A History of Japan: From Stone Age to Superpower (57 page)

Its most extreme action, however, was the presentation of the Twenty-One Demands to China early in 1915. These demands not only sought Chinese recognition of Japanese footholds, such as the newly acquired territory in Shantung, and further concessions in Mongolia and Manchuria. They also called for the appointment of Japanese advisers within the Chinese government, armed forces, and police. Effectively this would have placed China under Japanese control. China was outraged and appealed to the western powers, who were unable to take any decisive action. Eventually China was obliged to sign under duress a revised version of the demands, from which the demands for Japanese appointments had been withdrawn.

The Twenty-One Demands caused considerable concern in the west as to Japan’s motives, as well as in China. America in particular reacted negatively, and from that point on viewed Japan with great suspicion.
⁶

Nevertheless, as a member of the victorious allies Japan had a significant place at the Versailles (Paris) Peace Conference in 1919, having an equal vote with the other victorious powers. It similarly took its place at the Washington Conference of November 1921–February 1922. This was aimed at producing a new and more stable world order by focusing on multilateral rather than bilateral agreements between nations. One of the Washington resolutions obliged Japan to agree to a naval limitation of three Japanese capital ships to five American and five British. This was considerably ahead of France and Italy’s 1.67 (each), but still upset many Japanese at home, who felt they should have equal naval status with America and Britain.

A sense of unequal treatment was to be a constant irritant to Japan during the interwar years, often with some justification. In 1920 Japan was one of the founding council members of the League of Nations. In this particular aspect of internationalism it led the United States, which was never a formal member of the League. Soon afterwards Japan was greatly upset and disillusioned that it did not succeed in its proposal to have a racial equality clause put into the League’s charter. This was in large part due to opposition from Australia, which had been operating its ‘White Australia’ policy for some decades by this stage.
⁷

One major source of upset to the Japanese was a series of race-based exclusion acts passed in the United States. In particular, the 1924 Immigration Act effectively banned Japanese immigration (by relating immigrant quota eligibility to a naturalisation act of 1870). Japanese migrants had been entering the United States in large numbers since the 1880s, especially after the US annexation of Hawaii in 1897. By the First World War there were well over 100,000 in California alone, which had for some time been the scene of considerable anti-Japanese sentiment as a result of the volume of immigration. Voluntary restraints were
unsuccessful, leading to the 1924 act, which was deliberately tightened so as to have particular effect on the Japanese.
⁸
This caused outrage among the Japanese people, and greatly weakened the arguments of those who advocated cooperation with the United States in the new world order set up under the Washington treaties.
⁹

The Japanese themselves were hardly paragons of virtue when it came to racial attitudes, as their treatment of Koreans in particular showed. It was only when they themselves were the actual or potential victims of racial discrimination that they talked of racial equality. Nevertheless, Japan was receiving a message that it was not going to be treated as an equal after all. It was respected for its achievements, and accepted in the world community as a major power, but it would never be accepted as a real equal because its people were simply not white. It could do things western-style for ever and a day, but it would never be a proper white nation.
¹⁰
So why bother any more? Some western things were still useful for making and keeping Japan a strong nation in a western-dominated world. But whether this uncomfortable thing called democracy was one of them was another question.

5.2   A Troubled Start to Sh
wa

Hirohito became emperor on his father’s death on 25 December 1926. Though only in his mid-twenties he had gained significant experience as regent, and had also travelled widely abroad. Partly through admiration for the British monarchy, and partly through the influence of Minobe Tatsukichi, he was keen to function as a constitutional monarch.
¹¹
An immediate problem was that the constitution was very ambivalent regarding the role of the monarch.

However, constitutionalism was not the only influence on Hirohito. As a child he had been raised under a strong personal military influence, first from General Nogi and then from Admiral T
g
. His tutors also included the nationalist Sugiura Shigetake (1855–1924). As an individual Hirohito was aloof and far removed from the public. He was a god in name, and in practice an elitist who knew next to nothing about the lives of his common subjects.

Hirohito’s reign was given the name ‘Sh
wa’, meaning ‘Illustrious Peace’. In fact it was characterised virtually from the outset by crises and drama at home and abroad.

At home, the economy was not in good shape. The First World War had been good to Japan, enabling it to fill market gaps in Asia left vacant by the warring western powers. During the war years industrial production had grown five-fold, exports had more than trebled, and the economy as a whole had grown by some 50 per cent.
¹²
With such a command over supply, Japan had also been able to experiment with new technology and diversification.
¹³
The
zaibatsu
in particular had profited from the war. However, after the war prices had collapsed and an enduring recession set in. The so-called ‘dual economy’ grew worse, as the gap between the huge
zaibatsu
and the smaller companies grew ever wider. Reconstruction after the T
ky
Earthquake in 1923 provided a brief boost, but this was followed in 1927 by a financial crisis that saw a quarter of Japan’s banks fail. Silk still formed a substantial export item, but prices slumped by more than half in the late 1920s. The rural sector was further hit by a similar fall in rice prices in 1930, and in general it was the rural sector that bore the brunt of Japan’s share of the world depression of that time. Between 1926 and 1931 rural cash incomes fell from an index of 100 to 33, which was more than twice the fall in urban incomes.

The urban population was growing fast, which was itself a source of social problems. In 1895 only 12 per cent of the then 42 million Japanese had lived in towns or cities of more than 10,000 people, but by the mid 1930s this rose to 45 per cent of the then 70 million Japanese.
¹⁴
Of course, not all urban dwellers were wealthy and enjoying a high quality of life, but in general there was a significant discrepancy between rural and urban life.
¹⁵
Rural Japan was characterised by lower living standards and traditional ways, and urban Japan by at least the promise of wealth, and by modernity and westernness, symbolised by the
moga
and
mobo
(from ‘modern girl’ and ‘modern boy’). The greater disaffection was among the rural communities. This was to work to the advantage of the military, whose forces were heavily drawn from the rural sector and who shared with the rural population a basically conservative and less internationalised outlook on life.
¹⁶

The military, and many members of the public, were increasingly angry about economic and political developments. There was a widespread belief that big business had too much influence in politics, to the point of corruption. Even the politicians themselves accepted this. The
Seiy
kai
government of 1927–29 was labelled a ‘Mitsui cabinet’ by the major opposition party, the (
Rikken
)
Minseit
(Constitutional Democratic Party, basically a derivative of the
Kokumint
). In return, the
Minseit
government of 1929–30 was labelled a ‘Mitsubishi cabinet’ by the
Seiy
kai
.
¹⁷