Weakening of Cordiality with America—Causes of Friction—Expansion and
Emigration—Annexation of Korea—New Treaties.
Attention has already been called to the very friendly relations
existing for many years between Japan and the United States, relations
so cordial as to be responsible for the distinction made between the
British and American nations by the Japanese Press, which spoke of the
former as “Our Allies,” and of the latter as “Our best friends.” The
reasons for the friendly feeling of the Japanese people for America are
not far to seek. It was from America that the first ideas of Western
civilization came; it was her influence which was most felt in the
earlier years of reopened intercourse with foreign nations; and her
policy of diplomatic independence and isolation, illustrated strikingly
by her behaviour in the crucial question of Treaty Revision, gave to her
dealings with Japan an air of disinterested benevolence that contrasted
favourably with the less complaisant attitude of other Powers.
The cordiality of American feeling towards Japan had of late years
diminished in some degree owing to various causes. Amongst them were the
unexpected disclosure of Japan’s military strength in the war with
China; her apparent willingness to associate herself with other Powers
in the aggressive policy in regard to China, which was one of the causes
of the Boxer Rising, and drew forth the remonstrances addressed by the
United States to the Governments concerned; her territorial expansion in
Manchuria at the expense of Russia; and the protectorate she had assumed
in Korea, which the United States Government had been inclined to regard
in the light of a protégé. The Japanese people were seemingly
unconscious of any change in the attitude of the American public; and no
serious differences had occurred to disturb the harmony of relations. In
1906, however, what is known as the School Question of California gave
rise to a troublesome controversy.
In the autumn of that year the San Francisco Board of Education issued
an order excluding Japanese children from the ordinary public schools
which they had hitherto attended, and providing for their segregation in
the common Asiatic school established in 1872 in the Chinese quarter in
pursuance of a State Law setting up separate schools for children of
Mongolian or Chinese descent. The law had been enacted in consequence of
the great increase of Chinese immigration. Welcomed at first owing to
the demand for labour on the Pacific coast, this influx of Chinese was
attended by obvious drawbacks, both social and moral, which were
regarded by the people of California as detrimental to the interests of
the community. In considerations of this kind Labour Unions in the State
found their opportunity, and an agitation was fomented against “Chinese
cheap labour,” with the result that steps were taken by the United
States Government to reduce this immigration to comparatively small
proportions.
Behind the question raised by the school authorities of San
Francisco—which was a mere pretext—the same forces were at work. The
segregation of Japanese school children produced serious resentment in
Japan, the ill-feeling evoked thereby being aggravated by
misunderstanding on the part of the public in both countries and by
intemperate writing in the Press. The incident, which led to some
diplomatic correspondence between the Governments concerned, was
eventually closed through the intervention of President Roosevelt
early in 1907. Apart from its international aspect, the difficulty had
involved the troublesome issue of Federal and State rights. By a
compromise arrived at between the President and the School Board it
was agreed that all alien children—no mention being made of
Japanese—above a certain age who, after examination, should be found
to be deficient in the elements of English, might be sent to special
schools; the President, at the same time, undertaking to secure some
limitation of Japanese immigration. In accordance with this
undertaking a clause, providing for the exclusion of certain classes
of immigrants, was inserted in the Immigration Act of February, 1907,
the right to legislate in such matters having been expressly reserved
by the United States in the revised Treaty with Japan of 1894. Further
negotiations between the two countries resulted in the conclusion in
1908 of what is known as the “Gentlemen’s Agreement”—effected by an
exchange of confidential Notes—by which the Japanese Government
consented to co-operate in carrying out the purpose of the Act by
taking measures to restrict labour immigration from Japan to the
United States. When, therefore, in 1911 a new Treaty of commerce and
navigation between America and Japan was negotiated at Washington
there was good reason to regard it as putting an end to the
controversy. The United States Senate in ratifying it recorded the
understanding “that the Treaty should not be deemed to repeal or
affect any of the provisions of the Immigration Act of 1907”; and the
understanding was confirmed by a Declaration—appended to the
Treaty—stating the intention of the Japanese Government to maintain
with equal effectiveness the limitation and control which it had
exercised for the past three years in regulating the emigration of
labourers to the United States.
The hope that nothing more would be heard of the difficulty was
frustrated by the action of the Californian Legislature. In May, 1913,
in spite of the opposition of the Federal Authorities, it passed a law
giving the right of owning land only to “aliens eligible to
citizenship.” The passing of this law caused renewed resentment in
Japan, where, notwithstanding the form in which it was worded, it was
correctly interpreted as being aimed at Japanese residents. The Japanese
Government at once protested on the ground that Japanese subjects being
debarred from naturalization in America the law in question
discriminated unfairly against them, and was in effect a violation of
Japan’s treaty rights. This view the American Government declined to
accept, supporting the action of the State by the argument that every
nation had the right to determine such questions for itself. The
correspondence between the two Governments continued for some time
without any settlement being reached. It was published at the request of
Japan in 1914. This discrimination between the Japanese and other
aliens, who, unlike them, are eligible for naturalization as American
citizens, remains a sore point with the Japanese people, and is a
stumbling-block in the relations between Japan and America.
Opposition to Japanese labour immigration was not confined to the United
States. Similar anti-Japanese feeling arose in Canada. In consequence of
the outbreak of disturbances due to this cause a Canadian Mission was
sent to Japan in November, 1907, for the purpose of restricting this
emigration within what were described as proper limits, and thus
averting any renewal of the trouble that had occurred. The object of the
mission was attained by an exchange of Notes between the head of the
mission, Mr. Lemieux, and the Japanese Minister for Foreign Affairs. By
the arrangement arrived at—which may have facilitated that concluded, as
we have seen, in the following year between America and Japan—the
Japanese Government undertook to adopt effective measures for
restricting this immigration.
Of late years there has been a tendency, both in the Press and in books
about Japan, to associate closely two things which are not necessarily
connected—Japanese expansion and emigration. For instance, the author of
_Contemporary Politics of the Far East_, speaking of Japanese emigration
to the United States, observes that “Japan required room for her excess
[_sic_] population, and outlets for her expanding commerce,” thus
linking the two questions together. And other writers have used similar
language. The tendency referred to is probably due to the fact that,
different as the two things are—one being simply a movement of
population, the other an enlargement of territory—there has in some
countries been a direct connection between them. In Japan this is not
the case. There, both movements have taken place, but they have remained
distinct and separate.
Japanese expansion stands in a category by itself. It has attracted
attention for the reason that it was unexpected, the tendency of
Oriental countries in modern times being to contract rather than extend
their frontiers; from its rapidity and wide extent; and also because it
has been the result either of successful wars or of a policy of
aggrandisement justified, in Japanese opinion, by State necessity.
Far otherwise is it with Japanese emigration. What importance it
possesses is derived not from the scale on which it has hitherto been
conducted—which by comparison with other movements of the kind elsewhere
is insignificant—but from the international difficulties it has
produced, from its association in people’s minds with national
expansion, and from fear of the dimensions it may assume in the future.
Into the many considerations involved in Japanese emigration it is
unnecessary to enter, the question being too wide to be discussed with
advantage within the limits of these pages. A few remarks on the subject
may, however, not be out of place.
The movement is usually held to be due to an excess of population. This,
at least, is the view held by many writers. The increase of population
in Japan has certainly been rapid. In 1872 the population was
thirty-three millions. In 1916 it had risen to nearly fifty-six
millions. Assuming the rate of increase to be maintained, the total
population ten years hence should be well over sixty millions. In the
course of sixty years, therefore, the population will have very nearly
doubled itself. Striking as these figures are, the inference to be drawn
from them is not necessarily that Japan is no longer able to support her
people in their present numbers, and that some further outlet for her
surplus population is, therefore, a necessity. While the rapid increase
of population in a country may serve as a stimulus to emigration, it is
not the sole or even the governing factor in the question. That other
influences count for much is shown by what has taken place in Germany.
Fifty years ago German statesmen had good ground for anxiety in the
growing statistics of German emigration to the United States. Before the
end of the century the movement was arrested, and soon afterwards ceased
altogether. The two chief causes of this change were the increase of
wealth and industrial development. Japanese emigration to certain
countries may before long, for the same reasons, show a similar decline.
The industrial development of Japan has kept pace with her progress in
other respects. Her financial position has also changed. Instead of
being a debtor to the world, as she was before the Great War, she has
now become to an appreciable extent its creditor. Although, moreover,
parts of Japan may be overcrowded, there still remain large areas in the
northern islands, and in her newly acquired territories on the mainland,
which are still sparsely populated. The pressure of increasing
population alone does not seem likely to affect emigration in any marked
degree in the near future. A cause more powerful, and in its operation
more constant, may be found in the natural energy and enterprise of the
people, stimulated, perhaps, by their release from the enforced
isolation of the past. This supposition is supported by the wide
distribution of Japanese emigration, and by the varied nature of the
pursuits in which Japanese emigrants engage abroad. Though, as has
already been observed, the Japanese have not, as yet, disclosed any
special aptitude for colonization of the pioneering type, they are to be
met with to-day in South America and elsewhere as workers on the land,
and traders; in Australasia as pearl-fishers; in China, the Straits
Settlements and Java, as well as in India and Australia, as traders and
shopkeepers; in Manchuria as agricultural labourers and farmers, the
Korean immigrants there having since the annexation of Korea become
Japanese subjects; on the coasts of the northern and southern Pacific as
fishermen; in America and Canada as traders, farmers, shopkeepers,
market-gardeners and labourers; and in the Malay States as planters.
In its inception, it may be added, Japanese emigration took the form of
indentured labour. The first labour emigrants went to Hawaii—not then
annexed to America—under conditions regulated by the Japanese and
Hawaiian Governments; and it was the surreptitious entry of many of
these labourers into California from Hawaii that first aroused American
hostility. The development of this branch of emigration—encouraged by
agencies established for the purpose, but still subject, as before, to a
certain measure of official supervision—would seem to be a mere question
of supply and demand. The future of other emigration will depend on the
degree of opposition, or competition, it encounters. So far, however, as
the United States and Canada are concerned, the hostility it has evoked,
and the willingness of the Japanese Government to co-operate in its
restriction, suggest that the number of emigrants to those countries
will gradually decline.
The immediate results of Japan’s success in the Russo-Japanese war were,
as we have seen, the establishment of a protectorate over Korea and the
negotiation of a Treaty with China, confirming certain provisions of the
Treaty of Portsmouth concerning the transfer to her of the Russian lease
of Port Arthur and of the southern portion of the Manchurian railway.
Anxious to devote herself to the task of consolidating her new position
in the Far East, Japan during the next few years was as busily engaged
in negotiating treaties and agreements with other Powers as she had been
in the fifteen years of treaty-making which followed the signature of
Perry’s Treaty. In 1907 she concluded an arrangement for safeguarding
peace in the Far East with France; a similar Agreement with Russia (in
the form of a Convention), which, however, included a mutual pledge to
respect the territorial integrity and the rights of each accruing from
arrangements in force between it and China; a Commercial Treaty, a
Fisheries Treaty and a Consular Protocol with the same country; an
Agreement with China regarding the Simmintun, Mukden and Kirin Railway;
and a fresh Treaty with Korea, which placed all administrative authority
in the peninsula in the hands of the Japanese Resident-General. The
following year witnessed the negotiation of an Arbitration Treaty with
the United States, as well as an exchange of Notes between the same two
Governments for the declared purpose of preserving the independence and
territorial integrity of China. Two other arrangements testified to her
treaty-making activity. One of these was another railway Agreement, made
in 1907, with China. On this occasion the railway in question was the
line now connecting Mukden with the port of Antung. It was presumably
this fresh railway Agreement which induced the American Government to
submit to other Powers interested in the Far East in the autumn of the
same year a proposal for the neutralization of Manchurian railways. Far
from being accepted by Russia and Japan—the two Powers chiefly
concerned—the proposal only resulted in the conclusion in the following
year of an Agreement by which each undertook to maintain, by joint
action, if necessary, the existing _status quo_ in Manchuria.
The other, of a very different character, was a Treaty with Korea
annexing that country to Japan, which was signed at Seoul in August,
1910, by the Japanese Resident-General and the Korean Minister-Resident.
The annexation of a country by Treaty in the absence of prior
hostilities was an unusual procedure for which no precedent existed. No
less remarkable than the method adopted was the fact that Article 8 of
the instrument recorded with unconscious irony the consent of the
Sovereign of the annexed State to the loss of its independence. This
independence Japan had on several occasions announced her intention to
respect in engagements entered into with other Powers—with China, with
Russia and with Great Britain, as well as with Korea herself. Her
annexation of Korea, being for this reason unexpected, met with much
unfavourable criticism abroad. The course, however, that she had adopted
at the outset of her wars with China and Russia of making free use of
Korean territory showed that she was not disposed to let the wishes, or
convenience, of the Korean people stand in the way of military
operations. The protectorate she had already established over Korea in
1905, and her assumption of the control of administration in that
country two years later, were also ominous indications of what might
happen later. Some justification of the final act of annexation,
singular as the method employed may have been, is to be found in the
fact that the chronic disturbances in Korea, for which Japan was by no
means solely responsible, had led to two wars, and that there was some
blunt truth in the statement in the preamble to the Treaty, which
declared one of the objects of annexation to be the preservation of
peace in the Far East. It may even be said that an unprejudiced observer
of the condition of affairs in Korea in the years previous to the
establishment of the protectorate would have no hesitation in holding
the view that Japanese administration of that country is preferable,
even in the interests of the Koreans themselves, to the shocking
misgovernment of the past.
The signature of the Treaty of Annexation was accompanied by a
Declaration on the part of the Japanese Government announcing certain
arrangements designed to lessen any irritation which the abrupt and
arbitrary annulment of Korea’s treaties with other countries might
occasion. These concessions to foreign feeling included matters relating
to jurisdiction, Customs, tonnage duties and the coasting trade. Four
years later the foreign settlements in Korea were abolished with the
consent of the Powers concerned.
Her Revised Treaties with foreign Powers, which came into operation in
1899 for a term of twelve years, gave Japan the right to denounce them
at the end of that period—in other words, to announce her intention to
terminate them by giving the twelve months’ notice required. This notice
was given by Japan to all the Treaty Powers in July, 1910. The liberty
to conclude new treaties when the term of notice expired involved a
point of essential importance, the recovery of tariff autonomy—the
right, that is to say, to control her own tariff. Negotiations for the
conclusion of new treaties were at once set on foot, the first to be
concluded being that with the United States, which was signed in
February of the following year; the second, the Treaty with Great
Britain, which followed a few months later. The new treaties came into
force in July of the same year, the period of operation being twelve
years. The first public recognition of the increasing importance of
Japan in the Far East occurred, as we have seen, when she was included
in the list of Powers consulted by the American Government in 1899 in
regard to the observance of the principle of the “open door” and “equal
opportunity” in China. By her success in the Russo-Japanese war six
years later she established her claim to be regarded as a leading Power
in the Far East. Her position, nevertheless, was inferior in one respect
to that of the Western States, for she had not the entire control of her
tariff. With the conclusion of the new treaties, by which this last
disability was removed, she took rank on a footing of complete equality
with the great Powers of the world.