Japan 1904–1937

Japan 1904–1937 is one of eight National Studies options in Section II. You answer one 25-mark extended response (one of two alternatives), about 1,000 words in roughly 45 minutes. The syllabus key features are: nationalism; internationalism; the successes and failures of democracy; social change; imperialism; militarism; tradition versus modernisation; and Japanese foreign policy.

• Survey: Japan as an emerging power — the Russo-Japanese War, the annexation of Korea, great-power status through the Twenty-One Demands, World War I and the Washington Conference, and domestic issues by 1921.
• Focus of study: challenges to traditional power in the 1920s (limited liberal democracy, the influence of the zaibatsu, party politics, and the genro, bureaucracy and army); the rise of militarism in the 1930s (the impact of the Depression, modernisation and urbanisation, divisions in the army, hostility to the zaibatsu, the collapse of party politics, domestic responses, and the role of Emperor Hirohito); foreign policy to 1937 and the influence of ideology.

Names: Japanese names are written family name first (Hara Takashi, Inukai Tsuyoshi). Reign names are used for periods: Meiji (to 1912), Taisho (1912–26), Showa (from 1926, Hirohito).

The Meiji Constitution (1889) made the emperor sacred and sovereign. The cabinet answered to him, not the Diet; the army and navy held the right of supreme command under the emperor (Article XI); unelected bodies — the genro (elder statesmen), the Privy Council, the House of Peers and the bureaucracy — held great influence. The Imperial Rescript on Education (1890) taught loyalty to the emperor as the father of a ‘family state’.

• Anglo-Japanese Alliance (1902): the first alliance between a European great power and an Asian state.
• Russo-Japanese War (1904–05): victories at Port Arthur, Mukden and the naval battle of Tsushima (May 1905). The Treaty of Portsmouth (September 1905), mediated by Theodore Roosevelt, gave Japan the Liaodong lease, the South Manchurian Railway, southern Sakhalin and dominance in Korea — but no indemnity, causing the Hibiya riots.
• Korea: protectorate (1905); after Ito Hirobumi's assassination (1909), annexation (1910).
• World War I: Japan seized Qingdao and Germany's north Pacific islands (1914) and presented the Twenty-One Demands (1915) to China. The war brought an industrial boom.
• Paris 1919: one of the Big Five; a permanent seat on the League Council; mandates over the Pacific islands; kept Shandong for now; the racial equality proposal was blocked.
• Washington Conference (1921–22): the 5:5:3 capital-ship ratio, the end of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance (Four-Power Treaty), the Nine-Power Treaty on China, and the return of Shandong.
• Domestic issues by 1921: the Rice Riots (1918); Hara Takashi became the first commoner and party leader to head a cabinet (1918) and was assassinated (1921).

‘Taisho democracy’

• Party cabinets: from 1924 to 1932 (‘normal constitutional government’), the leader of the majority party usually became Prime Minister — Seiyukai or Kenseikai/Minseito.
• Universal male suffrage (1925): the electorate grew about fourfold (to about 12.5 million).
• Ideas and movements: Yoshino Sakuzo's _minponshugi_ (government for the people's welfare); Minobe Tatsukichi's ‘organ theory’ of the emperor; unions, tenant farmers' unions, women's groups, the Suiheisha (Burakumin rights, 1922).
• Shidehara diplomacy: cooperation with the West and non-intervention in China.

Limits

• Peace Preservation Law (1925; death penalty added 1928) and the Special Higher Police.
• Zaibatsu — Mitsui, Mitsubishi, Sumitomo, Yasuda — funded the parties; corruption scandals.
• Unelected power: the genro Saionji chose Prime Ministers; military independence remained.
• Violence: the killing of Koreans (estimates range from several hundred to about 6,000) by vigilantes, police and soldiers after the Great Kanto Earthquake (1923); the Kwantung Army's assassination of Zhang Zuolin (1928); the shooting of PM Hamaguchi (1930).

Why militarism rose

• Structure: military independence under the constitution.
• The Depression: silk prices fell by more than half in 1930; rural poverty, especially in Tohoku; anger at the parties and zaibatsu. Finance Minister Takahashi Korekiyo's reflation (devaluation, deficit and military spending) brought fast recovery.
• Ideology: ultranationalism (Kita Ikki's call for a ‘Showa Restoration’), agrarian nationalism, pan-Asianism, resentment of Western racism and the Washington system.
• Army factions: the radical Imperial Way (Kodoha: Araki, Mazaki) versus the Control faction (Toseiha: Nagata, later Tojo), which wanted a planned ‘total war’ state. After February 1936 the Control faction dominated.
• Hirohito: he ordered the February 26 rebels crushed; his wider role is debated — Herbert Bix sees an active participant, others a constitutional monarch who usually followed advice.
• Domestic responses: some resistance in the Diet (Saito Takao's 1936 and 1940 speeches), but most elites accommodated the army; popular support for expansion was strong.

1. 1904–1914: security (Korea, Manchuria) and great-power status within an alliance system.
2. 1914–1921: wartime opportunism — Qingdao, the Twenty-One Demands, Paris.
3. 1922–1930: cooperative diplomacy (Shidehara) within the Washington system.
4. 1931–1937: independent army action, Manchukuo, leaving the League, pan-Asian and anti-Western ideology, the Anti-Comintern Pact, war with China.

Ideology (nationalism, the kokutai, pan-Asianism, anti-communism) became more influential in the 1930s, but it always worked with strategic and economic aims — resources, markets and security.

Worked example (not a bank question). _‘Assess the influence of the zaibatsu on Japanese politics and society between 1904 and 1937.’_

1. Thesis: the zaibatsu were central to modernisation and party politics, but their wealth made them targets in the 1930s, so their political influence declined even as their economic power grew.
2. Paragraph 1 — economic power: industrial growth, World War I, banks and trading companies.
3. Paragraph 2 — party politics: funding of the Seiyukai and Minseito; corruption.
4. Paragraph 3 — the 1930s backlash: the ‘dollar buying’ scandal, the assassination of Dan Takuma; cooperation with the military economy in Manchuria.
5. Conclusion: a clear judgement on influence and how it changed.

• Treating 1920s Japan as a Western-style democracy, or the 1930s as a dictatorship like Nazi Germany — Japan had no single leader or party.
• Assuming the government planned the Mukden Incident.
• Saying the failed February 26 Incident reduced military power.
• Starting essays in 1868; Meiji is only background.
• Explaining expansion only by ideology, or only by economics.

• Section II is marked on a sustained, logical and cohesive response, detailed, accurate and relevant historical knowledge, historical terms and concepts and, where relevant, historical interpretations. Naming historians can strengthen an argument but is not required.
• Useful interpretations: Herbert Bix on Hirohito; Andrew Gordon's ‘imperial democracy’; debates over whether the 1930s were a break from the 1920s or the outcome of the Meiji system.
• Key terms: genro, Diet, kokutai, zaibatsu, Taisho democracy, supreme command, Kwantung Army, Manchukuo, Kodoha, Toseiha, ultranationalism, pan-Asianism.
• Prepare flexible paragraphs on great-power status, 1920s democracy, the Depression, the army and militarism, and foreign policy.

• The core compares Japanese militarism with fascism in Italy and Nazism in Germany.
• China 1927–1949 covers Japanese imperialism in China from the Chinese side.
• Conflict in Europe 1935–1945 gives the European context of the Anti-Comintern Pact.