Empire, war and 'Overcoming Modernity'

Detail

Building the empire — the three victories

• War with China, 1894–95. Japan and China fought over who would control Korea. China lost.
• The war ended with the Treaty of Shimonoseki, signed 17 April 1895 [2].
• China had to accept that Korea was independent — that is, no longer under Chinese protection [2].
• China gave Japan Taiwan, the Pescadores (P'eng-hu) Islands and the Liaodong Peninsula in south Manchuria [2].
• China also paid 200,000,000 taels as war money (indemnity) and opened four ports — Shashi, Chongqing, Suzhou, Hangzhou — to Japanese trade [2].

• Taiwan was ceded (handed over) in perpetuity, meaning for all time [2].

• The Triple Intervention, 1895. Russia, France and Germany together forced Japan to give the Liaodong Peninsula back to China, in return for 30,000,000 taels more. Taiwan stayed with Japan [3].

• Lesson Japanese leaders drew: military strength alone was not enough; the Western powers could still push Japan around. This fed the demand for a bigger army and navy.

• War with Russia, 1904–05. Japan won — the first time an Asian country beat a major European power in a modern war.

• Peace talks opened at Portsmouth, New Hampshire (USA), on 9 August 1905; the Treaty of Portsmouth was signed on 5 September 1905 [4].

• Russia gave up its leases on Port Arthur and the Liaodong Peninsula, left Manchuria, handed over the southern half of Sakhalin, and accepted that Korea was in Japan's sphere of interest [4].

• Korea annexed, 1910. Annexed means taken over completely and made part of Japan.

• Steps: Japan forced the Korean emperor to sign a treaty in November 1905 making Korea a protectorate (Japan controlled its foreign affairs) → the Korean army was disbanded → 1910, full annexation [4].

Why nobody could say no to military spending

• Japanese leaders kept pointing at the danger from the West. Fear of being colonised like China or India silenced people who wanted the money spent elsewhere.
• Pattern: every victory brought new land and new "frontiers to defend" — which became the reason for the next round of spending.

1930s–40s — state-centred nationalism

• The state, not the individual, became the centre of everything. Loyalty to the emperor and the nation was made the highest duty.
• 1931 — invasion of China. Japan moved into Manchuria (north-east China) after the Mukden (Manchurian) Incident of 18 September 1931, beat weak Chinese resistance, and set up the puppet state of Manchukuo — a state that looked independent but was run by Japan [5].
• The fighting widened into the Second Sino-Japanese War from 1937, and then merged into the Second World War [5].
• Pearl Harbor, 7 December 1941. A surprise air attack on the US naval base at Pearl Harbor, Oahu Island, Hawaii [6].
• Japan's thinking: knock out the US Pacific Fleet first, then take South-East Asia freely [6].
• Damage in just over an hour: more than 180 aircraft destroyed, more than a dozen ships sunk or damaged, more than 2,400 US military members and civilians killed [6].

• Result: the United States entered the Second World War [6].

• Pacific War, 1941–45. The long war against the USA and the Allies across the Pacific.

• Inside Japan during the war:
• Dissidents (people who disagreed with the government) were jailed.
• Patriotic societies were formed to back the war. Many of these were women's societies — women collected funds, saw soldiers off, and supported families of soldiers.
• So the war was not run by the army alone; ordinary society was organised to support it.

The 'Overcoming Modernity' symposium, 1943

• A symposium is a meeting where scholars read papers and debate a common theme.
• The question debated: how should Japan get past the pull of Western "modernity" while still staying a powerful modern nation?
• Moroi Saburo — a musician. He asked how to go beyond Western music and restore music to an art of the spirit, not just something for entertainment or technique.
• Nishitani Keiji — a philosopher. His definition of the 'modern' was the coming together of three separate Western movements:
• the Renaissance,
• the Protestant Reformation,

• the rise of the natural sciences.

• Nishitani argued Japan had a special 'moral energy' — he borrowed the phrase from the German historian Ranke — and this energy gave Japan the duty to build a Greater East Asia, an Asia led by Japan.

• Why this matters: the symposium turned empire into a philosophical mission, not only a military or economic one. War was dressed up as Asia freeing itself from the West.
• Nishitani Keiji (1900–90) belonged to the Kyoto School, twentieth-century Japan's most influential philosophical movement, which compared Western philosophy with East Asian philosophy and religion [7]. He studied under the German philosopher Martin Heidegger and worked on the idea of Nothingness drawn from Zen Buddhism [7].
• The phrase "overcoming the modern" (Japanese: kindai no chōkoku) was already a catch-phrase in Japan in the 1930s, before the symposium [7].

Note: Britannica-linked material dates the kindai no chōkoku catch-phrase to the 1930s and some accounts place the symposium in 1942 [7]; the NCERT date of 1943 for the symposium is retained here.

Prelims Hooks

• The Treaty of Shimonoseki (17 April 1895) ended the first Sino-Japanese War; China ceded Taiwan, the Pescadores and Liaodong [2].
• China's indemnity under Shimonoseki: 200,000,000 taels; four ports opened — Shashi, Chongqing, Suzhou, Hangzhou [2].
• The Triple Intervention (1895) — Russia, France, Germany — forced Japan to return Liaodong for 30,000,000 taels extra [3].
• The Treaty of Portsmouth, signed 5 September 1905, ended the Russo-Japanese War; Russia recognised Korea as Japan's sphere of interest [4].
• Korea became a Japanese protectorate in November 1905 and was annexed in 1910 [4].
• The Mukden (Manchurian) Incident of 18 September 1931 began Japan's takeover of Manchuria; the puppet state created was Manchukuo [5].
• Pearl Harbor was attacked on 7 December 1941; over 2,400 US military members and civilians were killed [6].
• At the 1943 'Overcoming Modernity' symposium, Moroi Saburo wanted music restored as an art of the spirit.
• Nishitani Keiji defined the 'modern' as Renaissance + Protestant Reformation + natural sciences, and used Ranke's term 'moral energy' to justify a Greater East Asia.
• Nishitani belonged to the Kyoto School and studied under Heidegger [7].

Mains Points

• Empire as the price of modernisation. Japan's modernisation and its empire grew together. Each war (1894–95, 1904–05) paid for and justified the next round of military spending, and fear of the West stopped any debate. Useful for arguing that in Japan, "catching up with the West" and "becoming like the West as a coloniser" were the same project.
• Ideology built to serve the state. The 1943 symposium shows intellectuals — musicians, philosophers — supplying a cultural argument for war. Nishitani's claim that the 'modern' was a purely Western package (Renaissance, Reformation, science) let Japan claim it could be modern without being Western, and lead Asia instead. Compare with Chinese and Korean nationalist thought, which read Japan's "Greater East Asia" as plain colonialism.
• Society mobilised, not merely commanded. Jailing dissidents and building patriotic societies (many of them women's) shows a state that both repressed and recruited. Good contrast material against European fascism, and against China's mass mobilisation under the Communist Party.
• Korea's experience as the sharp edge. The 1905 protectorate → disbanded army → 1910 annexation sequence shows how legal treaty forms were used to hide conquest — a link to how colonial powers elsewhere, including in India, used treaties and "protection" to take over states.