A History of Japan: From Stone Age to Superpower (100 page)

58
See Beasley 89b, p668.

59
The difficult political situation of the time is described in detail in Banno 92.

60
See, for example, Reischauer and Craig 79, p178, and Beasley 89b, p669.

61
Gluck 85, p67.

62
See Iriye 83.

63
For details see Reischauer and Craig 79, pp180–2.

64
Katsura is himself sometimes referred to as a
genr
, but in practice he was considered a junior by the older
genr
.

65
Okamoto 83, p346.

66
This was the ‘Revolution of 1905’, not to be confused with the better-known revolution of 1917.

67
Okamoto 83, p347. Japan had already decided the previous month that it would seek mediation, and the victory certainly helped its bargaining power.

68
Many commentators treat it as the first-ever such victory, but in fact in ancient times the Chinese defeated the Romans on a number of occasions, in medieval times the Mongols had a number of victories over European states, and in more modern times the Afghans defeated the British in the First Anglo-Afghan War of 1839–42, and the Ethiopians defeated the Italians in the First Italo-Ethiopian War of 1895–96 at the decisive Battle of Ad(o)wa in March 1896.

69
Reischauer and Craig 79, p188.

70
Reischauer and Craig 79, p183.

71
Hunter 89, pp243–4.

72
One extreme case, cited by Morris-Suzuki (94, p78), was the Kamaishi iron-works, in which the government invested some 2.2 million yen and which it sold to a local merchant for a mere 12,600 yen – just 0.5 per cent of cost.

73
Francks 92, p38.

74
Francks 92, pp38–9.

75
Francks 92, pp38–9.

76
Crawcour 89, p613.

77
See Morris-Suzuki 94, pp111–2, and Francks 92, pp190–1.

78
Francks 92, pp38–9.

79
Francks 92, p189 and p51.

80
One of the more popular models is the ‘developmental state’ model described by Chalmers Johnson, which he applies in particular to Sh
wa Japan but whose origin he sees in the Meiji period. (See Johnson 82, esp. p23.) This ‘plan-rational’ model treats the state as having intervened constructively in the economy, as opposed to leaving it to market forces (‘market-rational’ or ‘laissez-faire’), in order to guide and develop it in a way appropriate to the nation’s interests. By contrast, Penelope Francks agrees that the government did not want to rely on market forces alone but feels that the constructiveness of the state’s involvement has been exaggerated, and that economic development was not quite as planned as the ‘developmental state’ model suggests. In her view actual government intervention was a rather hit-and-miss response to circumstances of time and place. (See Francks 92, esp. pp255–6.)

81
Among other things, he rarely made public tours after around 1890, even though this was the point from which the new emperor-centred ideology was particularly strongly promoted. His withdrawal from public life was possibly because of his rather vulgar and embarrassing personal habits. (See Behr 89, p14.) For a detailed study of Emperor Meiji see Keene 03. Interestingly, despite his study occupying almost a thousand pages, Keene concludes that it is difficult to find the ‘real Meiji’.

82
Tayama Katai 1917/87, pp247–51.

83
In the poem ‘Kimi Shinitam
Koto Nakare’ (You Must Not Die, My Brother).

84
See the partial translation in McClellan 69, p37.

85
See Mita 92, Part I, esp. pp21–8.

86
Tayama Katai 1917/87, pp248–9.

Part Five: The Excesses of Ambition

1
In recent years some scholars, such as contributors to Minichiello 98, have suggested a periodisation based on a notional ‘Greater Taish
’, from ca 1900 to ca 1930. While new approaches are always welcome, in this particular case I prefer to follow standard periodisation.

2
Duus 83, p198, Reischauer and Craig 79, p228, and Storry 63, pp160–1.

3
Stanley 83. For a vivid personal insight into this ‘Korean hunt’ I am indebted to Yoshio Okamoto, of K
be, whose father, though a Japanese, was mistaken for a Korean and barely escaped with his life.

4
Stanley 83.

5
These were the islands of Micronesia, namely the Marshalls, Carolines and Marianas (but not Guam). Britain agreed to Japanese occupation of former German Pacific ‘possessions’ north of the equator in return for Japanese recognition of Britain’s occupation of those south of the equator, such as in Samoa. After the First World War they were formally mandated to Japan by the League of Nations (till lost at the end of the Second World War), and represent an interesting example of a relatively benign and constructive Japanese occupancy, in contrast with the later notorious occupations of mainland Asian nations. See Henshall 04. For a detailed discussion of the Japanese in Micronesia, see Peattie 88.

6
Storry 63, p153.

7
Frei 91, Ch. 6.

8
Daniels 83, p164.

9
Kosaka 92, p35.

10
It was in later years to be deemed, by countries such as South Africa, an ‘honorary’ white nation, but such patronising for economic expediency was hardly real acceptance.

11
Large 92, pp28–31.

12
Kosaka 92, p28, and Forster 81, pp59–60.

13
Morris-Suzuki 94, pp105–16.

14
Reischauer and Craig 79, p206, and see also Hunter 89, p93.

15
See Hunter 89, p95, and Duus 83, pp198–9, for opposed views of the differences between the rural and the urban (the former playing them down, the latter highlighting them).

16
Hunter 89, p97.

17
Reischauer and Craig 79, p243.

18
Reischauer 88, p97.

19
Reischauer and Craig 79, p249, and Hata 88, p295.

20
Large 92, p49.

21
Duus 88, p7.

22
Hall 74, p9.

23
Kokutai no Hongi
, p55.

24
The 14 quotations in this paragraph are respectively from pp66, 71, 67, 67, 78, 78, 78, 81, 80, 93, 100, 82, 82, and 55 of
Kokutai no Hongi
.