Japan and Southeast Asia

From the 1880s until 1945, Japan pursued a determined imperial policy of military and political supremacy over China, or at least over most of it. What America, Asia, and Africa were to Western European imperial colonizers, China and later Southeast Asia were (or were supposed to be) to Japan. However, in pursuing its imperial endeavours in China and Southeast Asia, and following the example of Western colonizers, including the United States, Japan was hampered by the imperial jealousy of the Western powers who believed that they alone had the right to the exploitation of China and the countries in Pacific Asia.

However, by laying claim to China and the Pacific Basin, Japan clearly risked increasing the opposition, and even hostility, of the Western powers. It was clear to Japan that these powers would not voluntarily leave it alone to do what these powers had done long before in the same geographical area. Japan discovered at the end of the 19th century that the Western powers would not leave it carte blanche for its imperial undertakings in China, above all in Manchuria, because they were against Japan’s military, political, and economic rise. Japan could not, following the example of the Western colonial powers, continue without creating its own colonial empire.

To achieve its imperial goal in this part of the world, Japan had to resort to diplomacy. Surrounded by Western colonial powers that had already divided up the territory of Pacific Asia among themselves, Tokyo decided to split its united front by courting a major Western power as ally. In public, this policy was presented as nationally beneficial in exchange for the patronage (protection) of that Western power. Thus, at the beginning of the 20th century, Japan believed that if it managed to gain the friendship and protection of a leading world power, it would be able to contain all other powers against it and avoid being forced, as in 1895 (First Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895 in which it defeated China), to temporarily give up its main demands regarding China.

Japan’s diplomatic dilemma around the year of 1900

The question now arose: What great Western power could this be given the general view of Japan as a newcomer to the politics of the Pacific Asia? Opinions in Tokyo were divided.

It was generally accepted in Japan that her ultimate national enemy, which fought against all Japanese imperial claims in the Pacific, was its immediate overseas neighbour - Russia. However, a number of Japanese experts on the geopolitics of Pacific Asia advocated easing tensions with Tsarist Russia. This party, when it came to power in Tokyo, began negotiations with Russia for peaceful coexistence with Japan.

Another geopolitical school in Tokyo was in favour of an alliance with Imperial Germany. This fit in with that party’s program of modernizing Japan on the basis of the German experience: constitution, army, etc. In the following years, the shaping of Japanese foreign policy depended on the level of Japanese contact with Imperial Germany.

But another school of thought finally prevailed in the country’s foreign policy orientation, which was in favour of Japan relying on its navy. The arguments were that Japan was an island country and a maritime power in the Pacific Ocean. The proponents of this school felt that Japan should follow its predetermined geopolitical destiny and accept a maritime solution to its foreign policy problems. Thus, Japan finally decided to tie its geopolitical destiny to Great Britain. Two thalassocracies (the ancient Greek term for the master of the sea), one as a world and the other as a regional maritime power, were joining forces to achieve their geopolitical goals in the Pacific Ocean region.

There were three main geopolitical reasons for Japan’s turn towards Great Britain as a strategic partner at the beginning of the 20th century:

1)     Japan, considering its separateness from the Asian landmass, was aware that its foreign policy was very similar to the British thalassocracy because Britain, as an island nation separated from continental Europe, was also oriented towards the sea and the creation of an overseas empire.

2)    The attraction to Great Britain was reinforced in Tokyo by the political attitudes of the great Western colonial powers towards Japan since the forced opening of Japan to international trade in 1853/1868 were marked by the limitation of its land activities (the limitation of the Japanese occupation of parts of China in the war of 1894-1895, and in some Western European circles by a cultural policy based on racial grounds, expressed in the term “Yellow danger”).

3)    The agreement with Great Britain not only promised a political alliance between the two powers in the Pacific Ocean, but erased the feeling of earlier humiliation by London and thereby created a friendly mood with the world’s strongest naval power (thalassocracy) at that time.

Thus, in 1902, the Anglo-Japanese alliance was concluded, against Tsarist Russia, which provided Japan with the world partner that Japan had longed for at that time.

Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 1902

The Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 1902 was a crucial event in the history of Japan. It was preceded by complex diplomatic activity and was the key to everything that took place later in Pacific Asia. As far as Japan was concerned, this alliance against Russia was a neutralizing arrangement. The text of the alliance included that if one of the two signatories of the alliance (Japan) entered into war with one great power (Russia), the other signatory (Great Britain) must indicate that it would join the side of its ally if attacked by another foreign power (Russia). The net military gain for Japan was that it was effectively spared of having to fight with more than one enemy (Russia). Thus, the neutrality of the other great powers was ensured, and Japan had the direct support of Great Britain in the event of a war with Russia.

The essence of this alliance was that if Japan went to war with Russia (it was preparing for aggression against Russia), the military forces of Great Britain would go to war against any ally of Russia or any other enemy of Japan, which ensured the neutrality of all other great powers in the Pacific. This reduced the danger to Japan of war against several countries.

The Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 1902 soon brought concrete results for Japan, as Tokyo had expected. Japan attacked Russia in 1904 and fought it the following year. This war was essentially a Japanese-Russian rivalry for control of northern China (Manchuria). It was surprising at the time that Japan, with its new imperial arrogance, would attack Russia, but Japan survived and became stronger.

In the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, Japan’s victory was less complete than popular legend suggests. Japan was exhausted and made peace after 18 months of a successful but exhausting war. Japan was in no position to demand the annexation of Manchuria (for which it had fought). Based on the peace treaty, Japan was given the right to protect the South Manchurian Railway which had been built with the help of Japanese capital. Nevertheless, this solution was historically fateful for the further history of Pacific Asia, because from Japan expanded its military-political power in the following years, even decades, until 1945.

This first of Japan’s major wars set a precedent for undiplomatic behaviour. Japan began its war against Russia in the Pacific in 1904 with an undiplomatic precedent - a direct and surprise attack on the anchored Russian Navy in Port Arthur without a declaration of war. on December 7, 1941, Japan repeated the same scenario against the US Navy in the Pacific at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. However, as far as Japan was concerned, its behaviour in the war against Russia towards prisoners of war, as well as Japan’s respect for international conventions, were exemplary (for respect of international law).

The alliance with Japan was also beneficial to Great Britain. It guaranteed that Great Britain’s interests in the Far East would be protected if Great Britain were to enter the war in Europe in any way. If that happened, Great Britain could rely on Japan to preserve its overseas empire (thalassocracy) and London’s interests in Pacific Asia. In fact, this happened during the Great War of 1914-1918 when Japan liquidated all German colonies in China. However, Great Britain was not entirely satisfied with Japan’s fulfilment of its contractual obligations and felt that Japan should have done much more for the British Empire in the Pacific Asia.

For two decades, the Anglo-Japanese alliance formed the basis of Japanese policy in the Pacific Asia region. Japan took the first successful steps towards establishing its Pacific Asia empire, the borders of which culminated in mid-1942. This territorial expansion led Japan into World War II, into war against its former ally, Great Britain. Many Japanese conservatives at the time looked with nostalgia at the Anglo-Japanese alliance of 1902-1921 because this alliance embodied a period of international security that laid the foundations for Japanese imperial policy in the Pacific Asia region.

Washington Conference of 1921

The Anglo-Japanese Alliance was dissolved in 1921 at the Washington Conference, as the problems in the Pacific Asia region after the Great War had become far more complicated. The balance of power in this region was upset in 1915 because Western powers were involved in war on the European continent; Japan took advantage to secure its supremacy here. On January 18, 1915, Tokyo delivered an ultimatum to China - the 21 Demands. Its acceptance would have ended even the limited independence of the northern parts of China and turned it into a Japanese protectorate. In 1905, Japan had turned the Korean Peninsula into its protectorate and even annexed it in 1910 during the Anglo-Japanese Treaty.  This was previously been done with Taiwan in 1895. Russia was defeated in the Pacific in 1905, so the way was open for Japan to further aggression towards northern China, which Japan would finally exploit in 1931 and later in 1937.

After January 1915, China was saved from final ruin by diplomatic intervention by the United States, with a military threat to Japan. Instead of obtaining China’s surrender, Japan was forced to enter into diplomatic negotiations with the United States in 1917 (when Russia was paralyzed by revolutionary chaos). The US in principle recognized Tokyo’s territorial claims in a non-specific, rather vague form. When peace was established after the Great War, Japan had to suffer the humiliation of being forced to participate in the Washington Conference of 1921, convened by the US, and thus join the other great powers interested in the Pacific Asia region by committing to respect the independence and territorial integrity of China. This was directly detrimental to Japan’s imperialist-colonial plans and interests after the Great War.

The Washington Conference also provided for a period during which there would be no port use agreements or extraterritorial (colonial) rights in China. The great powers were willing to allow China to join the committee of states (League of Nations) as an equal country and welcomed the process of its modernization according to Western standards. These agreements were embodied in the Nine Power Pact, which for 20 years was to serve as a reminder of the limitations that had constrained Japan from deciding the fate of China and Pacific Asia.

It was clear to Japan that this document was adopted because the world was already divided in a colonial sense and new colonial powers like Japan had no place on the post-war world map. The old Western colonial empires defended their positions and did not allow the new powers to become their equals. This applied not only to Japan but also to Mussolini’s Italy and later Hitler’s Germany.

On the other hand, public opinion in the old imperialist powers questioned whether imperialism was worth it, whether the profits from the economic exploitation of China were worth the costs and dangers of keeping China under colonial occupation. Among more liberal circles, there was also a willingness to calmly accept the development of Chinese nationalism.

Dissolution of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance in 1921

In these circumstances, the British decided to break the alliance with Japan in 1921, thus dealing a heavy blow to Japan. London believed that the Anglo-Japanese alliance of 1902 had done enough damage to British interests, but US interests were primarily behind the breakup. The immediate motive that influenced London was pressure from the Canadian government, which reflected the opinion of Washington as the United States began to seriously feel naval rivalry with Japan.

The initial phase of political tensions between Washington and Tokyo was conditioned by the results of the successful American armament and the activities of its army and navy during the Great War. The main reason for the British yielding to American pressure to break the Anglo-Japanese alliance was London’s belief that the alliance with the US was a choice not only of Anglo-Saxon solidarity but also of practical benefit in the emerging post-war times. This fateful decision of British diplomacy was made without deeper reflection and rational understanding of the geopolitical situation in which the Pacific Asia region found itself after the Great War.

One of the main consequences of the termination of this treaty was that it effectively confirmed that the post-war world was divided along racial lines. Since Great Britain in 1921 rejected the alliance with Japan, Tokyo was forced to see itself as a member of the Asian (“yellow”) race and not the Western (“white”) race, to present itself as the leader of the conquered Asian peoples, and finally to act in the following period as the liberator of Asian peoples from Western colonial rule. All this was forced upon it by Great Britain with its Asian policy after the Great War. it contributed to the understanding in the interwar period that the tensions in this part of the world were expressed in the relationship of the “white” race against the “yellow” race.

After the dissolution of the alliance, Japan was once again expelled from the society of Western great powers, i.e., the powers that determined the fate of Asia and a large part of the colonial world, since they had the last word in global politics. Ejected from the Western circle of the strongest, Japan turned on itself and fought for the equality of the “white” and “yellow” races in the Pacific Asia region. This is how it presented itself during World War II. This largely explains the great and rapid military successes of Japan in Southeast Asia in the first half of 1942, because many Asian peoples perceived it as a fighter for the liberation of Asia from the colonial domination.

Consequences of the breakup of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance

After 1921, Japan could no longer be sure of the neutrality of most Western powers, and sought to improve relations with those Western powers that were not hostile to it in the 1930s. As compensation for the old Anglo-Japanese alliance, Japan had to be content with a treaty on the limitation of naval forces, according to which Japan was recognized as one of the greatest naval powers in the world, which Japan de facto became after the Great War. This treaty granted Japan a ratio of 3 to 5 in relation to the United States and Great Britain. This was still a weak compensation, since Japan did not gain a reliable friend and ally like Great Britain during the Anglo-Japanese Alliance.

The dissolution of the alliance and signing of the naval limitation agreement revealed the divergence of interests between Japan and the Western powers. Whereas previously Japan could count on the British Navy as its real ally, and while the United States had previously pursued a policy guided solely by American interests, now both Great Britain and the United States had united and become potential enemies of Japan.

The next step in the deterioration of Japan’s relations with the USA and Great Britain took place in 1924, when the US Congress, racially disturbed by the sudden influx of Japanese emigration to the US, passed a law that deprived emigrants from Asia, including the Japanese, of any hope of being accepted as equal immigrants. At the same time, Australia became famous for its “White Australia” policy. All these de facto racist political steps of Western “democracies” finally convinced Asian “yellow” Japan that the Japanese did not belong to the white race and that they could only be second-class Asians, and that representatives of the “white” race would be the leaders of world politics.

Because Great Britain renounced Japan in 1921 as its main partner and ally in the region, Japan was forced from then on (until 1940) to seek a new ally or allies among the great world powers that could provide it with the same national security and/or fulfilment of national interests in the region as Great Britain had done from 1902 to 1921 against Russia.

Japan’s policy to halt China’s economic and political recovery was thwarted by diplomacy and intervention by Western powers. Japan was effectively forced to retreat and temporarily abandon its imperial policy in the region as it still lacked self-confidence vis-à-vis the Western powers. The stage was set for a decisive confrontation for which Japan was prepared in alliance with its new European allies – Germany and Italy. Thus, Japan, unlike in the Great War, found itself on the side of its Anglo-Saxon adversaries during the Second World War.