JAPAN AND THE WORLD
Japan had been isolated for over 200 years when Commodore Perry came to Japan in 1853. On behalf of the U.S. government and backed by superior military force, Perry demanded that Japan open itself to foreign trade. As a result, Japan was forced to become part of the world within a highly competitive environment based on national power. In this harsh environment, Japanese people devoted themselves to building a rich and powerful nation, one that could flourish and, ultimately, win the recognition of the rest of the world and gain honor, prestige, and self-esteem.
Japanese Identity
To pursue these goals, during the late 19th century the Japanese government began constructing a cultural identity emphasizing the idea that the Japanese state was a family headed by the divine emperor. This identity provided a sense of unity and served as a basis for loyalty to the nation, but it was highly fictional. It was designed to give Japanese people a sense of their own separate history, culture, and destiny. In addition, the notion of the divinity of the emperor was an assertion of the national superiority of the Japanese people. Yet, Japan implicitly recognized the superiority of Western civilization by borrowing from the West whatever would strengthen national power: modern science and technology plus Western economic, military, political, legal, and educational systems. Japan also acknowledged that the West had the power to confer the international standing that it so strenuously sought. Sadly, Japan’s claim to its own distinctive civilization was not recognized by the West, because modern Japanese culture was artificially created and lacked authenticity. It was only an imitation of the Western model of historical development.
Japan’s trauma was the outcome of losing its cultural freedom. The need to build an industrial society and catch up with the West meant that Japan lost control of its own development and no longer possessed the ability to determine its own destiny. Whereas Western civilization had developed from the inside according to its own natural growth, Japan had to hastily develop under extreme outside pressure and humiliating circumstances. There was no choice but to take on alien values and institutions and to adjust to the conventions and customs of the stronger groups. The civilization produced within this highly unfavorable situation was shallow and imitative. It could neither impress Westerners nor provide Japanese with feelings of pride about their own development. The best Japan could do was win military victories over China in 1895 and Russia in 1904 in order to support its claims of equality with the West.
Anti-Japanese Racism
Western contempt for Japan partially arose from the imitative and artificial nature of Japanese civilization. But it was also derived from an allegedly scientific racialist view in which the world was divided into three categories: civilized, barbarous, and savage. The civilized races of Europe and North America deserved full recognition from international society. The barbarous races, the independent nation states of Asia such as Turkey, Iran, Thailand, China, and Japan, should be given partial recognition. And the rest of humanity, the savage races, were worthy of neither respect nor consideration.
The strong Japanese desire for recognition from the West remained constant as Japan’s economy rapidly developed, its national power greatly increased, and it successfully incorporated Western civilization. Yet, Japan felt that Western nations withheld the recognition it deserved for its successful modernization. And at the beginning of the 20th century, Japanese immigrants to the United States, Australia, and Canada were viewed as a “Yellow Peril” that threatened local communities. Japan’s self-image after its victory in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 as a great power was contradicted by discrimination against Japanese people in Anglo-Saxon countries. When the San Francisco School Board decided in 1905 to have a separate school for Asian children, Japanese people were outraged.
Things were no better for Japan at the Versailles Peace Conference in 1918, even though it was on the victor’s side in World War II. Japan desired the inclusion of a racial equality clause in the League of Nations covenant, but when Great Britain and the United States failed to support this clause, it was not adopted. From the Japanese perspective, President Wilson’s idealism was hypocritical, since the new order that he wanted to create after the war did not accept the members of non-white races as equals.
A further insult to Japanese people was the passage by the U.S. Congress of the Immigration Act of 1924. This bill focused on Japanese and Chinese people as undesirable immigrants and excluded them from entering the United States. Japanese people interpreted this exclusionary bill as one more indication that the Western nations were unlikely to provide Japan with the status and recognition it had coveted for the past half century. At this time, Great Britain and the United States were the leading powers in the world, but they failed to consider the prestige and honor of Japan, the newly rising power. Therefore, the wounds that Japan received when it first joined the international system in 1868 were reopened time and again as Japanese people experienced racial discrimination at the hands of Westerners.
Japanese believed that they were first-class people and had merited this distinction due to their unique achievements. Nevertheless, Western people treated them in the same manner as other Asians. Such treatment mocked Japan’s aspirations, since Japan had clearly stopped identifying with the rest of Asia and perceived other Asians as lower-ranking peoples. Since Japan had sacrificed its culture and way of life in order to join the international system on the West’s terms, Japanese were shocked and disappointed by Western racial prejudice and lack of acceptance. They felt great anger against the West because it was unwilling to appreciate Japan’s struggles and to recognize Japanese achievements.
World War II
The psychological and historical factors that led Japan on the path of war are clear. Disregard and humiliation at the hands of the leading Western powers produced negative self-images. To protect its fragile self-esteem, Japan compensated through self-assertion and proclaimed its own superiority. Since Japan’s pursuit of national power and international status had come at the cost of its own autonomy, self-sufficiency, and cultural integrity, a new balance had to be achieved. Japan could not be satisfied with achieving wealth and power. It would have to stop imitating the West and instead build up its own world in Asia based on its own values and way of life. Thus, Japan’s invasion of Asia was in a sense a protest against unfair treatment by the West, in particular, its failure to recognize Japan as a nation of the first rank. By engaging in warfare with the leading Western powers, Japan was taking on the challenge of proving that it deserved to be placed among the leading powers.
Race has been one of the neglected dimensions of World War II, although a persuasive case can be made for viewing it as a race war that brought prejudices to the surface and served as a vehicle for the expression of racial pride. Japan fought to control southern and eastern Asia under the banner of pan-Asianism, defined as Asian solidarity against Western colonialism. By driving out the Western imperialists that had long dominated the local peoples, Japan destroyed the myth of white supremacy that the Western nations had taken such care to maintain over the several centuries of colonial rule.
But many Japanese were intoxicated by a belief in their own racial superiority. As a result, their arrogance and brutality toward the Asian people they conquered was often greater than that of European colonizers. They dominated the conquered peoples economically, politically, and culturally, treated them without respect, tortured and killed those who dissented, and exploited their workers to the point of death.
Japan and the West in the Postwar Era
The American occupation of Japan ended in 1952. The peace treaty was not based on a desire for revenge or for Japan to be punished. However, it did provide the United States with extensive military bases in Japan. In addition, Okinawa was given to the United States (although the residual sovereignty of Japan was acknowledged) so that it could serve as the center of U.S. nuclear strategy against the Soviet Union in Asia. Although the United States government maintained that its military presence in Japan was necessary to protect Japan from foreign threats, there was actually no foreign threat to Japan at that time. And the presence of these bases made Japan a more likely target of U.S. enemies than it would have been if there had been no bases.
The U.S. military bases in Japan were part of a strategy to project power in Asia. Japan was pressured to heavily rearm by the United States in order to contain communism in Asia. However, the Japanese government was able to partially resist such pressure by making any large-scale military buildup dependent upon constitutional revision. Since the Japanese constitution had a clause that renounced war and the use of force in international disputes that the Americans themselves had authored, revision was not a simple matter. In addition, Japanese people feared that it would usher in a new militarization of Japanese society.
The paternalistic relationship that was established between the United States and Japan gradually corroded Japanese self-esteem and capacity for independent action. During the postwar era, Japan redirected its drive for status and recognition from military power to economic power. Its aim was to catch up with the West economically by imitating the institutional aspects of Western societies, and of the United States, in particular, that were the source of national strength. Therefore, the great energies that had propelled Japan to challenge the West in the prewar era were now mobilized to economically regenerate postwar Japan.
During the late 1980s and early 1990s, it appeared that Japan was poised to surpass the United States as the strongest economy in the world. Japan’s rise to economic superpower status brought instability to the US-Japan relations due to the unanticipated shift in power that was taking place. The result was a chorus of American voices predicting rough times ahead due to conflicts over money, power, and influence between the two nations. Since their economic rivalry was perceived as competition to determine which nation was Number One, national pride on both sides became heavily engaged in the outcome.
Competition between the two leading economic powers was complicated by the different models of capitalism represented by the United States and Japan. The result was that many Americans criticized Japanese capitalism as a departure from the prevailing models of American capitalism. In particular, government guidance of the economy was denounced as a violation of the principle of free competition. These critics further asserted that Japanese-style capitalism provided Japan with an unfair advantage in international trade, because of government-led export drives and systematic obstruction of the sale of imported goods within Japan.
Although clashes of economic interest were the major causes of instability in the Japan-US relationship, racism and ethnocentrism in both countries played an important role in the worsening of relations. Each saw the other in a distorted way, negative feelings against the other were incited, and it was difficult to experience the goodwill that the two countries needed to effectively deal with their common problems. The American prejudice toward Japan derived from white people’s notions of racial superiority that went back to the days of slavery and colonialism. The most blatant forms of such prejudice were muted after Japan’s recruitment as a US ally in the struggle against communism. Nevertheless, Japan assumed a subordinate position to the US after the end of the war by suppressing its agency and playing the role of passive student. Such subordination was the result of Japan’s wartime defeat.
Japanese economic strength during the 1980s and early 1990s represented a challenge to white Americans. Accustomed to being unchallenged political and economic leaders of the world, white Americans’ self-perception of racial superiority was threatened by Japanese economic success. And on the basis of such success, Japanese people were asking for respect from white Americans that was not forthcoming. Therefore, Japan was not just an economic rival like European capitalist nations; it was a competitor for economic success that was racially and culturally different. As such, white Americans tended to view Japanese as inherently less capable and accomplished than themselves.
From the Japanese side, race also played a key role in perceptions of the United States. Japanese considered themselves as pure and racially homogeneous, unlike the decadent and racially heterogeneous Westerners. In this view, Japanese are unique and distinctive as a people and fundamentally different from Western people. There is much ambivalence toward Western people who may be seen as capable of both great harm and as bringers of benefits. When Japan-U.S. relations flourished during the early postwar period and America assisted Japan’s economic recovery, the positive aspect of white Americans was emphasized. But American criticism of Japan as an unfair trader and its failure to acknowledge Japan’s economic success led to an emphasis on the threatening behavior of white Americans. They were accused of causing tensions in the Japan-U.S. relationship and were depicted as bullying their innocent victims, the Japanese people.
With Japan’s economic downturn, the uglier features of the relationship began to recede. The United States was the lone superpower, and Japan was not capable of mounting any kind of challenge to U.S. hegemony. In fact, it became clear that ultimately it would be China rather than Japan that would mount an economic and political/military challenge with racial overtones.
Cultural nationalism flourished during the postwar era in Japan, especially in the 1970s and 1980s when Japanese economic success was attracting world attention. There were a large number of best-selling books, the nihonjinron, that attempted to describe and portray the unique aspects of Japanese culture, society, and national character. Such cultural nationalism was a means of regenerating the Japanese people by giving shape, solidity, and strength to the national identity at a time when large-scale Western influence threatened its coherence. This positive effect can be contrasted with several negative effects. The continuing emphasis on Japanese people’s differences rather than similarities with other peoples led to a strong awareness of Japanese uniqueness. And the belief that Japanese thought and behavior could not be understood by non-Japanese made communication with foreign residents difficult and hindered their integration into Japanese society. In addition, the tendency to explain Japan’s economic success in cultural terms promoted nationalism.
Japanese attitudes toward the world during the postwar era have been highly complex. On the one hand, there has been great interest in Western societies, especially the United States, as the repositories of the most advanced civilization. Western people and Western culture have been highly prized and viewed as a great source of prestige. On the other hand, barriers have been set up to protect Japanese society from being overwhelmed by foreign people and foreign goods. The notion of a unique Japanese culture has provided a sense of historical continuity, while the idea of an absolute distinction between Japan and the rest of the world (here the world really means the West) has created a psychological fortress behind which Japanese could feel secure.
Japan and Asia in the Postwar Era
During the postwar era, Japan’s relations with the rest of Asia continued along the path initiated by the Japanese government when it decided to spare no effort to become a leading world power. The decision to “leave Asia” and seek equality with the West in the late 19th century implied that the rest of Asia was beneath Japan, just as Japan lagged behind the West. Such judgments were based on the level of economic development and national power. Since the rest of Asia remained economically less advanced during the early postwar era, Japan continued its slighting of other Asians. This attitude was apparent both in Japanese discriminatory treatment of Koreans and Chinese in Japan and in the disdainful attitude toward the Asian peoples with whom they interacted in East and Southeast Asia.
In the mid-1980s, it became profitable for Japan to build factories in other parts of Asia in order to take advantage of cheaper labor costs in manufacturing. Such involvement was deep and unanticipated. At this time, Japanese people viewed other Asians in terms of an economic and technological hierarchy. Japan was on the top, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore were in the middle, and Southeast Asia and China were at the bottom. In other words, Japan saw itself as the leader of Asia and was prepared to play its customary paternalistic role.
The rising economic strength and progress of Asian nations brought with it nationalist vitality. Such economic potential had been previously masked, and Japan was not prepared to deal with this new Asia that was dynamic and competitive. Consequently, by the mid-1990s, the assumptions upon which the Japanese leadership based its relations with the rest of Asia were clearly proven false. There could be no return to the hierarchical pattern of the late 19th and early 20th century. Economic growth in the region was high; Japan’s economy was stagnant. As Japan’s economy floundered, the Japanese model of economic development appeared less glittering. Reductions in foreign aid and overseas investment also tarnished Japan’s allure. A further chilling factor was Japan’s pursuit of narrow economic self-interest in the rest of Asia.
In any case, there was little desire on the part of the Japanese postwar ruling elite to build a new relationship with Asia. Moving in a new direction in its relations with Asia would require Japan to come to terms with its wartime imperialism. Given the reluctance of the Japanese leadership to acknowledge the brutality of its wartime activities in Asia, a settling of accounts with Asia has not been possible. Education ministry officials did not allow high-school social studies texts to describe Japan’s invasion of China. It is only due to international protests that the government dismissed cabinet members who defended the colonization of Korea or denied the Nanjing massacres. The government also held back from admitting that many Asian women had been forced to offer sexual services to Japanese soldiers and that large-scale germ warfare experiments had been conducted in China, until conclusive evidence was presented.
In both China and Korea, nationalism arose from the attempts to drive back Japanese imperialism. There is an irreconcilable difference between the views of the past accepted by Chinese and Korean people and the perspective promoted by Japanese nationalists. This conflict shows little sign of abating since textbook versions of the Pacific War continue to whitewash Japanese atrocities and Japanese prime ministers have officially visited Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo where the Japanese war dead, including the leading war criminals, are buried.
