Asian Current

Japan Sweep towards Empire Part II

Soon after my arrival in Japan I had an interesting talk with a professor in one of the leading Tokyo universities.

He remarked that, as the people of North China are of the same racial stock as the majority of the inhabitants of Manchoukuo, it would only be natural if, in time, these two territories should come under the same sovereignty.

Then, he suggested, would come the turn of vast, sparsely populated Outer Mongolia. Finally, the Japanese Empire might be rounded out by the addition of the maritime provinces of Siberia. After outlining this substantial programme of national aggrandizement, the professor, with a very amiable smile, concluded:

“Some people say I am an imperialist. But I think I am only a sane liberal.”

The professor, of course, was a private individual, with no official responsibilities. But similar expansionist voices are not infrequently raised in the Japanese newspaper and periodical press. So Mr. Chonosuke Yada, director of the Japan-Siam Society, offered the following suggestions in regard to Japanese southward expansion in the course of a recent lecture:

The world situation is constantly changing. It is highly questionable how long the Netherlands can retain her territories in the East Indies, which are more than sixty times as large as her homeland, and continue to exploit them to her advantage. It is also uncertain how long India will remain a British possession. When we take account of these facts we are convinced that Japan must make her way southward. She must make her way southward immediately, for there is no time to be lost.

Other suggestions for a peaceful enlargement of Japan’s possessions were the intimation by Foreign Minister Hirota, in the spring of 1935, that Japan would be glad to consider purchasing the Soviet northern part of the island of Sakhalin and the more recent proposal in the Japanese Diet that Japan should lease the huge, undeveloped Dutch portion of the island of New Guinea. The Soviet reaction to Hirota’s suggestion was freezingly negative, and it is doubtful whether the Dutch Government would ever, except under duress, open up any part of its East Indian possessions to large-scale Japanese colonization and economic development. The fear is too great that any such concession would be only the prelude to the bringing of the whole rich East Indian archipelago under the Rising Sun flag.

Behind Japan’s urge to expansion are a number of impelling forces. There is the explosive pressure of rapidly increasing population in a land that is already overcrowded. There is the feeling of being unfairly treated in the world distribution of territory and raw materials. There is the exceptionally strong position of the fighting services vis-à-vis the civil authorities. There is the high-flown sense of nationalism, which for many Japanese has all the force of religious conviction. There is the mystical idea of Japan’s Pan-Asian mission, very popular with retired army officers and nationalist theoreticians, which envisage Japan as the leader of an Asia from which “white imperialism” has been banished. Finally, there is the great difficulty, not to say impossibility, of turning back from the imperial road on which the country has started, no matter how great may be the difficulties and obstacles which may be encountered.

This last consideration may be clarified through an illustration. If Japan had not seized Manchuria, the Soviet Union might not have considered it necessary to send a powerful army, with a large complement of tanks and airplanes, to the Far East and to create a flotilla of submarines in Far Eastern waters. But now that the Soviet troops and airplanes and tanks and submarines are there, the Japanese military leaders feel that it is an elementary requirement of national security to scale up their own military and air forces to meet the threat. This is only one of several instances in which the costs of imperialism grow because of the opposition and counter-pressure which it excites.