At the start of the 20th century, U.S. and Japanese interests appeared to be aligned both nations supported the idea of an “open door” for commercial expansion in China. After the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05, U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt acted as a mediator at Japan’s request, and the two sides of the conflict met on neutral territory in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. In the same year, U.S. Secretary of War William Howard Taft met with Prime Minister Katsura Taro in Japan. The two concluded the Taft-Katsura Agreement, in which the United States acknowledged Japanese rule over Korea and condoned the Anglo-Japanese alliance of 1902. At the same time, Japan recognized U.S. control of the Philippines. It seemed as though the great powers in the Pacific region had reached a detent.

The apparent stability in U.S.–Japanese relations after 1905 can be misleading if we assume it removed Japan’s own strategic imperatives. In fact, the Russo-Japanese War settlement and the Taft–Katsura understanding reinforced rather than reduced Japan’s incentive to deepen its position in Manchuria. Several interlocking reasons explain this.

Manchuria 

Japan did not go to war with Russia primarily to win diplomatic recognition or goodwill from the United States. Its central objectives were security and economic survival. Manchuria was always the goal of the 1904-1905 war. The war was meant prevent a renewed Russian threat on the Asian mainland and to secure resources and markets unavailable in Japan itself

The Treaty of Portsmouth transferred to Japan Russia’s leasehold on the Liaodong Peninsula (Port Arthur, Dairen), control of the South Manchuria Railway (SMR) south of Changchun, and recognition of Japan’s “paramount interests” in Korea. These gains were geographically limited and strategically fragile. From Tokyo’s perspective, holding them required deeper penetration, not restraint. A narrow railway zone without political, economic, and military depth was indefensible. Taft–Katsura effectively removed constraints upon Japan rather than imposed limits.

From the U.S. perspective, the 1905 Taft–Katsura Agreement was seen as a mutual guarantee of peace. It is true that the Agreement established a recognition-of-spheres: U.S. acceptance of Japanese predominance in Korea and Japanese acceptance of U.S. control of the Philippines. But crucially, Manchuria was not restricted as the U.S. did not guarantee China’s territorial integrity in practice. So, on the Japanese side of things they concluded that as long as American core interests were untouched, it had room to maneuver on the continent. To the Japanese, Taft–Katsura signaled permissiveness, not partnership.

Economic Reality

Simply put, Manchuria was essential to Japan’s economic strategy. By 1905 Japan faced structural problems of rapid population growth, limited arable land, and dependence on foreign raw materials (coal, iron, soybeans). Manchuria offered vast resources of coal and iron, agricultural land and food supplies, a market for Japanese industry, and a base for settler colonialism, seen as a solution to domestic social pressures. The South Manchuria Railway Company quickly became a transportation firm, a development agency and a political and intelligence instrument. Economic logic alone pushed Japan beyond mere treaty rights.

The war with Russia had been a massive financial strain on Japan. The total cost of the war is estimated at around ¥17–20 billion. By comparison, government revenues in 1905 were only about ¥400 million, meaning war spending equaled roughly five years of peacetime revenue. Other war expense estimates range at nearly 11–12 times revenues.  Whatever the case, Japan had to finance the war.

Roughly three-quarters of the war cost was covered by public bonds rather than taxes. A significant portion of this debt was sold on international markets, especially in London and other European financial centers, where Japanese foreign bonds found buyers through syndicates of banks supported ultimately by foreign credit. Around 40% of war expenditure was funded via overseas borrowing.

Japan’s banking and financial markets at the end of the Russo-Japanese War were under significant stress from heavy deficit spending, heavy reliance on debt finance (both domestic and foreign), and strained central bank reserves. The war pushed the government well into deficit territory by peacetime standards and transformed how public finance and capital markets operated in modern Japan.

Manchuria was the means to solve their economic and strategic concerns.

The Pattern

At the same time, China’s weakness invited Japanese incursions into Manchuria. Qing China was militarily weak, politically unstable, and had no means to enforce sovereignty in Manchuria. Japan simply followed an imperial pattern they had seen employed by the European powers: de facto control without overt conquests. It started with the railway zones, embedding imperial advisors in positions of power, instituting a separate police force, monopolizing the financial and banking systems, inserting itself into the local school system or offering “premium” schooling opportunities.

By 1905, outright annexation was no longer the preferred first step of empire-building among great powers. It was diplomatically risky and expensive. Instead, empires sought control without sovereignty. Manchuria remained nominally sovereign as real power shifted to Japan. Japan initially avoided annexation precisely because it wished to avoid provoking the U.S. and Britain and it could extract economic and strategic benefits without legal responsibility.

Control of the Southern Manchurian Railroad (SMR) might seem somewhat minor, but was exactly the means for controlled troop movement and logistics.  The immigration of Japanese citizens to Manchuria was into settlements anchored on the railway. At the same time, the Chinese residents became economically dependent upon SMR services to transport their goods to market. In addition, by international norms of the time, railways created and defined extraterritorial “railway zones,” quasi-sovereign spaces. It is here that Japan stationed police, courts, and troops along the line. This allowed Japan to dominate Manchuria without governing all of it.

But who is in charge?

While Taft-Katsura recognized Manchuria as a “special interest” zone for Japan (since the U.S. had limited business interests there), diplomatically the U.S. held that Manchuria was part of China. As we’ve pointed out, Japan was slowly exerting increasing levels of dominance over Manchuria. But who was in charge of the Japanese strategy? The diplomats had negotiated Taft-Katsura, but it was the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) that drove policy in Manchuria. The IJA was of the view that Manchuria was the strategic barrier protecting Korea from the next Russian offensive. As a result they acted rather autonomously in the field, expanding their Japanese-held territories in Manchuria. Actions of the Japanese army (known as the Kwantung Army – Kwantung was another name for the Laiodong Peninsula area) set national policy as the government in Tokyo raced to catch up.

Where was the United States?

At this time the interests of the U.S. was maintaining the “Open Door” policy for China to ensure business interests, but also the U.S. has concerns about stability in the Philippines as well as being heavily involved in interventions and peacekeeping in the Caribbean and Central America, notably in Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua. As a result, the U.S. had limited military presence in East Asia, and as long as China trade was open, had other concerns. Only later, after immigration disputes, naval competition, and China policy clashes did Manchuria become a focal point of U.S. tension with Japan.

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

At this point in the series we have reached 1905. The Russo-Japanese War had just concluded with a peace settlement reached, moderated by the United States. China was technically at peace, but as we’ll explore later in this post, there was a lot of conflict ongoing within China’s borders – foreign states fighting one another and internal actors seeking to overthrow the Chinese Qing Dynasty government (the last of the Chinese imperial governments established by the Manchu people of northern China). What becomes confusing is the ebb-and-flow of  the control of “areas” of China in the first half of the 20th century. This post will attempt to offer a primer in area and names that will be bandied about in the following posts.

The major “areas” are as follows – and some of the nomenclature is mine in an attempt to (hopefully) make it easier to follow the storyline:

• China: the southern part of the nation nominally in control of the Chinese government(s) and unoccupied by a foreign power. Under the China “Open Door” policy (not a treaty but a working understanding) most European powers had enclaves in port cities and important cities of the interior prior to WW2.
• Manchuria: the traditional area in the northernmost bounds of the nation of China that was occupied, reoccupied, and in conflict between non-Chinese nations for the first half of the 20th century. It shares a border with Korea and Liaodong to the south and Siberia to the north. Importantly the railroad across Manchuria connected the TransSiberian Railroad to Russia’s eastern port of Vladivostok. 
• Northern China: a “made up” term that will be used to describe the area south of Manchuria and north of the rest of China. It is the area during the Second Sino-Japanese War (b. 1937) and incidents leading up to that conflict in which Japanese and Chinese forces clashed. While not exactly accurate, it is an area north of the Great Wall of China.
• Inner Mongolia: a crescent shaped area north of “Northern China” and west-southwest of Manchuria. It largely borders Mongolia (a Russian state) with some shared border area with Russia (Siberia) 
• Laiodong (Kwantung): a peninsula west of Korea peninsula that is important for its warm water ports (notably Port Arthur) and the terminus of a railway system that connected the ports to the Trans-Siberian Railroad. The Chinese Eastern Railroad will later be called South Manchurian Railroad and later designated the North Manchurian Railroad
• Korea: the boundaries then are the same as now. In the early 20th century it was technically an independent nation with its own king and queen.
• Formosa: now known as Taiwan.

Korea

Korea has its own rich and varied history, but for purposes of this post, by the 20th century Korea was either a tribute state subject to China or a battleground for China, Russia, and Japan. Korea had once been a land of the “Three Kingdoms” – Goguryeo, Paekche (Baekje), and Silla. At the height of its powers the three kingdoms occupied the entire peninsula and roughly half of Manchuria and small parts of the modern Russian Far East. Goguryeo controlled the northern half of the peninsula, as well as Liaodong Peninsula and Manchuria. Paekche and Silla occupied the southern half of the peninsula. 

Paekche was a great maritime power and was instrumental in the dissemination of Buddhism and its culture/skills to  ancient Japan. This included Chinese written characters, Chinese and Korean literature, and technologies such as ferrous metallurgy and ceramics, architectural styles, sericulture (silk worms) and Buddhism.

The history of Korea is far more complicated than the “Three Kingdom” but that was the foundation that became modern Korea (after many twists and turns!) In the late 19th century, the government implemented a strict isolationist policy, earning Korea the nickname “Hermit Kingdom”. Like Japan, the policy had been established primarily for protection against Western imperialism, but soon the ruling dynasty was forced to open trade, beginning an era leading into competing Chinese and Japanese pressures. Prior to the First Sino-Japanese War, Korea was a tribute state to China. The 1895 post-war settlement gave them independence and the King became the Emperor of Korea. 

Japan, Russia and China were the major foreign powers with interests in Korea, but at the end of the Russo-Japanese War in 1905, the Korean Empire effectively became a protectorate of Japan. At point of great contention, then and now, is that the 1905 Protectorate Treaty promulgated without the Emperor. It was not dissimilar to the U.S. annexation of Hawaii in 1898. Japan annexed Korea in 1910 and so things remained until 1945 and the defeat of Japan. 

There is a long history of animosity between Korea and Japan stemming from the 1905-1945 period. Even today, Korea feels that Japan has not sufficiently acknowledged numerous injustices from the period, with grievances focusing on an alleged lack of a clear, straightforward admission of historical wrongdoing, denial of specific atrocities, and failure to provide appropriate reparations to individual victims. The list of injustices includes:

• Sexual slavery (“comfort women”): the forced recruitment of tens of thousands of women, mostly Korean, into Japanese military brothels across Asia and the Pacific as sexual slaves.
• Forced labor: millions of Koreans were forced to work in harsh conditions in mines, factories, and on construction sites in Japan and its colonies with little to no payment.
• Cultural suppression: Japan implemented policies aimed at erasing Korean national identity, including banning the Korean language in schools and public spaces, forcing Koreans to adopt Japanese names, burning Korean historical documents, and converting Korean temples to honor Japanese deities.    
• Massacres and war crimes: Koreans highlight several mass murders and atrocities committed by Japanese forces, such as the Gando and Kantō massacres, not acknowledged by Japan.
• Legality of annexation: There is an ongoing dispute over the legality of the 1910 Annexation Treaty itself, which many Koreans view as having been signed under duress and therefore invalid. 

Japan and Korea

Japan had long been interested in Korea, “the dagger pointed at the heart of Japan.” Neutrality was not an option. Japan wanted control as part of its vision of strategic buffers. But in addition, Japan needed Korea’s food production, natural resources, and land for Japanese emigrants due over population concerns in the home islands. 

Image credit: various photographs from Naval Aviation Museum, National World War II Museum, and US Navy Archives. | Map courtesy of MapWorks 2005

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.

In the previous post we noted that the transfer of Liaodong Peninsula and its warm water Port Arthur were ceded to Japan in the treaty that ended the First Sino-Japanese War.  Via the “Triple Intervention,” (of which Russia was the primary animator), Japan reluctantly agreed to return Liaodong to China in 1895, the same year the war ended. In 1898 the ports of Liaodong and Port Authur were leased to Russia. The news was not received well in Japan. Beyond the humiliation, this meant the very thing Japan feared: a western imperial power gaining a foothold in what Japan considered its “security zone.” But Japan also realized Russia’ long term goals and objectives were even more ominous.

Russia had a similar view of Japan and sought to construct “security zones” that provided protection, strategic depth while providing economic and diplomatic leverage. Russia’s Far Eastern policy aimed at the warm-water port of Port Arthur. In addition Russia wanted to extend its influence southward from Siberia into Manchuria and Korea. This would link the Pacific coast firmly to European Russia. 

All this brought Russia even more deeply and directly into Japan’s perceived security zone.

Precursors to War

After 1895, Russia steadily entrenched itself in Manchuria as it had gained rights to build the Chinese Eastern Railway across Manchuria to connect to the Trans-Siberian Railway. In 1898 the aforementioned lease of Port Arthur was secured and in 1900 the Russian military took advantage of conflict and occupied Manchuria during China’s Boxer Rebellion. Then Russia failed to fully withdraw from Manchuria afterward, despite repeated promises. Japanese leaders interpreted this as bad faith and evidence of permanent annexation plans. All this transformed Russia from a distant empire into a direct territorial rival.

Although Manchuria was vital, Korea was the emotional and strategic trigger. After 1895, Russia increased diplomatic, financial, and military involvement in Korea. Russian advisers appeared at the Korean court. Russia was giving all the signs and indications that their goal was for Korea to become a Russian protectorate, mirroring what had happened in Manchuria. Japan was willing to compromise on Manchuria; it was not willing to compromise on Korea.

From 1901–1904, Japan sought negotiated settlements, proposing that Japan recognize Russian predominance in Manchuria in exchange for Russian recognition of Japanese predominance in Korea. Russia repeatedly delayed responses and when they did reply the concessions or counters were vague or conditional. At the same time the Russians continued strengthening their military position. Japan rightly concluded that Russia was using diplomacy to buy time.

Internal pressures pushed Japan toward war. After the Triple Intervention, Japan believed its status as a great power depended on resisting further humiliation. Many Japanese believed they must fight before Russia completed the Chinese Eastern Railway and achieved overwhelming superiority – it was now or never – and the nation, for 20 years, had been investing in the military for a contingency just like this. Further delay favored Russia and so “now” seemed to be the window for victory; a window that might soon close. War increasingly appeared to be the least bad option.

How to understand the Russo-Japanese War

The Triple Intervention’s legacy went beyond immediate grievance. It convinced Japan that international law and diplomacy favored the strong, hardened Japanese elites against reliance on Western goodwill, and reinforced the belief that only decisive force could secure Japan’s place. The Triple Intervention was not a cause of war, but a lesson learned.

Other world powers had their own concerns about Russia. Britain and the United States preferred a strong Japan to check Russian expansion and applied no serious pressure on Japan to back down. In addition the Britain–Japan Alliance (1902) reassured Japan that it would not face a multi-power coalition. And so Japan did not fear diplomatic isolation in the way it had regarding the First Sino-Japanese War. All of this gave indications that perhaps Japan was being accepted as a world power or at least acknowledged as the preeminent Asia power.

Meanwhile, Russia never prepared for war. On one hand Russia was far more concerned with European matters and internal court intrigue. On the other, Russia severely underestimated Japan’s military power, the existential threat they were imposing upon Japan, its willingness to attack a European power, and other factors that likely included racial and cultural assumptions that Japan was a “second-rate” power. Besides, time was on their side; or so they believed.

Over time, historians have developed different views of the war. In part, because more primary source information became available and the lenses of understanding changed between generations.  Up until the 1950s, the understanding was that Russian aggression and imperial expansion were the primary causes; Japan fought a defensive, pre-emptive war. It was believed that Japan exhausted diplomatic options and struck only when delay became fatal. Overall, the clash is viewed as a case of a rising regional power resisting European imperialism. Any Japanese imperial ambitions are downplayed and priority is given to the perceived threat from Russia.

In the 1960s the assertion was that Japan deliberately chose war to secure imperial expansion. Russia was cautious, divided, and often defensive while Japan overstated the Korean security threat to justify expansion. Captured by internal politics, Tokyo rejected workable compromises to avoid diplomatic limits on its freedom. At the same time, military and naval elites used war to secure budgets, cement political influence and validate the expenses of the modernization efforts.  Russia, lacking a coherent Far Eastern strategy, repeatedly sought delays. This view underplays how threatening Russian actions appeared to Japanese decision-makers at the time.

From the 1990s onward the view judges that the war resulted from mutual imperial ambitions, compounded by misperception, bureaucratic politics, and structural insecurity. This approach does not split blame cleanly but asks, “Why did compromise fail when it seemed possible?”

The general conclusion is that diplomacy failed because Russia’s bureaucracy was fragmented causing delays which Japan interpreted as deception. Both sides believed time favored the other, creating a commitment trap. Along with other factors, war was not inevitable, but once certain thresholds were crossed, it became likely. 

When one looks at the analysis of the later Asian-Pacific War, you will discover elements of the same pattern. Often these phases are described as orthodox, revisionist, and modern (sometimes followed by neo-orthodox). It is especially in the last phases, when more primary source documents become available that specialists begin to view through specific lenses reflecting what the historian thinks is the primary driver:  economics, diplomacy, policy, politics, security, and more.

Why do I mention this? Because later in this series we will review that same morphing historiography as concerns Pearl Harbor and the Asia-Pacific War.

The War

After years of failed diplomacy, Japan launched a surprise attack on the Russian fleet at Port Arthur in February 1904. Japan quickly seized the initiative on land and sea, winning major battles at Liaoyang, Mukden (remember this name), and decisively at the naval Battle of Tsushima, where Japan destroyed Russia’s Baltic Fleet. Tsushima turned a prolonged war of attrition into a rapid path to Japanese victory.

Despite Russia’s larger population and resources, she suffered from poor leadership, long supply lines, and domestic unrest all of which crippled her war effort. Japan’s modernized army and navy achieved rapid, coordinated victories but at high cost. The war ended with the Treaty of Portsmouth (1905), mediated by the United States, recognizing Japan’s predominance in Korea, transferring Port Arthur and southern Manchuria to Japan, and confirming Japan as the first Asian power to defeat a European great power in modern war.

The Aftermath

The Japanese victory in the Russo-Japanese War is described as coming “at high cost” because military success pushed Japan close to the limits of its manpower, finances, and social cohesion, even while it won on the battlefield. The costs were real, visible, and politically destabilizing, leaving deep scars beneath the triumph.

Japan won most major engagements, but often through frontal assaults against entrenched Russian positions. The losses (deaths and casualties) were exceptionally high for a small nation. Total casualties (killed, wounded, missing) were 70,000–80,000. While the Russian losses were higher in absolute numbers, the losses were not as devastating or proportionally large.  Further, for Japan the losses fell heavily on young, conscripted males, straining villages and families. The army began to fear it was winning battles faster than it could replace men.

Japanese doctrine emphasized an offensive spirit and tactical mindset regardless of the cost. While it worked tactically in this war, attrition favored Russia in the long run. Japan’s leaders quickly came to understand that they could not sustain another year of fighting. By early 1905 ammunition stockpiles were low, replacement soldiers were less well trained, and the army was nearing exhaustion. Victory arrived just before exhaustion became defeat.

In a certain sense Japan lost the war. Japan had financed the war largely through Britain and U.S. loans supplemented by heavy domestic taxation. As a result national debt skyrocketed as war expenditures consumed well over half of government spending. Japan emerged victorious but financially dependent on international credit, and most importantly, had no leverage to impose a punitive peace as it had done after the First Sino-Japanese War. Punitive peace was the expectation of the people after such a great sacrifice.

But unlike earlier wars, Russia had suffered casualties and loss, but overall their army and navy were still substantial, no Russian territory was occupied, and the regime of Russia was not really threatened, nor was the Trans-Siberian Railway. In addition, the U.S. had moderated the treaty/settlement. President Roosevelt’s priorities were ending the war quickly, preserving a balance of power in East Asia and avoiding Russia’s complete humiliation which might destabilize Europe. Roosevelt pressed Japan to drop  indemnity demands and accept territorial and political concessions instead

Japan accepted because it needed peace more than money.

Back home, the public expected indemnity payments, territorial expansion of more than Korea and southern Manchuria, and some step-up in recognition. The perceived gap between sacrifice and reward sparked riots in Tokyo and a growing disillusionment with the current political leaders. Victory felt incomplete, even humiliating to some.

The war reinforced dangerous lessons for the Japanese military that cemented the bushidō philosophy in their ranks. It became, not just an understanding, but doctrine that bushidō spirit could overcome material disadvantage. Also, that decisive victory required willingness to accept massive losses. These lessons contributed to later tolerance for extreme casualties in future wars. In a way, the cost was not only human and financial, but ideological. And to the western mind, irrational.

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

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.

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

When the Meiji era began in 1868, just as the nation was in transition from the Shogunate to a Constitutional Monarch, the Japanese military was undergoing a similar radical transformation. The underlying impetus was national survival. Having witnessed the fate of China in the face of more modern and powerful western militaries, Japan concluded that they too required a modern, Western-style military. They dismantled the Tokugawa samurai-based system and built a centralized national force modeled on European powers. 

At the beginning of the Meiji period the army was a fragmented, transitional force composed largely of former samurai from the victorious domains that had initiated the downfall of the Shogunate. It was not yet a national army as the soldiers’ loyalty was often domain-based. Training was uneven and nascent and not anywhere near the standards required to face western military power. There was a limited amount of modern rifles, some firearms left over from the previous age, but a wealth of samurai weaponry. But even if there were adequate manpower and suitable training, there was no professional officer corps with an understanding of modern warfare, tactics such as combined arms combat (soldiers and artillery support), and the necessary general staff to wage and support an army in the field under combat. All semblance of modern western military capability was lacking.

The Navy was a small, underdeveloped fleet inherited from the late Tokugawa period. There were sailing vessels and a handful of modern steamships, many purchased from abroad. While they possessed good seamanship and ship-to-ship engagements, fleet engagements were foreign to them, and even then lack the capital ships common to the western fleets, namely, battleships, cruisers, destroyers, auxiliary ships, and logistics capability to be a “blue water” navy. In the beginning they are best described as a coastal-defense force.

Twenty years later the army was fully centralized, conscription was in place, training was based on the ideal of Bushidō and Prussian organization and tactics. The army possessed a professional officer corps and general staff (logistics, intelligence, planning, medical services and more). Weaponry was modern in terms of rifles and artillery. Command and control functions were Prussian: centralized, disciplined and bureaucratic. It was a modern national army, capable of coordinated large-scale operations overseas.

The Navy had been reorganized and closely modeled the Royal Navy. Ships were constructed of steel and consisted of a range of large and small capital ships. A professionalized officer corps was in place, well versed in modern navigation, gunnery, and signaling. Even more, their role was integrated into a larger national planning to support Army operations with control of the sea, troop transport and blockade capabilities. In the Asia-Pacific region, apart from western fleets, they were the premier naval force.

At the start of hostilities, the IJN Combined Fleet composition was :

• 12 modern warships (primarily cruisers),
• 8 corvettes,
• 1 ironclad warship,
• 26 torpedo boats, and
• Numerous auxiliaries, armed merchant cruisers, and converted liners used for transport and support

There was a similar buildup and expansion of the Army. All of this came at a cost, but also with benefits. Among the benefits of the military buildup in the late-19th century was the acceleration of Japan’s industrial economy. The state invested heavily in shipyards, arsenals, steelworks, railways, and telegraph lines all of which helped create the foundations for heavy industries which were later transferred to private firms. The build up also stimulated existing sectors such as coal mining, metallurgy, engineering, and shipbuilding. The military buildup acted as a state-led industrial catalyst.

All of this needed to be funded, financed and paid for. To this end the government implemented the land tax reform, creating a stable, cash-based tax system. Revenue became more predictable and as a result enabled long-term military and infrastructure planning. This radical shift in central planning and finance strengthened the modern fiscal state but increased pressure on rural society where the land tax burden landed.

Military expansion was expensive, leading the early Meiji governments to run budget deficits. This problem was compounded by issuing paper currency accelerating inflation throughout the 1870s into the early 1880s. Military spending diverted resources from social welfare, rural investment, and development of the consumer sector of the economy. As a result, the citizens, especially the peasants bore much of the cost through taxes, while economic benefits were unevenly distributed. The social unrest came to a head in the Satsuma Rebellion, a revolt of disaffected samurai against the central government. The rebellion was very expensive for the government, which forced it to make additional monetary reforms including leaving the gold standard. The conflict effectively ended the samurai class. Economic discipline only stabilized in the early 1890s.

Military procurement fostered close ties between the state and emerging industrial conglomerates (zaibatsu such as Mitsubishi). These firms benefited from government contracts, subsidies and technology transfers, and access to capital and overseas markets. This helped create a modern capitalist elite aligned with state goals. Overall, military expansion stimulated economic modernization, but it did so through top-down coercive extraction, embedding a long-term pattern in which economic growth was closely tied to military and imperial priorities.

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

It would not be accurate to describe the evolution of the Japanese military in the latter half of the 19th century. It was a radical revolution. After the Meiji Restoration (1868), Japan’s leaders concluded that national survival required a modern, Western-style military. They dismantled the Tokugawa samurai-based system and built a centralized national force modeled on European powers. This was made possible by Universal male conscription (1873) replacing hereditary samurai service, creating a national military loyal to the emperor rather than to domains or lords.

In order to accomplish this radical change, Japan looked to the nations it considered threats to Japan’s independence. This was accomplished by adopting foreign military models under the tutelage of foreign advisors. The army was modeled on Prussian doctrine that emphasized discipline, general staff organization, and state-controlled command. The navy was modeled on the British Royal Navy, adopting British ship designs, training methods, and naval strategy. At the same time, Japan imported modern rifles, artillery, and warships, then rapidly developed domestic arms industries, arsenals, and shipyards to ensure self-sufficiency.

Essential to the development of a modern military was formation and education. To this end, western-style military academies, staff colleges, and technical schools were established, professionalizing the officer corps and emphasizing science, engineering, and modern tactics. Western techniques were combined with emperor-centered loyalty, making the military both modern in form and uniquely Japanese in spirit. In addition, the spirit and lessons of the samurai were not lost. Japan did not simply preserve samurai tradition; it selectively reconstructed it.

Bushidō and the Meiji Military

Under Tokugawa Shogunate rule, “samurai spirit” referred to class-based ideals: loyalty to one’s lord, honor, discipline, and readiness to die. After 1868, the Meiji state detached these values from the samurai class and recast them as virtues for all citizens, especially soldiers. This recasting of the “samurai spirit” became known as Bushidō, and was a national moral code, not a code restricted to the military. But it did serve as a bridge between Japan’s past and its modern conscript army. No longer was there feudal loyalty to a daimyō; loyalty was now absolute and directed to the emperor. The Meiji Constitution made the emperor the “command-in-chief” of the army and navy. Bushidō preserved the form of samurai loyalty while transforming its object.

Formation and indoctrination of Bushidō was incorporated into every level of military training. While Japan adopted western drill, weapons, and organization, it paired them with ethical and spiritual instruction drawn from samurai ideals. Soldiers were taught: endurance, self-control, obedience, and acceptance of death as honorable if done in imperial service. These ideals were reinforced from the oath of service and in every course of education and training. Bushidō was simplified from is historical samurai basis and then standarized for modern instruction.

Bushidō was also incorporated in symbolic practices and rituals. Ceremonial language was ripe with honor and shame, casting failure as disloyalty to comrades and especially to the Emperor. Rituals reinforcing collective identity, willingness to endure hardship, and death as preferable to dishonor. The officer corp carried swords as symbols of moral authority and leadership. Clearly in modern warfare, the use of the sword was limited, but at the end of World War II photographs of kamikaze pilots before their final mission showed the officers with their swords which were carried in the cockpit on the one-way flight. All of this was an effort to link the modern military psychologically to the samurai past. 

Key writers and thinkers such as Nitobe Inazō positioned bushidō as Japan’s equivalent to Western chivalry, and proof Japan possessed a moral civilization worthy of great-power status. This intellectualization helped justify both military discipline at home and imperial mission abroad.

The fusion of western military structure, samurai-derived moral absolutism, and emperor-centered ideology produced a military culture that valued spirit (seishin) over material limits, encouraged endurance and sacrifice, and discouraged surrender and compromise. These traits became especially pronounced in the early 20th century. It is noteworthy that during World War II, less than 3% of imperial Japanese soldiers surrendered – and most of these were extremely sick, starving or critically wounded. In many instances, there were no Japanese survivors.

The effects of bushidō formation was strikingly evident in 20th century combat behavior.

• preference for death over surrender
• emphasis on spirit over material reality – commanders often stressed seishin (spiritual strength) to compensate for shortages in equipment or supplies, encouraging frontal assaults and last-stand defenses even when strategically unsound.
• fanatical defensive tactics where soldiers fought to the last man in Biak, Pelilui, Tarawa, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa reflecting the belief that total sacrifice was the highest form of loyalty.
• Banzai charges and later kamikaze missions were framed as noble offerings to the emperor, transforming death into a sanctioned military tactic.
• harsh treatment of prisoners and civilians since their surrender was and thus the prisoners were viewed with contempt, brutalized and executed in violation of the Law of War to which Japan was a signatory.

It also led to actions and campaigns that were strategically and tactically questionable supported by the guise that the bushidō spirit would compensate for all the evident shortcomings.

At the advent of the 20th century

By the late 19th century, Japan possessed a modern, disciplined, and industrialized military, capable of defeating China (1894–95) and Russia (1904–05), demonstrating that Japan had successfully adapted Western military systems to its own political and ideological framework.

When Japan adopted a Social Darwinist lens, East Asia ceased to be a shared moral world and became a competitive ecological system. Bushidō was the ideological element needed to form the military and the citizenry to not simply remain competitive but to become the apex nation in the Asia-Pacific sphere.

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

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.

The history of how Hawaii came to be part of the United States is not, in my opinion, a shining moment in our nation’s history. The Hawaiian archipelago consists of five major islands and a number of smaller islands – including Midway at the extreme northwest. The five major islands and several smaller ones in proximity were united under the great King Kamehameha in 1795. It was not a bloodless unification, but the Kamehameha dynasty was the reigning monarchy of the Hawaiian Kingdom. The Kingdom was formally recognized by the United States in 1846 and as a result of the recognition of Hawaiian independence, the Hawaiian Kingdom entered into treaties with the major nations of the world and established over ninety legations and consulates in multiple seaports and cities.

Europeans had first come across the islands in the late 1700s and by the 1790s was an active destination for American merchants. The arrival of outsiders brought new technologies, goods, diseases, and political dynamics, ultimately leading to Kamehameha’s unification of the islands. One of the key elements of Hawaiian that outsiders quickly encountered was that the land is a gift and not to be owned by individuals. It is a concept that the Hawaiians managed well enough in the normal matters of houses, villages, farms and the such. It was a concept unthinkable to merchants, missionaries, and members of the western business community.

Over the next 100 years more and more outsiders came to the islands. American merchant ships began stopping in Hawaii for supplies, and some sailors jumped ship to live among Hawaiians. The first wave of Americans were the New England missionaries who arrived in 1820. They were soon followed by business men, investors, and all manner of commerce. Plantation agriculture first appeared in Hawaii with the establishment of the first permanent sugar plantation in 1835, marking the start of large-scale commercial sugarcane production that would define the islands’ economy for over a century. It also led to immigration from China and Japan.

Immigration to Hawaii

Between 1852 and 1899, around 46,000 Chinese immigrated to Hawaii. Although many came as laborers for sugar plantations in Hawaii, they concentrated on getting education for their children. When their contracts expired, many decided to remain in Hawaii and opened businesses in areas such as downtown Honolulu’s Chinatown.

In 1868 the first documented group of Japanese immigrants arrived seeking work in Hawaii’s sugarcane and rice fields, though this initial wave was small. The major waves began in 1885 when the first large-scale, government-sponsored group of almost 1,000 Japanese laborers arrived, following King Kalākaua’s diplomatic efforts to secure workers from Japan for the plantations. Following this, many Japanese women arrived as “picture brides,” marrying men they’d only seen in photographs to join the growing immigrant community. In time, the Japanese community was well established in the islands.

All during this period land ownership was a constant source of friction between the native Hawaiians and the outsiders. In 1875, the U.S. considered Hawaii as critical to their national interest in the Pacific region and began discussions with the Hawaiian government about the use of Pearl River Lagoon as a naval base. We know the area as Pearl Harbor.

Imperialism from within

During the summer of 1887, while the Legislature was out of session, a group of Hawaiians (most also U.S. citizens) with land and business interests, essentially hijacked the nation. Under the threat of armed revolt and assasination, King Kalakaua signed what is known as the Bayonet Constitution. This resulted in disenfranchising two-thirds of the native Hawaiians as well as other ethnic groups who had previously held the right to vote but were no longer able to meet the new voting requirements. The new constitution was to the benefit of the white, foreign plantation owners. Of interest to this series is that Asian immigrants were completely shut out and were no longer able to acquire citizenship or vote at all.

The ruling elite almost immediately began to petition the U.S. to annex Hawaii. They sent a delegation to Washington in 1894 seeking annexation, but the new President, Grover Cleveland, opposed annexation and tried to restore the Queen. Spurred by the nationalism aroused by the Spanish-American War, the United States annexed Hawaii in 1898 at the urging of President William McKinley. Hawaii was made a territory in 1900.

Why annex Hawaii?

What were the considerations when the U.S. annexed Hawaii? Perhaps it can best be explained in three arenas: strategic considerations, economic motivations, and political rationale.

The strategic motivations can arguably be seen as an extension of “manifest destiny” extended into the Pacific for access to Asian markets. At the same time, acquiring territories like Florida and Louisiana was crucial to secure borders, control Gulf Coast ports, and prevent European powers from establishing footholds near U.S. territories. In the same light, security and economics merged by establishing Hawaii (Pearl Harbor) and the Philippines as vital naval bases and coaling stations, projecting American power into the Pacific and challenging European empires. This was also part of the political calculus

Economic motivations were basic: American industry needed raw materials and new consumers, making territories rich in resources or with potential trade routes in the Pacific highly valuable. This also gave added impetus to the development of west coast ports such as San Francisco, Los Angeles and Portland. 

From a distance

By the 1880s Hawaii had become strategically and demographically important to Japan as Japanese laborers were the single largest ethnic group on the islands with many under state-supervised emigration contracts. Hawaii was also strategically important sitting astride Pacific sea lanes. Japanese naval planners viewed it as vital to Pacific security. Hawaii also had a symbolic importance to the Japanese. It was an independent non-Western monarchy, like Japan. Thus, its fate was watched closely as a test of whether non-Western states could survive. Thus Hawaii was both a practical concern (citizens, trade, security) and a symbolic mirror of Japan’s own vulnerability.

After the Hawaiian coup, Japan formally protested, viewing the coup as an illegal seizure of power and a threat to Japanese residents’ rights. The protests focused on unequal treatment of Japanese subjects as agreed to under international law. Japan dispatched the warship Naniwa to Honolulu (1887) to signal their protest in sign of deliberate restraint as there was no attempt to restore royal authority.

Despite outrage in some Japanese newspapers and among naval officers Japan feared diplomatic isolation and being labeled an “uncivilized” power – and mostly conflict with the United States and Britain. Many Japanese commentators concluded: “Even civilized, independent states can be destroyed if they lack power.”  This sentiment was to come to a fuller fruition in the years to come. 

When the U.S. annexed Hawaii, there were diplomatic objections similar to the ones a decade earlier, but there was also a pragmatic realism: Hawaii was firmly within the U.S. sphere. At the same time Japan was between wars in their own home region. The First Sino-Japanese War had just concluded and other war clouds were gathering for possible conflict with Russia. Japan protested symbolically but accepted the new reality.

Lesson learned

The events in Hawaii had a tremendous influence on the Japanese strategic mindset. The elites and military of Japan drew these lessons:

• International law follows power
• Legal sovereignty offers no protection without force.
• Western powers will not tolerate non-Western autonomy in strategic zones
• Emigration creates strategic vulnerability
• Japan must secure its own buffers and so Korea and Manchuria became increasingly urgent.

Japan responded to the Hawaiian crisis with protest and symbolic force but no intervention, and it accepted U.S. annexation as unavoidable—drawing from Hawaiʻi the sobering lesson that even “civilized” non-Western states could not survive without overwhelming power, a conclusion that hardened Japan’s later imperial strategy.

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

In the previous post we considered Japan’s 19th century transition from the Tokugawa Shogunate to the Meiji Restoration which transformed the nation of Japan to an outward facing nation, under the Imperial guidance of the divine Emperor, with a moral obligation to bring order and harmony to the Asian world in the face of western colonial power.

In this post, we need to “back up” and catch up with U.S. activities since the time of Admiral Perry’s 1853 visit to Tokyo Bay. In a previous post we noted that making the journey to China and maintaining the U.S. presence there also required a network of ports extending across the Pacific Ocean, and as such, the China trade soon drove the United States to expand its presence throughout the Pacific region.  At its root, Perry’s primary mission was to establish a foothold that would strengthen the U.S. position for trade and diplomacy in the region. In other words, the United States opened relations with Japan in large part to enhance its status in China. On a smaller scale, as U.S. merchants began to stop at many of the Pacific Islands to replenish supplies and acquire goods to trade with Chinese merchants, the U.S. Government appointed consuls to several of these places. For example, consulates were established in Fiji in 1844, Samoa in 1856, and the Marshall Islands in 1881. 

There was a lot going on in the period 1889-1900. I will mention some of the key events in order to keep them in context – and then go on to mention some later events with the United States – before returning the series to a more orderly arrangement.

• The First Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895)
• The U.S. annexation of Hawaii in 1898
• The defeat of Spain in the the Spanish-American War of 1898

The China trade led to a growing U.S. presence in Hawaii that grew out of the need for a substantial base of maritime operations in the Pacific to support U.S. interests in China. Ultimately this need became so great, and the U.S. presence so large, that the United States annexed the islands in 1898. We will cover the annexation of Hawaii in its own post.

Following the defeat of Spain in the Spanish-American War of 1898, the United States acquired overseas colonies in the Caribbean and the Pacific. The two key Pacific acquisitions were the Philippines, Wake Island, and Guam in the Mariana Islands. Overnight the U.S. was solidly ensconced in the Central Pacific. 

In one year the U.S. was in possession of locales that would be critical places in the Asia-Pacific War: Hawaii, Wake Island, Guam, and the Philippines. U.S. possession of Guam and the Philippines would be of principle concern for Japan.

In its new status as a global power, the United States pursued a series of policies designed to protect American territories and aggressively expand its international commercial interests. These policies included the promotion of the “Open Door” policy in China and the attachment of the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine that formally announced the intention to use military force to defend the Western Hemisphere against European incursions. It was in this same period that President Theodore Roosevelt oversaw the construction of the Panama Canal, which would have profound economic implications for American trade and ease the movement of merchant and military shipping between Atlantic and Pacific regions. In just over a decade, the United States had redefined its national and international interests to include a large overseas military presence, overseas possessions, and direct engagement in setting priorities in international affairs.

It is noteworthy that from 1909 to 1913, President William Howard Taft and Secretary of State Knox followed a foreign policy characterized as “dollar diplomacy.” Taft shared the view held by Knox, a corporate lawyer who had founded the giant conglomerate U.S. Steel, that the goal of diplomacy was to create stability and order abroad that would best promote American commercial interests. Knox felt that not only was the goal of diplomacy to improve financial opportunities, but also to use private capital to further U.S. interests overseas. “Dollar diplomacy” was evident in extensive U.S. interventions in the Caribbean and Central America, especially in measures undertaken to safeguard American financial interests in the region. In China, Knox secured the entry of an American banking conglomerate, headed by J.P. Morgan, into a European-financed consortium financing the construction of a railway from Huguang to Canton. In spite of successes, “dollar diplomacy” failed to counteract economic instability and the tide of revolution in places like Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, and China. But the idea reflects the underlying principle: diplomacy, military capability, and business were at the root of America’s international interests.

Image credit: various photographs from Naval Aviation Museum, National World War II Museum, and US Navy Archives. Source credit: “Dollar Diplomacy, 1909–1913” | Office of the Historian, Department of State.

At this point in the series we have tried to give some sense and introduction to the currents of history that led the political, economic, and military stew that was the Asia-Pacific region in the mid-19th century. Some of the key elements include (and certainly not limited to):

• The Opium Wars in China (1839 and 1857) and the fallout of these conflicts;
• The U.S. fleet’s arrival in Tokyo Bay (1853) which led to the Treaty of Kanagawa which, not immediately, but eventually led to a more open posture of Japan to the world after 200 years of isolation; and
• A self-view within Japan that in terms of culture, ethics, learning and more they were ready to be leaders in the Asian sphere

Via Dutch traders, Japan was aware of the Opium Wars in China, the unequal treaties that forced foreign trade upon China, and what the foreign powers were willing to do via military advantage. It became aware of how unprepared it was should these same foreign powers turn to Japan with the same intent. Concerned by Western incursions into Asia, particularly the Opium Wars’ impact on China and Commodore Perry’s forced opening of Japan, the Japanese sought firsthand intelligence on how China was handling the situation and the policies it adopted.

To that end, after two centuries of self-imposed isolation, in 1862, the Tokugawa Shogunate sent the sailing ship Senzai Maru to Shanghai as an unprecedented official mission by the shogunate to investigate trade and diplomatic conditions in China and learn from the Chinese experience with Western powers. The mission also hoped to open commercial and possibly diplomatic ties with China, which had been suspended for over 2 centuries. 

The journey had a profound impact on Japan’s internal deliberations and future direction. The lessons learned in Shanghai, particularly witnessing the vulnerability of a closed-off nation to Western imperial powers, helped shift Japanese policy from isolationism to a reformist approach. This critical understanding contributed to the climate that enabled the eventual overthrow of the Tokugawa Shogunate 

From Tokugawa to Meiji

The Tokugawa shogunate had established itself in the early 17th century. Under its rule, the shōgun governed Japan. About 180 lords, known as daimyōs, ruled autonomous realms under the shōgun. There was an Emperor, but the shōgun ruled. He set the tone and established a code of behavior for the nobility in 1605. Under the code, the emperor was required to devote his time to scholarship and the arts and was confined to the palace in Kyoto. Later, at the arrival of Western colonial powers as trading partners, a new power dynamic was introduced and with that an era of change. The western powers played the regional daimyōs against one another, who positioned themselves in regard to the Shogun (but not in ways always discernable for ill or for good). All the while the Emperor remained in Kyoto as something akin to a cultural icon of the ideals of Japan.

By the early 19th century the changing dynamic brought about within Japan led to a period of high inflation while at the same time samurai stipends were fixed. The same effects were felt among the feudal peasants but not among the ruling class and the merchants. All of this led to a crisis of authority. The Shogun, daimyōs, and their administrators (bakufu) appeared militarily weak, diplomatically incompetent, and unable or unwilling to defend Japan’s sovereignty against western manipulation. This triggered debate over who truly possessed legitimate authority to act in Japan’s name.

Some of the more powerful leading daimyōs invoked the Emperor as the source of ultimate legitimacy and as a rallying point against the controls and constraints of the bakufu. It was couched as a restoration of ancient practice but it was really a reinvention of imperial authority. As unrest spread a large number of young samurai, known as shishi or “men of high purpose”, began to meet and speak against the shogunate. The shishi revered the Emperor and rallied people to their side with the slogan “Revere the Emperor, Expel the Barbarians.” In January 1868, these shishi executed a coup d’état and seized the Imperial Palace in Kyoto, announced the abolishment of the Shogunate, and declared authority restored to the Emperor who adopted the reign name Meiji, meaning “enlightened rule”. There was a short civil war (Boshin War) that ended with the defeat of Tokugawa loyalists and the formal end of the Shogunate by 1869.

Long story, told short, these were the animating force that brought about the Meiji Reforms and ultimately the Meiji Constitution.

Japanese leaders realized they needed to modernize to avoid the humiliation suffered by China during the First and Second Opium Wars. After the old Tokugawa shogunate was overthrown during the Meiji Restoration, Japan initiated structural reforms resulting in rapid modernization, industrialization, militarization and imperialism modeled after the imperialistic Western powers. 

The Meiji Restoration

It is important to understand that Meiji restoration was not, as claimed, a movement to restore ancient imperial rule. In reality it dismantled the existing means of governance, repurposed the bakufu, centralized power far beyond anything previously known in the history of Japan. The focal point of the restoration was the Meiji Emperor. He became the formal head of state and the symbolic center of loyalty and identity. But the real power lay with a small oligarchy of former samurai from the more powerful pre-Meiji domains: Satsuma, Chōshū, Tosa, and Hizen. The Tokugawa institutions were not completely discarded; many were adapted including the bureaucratic governance, legal codification, and the elites of the domains were incorporated into the positions wherein their expertise could be used, their ambitions controlled, and their wallets enhanced.

In the early Meiji period (1870s) the oligarchs and councils were the decision makers but the Emperor was cautiously used as the moral center of the coming changes. Some of the early and rapid reforms meant to consolidate power and control included the abolition of domains, end of samurai privileges, start of military conscription, national taxation, and education reforms.

Slowly the Emperor became the sacred focal point of the modern nation-state. This was enhanced even further when Shinto became the official “religion” of the nation. In 1889 the Meiji Constitution framed national sovereignty as emanating from the emperor – this was the notion of kokutai which held that national sovereignty and the emperor were identical.

The transition from Tokugawa to Meiji was not a popular uprising, nor a simple return to ancient rule, but a carefully managed elite revolution that used the emperor as a legitimating symbol to dismantle the old order and construct a modern state. A state that was preparing to face the challenge of western imperialism that had dismantled China.

Meiji and the Foundation of Expansionism

Under the Constitution, the emperor was no longer merely a symbol of unity. He was redefined not only as he kokutai, but as the moral center of the nation and the living embodiment of Japan’s historical destiny. This shift was crucial. Expansion could now be framed not as policy choice, but as moral obligation.

All of this was held to reside in the emperor by divine lineage. As such, the emperor possessed supreme command of the army and navy and authority over diplomacy and war. This structure had two consequences: military autonomy from civilian government and expansionist decisions could be justified as expressions of imperial will rather than partisan ambition. Once these actions were linked to the emperor’s sacred authority, opposition became disloyalty, not disagreement.

Sacred Nationalism

Long tradition held that the emperor was a descendant of Amaterasu, the Sun goddess. This belief was not part of Confucianism or Buddhism, but was grounded in Shinto, Japan’s indigenous religion that pre-dated history. Shinto is focused on reverence for nature, ancestors, and spirits called kami. Shinto emphasizes purity, harmony, gratitude, and sincere living rather than strict dogma or the teachings of a single founder.  The Emperor was considered an embodied kami. 

During the Meiji period Shinto was transformed into what is referred to as “State Shinto.”  This was the government-promoted, nationalist ideology that fused Shinto traditions with state power, establishing the Emperor as a divine figure descended from the sun goddess, fostering national unity, and demanding loyalty through shrines and education, effectively making Shinto a quasi-official religion to support the goals of Imperial Japan. State Shinto transformed loyalty to the emperor into religious devotion. Under this veneer, expansion became a sacred mission and a fulfillment of Japan’s divine role in history. That divinely appointed role was the moral leadership to bring order and enlightenment to Asia under imperial benevolence.

Image credit: various photographs from Naval Aviation Museum, National World War II Museum, and US Navy Archives. Source Credit: “The Meiji Restoration and the rise of the Japanese Empire 1868–1931” | Office of the Historian, Department of State.