THE JAPANESE PERIL
The ambitions of the Mikado--The _Shin Nippon_ in Western
America--Pacific invasion--Japanese and Americans.
Facing the United States in the mysterious Orient is an extensive
empire which is sending its legions of pacific invaders into the New
World. Anticipating the Japanese victories, the German Emperor
warned a somnolent Europe of the terrible Yellow Peril; the peril of
hordes like those of Genghis Khan, which would destroy the treasures
of Western civilisation. This danger, after the defeat of Russia and
the formation of the Anglo-Japanese alliance, has been felt in
America from Vancouver and California down to Chili.
To dominate the Pacific is the ambition both of the North American
Republic and the Asiatic Monarchy.
Before ruling America the Japanese, exposed to the hostility of the
Californians, will fight in the North the great battle which will
decide their fate. The Monroe doctrine, which liberated Latin
America from the tutelage of the Holy Alliance, is perhaps destined
to protect it also against the menace of the East. The Anglo-Saxons
will not tolerate the foundation of Japanese colonies on the southern
coasts of America, and to prevent them they are overcoming the
obstacle of the Isthmus: are digging a canal, {324} fortifying it,
and increasing their navy. The United States understand that their
future will baffle Japan, and by the acquisition of the Philippines
they have become an Asiatic power. They defend the integrity of
China, negotiate peace between Russia and Japan, demand the
neutrality of the Manchurian railway, and claim a financial share in
the Chinese loans and undertakings of material civilisation. The
policy of Mr. Taft tends to ensure the American control of the
Chinese finances.
The industry of North America needs outlets in Asia, because South
America is still a commercial fief of Europe. On the other hand, the
Japanese population is increasing at such an excessive rate that
emigration is a necessary phenomenon for that country; a people of
mariners hemmed in by the ocean naturally looks for fruitful
adventures by sea. Moreover, the State stimulates emigration;
socialism is causing it anxiety, and the dense population of
proletariats is producing implacable caste antagonisms. Anarchists,
brilliant propagandists of European doctrines, are spreading their
convictions among the multitude which vegetates upon a
poverty-stricken soil. Industrialism, and the general transformation
of the nation, renders the protest of the disinherited still more
bitter.
This current of emigration is neither chaotic nor fruitless. Even
more than the German the Japanese is an emissary of imperialistic
design. He does not become absorbed into the nation in which he
lives; he does not become naturalised under the protection of
hospitable laws; he preserves his worship of the Mikado, his national
traditions, and his noble devotion to the dead.
Japan aspires to political domination and economic hegemony in Korea
and Northern China. The Japanese have annexed Korea, and flying the
Imperial standard upon this peninsula they have become a {325}
continental power. They have received from ancient China lessons in
wisdom, artists and philosophers, and to-day the initiate seeks to
rule the initiator. Japan is transforming China and teaching her the
methods of the West; the philosophy of Heidelberg, the arts of Paris.
In Manchuria, despite the ambitions of the United States, she
pretends to supremacy for her industries and her banks.
"Asia for the Asiatics" is the Japanese cry, as "America for the
Americans" is that of the people of the States.
Neither of these peoples respects the autonomy of foreign nations.
The United States are conquering Asia economically, and the Japanese,
the defenders of Oriental integrity, are slowly invading the Far West
of America. The Philippines for the United States and Hawaii for
Japan are the advance posts of commercial expansion on the one hand
and imperialism on the other.
We are then face to face with a struggle of races, a clash of
irreconcilable interests. In the proud northern democracy we note an
uneasiness which reveals itself by the jealous exclusion of the
Japanese from the life of the West, and by immovable racial
prejudices. The American General Homer Lee, in a pessimistic book,
_The Valor of Ignorance_, states that a heterogeneous nation in which
foreigners constitute half the population can never conquer Japan.
He foresees that the island empire, having eliminated its two rivals,
Russia and China, by successive wars, will vanquish the United States
and occupy vast territories in the American North-West. Only
alliance with England, "to-day allied with the destinies of Japan,"
could save the Republic from subjection to her Oriental rivals.
Such prophecies, however, do not assume a general character. While
waiting for the future war the struggle for the Pacific between the
two powers {326} concerned remains acute. The Japanese emigrants
halt at Hawaii, assimilate American methods, and resume their exodus
toward the Californian Eldorado. In the islands they are electors;
they prevail by force of numbers; they change their professions or
industries with remarkable adaptability, and then return to Japan, or
remain, and retain their national feeling inviolate. In California
they follow humble callings; they are secretly preparing themselves
for conquest. Numberless legions thus arrive from the Orient; they
are proud, adventurous, speculative; they aspire to economic
supremacy.
In California, that country of gold and adventure, the problem of
Japanese immigration is becoming more complex. M. Louis Aubert
explains that in this State the Japanese constitute a necessary
defence against the tyranny of the trades unions.[1] They accept an
absurd wage and furnish the financial oligarchy with useful arms and
sober stomachs. When the associations of working men demand
increased salaries and threaten the greedy plutocrats with strikes or
socialistic demands, the Japanese passively submit to the iron law of
capitalism. If the interests of the race demand their expulsion from
California, the interests of the capitalist class demand their
retention. The instinct of the democracy which supports the
civilising mission of the white man, "the white man's burden," is
stronger than its utilitarian egoism. The immigrant is accused of
immodesty or servility. The energy, frugality, self-respect,
triumphant patience, and hostile isolation of the Japanese in Hawaii
and California cause the Americans much uneasiness.
Repulsed in the north, the conquering Japanese take refuge on the
long coast-line of South America. They do not renounce California
and its admirable soil, but they prefer to forget the disdain of the
{327} North, to compromise with that haughty democracy, and prepare
in silence for the future conflict.
They are, as a race, transformed; they have forsaken their own
history in the midst of the millennial and ecstatic Orient, and this
renovation has resulted in an intense ambition of expansion. The
Japan which apes Europe does not overlook the teachings of
Anglo-Saxon imperialism. Its statesmen, disciples of Disraeli and
Chamberlain, wish to found an immense empire under the tutelage of
the Asiatic England, insular and proud as the United Kingdom itself.
Count Okuma stated that South America was comprised in the sphere of
influence to which the Japanese Empire may legitimately pretend. Is
not this the very language of the conquerors of Europe, for whom such
"spheres of influence" pave the way for protectorates, tutelage, or
annexation? "Western America," write the Japanese journals, "is a
favourable ground for Japanese emigration. Persevering emigrants
might there build up a new Japan, _Shin Nippon_." It is the
identical object of the Germans in Southern Brazil; the creation of a
Transatlantic _Deutschtum_.
The Japanese emigrate to Canada, there to establish a base for the
invasion of the United States; they do the same in Mexico, and settle
even in Chili; but Peru is the favourite soil of these imperialistic
adventurers. To a statesman here is a _Shin Nippon_ whose future is
assured, a new Hawaii. Its climate resembles that of Japan. "In
Peru, as in the greater part of South America, the government is
weak, and if energy be displayed it cannot refuse to accept Japanese
immigrants," writes a journal of Tokio. "In this hospitable country
the Japanese could receive education in the public schools, acquire
lands, and exploit mines." It is necessary, says an Osaka
news-sheet, that these immigrants should not return to Japan after
amassing a fortune; {328} they must remain in Peru and there create a
_Shin Nippon_.[2] The Japanese immigrants are reminded that already
there are 60,000 Chinese in the sugar plantations of Peru, and that
this republic is one of the richest on the Pacific coast. A minute
explanation is given of the agricultural products which can be raised
in Mexico, Chili, and Peru, and what are the privileges granted to
immigrants in these countries; but these comprehensive statements do
not trouble American statesmen. The very date of the first Japanese
exodus toward the Eldorado of the _conquistadors_ has become the
classic anniversary of the commencement of a new era; "the
thirty-second of the Meijie," of the regeneration of the Empire.
According to recent statistics 6,000 Japanese are at work in Peru, in
the plantations of sugar-cane, the rubber-forests, or the
cotton-fields; following the tracks of the Chinese, they fill the
lesser callings and defeat the mulattos and half-breeds in the
economic struggle. New fleets of steamers carry these persistent
legions under the Imperial flag. The State protects the navigation
companies which run between Japan and South America, and although the
commerce thus favoured is more profitable to Peru and Chili than to
Japan, the far-sighted Mikado encourages relations which are not
particularly favourable to-day, but which permit of the development
of Japanese influence all along the Pacific coast, and the creation
of centres of Japanese population and influence in Mexico, Peru, and
Chili.[3] The Japanese vessels discharge their human freight at
Callao and Valparaiso. The soil, which lacks Chinese serfs, is thus
fertilised by Japanese immigrants, and the agricultural oligarchy
{329} of Chili and Peru is satisfied. Brazil itself attracts these
emigrants, replacing the fertile Italian invasion by these sober
workers of a hostile race, and is preparing the way for the
establishment on Brazilian soil of two groups of identical
tendencies, but inimical: one Japanese, the other German.
Japanese spies have been captured in Ecuador and Mexico. At the
centennial fêtes of Mexico and the Argentine in 1910 a Japanese
cruiser and an ambassador of the Mikado brought fraternal messages
from the Orient. Uneasy on account of the North American peril,
certain writers of the Latin American democracies entertain a certain
amount of confidence in the sympathies of Japan; perhaps they even
count upon an alliance with the Empire of the Rising Sun. But we
cannot see, with the brilliant Argentine writer Manuel Ugarte, that
Latin diplomacy must henceforth count upon Japan, because the
hostility between that nation and the United States might be
successfully exploited at the proper moment. In the commercial
battles for the domination of the Pacific Japan does not support the
autonomy of Latin America; her statesmen and publicists consider that
Peru, Chili, and Mexico are spheres of Japanese expansion. We have
cited conclusive opinions on this subject, and they contradict the
optimism of the Argentine sociologist. Apart from the emigrants and
the companies which encourage them the projects and designs of Count
Okuma, leader of the Japanese imperialists, are manifested in the
nationalist Press, which sometimes betrays more than it intends.
To-day, in the face of the unanimous opinion of these journals, we
cannot deny that Japan has ambitious designs upon America. The
future war will be born of the clash of two doctrines, of two
imperialisms, of the ideal of Okuma and the Monroe doctrine.
Victorious, the Japanese would invade Western America and convert the
Pacific into a vast closed {330} sea, closed to foreign ambitions,
_mare nostrum_, peopled by Japanese colonies.[4]
The Japanese hegemony would not be a mere change of tutelage for the
nations of America. In spite of essential differences the Latins
oversea have certain common ties with the people of the States: a
long-established religion, Christianity, and a coherent, European,
occidental civilisation. Perhaps there is some obscure fraternity
between the Japanese and the American Indians, between the yellow men
of Nippon and the copper-coloured Quechuas, a disciplined and sober
people. But the ruling race, the dominant type of Spanish origin,
which imposes the civilisation of the white man upon America, is
hostile to the entire invading East.
The geography of the Oriental Empire in no sense recalls that of
America; there are neither wide plains, nor mighty rivers, nor
fertile and luxurious forests. Narrow horizons, gentle hills, minute
islands, closed seas, and the strange flora of the harmonious insular
landscape: lotuses, cryptomera, bamboos, chrysanthemums, dwarf trees.
Beliefs, manners, and customs all differ radically from the American.
"The Europeans," writes Lafcadio Hearn, "build with a view to
duration, the Japanese with a view to instability." A keen sentiment
of all that is fugitive in life, of the anguish caused by the
incessant flux and mobility of things, causes men to love ephemeral
apparitions. Buddhism speaks of the fluidity of life. Japanese art
strives to fix passing impressions; the dew, the pale light of the
moon, the fleeting tints of twilight, the provisional {331} temples,
the small houses of wood, the rice-paper _shoji_, on which the very
shadows of those within are vague and momentary. There is nothing
persevering in Japanese life; the inhabitant is a nomad and nature is
variable. Impassive Buddhas, seated on their blue lotus flowers,
contemplate the irresistible current of appearances. Mobility, and a
religious sense of becoming: these would be elements of dissolution
in a divided America.
Powerful and traditional, the Japanese civilisation would weigh too
heavily upon the Latin democracies, mixed as they are. Bushido, the
cult of honour and fidelity to one's ancestors, is the basis of an
intense nationalism; the contempt for death, the pride of an insular
people, the subjection of the individual to the family and the native
land, and the asceticism of the _samurai_, constitute so formidable a
superiority that in the conflict between half-breed America and stoic
Japan the former would lose both its autonomy and its traditions.
[1] Louis Aubert, _Americains et Japonais_, Paris, 1908, pp. 151 _et
seq_.
[2] M. Aubert cites these and other extracts.
[3] The Peruvian imports into Japan were £101,000 in 1909; the
Japanese imports into Peru only £4,400. There is a commercial treaty
between Chili and Japan.
[4] Perhaps the emigration of Orientals towards the two Americas will
be arrested, for there is a Chinese Far West which is slowly becoming
peopled. Japan aspires to assure herself of the domination of
Manchuria, and is sending colonists to Korea, the annexed peninsula.
The excess of the population of China and Japan tends naturally to
occupy territories in which everything is favourable--climate,
religion, and race.
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