Asian Current

Sweep towards Japanese Empire Part VII

Pan-Asianism is one of the potentially explosive ideas that have contributed to Japan’s drive for expansion. It has become increasingly popular, especially among high military officers, both active and retired. Typical of the spirit of Japanese Pan-Asianism is an article by the publicist Rin Kaito, who, after recalling the religions, arts, and sciences which originated in Asia and repudiating the Occidental assumption of superiority to Orientals, ends on the following note:

For over a century and a half the Asiatics have been pressed down by the Whites and subjected to Western tyranny. But Japan, after defeating Russia, has aroused the sleeping Asiatics to shake off the Western tyranny and torture.

It is significant that Major General Kenji Doihara, who had the reputation of being one of Japan’s most astute military diplomats and experts on the mainland of Asia/ is an avowed believer in Pan-Asianism. “The doctrine of ‘Asia for the Asiatics,’” Doihara wrote in an issue of Dai Asia Shugi, a magazine devoted to expounding Pan-Asian ideas, “is based on the supreme principle that Asia must be safeguarded and maintained by Asiatics.”

In other words, the Occidental should go, from China first of all, then from the Dutch East Indies, the Philippines, India, and other parts of Asia which should be “safeguarded and maintained by Asiatics.” Under present conditions “Asia for the Asiatics” in practice would be synonymous with “Japan over Asia.” The Japanese superiority over other Oriental peoples in such factors of national strength as military and naval power, general literacy, industrial development, and military organization is so great that there would be almost no limit to Japanese expectations of supremacy in Asia if the influence of the West were withdrawn.

I recently discussed the ideals of the Pan-Asian movement with General I wane Matsui, former commander of the Japanese garrison in Formosa and a leading figure in the Dai Asia Kyokai (Great Asia Association) of Japan. Spare in build and alert in bearing, General Matsui, like many other Japanese high officers, gave the impression of keeping himself in an excellent state of physical fitness through rigorous exercise and simple living. He described as one of the ideals of his organization “an Asiatic League of Nations, based on the slogan (Asia for the Asiatics,’” and declared that Pan-Asianism had won followers in China, India, French Indo-China, the Philippines, and Afghanistan. He gave me with approval a pamphlet in the English language entitled Asiatic Asia: What Does It Mean? By Professor Takeyo Nakatani, secretary of the association. The idea of Japanese hegemony in the Pan-Asian order was clearly put forward by Professor Nakatani in the following terms:

To bring order and reconstruction to the present chaotic condition of Asia is a duty that rests mostly on the shoulders of Japan… She has been asked to put to work all her forces, cultural, political, economic, and, if need be, military, in order to bring about unity and wholesale reconstruction in Asia.

The appeal of the Pan-Asian idea outside of Japan does not seem to be very wide or very great. Now and then a roving nationalist revolutionary from India or the Philippines may find shelter in Japan. But there is no evidence that Oriental nationalists, however much they may dislike British, French, or Dutch rule, would care to substitute Japanese. Japan’s aggressive policy toward China has certainly not been calculated to win support for plans of cooperating on a Pan-Asian or any other basis.

But while Pan-Asianism is a negligible force outside of Japan, the propulsive force of the idea in Japan should not be underrated. General Matsui is not the only Japanese military leader who cherishes an almost mystical faith in Japan’s mission as the driving force in an “Asia for the Asiatics” movement. If the Japanese Empire is to expand further, Pan-Asianism, to a certain type of Japanese mind, may become a slogan as inspiring as Kipling’s phrase about the “white man’s burden” was to the believer in the blessings of British imperial rule.

So behind the Japanese sweep toward empire one finds a whole complex of impelling forces. Some of these stem from Japan’s romantic feudal past, with its cult of the sword; others are derived rather from the more prosaic counting house considerations of the present.

The average Japanese does not possess a speculative mind.

But those who try to draw lessons from their country’s history must sometimes regret the two and a half centuries of self-imposed seclusion from which Japan emerged into the modern world with the Meiji Restoration of 1868. For while Japan was leading its static, shut-in life under the Tokugawa Shogunate, the rich colonial prizes were being staked out. Japan was handicapped in the race for colonial spoils by her super isolation, much as Germany and Italy were handicapped by the late achievement of national unity.

Two centuries ago, before Russia, Great Britain, France, and other foreign powers had struck firm roots in the Far East, it would have been far simpler and easier for Japan to carve out a vast Asiatic empire than it is at the present time. To-day Japanese pressure evokes counter-pressure. As a direct result of Japan’s drive for expansion, East Asia is arming on a scale which recalls the military establishments of its great mediaeval conquerors, Genghis Khan and Kublai Khan.

The more spectacular armament race in Europe should not obscure the fact that the Far East is also arming to the limit of its resources. From Vladivostok, Russia’s main window on the Pacific, to Singapore, at the tip of the Malay Peninsula, every country, with variations dictated by size, population, and resources, is investing an ever-larger share of its income in troops and ships and airplanes and cannon.

Take a brief imaginary tour of the Far East from north to south. The long Soviet-Manchoukuo frontier, slightly defended a few years ago, now bristles on the Russian side with forts and blockhouses, gas- and bomb-proof hangars for a fleet of several hundred airplanes, cantonments and storehouses for an army that is generally estimated at between 200,000 and 300,000 men. Vladivostok, from which Japanese residents are being crowded out by none too gentle methods, is a large garrison town and submarine base.

On the other side of the frontier the Japanese army of occupation in Manchoukuo, while inferior to the Soviet forces in Siberia as regards size and equipment, is much the largest force that Japan has ever maintained on the Asiatic continent in time of peace. And Japan itself is passing through one political and economic crisis after another because of the effort to increase armaments at a pace which affects adversely both the financial stability of the country and the living standards of the people.

China in 1936 was America’s best customer in the field of airplanes and aeronautical equipment. Chinese purchases amounted to $6,872,000, as against $2,293,000 in 1935. And military airplanes represent only one part of China’s preparedness programme, which lays heavy burdens on the country’s chronically straitened finances.

The Commonwealth Government of the Philippines has launched a universal-service army scheme which will train 400,000 men by the time full independence is realized in 1946. The annual military appropriation of 16,000,000 pesos ($8,000,000) is a substantial item in the limited Philippine budget, but is small in relation to the country’s defense needs. It must be increased if the Philippine Army is to possess adequate air and naval auxiliary units.

Siam is spending money abroad for arms so fast that its British financial adviser has felt obliged to sound a gentle note of warning that financial equilibrium is under a strain as a consequence of the large outlay of foreign currency. Military appropriations have increased in the Dutch East Indies and in French Indo-China.

In the Dutch East Indies, where apprehension in regard to Japan’s ultimate acquisitive designs, whether justified or unjustified, is very pronounced, a hundred and fifty fighting planes are held in readiness at the air base near Surabaya. Great Britain has been holding large-scale maneuvers, with units drawn from places as far apart as Hong Kong and Iraq, to test the effectiveness of the great naval and air base at Singapore.

In the Far East, as in Europe, the arms-limitation hopes of what seem in retrospect the peaceful ‘twenties have been thoroughly blighted. At the moment a precarious equilibrium has been attained. Japan’s forward policy on the continent of Asia has provoked so much counter-arming that the Island Empire can scarcely take new aggressive steps without running the risk of provoking serious conflict. Whether this uneasy truce may in time be transformed into something more positively pacific, or whether it will break down altogether, depends in no small degree on how the issue of war and peace will be settled in Europe.

Japan’s sweep toward empire has by no means been purely military and territorial in character. Goods with the “Made in Japan” label have won their victories and made their enemies, just as the Japanese soldiers on the battlefields of Manchuria and Jehol. Japan’s advance to a commanding position on the Asiatic continent may be graphically represented by three arrows, pointing in different directions. The first points north, to Manchoukuo and the troubled frontier with Russia. The second points west, to China, where the destiny of Japan as an imperial power may well be settled. The third points south, to the rich tropical lands where Japan’s activities have thus far been purely commercial in character.