Japanese Colonial Wars

At issue: Japan’s status as a major Pacific power, European interests in the Far East, and the territorial integrity of China

Date: 1874–1931

Location: Formosa, Korea, China, Manchuria

Combatants: Japanese vs. Chinese, Russians, Germans, and the Formosan and Manchurian peoples

Principal commanders:Japanese, Field Marshal Aritomo Yamagata (1838–1922), General Maresuke Nogi (1849–1912), Admiral Heihachirō Tōgō (1848–1934); Russian, General Aleksei Nikolaevich Kuropatkin (1848–1925)

Principal battles: Pyongyang, Yalu River, Weihaiwei, Port Arthur, Mukden, Tsushima, Qingdao (Tsingtao), Manchurian Incident

Result: A series of Japanese victories resulted in the formation of a Japanese empire on the Asian mainland

Background

In 1853, American commodore Matthew C. Perry arrived in Japan and pressured the Tokugawa bakufu into ending its nearly 250-year-old policy of virtual national seclusion. This event was followed by increased contact between Japan and the nations of the West. The Japanese leadership recognized its military inferiority and had little choice but to enter into a series of unequal treaties with the major Western powers such as the United States, France, Great Britain, and Russia, granting them rights such as extraterritoriality and control over Japanese tariffs. This chain of events led to considerable political upheaval in Japan, and in 1868, the Tokugawa bakufu was overthrown and the Emperor Meiji, backed by a new group of influential soldiers and statesmen, was restored to power. The new government was dedicated not only to military and economic modernization but also to making Japan a major power in Asia with the aim of protecting the nation against Western imperialism and encouraging the Western powers to agree to revise the unequal treaties. These ambitions conflicted with those of imperial China, which was trying to establish its control over traditional dependencies such as Korea, and also Russia, which was busy carving out a considerable sphere of influence in Northern China in the late nineteenth century.

Action

In 1874, just one year after the formation of the Imperial Japanese Army and the introduction of conscription, Japan launched its first overseas adventure of the nineteenth century. In December of 1871, aborigines from Formosa attacked a group of fishermen from the Ryūkyū Islands, killing 54. The Ryūkyūs were considered by the Japanese to be a part of their territory, and the government decided to launch an armed expedition in order to punish the Formosan natives. It was hoped that this gesture would help solidify Japan’s claim to the Ryūkyū Islands, which were traditionally affiliated with the Chinese. In May, 1874, 3,000 Japanese troops were sent to the island, but they made little headway against the natives and were soon withdrawn. Although the expedition to Formosa was poorly handled, it did allow the Japanese government to claim that it, not the Chinese government, was the rightful governing body in the Ryūkyū Islands. This fighting set the pattern for Japanese colonial warfare as the Japanese government showed that it was willing to use violence to protect its “sphere of influence” and to assert its status as a major power in Asia.

Korea was another area considered essential to Japan’s interests. The Korean Peninsula represented the most likely point on the mainland of Asia from which an invasion of Japan could be launched. The potential profit that could be won by exploiting Korea as a colonial dependency was not lost on the Japanese leaders. As early as 1873, influential Japanese generals and statesmen such as Takamori Saigo had called for an invasion of Korea. Other members of the government believed that invading Korea was beyond Japan’s power, and the idea was eventually scrapped. However, Japan did force Korea to accept the Treaty of Kanghwa in 1876 and received trade privileges as a result. Korea, like the Ryūkyū Islands, was traditionally a dependency of China. The Chinese were anxious to retain their traditional control and saw the Japanese efforts to gain privileges in Korea as a threat to their own interests. This conflict became more serious throughout the 1880’s and 1890’s.

When a rebellion threatened the Korean crown in 1894, both China and Japan sent troops to the peninsula. After a series of minor encounters including the sinking of a British ship carrying Chinese troops to Korea, Japan declared war on August 1, 1894, marking the beginning of the Sino-Japanese War. On September 16 of that year, the Japanese army won a major land victory at Pyongyang. This battle put an end to Chinese military strength in Korea. On the following day, a naval engagement was fought at the Yalu River and ended in a Japanese victory for forces under Aritomo Yamagata. The remainder of the Chinese fleet was defeated at Weihaiwei on February 12, 1895. These victories allowed the Japanese to march into Northern China. The Japanese advance resulted in the seizure of the Liaodong Peninsula in Southern Manchuria.

The Chinese had been decisively defeated by the Japanese, and the war ended with the Treaty of Shimonoseki in 1895. The provisions of this treaty clearly demonstrate the colonial motives of Japanese aggression in the Far East. Japan forced China to recognize its interests in Korea and also to transfer Formosa and the Liaodong Peninsula to Japanese control. The Chinese also agreed to pay a large indemnity to Japan. This war also helped the Japanese win the respect of the Western powers and facilitated the renegotiation of the unequal treaties that had offended Japanese nationalists since the 1850’s. However, Japan’s success in the war against China made several Western nations, including Germany, France, and Russia, concerned about the security of their Asian possessions. These three powers forced Japan to return the Liaodong Peninsula to China in the Tripartite Intervention. Japan, not yet strong enough to challenge the Western powers, had no choice but to comply. The situation became even more unbearable to the Japanese leadership when Russia annexed the Liaodong Peninsula in 1898.

During the Boxer Rebellion in 1900, the Japanese sent troops to Beijing as part of an international force to rescue foreign diplomats in the city. The Japanese government wished to use the Boxer Rebellion as an opportunity to expand its power in Northern China, but the Russian government acted sooner and occupied Manchuria. The Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905) was a product of rival imperialist ambitions in the region. It began on February 9, 1904, when the Imperial Japanese Navy launched a surprise attack against the Russian fleet at Port Arthur. The Russian fleet was tied up in port, giving the Japanese a chance to ferry additional forces to Korea. On May 1, the Japanese army broke through the Russian defensive line at the Yalu River and moved into the Russian-held region of Northern China. By August, Japanese forces under General Maresuke Nogi had laid siege to Port Arthur (1904–1905) on the strategically vital Liaodong Peninsula. The fortress fell in January of 1905. This was followed in March by a fierce battle at Mukden in which a Japanese force of 250,000 engaged the main body of the Russian forces numbering more than 320,000 in the Far East. The Russians withdrew after ten days of fighting. Both sides were exhausted, and when the Russian Baltic Fleet was destroyed at Tsushima (May 27, 1905) by forces under Heihachirō Tōgō, a peace treaty was mediated by U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt. The Treaty of Portsmouth (September 5, 1905) was signed, and Japan won exclusive power in Korea as well as control over Russia’s South Manchurian Railway. This established a more significant Japanese presence in Northern China, which was to have a great impact on future relations between the two nations.

In 1914, Japan decided to enter World War I on the side of Britain and its allies. The Japanese government wished to increase its power in China by taking control of Germany’s possessions there. The Kiaochow (Jiao Xian) Leased Territory, containing the important port of Qingdao (Tsingtao), was Germany’s most important possession in the Far East, and the Japanese coveted it as a way to hasten their economic penetration of China. On September 2, 1914, the Japanese landed troops near Qingdao and laid siege to the city. The German garrison surrendered after six weeks. Japan followed this victory by presenting the Chinese government with demands for additional economic and political privileges in the country.

Around the time of World War I, the Japanese government also had ambitions to take control of the Russian Far East. This led to Japan’s participation in a joint expedition with U.S. and British troops to rescue a corps of Czechoslovak troops who were trapped in Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution. In 1917, the Japanese government sent 70,000 troops into the Russian Far East, and they remained after the expedition’s aims had been accomplished. As many as 50,000 Japanese settlers also entered the region. In 1922, there was fighting between Japanese and Bolshevik troops, and the Japanese government decided to withdraw its forces rather than risk a serious conflict. Japanese troops withdrew from the Russian Far East in June of 1922.

Throughout the 1920’s, the Japanese continued to expand their economic interests in China and endeavored to keep Manchuria from falling under the control of the Chinese Nationalist government. The assertion of Chinese power in the region and the gradual buildup of Soviet military power in the Far East over the course of the 1920’s caused many officers of the Imperial Japanese Army to call for action.

This action materialized on September 18, 1931, in the form of an unauthorized plot by Japanese troops in Manchuria, known as the Manchurian Incident. The Japanese staged a bombing of a railroad near Mukden that they blamed on Chinese troops in the region. This provided the Japanese army with an excuse for the total occupation of Manchuria, which was completed before the end of the year.

Aftermath

The Japanese seizure of power in Manchuria resulted in the formation of the independent nation of Manchukuo in 1932. The government of Manchukuo was dominated by the Japanese, and international public opinion censured the Japanese government for its aggression. In 1933, the League of Nations refused to acknowledge the existence of Manchukuo and condemned Japan for its actions there. As a result, the Japanese withdrew from the league. These developments put Japan at odds with the Western democracies. Japan also continued to expand its economic and military power across the borders of Manchukuo and into Northern China. This evoked a considerable nationalist response from the Chinese, and an exchange of fire between Japanese and Chinese troops near Peking in 1937 precipitated a major war between the two nations, known as the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945). The Japanese military presence in Manchukuo also put them into conflict with Russia, which had its own military interests in Mongolia and the Russian Far East. The Japanese Colonial Wars between 1874 and 1931 created the conditions that led to the eruption of the war in the Far East, which lasted between 1937 and 1945.

Bibliography

Harries, Meirion, and Susie Harries. Soldiers of the Sun: The Rise and Fall of the Imperial Japanese Army. New York: Random House, 1991.

Lone, Stewart. Japan’s First Modern War: Army and Society in the Conflict with China, 1894–1895. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994.

Wells, David, and Sandra Wilson, eds. The Russo-Japanese War in Cultural Perspective, 1904–1905. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999.