In the previous post we considered the late 19th-century events in Hawaii that led to the overthrow of the Hawaiian constitutional monarchy and eventually the annexation of Hawaii as a U.S. territory. The post ended with the Japanese reaction to these events. This post explores the lens through which the Hawaii events were seen and the rationale for the coming wars with China (1894-1895) and Russia (1904-1905). It also forms the basis on how the United States will be increasingly seen from Japan’s point of view.
If you ask most people who coined the phrase “survival of the fittest,” the most probable reply is Charles Darwin. But the correct answer is Herbert Spenser, a 19th century English philosopher. He is best known for his theory that, much to his chagrin, came to be known as Social Darwinism. Spenser’s work was based on the evolutionary theory of Lamarck, who posited that organs are developed or diminished by use or disuse and that the resulting changes may be transmitted to future generations. Spenser applied this view of evolution to society, proposing that societies, like organisms, evolve from simple to complex, and individuals/groups best adapted to competition thrive (“survival of the fittest”). He might be thought of as sociological “libertarian” as he advocated for minimal government interference (laissez-faire) to allow natural progress through specialization and adaptation, viewing society as an evolving organism. He argued for individual liberty and believed societal advancement comes from the “fittest” succeeding, leading to a more complex, efficient world.
When Spenser’s work reached late-19th-century Japan it reshaped elite thinking leading to a re-evaluation and view of China and East Asia after the Meiji Reforms. The core assumptions absorbed in Japan was that the nations compete like organisms in which there will always be a struggle for the resources that make life flourish and history will be governed by conflict in which weak states are absorbed or eliminated. Moral intention will not stave off extinction. For a nation that had long been invested in Confucian life where virtue and moral order are essential elements, the shift away from moral intentions to survival of the fittest, the natural pathway was imperialism and permanent competition for local, regional and global dominance.
It was a rapid shift away from traditional and classic ways of understanding the world order because they watched it unfold in the living laboratory called China. For Japanese elites and leaders social darwinism was evident in the Opium Wars, the Unequal Treaties, loss of economic control, and disintegration of internal cohesion. China became the empirical proof that moral civilization without power equals extinction.
Even before Spenser’s work reached Japan in 1870, Fukuzawa Yukichi published “Conditions in the West,” a meditation based on his observations in Europe and America. He introduced the concept that international relations operate by power, not morality and as a result weak nations are exploited regardless of virtue. He pointed out that China, while being morally refined, is politically helpless, no nation at all and is subjugated to the economic interest of the non-Asian world powers.
Among Japanese elites the dialogue asserted that Asia was collectively at risk, only strength and modernization could prevent subjugation, and equality would be granted only to those who could enforce it. Thus national survival required military parity, industrial capacity and territorial buffers
In 1882 Katō Hiroyuki published “A New Theory of Human Rights,” work in which Katō explicitly rejected natural rights, arguing that rights arise from power. He applied what was essentially evolutionary logic to politics: “The strong rule; the weak are destroyed—this is the law of nature.” Why this is significant is that his work marks the moment when evolutionary struggle became normative political theory. And then Spenser’ s work was translated by Katō and was propagated throughout academic journals tied to Tokyo Imperial University. Spencer’s philosophy opposed imperial aggression, but the Japanese elite emphasized struggle and survival.
In 1886, Tokutomi Sohō moved social darwinism to general readership with his work “The Future Japan.” In the popular work he combined social darwinism, national destiny, and historical inevitability. He argued that nations are competing organisms with only two outcomes: domination or eradication. He used China as the proof. This text popularized elite theory for mass readership, turning Darwinism into common sense.
In 1890 social darwinism was explicitly militarized as state strategy in the writings of Yamagata Aritomo. He was not translating western works, but synthesized western military theory to highlight key elements of national strategy: buffer zones and strategic depth. His famous idea was describing Korea as “a dagger pointed at the heart of Japan.” Yamagata asserted that since conflict was inevitable, preemptive expansion was critical and the first goal was Korea. If Japan did not dominate Korea, another power would.
The ideas of Yamagata pointed to zones of survival that were more than geography. Given Japan’s lack of many natural resources, Manchuria became seen as a repository of needed resources and a buffer against Imperial Russia. Zones of survival were never neutral. It was in this view that imperialism was not aggression but was defensive in nature. The implications are that the “empire” was inevitable and forced by global conditions. This allowed Japanese leaders to claim: “We do not seek conquest; we seek existence.” It is a logic that removes ethical restraint.
Another important work was “Leaving Asia (1985) by Fukuzawa Yukichi. It was an essay that argued that Japan must separate from backward Asia (pointedly referring to China and Korea). Strategically this transformed these two nations to “zones of survival” for their resources and to position to serve as a buffer against major powers.
The evolving integration of social darwinism into national polity and strategy began to transform Pan-Asianism. Early Pan-Asian thought was focused on solidarity among Asian nations in order to form a mutual defense in terms of culture, economy and border integrity. But under the concepts of social darwinism, Asia needed a leader. Japan’s view was that they were the only viable candidate. Solidarity was replaced by the architecture of hierarchy within Asia.
This thinking was not uniform across the range of Japanese elites. Some Pan-Asian thinkers opposed the imperialism embedded in the fusion of the two forms of strategy. At the same time, business leaders worried about economic stability and national budgets being redirected to military expansion. But military and bureaucratic elites set the national policy
What this means is that, depending on who governed, international relationships would be increasingly less reliant on the role of diplomacy as international relations became zero-sum, evolutionary and amoral. This logic carries will become evident in the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–95), the Russian-Japanese War (1904–05), the aftermath of the Mukdan Incident (1931) and the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945; the opening action the the Asia-Pacific War) and in the attack on Pearl Harbor.
When Japan adopted a Social Darwinist lens, East Asia ceased to be a shared moral world and became a competitive ecological system. China was re-imagined not as a fallen elder brother but as an endangered species whose weakness threatened Japan’s own survival. Russia, Britain, France, Holland, Germany, and the United States were existential threats to Japan’s independence.
From this perspective, imperial expansion was a necessity for the very sake and survival of the nation.
Image credit: various photographs from Naval Aviation Museum, National World War II Museum, and US Navy Archives.
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