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The research for this article was generously supported by the Gordon and Dailey Pattee Fac-
ulty Fellowship, Stanford University. I would like to thank Cemil Aydin, Kenneth J. Ruoff,
and Kren Wigen, and two anonymous readers for JJS for their critical and thoughtful feed-
back on earlier drafts. I also thank Jordan Sand for the opportunity to present the final draft
at a workshop on the Pacific Empires at Georgetown University, and Paul Kramer, Eiichiro
Azuma, David Chang, and Takashi Fujitani for their insightful comments and questions.
1. Cited in Mark R. Peattie, The Nanyo: Japan in the South Pacific, 18851945, in
Ramon H. Myers and Mark R. Peattie, eds., The Japanese Colonial Empire, 18951945
(Princeton: Princeton University Press), p. 179. Nanyo refers to islands of Micronesia or the
57
Journal of Japanese Studies, 42:1
2016 Society for Japanese Studies
South Pacific (including countries of Southeast Asia) more broadly. Mark R. Peattie, Nanyo:
The Rise and Fall of the Japanese in Micronesia, 18851945 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii
Press, 1988), pp. xvii-xviii.
2. Dai-Nihon Kyoikukai Shigaken Shibu, ed., Sugiura Jugo sensei zenshu, Vol. 1 (To-
kyo: Kenkyusha, 1945), p. 5. For more information on his career as an ethics teacher of
Hirohito, see Peter Wetzler, Hirohito and War: Imperial Tradition and Military Decision
Making in Prewar Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1998), chapters 5 and 6;
and Herbert P. Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (New York: HarperCollins,
2001), pp. 6299.
3. For an overview of the history of O mi merchants, see Egashira Tsuneharu, Omi
shonin (Tokyo: Kobundo, 1959).
4. Here I build on the studies of those men who contributed to certain areas of Meiji
reform and then directed their energies to overseas colonies including Nagayo Sensai (see
Ruth Rogaski, Hygienic Modernity: Meanings of Health and Disease in Treaty-Port China
[Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004], and Susan Burns, Constructing the Na-
tional Body: Public Health and the Nation in Nineteenth-Century Japan, in Timothy Brook
and Andre Schmid, eds., Nation Work: Asian Elites and National Identities [Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 2000], pp. 1750); Ohara Shigechika and Ogawa Shigejiro
(see Daniel V. Botsman, Punishment and Power in the Making of Modern Japan [Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2005]); and Ume Kenjiro (see Yi Yong-mi, Kankoku shiho seido
to Ume Kenjiro [Tokyo: Hosei Daigaku Shuppankyoku, 2005], and Marie Seong-Hak Kim,
Law and Custom in Korea: Comparative Legal History [Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2012]).
5. Sugiuras biographical information in this section comes from the following sources,
unless otherwise specified: Sugiura Jugo, Nihon no seishin (Tokyo: Kobundo Shoten, 1916),
pp. 1415; O machi Keigetsu and Ikari Shizan, Sugiura Jugo sensei (Tokyo: Seikyosha, 1924);
and Kaigo Tokiomi, Nishimura Shigeki, Sugiura Shigetake, in Kaigo Tokiomi chosakushu,
Vol. 3: Kyoiku shiso kenkyu (Tokyo: Tokyo Shoseki, 1981).
6. Although Sugiura himself did not completely identify with the reactionary and
anti-Western brand of Japanism propounded by the Dai Nihon Kyokai (Great Japan Society)
launched in 1897 by Inoue Tetsujiro and Takayama Chogyu (Hisaki Yukio, Kaisetsu, in
Meiji Kyoikushi Kenkyukai, ed., Sugiura Jugo zenshu, Vol. 1 [O tsu-shi: Sugiura Jugo Zen-
shu Kankokai, 1983], pp. 98890), he shared with Takayama a broad emphasis on overseas
expansion in his advocacy of Japanism. For more on the cultural nationalism of Takayama
and Inoue, see Kevin Doak, A History of Nationalism in Modern Japan: Placing the People
(Leiden: Brill, 2007), pp. 22326.
7. Sugiura Jugo Sensei Kenshokai, ed., Kaiso Sugiura Jugo: sono shogai to gyoseki
(Tokyo: Seisaku Shibunkaku Shuppan, 1984), pp. 43235, 56579, 6056; Richard M. Rei-
tan, Making a Moral Society: Ethics and the State in Meiji Japan (Honolulu: University of
Hawaii Press, 2010), p. 74.
machi and Ikari, Sugiura Jugo sensei, pp. 23334. For an in-depth study of Seikyosha
8. O
and its precursor, Kenkonsha, see Kenneth B. Pyle, The New Generation in Meiji Japan:
mi Merchants as Pioneers
Japan as a Maritime Empire and O
By the time Meiji Japan joined the race for overseas markets and terri-
tories, the world seemed entirely dominated by the Western powers, leaving
few uncharted lands to the new entrant. This did not deter the Japanese from
giving free rein to their imagination, however. Seeing the ocean as a global
arena of Japans ascendancy, Meiji political leaders, military officers, and
opinion makers brought a wide range of lands under their scrutiny as poten-
tial markets and sites of settlementnot only East Asia but also the South
Pacific, Southeast Asia, Australia, and Central and South America. From
their writings emerged a new understanding of Japan as a transoceanic em-
pire: one that would rule the Pacific through a network of shipping, trade,
business, migration, and settlement. According to the historian Hirose Reiko,
viewing these activities as part of a holistic package of expansionand
conflating their meanings in the discussion of Japan as an oceanic nation
(kaikoku)was typical of nationalist thinkers concerned with kokusui (na-
Problems of Cultural Identity, 18851895 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1969); Yue-
him Tam, Informal Groups Behind Modern Japanese Intellectual History: The Case of
the Seikyosha, New Asia College Academic Annals, Vol. 19 (1977); and Nakanome Toru,
Seikyosha no kenkyu (Tokyo: Shibunkaku Shuppan, 1993).
9. Naichi zakkyo no junbi towa nanzo, Tokyo asahi shinbun, March 18, 1893; Tsugu
gakusei shoshi, Tokyo asahi shinbun, September 9, 1894; Tam, Informal Groups, p. 7.
tional essence) at the time.10 But the colonial thought of Sugiura and other
like-minded advocates of kokusui in Seikyosha (such as Shiga Shigetaka,
Kuga Katsunan, and Fukumoto Nichinan) has not garnered much scholarly
attention. Pioneering studies by Yano Toru and Shimizu Hajime are among
the few exceptions, but they tend to reduce the maritime thought of kokusui
advocates to an argument for southern advance.11 In fact, these nationalists
embraced in their thought a variety of regions, from Hokkaido and Korea to
Canada and Mexico: in short, a vision of constructing a Japanese diaspora
across the Pacific.
Sugiuras writings on expansion represented this early and crude out-
look on the world, centered on the ocean. In an August 1887 editorial for
Yomiuri, he lamented how miserably small Japan looks on the map of
the world but simultaneously observed that modest-sized nations such as
England, Spain, and Holland nonetheless managed to develop maritime em-
pires, owing to their ability to navigate and trade across the seas. Hoping that
Japan would follow their example, he proposed that the Meiji government
establish a colonial ministry to supervise all overseas affairsfrom the
jurisdiction of Hokkaido and the islands of Ogasawara, to the migration and
settlement of Hawaiiand to investigate methods for developing other
colonies.12 Seven years later in August 1894, when Japans conflict with
the Qing erupted over the Korean peninsula, he continued to argue that
Japan as a maritime nation must expand not only its navy but also
its sea-lanes and shipping in peacetime for promoting foreign trade and
emigration.13
Sugiura conceived of expansion not necessarily or primarily as military
and territorial conquest, but in broader and more peaceful terms of global
10. On the views of Meiji leaders, see Akira Iriye, Pacific Estrangement: Japanese
and American Expansion, 18971911 (Chicago: Imprint Publications, 1994), p. 48. Also see
Hirose Reiko, Kokusui shugisha no kokusai ninshiki to kokka koso: Fukumoto Nichinan o
chushin to shite (Tokyo: Fuyo Shobo Shuppan, 2004), p. 22.
11. Both scholars have dismissed the connection between the argument for nanshin and
Asianism (Ajia shugi), seeing them as ideologically distinct (Yano Toru, Nanshin no keifu
[Tokyo: Chuo Koronsha, 1975], pp. 5354, 6465; Shimizu Hajime, Ajiashugi to nanshin,
in Iwanami Koza, Kindai Nihon to shokuminchi 4: togo to shihai no ronri [Tokyo: Iwanami
Shoten, 1993], pp. 9394). By contrast, Hirose Reiko in Kokusui shugisha examines the rela-
tionship between the colonial thought of previously obscured kokusui thinkers, with a focus
on Fukumoto Nichinan, and Asianism in its early and diverse formulations. I follow Hiroses
work in offering an in-depth study of Sugiuras colonial thought in relation to other kokusui
thinkers such as Fukumoto Nichinan, Kuga Katsunan, and Shiga Shigetaka.
12. Shinshuron, Yomiuri shinbun, August 11, 1887. In addition to northern and south-
ern advance, a third orientationtranspacific eastward expansionism which envisioned
emigration-led colonization in Hawaii and the Pacific Coast regions of America (Eiichiro
Azuma, Between Two Empires: Race, History, and Transnationalism in Japanese America
[New York: Oxford University Press, 2005], pp. 2223)also informed Sugiuras vision.
13. Kaikoku yodan, Tokyo asahi shinbun, August 17, 1894.
14. Ibid.; Toyo ronsaku, Yomiuri shinbun, October 1, 1886; Tonansetsu, Tokyo asahi
shinbun, June 12, 1895; Iriye, Pacific Estrangement, pp. 8, 44. This vision of peaceful or
liberal expansionism was embraced by Protestant intellectuals in Japan (Yosuke Nirei,
Globalism and Liberal Expansionism in Meiji Protestant Discourse, Social Science Japan
Journal, Vol. 15, No. 1 [2012], pp. 7592) and by Issei intellectuals in the American West
(Azuma, Between Two Empires, pp. 2324).
15. Joyaku kaisei kaigi enki, Yomiuri shinbun, August 6, 1887; Shinshuron; Mata
issetsu, Yomiuri shinbun, August 18, 1887; Jieiron, Tokyo asahi shinbun, July 18, 1899.
16. Shinshuron; Aikokushin to enseiteki jigyo, Tokyo asahi shinbun, June 2, 1897.
Egypt as the colonized colonizer wished to keep Sudan as part of its empire, while strug-
gling against the British protectorate after 1882. See Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade
of Colonialism: Egypt, Great Britain, and the Mastery of the Sudan (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2003).
17. These articles penned for the magazine Nihon were compiled in a monograph under
the same title, Kaikoku seidan (Tokyo: Nihon Shinbunsha, 1892). See especially pp. 2, 67,
3052.
the crucial first step for strengthening and enriching the country (fukoku).
Although this project ended in failure, Fukumoto quickly turned his atten-
tion southward after befriending Sugiura and embarked on yet another co-
lonial venture in the Philippines.18 Other journalists such as Kuga Katsunan
and political leaders such as Tani Kanjo and Konoe Atsumaro, in varying
degrees, also stressed the importance of developing the shipping industry,
along with colonization and trade, from the perspective of Japan as a mari-
time nation. Shiga Shigetaka argued for creating commercial new Japans
[shogyoteki shin Nihon] everywhere across the sea, envisioning Japan as
the leader of the Pacific.19
In sum, the ocean, or what was broadly referred to as overseas (kai-
gai), was an extension of the modernizing home islands: a place where Ja-
pan would cultivate its economic strength, nurture its human capital (even
conduct a rehearsal for the National Diet [kokkai], in the words of Sugi-
ura), and eventually fulfill its national objective of fukoku kyohei (building
a rich and strong country). These concerns combined with the looming Mal-
thusian specter that had spread among Japans reading public by the 1880s
of population growth outstripping food supply, giving further impetus to the
argument for expansion abroad.20
At the same time, Sugiura and other Meiji thinkers emphasized that
Japan possessed a transoceanic history of expansion long before the rise of
imperialism in the nineteenth century. Underlying their image of maritime
Japan was a desire to revitalize an indigenous tradition of expansionism,
chronicled in the adventures of Japanese merchants, warriors, and seafarers
in the South Pacific and elsewhere from the fifteenth to the seventeenth cen-
turies.21 A typical account appeared in an April 1885 bulletin of the Minis-
try of Agriculture, Commerce, and Industry. Bemoaning that few merchants
have ventured abroad to engage in trade since the opening of Yokohama,
the author alerted readers to the first half of the seventeenth century: the
golden era of maritime activity when our merchants, full of enterprising
spirit, frequently traveled to Taiwan, Cochin [China], Siam, and Cambodia
18. Fukumoto Nichinan, Hokumon jiji (Tokyo: Maruzen, 1882); Hirose, Kokusui shu-
gisha, pp. 40, 4446. Fukumoto later argued for building ties with Australia as a trading
partner and a site of labor migration and settlement (ibid., pp. 19194).
19. Kuga Katsunan, Shimaguni to kaikoku, Nihon, April 1, 1902, reprinted in Kuga
Katsunan zenshu, Vol. 7 (Tokyo: Misuzu Shobo, 1972), pp. 40910; Hirose, Kokusui shugisha,
pp. 17071; Shiga Shigetaka, Nanyo jiji (Tokyo: Maruzen Shosha, 1887), p. 194.
20. Shinshuron; Soo no jiki ni saishite shokan o nobu, Goshu Kyoyukai zasshi,
Vol. 72 (June 1895), reprinted in Sugiura Jugo zenshu, Vol. 1, pp. 73132.
21. Iriye, Pacific Estrangement, p. 18. For more on Japans trans-Pacific migration and
trade in the early modern era, see Mark Caprio and Matsuda Koichiro, eds., Japan and the
Pacific, 15401920 (Aldershot, England: Ashgate/Variorum, 2006); and Tsurumi Sakio, Ni-
hon boeki shiko (Tokyo: Ganshodo Shoten, 1939), pp. 3129.
and created colonies where, in Siam alone, Japanese residents, male and
female, totaled as many as eight thousand.
According to this narrative, the expeditionary impulses of Japanese
were momentarily stifled by the policies of the Tokugawa shogunate, whose
ban on foreign travel gradually made merchants cowardly. But merchants
from the province of O mi (also known as Goshu) represented a notable ex-
ception. Against all odds, the author noted, Goshu merchants carried on the
spirit of expedition and managed to build a fortune by braving the moun-
tains and high seas, much in the way that English merchants garnered
wealth and allowed their island nation to lead the world.22 In Kogyo iken
kaidai (An opinion on the promotion of industry), the ministry more ex-
mi shonin.
plicitly urged Japanese merchants to reflect on the feats of the O
Famous business magnates in todays Goshu such as the founders of Ho-
shikyu and Beniichi initially began with a mere 3 or 4 ryo to traverse the
provinces. Already during the era of Keicho (15961615), [O mi merchants]
visited regions as far afield as Matsumae, and in the course of their travel
inspected local sentiments, customs, and so forth, and purchased goods
suitable to local tastes. . . . They not only built enormous wealth in one
generation, but transmitted their business methods to posterity as well as
throughout the entire province of O mi, to the point where Goshu has come
to be known as our countrys England.23
22. Noshomusho, Noshoko koho, Vol. 2 (April 1885), reprinted in Meiji Bunken Shiryo
Kankokai, ed., Meiji zenki sangyo hattatsushi shiryo, bessatsu, Vol. 10, Part 1 (Tokyo: Meiji
Bunken Shiryo Kankokai, 1965), pp. 5152.
23. Kogyo iken kaidai, in Noshomusho, ed., Kogyo iken (Tokyo: Noshomusho, 1884),
p. 101.
27. O mi shonin to gakumon, Goshu Kyoyukai zasshi, Vol. 68 (February 1895), re-
printed in Sugiura Jugo zenshu, Vol. 1, pp. 72729; Shosen gakko o kakucho subeshi, Tokyo
asahi shinbun, May 29, 1892 (this argument was echoed by Shiga Shigetaka [Nanyo jiji,
pp. 1034] and Fukumoto Nichinan [Hirose, Kokusui shugisha, pp. 18788]); Shugakuteki
kokai, Tokyo asahi shinbun, December 5, 1896.
28. Kokkiron, Yomiuri shinbun, January 3, 1887; Gaikoku boeki no koto, Yomiuri
shinbun, January 27, 1887; Nanyosaku shoho, Yomiuri shinbun, November 22, 1887; Mata
issetsu; Watanabe Katsuo, Sugiura Jugo no kokkenron (2): taigairon o chushin ni, Nihon
Gakuen Koto Gakko kenkyu kiyo, Vol. 2 (1983), p. 48; J. Charles Schencking, Making Waves:
Politics, Propaganda, and the Emergence of the Imperial Japanese Navy, 18681922 (Stan-
ford: Stanford University Press, 2005), p. 39.
29. Fukumoto, Kaikoku seidan, pp. 2122; and Tonkaisaku o kozu beshi, Nihon, Janu-
ary 6, 1892, cited in Hirose, Kokushui shugisha, p. 190.
1891; the crew, he later recollected, literally searched in vain for a tiny
island marked unclaimed on the English sea map, hoping to acquire it for
Japan.30 These nationalists, who advocated Japanism to overcome cultural
subservience to the West, were among the nations first civilians to voyage
through Nanyo, indeed to find passage back to their Japanese roots that
they believed lay in the ocean.
In order to engage more enterprising civilians in overseas commerce,
Sugiura urged Meiji leaders to devise a comprehensive plan to export Japa-
nese goods and create a commercial museum to display domestic and
foreign merchandise. He particularly emphasized the export of Japans tra-
ditional manufactures, matching each product to a specific foreign import,
such as sake (to counter Western alcohol), raw silk (to counter cotton), and
tea (to counter sugar). Sugiuras focus on cottage industries was not the
only reflection of the embryonic state of Japanese capitalism at the time;
Seikyosha similarly stressed the promotion of rural industries and regional
entrepreneurs, rather than an urban-based and privileged bourgeoisie allied
to the government.31 Shiga Shigetaka, in an 1887 report on his voyage to
the South Seas, advanced a more ambitious idea of developing Japan as a
trading and manufacturing nation. Given that its small size naturally in-
hibited the growth of domestic industries and agriculture, he argued, Japan
should move into the area of intermediary trade (chukai boeki) to pur-
chase foreign goods to be sold to other countries. He perceived overseas
colonization and migration as the key to promoting this type of trade: If
our countrymen migrated and settled everywhere across the sea . . . they
would order daily necessities and goods from the home country, thereby
establishing [new] connections with overseas territories beyond their func-
tion as an outlet for overpopulation.32 Sugiura looked to O mi merchants as
a model for playing the role of such intermediaries. Considering that sake,
dry goods, and timber reportedly sell very well at the ports of China and
Korea, he suggested, as a first step in promoting their export, why not fol-
low the precedent of O mi merchants and venture out to foreign countries to
engage in aggressive peddling [oshiuri]?33
This idea of overseas peddling later became one of Sugiuras recom-
mendations for educational reform. In a Tokyo asahi shinbun editorial in
April 1894, he proposed that vocational schools, now found in every port
and city, incorporate the O mi merchant custom of peddling into their cur-
34. Shogyo jitchi renshu, Tokyo asahi shinbun, April 19, 1894; Kawakami Ujiro, ed.,
Hachiman Shogyo gojugonenshi (O mi Hachiman: Shigakenritsu Hachiman Shogyo Gakko
Soritsu Gojusshunen Kinenkai, 1941), p. 380.
35. On Miyazaki Toten and his Pan-Asian thought and activities, see Christopher W. A.
Szpilman, Miyazaki Totens Pan-Asianism, 19151919, in Sven Saaler and Christo-
pher W. A. Szpilman, eds., Pan-Asianism: A Documentary History, Vol. 1 (Lanham, Md.:
Rowman & Littlefield, 2011), pp. 13336. In the same volume, on the Genyosha and the con-
tinental exploits of its members, see Jol Joos, The Genyosha (1881) and Premodern Roots of
Japanese Expansionism (pp. 6164), and on the Kokuryukai (190120) and its pan-Asianist
character (whose explicit expression appeared in its writings only after World War I), see
Sven Saaler, The Kokuryukai, 19011920 (pp. 12132).
36. Shinbun kisha wa sore shinni teisetsu o hakuka, Yomiuri shinbun, August 26,
1886; Ikari Matazo, Sugiura Jugo sensei shoden (Tokyo: Nihon Chugakko Dosokai Shup-
panbu, 1929), p. 140. Admiration for Li Hongzhang was widely shared by his contemporaries,
including Kuga Katsunan (see his Shinkoku no meishin Rikosho, Nihon, February 2, 1901,
reprinted in Kuga Katsunan zenshu, Vol. 7, pp. 3940).
37. Toyo ronsaku; Zoku zenrin ron, Yomiuri shinbun, August 22, 1886; Benjamin A.
Elman, Naval Warfare and the Refraction of Chinas Self-Strengthening Reforms into Sci-
entific and Technological Failure, 18651895, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 38, No. 2 (2004),
pp. 31719; Martina Deuchler, Confucian Gentlemen and Barbarian Envoys: The Opening
of Korea, 18751885 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1977), pp. 22325; Kirk W.
Larsen, Tradition, Treaties, and Trade: Qing Imperialism and Choson Korea, 18501910
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2008).
38. Urs Matthias Zachmann, China and Japan in the Late Meiji Period: China Policy
and the Japanese Discourse on National Identity, 18951904 (London: Routledge, 2009),
p. 25; Watanabe, Sugiura Jugo, p. 52.
39. Zoku-zenrinron; Nisshi no kankei, Tokyo asahi shinbun, July 2627, 1893.
40. Cemil Aydin, The Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia: Visions of World Order in
Pan-Islamic and Pan-Asian Thought (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007); Sven
Saaler and Christopher W. A. Szpilman, Introduction, in Saaler and Szpilman, eds., Pan-
Asianism, pp. 1617.
41. Before the 1890s, the term Asianism itself was hardly ever used and the ideal of
Asian solidarity was expressed through other terms, such as Koa (Raising Asia) and Dobun
Doshu (Same Culture, Same Race), expressions that reflected a longing for cooperation and
intra-Asian fraternity in the face of Western aggression (Saaler and Szpilman, eds., Pan-
Asianism, p. 44; see also Matsuda Koichiro, The Concept of Asia before Pan-Asianism,
in ibid., pp. 4748.). In the early 1880s, advocates of kokusui (including Fukumoto Nichinan,
Shiga Shigetaka, and Kuga Katunan) in varying degrees shared the Pan-Asianist idea of koa
(Hirose, Kokusui shugisha, p. 16). But by 1890 Shiga would depart from this position (still
embraced by most Seikyosha leaders) by arguing for Japans preemptive expansion into Asia
especially vis--vis Russia (Tam, Informal Groups, p. 8).
interest in the idea of Asian revival (fukko) and solidarity among Asian
nations in terms of koa (raising Asia). Like Sugiura, Fukumoto believed
that the project of raising Asia hinged on Japans partnership with the Qing,
a belief that remained unshaken by the Nagasaki Incident of 1886.42 In his
Nanyo jiji (1887), a popular account of his 1886 voyage through the South
Pacific, Shiga Shigetaka similarly advocated an alliance of Japan and the
Qing as leaders of the yellow race, having witnessed the fierce colonial
rivalries on the islands where yellow, black, bronze, and Malay races had
fallen under the Western powers.43 So did Konoe Atsumaro, the president of
the House of Peers (18961903), who argued for a racial alliance of Asian
nations while admonishing the frivolousness of the Japanese who, in uni-
son with the Europeans, recklessly strike up the tune of Chinas demise.44
While race and culture were thus fused in the Meiji discourse on Sino-
Japanese relations, at the core of its emphasis on solidarity with China
what Eri Hotta calls Sinic Pan-Asianism45lay a quite pragmatic con-
cern to expand Japanese economic interests on the continent. When Fuku-
moto traveled to Shanghai in 1887, it was in the hope of promoting inti-
mate relations between Japan and the Qing through trade and commerce.46
Sugiuras Pan-Asianism was no exception. In stressing the need to cultivate
ties to China, he alerted his countrymen to its vast population with an
unlimited reserve of purchasing power and urged them to seize com-
mercial rights [there] to prevent the Westerners from monopolizing profit.
Bewailing widespread public ignorance about Chinas conditions, he also
prodded his readers to study China especially its main ports and prod-
ucts, a pursuit in which Western scholars had come to excel.47 In a similar
vein, a variety of pan-Asian organizations formed in this period emphasized
the study of Chinese language as a prerequisite for regional integration
42. Hirose, Kokusui shugisha, pp. 3031. The incident witnessed a violent clash between
Chinese sailors and Japanese policemen and residents at the port of Nagasaki.
43. Shiga Shigetaka, Nanyo jiji, pp. 616 (Sugiura contributed a Chinese poem to the
preface of this book). This vision of racial struggle was shared by Nagasawa Setsu, who
conceived of the world in terms of a clash between the Mongolian race led by the Japanese
and the Aryan races (Daishototsu: Moko jinshu to Erian shuzoku, Nihonjin, Vol. 2, No. 7
[January 18, 1894]).
44. Konoe Atsumaro, A Same-Race Alliance and On the Necessity of Studying the
Chinese Question, in Saaler and Szpilman, eds., Pan-Asianism, pp. 8992.
45. Eri Hotta, Pan-Asianism and Japans War, 19311945 (New York: Palgrave Mac-
millan, 2007), pp. 30, 4344.
46. Quoted in Hirose, Kokusui shugisha, p. 33. This venture in Shanghai ended in fail-
ure (ibid., p. 41).
47. Nisshi no kankei, Tokyo asahi shinbun, July 26, 1893; Todai motokurashi, Yo-
miuri shinbun, August 31, 1887; Shina tono kankei, Yomiuri shinbun, December 14, 1887;
and Shinagaku no hituyo, Yomiuri shinbun, June 21, 1888.
48. They included the Koakai (Raising Asia Society) and its successor, the Toa Dobunkai
(see below). The Koakai was the first pan-Asian society in Japan founded in 1880 and re-
named Ajia Kyokai in 1883 (and eventually absorbed into the Toa Dobunkai in 1900). For
more information, see Urs Matthias Zachmann, The Foundation Manifesto of the Koakai
(Raising Asia Society) and the Ajia Kyokai (Asia Association), 18801883, in Saaler and
Szpilman, eds., Pan-Asianism, pp. 5557; and Morifumi Kuroki, The Asianism of the
Koakai and the Ajia Kyokai: Reconsidering the Ambiguity of Asianism, in Sven Saaler
and J. Victor Koschmann, eds., Pan-Asianism in Modern Japanese History: Colonialism,
Regionalism and Borders (London: Routledge, 2007), pp. 4950.
49. Michael A. Schneider, KoaRaising Asia: Arao Sei and Inoue Masaji, in Saaler
and Szpilman, eds., Pan-Asianism, pp. 6970.
50. Chosen tono kankei, Yomiuri shinbun, September 7, 1886; Toyo ronsaku.
51. Tarui Tokichi, Gendaiyaku Daito gapporon (Tokyo: Daito Juku Shuppanbu, 1963
[1893]); Kyu Hyun Kim, Tarui Tokichis Arguments on Behalf of the Union of the Great
East, 1893, in Saaler and Szpilman, eds., Pan-Asianism, pp. 7677.
52. Kongo no taikansaku ikan, Tokyo asahi shinbun, July 10, 1895; Toyo ronsaku;
Toyo no heiwa hatashite nozomubekika, Tokyo asahi shinbun, June 8, 1895.
53. This had been a prevailing perception among Japanese intellectuals in the early nine-
teenth century (Matsuda, The Concept of Asia before Pan-Asianism, pp. 4548), before
the rise of the Japanese Orientalist scholarship (Stefan Tanaka, Japans Orient: Rendering
Pasts into History [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993], especially chapter 3).
the Qing in recent years. In the wake of the Sino-Japanese War, he came to
conclude, the Korean people have grown so irremediably weak and ener-
vated that Korea will not be able to function politically as a state in the
future. If we see no Korean state politically, of course, there is no reason
to do such a thing as assist its independence; we need only recognize the
presence of the Korean peninsula geographically, that is, as a toponym
rather than as a political entity. And if we consider the peninsula to have no
bearing on our countrys interests in the future, I think we could withdraw
completely today.54
This suggestion, made on the heels of Chinese departure from the pen-
insula, must have sounded out of sync with the dominant Japanese opinion
and at odds with the policy of Sugiuras now powerful friend and diplo-
mat, Komura Jutaro, who brokered the negotiations for the Treaty of Shi-
monoseki in 1895. Yet one may also argue that the idea of withdrawing from
Korea at the conclusion of the war was not entirely inscrutable, given the
political turmoil that ensued in its wake. This began almost immediately
with the Triple Intervention of Germany, France, and Russia, followed by
King Kojongs flight to the Russian Legation and the Japanese assassina-
tion of Queen Min. To Sugiura, and many thinkers outside the Meiji ruling
circle, the issue of national security vis--vis Korea often took a backseat
to the more fundamental national task of economic self-strengthening.55 In
arguing for leaving Korea, whether as a Pan-Asian ally or as a Western-style
imperialist, Sugiura effectively proposed an alternative to the widespread
view of an East Asian alliance (championed by Tarui Tokichi) and its dia-
metrically opposed notion of de-Asianization (articulated by Fukuzawa
Yukichi), two ideological positions that defined the parameters of Meiji dis-
course on Asia.
At the same time, Sugiuras proposal shows that the boundary between
Raising Asia and Leaving Asia was never so starkly drawn. As Urs
Matthias Zachmann has observed, both positions implied an underlying
assumption about Japans leadership in Asia (especially guidance and assis-
tance to China), which became most explicit after the Sino-Japanese War.56
Indeed, Fukumotos aforementioned vision of koa was not an alliance among
equal nations but an argument for revitalizing and unifying Asian nations
under Japans leadership. This premise was widely held by Pan-Asianist
thinkers, who eventually developed an argument for a Japanese Monroe
Doctrine to maintain Asia for Asia. Conceived in response to the Triple
Intervention of 1895 and in direct parallel to the Spanish-American War
54. Chosen hatashite kuni to shosubekika, Tokyo asahi shinbun, February 19, 1896.
55. Iriye, Pacific Estrangement, pp. 1920.
56. Zachmann, The Foundation Manifesto of the Koakai, p. 57.
57. Schneider, Koa, p. 69; Zachmann, China and Japan, pp. 6773, 85, 88; Hirose,
Kokusui shugisha, pp. 7980; Konoe, A Same-Race Alliance, pp. 8992.
58. Zachmann, China and Japan, pp. 7780, 88, 115, and The Foundation Manifesto of
the Koakai, pp. 11517. Around the turn of the century, Fukumoto Nichinan as well as Kuga
Katsunan and Nagasawa Setsu turned to the argument for the preservation of China, which
opposed Western military intervention into the Qing and yet insisted that Japan should join
the race for economic invasion (Hirose, Kokusui shugisha, pp. 36970; Zachmann, China
and Japan, pp. 8187). According to Hirose, this convergence signaled the end of koa thought
among kokusui thinkers, while Tam notes that the Seikyoshas quest for kokusui, too, had
disintegrated by 1900 (Tam, Informal Groups, p. 24).
cultural unity, too, gave way to a more pragmatic and strategic concern to
stress Japans leadership and national interests by the turn of the century.59
59. Douglas R. Reynolds, Chinese Area Studies in Prewar China: Japans Toa Dobun
Shoin in Shanghai, 19001945, Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 45, No. 5 (1986), p. 945. A
shift in Sugiuras stance is also affirmed by his editorial for Tokyo asahi shinbun (Septem-
ber 18, 1898), published in the midst of the Far Eastern Crisis. Although he does not use the
term hozen, Sugiura calls for assisting [fuchi] Chinathat is, injecting new civilization,
developing thought, and promoting material progressas an urgent duty of the Japanese
(as the citizens of dobun doshu) and argues for stronger diplomacy toward China in the
face of renewed Western threat. Another editorial in Tokyo asahi shinbun published a year
later (October 9, 1899) directly advocated the idea of Shina hozen. Support for the Toa Dobun
Shoin as an important training center for private entrepreneurs and continental manage-
ment was also expressed by Kuga Katsunan (see his Shinkoku e no ryugaku, Nihon, No-
vember 9, 1902, reprinted in Kuga Katsunan zenshu, Vol. 7, pp. 56768).
60. Taishindan, Tokyo asahi shinbun, September 18, 1898; Sengoshin, Tokyo asahi
shinbun, August 13, 1895; Fukumoto Nichinan, Warera no Shina, Nihonjin, October 5,
1895, reprinted in Matsumoto Sannosuke, ed., Seikyosha bungaku zenshu (Tokyo: Chikuma
Shobo, 1980), p. 257; Zachmann, China and Japan, pp. 3940.
61. Tanaka, Japans Orient, p. 199.
62. Zenrinron; Gaiseishin ni toboshiki wa nanni genin suruka, Tokyo asahi shin-
bun, August 7, 1892. Also see Nagasawa Setsu, Yankii (Tokyo: Keigyosha, 1893), pp. 1113,
and Muto Sanjis observation (cited in Iriye, Pacific Estangement, p. 22), which expressed a
mixture of fear and admiration for Chinese immigrants.
63. Shinshodan, Yomiuri shinbun, September 30, 1887.
64. Zenrinron; Mata issetsu; Shosen gakko o kakucho subeshi, Tokyo asahi shin-
bun, May 29, 1892.
than the United States of America. Pointing to the Chinese contract laborers
in the United States, Sugiura wrote that although China had a trade deficit
with the United States, when taking account of the remittances sent home
by its countrymen abroad, the total value of exports can be said to exceed
that of imports. In this respect the country most exploited by the Chinese
was the United States, where they have siphoned off the largest amount of
money and dominated the local labor market through singular devotion
to work and savings. In light of the recently growing Japanese labor migra-
tion to the United States, he predicted that if Japanese immigrants worked
as hard and lived as frugally as the Chinese, they would certainly incur
the same treatment of exclusion. But this would be a cause for celebra-
tion rather than lament, for it would mean that they had successfully won
the competition with white workers at the lower end of the wage scale.65
In another article, he proposed that the Japanese should take advantage
of Chinese exclusion and step into their place to engage in labor without
losing face as members of a sovereign nation. According to this remarkable
logic, racial exclusion became an index of success in constructing a diaspora
across the Pacific. By the same token, he added, Japan must proceed with
caution in permitting whites to live in its interior; just as the United States
was faced with the consequences of having allowed Asian immigrants into
its territory, so Japan would risk social disorder and the loss of kokusui.66
Cultivating economic strength through trade and emigration offered the
only sure bulwark against such turmoil.
On the topic of emigration, Sugiura found himself in disagreement with
his Seikyosha colleagues, owing not least to his lack of understanding about
the true state of affairs. In contrast to the public optimism, the much-touted
prospect of transpacific emigration was dismissed by Fukumoto Nichinan,
who was keenly aware of the severity of Asian exclusion. During his study
at Stanford University, Nagasawa Setsu, too, toned down his enthusiasm for
emigration to the United States, as he observed firsthand the discrimination
against fellow Japanese, which he frequently reported in articles he sent
back to Seikyosha.67 The plight of emigrants was clearly not the focus of
Sugiuras concern in his diasporic vision of expansion.
65. Beikoku ni okeru Shinajin, Tokyo asahi shinbun, May 21, 1892. Sugiuras argu-
ment here reflects a lack of understanding of the realities of racial exclusion in America.
Amanuma Kaoru, Meiji chuki kokusui shugisha no iminkan, Tokai Joshi Daigaku kiyo,
No. 6 (1986), p. 26.
66. Gen Nihon nanafushigi no go, Yomiuri shinbun, June 26, 1888. The issue of Chi-
nese immigrants and the economic threat they posed also became one of the central points
in the public debate on mixed residence in Japan (Zachmann, China and Japan, pp. 23,
4041).
67. Hirose, Kokusui shugisha, p. 126. Nagasawa advocated the permanent settlement of
Hawaii (and acquisition of suffrage there) as the key to transpacific expansion of Japanese.
Yet he also expressed deep misgivings about the prospect of Japanese emigrants in the United
States, worried that they would soon be excluded like the Chinese (see his Yankii [Tokyo:
Keigyosha, 1893], pp. 2935, 11719, 12832). Nagasawa eventually came to conclude that
the United States was not suitable as a destination for emigration, suggesting instead Mexico
and Central and South America (Hirose, Kokusui shugisha, pp. 12930).
68. O mi shonin to gakumon, pp. 72729.
69. Shinkoku tsusho joyaku no katsuyo, Tokyo asahi shinbun, August 7, 1896; Jie-
iron, Tokyo asahi shinbun, July 18, 1899; Omoi o toki ni itase, Tokyo Asahi shinbun,
August 13, 1900.
70. Shinkoku tsusho joyaku no katsuyo, Tokyo asahi shinbun, August 7, 1896.
71. Peattie, The Nanyo, pp. 17374; Yano, Nanshin no keifu, pp. 6468; Shimizu
Hajime, Ajiashugi to nanshin, p. 95; Iriye, Pacific Estrangement, p. 20; Sven Matthiessen,
The Perception of the Philippines in Japanese Pan-Asianism From the Meiji-era until the
Wake of the Pacific War, GEMC Journal (Tohoku University), No. 4 (2011), pp. 13032.
to open contact with the region. Thereby, he hoped, Japan would at least
reach the level of Holland and Spain, if not the imperial glory of England
and France.72
Sugiuras argument for nanshin, which viewed trade and colonization as
inseparably linked, found a more dramatic outlet in Hankai yume monoga-
tari (Tale of a dream of Hankai), a novella he coauthored with Fukumoto
Nichinan in 1886.73 Like many Meiji writers who turned the South Pacific
into an object of popular curiosity and romantic adventure, Sugiura bor-
rowed the power of fiction to advocate expansion. But he made an unlikely
community its protagonists: Japans minority group known as burakumin,
social outcastes who were more pejoratively labeled eta and hinin in the
Tokugawa period. In addition to his stance on Korea, Sugiuras idea of mo-
bilizing outcastes as agents of southern expansion represented the unique
and most controversial aspect of his colonial thought. The story could also
be read as a summation of his key arguments: his multifaceted understand-
ing of overseas expansion as a means of protecting sovereignty and pro-
moting the Pan-Asianist project of koa is woven into its narrative in such
a way that nanshin emerges as a logical conclusion to his diasporic vision.
The novels plot, moreover, embodied broader societal hopes and prejudice
toward burakumin that are worth unpacking in detail, for they shed further
light on the inextricable link between expansionism and liberalism.74
Hankai yume monogatari is set in a fictional province of Japan, where a
hermit (inshi), during his visit to a hot spring, spots a man washing animal
hides in the nearby river (an act indicative of burakumin) and subsequently
follows him into his village. Seeing the villagers streaming into a building,
he decides to eavesdrop on their assembly, which provides the context for
the rest of the story. At the center of the room, filled with several hundred
people, one man, who appears to be the leader of burakumin, begins his
speech by deploring the oppression and discrimination they have endured
throughout history. The leader goes on to explain various ethnic origins
75. Dai-Nihon Kyoikukai Shigaken Shibu, ed., Sugiura Jugo sensei zenshu, pp. 1, 8.
Sugiura adds: It has a population of 4,319,000, and produces sugar, hemp, and especially
tobacco.
76. Shin heiminron, Yomiuri shinbun, June 5, 1886; Shin heimin shoshi ni gekisu,
Yomiuri shinbun, July 3, 1886. The abolition of outcaste status itself was recast in terms of
the global movement toward freedom and liberation by Meiji leaders. Daniel V. Botsman,
Freedom without Slavery? Coolies, Prostitutes, and Outcastes in Meiji Japans Emancipa-
tion Moment, American Historical Review, Vol. 16, No. 5 (2011), p. 1345.
77. Hisaki, Kaisetsu, p. 1029. For the example of Yagiyama village and the struggle of
local burakumin for equality in the wake of the Emancipation Ordinance, see Shinshu Otsu-
tsu: O
shi shi: kindai, Vol. 5 (O tsu Shiyakusho, 1982), pp. 6274.
78. Edward Fowler, The Buraku in Modern Japanese Literature: Texts and Contexts,
Journal of Japanese Studies, Vol. 26, No. 1 (2000), pp. 1415, 18; David Howell, Geogra-
phies of Identity in Nineteenth-Century Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press,
2005), pp. 83106; Jeffrey Paul Bayliss, On the Margins of Empire: Buraku and Korean
Identity in Prewar and Wartime Japan (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center,
2013). On the Tokugawa policy toward outcastes in terms of racism, see Herman Ooms,
Tokugawa Village Practice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), chapter 5.
79. Yomiuri zatsudan, Yomiuri shinbun, May 25, 1886.
80. For a summary of various scholarly assessments of the novella, see Watanabe, Su-
giura Jugo, pp. 4546, 6970, and Hisaki Yukio, Sugiura Shigetake to hisabetsu buraku
mondai, in Sugiura Jugo zenshu, Vol. 1, pp. 102933. My interpretation is close to that of
Kida Junichiro, who evaluates the novel as an idiosyncratic literature born out of a mar-
riage between Sugiuras nascent ideal of social reform as a young man of Meiji and his de-
sire to promote southward expansion. See Kidas Nangokuki, cited in Watanabe, Sugiura
both were seen as essential criteria for a modern civilized nation, rather
than contradictory pursuits. What we can deduce from his writings is that
the idea of sending burakumin abroad appealed to Sugiura as a way to re-
solve the contradiction between liberalism and vestiges of feudalism at
homeand to overcome the limits of the law in guaranteeing equality and
protection to all members of a new nation.81 By linking the struggle of the
domestic other to the oppression of the colonial other, furthermore, his
novella conjured a fantastic metamorphosis of outcastes into heroic pioneers
who would emancipate themselves by freeing their Asian brothers from
European rule. Here was yet another example of what Robert Tierney has
termed folklore imperialism,82 where fact and fiction came together in a
compelling utopian scenario.
Yet to resign oneself to the status quo of prejudice toward burakumin
as social custom, as Sugiura did, also meant to give up on agitating for
their equality at home. Rather than insist on full social integration of bura-
kumin into the category of the people (kokumin), he sought an overseas
outlet for the productive deployment of their labor, in effect exporting the
contradiction to a colonial hinterland. Nor was Sugiura alone in entertain-
ing this idea. The resettlement of burakumin in the frontier towns of Hok-
kaido was similarly explored in Meiji-period fiction and seriously contem-
plated since the late Tokugawa period by government officials (including
O e Taku, who championed the passage of the Emancipation Edict). Ac-
cording to Toake Endo, the Japanese governments policies to send Japanese
citizens to Latin America between the 1890s and 1960s also systematically
targeted marginalized and radicalized social groups such as poor farmers
and burakumin for export, out of concern for domestic political stability.
In effect, these plansessentially strategies of social imperialismwould
have left the former outcastes literally, if not legally, outside the boundaries
of the Japanese.83 Yet they would have also turned burakumin into true
Jugo, p. 45; Kida Junichiro, Kaikoku no seishin (Tokyo: Tamagawa Gakuen Shuppanbu,
1977), p. 301. Japans twin imperatives were also articulated by Tokutomi Soho in defense of
his new political position after 1895 and exemplified by Takekoshi Yosaburos advocacy of
liberal imperialism. Cited in Nirei, Globalism, p. 83.
81. Daniel V. Botsman, Punishment and Power in the Making of Modern Japan (Prince-
ton: Princeton University Press, 2005), pp. 5758.
82. See Robert Thomas Tierney, Tropics of Savagery: The Culture of Japanese Empire
in Comparative Frame (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010), chapter 3. Another
fictional writing on nanshin, with a similar plot to Hankai yume monogatari, was Yano
Ryukeis Ukishiro monogatari (1890) (Sudo Naoto, Nanyo-Orientalism: Japanese Represen-
tations of the Pacific [Amherst, N.Y.: Cambria Press, 2010], p. 5).
83. Fowler, The Buraku, pp. 910; Harada Tomohiko et al., eds., Kindai burakushi
shiryo shusei, Vol. 3: Jiyuminken undo to kaiho undo (Tokyo: Sanichi Shobo, 1987), p. 4;
Kida, Kaikoku no seishin, p. 299; Toake Endo, Exporting Japan: Politics of Emigration
toward Latin America (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009). The strategy of social
imperialism was to divert internal tensions caused by the disruptive effects of modernization
outward to preserve the existing order and thereby to restrict the process of social and politi-
cal freedom at home. Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Bismarcks Imperialism, 18621890, Past and
Present, Vol. 48 (1970), pp. 12223.
84. For instance, see Kanno Wataro, O mi shonin no kigen, Keizai Ronso (Kyoto
Teikoku Daigaku Keizai Gakkai), Vol. 26, No. 6 (1928), pp. 8190.
85. Irie Toraji, Meiji nanshin shiko, pp. 8182, 9192 (while at Todai, Suganuma also
drafted his own plan for southward advance in an essay, whose idea and prose derived directly
from Sugiuras novel, as cited in ibid., pp. 8385); Fukumoto Nichinan, Suganuma Teifu
kun sossu, Nihon, August 2, 1889, reprinted in Matsumoto, ed., Seikyosha bungaku zenshu,
pp. 23435; Hirose, Kokusui shugisha, p. 49.
86. Kuga Katsunan, Shokumin no hitsuyo narabini shokumin no basho, Tokyo denpo,
November 15 and 20, 1888, reprinted in Kuga Katsunan zenshu, Vol. 1 (Tokyo: Misuzu
Shobo, 1968), pp. 59699.
Conclusion
Spanning the last decades of the nineteenth century, Sugiura Shigetakes
colonial discourse offers a portal into some of the central concerns that
drove Japans transformation from an island nation into an oceanic empire.
In part unique in his provincial attachment and in part emblematic of the
Meiji ideological milieu, Sugiuras writings stitched together fluid and in-
choate ideas about nation building, modernity, and Pan-Asian unity that
grew out of Japans halting efforts to join the world powers. In the capacious
Japanese understanding of Western strength, imperialism was but one in
a wide repertoire of strategies for projecting national power abroad: from
trade and shipping, arms expansion and diplomacy, to overseas migration
and settlement. This inclusive approach to expansion in all directions87
framed Sugiuras maritime vision. To cast his vision in terms of the emerg-
ing field of transpacific history,88 if the northern Pacific was a space of
economic exchange and cultural solidarity against the West, the South Pa-
cific was an ideal site of colonization and settlement. The latter was spe-
cifically imagined as an outlet for Japans surplus population, with social
outcastes playing a leading role.
A search for national essence also led Sugiura deep into the annals of
Japanese history. For Sugiura and his Seikyosha friends, empire signified
not so much a rupture into modernity as a return to Japans ancestral ori-
gins as a seafaring community. Overseas expansion had a longer and more
complex genealogy than the rise of imperialism in the late nineteenth cen-
tury, one that could be tracked across the ocean linking Japan to the distant
shores of Nanyo.
Sugiuras diasporic vision also revealed a strong undercurrent of region-
alism in Japanese colonial thought that a nation-based narrative has long
obscured. In virtually every proposal for expansion that he penned, Sugiura
evoked the ancestral figure of O mi shonin, often in tacit comparison with
overseas Chinese, as a model for the contemporary Japanese to follow. In
so doing he sought to remind his countrymen of their shared heritage of ex-
pansion, a trait allegedly embedded in their national character and nurtured
quite independent of Western influence.
Moreover, Sugiuras thesis on China adds a new layer of complexity to
94. O machi and Inokari, Sugiura Jugo sensei, pp. 34757; Hisaki, Kaisetsu, p. 997;
Kaigo, Nishimura Shigeki, p. 533.
95. Tam, Informal Groups, p. 24; Hisaki, Kaisetsu, pp. 99394.
96. Shoko Juku ho (December 1911), reprinted in Sugiura Jugo zenshu, Vol. 1, p. 831.