Reading I NEED HELP ON MY HOMEWORK

230

8 The Age of Westernization (1900-1929)

Defeat at the hands of Japan in the Sino-Japanese War of 1895 irrevocably shattered

China's traditional sense of self-assurance, and what remained of the premodern

Chinese world order was rapidly undermined thereafter. In 1891 and 1897, the

reformer Kang Youwei (1858-1927) published two controversial (and repeatedly

banned) books that argued that the existing texts of the Confucian Classics had

been distorted by forgeries dating from the first century and that Confucius, far

from being a conservative transmitter of ancient traditions, had actually been a

reformer in his own day. 1

Despite this attempt to rejuvenate the Sage Confucius in

the modernizing guise of a reformer, such scholarship already betrayed a profound loss of faith in tradition.

In 1898, one important official, while apparently arguing conservatively for

maintaining "Chinese learning for the fundamental principles," simultaneously

also acknowledged that in a time of "drastic transformation," substantial modern­

izing reforms were appropriate. After 1898, even this relatively moderate approach

tended to be abandoned in favor of more radical modernization. 2 The Japanese

victory in 1895 had sounded an alarm, and following the Boxer disaster in 1900,

even the Qing government recognized the need for rapid reform. China had been

exposed as vulnerable - a once mighty empire apparently reduced to being the

"sick man of Asia" - and in need of some fairly dramatic measures to pull itself

out of the past and adjust to modern world realities (see Figure 8.1). New (xin)

suddenly became a highly fashionable buzzword in early-twentieth-century China,

beginning with the Qing Dynasty's "new policies" and "new schools" in the first

decade and reaching its climax with the "new culture" of the May Fourth Move­

ment in the second decade of the century - epitomized by the title of its most famous journal, New Youth. 3

In 1902, the Empress Dowager Cixi authorized an edict ordering the aboli­ tion of foot binding (a painful and disabling custom that had been widespread

among Chinese women since about the Song Dynasty). Although foot binding

The Age of Westernization (1900-1929)

Figure 8.1. The last days of the Chinese Empire. A lone rider at the Ming tombs in north China, 1907. Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-56190.

took decades to thoroughly eradicate everywhere, the abolition of the traditional

examination system in 1905 was immediately effective and dealt a fatal blow to

the old examination-selected Mandarin elite. Also in 1905, a group of imperial

commissioners traveled for eight months in Japan, the United States, and Europe

to study models of modern constitutional government. After their return, a nine­

year program of constitutional reform was announced in 1908 that included the

installation of elected provincial representative assemblies by 1909 and a promise

of gradual transition to "self-government."

Yet even these dramatic reforms were no longer enough. The "new schools" were

often simply converted temples or former Confucian academies that remained far

from universally accessible and that were not necessarily really very different from

their premodern predecessors. The electorate for the 1909 provincial elections was

no more than half of 1 percent of the population. 4 The Meiji Japanese and imperial

German model that was favored for the Qing Dynasty reforms, with its assertive

role for centralized authoritarian imperial government, also disappointed would­

be local leaders as well as reformers who held more liberal Anglo-American-style

aspirations. In addition, breaking with long-standing Qing Dynasty precedent,

princes from the imperial family began to play a more active role in government,

231

232 A History of East Asia

and the number of ethnic Manchus in high office actually increased. For example,

although the Manchu Banner People were only a little over 1 percent of China's

population, they held eight of thirteen heads of ministries in 1906 and five of nine

governor-general positions in 1907.5

This was particularly unfortunate because it coincided with the introduction of

modern Western ideas of national self-determination. After some two centuries of

widespread acceptance of Manchu rule under the Qing Dynasty, at the turn of the

twentieth century, many Chinese people suddenly awoke to the idea that they were

the conquered subjects of "foreign" Manchus. Ending Manchu rule became the

first priority of the new Chinese nationalism.

Something like the nation, of course, is an ancient phenomenon. But premodern

states, in China and elsewhere, were often defined more by their ruling elites than by their peoples. It has been argued that true modern nationalism had its origins

in sixteenth-century England, when the people first began to be conceived as the

ultimate source of legitimate sovereignty. As the spread of print technology pro­

moted increasingly standardized national languages (High German and Parisian

French, for example, gaining prestige over local dialects as national standards), a

new sense of participation in a shared national community began to take shape among the reading public. 6

The first East Asian invocation of this originally European concept of "nation"

apparently came during the Meiji era Japanese popular rights movement, when

a new two-character Japanese expression minzoku (meaning, roughly, the "people

clan") was coined to translate the nationale in French expressions such as Assembtee

Nationale- in this case, obviously, still referring to popular sovereignty. By the end

of the nineteenth century, however, this Japanese word was coming to be used more

commonly in approximation of the German word Vblk, indicating a community

with supposedly shared linguistic, cultural, historical, and other ties. 7 Nations in

that sense, as peoples possessing allegedly distinctive characteristics, and ideally

independently self-governing, came to be widely viewed as the natural divisions

of humanity in nineteenth-century Europe, and Germany itself became a classic

example of modern nation-state building, as the Prussian Kingdom expanded

between 1866 and 1871 to forge the first-ever unified Germany.

Like many other modern Japanese translations of European terms, this new word

for "nation" soon made its way to China, where the same two-character combina­

tion (pronounced "minzu" in Chinese) could be imported and easily understood

directly in written form. 8 Both in the political sense of popular sovereignty and

in the communal sense of Vblk, this new idea of nationalism demanded an end in

China to hereditary rule by non-Chinese Manchu emperors. Because such nation­

alism was originally a Western idea, in China as elsewhere, the earliest nationalists

tended to emerge from the ranks of persons who were deeply exposed to modern

Western thought. In China's case, appropriately, the first great nationalist revolu­

tionary was also one of the most thoroughly Westernized major figures in all of Chinese history: Dr. Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925).

Sun Yat-sen (see Figure 8.2) was a Cantonese peasant by birth - born, that

is, far from the traditional centers of Chinese culture and power and speaking

The Age of Westernization (1900-1929)

Figure 8.2. Dr. and Mrs. Sun Yat-sen. Photograph signed and dated by Mrs. Sun, Canton, January 14, 1926. Hoover Institution Archives. Paul Myron Wentworth Linebarger papers.

an unintelligible local southern dialect - but in 1879, he was sent to join an older brother in Hawai'i. In Hawai'i, Sun was placed in a boarding school, where

the language of instruction was English. Sun became fluent in English, and he

also became a Christian. He completed his formal education in Hong Kong with

training in Western-style medicine. Altogether, Sun spent some thirteen years as a student or protege of Western Protestant missionaries, and until age forty-six,

he lived most of his life outside China.9 Inspired by his intimate knowledge of the modern West, Sun hoped to create a Western-style nation-state and republic in

China, sometimes specifically taking the United States as his model.

The 1911 Revolution Sun Yat-sen organized his first revolutionary group in Hawai'i in 1894. In 1895,

he attempted his first armed revolutionary uprising, in Guangzhou. This came

immediately after the Qing defeat in the Sino-Japanese War, which might have presented a timely opportunity to overthrow the Qing, but the uprising was delayed

233

234 A History of East Asia

for two days because its preparations were incomplete, and during the interval, the police discovered the plot. Forty-eight conspirators were arrested, and 205 revolvers were confiscated. Sun Yat-sen escaped to British Hong Kong and then

traveled on to Japan. From this time until the final success of the Republican Revolution in 1911, Sun spent a total of only one night in China.

Sun Yat-sen spent much of his time abroad in Japan, where he acquired the

alias by which he is still most commonly known to Chinese-language speakers: (Sun) Zhongshan, the Mandarin Chinese pronunciation of the Japanese surname

Nakayama. But Sun also spent some time in French colonial Vietnam, and he was particularly active with fund-raising in the United States and Britain. In a famous

episode in 1896, Sun was kidnapped and held prisoner in the Qing legation in

London. Fortunately for Sun, he was able to smuggle a message out to a British

friend, who raised a clamor in the English press that forced his release. This

incident catapulted Sun to a certain degree of international notoriety, but most

Chinese people were probably still largely unaware of Sun and his revolutionary

movement as late as the beginning of the twentieth century. However, in Tokyo,

Japan, in 1905, a loose coalition of Chinese revolutionary groups was formed

called the Revolutionary Alliance (Tongmenghui), with Sun Yat-sen as a central figure.

Over the next few years, this Revolutionary Alliance sponsored several armed uprisings in China, all of which failed dismally. As the litany of defeats lengthened,

the revolutionaries turned with growing fascination to the tactics of terrorism,

including bombings and assassinations. On October 9, 1911, as some revolu­

tionaries were making bombs in the headquarters of a group called the Forward Together Society, located in the Russian concession in the cluster of three mid­

Yangzi River cities collectively known as Wuhan, some ashes from a cigarette they

were smoking fell and accidentally detonated one of those bombs. The police came

and uncovered a list of members in the rubble and immediately arrested dozens. Three revolutionaries were executed early the very next day, October 10, which

precipitated an unplanned mutiny in the local New Army garrison. The mutinous

troops seized control of the arsenal, the Manchu governor-general fled, and on

October 11, the president of the local provincial assembly met with the rebels and

declared his support. This was the beginning of the Republican, or Nationalist, Revolution in China.

Ironically enough, the modern Western-style New Armies that had been created

by the Qing to save the dynasty instead provided the military force that overthrew it. The first four provinces that rebelled were allied by New Army uprisings, and

New Army support was also critical in most of the other provinces that joined the revolution later.

10 Before long, fifteen provinces, mostly concentrated in the

south, had declared independence from the Qing. Although there was some locally

fierce combat, within about a month the fighting had reached a stalemate, and negotiations began in Shanghai. Dr. Sun Yat-sen, meanwhile, was in Colorado at

the time this unplanned revolution erupted and read about it in the news while traveling by train from Denver to Kansas City. Sun eventually made his way from

the United States back to China, where he was appointed provisional president of

The Age of Westernization (1900-1929)

the new republic. He held that title for only forty-five days, however, because Sun

soon joined in offering the presidency to another man: Yuan Shikai (1859-1916).

Yuan Shikai had been a crucial player in the formation of the main modern

army in north China, and his ability to control that armed force now made him a

pivotal figure. Initially, he was recruited by the imperial court in Beijing to try to

rescue the Qing Dynasty, but the republican revolutionaries made him a tempting

counteroffer. After some negotiations, Yuan switched sides, and on February 12, 1912 -just four months after the revolution had begun- the last emperor of China

abdicated the throne. The five-year-old ex-emperor was given favorable treatment,

including a generous government subsidy and permission to continue living in the

old imperial palace. Yuan Shikai then became the first official president of the

new Republic of China. And three days after the abdication of the last emperor,

Sun Yat-sen visited the tomb of the founder of the last ethnically Chinese dynasty

(the Ming) to announce the restoration of Chinese rule after three centuries of

subjugation under the "alien" Manchus.

The May Fourth Movement: Science and Democracy

It was not merely Manchu rule that abruptly came to an end with the revolution

in 1912: an imperial system that had lasted for more than two thousand years also

ended forever. With it, in important senses, also died traditional China. Even the

classical Chinese written language was now fairly rapidly replaced by a modern

vernacular (roughly comparable to switching from Latin to Italian). By 1921, the

Ministry of Education required all primary school textbooks to be written in the

vernacular. Building a modern Chinese nation-state meant, paradoxically, a rejec­

tion of much Chinese tradition. Sun Yat-sen, for example, insisted on switching

immediately to the Western solar calendar as "the first important reform of our suc­

cessful revolution." 11 Most Chinese men immediately cut their Manchu-imposed

queues in 1912, and rather than revert to older pre-Manchu Chinese hairstyles,

modern Western-influenced hairstyles and clothing were widely adopted.

Contrary to the popular stereotype of a closed and isolationistic and deeply

traditional China, China had long been heavily involved in world trade, and

in the late nineteenth century, many Chinese people were already surprisingly

receptive to new things. Those who could afford it, especially in the big coastal

cities, took fairly quickly to new technologies such as electric fans and photog­

raphy, and even many of the humblest rural peasants also welcomed modern

kerosene lamps, machine-manufactured enamel wash basins, and mass-produced

inexpensive mirrors - although these modern mirrors might then be placed outside

doorways to frighten away "traditional" evil spirits. By 1935, half of all Chinese

villagers regularly used imported foreign kerosene. China's continuingly disap­

pointing low volume of manufactured imports from the West was due less to a

stubborn refusal to accept new products than to the speed with which locally made

substitutes began to compete with foreign goods. Especially after the suppression of

the Boxer Rebellion, by 1901, even in a city deep in the interior, such as Changsha,

foreign kerosene, clocks, tinned vegetables and fruit from America, and European

235

L.:>O A History of East Asia

beer were easily available. The first motion picture to be shown in China was in

1897. The empress dowager received an automobile, a Benz, in 1902 (although

she apparently never rode in it), and the first privately Chinese-owned automobile

may have been in 1909. In 1911, China acquired its first two airplanes. Typically,

one American journalist was disappointed on arrival in 1925 to find that his first

glimpse of China was a billboard advertising chewing gum. 12

For many, the revolution of 1911 brought a sweeping repudiation of the entire

old order. The most famous statement of this almost complete reversal of attitudes

may be a passage in an experimental short story - one of the first to be published

in the new vernacular- called "A Madman's Diary," written in 1918 by modern

China's most admired man of letters, Lu Xun (1881-1936). The main character

in this story begins reading China's histories, only to find that "my history has no

chronology, and scrawled all over each page are the words: 'Virtue and Morality'

[i.e., traditional Confucian values]. Since I could not sleep anyway, I read intently

half the night, until I began to see words between the lines, the whole book being

filled with the two words - 'Eat people."' 13 That is, unlike the dynamic mod­

ern West, China's premodern history had no progress, and all the lofty rhetoric

about Confucian virtue merely concealed the hidden reality of cannibalism and

exploitation.

What suddenly now appeared to be the "bad customs" of old China were

denounced, including such things as foot binding, opium addiction, arranged

marriages, the sale of female bondservants, uncleanliness, spitting in public, and

"superstition." Superstition (mixin, another new word in China) referred to tra­

ditional Chinese religions, which many in the educated Chinese elite, whether

they were Christian or not, now felt were embarrassing signs of backwardness. Of

roughly a million temples in China at the start of the twentieth century, more than

half had been closed down by the 1930s. 14 Confucianism itself, moreover, now

seemed to be the biggest obstacle to modernization of all. The idea of progress ren­

dered antiquity obsolete, and tradition now seemed sweepingly discredited because

it had left China so obviously weak and impoverished. As a result of the Indus­

trial Revolution, by 1913, Europe and the United States together accounted for

88.6 percent of world manufacturing, while China's share had been reduced to

only 3.6 percent. 15 The proven wealth and power of the West made Western­

ization attractive, especially to the young, urban, and educated. Although "the

West" is something of an elastic, value-laden concept rather than a concrete,

permanent, clearly defined reality, as an idea, it has sometimes been undeniably

powerful.

There was a fair amount of conscious Westernization, but even this still had to be

on Chinese terms, suiting Chinese tastes (and, for patriots, to be in the service of

the Chinese nation). The result was a complicated pattern ofhybridization: an often

bewildering mix of old and new, Chinese and Western (see Figure 8.3). When the

British-American Tobacco Company, for example, transplanted modern American

commercial advertisements directly to China in 1902, the Chinese reaction was

bewilderment. But when the same company installed advanced printing presses in

Shanghai in 1905 and began producing modern advertising designed by Chinese

The Age of Westernization (1900-1929)

Figure 8.3. Beijing, ca. 1925, looking toward the Qianmen (gate). Library of Congress,

LC-USZ62-137036.

people, and tailored to Chinese sensibilities, this modified advertising campaign

soon penetrated every corner of China with remarkable success. 16

Although genuinely traditional clothing and hairstyles were largely abandoned

after 1912, in the 1920s, a major new fashion for Chinese men became the Sun

Yat-sen suit (an early form of what later came to be known as the Mao suit). This

was adapted from modern student uniforms and represented neither tradition

nor a slavish imitation of the West but a distinctly Chinese version of modernity.

Although the Western solar calendar was widely accepted, and also the foreign idea

of a seven-day week with a regular day of rest on Sunday, the old lunar calendar

simultaneously continued to be used for the celebration of holidays such as the

New Year. 17 Significantly, under the Republic, dates were (really, in widespread

237

238 A History of East Asia

actual practice) calculated not from the birth of Christ but taking the foundation

of the Republic of China in 1 912 as the year 1 .

Also significantly, China's greatest burst of popular enthusiasm for sweeping

Westernization takes its name from what began as anti-Western (though most

especially anti-Japanese) student protests: the May Fourth Movement. China had

participated on the Allied side in World War I, and perhaps as many as two hundred thousand Chinese people had labored abroad as China's contribution to the Allied

war effort. Because China had therefore been on the winning side, and especially

in view of the American president Woodrow Wilson's stirring evocations of the

ideal of national self-determination, Chinese students felt encouraged to hope that

former German concessions in China would revert to Chinese rule after the war.

Instead, the German base in Shandong was granted to Japan at the Versailles

peace conference in 1919. When the news reached Beijing on May 4, 1919, many

students felt betrayed, and several thousand gathered at Tiananmen (the old Gate

of Heavenly Peace, not the Square, which did not yet exist) to stage protests.

The May Fourth Movement that began with these patriotic student demonstra­

tions in 1919 then gave its name, more broadly, to an entire age of enthusiasm for

New Culture. For the "new youth" of the May Fourth generation, "science and

democracy" became the most revered mantra. Some young people even hoped for

total Westernization. It was a time ofyouthful excitement and the discovery of new

ideas. The American educator John Dewey lectured to eager audiences in China

in 1919-1921. The renowned British philosopher Bertrand Russell was invited to

Peking University in 1920. Hundreds of new magazines and periodicals began to be

published. A modernizing attack on the entire patriarchal Confucian values system

was unleashed in the name freedom and equality, and the 191 Os-1920s became the

great age of Chinese individualism, feminism, and other modern Western ideals.

At the start of the twentieth century, modernizers throughout East Asia had

often looked to Japan as a successful model. Japan had, after all, shaken off the

treaty port system and defeated Russia in war by 1905. By 1914, Japan was one of

only five countries in the entire world that were self-sufficient in railway locomotive

production (a key index of early industrialization), together with Britain, France,

Germany, and the United States. 18 For this, as well as reasons of convenience, the

largest number of Chinese students studying abroad in the early twentieth century

went to Japan by 1906, about thirteen thousand. A truly impressive number of

important early Chinese revolutionaries spent time in Japan, including both Sun

Yat-sen and the future president of the Republic of China Chiang Kai-shek (in

Mandarin, Jiang Jieshi, 1887-1975), who trained at a Japanese military academy

in 1908-1911.

By World War I, however, Japan was already beginning to be viewed with sus­

picion as an imperialist aggressor by many Chinese people, and Japan had always

served chiefly, anyway, only as a convenient filter through which modern West­

ern ideas could be communicated. It was "the West" that fired the youthful May

Fourth imagination. In particular, "the political thought of the French Revolu­

tion had an almost unrivaled vogue among young Chinese revolutionaries and

reformers." Chen Duxiu (1879-1942), for example, who may have been in France

The Age of Westernization (1900-1929)

--

v1!\' 1Jt" "~

sixteen-year-old student, during his study in France, 1920.

New China Pictures. Magnum Photos.

between 1907 and 1910, used French rather than English for the Western-language

alternate title of the extremely influential journal he founded, LaJeunesse Nouvelle

(New "YOuth, or Xin Qingnian in Chinese), and for its first issue, he also wrote

an article on "The French and Modern Civilization." 19

Chen Duxiu would later

become the first leader of the Chinese Communist Party, when it was founded

in 1921. A surprising number of early leaders of the Chinese communist movement went

to France, many in connection with a work-study program developed during World War I. The list includes Zhou Enlai (1898-1976), who became a Communist Party

member while in France in 1920-1922, and who later served as premier ofthe Peo­ ple's Republic and was Mao Zedong's single most distinguished associate. Deng

Xiaoping ( 1904-1997), who succeeded Mao as leader of the People's Republic in

1978, was in France from 1920 to 1926 (see Figure 8.4), where he also joined the

239

240 A History of East Asia

Communist Party. Li Lisan (1899-1967), who was the Comintern's (an abbrevi­

ation for Communist International, headquartered in Moscow) pick to head the

Chinese Communist Party in a time of crisis after 1927, before Mao Zedong's

rise to power, was in France between 1919 and 1921. Mao's close friend (before

his execution in 1931) Cai Hesen (1895-1931) also was in France in 1919-1921.

Chen Yi (1901-1972), a future foreign minister, was in France from 1919 to 1921.

In fact, during the first decade after the establishment of the communist People's

Republic of China in 1949, nearly a quarter of the top leadership had been in

France during this formative moment at the end of World War I. 20

One exception was Zhu De (1886-197 6), who joined the Communist Party in

Germany rather than France in 1922. Zhu was the first commander of the Chinese

Red Army and was the military genius probably most responsible for developing

its successful tactics of guerilla warfare. 21 In fact, among the top early Chinese

revolutionaries (both Communist and Nationalist), it may have been Mao Zedong

(1893-1976) who was most conspicuous for his lack of cosmopolitan experience.

Mao never became proficient in any foreign language, and he never traveled outside

China until after he had become head of state, when he finally made a trip to

Moscow in 1949. Since Mao eventually rose to become the supreme figure in

China's communist revolution, his lack of international experience is telling. Yet

even Mao was a graduate of a modern-style provincial teacher's college, read widely

in Western books in Chinese translation, and happened to be in Beijing at the height

of the May Fourth Movement. By 1920, Mao was calling himself a Marxist. 22

English-speaking readers may find it incredible that one of the principal out­

comes of the first great wave ofWesternization in China was the rise of communism.

The enthusiasm with which some educated young Chinese embraced Westerniza­

tion was fired, however, by a confidence that it represented a potentially universal

pattern of progress rather than something exclusively European. Nowhere was this

universalism articulated more explicitly (or more rigidly) than in the theoretical

Marxist sequence of stages, or "modes of production," through which all societies

supposedly advanced. Of particular relevance, these included a universal transition

from feudalism to capitalism, and then from capitalism to communism in the sup­

posedly inevitable future. Communism was modern, Western (Karl Marx, after

all, was a German who did much of his work in England), and ostensibly scientific,

and Marxism-Leninism also offered a scathing critique of great power imperialism

that could be comforting to those who felt victimized, or at least humiliated, by

it. And communist organization provided a tightly disciplined program of action

that made it simply more effective than other, initially more appealing Western

ideologies such as anarchism (which, by definition, was not well organized).

The Chinese Communists were committed to a goal of industrialized (though

socialist) modernity, and tl1is remained true even after Mao Zedong, for reasons of

tactical necessity (and very awkwardly for Marxist theory), shifted the base of his

revolution from urban industrial workers (the proletariat) to rural peasants. By the

time of the final Communist victory in 1949, a large majority of party members

were peasants, yet the party never endorsed a so-called peasant mentality. Peasants

were regarded as perhaps the most backward segment of a generally backward

The Age of Westernization (1900-1929)

and feudal old regime from which the revolution was supposed to liberate China, and under the Communist People's Republic, peasants even came to be treated,

according to some observers, as second-class citizens. 23

In any case, interest in communism in China was long confined to relatively

narrow intellectual circles, and it was not until after the global descent into the

"dark valley" of economic depression, fascism, and war during the 1930s and 1940s that communism threatened to gain control in China. Yet despite much

genuine youthful Chinese interest in individualism, democracy, and other Western ideals during the May Fourth era, there was also an overriding sense of concern

at China's palpable weakness and vulnerability and a patriotic desire to regenerate

national strength. Nationalists as well as Communists tended to see the solution in

terms of political centralization and national unity. The Nationalist revolutionary

Sun Yat-sen's most famous lament was that the Chinese people were "like loose

sand," and his conclusion was that what China needed was discipline more than freedom. 24 Such discipline and unity seemed especially crucial because, after the

initial success of the Republican Revolution in 1912, China had dissolved into

warlordism.

The Warlord Era, 1916-1928

In the early twentieth century, representative self-government seemed to be an

irresistible trend that was sweeping the entire planet and an essential component of modernization. Following the success of the Republican Revolution in 1912,

nationwide elections were scheduled almost immediately for a planned constitu­

tional assembly. In this first Chinese experiment with democracy at the national

level, some forty million men were eligible to vote - fully a fifth of the entire adult

male population. 25 The elections went reasonably smoothly, and a newly organized,

modern, Western-style political party known as the Nationalist Party (Guomindang

in Chinese, alternatively spelled I<uo-Min-Tang and abbreviated either GMD or KMT) emerged as the clear winner. The first president of the Republic (Yuan

Shikai), who had gained office through a deal rather than through the ballot box,

was apparently alarmed by this Nationalist Party success, however, and is sus­

pected ofbeing implicated in the assassination of the party's dynamic young leader

in 1913. President Yuan ordered the Nationalist Party dissolved later that same

year, and in 1914, he dismissed the elected legislature. In 1915, then, the president "allowed" himself to be declared emperor. He held

the imperial title for only eighty-three days, however, because even some ofhis own

officers took up arms against this attempt to revive the empire, and he was soon

compelled to step down. In 1916, this first president died. Unfortunately, by that

time, the constitutional process was also thoroughly bankrupt. Effective central

government in China virtually ceased to exist for a dozen years after 1916. Purely

for diplomatic convenience, foreign governments continued to address whichever warlord regime happened to control Beijing as if it were the government of China,

but in practice, local authorities at various levels became independent. Chambers of commerce in some cities, for example, maintained their own armed forces,

241

J.,' ",J. 11 - s·:ory o·. East Asia

constructed railways, and sometimes even conducted negotiations with foreign governments.

Shanghai, the largest city in China, remained substantially under foreign admin­

istration. Because police in each of the three administrative jurisdictions (the Inter­

national Settlement, the French Concession, and the Chinese city) had no author­

ity in the other two, Shanghai was particularly ripe for the emergence of modern

organized crime, especially after the re-prohibition of opium (which had been

legalized in 1860) in 1919 provided opportunities for large illegal profits. Most

notorious was the Green Gang, which carne to be led by "Big-eared" Du Yue­

sheng ( 1888-1951). Du had been born on the wrong side of the river in a Pudong

slum and began life as a fruit vender's helper. After joining a gang as a teenager,

he developed a new crime cartel to more efficiently distribute illegal profits, and

he eventually even became prominent in legitimate public and charitable activ­

ities. Among his other titles, Du became deputy chairman of the Chinese Red

Cross, chairman of the Shanghai Chinese Municipal Council, and director of the

Shanghai Stock Exchange. 26 Du was perhaps the single best example of those

colorfully sinister figures who gave pre-World War II Shanghai its rather shady reputation.

In the countryside, there was also widespread more traditional banditry. In a

particularly notorious incident in 1923, bandits in Shandong derailed an express

train and took twenty Westerners hostage, including a member of the wealthy

American Rockefeller family. This drew international attention, and the incident

was resolved by giving the bandits positions in the regular Chinese army, the bandit

leader becoming a brigadier general. The line between bandits and soldiers was, in

fact, often unclear, and few of China's armies were under effective central control.

As the Qing Dynasty had begun to modernize its military in the late nineteenth

century, curiously, it did not attempt to forge a single, unified national army. In the

aftermath of the revolution, the armed forces of the early republican era remained

essentially separate provincial armies. With the collapse of clearly legitimate civilian

central authority after 1916, military commanders stepped into the vacuum and

became locally independent forces, or warlords.

Among these various military commanders, perhaps the most successful overall

was the warlord of Manchuria, Zhang Zuolin (ca. 1875-1928). Zhang had begun

his career as a bandit, and he gained control over Manchuria at the time of the

1911 Republican Revolution as a would-be Qing Dynasty imperial loyalist. After

the fall of the Qing, he operated independently, and in 1922, he openly declared

the independence of the three Manchurian provinces. Because Manchuria was,

at this time, rapidly falling under Japanese domination, Zhang was obliged to

coexist with rising Japanese power. By 1928, there may have been as many as fifty

Japanese advisors attached to Zhang's Chinese army in Manchuria. But Zhang was

also attended by a scattering of English, American, French, and White Russian

advisors. 27 In his own way, moreover, Zhang was a Chinese patriot, and he may

have even envisioned himself as the great reunifier who would rebuild China. In

1924, he gained control of Beijing and soon made it his headquarters. In 1928, he

was assassinated by rogue Japanese army officers.

The Age of Westernization (1900-1929)

In the meantime, Sun Yat-sen had been driven back into exile in Japan by the

authoritarian behavior of the first president. After President Yuan Shikai's death, in 1917 Sun returned to China and attempted to establish a regional base in Guangzhou. Sun was joined there by 130 members of the dissolved legislature and

also the minister of the Navy, who resigned and brought with him fifteen warships. The warlord commanders of the surrounding countryside were intermittently hos­

tile, however, and Sun's effort to revive the republic, and the Nationalist Party,

remained fragile. Seeking foreign aid - a recurrent theme throughout Sun Vat­

sen's career- Sun now found that the only available source was the Soviet Union. The apparent success of the Russian October Revolution in 1917, the newly

established Soviet Union's public stance of avowed opposition to imperialism, and

the fact that China and the Soviet Union shared the longest land border in the world

all naturally drew Chinese attention to the north. Although Sun Yat-sen did not embrace communism, in 1923, Sun did reach a formal agreement with the Soviet

Union. For its part, Moscow agreed that China was not yet ready for communism and pledged to assist the cause of the Nationalist revolution, while Sun Yat-sen

permitted individual members of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) also to

join the Nationalist Party. Young Mao Zedong, for example, served as director of

the Nationalist Party Propaganda Bureau. Because military reunification of a China torn between contending warlord

armies now seemed necessary, it was decided to create a separate new Nation­

alist Party army. In 1924, a Nationalist military academy was established (known

as Huangpu or Whampoa). Moscow provided the bulk of the funds, and this new military academy was unique in China at the time for its incorporation of politi­

cal as well as military instruction. On the model of the Soviet commissar system,

Nationalist Party representatives were appointed to the army. 28

The man who was to be the first commandant of this Nationalist military academy was then sent to

Moscow for three months of training. His name was Chiang Kai-shek. In 1925, Sun Yat-sen died and was soon succeeded as leader of the Nationalist

Party by Chiang Kai-shek. Acting swiftly, in 1926, Chiang launched a Northern

Expedition to reunify China militarily from the Nationalist base in the far south at

Guangzhou. Although John Pratt, a brother of the famous Hollywood actor Boris

Karloff, predicted in a lecture to the British Imperial Defense College in February 1928 that China still might not have an effective central government "perhaps for

a generation or two," by late 1928, Chiang Kai-shek's Northern Expedition had

in fact succeeded in reunifying most of China proper, up to about the line of the

Great Wall. 29

After being admitted into the Nationalist Party following the 1923 agreement

to cooperate, Chinese Communists had quickly become active in labor and politi­

cal organization. During the Northern Expedition, a General Labor Union under

leftist direction actually gained control of the city of Shanghai before Chiang Kai­ shek's troops arrived. Chiang was unhappy with this leftist orientation, however,

and in April 1927, while the Northern Expedition was only about half completed,

Chiang broke suddenly with the leftists, striking at communist and labor organiza­

tions. Perhaps as many as twenty-five thousand Chinese Communists were killed

243

242 A History of East Asia

constructed railways, and sometimes even conducted negotiations with foreign

governments.

Shanghai, the largest city in China, remained substantially under foreign admin­

istration. Because police in each ofthe three administrative jurisdictions (the Inter­

national Settlement, the French Concession, and the Chinese city) had no author­

ity in the other two, Shanghai was particularly ripe for the emergence of modern

organized crime, especially after the re-prohibition of opium (which had been

legalized in 1860) in 1919 provided opportunities for large illegal profits. Most

notorious was the Green Gang, which came to be led by "Big-eared" Du Yue­

sheng ( 1888-1951). Du had been born on the wrong side of the river in a Pudong

slum and began life as a fruit vender's helper. After joining a gang as a teenager,

he developed a new crime cartel to more efficiently distribute illegal profits, and

he eventually even became prominent in legitimate public and charitable activ­

ities. Among his other titles, Du became deputy chairman of the Chinese Red

Cross, chairman of the Shanghai Chinese Municipal Council, and director of the

Shanghai Stock Exchange. 26 Du was perhaps the single best example of those

colorfully sinister figures who gave pre-World War II Shanghai its rather shady

reputation.

In the countryside, there was also widespread more traditional banditry. In a

particularly notorious incident in 1923, bandits in Shandong derailed an express

train and took twenty Westerners hostage, including a member of the wealthy

American Rockefeller family. This drew international attention, and the incident

was resolved by giving the bandits positions in the regular Chinese army, the bandit

leader becoming a brigadier general. The line between bandits and soldiers was, in

fact, often unclear, and few of China's armies were under effective central control.

As the Qing Dynasty had begun to modernize its military in the late nineteenth

century, curiously, it did not attempt to forge a single, unified national army. In the

aftermath of the revolution, the armed forces of the early republican era remained

essentially separate provincial armies. With the collapse of clearly legitimate civilian

central authority after 1916, military commanders stepped into the vacuum and

became locally independent forces, or warlords.

Among these various military commanders, perhaps the most successful overall

was the warlord of Manchuria, Zhang Zuolin (ca. 1875-1928). Zhang had begun

his career as a bandit, and he gained control over Manchuria at the time of the 1911 Republican Revolution as a would-be Qing Dynasty imperial loyalist. After

the fall of the Qing, he operated independently, and in 1922, he openly declared

the independence of the three Manchurian provinces. Because Manchuria was,

at this time, rapidly falling under Japanese domination, Zhang was obliged to

coexist with rising Japanese power. By 1928, there may have been as many as fifty

Japanese advisors attached to Zhang's Chinese army in Manchuria. But Zhang was

also attended by a scattering of English, American, French, and White Russian

advisors. 27 In his own way, moreover, Zhang was a Chinese patriot, and he may

have even envisioned himself as the great reunifier who would rebuild China. In

1924, he gained control of Beijing and soon made it his headquarters. In 1928, he

was assassinated by rogue Japanese army officers.

The Age of Westernization (1900-1929)

In the meantime, Sun Yat-sen had been driven back into exile in Japan by the

authoritarian behavior of the first president. After President Yuan Shikai's death, in 1917 Sun returned to China and attempted to establish a regional base in

Guangzhou. Sun was joined there by 130 members ofthe dissolved legislature and

also the minister of the Navy, who resigned and brought with him fifteen warships. The warlord commanders of the surrounding countryside were intermittently hos­

tile, however, and Sun's effort to revive the republic, and the Nationalist Party,

remained fragile. Seeking foreign aid a recurrent theme throughout Sun Yat­ sen's career Sun now found that the only available source was the Soviet Union.

The apparent success of the Russian October Revolution in 1917, the newly

established Soviet Union's public stance of avowed opposition to imperialism, and

the fact that China and the Soviet Union shared the longest land border in the world

all naturally drew Chinese attention to the north. Although Sun Yat-sen did not embrace communism, in 1923, Sun did reach a formal agreement with the Soviet

Union. For its part, Moscow agreed that China was not yet ready for communism

and pledged to assist the cause of the Nationalist revolution, while Sun Yat-sen

permitted individual members of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) also to join the Nationalist Party. Young Mao Zedong, for example, served as director of

the Nationalist Party Propaganda Bureau. Because military reunification of a China torn between contending warlord

armies now seemed necessary, it was decided to create a separate new Nation­

alist Party army. In 1924, a Nationalist military academy was established (known as Huangpu or Whampoa). Moscow provided the bulk of the funds, and this new

military academy was unique in China at the time for its incorporation of politi­

cal as well as military instruction. On the model of the Soviet commissar system,

Nationalist Party representatives were appointed to the army. 28

The man who was to be the first commandant of this Nationalist military academy was then sent to

Moscow for three months of training. His name was Chiang Kai-shek. In 1925, Sun Yat-sen died and was soon succeeded as leader of the Nationalist

Party by Chiang Kai-shek. Acting swiftly, in 1926, Chiang launched a Northern

Expedition to reunify China militarily from the Nationalist base in the far south at

Guangzhou. Although John Pratt, a brother of the famous Hollywood actor Boris

Karloff, predicted in a lecture to the British Imperial Defense College in February

1928 that China still might not have an effective central government "perhaps for

a generation or two," by late 1928, Chiang Kai-shek's Northern Expedition had

in fact succeeded in reunifying most of China proper, up to about the line of the

Great Wall. 29

After being admitted into the Nationalist Party following the 1923 agreement

to cooperate, Chinese Communists had quickly become active in labor and politi­

cal organization. During the Northern Expedition, a General Labor Union under

leftist direction actually gained control of the city of Shanghai before Chiang Kai­ shek's troops arrived. Chiang was unhappy with this leftist orientation, however,

and in April 1927, while the Northern Expedition was only about half completed,

Chiang broke suddenly with the leftists, striking at communist and labor organiza­

tions. Perhaps as many as twenty-five thousand Chinese Communists were killed

243

244 A History of East Asia

in the first few months after this purge, and Chiang Kai-shek now emerged as a staunchly anti-communist figure.

By the end of 1928, therefore, with the completion of the Northern Expedition,

a reunified Republic of China had been restored, led by Chiang Kai-shek and

a now firmly anti-communist Nationalist Party, from a new capital at Nanjing

(Nanking). But in reality, most of China still remained beyond effective central

government control, and the revived republic was also now reconfigured as a single­

party state. Sun Yat-sen had originally anticipated a three-stage process, beginning

with the military reunification of China, followed by a supposedly brief period of

Nationalist Party tutelage preparing the people for representative self-government,

and then a transition to democracy. But the formation of opposition parties was

banned after 1928, and the republic settled into a protracted period of Nationalist

Party rule. Although the ban was initially only supposed to last for six years,

the formation of opposition political parties in the Republic of China would not

actually be legalized again until 1987 (by that time on the island of Taiwan, where

the transition to genuine multiparty democracy was finally achieved). Despite

Chiang Kai-shek's purge of the Communists in 1927 and turn to the political

Right, however, this did not immediately mark a complete end to the May Fourth

spirit. The Nationalist Party was still a self-proclaimed modernizing revolutionary

party, and official documents in Chiang Kai-shek's new government were still

stamped "the revolution is not yet complete."30

The emperor (and former king) of Korea was able to temporarily maintain Korean

independence by playing Russian interests off against Japan, but room for any

further maneuver evaporated suddenly after Japan defeated Russia in war in 1905.

From the Japanese perspective, the Korean peninsula - which reached to just

fifty miles from Japan's shores, like "a dagger pointed at the heart of Japan" in

one persuasively threatening image -was understandably perceived as strategically

vital. The Chinese had been expelled from Korea after the Sino-Japanese War in

1895, but in the meantime, the Russians had begun building their Trans-Siberian

Railway in 1891 and acquired a naval base at Port Arthur on the tip of Liaodong

peninsula in southern Manchuria in 1898. To oppose this approaching Russian

power, instead of demobilizing after the Sino-Japanese War, the Japanese budget

of 1896 actually called for doubling the size of the military.

Russia's primary interests lay in Manchuria, while Japan's lay in Korea, but

neither power was willing to renounce its wider ambitions in order to reach an

accommodation. In part to counter the Russian threat, Japan signed a formal

alliance in 1902 with Russia's foremost global imperial rival, Great Britain. Under

the terms of this Anglo-Japanese treaty, both countries pledged to aid the other if

it became involved in a war with more than one adversary. This gave the Japanese

a freer hand to confront Russia in Korea. Negotiations with Russia broke off on

February 6, 1904, and war was declared four days later (see Figure 8.5). Active

hostilities began a day before the formal declaration of war with a surprise Japanese

The Age of Westernization (1900-1929)

--

Figure 8.5. "Naval Battle of the Russo-Japanese War at Chinmulpo," 1904, by Migita Toshi­ hide ( 1863-1925), Japanese woodblock print. Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Insti­

tution, Washington, D.C.: Gift of Gregory and Patricia Kruglak, S2001.37a-c.

night attack on the naval base at Port Arthur, in which two Russian battleships and

a cruiser were struck by torpedoes. Russia was a major world power with vastly superior potential resources than

newly industrializing little Japan, and although the Japanese scored some early

victories on the battlefield, none were decisive. The cost of the war to Japan was staggering, both in the number oflives lost (81,455 Japanese dead) and in the

skyrocketing debt necessary to fund it. Russia, on the other hand, was large enough

to suffer heavy losses and continue fighting. The Japanese high command therefore grew anxious to negotiate an end to the war quickly, and an opportunity to seek

peace on favorable terms came after a smashing Japanese naval victory at Tsushima on May 27, 1905. The Russian Baltic fleet, consisting of eleven battleships, had

sailed halfway around the world to reinforce the Russian forces in the Pacific, but

it was intercepted toward the end of its long voyage near Tsushima, an island

lying midway between Korea and Japan, by a fleet of five Japanese battleships. The

Japanese performed the classic naval maneuver known as "crossing the T," in which all of their big guns were able to fire broadsides on the oncoming Russian ships,

while the Russians could only bring their forward guns to bear. In just forty-five

minutes of action, the Russian fleet was annihilated, while the Japanese suffered

only minimal losses. Japan was now in a position to approach the president of the United States,

Theodore Roosevelt, with a request to mediate, and the war was ended by the Treaty of Portsmouth (New Hampshire) in September 1905. As a result of the war,

Russia ceded its concessions in southern Manchuria to Japan and renounced Rus­

sian interests in Korea, but the Russian bargaining position was still strong enough

that Russia could not be compelled to pay war reparations to Japan. Although Japan

245

246 A History of East Asia

had won the war, therefore, many Japanese people felt disappointed, and serious rioting broke out, especially in Hibiya Park in Tokyo. A majority of Tokyo's police

boxes were reportedly destroyed, troops had to be brought in, martial law was declared, and some two thousand Japanese rioters were arrested.

Meanwhile, at the start of the war, the Korean government had attempted to remain neutral, but Japanese troops occupied Seoul, and the Koreans were obliged

to accept advisors recommended by the Japanese- with the power even to approve Korean cabinet-level decisions. After the war, in 1905, Korea was reduced to

a formal Japanese protectorate. The Meiji oligarch Ito Hirobumi architect of

the Meiji constitution and Japan's first prime minister - was brought in to serve as Japan's first resident-general in Korea. But Emperor Kojong had agreed to the

Japanese protectorate only under duress, if at all, and in 1906 and 1907, he publicly

appealed for world support against Japan, in particular, with a mission to a peace conference at the Hague, in the Netherlands.

Japanese domination was now irreversible, however, and in 1907, Emperor

Kojong abdicated in favor of his son. By now, all laws, important decisions, and

appointments of high officials required the Japanese resident-general's approval.

The Korean army was disbanded, and many former Korean soldiers joined anti­ Japanese guerrillas in the countryside. According to Japanese count, between 1907

and 1910, there were 2,819 armed clashes with Korean guerrillas, and in 1907, in

a coordinated attack on the headquarters of the Japanese residency-general, one particularly large guerrilla force penetrated to within eight miles of Seoul. 31 The

modern Japanese army was too powerful for disorganized guerrillas to overcome,

however, and the overall Japanese presence in Korea was, meanwhile, expanding rapidly, multiplying tenfold between 1900 and 1910. In the southern port city of

Pusan, half the population became Japanese, and much of the town was Japanese built. 32

In the years after the establishment of the protectorate, the Japanese residency­ general financed its program for the creation of modern banking facilities and roads

in Korea through Japanese loans to the Korean government. This put the Koreans

heavily in debt to Japan. Partly on the pretext of these unpaid debts, and after

the assassination of Ito Hirobumi by a Korean nationalist in 1909, Japan openly annexed Korea as a formal colony in 1 91 0.

By the early twentieth century, in the heyday of what is called the new imperial­

ism, much of the entire world had been reduced to colonial status. The Japanese

colony in Korea was exceptional, even so, because of the extremely large number

of resident Japanese colonists and because of its high degree of intrusiveness of

the colonial regime. By the 1930s, there was one policeman for roughly every four

hundred Koreans, and the number of Japanese colonists in Korea was more than

twenty times the number of French colonists in Vietnam. 33 Japanese rule in Korea

was, moreover, at first extremely ironfisted. After annexation, all the Japanese

governors-general of Korea were active-duty generals in the imperial army, with

one exception, who was a retired navy admiral. From 1910 to 1920, no Korean­

owned newspapers were permitted, and all Korean political meetings and public

The Age of Westernization (1900-1929)

assemblies were banned. Colonial economic policy also focused initially on the

exploitation of raw materials and agriculture, and little development of modern

business was envisioned, especially if it was not Japanese owned. On March 1, 1919, Korean resentment erupted in mass protest. Inspired by

Wilsonian ideals of national self-determination, and coordinated with the upcom­

ing funeral of former Emperor Kojong, demonstrations - ultimately involving as

many as one million Koreans - began with the reading of a Korean "Declaration

of Independence." Although these demonstrations were brutally suppressed, the

Japanese colonial regime did shift to a gentler approach afterward, introducing

some reforms that treated Koreans less harshly. New business start-ups no longer

required government permission, and the Japanese government even began pro­

viding subsidies to certain Korean companies. The military police were replaced

by civilians who no longer routinely carried swords. Censorship was relaxed, and

Korean-language newspaper and magazine publishing flourished. Yet it has also

been observed that even as the external appearance of the police force softened,

their numbers also increased. 34

Paradoxically, Japanese colonization of Korea in some ways did promote mod­

ernization, and even Westernization. For example, although Korea's nonagricul­

tural commercial economy had been notably less developed than either China's

or Japan's in the nineteenth century, by the end of the colonial period in 1945,

Korea was more thoroughly industrialized than any other part of East Asia, except

for Japan itself. Modern Western-style consumer culture also arrived in Korea

together with Japanese rule. The cinema, phonographic records, radio, commer­

cial advertising, magazines, department stores, and modern Western-style fashions

in clothing all made their appearance in Korea's larger cities during the period of

Japanese rule. Modernization in Korea thus followed a complicated trajectory,

including simultaneous Japanese-ization, Westernization, and also the maturation

of a new sense of Korean nationalism. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, with the aid of a modern Korean­

language press (recall that until the end of the nineteenth century, much elite

writing in Korea had still been in classical Chinese), Korean national consciousness

had been brewing. The same new two-character word for "nation" that was used

in both Japan and China (pronounced "minjok" in Korean) was adopted, and

Korean history began to be conceived as the history of a Korean Volk, or "people."

In 1921, the Korean Language Research Society was founded to promote and

standardize grammatical and han 'gul spelling rules for the Korean language and

compile a pioneering Korean-language dictionary. In an example of the complexity

of modernizing impulses, the colonial Japanese government's subsidy of radio

broadcasting in Korea also helped substantially to promote the spread of the Seoul

dialect as a standard pronunciation for the Korean national language. 35 Despite

some early toleration of this pioneering Korean linguistic activity, however, the

promotion of the Korean language eventually came to be seen as subversive of the

Japanese goal of assimilation, and during World War II, many Korean linguists

found themselves under arrest.

247

248 A History of East Asia

From a quite early date, much of the Korean nationalist movement was driven

abroad into exile. The future president of the Republic of Korea, Syngman Rhee

(Yi Sungman, 1875-1965), for example, went into exile after 1904, and a few

years later founded the Korean National Association in Hawai'i. Inside Korea, the

Japanese colonial regime favored assimilation. As early as 1910, the Japanese lan­

guage was officially designated Korea's "national language." The Japanese regarded

Koreans as racially and culturally akin to themselves and therefore potentially as

fellow "imperial peoples." At the same time, however, and with a fatal contradic­

tion, they also stereotypically imagined Koreans as backward and underdeveloped.

Koreans were therefore allowed to remain unrepresented in the Japanese legisla­

ture, intermarriage between Japanese and Koreans was discouraged, and Koreans

continued to be treated with offensive condescension by many Japanese.36 Despite

the official policy of assimilation, Korean ethnicity was also still specified on iden­

tification cards.

The attempted integration of Korea into the Japanese Empire began to accel­

erate after Manchuria was brought into the Japanese-led yen-bloc in 1931, and

even more rapidly after the outbreak of World War II in China in 193 7. Beginning

in 1935, Korean worship at Japanese-style Shinto shrines became mandatory­

which was particularly objectionable to the relatively large number of monotheis­

tic Korean Christians. In 1939, all Koreans were required to take Japanese-style names. Most officially did so, although it is questionable how many ever came to

identify closely with these new Japanese names. Between 1937 and 1939, the use

of the Korean language was banned in stages, in government, public schools, and

finally in the private press. In spite of all this coerced assimilation, however, it has

been estimated that as of 1942, only about 20 percent of the Korean people could

actually even understand the Japanese language.37

Increased integration into the Japanese Empire brought rapid industrialization and economic modernization. Although some Korean businesses certainly did

benefit, however, this industrialization was not only Japanese dominated but also

largely state led, for strategic military purposes. After 1937, industrial mobilization

even included compulsory conscription of Korean labor. In a negative parallel to

this swift industrialization, a fairly drastic decline in per capita Korean consumption

of rice has also been observed in this period, since much of Korea's rice crop was

now exported to Japan, while Korean agriculture saw relatively few improvements

in productivity.38

Beginning in 1943, Koreans could be drafted into the wartime Japanese imperial

army. Notoriously, more than one hundred thousand Korean women were pres­

sured into becoming so-called comfort women, providing sexual services for the

Japanese military. The combination of rapid industrialization and forced mobiliza­

tion for Japan's war effort in World War II created enormous dislocations in what

had previously been a settled agrarian Korean society. By the end of World War II, perhaps 20 percent of the entire Korean population had been uprooted and

moved away from their native province or even beyond the borders of Korea itself,

many going to Manchuria or the Japanese home islands.39 In the midst of Japan's

rapidly deteriorating military situation in late World War II, all this population

The Age of Westernization (1900-1929)

Figure 8.6. Showroom of the Mitsukoshi Dry-Goods Store, Japan, 1911. National Diet

Library Web site.

dislocation, hardship, and forced assimilation of a proud people simultaneously faced with continuing discrimination planted bitter seeds oflasting anti-Japanese

resentment in Korea.

Explicitly Western things had begun to be fashionable in Japan from early in the Meiji era. For example, reading and writing in horizontal lines from left to right,

Western-style, as opposed to the traditional East Asian vertical columns marching

from right to left, was introduced in Meiji times (though the practice remains

inconsistent even today); chairs began to be used in government buildings as early as 1871 (although at home, many Japanese still sit- and sleep, quite comfortably­

on their tatami-matted floors); and the modern department store, complete with

commercial advertising, had appeared in Japan by the early twentieth century (see Figure 8.6). The game of baseball was introduced in early Meiji, and the

first international game may have been in 1896, when a Japanese school team

beat an American team. 40 Beer was introduced from Europe in 1868 and began

to be brewed domestically within a decade. Eventually, after World War II, beer (and whiskey) came to commonly be sold from vending machines on the street.

Military service on the continent at the start of the twentieth century introduced

large numbers of Japanese soldiers to more Western-style foods, including beef

(as in sukiyaki), which had rarely been consumed in premodern Japan. Pseudo

Indian-style curry rice was popularized during World War I and eventually became

249

250 A History of East Asia

a Japanese staple. The now ubiquitous pork cutlet (tonkatsu) made its debut in the

Japanese national diet shortly thereafter. Despite the early date of some of these

adoptions, though, daily life for most Japanese people did not really significantly

begin to alter until the World War I period.41

There was, moreover, even something of a nationalistic counterreaction to the

early Meiji enthusiasm for Westernization beginning around 1887.42 Interest in

traditional Japanese art, literature, history, and Confucian morality was revived,

and the idea of an enduring Japanese "national polity" (kokutaz), closely identified

with an unbroken and supposedly divine ancient imperial line, began to be some­

times stridently promoted. Yet, although there were countercurrents, in Japan, as

in China, the first great wave of Westernization in many ways only peaked in the 191 Os-1920s.

It was also during roughly this period that the modern Japanese industrial econ­

omy finally matured. A huge government steel mill had been opened at Yawata in

1 901, but during its first decade of operation, it suffered heavy financial losses,

and as late as 1914, Japan was still only producing about a third of its own domes­

tic steel requirements. Up to the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the Japanese

government continued to provide 30-40 percent of the total capital investment in

the modern sector of the economy. 43 The start of World War I, however, not only

brought war-related orders to Japanese factories but also caused the withdrawal of

much European and American competition, opening up new Asian and African

markets for Japan. Japan's exports tripled in four years, and during the war years

(1914-1918), Japan's gross national product increased by 9 percent annually.

The number of Japanese factory workers doubled during the war, but this also led

to a labor shortage and rising prices, which strained the resources of those on fixed

incomes. Food prices tripled during World War I, and the increased cost provoked

major rice riots in 1918. Over a million persons participated, there were twenty-five

thousand arrests, and the prime minister was obliged to step down. The end of

World War I, then, brought resumed European and American competition and a

postwar slump. The Japanese stock market crashed in 1920, and many companies

went bankrupt. Plummeting prices for agricultural products led to deep, endemic

rural poverty. This contributed to an already "growing chasm between the life­

styles of the 'two Japans,"' urban and rural. 44 Work conditions in many of the new

factories were also often grim. The development of the Japanese textile industry,

for example, depended heavily on cheap labor, and a large majority of the labor

force was female, typically employed only briefly and working twelve-hour shifts

under often harsh conditions.

In 1923, the great Kanto earthquake struck in the vicinity of Tokyo, destroying

half a million homes and killing 105,000 people. A bank panic in 1927 led to the

withdrawal of some 11 percent of all deposits. Major banking institutions failed,

including the imperial household's own bank. Thirty-two banks closed their doors.

The 1920s were therefore a decade of repeated economic crises. Yet despite this,

Japan's overall real economic growth rate in the period 1913-1938 was more than

three times that of the United States. A critical threshold in the industrialization

process seems to have been crossed, and certain developments in this era are said to

The Age of Westernization (1900-1929)

- have already foreshadowed the spectacular post-World War II Japanese economic

"miracle."45

Not only did the industrialized economy mature, but parliamentary democracy

also came of age in the aftermath of World War I, as rule by unelected oligarchs was

finally replaced by a regular parliamentary-style political party system. The Meiji

emperor died in 1 912, and the reign period of his successor, the Taisho Emperor (r. 1912-1926), was known as an age of relatively liberal "Taisho democracy."

From 1918 to 1932, the prime minister was usually the head of one of the political

parties elected to the Diet, and in 1925, all Japanese men aged twenty-five or older

were given the vote: universal adult male suffrage. The old Meiji period ideal of "transcendent" government - that is, an admin-

istration that was supposedly above party politics had broken down in the early

twentieth century, as cabinet after cabinet was obliged to seek the support of

politicians in the legislature. Mter 1905, no prime minister was able to govern

entirely without party support. Meanwhile, the elder statesman Ito Hirobumi had

joined with the leading faction in the Diet to form a political party of his own in 1900 (called the Seiyukai). The rice riots in 1918, then, were the largest such

disturbances in recorded Japanese history and led to the fall of the current admin­ istration. In this moment of crisis, the surviving Meiji era oligarchs (acting in the name of the emperor) turned to the then president of the Seiyukai Party, Hara

Kei (also known as Hara Takashi, 1856-1921), to form the first-ever Japanese

party government in September 1918. Although Hara's ancestry was samurai, he

had renounced his former samurai status and refused a peerage, and he is there­

fore also considered to be the first commoner ever to serve as prime minister of

Japan. In 1921, Hara was stabbed to death at a Tokyo train station by a man who was

enraged by the naval arms limitations agreed to at the Washington Conference

earlier that year. After Hara's death, there followed four brief administrations in

quick succession, three of them non-party, but in 1924, another party politician

was made prime minister, and this now became the norm (until a new age of

militarism began in the 1930s). "Taisho democracy" reached its height at this

time. Military expenditures were reduced in 1924, and four divisions were cut from the army. In March 1925, the movement toward democracy culminated in

the implementation of universal adult male suffrage. Although the Taisho Emperor died in 1926, technically putting an end to Taisho democracy, his successor, the

Showa Emperor (former prince regent Hirohito, r. 1926-1989), had personally

visited Europe and enjoyed a reputation for Western-style interests such as golf

and marine biology. As in contemporary China, the 1920s were an era of modernity and often con-

sciously Western-style fashions in Japan. Giant multistory department stores, with

solid Western-style floors (so that it was no longer necessary to follow the custom of leaving shoes at the door), and featuring such modern goods as Shiseido cos­

metics, became places of entertainment as well as commerce. Neon lights lit the

streets of major cities at night, and the first Tokyo subway line began operations

in 1927.

251

252 A History of East Asia

Movies had begun to be shown in Japan as early as the 1890s, but cinema

especially flourished in the 1920s. Japanese women styled their hair to resemble

international movie stars like Gloria Swanson and Greta Garbo. A few experimental

radio stations were already broadcasting by 1922, and Tokyo Broadcasting Station

began operations in 1925. Panel-narrative comic strips began to be published in the

1920s - ancestors of today's ubiquitous manga. At the more consciously elevated

cultural level, Western-style avant-garde art also found a niche. There was an

enormous reading public, for serious books as well as for light entertainment. At

the start of World War I, Japan was publishing twice as many different book titles

as the United States.46 Today, Japan may actually provide the largest per capita

audience for the quintessentially American-style jazz music in the world, and in the

1920s, Japanese musicians were consciously performing in the style of American

jazz legends (although later, during the World War II years, there was an attempt

to find a "native" Japanese jazz style). 47 Individualism was fashionable in the Japan

of the 1920s, and feminism also took root in this era with the founding of the New

Woman's Association in 1920 and the beginnings of a women's suffrage movement.

The 1920s were popularly known as an age of "modern boys" and "modern girls."

The sudden swing toward militarism and ultranationalism that emerged in the

1930s might therefore appear surprising. This dramatic change of direction was

driven in large part by the onset of the Great Depression and other major world

trends and conditions. However, as we have already remarked, there had been

an earlier period of nationalistic reaction in the late 1880s and 1890s, much of

Japan's rural population had been left out of the heady urban modernization and

Westernization of the 1920s, strategic military considerations had always been

paramount from the beginning of the Meiji Restoration, and expansionist overseas

imperial ambitions had also been a recurrent theme. Even at the peak of Taisho

democracy, there were powerful countercurrents. At the very moment that the

vote was being extended to all adult males, for example, a new peace preservation

law in 1925 also made it illegal to advocate any change in Japan's somewhat mystical, emperor-centered "national polity" (kokutaz) or the abolition of private

property. 48 Midnight raids on March 15, 1928- provoked by leftist gains in an

election the previous month - arrested some sixteen hundred persons suspected of

being Communists. In that same year, five professors were dismissed from imperial

universities because they were suspected of harboring "dangerous thoughts."

In 1924, just as party government was stabilizing in Japan, the U.S. Congress

passed legislation preventing immigration by persons ineligible for U.S. citizenship,

which at that time pointedly included all Japanese. 49 This deeply insulted many

Japanese people, including some of those who found Western ideals most attractive.

Many in the army, especially those from impoverished rural villages, had already,

in the 1920s, begun contemplating the need for a military coup to return power

and wealth from the allegedly corrupt and self-interested capitalists and party

politicians to the emperor, in a so-called Showa Restoration. The modern mass

media that had matured in the 1920s could, furthermore, perhaps just as easily

be turned to mobilize ultranationalist patriotic sentiments as to promote liberal democracy.

The Age of Westernization (1900-1929)

The banking crisis of 1927 brought down the cabinet, and a conservative retired

armY general was made prime minister. Viewing Chiang Kai-shek's Northern

Expedition to reunify China as a threat to Japanese interests on the continent, in

1927-1928, his government intervened militarily three times in China to protect

Japanese interests and to prevent Manchuria from being included in the reunified Republic of China. To stimulate the economy, this prime minister also increased

military expenditures. Yet even this conservative ex-soldier was also the president

of a political party and a party politician himself. In 1928, his government signed

the Kellogg-Briand Pact that attempted to formally renounce war as an instrument

of national policy. Also in 1928, however, the Chinese warlord of Manchuria, Zhang Zuolin, was

blown up and killed in his railway car by Japanese army officers, acting without

the knowledge of the home government in Tokyo, who apparently hoped to cre­

ate an incident that would provide a pretext for Japanese seizure of Manchuria.

The Japanese prime minister was outraged by these actions and resolved to bring

the assassins to a court-martial. The army refused to cooperate, however, with the

result that the prime minister was forced to resign in 1929. 50

Ironically, this brought a temporary return to more liberal policies under the

next administration in 1929, which became the first in Japan to support women's

suffrage. A proposal was actually drafted to let women have the vote in local

elections, though it did not become law. But this new prime minister was fatally shot in 1930 by an outraged nationalist because of the government's acceptance

of an arms limitation agreement reached at the London Naval Conference. The

political climate in Japan was suddenly becoming very chilly. With the onset of the Great Depression, and the successful seizure of southern Manchuria by the

Japanese army in 1931 (after yet another staged explosion), and after one more brief

and ineffectual liberal cabinet, in 1931, a new, more conservative prime minister

(Inukai Tsuyoshi, 1855-1932) took office. He survived in office only five months

before he, too, was struck down by assassins - this time Japanese naval and army officers. After his death, there would be no more prime ministers from political

parties. Japan had begun its descent into the "dark valley" of militarism and war.

For Further Reading

On China's Nationalist Revolution, see Marie-Claire Bergere, Sun Yat-sen, trans. Janet Lloyd (Stanford University Press, [1994] 1998); John Fitzgerald, Awakening China: Politics, Cul­ ture, and Class in the Nationalist Revolution (Stanford University Press, 1996); Edward J. M. Rhoads, Manchus and Han: Ethnic Relations and Political Power in Late Qing and Early Republican China, 1861-1928 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000); and Mary Clabaugh Wright, ed., China in Revolution: The First Phase, 1900-1913 (New Haven, CT:

Yale University Press, 1968). A fine extended essay on the problem of modernization in China is Rana Mitter, A Bitter

Revolution: China's Struggle with the Modern WOrld (Oxford University Press, 2004). On the early-twentieth-century modern transformation of China, see Sherman Cochran, ed., Inventing Nanjing Road: Commercial Culture in Shanghai, 1900-1945 (Ithaca, NY: Cor­ nell University East Asia Program, 1999); Frank Dil,otter, Exotic Commodities: Modern Objects and Everyday Life in China (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006); and Leo

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254 A History of East Asia

Ou-fan Lee, Shanghai Modern: The Flowering of a New Urban Culture in China) 1930-1945 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999). The still-classic study of China's May Fourth movement is Tse-tsung Chow, The May Fourth Movement: Intellectual Revolution in Modern China (Stanford University Press, 1960).

On the warlord era in China, see Edward A. McCord, The Power of the Gun: The Emer­ gence of Modern Chinese W'arlordism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), and Gavan McCormack, Chang Tso-lin in Northeast China) 1911-1928: China) Japan) and the Manchurian Idea (Stanford University Press, 1977).

For Korea under Japanese rule, see Ramon H. Myers and Mark R. Peattie, eds., The Japanese Colonial Empire) 1895-1945 (Princeton University Press, 1984), and Michael Edson Robinson, Cultural Nationalism in Colonial Korea) 1920-1925 (Seattle: University ofWashington Press, 1988).

On early-twentieth-century Japan, see Marius B. Jansen, The Making of Modern Japan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000); Tetsuo Najita, Hara Kei and the Pol­ itics of Compromise) 1905-1915 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967); and Edward Seidensticker, Low CityJ High City: Tokyo from Edo to the Earthquake (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983). Stephen Vlastos, ed., Mirror of Modernity: Invented Traditions of Modern Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), provides a fascinating collection of essays on the modern reimagination of Japanese tradition.

9 The Darl' Valley (1930-1945)

The first great wave of modern globalization (which, because of the industrialized

West's initial leading role in defining global modernity, in this early phase some­

times overlapped fairly closely with what might even be described as Westerniza­

tion) had begun in the late nineteenth century and, in East Asia, culminated in the

191 Os-1920s with China's May Fourth Movement and Japan's Taish6 democracy.

Because Korea was a Japanese colony during these years, developments in Korea

took the slightly different form of combined simultaneous modernization, West­

ernization, and Japanese-ization. The high tide of globalization receded rapidly

after the disastrous collapse of the U.S. stock market in 1929, however. By the

1930s, the entire world was descending into what some Japanese historians have appropriately dubbed a "dark valley." As a result of the Great Depression, in the

United States, real gross domestic product had declined 35 percent by 1933, a

quarter of American workers were out of work, and there were calls for the newly

inaugurated president Franklin D. Roosevelt to assume dictatorial powers. Even

socialism no longer seemed entirely unthinkable in America. In Germany, the

Weimar Republic gave way to Adolph Hitler. In China, the Nationalist Republic

became an authoritarian single-party state with an increasingly nationalized econ­

omy. In Japan, Taish6 democracy was thrust aside by the rise of ultranationalistic

militarism.

Surprisingly, the industrial sector of Japan's economy recovered fairly quickly

from the depths of the Great Depression, due to a sharp devaluation in the exchange

value of the yen (which made the price of Japanese exports globally competitive),

low interest rates, and increased government spending on public works and arma­

ments. The volume of Japanese exports actually doubled between 1930 and 1936. But as much of the rest of the world responded to the Great Depression by adopt­

ing strict protectionist measures- such as high taxes or outright quotas on imports,

which threatened Japan's ability to continue exporting- the argument began to

resonate that what Japan really needed was to create an economically self-sufficient

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