CAN JAPAN KEEP THE PEACE?
Howard, Harry Paxton
Can Japan Keep The Peace? By HARRY PAXTON HOWARD EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the second of a series of articles by Mr. Howard exploring the problem of our postwar relationship with a defeated Japan....
...Such is the record...
...Feudal chieftains ruled in Japan, through their local officials...
...But with the attack on Pearl Harbor, our munition and other war producers were able to divert their products into even more profitable channels than previously, and could dispense with the Japanese market...
...It's Japan...
...We are supplying officers, and planes and war materials and maps and plans and funds to the Chinese at present—for now it is the Japanese who are the stronger...
...All the evidence indicates that Chinese and Japanese could have continued as friendly neighbors, were it not for the "estrangement policy" of Western powers, aiming definitely at the securing of an advantageous position for these powers at the expense of the Asiatics...
...They established extraterritorial privileges, putting their own nationals completely above Japanese law and authority and taxation...
...But what about freedom...
...In 1933, therefore, we started subsidizing the Chinese as well as the Japanese...
...At that time, China was far stronger than Japan, and the first thing was to build Japan up as a possible instrument against China...
...What can we conclude from this historical record, as it regards Japanese capacity for "keeping the peace...
...Minister de Long's ambition of making Japan "an ally of the Western powers" was fully realized...
...It became a real center of unity, in which the 200 Japanese feudal principalities became a nation...
...The third—at the end of the 16th Century—-was a Japanese invasion of Korea, then a vassal of the Chinese (Ming) Empire...
...In 1900, when the Chinese rebelled against Western domination, we begged the Japanese to join us in the invasion of Peking and the crushing of the rebellion...
...American support to Japan in 1873, and Anglo-American support to Japan in its much more serious invasion of China in 1894, was without any formal alliance...
...It was an alliance for joint aggression—directed immediately against Korea, China, and Russia...
...Keeping The Peace If the Western powers abandon their imperial ambitions in the Far East, there will probably be peace between China and Japan as there was peace throughout almost their entire history down to the modern period of collaboration and patronage and alliance between Western imperialists and Asiatic militarists...
...They laid down Japan's tariffs, secured special privileges for their nationals...
...British bombardment of defenseless Japanese towns opened Japan to the "glories" of modern civilization and war...
...Has the "Westernization" of Japan succeeded in transforming a peaceful and civilized people into what the New York Herald-Tribune terms a "sub-human breed...
...And it gives the lie direct to those professional propagandists who assert that the Chinese and Japanese are "natural enemies," or that there is some fundamental and permanent conflict between them...
...We greatly increased these subsidies in 1935-36...
...the British Navy dominated Japan's inland waters...
...For this "estrangement" has been our only permanent Far Eastern policy...
...Perry's forcible "opening" of Japan was followed by British visits and British aggressions...
...We are now concentrating on organizing, building up, encouraging, instigating, financing, and supplying the Chinese against the Japanese...
...One of them was when the Tang Empire, expanding its conquests to Korea, defeated the Japanese forces which were aiding some of the Korean states...
...Could it possibly be in Asia, among the "inferior" Asiatics, the "lesser breeds without the law" which it is the White Man's Burden to rule and govern for their own good...
...Could they be friends with the British, with the Americans, with the Russians...
...I propose to explore that subject in my next article in this series...
...What is it, a new "race" of Japanese...
...There is not a century that the borders of European states have not been drenched in blood again and again...
...Could the Japanese possibly work in harmony with their neighbors, instead of fighting them...
...Peace itself is a tremendous good...
...The Emperor of Heaven ruled in China, through his vast bureaucracy regimented in the Confucian party line...
...In 1894, when the Japanese attacked China so successfully, they had been released from their extraterritorial controls and taken into partnership with Britain and other Western powers in joint ascendancy in China...
...The next— seven centuries later—was when the mighty Mongols, who had conquered China and Korea, attacked Japan,, (twice) and were beaten off...
...We know it isn't in Europe...
...The "modern" period of Japanese-Chinese relations began in 1873, when we embarked upon what our then minister in Tokyo, Mr...
...So the Chinese Government expanded a local incident which had broken out at Peking (where the Japanese were definitely the aggressors) into a "nation-wide" war...
...For almost 20 years from the time of the Washington Conference—when the Anglo-Japanese Alliance was ended—Japan had no formal allies, but in September 1940, when the American Government took definite sides in the war by turning over destroyers and tankers to the British Government and insisting on the reopening of the Burma Road in order that we could supply arms to our Chinese agents, the Japanese responded by forming an alliance with the Germans...
...The Modern' Period The record is clear, for any who care to read it...
...Official American maps and plans were utilized by the Japanese, who employed as adviser an American consul who left his post in Foochow to serve the Japanese at Tokyo...
...A democratic China and Japan could be as good and friendly neighbors as are the peoples of the United States and Canada today—since the United States and Canada became democracies...
...By the 1930's, however, it began to be evident that the Japanese were no longer inclined to take orders from us, and were increasingly going into business for themselves...
...Modern" Japan went to war—sometimes declared, sometimes undeclared'—in 1873, in 1894-95, in 1900, in 1904-05, in 1914-19, in 1931-32, in 1937, and 1941 to present writing...
...The "estrangement policy" had reached its crowning point...
...In the meantime, the Japanese formed a secret alliance with Russia after their war, but the collapse of the Czarist regime brought this to an end...
...And then, in 1902, Minister de Long's dream came true...
...In such case, the relations between China and Japan would be not only those of peace, as throughout most of their long history, but also those of free peoples...
...It is a striking one...
...We know it isn't Britain, which 'during the past five centuries has engaged in more wars than any other country in the world...
...Or what has happened to bring about this amazing transformation...
...But there is another question...
...Indeed, a record of one foreign war every five centuries constitutes a remarkable advance towards lasting peace, as compared with our own record of at least one war every generation...
...Then, on July 8, 1937, Secretary Morgenthau and Finance Minister Kung reached an open agreement which assured the Chinese of American funds for at least a year of war...
...They agreed—on conditions...
...Sino-Japanese Friendship Where is this "Shangri-La"—this country which doesn't war with its neighbors...
...He actually instigated, suggested, and inspired a Japanese invasion of Formosa, intriguing with the Japanese feudal chieftain, Saigo of Satauma, for the purpose...
...When, for instance, we find a people who in 15 centuries of contact have engaged in only three wars with their neighbors, we might fairly consider them normally a "peaceful" or "peace-loving" people...
...de Long was not only a theorist...
...As to its relation to peace there can be but one rational answer...
...The "peace" of former centuries was between absolutist regimes...
...From then until 1941, the American Government was financing and supplying both Japanese and Chinese...
...In 1867, they conspired and intrigued with Japanese feudal chieftains to overthrow the existing authority —tile Shogunate, supreme among the feudal clans— and set up a centralized monarchy...
...The Japanese not only received sufficient fuel oil for their war against the Chinese, but an adequate surplus to bomb Pearl Harbor...
...That's right...
...The third will appear in an early issue...
...For China and Japan, then as now, would, in combination, represent a most powerful force against Western, domination of eastern Asia...
...de Long, termed "the true policy of the representatives of the Western powers to encourage Japan 5n a course of conduct thoroughly committing its Government against" an alliance with China, "and by estranging its court from those of China and Korea make it an ally of the Western powers...
...This estrangement policy has been the most fundamental and permanent of all Western policies in the Far East...
...We know it isn't the United States...
...But the Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 1902 marked Japan's "coming of age" in the modern world...
...The 'Estrangement' Policy Mr...
...A Japanese parliamentary government, representing the will of the Japanese people, would have no cause or desire whatever for war with a Chinese representative democracy, representing the will of the Chinese people...
...The "warlike" Japan of today is the result of modernization, of direct imitation of the techniques of Western Empire in Asia...
...What are the possibilities of a democratic Japan...
...Or are they utterly and hopelessly savage and warlike, a "subhuman breed" fit only for conquest and colonial subjection by our superior race...
...American naval officers were loaned to Japan for the purpose of the invasion...
...It would be peace with freedom...
...Sino-Japanese friendship is the common and "normal" thing throughout their history...
...What about democracy...
...So they are still an ally of Western powers, though it is not the power which we approve at present writing...
...In the 15 centuries between the sending of the first Japanese envoys to the court of the Son of Heaven in China, and the latter part of the 19th Century, the relations between Japan and China were marred by only' three wars...
...Such questions are not particularly difficult to answer, The possibilities of a people can be found in the history of a people...
...Japan became a full-fledged ally of what was then the greatest Power in the world—Great Britain...
...The question regarding "peace" is answered by actual history...
...It started with organizing, building up, encouraging, instigating, financing, and supplying Japanese militarism and imperialism against the Chinese...
...We should not be surprised at these things...
...ONE OF the most important questions propounded today is: "Can Japan keep the peace...
...This continued right down to 1941...
...Could they be friends with China...
...For 20 years, England and Japan cooperated in their aggressions...
...The British minister to Japan, Sir Ernest Satow, was the actual promoter of the Imperial Restoration of Japan in 1867, and the author^ of the idea of making the previously powerless "Sovereign of Heaven" the center of authority and sovereignty in the new Japanese state...
...The common people of China and Japan have no reason for making war upon one another...
...The British and other powers established themselves with their garrisons in the Japanese capital and in other Japanese towns...
Vol. 8 • April 1944 • No. 17
