The series to this point has attempted to “paint a picture” of the nation of Japan at the doorstep of the 20th century. In one way it can be viewed as Japan’s experience and reaction to the western world. There was a point in time when Japan, as the apprentice, looked to China as the master of knowledge, spirituality, statecraft, governance, and the model of Japan’s aspirations. But by the late 9th century AD, the apprentice had matured and the master diminished. Japan stopped official missions to China. For the next 800 years or so, until the late 16th or early 17th centuries, the relationship was largely trade with occasional moments of diplomacy when one side or the other wanted something. As Japan entered the Edo Period, as mentioned in an earlier post, Korea became a point of contention between China and Japan with a series of wars in the 1590s fought on the Korean peninsula. It was at this point that Japan entered the Tokugawa Shogunate period and the nation of Japan implemented severe maritime policies that isolated the nation and the people from outside contact – which at this point meant the western powers and proselytizing Christian denominations. When Japan emerged from isolation with the fall of Tokugawa and the rise of the Meiji era, the world of Asia was radically changed. The once great China had been humbled and reduced to a near vassal state under the power of western commerce supported by its military.

This is when the theory of social darwinism left its mark on Japan. The leaders of Japan concluded that nations are competing organisms with only two outcomes: domination or eradication. China was the proof. Japan’s national strategies began to coalesce around this idea, especially buffer zones and strategic depth. Korea was described as “a dagger pointed at the heart of Japan.” And since conflict was inevitable, preemptive expansion was critical and the first goal was Korea. Leadership and thinkers concluded that if Japan did not dominate Korea, another power would. Japan rapidly modernized along Western military, industrial, and administrative lines. The most recent posts outlined the transformation of Japan’s military in support of these conclusions.

Meanwhile, China was a shell of its former self but Korea was still a tribute state dependent upon them.

Korea would be the flash point. The First Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895) did not arise from a single crisis but from the collision of long-term structural change and immediate political triggers, centered above all on Korea.

Changes in Asian Dynamics

For centuries China presided over a tributary system in which Korea was a loyal client. By the late 19th century Western imperialism shattered this system and Japan has evolved into a nation ready to resist that same Western force to maintain its sovereignty even as China was losing theirs. Critical to Japan’s sovereignty was control of the “dagger pointed at the heart of Japan” – Korea. Japanese elites concluded that China was structurally incapable of defending Korea and that delay would allow Western powers or Russia to intervene. If Korea fell under hostile control, Japan would be exposed. Control of Korea, not its independence or vassalage to China was acceptable. Control of Korea was non-negotiable to Japan. Under such assumptions, diplomacy would fail and war was inevitable.

During the late 19th century, Korean society faced various social problems such as inequality, corruption, and excessive taxation. These problems later sparked a series of peasant-led rebellions culminating in the 1894 Donghak Peasant Rebellion. In the decade before this uprising, China and Japan signed the Tientsin Convention (1885) agreeing to withdraw their troops from Korea and agreed to notify each other before future deployments. During the rebellion, the Korean government requested troop support from China, who did not notify Japan. Soon enough Japan deployed army and navy assets to Korea – in far greater numbers than China’s deployment. Japan quickly captured and occupied Seoul and installed a pro-Japanese government.

Japan demanded joint Sino-Japanese reform of Korea and an end to Chinese vassalage. China rejected these terms and insisted on traditional authority. With terms and conditions far apart, Japan feared that further delay would give Western powers space to insert themselves into the problem. China feared humiliation. Negotiation collapsed, military incidents happened, fighting intensified and eventually war was formally declared. The First Sino-Japanese War resulted from the collision of Japan’s modern, survival-oriented strategy and China’s declining tributary authority, with Korea’s instability transforming long-term rivalry into unavoidable armed conflict (1894-95)

One step forward, one step back

I leave the details of the fighting to others. Japan won and extracted major concessions from China (Treaty of Shimonoseki):

• China transferred full sovereignty of Taiwan (then called Formosa), the Pescadores (Penghu Islands) and the Liaodong Peninsula including Port Arthur, a warm water port.
• China agreed to pay 200 million taels of silver which was about twice Japan’s annual budget.
• Opening of ports to Japan with the same favored-nation status as the western powers. In addition Japan could operate factories and industries in treaty ports meaning they could engage in manufacturing, not just trade
• For the first time in history, the two nations exchanged ambassadors – Japan was now one of the great powers.

This was a great step forward for Japan.

Immediately after the terms of the treaty became public, Russia, with its own designs and sphere of influence in China, expressed concern about the Japanese acquisition of the Liaodong Peninsula and the possible impact of the terms of the treaty on the stability of China. Russia persuaded France and Germany to apply diplomatic pressure on Japan for the return of the territory to China in exchange for a larger indemnity. 

At the end of 1895 Russia, France, and Germany (the Triple Intervention) pressured Japan to return Liaodong to China. Russia had the most to gain from the Triple Intervention. In the preceding years, Russia had been slowly increasing its influence in the Far East and had built a warm water port in the Russian east, Vladivostok. The construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway and the acquisition of another warm-water port on the China Seas would enable Russia to consolidate her presence in the region and further expand into Asia and the Pacific. Port Arthur falling into Japanese hands undermined its own need for the additional warm-water port in Asia. France and Russia agreed to help for their own reasons.

Japan complied but felt humiliated calculating it would not be able to resist a military takeover. The Liaodong episode radicalized Japanese attitudes toward Western powers and China. The Japanese public was outraged, especially after Russia obtained a 25-year lease on the peninsula in 1898. The reaction against the Triple Intervention was one of ongoing diplomatic conflicts with Russia.

One step back.

Implications and observations

The Treaty of Shimonoseki marked China’s transition from being the regional power broker to that of a  semi-colonial state. At the same time, it confirmed Japan as a modern imperial power and set the stage for Japan’s later continental expansion outlined in its “strategic buffer” policy.

The First Sino-Japanese war marked Japan as a military power – but was Japan capable of engaging a western military power? That question would be put to the test in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905.

One of Japan’s conclusions about western powers is the pattern of unequal treaties that were forced upon China. Ironically, when one considers the Treaty of Shimonoseki, the terms heavily borrowed the mechanisms of Western unequal treaties but applied them with greater strategic finality. Where Western powers sought access and influence, Japan sought territory, hierarchy, and regional leadership. For China, this made the treaty uniquely traumatic: it confirmed not only military defeat but the collapse of an entire worldview in which China stood at Asia’s center.

In their treaties with China, western powers sought territorial concessions that were limited (e.g., Hong Kong) and strategic enclaves rather than full provinces. Japan demanded entire territories that were permanently transferred and then governed directly as colonies. Japan replicated Western economic imperialism but compressed its demands into a single treaty having learned all the lessons that came before. The treaty directly dismantled China’s tributary system, its regional leadership and removed Korea from China’s orbit. Where the western treaties weakened China globally; Japan destroyed China’s East Asian order.

The Treaty of Shimonoseki borrowed the mechanisms of Western unequal treaties but applied them with greater strategic finality. Where Western powers sought access and influence, Japan sought territory, hierarchy, and regional leadership. For China, this made the treaty uniquely traumatic: it confirmed not only military defeat but the collapse of an entire worldview in which China stood at Asia’s center.

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Image credit: various photographs from Naval Aviation Museum, National World War II Museum, and US Navy Archives.