ABSTRACT
Between August 1894 and April 1895, Japan was at war with Qing China. The goal was to replace China as the dominant power in Korea. To this end, Japan mobilized a force of 240,000 men (5,000 of these from Gifu); Beijing put about four times that number into the field but the majority was untrained, poorly armed, and bereft of support such as medical care. The fighting was mainly in Korea and Manchuria in China’s northeast. The Japanese forces won every engagement on land and sea, although not without a far greater struggle on occasion than is usually credited in the history books. At the war’s end, Japan obtained a substantial profit in terms of money and land; the money came from the huge indemnity paid by the Chinese government and the land came with the cession of Taiwan which elevated Japan to the status of a colonial power. The principal setback of the war came late in the peace negotiations when, in the so-called Triple Intervention, France, Germany and Russia combined to pressure Japan into relinquishing any claim for territory on the Chinese mainland. This was the first overseas conflict fought by Japan in 300 years. To go so
long without a foreign war is a remarkable achievement for any society but especially one governed by a military elite. This immediately raises questions about the link between a military-dominated polity and national aggression. The point of greatest relevance for our needs, however, is that there was never any sign of a popular desire for war during these three centuries. Nor was there such a demand in 1894. It was, instead, Japan’s political and military leaders who were now convinced that a war to replace China as hegemon of Korea was essential. The fundamental principle of foreign relations in the late nineteenth century was that the ‘living’ nations of the modern age expanded, the ‘dying’ contracted, and that war was the ultimate test of a nation’s health and strength. For Japan in 1894, it was fortunate that its first experience of modern war was with a pre-industrial opponent whose government never desired war, was unprepared for war, and whose population was almost entirely disengaged from hostilities. This ensured that Japan’s military success was relatively easily obtained, incurred few battlefield casualties (most died from disease), and stopped well short of impoverishing the Japanese economy. This meant that it was easy for the Japanese public, after the initial weeks of
uncertainty, to enjoy the repeated victory festivals and feel they were sacrificing neither their men nor their own financial security. A question to which we shall return, however, is whether the ease and profit of these victories in 1894-95 encouraged any growth of militarism in provincial Japan. I have already stated that the Japanese people were not seeking war in
1894. I reiterate this point because it challenges one of the common assumptions in Japanese historiography. Thus, in one of the few academic works in Japanese even to consider social aspects of the 1894 conflict, the title of the first chapter is ‘The fever of the Japanese public for war’ (Nihon kokumin no sansen-netsu).1 A detailed inspection of the local press over the days and weeks preceding the war, however, shows nothing of this fever in Gifu. In May 1894, there were reports about political instability in Korea but almost nothing on military affairs outside of the annual routine of draft examinations. Earlier that year, virtually the only mention of anything to do with the military had been the Army Surgeon-General’s endorsement of a medicine which actually was to reduce fever in adults and children. The most frequent image of the warrior was the single illustration which accompanied the serial fiction in the daily press. Throughout the 1890s, these were usually stories of samurai swordsmen and the line drawings normally rotated between scenes of sword fighting, including grisly depictions of murder and decapitation, and quietude (one striking image from the No-bi Nippo-in January 1894 showed a two-sworded female warrior drinking from a gargantuan saké dish while the innkeeper looked on in horror).2 In terms of hard news, the major papers in Gifu prefecture, the Gifu Nichi Nichi Shimbun (GNN) and No-bi Nippo-, continued to focus on local and national politics, business and education. A sidelight on the public view of foreign relations and ideas of self-sacrifice, however, may be gleaned from two reports in the GNN of 3 May 1894. One concerned a new organization in Kyoto, the Society for Eternal Protection of the Nation (Aikoku Eiho-kai), which was dedicated to opposing the residence of foreigners in Japan, ‘even at the cost of their own lives’. This belligerent nationalism seemed to be a throwback to the pre-Meiji years of political unrest and the GNN comment was that the group ‘brought together only the slightly unusual sort of person’ (chotto futsu-igai no jimbutsu nomi). By contrast with these passionate, self-sacrificing men of Kyoto, a report on Tsumaki village, a pottery-making centre in Toki county in Gifu’s southeast, noted that no one wanted to serve as the new village head because, rather than get a low wage for sitting in an office all day and dealing with other people’s problems, they all preferred to make good money at home from making or painting pots.3 Thus, if the value of self-sacrifice for the communal good is central both to the military and militarism, this contrast of Gifu villagers and unusual urbanites from Kyoto suggests that, on the eve of Japan’s first modern war, any kind of ‘militarist’ in provincial society was very much in the minority. The first real sense at the provincial level that war was imminent appears in
June 1894. The head of the Gifu police issued an order early that month for
all branches in the prefecture to prevent alarmist rumours or gossip. At this same time, people were also aware that some newspapers in Tokyo had been banned for their reports on the rising tensions in Korea.4 On 26 June, the GNN warned local people that China was heavily involved in preparations for war and refused categorically to negotiate with Japan over Korea; it also reported that Chinese women and children were said to be fleeing the Korean peninsula; moreover, army reservists in Japan were soon to be called up. It was only now that the Japanese public confronted the reality of a modern overseas war in which the active support of all sectors of civil society might be decisive. The response of any public to war depends partly on the sense that the
resort to arms is legitimate. In 1894, this was never in doubt among ordinary Japanese. Interestingly, however, there was a discussion on the eve of hostilities as to whether a formal declaration of war was necessary. The issue, as reported in the Gifu press, was that, while traditions based on ancient Roman law required a formal announcement, more recent practice around the world had rendered such niceties superfluous. The press accepted, however, that this remained a topic of contention.5 In the event, Japanese and Chinese warships clashed on 25 July, while Japanese troops in Korea attacked Chinese forces on 29 July, and only on 1 August did the Emperor Meiji officially declare Japan to be at war (Japan was to repeat this practice of striking first against Russia in 1904 and at Pearl Harbor in 1941, thereby remaining consistent throughout the existence of the imperial armed forces). Aside from the legal questions, it became standard practice among Japanese civilians to describe this as ‘a righteous war’ (gisen), that is, a conflict between progress and regress or civilization and barbarism. Thus, there was never any real public criticism of the war on moral grounds. In a country so long at peace with its neighbours, the natural early
response to the prospect and then the reality of war was ambivalence. Broadly speaking, there were three emotional responses: the heroic, the pragmatic, and the perturbed. In the minority were those individuals and some groups who welcomed the war and who offered their services to the army ministry. On 3 July 1894, the GNN published in full the letter of Honda Masanao, a local villager of samurai origins from the western county of Yamagata. In this, Honda claimed to have formed a squad of 160 men ready to fight and die for the nation. Explaining his intention, Honda wrote, ‘Ah, you men who shed tears for your beloved nation, you righteous men who have the traditional Yamato spirit of Japan, now rise, rise, rise, and add your name to the patriotic squad (giyu-tai) I have established’. In the town of Kanayama in Mugi county, central Gifu, a group calling itself the Giyu-Ho-koku-gumi also collected nearly 60 members by the first week of August 1894 with many of them sharpening their skills through daily sword practice. Unfortunately for groups such as these, the government made it very clear from the outset that, in modern war, the official institutions of army and navy would do all of the fighting while civilian militia would stay at home and work. Still in the heroic
mould but slightly lower down the scale, the GNN also described Gifu city on the day that war was declared as being in a very positive mood, with everyone, young and old, discussing the war and exhibiting what it termed a ‘fine Yamato spirit’. Probably the most common public response, however, was pragmatism. Thus, around the prefecture, officials, the press and established associations, most notably the prefectural branch of the Japan Red Cross, quickly began to organize donations of money and non-perishable goods for the military. Other locals gathered at the Shinto-shrine in their town or village to pray for victory and, where appropriate, to drink to the health and safety of local reservists awaiting their call-up. In Gifu city, the Inaba Shrine began the war with 10 days of prayers for victory and the safety of Japanese forces; in one village in Mugi county, everyone stopped work for four days to pray at the local shrine.6 Indeed, one might say that, along with the newspapers, Shinto-shrines were the most important sites of ‘contact’ with the war for many people: from the newspapers, they obtained knowledge of the war, at the shrines, they expressed their feelings about it. Any perturbation about the prospect of war was due to the fact that China
had always been the hegemonic power in East Asia and it took an enormous leap of faith in mid-1894 to assume that Japan could triumph without suffering heavily. There were also concerns about the efficiency of Japan’s largely untested mass military. With no standing army in Gifu, local people could not see the men for themselves and gauge their confidence. They did, however, have access to some disquieting reports from army bases in other regions. Late in June, the GNN carried the news of several soldiers of the 5th Division at Hiroshima who, it was stated, had been so terrified at the threat of war that they had fled their barracks. The report claimed that four of them had been caught immediately and, with equal speed, shot as deserters. The day after the declaration of war, the GNN also reported on a soldier at an infantry regiment at Toyohashi in neighbouring Aichi prefecture. At 3 am on 1 August, he attempted to shoot his sergeant who was then sleeping. The bullet ricocheted off the intended victim’s arm and pierced the chest of another sergeant. The soldier then shot and killed himself.7 Anyone reading these reports – and the fact that they were printed and not censored is worth noting – would have reason to worry about discipline within the army’s ranks. A further source of anxiety at the start of the war was the belief, which did not evaporate with the war’s end, that China was not the real enemy and that, whatever the outcome of this war, it was only the prelude to another, far more challenging conflict in the future. Thus, as one soldier en route to the battlefield wrote to provincial schoolchildren, ‘Our duty is to fight the Qing but what will yours be? The Russians? The British? The French?’.8
