Imperialism Against Japan: Foreign Pressure

• The Tokugawa Shogunate of Japan was able to control foreign interaction until the early 19th Century

• However, beginning in 1844, British, French, and US ships visited Japan to establish relations– The US in particular wanted

ports where its Pacific whaling and merchant fleets could stop for fuel and provisions

Imperialism Against Japan: Foreign Pressure

• The Tokugawas refused all requests for expanded relations and stuck to their policy of limiting European and American visitors to a small number of Dutch at Nagasaki

• In the late 1840s the Japanese began making military preparations in case of attack

The artificial island Dejima in Nagasaki Bay where the

Dutch were allowed to trade

Imperialism Against Japan: Commodore Perry

• In 1853, Commodore Matthew Perry led a US naval squadron into Tokyo Bay and demanded that the shogun open Japan to diplomatic and commercial relations and sign a treaty of friendship

• The shogun had no good alternative and acquiesced to Perry’s demands Commodore Matthew Perry

Imperialism Against Japan: The Opening of Japan

• Representatives of Britain, the Netherlands, and Russia soon won similar rights

• Like the Chinese, the Japanese were subjected to a series of unequal treaties which opened Japanese ports to foreign commerce, deprived the government of control over tariffs, and granted foreigners extraterritorial rights

Japan’s Response: End of Tokugawa Rule

• The sudden intrusion of foreign powers in Japan resulted in the collapse of the Tokugawa and the restoration of imperial rule

• The dissident slogan was “Revere the emperor, expel the barbarians.”

• On Jan 3, 1868, the boy emperor Mutsuhito took power– He later became known as

Meiji (“Enlightened Rule”)

Japan’s Response: Meiji Reforms

• The Meiji government strived to gain parity with foreign powers behind the motto “rich country, strong army”

• It looked to the industrial lands of the United States and Europe to obtain knowledge and expertise to strengthen Japan and win revisions of the unequal treaties– The Meiji sent many students and officials abroad to

learn everything from technology to construction and hired foreign experts to facilitate economic development and indigenous expertise

Japan’s Response: Meiji Reforms

• The Meiji transformed Japan by:– abolishing the feudal order and therefore centralizing

political power,– revamping the tax system to put the regime on a firm

financial footing– creating a constitution which gave the emperor

effective power and the parliament the ability to advise but not control him

– creating a modern transportation, communications, and educational infrastructure

Japan’s Response: Sino-Japanese War

• From 1894-1895 Japan defeated China in a war over Korea which showed how modern and powerful Japan had become and how weakened China had become– The Japanese navy quickly gained control of the

Yellow Sea and then the Japanese army pushed Chinese forces off the Korean Peninsula

– In the peace treaty, China recognized Korean independence which made Korea a virtual dependency of Japan

• The Japanese victory alarmed European powers, especially Russia, who shared interests with Japan in Korea and Manchuria

Japan’s Response: Parity with the West

• In 1899 Japan was able to end extraterritoriality

• In 1902 Japan concluded an alliance with Britain as an equal power

• By the early 20th Century, Japan had joined the ranks of the world’s major industrial powers Toyoda Type-G

Automatic Loom invented in 1924

China’s Response: Boxer Rebellion

• Eventually an anti-foreign society called the Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists (called the “Boxers” by the foreign press) emerged to protest the increasing Western presence in China

• In 1899 the Boxers organized to rid China of “foreign devils”

• They went on a rampage killing foreigners, Chinese Christians, and Chinese who had ties to foreigners

China’s Response: Boxer Rebellion

• In 1900 they besieged the foreign embassies in Beijing

• A heavily armed force of British, French, Russian, US, German, and Japanese troops crushed the rebellion

Calvin P. Titus won the Medal of Honor leading the American

attack over the Chinese City Wall

The Rise of Japanese Imperialism: Russo-Japanese War

• When Russia refused to withdraw its troops from Manchuria after the Boxer Rebellion, Japan attacked and defeated the Russian Far Eastern Fleet anchored at Port Arthur

• It was the first time in modern history an Asian military force had soundly whipped the army and navy of a major non-Asian imperial power

• With the victory, Japan gained recognition as a major imperial power

President Theodore Roosevelt meets with Japanese and

Russian envoys to discuss peace at the end of the Russo-

Japanese War.

The Rise of Japanese Imperialism: World War I

• On August 23, 1914, Japan entered World War I on the side of the Allies

• It captured several German-occupied locations in China and the Pacific

• Building on this momentum, Japan presented the Chinese government with a secret list of Twenty-One Demands which would have reduced China to a protectorate of Japan

The Rise of Japanese Imperialism: World War I

• The Chinese leaked the note to the British who spoke up for the Chinese and prevented complete capitulation, but still China acquiesced to many of the demands

• The Twenty-One Demands reflected Japan’s determination to dominate east Asia and served as a basis for future Japanese pressure on China Japanese Prime Minister

Okuma Shigenobu presented the demands to China

The Rise of Japanese Imperialism: Naval Power

• Britain and the US began to see Japan as a threat to their naval dominance

• In 1922 the Five-Power Naval Limitation Treaty established a ratio of capital ships as– Britain 5– United States 5– Japan 3– France 1.67– Italy 1.67

• In the 1930s, an increasingly militant Japan demanded parity with the U.S. and Britain.

• When the request was denied, Japan gave notice in 1934 that it would withdraw from the treaty in two years and did so

The Rise of Japanese Imperialism: Manchuria

• The increasing Japanese power and its continued hostility toward China came to a head in the 1930s when for the most part civilians lost control of the government and the military in Japan

• In the 1937 Japan invaded Manchuria and waged a brutal war against civilians and a repressive occupation

The Rise of Japanese Imperialism: Manchuria

• The Japanese brutality was epitomized by the “Rape of Nanjing”

• Over a two month period, Japanese soldiers inflamed by war passion and a sense of racial superiority raped 7,000 women, murdered hundreds of thousands of unarmed soldiers and civilians, and burned 1/3 of the homes in Nanjing Chinese man being beheaded

A Chinese baby cries amid the rubble of the Japanese bombing of Shanghai

The Rise of Japanese Imperialism: World War II

• Japan continued to see the US and others as a threat to its influence in Asia and in 1940 the Japanese began developing plans to destroy the US Navy in Hawaii

• On Dec 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor– We’ll discuss this in

Lesson 27

In May 1940, the main part of the US fleet was transferred to Pearl

Harbor from the west coast