Chinese inn to a Japa-

  nese inn because it was quieter, and then he moved to a dormitory for

  Chinese students, where they could do their own cooking. He entered a

  Japanese- language program at East Asian Higher Preparatory School,
a

  school with nearly 1,000 Chinese students who were preparing for admission

  into regular Japa nese institutions. Most of his friends in Tokyo were from

  a group of thirty gradu ates from his middle school. His uncle sent him some

  money to cover his expenses in Tokyo, but Zhou was constantly short of

  funds, and several former schoolmates from Nankai Middle School

  chipped in to help him out financially.

  After some months of studying Japa nese and En glish, Zhou took an ex-

  amination to enter Tokyo Education School, but he failed. He later took

  another entrance examination, for Number One High School, which he

  also failed. In his diary he blames himself for his failures. He also rec ords

  his sadness about the deaths in his family, the untended graves of his mother

  and stepmother, the death of his uncle who had helped him out, and his in-

  ability to help his family. Friends reported that while in Japan Zhou became

  depressed. The fact that he failed the examinations was a terrible embarrass-

  ment because he had been an outstanding student at Nankai, because many

  of his former schoolmates did pass their entrance examinations in Japan,

  and because his friends in Japan had to help him out financially.

  Zhou did not have any close Japa nese friends but he had friendly ac-

  quaintances. He expressed appreciation to the president of his preparatory

  school, Master Matsumoto Kamejiro, who had formerly taught at Kano Jig-

  oro’s Kobun Institute. (When Zhou’s widow, Deng Yingchao, visited Japan

  in April 1979, she paid her re spects to Matsumoto’s grand sons.) Yasuda

  Ryumon, an art student in the same rooming house where Zhou lived,

  painted Zhou’s picture, and in 2000 the paint er’s son presented the por-

  trait to the Zhou Enlai and Deng Yingchao Memorial Museum in Tianjin.

  Later, in his writings, Zhou was critical of Japa nese politicians and milita-

  rists who had imperialist designs on China, and he was also critical of the

  Chinese who called other Chinese “traitors” if they had Japa nese friends. Al-

  though he later took part in anti- Japanese demonstrations, he did not ex-

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  press antipathy toward the Japa nese people. He was quite comfortable in

  dealing with Japa nese visitors later in his career, and he reminisced fondly

  about his time in Japan, especially remembering his visits to the Kanda