It is three days' easy journey from Japan to China. It is doubtful
whether anywhere in the world another journey of the same length
brings with it such a complete change of political temper and belief.
Certainly it is greater than the alteration perceived in journeying
directly from San Francisco to Shanghai. The difference is not one in
customs and modes of life; that goes without saying. It concerns the
ideas, beliefs and alleged information current about one and the same
fact: the status of Japan in the international world and especially
its attitude toward China. One finds everywhere in Japan a feeling of
uncertainty, hesitation, even of weakness. There is a subtle nervous
tension in the atmosphere as of a country on the verge of change but
not knowing where the change will take it. Liberalism is in the air,
but genuine liberals are encompassed with all sorts of difficulties
especially in combining their liberalism with the devotion to
theocratic robes which the imperialist militarists who rule Japan have
so skilfully thrown about the Throne and the Government. But what one
senses in China from the first moment is the feeling of the
all-pervading power of Japan which is working as surely as fate to its
unhesitating conclusion--the domination of Chinese politics and
industry by Japan with a view to its final absorption. It is not my
object to analyze the realities of the situation or to inquire whether
the universal feeling in China is a collective hallucination or is
grounded in fact. The phenomenon is worthy of record on its own
account. Even if it be merely psychological, it is a fact which must
be reckoned with in both its Chinese and its Japanese aspects. In the
first place, as to the differences in psychological atmosphere.
Everybody who knows anything about Japan knows that it is the land of
reserves and reticences. The half-informed American will tell you that
this is put on for the misleading of foreigners. The informed know
that it is an attitude shown to foreigners only because it is deeply
engrained in the moral and social tradition of Japan; and that, if
anything, the Japanese are more likely to be communicative--about many
things at least--to a sympathetic foreigner, than to one another. The
habit of reserve is so deeply embedded in all the etiquette,
convention and daily ceremony of living, as well as in the ideals of
strength of character, that only the Japanese who have subjected
themselves to foreign influences escape it--and many of them revert.
To put it mildly, the Japanese are not a loquacious people; they have
the gift of doing rather than of gab.
When accordingly a Japanese statesman or visiting diplomatist engages
in unusually prolonged and frank discourse setting forth the aims and
procedures of Japan, the student of politics who has been long in the
East at once becomes alert, not to say suspicious. A recent
illustration is so extreme that it will doubtless seem fantastic
beyond belief. But the student at home will have to take these seeming
fantasies seriously if he wishes to appreciate the present atmosphere
of China. Cables have brought fragmentary reports of some addresses of
Baron Goto in America. Doubtless in the American atmosphere these have
the effect of reassuring America as to any improper ambitions on the
part of Japan. In China, they were taken as announcements that Japan
has about completed its plans for the absorption of China, and that
the lucubration preliminary to operations of swallowing are about to
begin. The reader is forgiven in advance any scepticism he feels about
both the fact itself and the correctness of my report of the belief in
the alleged fact. His scepticism will not surpass what I should feel
in his place. But the suspicion aroused by such statements as this and
the recent interview of Foreign Minister Uchida and Baron Ishii must
be noted as evidences of the universal belief in China that Japan has
one mode of diplomacy for the East and another for the West, and that
what is said in the West must be read in reverse in the East.
China, whatever else it is, is not the land of privacies. It is a
proverb that nothing long remains secret in China. The Chinese talk
more easily than they act--especially in politics. They are adepts in
revealing their own shortcomings. They dissect their own weaknesses
and failures with the most extraordinary reasonableness. One of the
defects upon which they dwell is the love of finding substitutes for
positive action, of avoiding entering upon a course of action which
might be irrevocable. One almost wonders whether their power of
self-criticism is not itself another of these substitutes. At all
events, they are frank to the point of loquacity. Between the opposite
camps there are always communications flowing. Among official enemies
there are "sworn friends." In a land of perpetual compromise,
etiquette as well as necessity demands that the ways for later
accommodations be kept open. Consequently things which are spoken of
only under the breath in Japan are shouted from the housetops in
China. It would hardly be good taste in Japan to allude to the report
that influential Chinese ministers are in constant receipt of Japanese
funds and these corrupt officials are the agencies by which political
and economic concessions were wrung from China while Europe and
America were busy with the war. But in China nobody even takes the
trouble to deny it or even to discuss it. What is psychologically most
impressive is the fact that it is merely taken for granted. When it is
spoken of, it is as one mentions the heat on an unusually hot day.
In speaking of the feeling of weakness current in Japan about Japan
itself, one must refer to the economic situation because of its
obvious connection with the international situation. In the first
place, there is the strong impression that Japan is over-extended.
Even in normal times, Japan relies more upon production for foreign
markets than is regarded in most countries as safe policy. And there
is the belief that Japan _must_ do so, because only by large foreign
sellings--large in comparison with the purchasing power of a people
still having a low standard of life--can it purchase the raw
materials--and even food--it has to have. But during the war, the
dependence of manufacturing and trade at home upon the foreign market
was greatly increased. The domestic increase of wealth, though very
great, is still too much in the hands of the few to affect seriously
the internal demand for goods. Item one, which awakens sympathy for
Japan as being in a somewhat precarious situation.
Another item concerns the labor situation. Japan seems to feel itself
in a dilemma. If she passes even reasonably decent factory laws (or
rather attempts their enforcement) and regulates child and women's
labor, she will lose that advantage of cheap labor which she now
counts on to offset her many disadvantages. On the other hand,
strikes, labor difficulties, agitation for unions, etc., are
constantly increasing, and the tension in the atmosphere is
unmistakable. The rice riots are not often spoken of, but their memory
persists, and the fact that they came very near to assuming a directly
political aspect. Is there a race between fulfillment of the
aspirations of the military clans who still hold the reins, and the
growth of genuinely democratic forces which will forever terminate
those aspirations? Certainly the defeat of Germany gave a blow to
bureaucratic militarism in Japan which in time will go far. Will it
have the time required to take effect on foreign policy? The hope that
it will is a large factor in stimulating liberal sympathy for a Japan
which is beginning to undergo the throes of transition.
As for the direct international situation of Japan, the feeling in
Japan is that of the threatening danger of isolation. Germany is gone;
Russia is gone. While those facts simplify matters for Japan somewhat,
there is also the belief that in taking away potential allies, they
have weakened Japan in the general game of balance and counter-balance
of power. Particularly does the removal of imperialistic Russia
relieve the threat on India which was such a factor in the willingness
of Great Britain to make the offensive-defensive alliance. The
revelation of the militaristic possibilities of America is another
serious factor. Certainly the new triple entente cordiale of Japan,
Italy and France is no adequate substitute for a realignment of
international forces in which a common understanding between Great
Britain and America is a dominant factor. This factor explains, if it
does not excuse, some of the querulousness and studied discourtesies
with which the Japanese press for some months treated President
Wilson, the United States in general and its relation to the League of
Nations in particular, while it also throws light on the ardor with
which the opportune question of racial discrimination was discussed.
(The Chinese have an unfailing refuge in a sense of humor. It was
interesting to note the delight with which they received the utterance
of the Japanese Foreign Minister, after Japanese success at Paris,
that "his attention had recently been called" to various press attacks
on America which he much deprecated). In any case there is no
mistaking the air of tension and nervous overstrain which now attends
all discussion of Japanese foreign relations. In all directions, there
are characteristic signs of hesitation, shaking of old beliefs and
movement along new lines. Japan seems to be much in the same mood as
that which it experienced in the early eighties before, toward the
close of that decade, it crystallized its institutions through
acceptance of the German constitution, militarism, educational system,
and diplomatic methods. So that, once more, the observer gets the
impression that substantially all of Japan's energy, abundant as that
is, must be devoted to her urgent problems of readjustment.
Come to China, and the difference is incredible. It almost seems as if
one were living in a dream; or as if some new Alice had ventured
behind an international looking-glass wherein everything is reversed.
That we in America should have little idea of the state of things and
the frame of mind in China is not astonishing--especially in view of
the censorship and the distraction of attention of the last few years.
But that Japan and China should be so geographically near, and yet
every fact that concerns them appear in precisely opposite
perspective, is an experience of a life time. Japanese liberalism?
Yes, it is heard of, but only in connection with one form which the
longing for the miraculous _deus ex machina_ takes. Perhaps a
revolution in Japan may intervene to save China from the fate which
now hangs over her. But there is no suggestion that anything less than
a complete revolution will alter or even retard the course which is
attributed to Japanese diplomacy working hand in hand with Japanese
business interests and militarism. The collapse of Russia and Germany?
These things only mean that Japan has in a few years fallen complete
heir to Russian hopes, achievements and possessions in Manchuria and
Outer Mongolia, and has had opportunities in Siberia thrown into her
hands which she could hardly have hoped for in her most optimistic
moments. And now Japan has, with the blessing of the great Powers at
Paris, become also the heir of German concessions, intrigues and
ambitions, with added concessions, wrung (or bought) from incompetent
and corrupt officials by secret agreements when the world was busy
with war. If all the great Powers are so afraid of Japan that they
give way to her every wish, what is China that she can escape the doom
prepared for her? That is the cry of helplessness going up all over
China. And Japanese propagandists take advantage of the situation,
pointing to the action of the Peace Conference as proof that the
Allies care nothing for China, and that China must throw herself into
the arms of Japan if she is to have any protection at all. In short,
Japan stands ready as she stood ready in Korea to guarantee the
integrity and independence of China. And the fear that the latter
must, in spite of her animosity toward Japan, accept this fate in
order to escape something worse swims in the sinister air. It is the
exact counterpart of the feeling current among the liberals in Japan
that Japan has alienated China permanently when a considerate and
slower course might have united the two countries. If the economic
straits of Japan are alluded to, it is only as a reason why Japan has
hurried her diplomatic coercion, her corrupt and secret bargainings
with Chinese traitors and her industrial invasion. While the western
world supposes that the military and the industrial party in Japan
have opposite ideas as to best methods of securing Japanese supremacy
in the East, it is the universal opinion in China that they two are
working in complete understanding with one another, and the
differences that sometimes occur between the Foreign Office in Tokyo
and the Ministry of War (which is extra-constitutional in its status)
are staged for effect.
These are some of the aspects of the most complete transformation
scene that it has ever been the lot of the writer to experience. May
it turn out to be only an extraordinary psychological experience! But
in the interests of truth it must be recorded that every resident of
China, Chinese or American, with whom I have talked in the last four
weeks has volunteered the belief that all the seeds of a future great
war are now deeply implanted in China. To avert such a calamity they
look to the League of Nations or to some other force outside the
immediate scene. Unfortunately the press of Japan treats every attempt
to discuss the state of opinion in China or the state of facts as
evidence that America, having tasted blood in the war, now has its
eyes on Asia with the expectation later on of getting its hands on
Asia. Consequently America is interested in trying to foster ill-will
between China and Japan. If the pro-American Japanese do not enlighten
their fellow-countrymen as to the facts, then America ought to return
some of the propaganda that visits its shores. But every American who
goes to Japan ought also to visit China--if only to complete his
education.
May, 1919.