Japan and the Great War

Japan and the Great War

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Japan and the Great War Edited by Oliviero Frattolillo Assistant Professor, L Orientale, University of Naples, Italy and Antony Best Associate Professor, London School of Economics, UK

Introduction, selection and editorial matter Oliviero Frattolillo and Antony Best 2015 Individual chapters Respective authors 2015 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2015 978-1-137-54673-9 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy, or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied, or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6 10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988. First published 2015 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave and Macmillan are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-56435-4 ISBN 978-1-137-54674-6 (ebook) DOI 10.1057/9781137546746 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Japan and the Great War / Oliviero Frattolillo, Assistant Professor, University of Napoli, Italy and Antony Best, Associate Professor, London School of Economics, UK. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. World War, 1914 1918 Japan. 2. Japan History Taisho period, 1912 1926. I. Frattolillo, Oliviero, editor, author. II. Best, Antony, 1964 editor, author. D519.J28 2015 940.3952 dc23 2015028722

Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors List of Abbreviations vi vii viii x Introduction: Japan and the Great War 1 Oliviero Frattolillo and Antony Best Part I International Aspects 1 The Great War in China and Japan 13 Xu Guoqi 2 Japan s First World War-Era Diplomacy, 1914 15 36 Naraoka Sōchi 3 Britain, Japan, and the Crisis over China, 1915 16 52 Antony Best 4 The Christian Habitus of Japan s Interwar Diplomacy 71 Kevin M. Doak Part II Domestic and Long-Term Aspects 5 The Siberian Intervention and Japanese Society 93 Keishi Ono 6 Rethinking Japanese Taxation in the Wake of the Great War 116 Andrea Revelant 7 Japan s Great War as a Response to Western Hegemony 142 Oliviero Frattolillo 8 The First World War, Japan, and a Global Century 162 Frederick R. Dickinson Index 183 v

List of Illustrations Figures 5.1 The rate of food price increases (1915 25) 105 6.1 Selected national taxes (in millions of yen) 118 6.2 Selected local taxes (in millions of yen) 121 Tables 5.1 Economic/military cost of the First World War for the great powers (at current prices) (in billions of USD) 94 5.2 Number of the soldiers intervening in the Russian revolution 98 vi

Acknowledgements The centennial of the First World War has stimulated very fruitful academic reflections worldwide on the current historical significance of what was a mostly Europe-centred global war. However, in the mare magnum of the analyses that have appeared in recent years, very little attention has been paid to the East Asian context and the role played within it, and in the conflict in general, by a geopolitically peripheral actor Japan. This precious opportunity motivated a group of distinguished Chinese, Japanese, American, and European scholars investigate perhaps somewhat unusually the Great War from Japan s perspective. This project is the result of a fruitful collaboration stretching back three years. It took some time to get started from the first contacts and the initial discussions we had, but the common feeling of belonging to the cause and the simultaneous scientific enthusiasm which emerged has made it extraordinarily easy for us to communicate and coordinate a team across three different continents. It is precisely to all the authors of this volume that we express our most sincere thanks: Xu Guoqi, Naraoka Sōchi, Frederick R. Dickinson and to Kevin M. Doak, in particular, who have shown no hesitation in participating in a project that, without their notable and expert voices, would have certainly lost its sheen. We are also grateful to Palgrave Macmillan for agreeing to publish the book, to Jade Moulds for her precious and patient support, and to the anonymous reviewers who gave the manuscript such an insightful reading. We would also like to thank Cambridge Scholars Publishing and the following for permission to quote from archival sources: the Times Newspapers Limited Archive, News UK and Ireland Limited, HSBC Archives, HSBC Holdings plc, and the Syndics of Cambridge University Library. vii

Notes on Contributors Antony Best is Associate Professor of International History at the London School of Economics. He is the author of Britain, Japan and Pearl Harbor: Avoiding War in East Asia, 1936 1941 (1995); British Intelligence and the Japanese Challenge in Asia, 1914 1941 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2002) and one of the co-authors of International History of the Twentieth Century and Beyond, 3rd edition (2015). Frederick R. Dickinson is Professor of Japanese History in the Department of History at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of War and National Reinvention: Japan in the Great War, 1914 1919 (1999); Taisho Tennō [Taisho Emperor] (2009) and World War I and the Triumph of a New Japan, 1919 1930 (2013). Kevin M. Doak is Professor and Nippon Foundation Endowed Chair in Japanese Studies in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Georgetown University. He is the author of Dreams of Difference: The Japan Romantic School and the Crisis of Modernity (1994) and A History of Nationalism in Modern Japan: Placing the People (2007). Oliviero Frattolillo is an assistant professor in the Department of Asia, Africa, and the Mediterranean at L Orientale University of Naples. He is the author of Japan between East and West: The Search for an International Role in the Bipolar Years (in Italian) (2014); Diplomacy in Japan-EU Relations: From the Cold War to the Post-Bipolar Era (2013); Watsuji Tetsurō and the Ethics of In-Between (in Italian) (2013); Interwar Japan Beyond the West: The Search for a New Subjectivity in World History (2012). Xu Guoqi is professor in the Department of History at the University of Hong Kong. He is the author of China and the Great War: China s Pursuit of a New National Identity and Internationalization (2005); Olympic Dreams: China and Sports, 1895 2008 (2008) and Strangers on the Western Front: Chinese Workers in the Great War (2011). Keishi Ono is Head of the Defense Economics division at the National Institute for Defense Studies (NIDS), Japan. He is the author of Rise and Fall of Japan s Military Expenses in the Taisho Period: World War, Siberian Expedition and Arms Buildup (in Japanese), NIDS Military History Studies Annual, 17 (2014); The 8 8 Fleet Plan and the Financial viii

Notes on Contributors ix Policy during the Taisho Era: The Possibility to Continue the Struggle for Naval Build-up before the Washington Conference (in Japanese), The Journal of Military History, Vol. 48, no.2 (2012); Total War from the Economic Perspective (in English), NIDS International Forum on War History: Proceedings (2012). Andrea Revelant is an assistant professor in the Department of Asian and North-African Studies at Cà Foscari University of Venice. He is the author of Economic Growth and Tax Inequality: Evidence from World War I, Acta Asiatica Varsoviensia, Vol. 27 (2014); Tax Reform as Social Policy: Adjusting to Change in Interwar Japan, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 47 (2013); Party Cabinets, 1918 1932, in Japan at War: An Encyclopedia, ABC-Clio (2013); Learning How to Appeal to the Masses: Election Campaigns in Interwar Japan, Archiv Orientalni, Vol. 79 (2011). He has co-authored the volume Modern and Contemporary Japan: State, Media, Identity Processes (in Italian) (2012). Naraoka Sōchi is Associate Professor of History in the law faculty of Kyoto University. He is the author of Katō Takaaki to seito seiji: Nidai seito-sei he no michi (2006). His works in English include Katō Takaaki and the Russo-Japanese War, in Chapman J.W.M. and Inaba C. (eds), Rethinking the Russo-Japanese War, 1904 05, Vol. II (2007), and A New Look at Japan s Twenty-One Demands: Reconsidering Katō Takaaki s Motives in 1915, in Minohara T., Hon T.-K. and Dawley E. (eds), The Decade of the Great War: Japan and the Wider World in the 1910s (2014). He is currently finishing a book in Japanese on the Twenty-One Demands.

List of Abbreviations BOC BOJ CER FER IJA IJN SMR TSR Bank of Chosen Bank of Japan Chinese Eastern Railway Far Eastern Republic Imperial Japanese Army Imperial Japanese Navy South Manchurian Railway Trans-Siberian Railway x