This book is based on a conference sponsored by the Joint Committee on Japanese Studies and the Joint Committee on Chinese Studies of the American Council of Learned Societies and the Social Science Research Council.
THE JAPANESE INFORMAL EMPIRE IN CHINA, 1895-1937
Edited by
Peter Duus, Ramon H. Myers, and Mark R. Peattie
CONTRIBUTORS
Banno Junji Barbara J. Brooks Alyin D. Coox Peter Duus Albert Feuerwerker Nakagane Katsuji Kitaoka Shin'ichi
Sophia Lee Ramon H. Myers Mark R. Peattie Douglas R. Reynolds Mizoguchi Toshiyuki William D. Wray
Princeton University Press / Princeton, New Jersey
Attitudes Toward Colonialism — 81
CHAPTER 2
Japanese Attitudes Toward Colonialism, 1895-1945
Mürk R. Pealtie1
Without an empire until the twentieth century, it was hardly possible for Japan to have had a clearly articulated set of attitudes concerning the purpose and function of colonial rule up to that time. Two and a half centuries of stern isolation under the Tokugawa shogunate had done little to prepare the nation intellectually for the challenges of expansion in general, or for the management of alien peoples in particular. What did exist prior to 1895 was acquaintance with colonization, as distinct from colonialism, though even here Japanese experience was shallow. Indeed, while the long history of colonization in Europe since ancient times had provided Europeans with a rich vocabulary dealing with this activity, adequate terminology to encompass the concept of a "colony" hardly existed in Japanese until the mid-nineteenth century.2 Then, in the 1870's the implications of colonization rapidly impinged on the Japanese consciousness. There was, to begin with, the Japanese effort in the development, exploration, and colonization of Hokkaido, 1873-1883. which provided
1 I wish Co thank the Institute for Arts and Humanistic Studies at The Pennsylvania State University, as well as the Joint Committee on Japanese Studies of the Amman Council of Learned Societies and the Social Science Research Council, for financial support of the research for this paper.
1 Nitobe Inazo, in his comprehensive study of colonialism, noted that pre-nineteen th-cenrury Japanese concepts of colonizing activities were limited to Chinese terms which were inadequate to deal with the multiple implications behind the English word "colony," since the Chinese language lacked i single term to encompass at once the ideas of opening new Und and the emigration jnd transplantation of peoples to new territories. In the 1860's DoetTs Dutch-Japanese dictionary used the Dutch word volk-pltmting for colony without explaining it. The term jfcofaimii. a wholly Japanese construction, meaning "colonization" or "settlement" and later broadened to include the sense of colonial rule, was first used in an Enghsrejapanese dictionary in 1862. but did not come into vogue until the 1870'«. Nitobe Inazo. Zttuki (Collected Works], IV (Iwanami Shoten. 1943). pp. 49-50 In contrast, overseas settlement activity in the classical, medieval, and modem West provided a wealth of terminology to be defined, classified, and lotted out by Western writers on the subject. See, for example. Albert Keller, Colmizahen: A Study "/'*" Founding o/Ntw Scdaiti (Boiton, 1908).
practical experience in the creation of a settlement colony, not unlike the British colonization of Australia and New Zealand, wherein a government settles its own lands with its own peoples. But such colonizing—as opposed to colonial—activities never became the dominant activity in the larger empire, though colonization as an ideal continued to inspire propagandists for Japanese expansion in the decades to come.
Intellectually, too, Japanese began to explore the meaning and value of colonies, though the Japanese frame of reference was almost entirely within the context of Western economic theory, rather than related to colonial administration as such. Along with Fukuzawa Yu-kichi, Meiji writers like Kanda Kohei, Amano Tamesuke, and Ta-guchi Ukichi, reacting against the state orthodoxy of the Tokugawa, were diligent in translating and propagating works of liberal economic thinkers in the West, especially those colonial theorists in Britain like Adam Smith who stressed the ideas of free competition.3 Thus, it is an odd fact that the first intellectual speculations in Japan on colonial matters were inspired by Western theories which were in essence anti-colonial, or at least deprecated earlier mercantilist beliefs in the economic value of formal colonies. Admittedly, certain Japanese writers of the time were initially more influenced by the protectionist ideas of Georg Fricdrich List and were thus concerned with problems of formal colonial rule, but again more in terms of political economy than of governmental administration.4
On the eve of Japan's entry into the colonial lists, more aggressive urges for the acquisition of territories beyond the Japanese islands had been expressed in vague terms by different groups. Those responsible for the nation's military policies, concerned with the Korean "dagger" pointed at Japan, sought to sheath it with some sort of Japanese presence on the peninsula; for a number of expansionist writers the South Pacific was a magnet for their hazy dreams of Japanese living space or Japanese claims to lands as yet unspoken for; and to Toku-tomi Soho, taking pride in the political vigor of his countrymen, it was possible to speak of a Japanese imperial mission "to extend the blessings of political organization throughout the rest of East Asia
' Kuroda Kcn'ichi. Nihm ikokumm ihiiiiM [Japanese Colonial Thought] (Kobundo, 1942). pp. 184-193 and 211-224. Taguchi, in particular, wrote extensively on colonial theory from the perspective of political economy and criticized the administrator, of Hokkaido as too oppressive and restrictive of economic activities in the island.
1 The nationalistic and protectionist ideas of Wakayama Gnchi and Sata Kaiseki, tor example, stood in direct opposition to the laisiez-faire beliefs of liberal colonial theory. Wakayama advocated the application of a rigorous program of protectionism in Hokkaido as parr of an effort to give employment to the economically depnved samurai dass. Ibid., pp. 187. 224. and 227.
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and the South Pacific, just as the Romans had once done for Europe and the Mediterranean."' For the leadership of Meiji Japan, however, territorial expansion, once decided upon, involved pragmatic and particularistic concerns. Taiwan was acquired in 1895 for reasons that in fact had more to do with opportunism, diplomatic pressures, and matters of international prestige than those ex-post-facto justifications for its occupation which were couched in the language of the new imperialism.*
If there was little consistency in these aspirations and nothing as yet resembling a doctrine of Japanese imperial expansion, this was partly due to the jumble of ideas in the West concerning the nature and value of colonies. The great nineteenth-century treatises on imperial purpose, such as Henry Leroy-Beaulieu's De la colonisation chez lespeupla modenus (1874) and J. R. Seeley's 77k Expansion of England (1883), representing concerns with the older mercantilist imperialism and the expansion of peoples in overseas colonization, had been written on the very eve of the new imperialism which now proclaimed the virtues of Social Darwinism, protectionism, and the advantages of industrial capitalism. As for colonial rule itself, with the major exceptions of India, Algeria, and the East Indies, the administration of alien races was so recent an imperial task that colonialism was a concept whose implications had only just begun to be explored. It is small wonder, then, that the first Japanese speculations on colonial mission proceeded from no common theoretical point of departure and that Japanese writers on the] subject tended initially to use terms like expansion, imperialism, emigration, and colonization, without fine distinction.7
The European Impress 1895-1920
By 1895, however, one thing was certain: Japan had acquired a colonial territory and had thus joined the ranks of the colonial—the civilized—powers; the new territory, once the government decided to keep it, became a source of common pride, a symbol of the nation's equality with the West and of its participation in the great work of modem civilization. "Western nations," the politician and journalist
* Kenneth Pyle, The New CnmU'tn of Meiji Japan: Problems of Cultural Uttulty 1885-1895 (Stanford. 1969). p. 181.
* Edward 1-te Chen, "Japan's Decision to Annex Taiwan: A Study of Muto-lto Diplomacy." m Journal of Asian Studies XXXVlt: 1 (Nov, 1977), 62.
' For the diversity of viewpoint of Japanese expansionist thinking prior to 1895 see Akira Iriye, Patifii Estrangement; Japanese anil American Expansion, 1897-1911 (Cambridge. Mass.). 1972
Attitudes Toward Colonialism — 83
Takekoshi Yosaburd declared, "have long believed that on their shoulders alone rested the responsibility of colonizing the yet-unopened portions of the globe and extending to the inhabitants the benefits of civilization; but now we Japanese, rising from the ocean in the extreme Orient, which as a nation to take part in this great and glorious work."* Yet, without a colonial tradition,.literature, or policy, or a corps of trained administrators, it was difficult to translate self-satisfied pronouncements into effective colonial policy, as the first chaotic and haphazard attempts to govern Taiwan quite dismally revealed. Lacking civil administrative experience, high-level policy to guide them, or personal vision to inspire them, and forced to concentrate ori the military pacification of a stubbornly resistant population, the first few governors general were ill-equipped to develop the arts of colonial government.9 •
Yet, waiting in the wings, stood the first of a steady stream of competently trained civil bureaucrats, able to guide their superiors, the military governors general, in the complexities of modern management. With the arrival of Kodama Gentaro and his civil administrator Goto Shimpei, the Japanese presence in Taiwan at last found a policy and a purpose. Superbly trained in the medical profession in Germany, widely read in the contemporary literature of colonialism. Goto combined outstanding organizational talent with a quick and searching mind. Working under an influential and trusting superior and reinforced by important political connections at home, moreover, he had the benefit of operating in an underdeveloped territory with a broad latitude of authority. In the future there would be honest and competent, but somewhat unimaginative, colonial administrators, like Den Kenjiro, acting within narrower limits of authority, and a few scholars like Yanaihara Tadab, who were profoundly informed on colonial affairs, but out- of touch and out of favor with colonial authority. But never again would knowledge, ability, and
■ Takekoshi Yosabut6, Japanese Rule in Formosa (London, 1907). p. vii.
' The outlook of the war hero Nogi Maresuke. third of the military governors-general, waa typical of their rather simplistic approach toward colonial rule. A moralist but not an administrator, he was convinced that the key to successful colonial administration was to "mix severity with generosity, to deal justice and mercy at the proper time, and to make (colonial peoples] obedient to moral authority." Such an outlook hardly aided him in the formation of concrete policy to bring about the colony's stability and progress. While believing, for example, in the prime importance of education as a civilizing force, he could think no further than having the Imperial Rescript On Education translated and distributed throughout the island. Cited in Mark Peattie. "The Last Samurai: The Military Career of Nogi Maresuke," in Princeton Papers on East Asia: Japan, I (Princeton, 1972), pp. 99-100.
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scope be so brilliantly combined in one office of Japanese colonial administration.
Goto's accomplishments in restructuring the political, social, and economic order in Taiwan, successes which transformed the territory from an embarrassment to a colonial showcase, have long since been documented10 and need no recapitulation, but the oudook which he brought to his tasks deserves renewed attention. For if Goto stands alone in the sum of his capacities and accomplishments, his approach to colonial rule reflected an emerging oudook of the Japanese bureaucrats, politicians, and journalists concerned with Japan's pioneer efforts as a colonial power. This opinion, in turn, was closely tden- ) tified with contemporary European concepts.
To begin with, colonial order and efficiency were prized because they supposedly contributed to the universal civilizing task in which Japanese felt they now participated. Convinced, like others in the late Meiji bureaucracy, that these goals were best attained through the techniques of modern science, the reformist officialdom in Taiwan sought to take a "scientific" approach to the solution of a wide range of problems—social, political, economic, and sanitary—which Japan faced in the colony. More than anything else, this meant obtaining sound and relevant information on which to base policy, information to be derived from careful research. Here Goto, with his professional training, took the lead. The various research centers and organizations that he established, of wKich the "Commission for the Investigation of Traditional Customs in Taiwan." so influential in the formation of social policy, was only the most famous, were concrete manifestations of Goto's perception of Taiwan as a "laboratory" for Japan's experiment in colonial rule. A voracious reader, he also amassed a collection of works at his official residence which represented the best of contemporary European commentary on colonial affairs. When Takekoshi Yosaburo once called upon him in his study Goto expansively announced, "You know, we look upon the Governor General's office as a sort of university where one may study the theories and principles of colonization, in which branch we, Japanese, are not overly well posted. The Governor General is the president, I am the
w See. for example. Chang Han-yu and Ramon H Myni, "Japanese Colonial Development Pohcy in Taiwan, 1895-1906: A Case of Bureaucratic Entrepreneurship," in Journal of Asian Studies, XXII: 2 (Aug. 1963). pp. 443-449; Ramon H. Myers. "Taiwan as an Imperial Colony of Japan, 1895-1945," in Journal of the lnslituu of Chinese Stuiits, Chinese Univcrsiiy of Hong Kong. Vol. VI (Dec. 1973), pp. 425-451; and Yulriko Hayase, "The Career of Goto Shimpei: Japan's Statesman of Research. 1857-1929," unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. The Florida State University. 1974. pp. 40-90.
Attitudes Toward Colonialism — 85
manager, and this room we are now in is the library of this colonization university."'1
It seems likely that it was Goto's wide reading in contemporary Western colonial thought, buttressed, perhaps, by his own professional training in Berlin, which brought him to adopt current European—particularly German—notions about colonial policy. In particular, his systematic and research-oriented approach to the development of Taiwan and his perception of the island as a "laboratory," wherein experiments to control its social and political environment could supposedly determine the course of social change and evolution in the colony, reflected the pseudo-scientific passion of the time for the application of "biological laws" to political and social institutions.'2 In the realm of colonial affairs such ideas had come to be exalted in Europe as "scientific colonialtsm." a term particularly favored in Wilhelmian Germany, where it had been promoted by the energetic colonial reformer Bernhard Dernberg.13
But to Goto and his colleagues in Taiwan "scientific colonialism" meant more than just research to rationalize colonial policy or social engineering as an aid to colonial development. In its Social Darwinist obsession with "biological politics" it also implied a way of looking at supposed differences in political capacity between ruler and ruled, differences seen to be shaped by biological principles. As Takekoshi Yosaburo insisted, ", . . biological laws prevail in politics as well as in the human body. ... We of the latter-day school of the science of government firmly believe that the government of a colony cannot go beyond biological laws'. . . ."14
I" Takekoshi. Formosa, pp. 21-22.
" For Goto's rather murky statement on the way by which biological "principle*" supposedly related to colonial administranon, see Ramon Myers, p. 435.
" Peter Duignan and Lewis Gann. Thr Rulers of German Africa, 1884-1914 (Stanford. 1972). pp. 179 and 189, There are interesting parallels between Demburg and Goto ai colonial administrators, as there are between the general colonial ideas of Wilhelmian Germany and late Meiji Japan. Both Demburg and Goto received medical training in Germany, and both saw medical training and research ai an essential pan of colonial reform. Improvements in public health came to be a paramount advertisement for success claimed by the colonial authorities in both German and Japanese empires. In more general terms no two colonial powers devoted as much attention to research as part of the colonial task. In Germany this effort resulted in the huge encyclopedias on the colonies, like Heinrich Sdlnee't Deutthes Kolmial Lexicon, published after Germany has lost its colonies. In the case of Japan it'materialized in the vast amount of information on colonial territories collected and published by various Japanese agencies, an activity begun by Goto in Taiwan, continued in Korea, and perfected by the South Manchuria Railway Company in its research on Manchuria and China.
w Takekoshi Yosaburo. "Japan's Colonial Policy" in Japan lo America, Naoichi Ma-saoka, ed. (Putrnan. 1915). p. 97.
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These Japanese attitudes concerning the overseas empire that took shape in the near decade and a half after the conclusion of the Goto era in Taiwan were a strange combination of continuing detachment and gathering interest. Despite the seeming public neglect of colonial matters, a growing body of knowledge and informed opinion on the subject emerged between 1905 and 1920. It was shaped by a group of publicists—ex-adiiimistrators, scholars, politicians, journalists—who were widely read in modern colonial theory, but who also possessed a first-hand knowledge of colonial affairs from extensive service or observation in the colonies, particularly in Taiwan. Prominent in their own right, men like Nitobe Inaio, Togo Minoru, Mochiji Rokusa-buro. Takekoshi Yosaburo, and Nagai Ryutaro began to produce a steady flow of commentary on the Japanese colonial empire.
It is difficult to measure in precise terms the influence of these men. One cannot say that they necessarily represented an unofficial expression of official views, nor indeed that of any particular interest group or segment of Japanese opinion. Yet, given the government background of most of these men and the influential positions which they had come to hold in politics, academe, or journalism, they can be said to have expressed collectively the most informed, most articulate, and most frequently voiced Japanese attitudes toward colonial matters during the first quarter century of the empire.
It was not long before this growing expertise in colonial affairs began to acquire institutional support. In 1908, at the initiative of Goto Shimpci (now president of the South Manchuria Railway Company), Tokyo University established a chair in colonial studies, and Nitobe Inazo, who had been one of Goto's brilliant young brain trust in Taiwan, was named its first occupant. Nitobe's meticulous and wide-ranging study of colonialism marked a major chapter in the evolution of Japanese colonial thought. In particular, his lectures on colonial policy which he delivered in 1916-1917 at his university collated and synthesized a great mass of information and commentary regarding colonial institutions around the globe and constituted the first systematic study of the subject in Japan." Similar initiatives followed. A year after Nitobe assumed the chair at Todai, Nagai Ryutaro was appointed to an equivalent position at Waseda, and other less prestigious institutions began to offer courses in colonial studies.
What is important about the efforts of Nitobe. and other commentators perhaps less exhaustive in their investigations, is that their writings on the Japanese colonial empire now placed the empire within
" 5« Nitobe's. "Sholturain seisaku k6gi oyobi ronbunshu" (Collected Lectures and Essays on Colonial Policy], Nitobe, Ztnihu, Vol IV.
Attitudes Toward Colonialism — 87
the context of colonialism as a global phenomenon and began to strengthen Japanese understanding of colonial affairs in the broadest sense, not just as an offshoot of economic theory. Drawing attention to the circumstances of Japan's own colonies, they raised questions about the nature and purpose of Japanese rule over foreign peoples. Conveying the commentaries of foreign thinkers and specialists like J. R. Sceley, Paul Reisch, and Jules Harmand, they began to ponder the relative merits of particular European colonial systems for the Japanese situation.
In comparison with writers or commentators of later decades who 1^ were either more liberal or more radically authoritarian in their atti-
tudes, the Japanese specialists on colonial affairs between 1905 and 1920 might be called both moderate and conservative. Their outlook, on the issues of colonial rule mixed hard national interest, cautious humanitarianism, racially oriented pseudo-science, paternalism, and complacent assumptions about the status quo in almost equal proportions. In this it was at one with much of contemporary colonial thought in Europe, which was not surprising in view of their deep immersion in the growing corpus of Western literature on colonial affairs.
The new Japanese expertise on colonial matters flourished within a growing confidence in imperial success following the nation's victory over Russia which not only augmented the territorial limits of the empire (with acquisition of southern Sakhalin and the Liaotung peninsula) but, in terms of sums, raised Japan to the ranks of the major colonial powers. With an increased understanding of other colonial systems the Japanese were better able to match their qualifications against the generally acknowledged requisites in colonial rulership and to note with satisfaction that they measured up to the demanding standards imposed by Western specialists in colonial policy.16
Such self-congratulation was buttressed by the plaudits of foreign observers concerning Japan's accomplishments in her first decade as a colonial power. Initial foreign commentary of Japanese talents for the management of alien territory had been skeptical or patronizing.
'* Bureaucrat, politician, and colonial publicist. Tdgo Minoru expressed the confidence of many Japanese in the nation's historic capacities for overseas dominion, but brought in Western theory to confirm it. Citing the six prerequisites ascribed by Sir Charles Lucas, the prominent British geographer, for success as a colonial race—entrepreneurial spirit, commercial acumen, ability as emigrants to establish a new society, military prowess, administrative skill, and the power of assimilation—Togd, after scanning Japan's history, concluded that it gave ample proof of all these attributes. Togo Minoru, Nikon thokuminnn [On Japanese Colonialism], 1906, pp. 358-359.
88 — Origins and Meaning
"Whether they possess the mystic faculty or not only time can tell," sniffed one British writer at the opening of the century, but after the success of the Goto era in Taiwan doubts had turned to enthusiastic praise. In a short decade Japan turned from a colonial "new boy" to "a colonizing power worthy of study and attention."17
Basic also to Japan's growing confidence in colonial rule was the increasing identification with European colonialism in form, as well as in idea. For Goto, the British example served as the starting point for much of his revitalizing effort in Taiwan Having read widely in the literature of British colonialism, he encouraged his subordinates to do the same, an activity which he initiated by having Sir Charles Lucas' Historical Geography of the British Colonies translated into Japanese. Convinced that the secret of British administrative success lay in the self-confidence engendered by British education. Goto attempted the novel and ultimately abortive scheme of establishing a character-building institution for upper-class Japanese youth in Taiwan not unlike a British public school." More effectively, he adopted to the Japanese colonial scene British concepts of physical grandeur to reinforce colonial authority. Taking his cue from the role of the public edifice in British India, he undertook the transformation of the decaying jumble of Chinese Taipei into the stately European-style capital of Taihoku. At its center he placed the imposing Government General Building, whose viceregal proportions were meant to symbolize the authority and permanence of the Japanese presence. Other Japanese empire builders approved. "Colonial rulers should take care to maintain pride in themselves," declared Nitobe, commenting on the new structure. "Merely being kind to [colonial subjects] is insufficient. Primitive peoples are motivated by awe."" Lord Curzon and Earl Cromer would have agreed.
Yet if material pomp and circumstance provided the pride and glitter of empire for a handful of civil servants and residents in Taiwan, subsequent territorial annexations seemed to offer the prospect that
" Archibald Colquhon. Tht Mesttry ,;i ih, Patific (New York. 1902). p. 398, and Alfred Stead, Grttt Japan: A Study of National Effiiienty (New York, 1906). p. 426.
" E. Patricia Tsurumi, Japanat Colonial Mutation in Taiwan, 1895-1945 (Cambridge. Mais). 1977. pp. 74-77
* Nitobe. Ztmku, IV. 144. To Takekoshi Yosaburd the idea of architectural pomp was Chinese is well. Quoting a T'ang poet—"How ihall the people recognize the Emperor's majesty if the palace be not surely?"—he declared that "In order to establish the national prestige in the island and eradicate the native yearnings after the past it is fitting that the authorities should erect substantial and imposing buildings and thus show that it is their determination to rule the country permanently." Takekoshi. Formosa, p. 16. -
Attitudes Toward Colonialism — 89
the Japanese people as a whole might participate in and contribute to the great work of imperial expansion. With the acquisition of Kara-futo and eventually Korea, hopes were raised that the empire might somehow develop as an outlet for overseas settlement where the "surplus" portion of the Japanese population could find new living space under the Japanese flag and where the energies and resourcefulness of Japanese agriculturalists could create "new Japans" which would strengthen and increase the Japanese race in its world struggle for survival, as well as furnish foodstuffs for the health and vigor of the homeland.M Initially, some Japanese publicists had placed hopes on Taiwan and Sakhalin as territories for such mass emigration, but recognition of difficult conditions of climate and topography on both islands ultimately channeled Japanese expectations toward the direct agricultural colonization of Koiea. From faulty population statistics and from wishful thinking colonial propagandists derived heady visions of large tracts of underdeveloped Korean land available for Japanese settlement. Nagai Ryutaro spoke glowingly of the peninsula as a splendid haven for Japanese immigrants, and in 1912 Takekoshi Yosaburo, noting that Japan, prior to 1895. had colonists but no colonies, joyfully reported that "now Korea has room forten million immigrants and Formosa two truuk>n.,'a
But circumstances and the predispositions of Japanese immigrants into Korea undercut the tidy assumptions of Japanese colonial theorists. By the time of Korea's annexation, Karl Moskowitz tells us, the incredible illusions about Korea's sparse population and available land had been dispelled and Japanese aspirations to direct agricultural colonization of the peninsula had foundered on the hard fact that Korea was already filled—with Koreans. Nor had those Japanese colonists, who had indeed emigrated to Korea in considerable numbers by 1910, conformed to the cherished notions of those specialists con-. cemed with colonial policy. Gregory Henderson has likened the Japanese immigrants who entered Korea to the impoverished piedt noity who poured in massive numbers into the North African maghrcb in ] the late nineteenth century. Tinkers, peddlers, failed shopkeepers,
rough adventurers, they represented the marginal elements of Japanese society and. far from being hardy pioneers of the soil, willing to till the Korean hillsides into paddy land, they were profit-seekers
■ T6gd Minora and Sato Shiro. Taiwan ihokumin nattauu shi (History of Colonial Development m Taiwan). K&bunkan (Taipei, 1916). pp. 1-7.
" Nagai Ryutaro, Shakai mondai u ikohmm mondai [Social and Colonial Problems) (Shmkdsha. 1912). pp 397-400; and Takekoshi. "Japan1! Colonial Policy." Japan to Aintriu, p. 98.
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who naturally gravitated to the cities, or buying up land already cultivated, eventually became the new landlords of Korea.22
With the diminished prospects for a continued and massive outflow of Japan's population to Korea the emigrationist element in Japanese colonialism began to fade. Nevertheless, demands for "living space" for Japan's "surplus" population remained a powerful argument in the 1920's for Japanese expansionists who pressed for the occupation of Manchuria, and to a lesser extent it provided the impetus for the ballooning Japanese immigration in the island territories of Micronesia in the 1930's. Yet, in fact, by 1920, all overseas Japanese territories, save Karafuto and a number of the Micronesian islands, were colonies of occupation rather than settlement.
Diminished expectations for the enlargement of the Japanese race in overseas territories under the national flag did not affect the basic expansionist assumptions imbedded in Japanese attitudes toward empire since the acquisition of Japan's first colony. It is not necessary to subscribe to unsubstantiated devil theories about Japanese conspiracies for conquest in order to recognize that Japan came to regard its colonies as bases for the extension of Japanese trade, influence, and power in Asia and the West Pacific. Once in Japanese hands, Taiwan, in particular, came to be valued for the economic and political penetration of South China and Southeast Asia. Katsura Taro, the colony's second governor, had readily connected Japan's colonial presence in Taiwan with Japanese ambitions in those regions, and, while the authenticity of the sensational "Kodama Report of 1902" and its alleged discussion of Taiwan as a military base for the conquest of Southeast Asia remains as dubious as that of the Tanaka Memorial of two decades later, it is true that over the years, as the hazy notions of a "southern advance" (nanshin) evolved in the minds of Japanese expansionists. Taiwan retained its importance as a "stone aiming at the southeast" (Tonan no seki).13 In 1918, Akashi Motojiro, then governor general of Taiwan, underscored the importance of the island as a pivot for Japanese expansion in an address to colonial subordinates, during which he referred to Taiwan.as "the essential hinge in the
n Karl Moskowirz, "The Creation of the Oriental Development Company. Japanese Illusion! Meet Korean Reality." in Occasional Papers on Keren No. 2. New York. 1974. pp. 77-102, and Gregory Henderson. "Japan"* Chosen: Immigrants, Ruthlessness and Developmental Shock." m Korea Under Japanese Colonial Hull: Studies of the Policy and Techniques of Japanese Colonialism, Andrew C. Nahm, ed. (Kalamazoo, 1973). pp. 263-265.
" Chang and Myers, p. 43*; George Kerr, "The Kodama Report: Plan for Conquest," in Far Eastern Survey. XIV: 14 July 18, 1945). pp 185-190. and A. J Graj-daruev. Formosa Today An Analysis of ike Economic Development and Strategic Importance of Japan's Tropical Colony (New York. 1942). p. 183.
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Empire's southern gate."24 Similar, though less frequent, appraisals of the position of each of the colonial territories and of expansionism as an inherent element of Japan's colonial purpose were made by civilian as well as military spokesmen for the empire.25
It needs to be re-emphasized, however, that while expansion of commerce and influence appears to have been an integral part of Japan's views on the value of empire, there was little consistent; pressure between 1910 and 1920 for the territorial augmentation of the formal empire. True, the former German territories in Shantung and Micronesia were occupied in 1914, but those windfall acquisitions were due less to Japanese planning than to a sudden and fortuitous turn in international events. Most who spoke and wrote on colonial themes stressed the idea of colonial development rather than territorial aggrandizement. "We do not need more colonies than, we already have," declared Takckoshi Yosaburd in 1912. "Anyone who attempts to acquire more would act contrary to sound imperial policy and for his own private venture. Japan's imperial policy today calls for the development of Korea and Manchuria, as well as of Formosa, and Japan's colonial policy should not be otherwise than to fulfull her responsibility to those lands."*
Takekoshi's reference to Japan's colonial "responsibility" is of interest in light of the impression, in Western commentary, that Japan never developed a colonial ethos which included a sense of obligation to its colonial peoples. Much has been made, indeed, of Japan's overriding concern with economic profit and the Japanese tendency to judge the colonial successes and failures according to the principles of the accountant.57 To a large extent this is true. Japanese self-satisfaction.at having managed Taiwan so skillfully that it was economically self-sufficient within a decade was a recurrent theme in early Japanese literature on colonial affairs. As Japanese imperial propagandists became caught up in the spurious economic arguments of the "new imperialism." moreover, the material advantages of colonies
* Komon Tokuji. Akmki Stotojiri. IT Hara Shobo. pp. 54-56.
" The humanist Nitobc Inaxo. for example, viewed the penetration of Southeast Asia and the South Pacific as the future mission of the Japanese. Nitobe was careful to emphasize, however, that he referred only to the extension of Japanese economic leadership m these areas and cautioned that even in this function Jipancse policies would have to be cooperative and humane: "If we treat the peoples of these areas harshly: if we art unfair to the whites in commercial rivalry; if, in competing with Chinese labor, we treat the Chinese badly: if. in I word, we neglect humamta nanism, then our great mission will have little success." Nitobe. Zenthu. IV. 474-478.
" Takekoshi Yosaburo, "Japan's Colonial Policy," in Japan to America, p. 98.
* Kublin. "The Evolution of Japanese Colonialism." pp. 77-78.
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to the Japanese homeland came to occupy a prominent place in Japanese colonial thinking.
Yet the implication that the Japanese, from the beginning of their empire, were singularly blatant in their concern with economic profit and material advantage is both unwarranted and indiscriminate. In all European colonial systems, attitudes toward colonial rule have included the basic presumption that overseas territories exist or ought to exist for the benefit of the metropolitan nation. In the Japanese case, justifications evolved which proclaimed a moral responsibility toward subject peoples and which cloaked, yet in many cases modified, this naked self-interest. These arguments usually embraced the ideas of a civilizing mission and the obligation for the welfare of dependent peoples. Leaving aside the labyrinthian question of the relative proportions of hypocrisy and idealism in such vindications of empire, it is important to understand that, like colonial thought in the West, the range of Japanese attitudes toward colonialism during the first half of the fifty-year history of the empire included those which recognized the nation's responsibility to protect the interests of its colonial peoples.
Such opinions were articulated between 1905 and 1920 by those in the emerging community of Japanese specialists in colonial problems. Taken together their arguments represented a theory of colonial governance which was paternalistic and gradualist, and which viewed the colonies as entities distinct from the mother country and thus deserving policies separate from it. It was a perspective which had much in common with European theorizing on colonial policy during those years and was, at the same time, an. approach to colonial policy framed within a growing sense of Japanese rights and responsibilities toward Asia as a whole. As Akira Iriye has noted, this emerging sense of "mission" to enlighten and to reform a decaying Asia was still directed toward the modernization of Asia in the Western mode and thus must be seen as distinct from the Pan-Asianism of the 1920's and 1930's with its strident call for the union of Asian peoples and for th.* ejection of Western imperialism from Asia.28
Basic to this view was the recognition that the welfare and happiness of colonized peoples were linked to a nation's reputation as a responsible colonial power, and thus the pursuit of material advantage in any colony required moderation and compromise on the part of the conquering race. This realization contained the implicit admission that the early years of Japanese rule in Taiwan and Korea had
a Akira Iriye, Patific Estrangement, p. 92, and Akira Inyc, "Japan's Policies Toward the United States." in Japan'i Foreign Policy, IS6S-i94t, A Research Cuide. James Mor-ley, ed. (New York. 1974). p. 425.
Attitudes Toward Colonialism — 93
involved shameful abuses of the interests of the indigenous peoples by fixe boo ting colonists (a common banc at the outset of many colonial regimes). Economic advantage pursued at the expense of the colonized, insisted ex-bureaucrat Mochiji Rokusaburo, was but temporary advantage, since the ruin of Japan's colonial subjects could only injure the wider interests of Japan as a whole. "The conquered stand before the conquerors like sheep before a tiger," wrote Mochiji in 1912. "Those who bear heavy responsibility for public government in the colonies must keep this ever in mind; if they do not. the progress of Japan as a civilized nation will be jeopardized."59 Nitobe Inazd, drawing on a wealth of personal .experience in colonial administration and a broad understanding of colonial theory, spoke to the essential problem in the management of alien peoples overseas:
What is vital in any colonial«scheme seems to me to be the right answer to this question: Do we govern an unwilling people for their jake or for our own? As to the general unwillingness of any colony ... to be governed by a power alien to it, there is litde doubt. A colonial government has received no consent of the governed. Nor is there much reason to believe that a colonial power, white or brown, bears the sacrifice simply to better the lot of the people placed in its charge. The history of colonization is the history of national egotism. But even egotism can attain its end by following the simple law of human intercourse;—"give and take." Mutual advantage must be the rule.30
As in most modern colonial systems it often turned out, of course, that in terms of effecting a humane policy toward colonized peoples, reforming bureaucrats and theoreticians in Japan proposed, while overbearing officials, callous policemen, and rapacious traders in the colonies disposed. The record of Japan's viciousness in Korea and frequent insensitiviry in Taiwan and the Pacific territories is too dear to deny that Japanese colonials on the scene often had little regard for the interests of Taiwanese, Koreans, or Micronesians. Yet there did exist in Japan, and to a lesser extent in the colonies, persons of influence who were genuinely concerned with Japan's colonial responsibilities and whose opinions on the subject were a good deal more liberal and humane than those occasionally voiced by European colonial spokesmen.31
* Mochiji Rokusaburo. Taiwan shokumtn seisaku (Colonial Policy in Taiwan) (Fu-rambd, 1912), p. 407.
l » Nitobe Inatd. •'Japanese Colonization." in Asian Review, Series 4. Vol. 16 Qui.
1920). pp. 120-121.
" It is instructive to juxtapose Nitobe'* statement quoted above with that of Theo-
94 — Origin* and Meaning
In part such perceptions stemmed from the recognition that while colonized peoples could be conquered by force they could not be permanently held by it. Ultimately, their docility toward alien rule would best be assured if they came to identify their security and welfare with the civilizing efforts of Japan. Thus, argued those in the mainstream of Japanese colonial thought, Japan's subject peoples should be introduced to the benefits of modem civilization—hospitals, railways, the telegraph, basic schooling—under the careful scrutiny of colonial authority. Typically, Mochiji spoke of a policy of "reassurance and guidance" {suibu keidS) for the Taiwanese, one which linked humanitarian protection of their rights and interests with paternalistic supervision of their progress toward modernity.12
But underlying this view was the assumption that the tempo and direction of the advance of dependent peoples would in large part be determined by the nature and status of their own societies. This, many Japanese colonial theorists insisted, was particularly true in the case of the Taiwanese and Koreans, races of ancient cultural traditions. To attempt abrupt changes in such societies was morally tcp-rehcnsible, as it could only lead to the disintegration of their social and cultural order. Such forced-draft modernization would also be a self-defeating policy for Japan, in that it would merely generate hostility to colonial rule among traditional elements in those populations and would exaggerate the expectations of freedom among those more disposed to modern ideas Thus, Japan should move cautiously in its civilizing mission, always respectful of the separate (and subordinate) cultural identities of their colonial peoples."
To the moderate and conservative colonial theorists of late Meiji and early Taishd, therefore, one of the most important elements in the formulation of sound and lasting colonial policy was time. Colo-do™ Leutwein. governor of German Southwest Africa. 1894-1905. who concluded that "the final objective of all colonization ii to make money. The colonizing race has no intention of bringing happiness to the abongmal people, the kind of happiness that the latter perhaps expects. In the first instance, the conquerors seek their own advantage. Such objectives correspond to human egotism and therefore accord with nature. Colonial pohcy must, therefore, be determined by the expected profits." Gann and Duignan. p. 44. Recognizing that there were those in Japan who were far less humane than Nitobe in their attitudes toward Japan's dependent peoples and theorists in Germany (like Demburg) who would have agreed wkh Nitobe's statement quoted here. Nitobe's judgment nevertheless demonstrates that there were Japanese in these years whose views were a good deal more liberal than those sometimes found in European colonial systems.
"Mochiji, Taiwan shokumin stiuku. pp 431-432.
>' Nitobe. Zfnshi. IV. 165. and Takekoshi, pp. 33-34.
Attitudes Toward Colonialism — 95
nial peoples could be guided toward the higher civilization of the metropolitan country at only the most gradual pace. Goto Shimpei, while in Taiwan, had spoken of a "hundred-year plan" for the gradual evolution of Taiwanese society, Nitobe Inazo thought eight hundred years a reasonable period for the evolution of certain colonial peoples. Here again, "biological principles" were invoked to support this extreme gradualism. Since human communities evolved over a long period of rime, Goto argued, any attempt to force sudden change in Taiwanese society would contradict the principles" of evolution and civilization. The same arguments were applied to Korea following its annexation. "Success in our policy (of gradualism) in Formosa," wrote Takekoshi Yosaburo in 1912. "made us extend the principle to Korea. .. . The Koreans can be slowly and gradually led in the direction of progress, but it is against all Jaws of sociology and biology to make them enter a new life at once. . . . "M Naturally, such contentions, which dealt from alleged differences in the capacities of races to modernize, evoked powerful arguments for preservation of the status quo. for the subordinate position of dependent peoples, and the superior place of their alien rulers. In a sense, this clement in Japanese colonial thought of the 1905-1920 period which implied the biological inferiority of colonized peoples bore some resemblance to the racial doctrines of colonial bureaucrats and theonsts in the Italian colonial empire of the 1930's.*
These were the ideas, then, of the most articulate elements of Japanese colonial opinion between 1905 and 1920. These commentators took cognizance of the welfare of Japan's dependent peoples and balanced them against the national interests of Japan, though they assumed, the moral right of "advanced" colonial races like Japan to establish dominion over "lesser" indigenous peoples. Confident in these assumptions, they presumed the availability of an infinite amount of time for the benefits of colonial rule to work their good, unhurried either by international challenges to the status quo or by violent pressures from the colonial peoples themselves. Finally, they perceived the Japanese colonies to be separate territories, distinct from the homeland and not merely extensions of it. In this sense theirs was an approach not unlike the French doctrine of association, which held that colonies should retain a separate identity and be governed prag-
* Tsurumi. pp. SI and 8t, Takekoshi Yosaburd, "Japan's Colonial Policy." in On-tnttl Review. 111:2 (Dec. 1912), 102-103.
» See Dennis Mack Smith, Mutulmi'i Roman F.mpirt (New York. 1976). pp. 112-
i
96 — Origins and Meaning
Attitudes Toward Colonialism — 97
maiirally. with due regard to the institutions and traditions of their native peoples.3*
In sum, the impulse behind the moderate-conservative Japanese colonial policy derived largely from the example of European colonial empires whose overseas territories were geographically dispersed and racially diverse. "The island of Formosa," Takekoshi declared, "where Japanese have come to establish power over the native population of three million people differing widely from us in tradition, customs, language, race and physical conditions, can only be regarded as a colony and therefore the island can only be governed in accord with the example and precedents furnished by other colonial powers."37
Assimilation and Its Critics, 1905-1920
And yet. as they evolved, Japanese perspectives also contained assumptions about relations between homeland and colonial peoples which ran counter to principles established within European colonial empires. Affinities of race and culture between Japan and her colonial peoples (excepting the islanders of the South Pacific) made possible the idea of a fusion of the two and suggested that ultimately Japanese colonial territories had no separate, autonomous identities of their own, but only a destiny which was entirely Japanese. This concept found its expression in the doctrine of assimilation—doka in Japanese^—which came to be the central issue in Japanese colonial affairs.
Assimilation as a general concept,«of course, was not uniquely Japanese. Best defined as "that system which tends to efface all differences between the colonies and the motherland and which views the colonies simply as a prolongation of the mother country beyond the seas,"38 it found its most enthusiastic and articulate expression in French colonial theory. But while Japanese who wrote and acted on colonial matters were aware of French assimilationist doctrine there is scant evidence that French concepts, based as they were on the republican ideals of 1789, had much influence in the formation of Japanese as-similationist ideas, which were distinctly Asian in origin and character. Nor was the maturation of Japanese assimilationist theory similar to that of France. The French colonial empire began the nineteenth
" D. K Fieldhouse. The Colonial Empiret: A Comparative Survey from the Eighteenth Century (New York, 1966), p. 319. " Takekoshi, Formosa, p. 33.
» S H Roberts, A History of French Colonial Policy, WO-IMS, I (London. 1929). p. 67.
century dedicated to the ideal of assimilation, but by the century's end had made a pragmatic adjustment toward the principle of association. In effect, Japanese colonial policy during the half century of the empire moved in exactly the opposite direction.
At least four assumptions about Japan's cultural heritage appear to have been central to Japanese ideas of assimilation. The ddbun dosha (same script, same race) formula of cultural and racial affinity with the Chinese cultural area were basic to these concepts, of course. But, more than this, Japanese ideas of assimilation contained a strongly moralistic tone, derived from the Chinese Confucian tradition and expressed in the endlessly-repeated phrase isshi dojin—"impartiality and equal favor"—which conveyed the idea that all who came under the sway of the sovereign shared equally in his benevolence.39 Applied to modem administration, it implied, at least to some, that in the colonies, Japanese and tfic native populations were to be treated equally, subject to the same obligations and invested with'the same rights. But like the "Three Peoples' Principles" of Republican China, isshi dojin was sufficiently nebulous that it could encompass a variety of meanings to suit quite disparate political purposes. It could be given the most liberal construction, stressing equal rights, or the most authoritarian interpretation, emphasizing equal obligations. A rhetorical device rather than a practical guide to colonial policy, it nevertheless became an incantation for numerous Japanese involved in colonial affairs, since, unlike the more prosaic and contentious term doka, it appeared sanctified by its implied reference to the Imperial will.
This link to the Japanese emperor as head of the Japanese race and state came to be the third distinguishing feature of Japanese ideas on assimilation. The origins of the Japanese race were held to be mystically linked to the Imperial house and thus to constitute an Imperial "family," a principle which could be extended outward to include new populations brought under Japanese dominion, so that these too could become "imperial peoples" (kdmin). Yet here again, the concept was so murky as to defy any precise application of rights and responsibilities to such "imperializcd"—that is, Japanized—nationalities, a vagueness which" made it less a policy than a dogma. Touched upon infrequently in the initial decades of Japanese colonialism, the
" The phrase had its origins in the Chinese i-shih t'ung-jen. meaning to be equally merciful to all. granting an impartial kindness or favor. It Is mentioned in the Han-yu yuan-jin by a famous T'ang poet and nge "Therefore, the sage treats everyone equally and impartially " See Miao T'len-hua, ed.. Ch'eng yu-l'itn [Dictionary of terms and phrases], Fu-hsmg shu-chu (Taipei. 1973).
98 — Origins and Meaning
idea of "imperialization" by the 1930's came to sanctify the increasing regimentation and subordination forced on Japan's colonial peoples.40 Lastly, some Japanese thinking about assimilation was colored by a conviction that Japanese historical experience had provided the race with unique talents for the assimilation of foreign peoples and ideas. Such a belief based its claims on various examples of semi-mythical, as well as of a factual, nature: the emergence of the Yamato people, Japan's assimilation of Chinese culture in ancient times, and its adaption of Western forms in the modern period. The idea not only rested on a simplisdc view of Japanese history, but represented an ill-conceived attempt to fit the "facts" of Japan's pre-modern past to a mod-cm colonial setting where, in fact, a minority of Japanese existed amidst alien majorities. But such realities did not prevent the idea's frequent appearance among the battery of arguments for assimilation.41
Despite the rhetoric of isshi dojin, of course, the actual environment of Japanese colonialism was hostile to any true merger of the Japanese with their dependent peoples on the basis of familiarity or mutual respect. Largely subordinate in position and treatment under separate colonial law, the indigenous populations had no representation in the Japanese Diet, nor any effective legislative bodies of their own, Japanese occupied the overwhelming portion of influential positions in government. Active Japanese discouragement of racial intermarriage and the isolation of colonial Japanese in their tight and exclusive urban communities hardly contributed to easy intercourse between the races. Above all, the attitudes of resident Japanese in the colonics, not dissimilar to those of most colonial elites, undercut the possibilities of teal assimilation. Their feelings of superiority, their jealous grip on privilege and position, were insurmountable barriers to mutually responsive communications between colonizers and colonized, and their obvious fear of being swamped culturally and politically by native majorities mocked Japanese assertions of the historic capacity of their race to assimilate foreign peoples.
Yet assimilation as a theory came to have a powerful appeal for a wide spectrum of Japanese. At its most idealized level—the mystic of isshi dojin—assimilation was central to the idea of a civilizing mission and thus a widely accepted perspective within the range of Japanese
" Gold Shimpei. m an address to a group of Japanese educators m Taiwan in 1903. •poke of the "inherent benefits to the Taiwanese on becoming part of'our imperial race' [wag* ki nc mm)." Shirai Asakichi and Ema Tsunekichi. Kimiidu undo |The Japanization Movement) (Taipei, 1939). pp. 10-11.
" See. for example. Akashi MotojircVs vim on the assimilation of the Yamato and Izumo races, in Komon. pp. 50-51.
Attitudes Toward Colonialism — 99
attitudes toward colonialism. This was in large part because the vagueness of its ideas meant that it could be perceived in quite different ways by different people and thus espoused by bureaucrats, politicians, scholars, and reformers for reasons that were often quite contradictory. Undoubtedly, moreover, because assimilation in any colonial system has always implied one-directional change by "inferior" colonized peoples toward the culture of the "superior" colonizing race, it found wide favor among Japanese of all persuasions.
As an ultimate and ideal goal, therefore, assimilation might even be said to have been accepted by those Japanese who had adopted a gradualist position in colonial affairs. In their view, japan's colonial peoples, under the proper guidance and over sufficient rime, could be "lifted up" to the superior culture of Japan and in this way, over a long period, become part, of that higher plane of civilization. Such a process could not be forced or rushed, but only "influenced by enlightenment" (lunka kaigo), as Mochiji Rokusaburo put it.42 In this sense, as Harry Lamley has noted, isshi ddjin sentiments reflected a certain humanitarianism, a Meiji belief in progress, coupled with feelings of superiority common to all colonial elites.43 Education, closely supervised and with carefully tailored objectives, was to be the vehicle for the gradual enlightenment of the colonized. Thus, in a sense, Goto Shimpei in his program of Japanese language training at the mass level had worked toward long-range assimilationist goals in Taiwan. Goto's limited effort can be seen as the initial step in a fifty-year attempt by the colonial authorities in Taiwan to use education is a device to incorporate the Taiwanese as an obedient, subordinate Hement in the Japanese race, a process charted in detail by Patricia Tsurumi's splendid monograph on colonial education in Taiwan.44
In Nitobe Inazo's view, the progress toward assimilation in any particular colony was necessarily determined by the extent to which cultural differences already existed between colonizer and colonized. (From this point of view Nitobe considered assimilation more possible in Korea than in Taiwan.) Nitobe cited, by European example, the painful consequences when colonial powers failed to recognize these differences and attempted hasty and ill-considered efforts to immerse dependent alien peoples in the advanced cultures of their
° Harry J. Lamley, "Assimilation Efforts in Colonial Taiwan: The Fate of the 1914 Movement," in Monuments Stria, XXIX (1970-71). pp. 498-499; and Tsurumi. pp. 23-25.
° Moiliiji, Taiwan ihokumtn ituaku, p. 400.
" Lamley. "The 1895 Taiwan War of Resistance; Local Chineie Efforts Against a Foreign Power" and Tsurumi. "Japanese Colonial Education m Taiwan 1895-1945," pp. 38^5.
100 — Origin! and Meaning
colonial masters. He concluded that at present assimilation was only "an idealistic concept and [thought] all arguments in its favor stem from lofty ideas"; its realization could only be brought about by small, incremental advances over a great span of dme.**
If some Japanese colonial thinkers were willing to accept assimilation in theory as a distant objective of colonial policy, Japanese colonial officialdom viewed assimilation of a very limited, mundane sort as an immediately useful administrative concept. As a restricted mechanical means to "Japanize" the appearance and lifestyles of Japan's colonial peoples and thus to remold them outwardly as loyal, law-abiding Japanese, it was seized upon by the colonial bureaucracy at the outset of Japanese rule in Taiwan. Concerned primarily with the problem of control, the Japanese colonial bureaucrat was delighted with programs which induced Taiwanese, Koreans, Chinese, and Micronesians to speak Japanese, live in Japanese style houses, dress in modern Japanese (Western) clothing, and reinforce their physical identity with the ruling elite.44 Ultimately, because Japanese authorities in the colonial empire failed to come to grips with the contradictions inherent in Japanese attitudes toward colonialism, official policies supporting assimilation were reduced to this mechanical level and generally achieved results among colonial populations that were similarly limited and superficial.
But, in 1912, to a more thoughtful observer of the colonial scene like Mochiji. it seemed possible to achieve greater integration between Japan and her "colonial peoples than merely their "material assimilation" (keijika ddka). Concerned essentially with Taiwan, Mochiji believed that it was essential to transform the entire mental and spiritual outlook of the Taiwanese to make them susceptible to the "Japanese spirit," which, for Mochiji, a man of late Meiji outlook, was undoubtedly a blend of modem Western and traditional Japanese values. But these deeper attitudinal changes among the Taiwanese could be brought about only through a more direct contact between the two races, and this in turn, depended largely upon a change of attitude by the Japanese in Taiwan. Criticizing his fellow countrymen for their cUquishness and their concentration in cities and larger towns apart from the Taiwanese, he called upon the home government to encourage Japanese agricultural settlement in Taiwan, not for economic reasons alone, but to stimulate conditions of "accommodative assimilation" {yuwa dika) whereby Japanese agriculturalists, living closely and harmoniously amongst their Taiwanese neighbors, would
■ Nitobe, Zemhú. IV, 158-160 and 163-164.
■ Umley. 'The 1895 Taiwan War of Refinance." p. 498. 5.
Attitudes Toward Colonialism — 101
inspire them through example and amity to become Japanese in outlook as well as lifestyle. (Mochiji also urged the promotion of Japanese missionary activity—Buddhist and Christian—among the Tai-, wanese as  an important and  underdeveloped  means to their
assimilation.) While these well-intentioned prescriptions for racial cooperation were both paternalistic and naive, what is interesting is chat Mochiji placed them in a wider framework of national destiny and imperial purpose. While Japan had proved itself capable of the mechanics of colonial administration and development, he argued, the amalgamation of colonial peoples, particularly of Chinese racial stock, was the great challenge of the future, one for which nothing from the Western colonial past would serve as adequate example or guide. "But on the solution of this profound problem." Mochiji concluded, "lies the fate and direction of an expanding Japanese empire." By linking cooperation among Asian races with Japanese expansionism Mochiji's view foreshadowed Pan-Asianist views of succeeding decades.47
None of these speculations on assimilation touched upon the sensitive question of the political relationship between metropolitan Japan and the colonies, particularly in terms of the Meiji Constitution. This was a critical problem, for if it were accepted that the provisions of the Constitution applied to all territory under formal Japanese jurisdiction, the authority of Japanese colonial governments would be reduced and the position of Japan's colonial peoples elevated to something approaching equality with the Japanese, a true political assimilation of colonizers and colonized. The impetus for this most controversial aspect of assimilation theory had come from liberal politicians in the Diet who were concerned about the creation of arbitrary bureaucratic power in Japanese territory overseas. Specifically, their criticism focused on the notorious Law 63 (Rokusan hS) of 1896, which had granted the Governor General of Taiwan authority to pass legislation for the colony. The one colonial issue which perennially stirred political debate in Japan, Law 63, was repeatedly attacked in the Diet as illegal, on the ground that, under the Constitution, the Diet had sole law-making power. The law was eventually modified,48 though the arbitrary authority of the government-general in Korea remained undented. Working, in any event, from the basic premise that the Meiji Constitution must apply to all Japanese territories, Japanese
■ Mochiji. Taiwan ihokumm uuaku. pp. 15, 398-403.
*• For a thorough discussion of Japanese administrative law in Taiwan and Korea, including the problem of Law 63, see Edward 1-te Chen. "Japanese Colonialism in Korea and Formosa: A Comparison of the Systems of Political Control." in Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies. XXX (1970). pp. 126-159.
102 — Origins and Meaning
liberals in early Taisho increasingly voiced concern that Japan's colonial populations did not possess the same political rights and liberties under the Constitution enjoyed by Japanese in the home islands. Their objective was therefore to "extend the homeland" (naichi entho), a favored term almost as nebulous as istki dojin, in order to apply the provisions of the Constitution in all Japanese territories. In this way, they believed, the colonies would be more rapidly and directly assimilated into the political, social, and economic structure of japan through at least modest provisions for civil liberties, political responsibility, and advanced education, as well as through the dissolution of restrictions hindering such union Many of these concepts were incorporated into the program of the ill-fated assimilation movement of 1914 in Taiwan, which received wide support among liberals in Japan.*9
It was the furious response to these provocative and liberal ideas which shaped the ideas of the gradualists already discussed. Reacting heatedly to both the proposals for assimilation in a political and legal sense and to suggestions for liberalization of colonial policy in general cultural and educational terms, they cited the Western colonial example to argue that such ideas undermined colonial authority on the one hand and agitated colonial peoples on the other. Taking note of French and American assimilationist policies, Takekoshi concluded that "those nations which have considered their colonies as pan and parcel of the home country have almost always failed in their system of [colonial] government; while, as a rule those nations have succeeded which have leoked upon their colonies as a special kind of body politic quite distinct from the mother country."'0 Togo Mi-noru, writing in the official government monthly in Taiwan, not only cited Algeria and Indochina as examples of the failures of French assimilationist theory, but went on to portray the hazards of rebellion and disorder invited by the British in India in their provision of advanced Western education and "almost unlimited freedom" (Togo's phrase) to the upper Indian elite."
While assimilation as a theory drew vigorous opposition from those concerned with colonial affairs who questioned its underlying assumptions and analyzed its failures as a concrete policy, these were by and large measured responses of an intellectual sort. Much more visceral and unenlightened was the outcry by Japanese bureaucrats
■ Such groups and individuals included Ouki Yukio. lnukai Tiuyoshi, a number of university presidents, ranking figures in all three major political parties, a number of ministers In the Okuma cabinet, ai well as > number of major newspapers. Lamley, pp. 510-511. and Tsurumi. p. 295. note 41.
10 Takekoshi. Formosa, pp. 24-25.
" Tsurumi/ "Japanese Colonial Education in Taiwan 1895-1954," p. 48.
Attitudes Toward Colonialism — 103
and residents in Taiwan against Itagaki Taisuke's abortive assimilation movement of 1914. Aghast at Itagaki's suggestion of extending basic liberties in Japan to the Taiwanese, Japanese bureaucrats and colonists in Taiwan, like all colonial elites, reacted vehemently to the prospect of any diminution of their power and privilege. The local Japanese press had shouted down the idea and finally the government-general, resentful of Itagaki and his fellow assimilationists as meddlesome outsiders, had simply banned the movement. Raw self-interest and jealous privilege of Japanese colonials ultimately doomed the single most substantive effort in the history of Japanese colonialism to provide a relatively egalitarian integration of a colonized people with the metropolitan country.'2
And yet, the ambiguity of its implications meant that, for quite different reasons, assimilation came to be espoused by conservatives, liberals, and expansionists alike. Not the least of its appeals was its emotional and somewhat hazy identification with emerging Pan-Asianist ideals of many Japanese. By demonstrating in Taiwan, initially, how members of the Japanese and Chinese races could co-exist and prosper together, Japan could display its lofty purpose of Asian prosperity and union in contrast with divisive and self-serving designs of Western colonialism in Asia. Itagaki, believing that the ideal of racial harmony could be an important clement in Japan's expanding influence in Asia, had given voice to this idea in his support of the 1914 assimilation movement.53
Within a few years others took up the theme more vigorously. Kumamoto Shigekichi, a colonial educator in Taiwan writing in the Taiwan jihd in 1920, called for Pan-Asian unity among the yellow races in the face of consolidation by the white race and announced that the basis of Pan-Asianism must be the assimilation by Japan of the peoples within its colonial empire in language, customs, and outlook. To accomplish this, Kumamoto urged redoubled efforts to provide a common education, particularly through the diffusion of the Japanese language, the abolition of discriminatory practices, the establishment of museums and libraries to foster the idea of a common cultural heritage, and above all a commitment to the idea of assimilation by Japanese colonists, whom he called upon to work more closely and generously with their Taiwanese neighbors in establishing a common loyalty. Just as the United States had "Americanized" its immigrants, Japan must, in a reverse process, make one national people out of the racial components of the empire byjapan-
u Lamley. "The 1895 Taiwan War of Resistance. 1 pp 514-515. » Ibid., p. 499. and Tsurumi. p. 66.
104 — Origins and Meaning
Attitudes Toward Colonialism — 105
izing its newly acquired populations. With the commonplace inconsistency of most Pan-Asianists of the day, Kumamoto concluded that such assimilation efforts would contribute simultaneously to strengthening Japanese power and influence in Asia and to peaceful cooperation between white and yellow races.54
Liberal Alternatives, 1920-1930
It was the powerful currents of change in the Japanese homeland and abroad from 1914 to 1920, however, that did most to invigorate assimilation as an issue in Japanese colonial thought and to reinforce, at least temporarily, its liberal and accommodative form. In Japan, the erosion of the influence of the elder statesmen and the high tide of political party power had brought Hara Kci to the premiership and had strengthened support for more liberal administration for the colonies. Abroad, the emergence of Wilsonian idealism, particularly the principles of self-deteimirution of peoples, gave heart to Taiwanese and Koreans who sought autonomy for their homelands and, in an international atmosphere less disposed to empires and colonial privilege, placed Japan's imperial propagandists on the defensive.
Not surprisingly, the 6rst reaction by Japanese colonial officialdom to the liberalizing trends abroad had been both harsh and reactionary. In Taiwan, Akashi Motojiro, a professional officer of sinister reputation, brought from his previous colonial positions in Korea a record of ruthlessncss as a military policeman and administrator. As governor general he pursued with vigor an assimilationUt policy, not as a gradual program of cultural amalgamation, or as an accommodation to Taiwanese pleas for a share of Japanese civil and political liberties, but as an immediate attempt to tighten Japan's political and ideological control over the colony. For Akashi, assimilation meant an accelerated effort, through the police system as well as the schools, to cement Japan's grip on Taiwan before the appeals of Wilson's principles of self-determination could weaken Taiwanese loyalties. Thus, while he could speak of isshi dojin and "mutual cooperation" {kyoshin ritsuryoku,K it is clear that Akashi"s ideas of assimilation, like that of Japanese military administrators of later decades, had little to do with Taiwanese aspirations for political equality and shared responsibility.
In Korea, the rigor with which Japan-centered assimilation was pursued by the military administration had created violent antago-
" Kumamoto Shigekichi. "Dai nam Nihon to doka mondai" (The Great Problem of Assimilation), in Taiwan jihi (Jan 1920), pp. 55-63. » Komon. Akaiki Motojirl. II. p. 60.
nisms which could not have been permanently contained. To Te-rauchi Masatake, Japan's first pro-consul on the peninsula and symbol of the oppressive era of budan teiji (military (dictatorial] rule), complete assimilation of the Korean people meant their total subjugation. To justify a policy of enforced conformity to Japanese institutions and values, Terauchi marshalled all the classic arguments of Meiji times for Japanese rule over Korea: geographic proximity between the two countries, shared ethnic origin, Japanese "special understanding" of Korea's history and character, as well as the need to protect Korea from the corrosive influence of Western liberal ideas.54
Yet a few Japanese civilian observers had begun to question some of the assumptions of Japanese colonialism in both Taiwan and Korea. Liberal journalist and educator Yoshino Sakuzd, at the forefront of the new democratic drift ip Taisho Japan, smellcd the acrid smoke of popular indignation while on a trip through the peninsula in 1916. To Yoshino the ponderous bureaucratism and mountainous arrogance of the government-general seemed to suggest what relations between officials and people must have been like under the feudal tyranny of the Tokugawa shogunate. In his view, the mindless rhetoric of Tcrauchi's administration, which spoke of the racial and cultural affinities between Koreans and Japanese, was fatally compromised by the racial and cultural contempt with which the Korean people were viewed by their colonial masters. Assimilation of a people of a relatively advanced and distinctive culture—and Yoshino considered the Koreans to be such people;—would be difficult in any event. But denial of social or legal equality to a colonized people in their own land not only made the task impossible, but made their resistance inevitable. Under these circumstances, education, the cherished means of colonial administrators to dispense Japanism, could only increase the white-hot sense of racial and national identity among the Korean people. Indeed, in Korea, Yoshino reported to Japanese readers, to be educated was to be anti-Japanese.57
The explosion of Korean national resentment on March 1, 1919 rocked all segments of informed opinion in Japan. The wrath of the
* Wonmo Dong, "Assimilation and Social Mobilization in Korea: A Study of Japanese Colonial Policy and Political Integration Effects," in Nahm. pp. 152-153 For a critical analysis of Japanese assimilation policy in Korea, see Hatada t akashi. "Nihon-jin no Chosenkan" [Japanese Attitudes toward Korea), in Nikon to Chonn [Japan and Korea). Vol. Ill of Ajia-AjuHka kixa (Lectures on Asia and Africa) (Keis6 Shobo, 196S). pp. 5-10.
"Yoshino Sakuzd, "Mankan o shisatsu shite" (A Tour of Manchuria and Korea), in CUi UnM, XXXL6 (June. 1916). 43-44
106 — Origins and Meaning
Attitudes Toward Colonialism —
107
Japanese military was manifest in the bloody-handedness with which it crushed the movement. Yet the depth of the Korean protest and the brutality of the Japanese colonial response combined to open the way to more liberal assiniilationist alternatives, not only in Korea, but in all the Japanese colonial territories. In large part the modest administrative reforms which followed were generated by Japan's anxiety for its reputation as a responsible colonial power. Writing less than a month after the March demonstration, Yoshino had sounded this concern: "The uprising in Korea," he declared, "is a great stain upon the history of the Taisho period, which we must exert every effort to wipe away. Unless we do so successfully it will not only reflect upon the honor of the most advanced country in East Asia, but will have a serious impact upon our national destiny." Yet Yoshino's remedies to deal with the crisis also serve to illustrate the perimeters of the liberal approach to Japan's colonial policies. The immediate need, he averred, was rigorous suppression of the uprising, punishment of its instigators, and provision of relief measures for Koreans made destitute by the ensuing violence. Yoshino saw the long-range amelioration of Japan's troubled policy in the colony in a basic rearrangement of Japanese-Korean relations. Assimilation—and here Yoshino used the term isshi dojin-rmnst mean that "impartiality and equal favor" become a political, social, and economic reality by the abolition of all discrirninatory practices against Koreans. Equal opportunity would create new and closer bonds of loyalty between the two peoples. At the same time, outright Korean independence was obviously unthinkable. As an alternative, Japan must grant Korea a greater degree of autonomy and the Korean people a larger role in the management of their own destiny, all within the framework of the empire.5*
To Premier Hara Kei, long a foe of autocratic rule in the colonies, yet an early advocate of the rapid and complete integration of Taiwan with the mother country, the March 1919 crisis in Korea and the sudden demise of Akashi Motojiro in Taiwan signalled new opportunities for administrative reform in both colonies, as well as in the newly awarded mandate in the South Pacific.5* The first step was to abolish or limit military rule in those colonies where it still existed. Successful in attaining his objective in Taiwan and the Japanese mandated islands, he was turned aside by the military in trying to apply the principle of civilian rule in Korea. He pushed ahead, nonetheless,
■ Yoshino Sakuzo. "Ch&jen bodo zengosaku" [Our Policy in Korea Before and After the Uprising], in Ckud Mm, XXXIV 4 'April 1919). pp. 121-122. " Tiurumi, "Japanese Colonial Education in Taiwan 1895-1945." p. 91.
for a liberalization of colonial administration in all Japan's overseas possessions, believing that colonial reforms should proceed along the same channels which bureaucratic reform had followed in Japan. Korea posed the most immediate and difficult problem, of course. Its population, in a state of near revolt, seemed capable of turning Korea into the Ireland of the Japanese empire, while the Japanese military administranon there seemed prepared to scourge the length of the peninsula to stamp out the fires of Korean unrest. In Haras view, the ultimate solution to these problems lay in binding Korea closer to an administratively liberalized and reformed Japan. He rejected the idea that Korea be governed as a colony in the same way that Britons or Americans administered peoples of different races, religions, and histories. Admitting that dissimilar levels of civilization and living standards between Korea and Japan meant that equality must be attained by gradual stages, Hara nevertheless argued that Japan must develop a common administrative policy for both the home islands and the peninsula.60 Above all, Koreans must eventually be granted the same political rights as Japanese, chief among which should be the right to send representatives to the Imperial Diet. To a visiting American journalist he insisted: "The desire of most Koreans is not for independence, but to be treated as equals of the Japanese. I intend to see to it that the Koreans have such equal opportunities in education, industry, and government position, as well as to undertake reform of local government along the same lines it has proceeded in Japan."*'
Had Hara not been assassinated in office it is possible that such changes in Japan's colonial administration might have been pursued with greater vigor. Certainly, the pale administrative and social re-Is forms that comprised the ensuing decade or more of the bunka seiji (cultural rule) period of Japanese adniinistration in Korea hardly realized Haras objectives, let alone satisfied Korean demands for justice and autonomy. Filtered as it was through a colonial administration which still held Korean political aspirations and capacities in contempt, liberalization of Japanese rule in Korea quickly evaporated into lofty slogans empty of any solid reform. "Co-existence and co-prosperity" (kyozon kyoti), for example, far from ushering in a new era of economic justice for the Koreans, came to mean economic development of Korea largely to promote Japanese interest. "Assimilation of Japan and Korea" (naistn doka) had nothing to do with
■ "> Hara Kei. Hm Kit nikkt [The Diary of Hara Kd|, VTII (Kangensha. 1950-1955).
?KJ. pp. 216-217.
p " ml, P- 563.
108 — Origins and Meaning
extending Japanese civil liberties and political rights to Korea, but was merely an accelerated effort to inculcate Japanese values among the Koreans. Yet, if neither the depth nor the tempo of colonial reform went far in meeting the legitimate demands of Korean patriots, the more overt and arbitrary aspects of Japanese oppression were at least muted for a time and respect for Korean culture retrieved by extensive Japanese scholarly research into Korea's past.*1
In Taiwan, where Hara was able to shunt aside military control of the colonial actoiinistrarion. his ideas were given voice by his old political colleague, Den Kenjiro. whom he appointed as the island's first civilian governor-general. Believing, like Hara, that Taiwan, as a territory of the empire, must eventually come within the jurisdiction of the Meiji Constitution, Den was committed to advancing the possibilities for political equality in Taiwan through a program of "acculturation" (kyoka). As Patricia Tsurumi tells us, this particular approach to assimilation, with its connotations of enlightening, civilizing, and evangelizing of a colonized people, was directed toward education of the Taiwanese in the broadest sense. For Den, acculturation extended beyond the classroom to include, inter alia, education of the Taiwanese toward greater political responsibilities, provision of equal employment opportunities for Taiwanese and Japanese, and social and racial integration of the two peoples through diffusion of the Japanese language and official encouragement of intermarriage.** Den believed that these measures would ultimately lead to the extension to Taiwan of the full political rights enjoyed by Japanese in the home islands.
To see Den as a liberal innovator, ready to bring about greatly enhanced Taiwanese independence or a radical equalization of Japanese and Taiwanese opportunities in the colony would be a mistake, of course. His commitment to the inculcation of Taiwanese loyalty to the Japanese Imperial family, his stress on "appropriate social status" (mibun soo) as the basis for association between the two races, and his denunciation of the Taiwanese home-rule movement place him well within the outlook of the Japanese colonial establishment.64 Nevertheless, within the range of official Japanese attitudes toward colonial empire, his views and those of his immediate civilian suc-
" For an overview of the bunka stiji period and the fate of its highly publicized reforms see David Brudnoy. "Japan's Experiment in Korea." in MormmmU Niyponiu, XXV:2 (1970). pp. 172-216.
° Tsurumi. p. 146; Kumda Kokuro. ed.. Den Ktnjiri den (The Biography of Den Kenjiro] (Den Kenjii* Denlo Hensankai. 1932). pp. 384-385.
** Ibid., pp. 389-392: Tsurumi. p. 189.
Attitudes Toward Colonialism — 109
cessors were among the most accommodative and enlightened in Japan's entire colonial history.
A Conservative Critique of Japanese Colonialism:
AOYACI TsUNATAJtfi AND TOGO MlNORU, 1925
To unreconstructed Japanese colonialists the liberal drift of both world events and Japan's colonial policy seemed intolerable. The barrage of angry criticism with which they responded constitutes a considerable portion of Japanese writings on colonialism The commentary of Seoul newspaper editor Aoyagi Tsunataro may, I think, be taken as typical of this view. Writing in 1923, Aoyagi filled the pages of his Chosen tochi ton (On the administration of Korea) with the florid rhetoric of justification and denunciation in an attempt to rouse his countrymen against the dangerous tides of liberalism which threatened, he believed, to sweep away all that Japan had done to lift Korea from material and spiritual morass. Contrasting the "moral degeneracy" and "material greed" of the Korean people with the "unique spiritual qualities of Japan" he saw the annexation of Korea by Japan as both moral and inevitable and ridiculed the idea of Korean independence. Without any history of real independence, Aoyagi insisted, the Koreans were a people without a concept of the state. Such a people were destined to be ruled by others. To advocate any advance in the autonomy of Korea was to press chaos on its people, for they were incapable of the complexities of modern administration.*5
Yet, paradoxically, despite the contempt which Aoyagi endlessly poured out upon Korean civilization and attainments, he was capable, like other commentators of his persuasion, of indulging in the worst flummery of Pan-Asian arguments about racial and cultural affinities between Koreans and Japanese, even to the point of repeating Marshal Terauchi's pronouncement that Japan's annexation of Korea was like "the re-union of two long-separated brothers." For Aoyagi the "facts" of Korean and Japanese affiniry argued for redoubled efforts to bind Korea more closely to Japan. The most important spiritual task of Japan in Korea was to assimilate the Korean people by "eradicating their more 'indecent' characteristics" and by "raising their cultural level to that of the Japanese." Oblivious to the contradictions inherent in this thesis, Aoyagi repeatedly returned to the theme that, given the wide differences in racial characteristics and customs be-
■ Aoyagi Tsunataro, Chlstn tiiktrm [On the Administration of Korea] (Seoul, 1923) pp. 139. 480-481. and 782.
110 — Origin! and Meaning
twcen Japan and Korea, passive efforts Co assimilate the Koreans were futile. Instead, aggressive assimilation policies, including abolition of the Korean language and enforced use of Japanese, must be undertaken to compel Koreans to adhere to Japanese values and institutions.M Above all, Aoyagi warned his Japanese readers, Japan should prevent the spread into Korea of the infection of nationalism generated by radical ideas from abroad: "If President Wilson's principles of the self-determination of peoples, voiced at the Versailles Peace Conference, are realized and the Koreans come to agitate for equal participation in such •elf-determination, then in Korea, made frivolous by ignorance and filled with a morally relapsed people, Japan's civilizing mission of the decade past will be undone."67
Within the spectrum of contemporary Japanese colonial thought, Aoyagi's ideas, while not uncommon, were markedly bigoted and unyielding. Other colonial publicists, also striving against the liberal assaults on colonialism in general and Japan's colonial autocracy in particular, were more thoughtful and better informed. In 1925. Togo Minora, as part of his ongoing criticism of the theory and practice of assimilation, completed his most ambitious work. Colonial Policy and Racial Consciousness (Sholeumin seisaku to minzoku shinri), which placed his critique of assimilation as a colonial policy within the larger questions of race, the nation state, and the emergence of multi-racial empires. In so doing he attempted a theoretical framework from which to defend the assumptions of the pre-World War I colonial order from the ideological attacks upon it at home and abroad.
Togo's critique took note of the differences between "natural races'' (shizrn minzoku), which had common physical and anatomical characteristics, but which did not necessarily belong to one state or share a common historical or cultural heritage; "historical races" (rekishi minzoku), whose members shared a common historical experience and cultural outlook; and a "people" or "nation" (kokumin), who belonged to one'state, but who did not necessarily possess common physical characteristics or a common cultural heritage.68
The ideal political structure for any state, Togo assumed, would be that of "one race, one nation" (ichi minzoku ikkoku), but he recognized that since ancient times only i few states had been uni-racial and that in modern times advanced countries were composed of complex mixtures of "historical races." The great powers of the modern world, moreover, were not only compelled to administer various
- Ihd  pp. 127-128 and 139. •' Ibid. pp. 422-423.
" Togo Minoru. Shokumm itiiaku u mlnxoku ihinri (Colonial Policy and Racial Consciousness) (Tokyo. Iwanami Shoten. 1925). pp. 56-58.
Attitudes Toward Colonialism — 111
historical races within their own boundaries, but with the acquisition of far flung colonial territories had taken charge of a welter of different racial groupings. This situation would not have become a problem, had there not emerged within the past century a surge of racial consciousness which had taken the form of demands for national identity. Among the great powers of Europe, racial nationalism had begun to manifest itself in the great "pan" movements, which, along with British imperialism, aimed at the creation of racial consciousness, had spread to lesser countries and eventually, through the increase of modern education and communications, to indigenous colonial peoples, whose struggle to find their own national identity now threatened the peace and stability of modern colonial empires. Japan now faced these problems as well. In the distant past the Japanese had comprised an homogeneous race with few racial tensions and conflicts, but with the acquisition of overseas colonial territories, in particular Taiwan and Korea, both of which had significant populations, economic organization, and cultural attainments, racial nationalism had come to present a distinct challenge to Japan's colonial policy.6*
Togo believed that the movements among colonial peoples for national and racial identity derived from a natural instinct fot races to express their individual qualities. The general aim of colonial peoples, Togo freely admitted, was to become independent. Colonized peoples, furthermore, had no inclination to thank their colonial masters for the material benefits of foreign rule, no matter how generous those might be. "More than anything else they wish to satisfy their claims to their own countries, no matter what price might be paid in stability and prosperity for that independence."70
Yet. in Togo's view, this natural instinct for self-determination of colonial peoples, agitated within the last decade by Wilson's call for its realization, ran counter to an equally natural trend of modern rimes: the great power drive to acquire colonial territory. Citing Lexoy-Beaulicu, Togo underscored the theme that only strong countries would survive in the future, that strength derived from nanonal self-sufficiency, and that self-sufficiency derived from control of vast amounts of territory, either contiguous in position or in the form of transoceanic colonies. Hence, it was foolish, Togo argued, to expect, as Wilson had, that colonial powers should sacrifice their own survival and set their colonies free in order to satisfy the demands of their colonial peoples for self-determination.7'
" Ibid . pp 1-2. 279-284, and 293-303.
■ Ibid., p 325.
" Ibid., pp. 326-330
112 — Origins and Meaning
What was to be done to resolve this dilemma which pitted the "natural instincts" of colonized and colonizer against each other? The solution, as Togo perceived it, was for colonized peoples to take part in the management of their own destinies to the extent that they were able, yet within the framework of the larger—colonial—nation. But colonial governments could persuade them to do so only if they were satisfied that their racial and cultural identities would be preserved and allowed to develop. Too often. Togo thought, colonial rulers had treated movements foi self-determination as purely political problems and had attempted to suppress them by coercive measures, either through a policy of colonial autocracy exercised without restraint by colonial governors on behalf of the metropolitan power, or by assimilation, essentially a policy designed to break down the institutions and racial consciousness of a colonized people. The results in either case were usually counterproductive, but enforced assimilation, in Togo's view, particularly served to fan the flames of national resistance to colonial rule.73.
As an alternative to these coercive policies. Togo proposed an approach which he termed "differentiation" (bunka itisaku), by whkh he meant a policy which permitted indigenous colonial peoples to determine their own political levels through the full exercise of their individual temperaments and institutions. Thus, in Togo's view. Japanese colonial policy should accept as natural, indeed as desirable, distinction among the racial components-of the empire, accommodating itself to the distinctive needs of each colony, which was to be regarded as a unit separate from the mother country. To this extent differentiation would be assimilation in reverse, the civilization of the colonizer being adjusted to that of the colonized. Since indigenous colonial people would be minimally disturbed in the expression of their racial and cultural talents, they would have litde reason to oppose the political management and economic utilization of the colony by the colonial power. Once colonial systems recognized the mutual advantages of a policy of differentiation, the dilemma of conflicting needs would be resolved. Colonial territories in the future would neither become fully independent, nor compelled to conform to the values and institutions of another country, but would exist as separate but subordinate political entities, shaped by a symbiotic accommodation between their needs and the needs of the colonial power.75 "In other words," Togo concluded, "the highest purpose in the administration of colonial peoples is not the eradication of the [cul-
■ Ibid., pp. 293-303. 305-307. and 330. » Ibid , pp. 307. 323. and 326-327.
Attitudes Toward Colonialism —
rural] essence of those peoples, but leadership. It is to provide thetiaajr-with new cultural opportunities and beneficent politics, and to assist^, them in achieving the greatest happiness as part of a greater nation.' To do so means avoiding the extremes of assimilation and emphasizing instead a policy of accommodation."74
Basic to Tog&'s theory of colonial rule was his concern with what he called "cthno-psychology." by which he apparently meant a sensitivity to the cultural, anthropological, and psychological characteristics of different races. These characteristics, which served to categorize racial talents and qualities, T6g6 believed, undercut the very assumptions on which assimilation theory was built. While ass tins-. lation assumed that all races were moving toward a common path of; rationality, nineteenth-century science had demonstrated, on the contrary, that men were swayed by inherited religious belief, custom, and instinct. "Any policy which neglects these differences in the psychological composition of races, or which is based on an assumption of equality between individual races, is, from the standpoint of ethno-psychology, utterly unreasonable.    What Togo was saying, of course, was that there were "superior" races, like the Japanese, and "mfe-rior" races, like their colonial peoples, and that assimilationist efforts to equalize relations between the two would founder on their inequalities. Implied in his argument, moreover, was the belief that, left to their own devices, colonial peoples would never be able to demonstrate their capacities for complete independence, since even the fullest expression of their political talents would still fall far short of demonstrating their ability to take complete control of their own affairs.
Togo Minoru's Colonial Polity and Racial Consciousness, which up to 1937 went through four separate printings, represented the last real defense of late-nineteenth-century colonialism in the range of Japanese colonial theory. As such, it was moderate in the demands that it made of colonial peoples to identify themselves with Japan, yet distinctly racist in its attitudes toward them. If it spoke of tolerance by Japan toward "native sentiment" and of granting colonial peoples their own racial identity, it nevertheless had litde to say about equal opportunity in education, employment, economic well-being, or social contact between colonized peoples and the colonizing race; indeed, it most emphatically denied such equalization. For Togo, Taiwan and Korea were to be ruled as colonies, not as extensions of Japan; they were to be separate, but definitely not equal.
" Ibid., p. 311.
* Ibid., pp 90-91. and 310-311
114 — Origins and Meaning
A Libf.hai Critique of Japanese Coloniausm: Yanaihara Tadao. 1924-1937
If Togo Minoru's work represented a refutation of what he perceived to be the liberal drift of colonial policy in the 1920's it was left to a young scholar, Yanaihara Tadao, to provide the most profound liberal critique of the reactionary inertia of Japanese colonialism.76 A student of Nitobe Inazo, Yanaihara had attended Nitobe's famous lectures on colonial policy while studying at Tokyo University. After his mentor had become too involved with a distinguished career at the League of Nations to continue his research in colonial studies, Yanaihara had begun to collate and edit the lectures, a task which he did not complete until he himself assumed Nitobe's chair in colonial policy at the university in 1937. In the meantime, Yanaihara had embarked on his own wide-ranging study of colonial systems, building on the work begun by his teacheT. He shared a number of traits with Nitobe: both men were devout Christians, both were superbly trained scholars, and both were interested in the study of colonialism in comparative perspective. Yet, as an intellectual and scholar, Ya-naihara's place in the evolution of Japanese colonial thought is undoubtedly higher than Nitobe's. his concern with the moral implications of policy was far less adulterated with the justifications of Japanese nationalism, and Yanaihara's encyclopedic studies of colonial problems surpass Nitobe's work in depth and breadth."
Yanaihara's scholarship in the rield of colonial affairs centered on both detailed institutional studies and broad theoretical problems. In institutional terms Yanaihara minutely examined the mechanisms of colonial administration not only of Japan but of other colonial systems, devoting particular attention to comparing and contrasting Japan's position in Taiwan and Korea with Britain's imperial policies in Canada and Ireland. On a broader plane Yanaihara's interests dealt with imperialism- as a theory and with its particular function in the Japanese case. His perspective was economic, though this had less to do with Marx than it had to do with a reconsideration of the theories
* For the deraili of Yanaihara'■ career, lee L'bukjtl Naokichi."Profile of an Aaian-minded man: Yadao Yanaihara." in The Developing Etonomiei, IV:1 (March. 1966). pp 91-105.
*' Yanaihara'5 major works on colonialism and imperialism include Shokumm seiiaku kogian [Lectures on Colonial Policy, a Draft). 1924: Shokumm oyoei thokumm seiiaku (Colonization and Colonial policy). 1926; Teiktkuihugika no Taiwan [Taiwan under Imperialism), 1929; Manthu mondai (The Manchurian Problem], 1934; Nan'yo gunii no kenkyu [Studies on the South Sea Islands], 1935: and Tnkokuihugi kenkyu [Studies in Imperialism], 194«. All of these are to he found iu Yanaihara Tadao eenthu [Collected works of Yanaihara Tadao], 29 vols, (Tokyo. Iwjnami Shoten. 1963-1965)
Attitudes Toward Colonialism — 115
of Adam Smith and with the concerns of his own Christian humanism. While his best-known economic studies of colonialism were his critique of the Japanese effort to increase ncc production in Korea and his analysis of the sugar industry in Taiwan, Yanaihara was interested in the entire spectrum of economic, political, and social problems in the Japanese empire, and his research, supported by extensive travel and observation, covered each and all of Japan's colonial territories.7*
At the same time. Yanaihara's erudition supported his vigorously expressed moral concern with Japanese colonial policy. Drawing upon a profound knowledge of the conditions of each of Japan's oversea* territories, Yanaihara. over die years, compiled an indictment of what he perceived to be the degraded situation of Japan's colonial peoples and a passionate brief for the augmentation of their political rights and the reduction of their economic exploitation. "Should I be asked to express my feelings about the colonial question," he declared, "I would say from the bottom of my heart, 'the liberation of those who are downtrodden, the raising up of those who would sink, and a peaceful union of those who are independent.' "7*
To Yanaihara one of the wotst aspects of Japanese colonialism was the arbitrary authoritarianism of individual colonial governments. Such autonomy of colonial administrations was all very well in the Ko-dama-Goto era in Taiwan, he believed, but in recent decades it had not only become an obstacle to reform, but had also led to corruption and malfeasance. Such a situation stemmed from the lack of a central direction to Japanese colonial policy which, while technically in the hands of the prime minister, in actual fact devolved upon the individual governors-general, who were able to act without restraint to suppress the liberties of colonial peoples. It was essential, he therefore believed, to curtail the authority of colonial governments and to increase the leadership and guidance of the central government through the creation of a colonial ministry and the provision of clear responsibilities of the Diet in the field of colonial affairs.80
It was Yanaihara's startling and consistent advocacy of home rule for the more advanced of Japan's colonial territories, however, which set him apart from even the most liberal of Japan's colonial theorists and policy-makers, most of whom had gone no further than to suggest colonial representation in the Japanese Diet. Yanaihara, on the contrary, urged that Taiwanese and Koreans be granted their own legislative assemblies. While in 1921 he had supported the movement
■ Ubukata. pp 90-92; Yanaihara zeniku. vol. XXVI. p. 36. » Cited in Ubukata. p. 90.
« Yanaihara zenshu (in Shokummehi kenkyu. pp 327-329).
116 — Origins and Meaning
for the establishment of a Taiwanese parliament, his most vigorous prose was devoted to the cause of a Korean national assembly. Given the population, cultural advancement, and aspirations of the Korean people, Yanaihara argued, there was no excuse for denying them the right to manage their own political affairs. Ticking off the list of insignificant and backward colonial possessions of die British empire which had no legislative assemblies of their own, Yanaihara charged that "the political status that has been granted to our own Korea is no higher than those of small, uncivilized Negro regions or fleet bases" and that, since even Java, the Philippines, and many French colonies had been granted degrees of legislative autonomy, "there exists no positive reason for not granting the people of Korea political rights, except that the government simply doesn't want to do so."r
To Yanaihara, assimilation, the Japanese government's official response toward political restlessness in the two colonies, was a mistaken policy. Certainly, without the abundant information about the colonial environment and an appreciation of the indigenous culture of the sort provided a quarter of a century before by Goto's Commission for the Investigation of Traditional Customs in Taiwan, assimilation as a uniform policy would inevitably collapse.*3 Nor was he impressed with official efforts to provide basic communications between the ruling Japanese and their dependent peoples. In 1929 he noted that, despite all the talk of the Japanese language as an aid in assimilation, there did not even exist a Japanese-Taiwanese dictionary; nearly a decade later he changed that in thirty years no more than three percent of the Korean population possessed more than a rudimentary knowledge of Japanese.*3 But assimilation "polities" in Yanaihara's view were themselves the problem. Essentially, assimilation as a regimented government program represented interference in human affairs. Accommodative assimilation (yuwa ddka), the only lasting integration of two races or cultures, required centuries of natural, unmonitored contact, not mechanical enforcement over a few years. Indeed, a policy of assimilation. Yanaihara insisted, merely got in the way of assimilation as a natural process.*4
Yanaihara gave all these criticisms their sharpest focus in his extensive writings on Korea. The main problem with hit country's "cultural policy" in Korea, he argued, was that, through empty sloganeering, Japan had stimulated the aspirations of the Korean people
" Ymunim ztnM. I. 739-740. Translation of the statement ated here is to be found in Ubukati. p. 93. » YmuAm «nito. I. 315-318. ■ Ibid.. IV. 324 •* JW..'I. 314.
1
Attitudes Towaid Colonialism — 117
without giving them the means lo fulfill them. Consequently, insecurity, desperation, hopelessness had become their lot. "Co-existence and co-prosperity" between Japan and Korea raised questions as to how Japan planned to make this a reality, given its exploitation of the Korean economy. "Assimilation of Koreans and Japanese" was just as meaningless. How could such a policy, as it was currently conceived, provide social equality for Koreans, who, in fact, constituted an historically different society? "Assimilation by fiat," Yanaihara flatly declared, "is impossible. Korea cannot form a single society with Japan."85 Why, he asked, could not his country realize that what Koreans wanted was not to become a pale copy of Japan, but the right to their own political destiny. "Go to Korea and look!" he demanded, "Every pebble by the roadside cries out for freedom."86 •
It was obvious to Yanaihara, moreover, that continuation of an assimilation policy which concentrated on limited material advances for the Korean people, while depriving them of the basic political rights as subjects of the empire until some distant day when they were sufficiendy "Japanized," was merely to borrow trouble for the future. In an essay on colonial policy for Korea which he wrote in 1938, Yanaihara pointed out that:
With the gradual modernization and advancement of the social life and productive powers of the Koreans their political aspirations and demands will grow and increase, regardless of how popular the Japanese language may become. This is bound to lead to a conflict between the two phases of the government's assimilation policy—paternalistic protection and encouragement on the one hand and bureaucratic oppression on the other.87
Such bureaucranc oppression. Yanaihara warned, would require increasingly heavy expenditures to maintain a military garrison on the peninsula capable of dealing with any threat to Japanese authority.' In this way Korea, far from contributing to the economic pros- . pcrity of the empire, could only become a serious financial drain on the Japanese government.
On the other hand, granting the people of Korea the right of political participation in their own administation would reduce the pressures within the colony for independence from Japan and would reinforce their feeling of solidanry with the empire. Thus, after an extended
- IbU., I. 729-737.
■ IbU.. I. 740. Translation from Ubukau. p. 93.
** Yanaihara Tadao, "Problems of Japanese Administration in Korea." in Pacific Af-Jain. Xl:ll (June. 1938). pp. 206-207.