Japanese Colonial control in International terms

Abstract

Promoters of Meiji Japan's imperialist expansion vied with European and American competitors for control of Korea perhaps more than in any other place in Japan's early empire. Thus, although Korea was not officially colonized until 1910, Meiji officials recognized the need for Japan's new policies toward Korea to make international sense more acutely than in the country's other colonial schemes. Within Japan's expanding empire, therefore, the annexation of Korea most significantly established the perceived legitimacy of Japan as a modern imperial nation. This paper examines this issue by analyzing how the idea of the legitimacy of colonization itself came into being in Meiji Japan. It focuses particularly on the period leading up to annexation during which the development of colonial ‘science’ as an area of specialized knowledge took hold, particularly in relation to Japan's development of Hokkaido.

Notes

¹ Duara, ‘The regime of authenticity’; also, Duara, Rescuing History from the Nation.

² German and Japanese assertions of uniqueness, for example, made sense because each country proclaimed mutually intelligible qualities as state builders that refashioned their national bodies in modernity's terms. See Fujitani, Splendid Monarchy.

³ Fukuzawa, Bunmei no gairyaku; see also Norio Tamaki, Yukichi Fukuzawa 1835–1901.

⁴ Tessa Morris-Suzuki has analyzed how the pre-Meiji ka-i (civilized/barbaric) spatial understanding of the world transformed into the late nineteenth century bunmei (civilization) temporal view in her compelling essay, ‘The frontiers of Japanese identity’; see also Morris-Suzuki, Re-Inventing Japan.

⁵ For a useful compendium of the early colonial treaties, see Yamada's convenient single volume, Gaikō shiryō.

⁶ Duara, ‘Between empire and nation’, 13; See also Duara, Authenticity and Sovereignty.

⁷ Burkman, ‘Nitobe Inazo’, 192.

⁸ See Barclay, ‘ “They have for the coast dwellers a traditional hatred” ’.

⁹ See Howell, Capitalism from Within.

¹⁰ In 1881, a stock investment scandal allowed those in Tokyo who were suspicious of the government's activities in Hokkaido to demand the dissolution of the Bureau of Colonial Affairs. When the Bureau was disbanded, however, its duties were simply transferred to newer branches of government such as the Hokkaido Government Office (Dōchō), then later to the Taiwan Governor General (Taiwan Sōtokufu), the Korean Governor General (Chōsen Sōtokufu), and so forth.

¹¹ See Walker, The Conquest of Ainu Land; Oguma, ‘Nihonjin’ no kyōkai; Morris-Suzuki, Re-inventing Japan; Siddle, Race, Resistance and the Ainu of Japan.

¹² For related argument, see Schmid, ‘The “Korea problem” in the historiography of modern Japan’; Asada, Nihon shokuminchi kenkyūshiron.

¹³ See Young, Total Empire; also, Lesser, Negotiating National Identity.

¹⁴ In 1927 when Nitobe returned from his duties in Geneva at the League of Nations, his former student and intellectual inheritor Yanaihara Tadao asked Nitobe to publish the lecture notes from his colonial policy courses at the University of Tokyo. Yanaihara and other former students had themselves become teachers of colonial policy courses at public and private universities throughout the country, and they wanted Nitobe to compile materials that they could use as a textbook for their respective courses. Nitobe refused and suggested that Yanaihara co-author a book with him. Yanaihara declined his teacher's offer, maintaining that only Nitobe himself could fully retell his thinking. Nonetheless, Yanaihara and the others published a collection of essays derived from their class notes. The essays were reprinted following Nitobe's death and continue to inform most of the scholarship on Nitobe's ideas about colonization. Yanaihara's vignette—which includes Nitobe's blackboard statement as well as the colonial essays—are reprinted together in Nitobe Inazō Zenshū Henshū Iinkai (ed.), Nitobe Inazō zenshū, Vol. 4, 7–10, 17–167.

¹⁵ Fujii, ‘Writing out Asia’.

¹⁶ Hokkaidō Mainichi Shinbun. The 1890s witnessed thousands of immigrants coming north aboard ships from Kyushu, the San-in coast, Tokyo, and Sendai, and their journeys as well as their stories of ‘settling in’ were reported regularly in this paper. In turn, newspapers in areas from which the colonists came advertised the ships departing north.

¹⁷ This is the argument I make in my book, Japan's Colonization of Korea.

¹⁸ Nitobe, The Imperial Agricultural College of Sapporo, 2–3.

¹⁹ Nitobe, The Imperial Agricultural College of Sapporo, 7.

²⁰ Horace Capron Papers, Yale University Library, Manuscripts and Archives (cited as CP). CP, 1872, Group 128, Box 1, Folder 4.

²¹ Horace Capron Papers, Yale University Library, Manuscripts and Archives (cited as CP). CP, 1872, Group 128, Box 1, Folder 4.

²² CP, 1873, Box 1, Folder 18.

²³ Nitobe, The Imperial Agricultural College of Sapporo, 5–6.

²⁴ See Maki, William Smith Clark.

²⁵ Kuroda was so convinced of the importance of Hokkaido to Japan's future that he repeatedly solicited the Meiji government to move the capital of Japan from Tokyo to Sapporo. The scheme failed not because people disagreed with its significance, but because they could not abide the cold winters.

²⁶ Clark, First Annual Report of Sapporo Agriculture College, 1877 (quoted as SAC, 1877), 49.

²⁷ Clark, First Annual Report of Sapporo Agriculture College, 1877 (quoted as SAC, 1877), 50.

²⁸ The Tondenhei was established in 1875 by the Bureau of Colonial Affairs for ‘opening up’ Hokkaido to agriculture and mining. If Ainu got in the way of Japanese settlers, the Tondenhei were charged with getting them out of the way. This special militia was officially abolished in 1905 in conjunction with Japan's victory against Russia.

²⁹ Second Annual Report of Sapporo Agricultural College (SAC, 1878), 90–91.

³⁰ The Morrill Act (1862) and the Land Grant College Act in the United States, as well as the Homestead Act (1862), informed both Capron and Clark's resolve with respect to how to people Hokkaido.

³¹ SAC, 1877, 2.

³² In 1894, Mary Nitobe's uncle died and left her a small windfall of about $2,000 that she and Nitobe used to open the school in the growing slum area of Sapporo. The school is now a center for runaways and ‘problem’ kids in what is still the run down, south-east area of the city.

³³ See Fujitani, Splendid Monarchy.

³⁴ Nitobe, in Nambara et al. (eds), The Works of Inazo Nitobe, Vol. 2, 79–80.

³⁵ Nitobe, The Imperial Agricultural College of Sapporo, 9.

³⁶ NIZHI, Vol. 5, 78–82.

³⁷ NIZHI, Vol. 5, 79.

³⁸ NIZHI, Vol. 5, 81.

³⁹ NIZHI, Vol. 5, 82.

⁴⁰ Nitobe, quoted in Tanaka, ‘Nitobe Inazō to Chōsen’, 93. In the wake of World War II, Iwanami publishers excised this speech in a reprint essay about Nitobe. Hokkaido University economist Tanaka Shinichi's careful reading of the different editions of Yanaihara's Our Nation's People of Merit revealed to him that Iwanami allowed the speech's inclusion in printings between 1940 and 1944, but deleted it when publication resumed again in 1948.

⁴¹ Nitobe, quoted in Tanaka, ‘Nitobe Inazō to Chōsen’, 93. In the wake of World War II, Iwanami publishers excised this speech in a reprint essay about Nitobe. Hokkaido University economist Tanaka Shinichi's careful reading of the different editions of Yanaihara's Our Nation's People of Merit revealed to him that Iwanami allowed the speech's inclusion in printings between 1940 and 1944, but deleted it when publication resumed again in 1948.

⁴² Nitobe, quoted in Tanaka, ‘Nitobe Inazō to Chōsen’, 93. In the wake of World War II, Iwanami publishers excised this speech in a reprint essay about Nitobe. Hokkaido University economist Tanaka Shinichi's careful reading of the different editions of Yanaihara's Our Nation's People of Merit revealed to him that Iwanami allowed the speech's inclusion in printings between 1940 and 1944, but deleted it when publication resumed again in 1948, 94.

⁴³ Nitobe, quoted in Tanaka, ‘Nitobe Inazō to Chōsen’, 93. In the wake of World War II, Iwanami publishers excised this speech in a reprint essay about Nitobe. Hokkaido University economist Tanaka Shinichi's careful reading of the different editions of Yanaihara's Our Nation's People of Merit revealed to him that Iwanami allowed the speech's inclusion in printings between 1940 and 1944, but deleted it when publication resumed again in 1948, 93–94.

⁴⁴ NIZHI, Vol. 4, 346–353.

⁴⁵ NIZHI, Vol. 4, 349–350.

⁴⁶ NIZHI, Vol. 4, 353.

⁴⁷ NIZHI, Vol. 4, 350.

⁴⁸ NIZHI, Vol. 4, 346–347.

⁴⁹ Takushoku Daigaku Sōritsu Hachijusshūnen Kinen Jigyō Jimukyoku (ed.), Takushoku Daigaku Hachijūnenshi, 66.

⁵⁰ Takushoku Daigaku Sōritsu Hachijusshūnen Kinen Jigyō Jimukyoku (ed.), Takushoku Daigaku Hachijūnenshi, 67–68.

⁵¹ Takushoku Daigaku Sōritsu Hachijusshūnen Kinen Jigyō Jimukyoku (ed.), Takushoku Daigaku Hachijūnenshi, 117.

⁵² Takushoku Daigaku Sōritsu Hachijusshūnen Kinen Jigyō Jimukyoku (ed.), Takushoku Daigaku Hachijūnenshi, 120.

⁵³ South China Daily Journal, 6 August 1907.