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jun uchida

From Island Nation to Oceanic Empire:


A Vision of Japanese Expansion from the Periphery

Abstract: This article examines the diasporic thought of Sugiura Shigetake


(18551924), an early and largely overlooked proponent of Japanese empire.
Written during the Tokugawa-Meiji transition, Sugiuras work illustrates a cru-
cial link between domestic reform and maritime expansion while demonstrat-
ing a debt to the new ideologies of Japanism, Pan-Asianism, and liberalism. His
perspective as a native of O mi Province, moreover, reveals a distinctive strain
of colonial thought that envisioned people on the periphery of a newly unified
Japan, from O mi merchants to social outcastes, as central agents of expansion.

In late nineteenth-century Japanbetween the time the country fully


opened its ports to trade and the time it began building oceangoing steam-
ers in its own shipyardsempire was a fertile ground for imagination. One
place that loomed large in Meiji colonial discourse was Nanyo (the South
Seas). Its distant promise as a tropical utopia inspired a flurry of writ-
ings, firsthand as well as fictional, on southbound voyages to islands still
unclaimed on the map of the globe. Our future lies not in the north, but
in the south, not on the continent, but on the ocean, journalist Takekoshi
Yosaburo declared in a popular account of his 1909 journey to Nanyo, urg-
ing his readers to join in the grand task to turn the Pacific into a Japanese
lake.1 But Takekoshis famed call for nanshin (southern advance) in fact

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

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58 Journal of Japanese Studies 42:1 (2016)

built on a generation of Japanese thinkers before himmany all but for-


gottenwho had begun to outline strategies for transforming their insular
nation into a maritime empire.
One of the young visionaries who gave shape to such hazy dreams of
overseas glory was Sugiura Shigetake (also Jugo; 18551924). Born and
raised in the province of O mi (present-day Shiga Prefecture), Sugiura was
one of the earliest Japanese to advocate expansion beyond the coloniza-
tion of Hokkaido. In contrast to his better-known contemporaries such as
Takekoshi, Sugiura operated behind the spotlight for most of his life as
a hidden patriot, according to one biography. Yet his career arc reveals a
man who imposed his vision everywhere on the Meiji public sphere, serving
as educator, journalist, Diet member, nationalist, and Pan-Asianist before
spending his last years as an ethics tutor to Crown Prince Hirohito.2 Of the
many identities he donned, this essay focuses on Sugiuras role as an early
exponent of empire whose ideas of Japan as a maritime power filled the
national dailies he edited in the closing decades of the nineteenth century.
In outlining a possible route of expansion to the south and across the
Pacific, Sugiura brought a vast array of territories within his purview, from
the islands of Micronesia to South America. Tracing the broad contours
of his maritime vision illuminates the fluid and dynamic ideological mi-
lieu of Meiji Japan. His discourse on expansion traversed the boundaries of
ideologies as diverse as Japanism, Pan-Asianism, and liberalism, revealing
not only their fissures but significant intersections that have long eluded
scholars. Above all, his writings allow us to look at the world of imperial-
ism through a provincial lens rather than the familiar eyes of Tokyo. At a
time when national attention was riveted on the West, Sugiura turned to
unlikely sources of inspiration for expansion: merchants in his native home
of O mithe so-called O mi shonin who had pioneered long-distance trade
in the Tokugawa period3and their Chinese counterparts across the sea.
Moreover, he placed socially marginalized communities known as bura-
kumin, another carryover from the early modern era, at the heart of his pro-
posal for nanshin.
That these provincial and marginal actors found their way into Sugiuras

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).

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Uchida: Expansion from the Periphery 59

discourse behooves us to rethink the local and ideological underpinnings


of the Japanese empire. As part of the generation of men who, through
the power of public opinion, led and guided Meiji reform, Sugiura and his
seminal writings on foreign affairs offer insight into the linkages between
overseas expansion and Japans transformation into a modern nation-state.4
After a brief overview of Sugiuras early life, the pages that follow unpack
his discourse on expansion that contained four key arguments: the vision of
Japan as a maritime power and O mi merchants as an economic vanguard;
the Pan-Asian emphasis on amity with China; overseas Chinese as a model
of expansion; and Japans strategy of southern advance to be led by bura-
kumin. I examine how these views echoed as well as diverged from those
of his contemporaries, especially his intellectual affiliates in the Seikyosha
(Society for Political Education), who spearheaded the call for building a
maritime Japan. In doing so, I aim to uncover a vision of expansion that
was at once distinctive and characteristic of his time: a perspective centered
not so much on Tokyo as on the periphery of a newly unified nation, not so
much on the Asian mainland as on the Pacific Ocean.

Sugiuras Early Life and Japanism


Sugiura was born in 1855 to a Confucian scholar in Zeze domain of
O mi Province.5 Having studied both the Chinese classics and Dutch learn-
ing until his mid-teens, he was selected by the domain in 1870 to advance
to Daigaku Nanko (forerunner of Tokyo Imperial University), where the
brightest students assembled from around the country. His cohort included
Komura Jutaro (18551911), a trusted friend who would later join the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs. From 1876 to 1880, Sugiura studied chemistry
in England as one of ten exchange students dispatched by the Ministry of
Education. Four years abroad helped seed an ideology of what he would

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).

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60 Journal of Japanese Studies 42:1 (2016)

term Japanism (Nihonshugi). As he later reminisced, I studied extremely


hard, with a belief that it was necessary to learn about Western culture and
institutions in order to uplift the Japanese from their savage status, while
at the same time nurturing their Yamato spirit until they could keep off the
Westerners. Reflective of his own eclectic learning, his Japanism would
stress a practical fusion of the twokokusui hozon, gaisui yunyu (preser-
vation of national essence, importation of foreign essence)as a key strat-
egy of national strengthening.6
During his overseas study, Sugiura developed a conviction to pursue
education as a career, which began shortly after his return in 1880. He au-
thored a number of treatises on what he called rigakushu, educational phi-
losophy which proposed the application of scientific laws to understanding
of human affairs, in addition to teaching the uniqueness of Japanese kokutai
(national polity) and reverence for the imperial house. Sugiura also estab-
lished two schools that would define his lifelong career as the Educator of
Meiji. One was the Tokyo Eigo Gakko (Tokyo English Institute), renamed
Nihon Chugakko (Japan Middle School) in 1892, which became, in both
nomenclature and curriculum, an institutional emblem of his Japanist peda-
gogy. Another was Shoko Juku, a private academy he opened at his abode in
Tokyo, where local youths, joined by many aspirants from his native Shiga
Prefecture, studied and lived together in a dormitory.7
In addition to managing the two schools, Sugiura forayed into journal-
ism, becoming a chief columnist for Yomiuri shinbun in 1885. He devoted
the next several years to writing editorials, not only to disseminate his ideas
of Japanism but also to denounce the Meiji states compromised approach to
revising the unequal treaties with the West. Like-minded young conserva-
tives soon gathered around Sugiura to form the Seikyosha, a forum through
which they castigated the oligarchs for falling short of abolishing extrater-
ritoriality, warned against rampant Westernization, and argued that the
Japanese empire must carry on by pursuing Japanism at all costs.8

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:

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Uchida: Expansion from the Periphery 61

After a brief stint in politics as a Diet representative from Shiga in 1890,


disaffected Sugiura resumed his attack on the government as an associate
editor for Tokyo asahi shinbun, this time focusing on the attendant issue
of mixed residence (naichi zakkyo, the freedom of foreigners to reside
in Japans interior set forward by the Western powers as a precondition
for treaty reform). To prepare for this prospect, he stressed, nurturing the
spirit of independence among the people [kokumin] and expanding arma-
ments were national priorities. In the wake of the signing of a new treaty
in 1894, he added the urgent need to cultivate industrial strength so as
to compete with [foreigners] in commerce and manufacturing. All these
goals of national self-strengthening, he argued, could be promoted and ac-
celerated by a mass national effort of Japanese to expand overseas. His view
was shared by members of the Seikyosha. They argued for exporting more
Japanese goods, capital, and people, as their concern increasingly shifted
from a search for kokusui (national essence) to its diffusion across Asia.9
What punctuated Sugiuras prominent career as educator was his lesser-
known role in invigorating this early public discourse on expansion. Along
with Japanism, empire was the foremost and recurrent topic of his editorials
from the mid-1880s to 1902, a period that coincided with the beginning of
Japanese expansion overseas.

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.

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62 Journal of Japanese Studies 42:1 (2016)

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.

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Uchida: Expansion from the Periphery 63

trade, shipping, and migration, which many Meiji contemporaries identified


as the central pillars of Western strength. Undoubtedly inspired by Victorian
Britain at the height of its imperial glory, he wished to see Japan become
a great island empire (to teikoku), an empire of free trade in which the
merchant marine would carry Japanese goods and traders to far corners of
the world.14 Buried in his call for expansion was a criticism of government
leaders for obsessing about treaty revision or discussing arms expansion
while ignoring a more urgent task: the development of industry and trade
(shokusan kogyo). This was the best way to cultivate the foundation of
the state (kokuhon no baiyo) and maintain national sovereignty, Sugiura
argued, in order to earn the much-needed respect of Western nations and
revoke the unequal treaties. Since Japanese merchants were still not strong
enough to compete with foreign merchants, the government must assume
the task of conducting an investigation of markets abroad while guiding
its untutored merchants, who lacked national awareness (kokka no shiso)
and sought quick profit, mishandling goods and inviting mistrust.15 Over-
seas expansion, in other words, was critical for making a modern Japanese
citizenry, infused with a sense of patriotism and national duty.
That it was imperative for Japan as a small country to expand for na-
tional survival was a consistent theme in Sugiuras writingslogic also
found in countries like Egypt, subject to unequal treaties yet eager to build
an empire.16 The idea of refashioning Japan as an oceanic nation for this
purpose found many adherents. Sugiuras intellectual cousin and journal-
ist, Fukumoto Nichinan (born Makoto, 18571921), expounded in a series
of articles on the urgent necessity of developing Japans shipping indus-
try in the face of Western competition.17 A decade earlier, he had already
launched a colonial venture in Hokkaido by settling a group of shizoku (for-
mer samurai), convinced that developing a bulwark against Russia would be

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.

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64 Journal of Japanese Studies 42:1 (2016)

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.

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Uchida: Expansion from the Periphery 65

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

The ministrys call for action to Japanese merchantsto embark on


foreign trade and business abroad by following the modus operandi of O mi
shoninwas elaborated by Sugiura. One of his first editorials for Yomiuri
in 1886 made a direct plea to the merchants of Goshu (Goshu shonin ni
gekisu) which began with a wonted homage to their Tokugawa predeces-
sors. Goshu merchants are the best businessmen Japan had seen before the
Meiji period, he wrote, for they ventured out to work not only in the west-
ern and eastern provinces but as far as Ezo and Matsumae, transporting
their local products to the major ports of Echizen and traveling further on to
Shikoku and Kyushu via Osaka to amass a huge profit. These Goshu mer-
chants did not mind trekking to faraway places, even though to reach the far
corners of the Japanese archipelago at the time was more difficult than it is
to sail to Europe and America today. Now that transportation had greatly
improved with railroads and steamships, you must not content yourselves
with conducting business within Japan, he implored, urging fellow natives
of Shiga to take the initiative in trading with foreign countries. Only by

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.

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66 Journal of Japanese Studies 42:1 (2016)

working in distant lands such as Europe and America, not to speak of


neighboring countries like China and Korea, could they hope to maintain
the reputation of Goshu merchants as in olden times. Once they had suc-
cessfully built on the ancestors legacy to fly the rising sun flag across the
seas, he averred, the name of Goshu shonin would blaze like the sun.24
A decade later, Sugiura found himself making the same entreaties in a
bulletin published by the Goshu Kyoyukai (Association of Friends from the
Homeland of Goshu). Sugiura was not certain O mi merchants were carry-
ing on the keen will of their ancestors and giving fullest play to their abil-
ity. To be sure, their influence was visible along the streets of Nihonbashi
lined by a row of giant stores named O mi-ya, as well as in Hakodate and
Sapporo where they had built magnificent branches. But these stores
seemed to be relics of inherited riches rather than signs of newly earned suc-
cess. The illustrious name of O mi shonin significantly resides with expe-
ditionary commerce, he asserted, reminding his readers of their ancestral
origins as itinerant peddlers: Oh, heirs to O mi shonin, what will happen to
your grand name without rousing yourselves to action and pushing forward
vigorously? Sugiura was not alone in voicing this concern. Worrisome
signs of decline were also noted by the prefectural governor of Shiga, who
observed that O mi natives today appeared to prioritize the protection of
their ancestral wealth, rather than rise up in society through education.25
Sugiuras message to O mi merchants and their offspring culminated
in an energetic call for expansion abroad. To prepare for this task required
first and foremost educating a new generation of Japanese in practices of
modern and international commerce. Sugiura thus argued for expanding
vocational education, a focal point of his campaign when he ran for the Diet
in 1890.26 In another article addressed to merchants of O mi in the bulletin
of the Goshu Kyoyukai, Sugiura urged them to take a good look at the
commercial world where old knowledge and commercial apprenticeship
no longer sufficed to maintain a superior position. Common sense as
merchants of a civilized nation was called for, an understanding of global
affairs sufficient to assess how the result of the Sino-Japanese War would
affect our economy, or how the collection of war bonds would relate to

24. Goshu shonin ni gekisu, Yomiuri shinbun, March 28, 1886.


25. Kono yumei o ikan, Goshu Kyoyukai zasshi, Vol. 66 (December 1894), reprinted in
Sugiura Jugo zenshu, Vol. 1, pp. 72526; the governors interview with Tokyo asahi shinbun,
June 20, 1901. For conducting business and cultivating trust with foreigners, Sugiura also
stressed the need to nurture nationalistic awareness among Japanese pupils from primary
school on, a duty that bore especially heavily on local educators of a future generation of O mi
merchants. See the transcription of his lecture in Shigaken Shiritsu Kyoikukai zasshi, Vol. 103
(January 1898), reprinted in Sugiura Jugo zenshu, Vol. 1, p. 863.
26. Shogyo jitchi renshu, Tokyo asahi shinbun, April 19, 1894; Kido Shoyo, ed., Nihon
teikoku kokkai giin seiden (Osaka: Tanaka Soeido, 1890), pp. 292301.

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Uchida: Expansion from the Periphery 67

our financial community. Otherwise, he warned, a blind adherence to old


customssuch as the belief that studying makes one impudent, an atti-
tude prevalent among local merchant familieswould threaten the loss of
the great name of O mi shonin. Furthermore, merchant marine academies
(shosen gakko) must be expanded to inculcate young men with skills of
navigation that they might search for markets around the world. He con-
sidered the diffusion of oceanic thought (kaikoku shiso) so critical that
he later proposed incorporating long-distance navigation into annual school
trips for middle schools.27
Through his newspaper editorials, Sugiura extended his message to
merchants around the country, evoking O mi shonin as a veritable tem-
plate for working in foreign countries. But even famed merchants of
O mi have not shown much progress in this direction, as it is extremely
difficult for civilians to board a ship for overseas travel. As one solution
to this logistical problem, Sugiura advanced a strikingly original proposal:
use warships as commercial vessels, an idea most likely inspired by the
1886 voyage of his fellow Seikyosha founder Shiga Shigetaka (18631927)
to Nanyo. Specifically, he proposed that the navys training ships, which
began to cruise the South Pacific in 1875, carry merchants in addition to
its cadets as a way to open trade and communication with the islands of
Nanyo as well as with Australia, South America, and other markets on
the Pacific Rim. Such ready access to marine transportation, he envisaged,
would enable those with the spirit akin to that of Goshu shonin to famil-
iarize themselves with the tastes of foreigners, manufacture goods suitable
to them, and travel to sell these goods directly.28
Sugiuras idea of doubling the function of the precious few warships in
Japan was later elaborated by Fukumoto Nichinan. He called for building
new cruisers (junkosen), armed with cannons and ready to be deployed for
battle, which would ordinarily operate as commercial vessels.29 The use of
the navys training ships was taken to yet another level when a Seikyosha
leader, Miyake Yujiro (Setsurei; 18601945), sailed the southern Pacific in

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.

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68 Journal of Japanese Studies 42:1 (2016)

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-

30. Pyle, The New Generation, p. 159.


31. Gaikoku boeki no koto, Yomiuri shinbun, January 27, 1887; Futatabi gaikoku
boeki no koto o ronzu, Yomiuri shinbun, January 30, 1887; Kano Masanao, Shihonshugi
keiseiki no chitsujo ishiki (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobo, 1969), pp. 34953.
32. Shiga, Nanyo jiji, pp. 102, 19193.
33. Gaikoku boeki no koto, Yomiuri shinbun, January 27, 1887.

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Uchida: Expansion from the Periphery 69

ricula and extend it to overseas locations. As potential sites of such on-


the-ground commercial training, schools must choose distant rather than
nearby places, starting with China, Korea, Russian Vladivostok, Siam, and
so forth, and gradually expand it to more faraway lands, in the course of
which students could also gain maritime knowledge and experience. Su-
giuras idea evidently struck a chord with educators in his home prefecture.
Hachiman Commercial School, the first vocational school established in
Shiga in 1886, incorporated peddling, among other local commercial cus-
toms, into its curriculum, which became the schools trademark. Eager to
revitalize the local economy and revive the name of Shiga as the birthplace
mi shonin, the schools teachers also seriously contemplated extending
of O
this practice abroad, which materialized during an annual school trip to the
continent on the eve of the Manchurian Incident in 1931.34

A Pan-Asian Call for Amity with China


In calling for overseas trade or stressing the importance of navigation,
Sugiura joined a chorus of Meiji thinkers who embraced an ocean-centered
view of expansion. His attitudes toward the continent were more compli-
cated. Whether parliamentarians (like O i Kentaro and Itagaki Taisuke) who
looked to the continent as an outlet for their political discontent, or radi-
cal Pan-Asianists (like Miyazaki Toten and the Genyosha and its offshoot,
Kokuryukai)35 who intervened in indigenous Chinese and Korean efforts to
oust the existing regimes, many Meiji Japanese saw the political reform of
Japan and the liberation of Asia as closely linked. Yet there were others, like
Sugiura, who did not fit either profile neatly. To be sure, Sugiura argued for
overseas expansion no less staunchly than did these veterans of the freedom
and peoples rights movement. But he departed from them in one significant
way: he counseled against taking a hawkish policy toward China over Ko-
rea, a stance he maintained throughout the Sino-Japanese War of 189495.
Sugiura introduced his argument for amity with China (zenrinron) in
an August 1886 editorial for Yomiuri, which opened by reminding readers
of the enormous cultural debt Japan had owed China since antiquity. Up-

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).

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70 Journal of Japanese Studies 42:1 (2016)

braiding the Japanese for their politically undesirable tendency to look


down on the Qing, he likened their attitude to that of an impertinent stu-
dent of Western learning disdaining his old teacher of the Chinese classics.
Sugiuras sermon, delivered also to students at his own academies, may be
partially explained by his Confucian educational background. Equally sig-
nificant, however, was his respect for the Chinese handling of European en-
croachments on East Asia, as demonstrated by the recent Sino-French War
of 188485. The French may have achieved their war aim to take control of
Tonkin (northern Vietnam), but the Chinese had defeated them in a number
of battles at sea. The Qing remained calm and undaunted, observed Su-
giura, whereas Japan would be completely at a loss if it had more than
one hundred casualties or several warships sunk. The Chinese were even
more impressive in the realm of diplomacy. The government representative
Li Hongzhang demonstrated fortitude and unexpected agility in negotia-
tions, leading to the eventual French withdrawal from Formosa (Taiwan)
and the Pescadores. Hence, while singling out Germanys Bismarck and
Englands Gladstone as the great men (eiketsu) who had the power to
shake the world, Sugiura ranked Li of the Qing as a close second, the
hero of the next powerful country.36
Around this time, the Qing empire began to reassert its suzerainty over
Korea in the face of Western pressures and new competition from Japan.
Following the failure of the Japanese-assisted coups to sever the Korean
court from the Chinese faction, in 1885 Ito Hirobumi and Li Hongzhang
concluded the Tianjin Agreement. In the context of Japans reabsorption
into its own domestic political matters, the agreement effectively under-
wrote Chinese dominance in the peninsula for the next decade. Sugiuras
perception of the Qing as a great power (taikoku) therefore not only cap-
tured a broad recognition in Japan and abroad of Chinese naval superiority
in the decade leading up to the Sino-Japanese War. It also clearly registered
the effort of the Qing dynasty, even as it was being carved up into Western
spheres of influence, to refashion itself from a ceremonial authority into a
Western-style ruler in the strained geopolitical context of East Asia.37
Sugiuras reaction to the Sino-French conflict over Vietnam contrasted

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.

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Uchida: Expansion from the Periphery 71

with that of many Japanese commentators who seldom demonstrated sym-


pathy for the Qing. Indeed, as Japans rivalry with China over Korea inten-
sified in the 1880s, public opinion turned increasingly hostile. Fukuzawa
Yukichis famous proposal for de-Asianization of Japan was echoed by
popular rights advocates across party lines who argued for opening a war
with the Qing.38 Sugiura countered such hawkish cries by steadfastly in-
sisting on amity with China. Rather than a regional contest between the
two Asian powers, a conflict between the Eastern and Western races was
on the horizon, as exemplified by the recent exclusion of Chinese from the
United States. According to Sugiuras diasporic vision that bridged what
was happening on the Asian continent with the issue of emigration across
the Pacific, the Japanese and Chinese must cement their unity around their
shared racial heritage against the white imperialists already active on the
continent.39
Sugiuras Pan-Asianist insistence on unity may have sounded as quix-
otic as his perception of China as a great power. He was certainly one of
the earliest intellectuals who conceptualized Asia as a cultural and racial
unit, before Pan-Asianism became a coherent ideology or movement, that
is, a defensive ideological posture toward the West in the aftermath of the
Russo-Japanese War and a concrete notion of regional integration under
Japanese leadership after World War I.40 In fact, his affiliates in Seikyosha
were among the first to use the term Ajiashugi (Asianism or Pan-Asianism)
to signify a cultural unity of Asia and a racial struggle of Asians to be led
by the Japanese.41 Fukumoto Nichinan lamented the decline of Asia in the
context of Western imperialism in the early 1880s and expressed a growing

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).

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72 Journal of Japanese Studies 42:1 (2016)

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.

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Uchida: Expansion from the Periphery 73

(and expansion).48 Emblematic was the Nisshin Boeki Kenkyujo (Institute


for Sino-Japanese Commercial Research) in Shanghai. Founded in 1890
by Arao Sei (who had served as an interpreter and spy in China for the
Army General Staff), the institute grew out of his conviction that the task
of raising Asia demanded serious Japanese study of Chinese language and
society in order for trade relations to move forward.49 This task would
be more fully implemented by its famous successor, the Toa Dobun Shoin
(East Asian Common Culture Academy) that Sugiura would briefly head in
19023. In sum, Sugiuras stress on racial and cultural unity, as with other
Sinic strains of Pan-Asian thought, was ultimately harnessed to the goal
of national expansion in order to claim a piece of the growing economic pie
on the continent.
While demanding stronger relations with China, Sugiura remarkably
argued for loosening ties to Koreaa distinguishing feature of his Pan-
Asianism when rendered into a foreign policy proposal. In the wake of
the aforementioned coups when the Korean court came increasingly un-
der Chinese sway, Sugiura argued that Japan must refrain from interfering
with Koreas internal affairs, not out of any affinity, but out of his very low
opinion of Korea as a sovereign country. Korea does not produce goods
that are particularly necessary for our country, he asserted, nor did it offer
anything to be learned in the area of arts and sciences. In short, Korea
was simply not worth risking many lives and capital as the Japanese had
done in the recent coups. Besides, any attempt to extend Japans leverage
over the Korean court would provoke diplomatic conflict and possibly even
a war with the Qing. Better to entrust Korea to the Qing (or to Tsarist Russia,
which was expanding southward toward the peninsula), so that Japan could
expend its resources and energies elsewhere.50
Sugiuras argument provided a stark contrast with that of Tarui Tokichi
(18501922). A journalist turned politician, Tarui in his Daito gapporon
(1893) vaguely proposed that Japan should form a political union (gappo)

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.

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74 Journal of Japanese Studies 42:1 (2016)

with Choson Korea and extend it to China to create a Pan-Asianist federation


of the Great East (Daito). Nonetheless, Taruis thesis was premised on the
same idea of Korean weakness and inability to modernize without Japanese
aid that underpinned Sugiuras writings. The difference was that Tarui did
not see the Korea problem as insurmountable as Sugiura claimed.51
A decade later in the summer of 1895, even as conflict with the Qing
over Korea drew to a close with Japans victory in sight, Sugiura contin-
ued to doubt the value of Korean intervention, with a faint admission of
its importance to Japans national security. He now questioned the very
ability of Korea to survive as a small independent nation like Belgium
or Switzerland, whether on its own or with the assistance of another
country. For one reformist faction after another, Korean leaders failed to
muster solidarity in the face of ceaseless external pressuresmost re-
cently, the Russians in Wonsan and the British in Komundowhich made
one doubt if the [Korean] people really want independence. Sugiura had
already written in the 1880s that only our Japan and the Qing maintain the
dignity [taimen] of truly sovereign states . . . who can stand up to the West
by calling themselves the nations of Toyo. By the end of the Sino-Japanese
War, he suggested that Japan should not adhere too closely to the word
Toyo [Orient]. In a rhetorical gesture of parting with Korea, he argued
that phrases like peace in Toyo are all but invented for the Western pow-
ers who exploit the turmoil in the Orient for maintaining a balance of
power among themselves.52
In contrast to the Japanese Orientalist scholarship on Toyo which
sought to conceptually separate China from Japan as inferior and the
other, Sugiuras Pan-Asianism emphasized Sino-Japanese unity but did not
insist on Toyo, viewing the latter as no more than a geopolitical construct
foisted on Asia by the imperial West.53 Equally conspicuous was the ab-
sence in his articles of any positive emphasis on cultural and ethnic affinity
with Korea, a central trope of Japans justification for its intervention into
and eventual colonization of the peninsula. Rather, Sugiura deplored that
Japan had been encumbered by Korea as a family relation since ancient
times, a nuisance who jeopardized the more important relationship with

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).

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Uchida: Expansion from the Periphery 75

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.

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76 Journal of Japanese Studies 42:1 (2016)

of 1898, the idea of an Asian Monroe Doctrine was advanced by another


Seikyosha affiliate, Kuga Katsunan, and shared by Konoe Atsumaro, who
emerged as the leader of Japans Pan-Asian movement around the turn of the
century, having renounced his earlier (and controversial) view of a racial
alliance of Asian nations against the Western powers.57
In the highly fluid and volatile context of Meiji diplomacy, the apparent
chasm between Sugiuras friendly respect toward China and Fukuzawas
polemical call for de-Asianization further narrowed. Fukuzawa evidently
revised his position to endorse Sino-Japanese solidarity in the aftermath of
the Far Eastern Crisis of 189798, when China sought, if reluctantly, a rap-
prochement with Japan in the face of renewed Western encroachments on
Chinese territory. Fukuzawas opportunistic volte-face paralleled a larger
shift in the overall emphasis of Pan-Asianist advocates. They moved from
an idealistic notion of cultural and racial unity with China to a more prag-
matic goal of cultivating economic and strategic ties with China, while un-
equivocally stressing Japans national interests and leadership.
At this juncture, as Zachmann and others have noted, a confusing and
shifting constellation of positions gradually converged on a common policy
of Shina hozen (preservation of Chinas integrity). This convergence, es-
sentially of realpolitik and idealism, was epitomized by the formation of the
Toa Dobunkai (East Asian Common Culture Society) under Konoes lead-
ership, as a result of a merger of two rather different Pan-Asianist groups
(which involved key members of the Seikyosha on the one hand and Arao
Seis disciples on the other) in late 1898. In addition to aid[ing] Chinas
advancement, the Toa Dobunkai professed as its aim to preserve the in-
tegrity of China (Shina o hozen su), much in line with the dominant public
opinion that no longer considered China an equal partner.58 Sugiura also be-
came involved in the societys activities on the continent. For a brief period
of 19023, Sugiura served as the head of the Toa Dobun Shoin, an academy
designed to train young Japanese as China hands who would aid their
countrys military and business operations on the ground. Although illness
compelled him to end his tenure in Shanghai, Sugiuras continued support
for the Toa Dobunkai suggests that his earlier, romantic notion of racial and

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).

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Uchida: Expansion from the Periphery 77

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

Overseas Chinese as a Diasporic Model


Nevertheless, Sugiuras emphasis on amity with China endured at least
until the turn of the century and, if anything, deepened after the war. In
the aftermath of the humiliating Triple Interventionwhich exposed the
weakness of Japanese diplomacy and engendered new concern about Ja-
pans credentials as the leader of the yellow racehe cautioned his coun-
trymen against self-congratulatory complacency and called for elevating
their relationship with China from amity to unity against the West. From
the perspective of koa, Fukumoto Nichinan similarly continued to see the
Qing as Japans most appropriate partner in Asia, evaluating highly the la-
tent ability of the Han Chinese to rebuild, revive, and rise after the
Qing defeat. Others such as Miyake Setsurei, too, perceived China as a
worthy opponent with diplomatic skills and military potentialbefore
they fully turned to the argument for the preservation of China at the cen-
turys end.60
Sugiuras Confucian regard for the old master resonated to some ex-
tent with prominent scholars of China, including Naito Konan (Torajiro,
18661934), the founder of the Kyoto School of Sinology. But whereas Naito
and his Tokyo counterpart, Shiratori Kurakichi (18651942), were as con-
cerned with the investigation of Chinese history as they were convinced of
Chinas contemporary weakness,61 Sugiura expressed much admiration for
the Chinese in the present, especially their ability to expand overseas, which
appeared unshaken by the Qing military defeat.
What particularly impressed him, and other Meiji thinkers, was the

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.

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78 Journal of Japanese Studies 42:1 (2016)

extraordinary success of Chinese in spreading themselves around the globe


through trade and emigration, areas in which the Japanese were seen to
lag. From the time he began writing for Yomiuri, Sugiura praised the Chi-
nese national character (kokuminsei) as being full of ambition to venture
afar, resolutely overcome the high waves, and not in the least loath to live
in foreign lands, abilities that we Japanese could never match. By dint of
hard work and perseverance, demonstrated in the face of recent exclusion
in the United States, the Chinese have already built trust in the realm of
commerce across the world.62 Most intriguingly, the diasporic portraits of
O mi shonin and overseas Chinese in Sugiuras narrative regularly blurred.
What he respected the most about the Chinese characterresilience, per-
severance, and trustcorresponded, almost word for word, to the quali-
ties he celebrated as the cardinal virtues of O mi merchants. One Yomiuri
article explicitly compared the two communities, stating that Goshu mer-
chants in retrospect resemble Chinese merchants whose sharp business
tactics could even make European merchants suffer. Nevertheless, our
countrymen, busy styling themselves as Westerners, fail to pay attention
to their formidable [Chinese] rivals, which is nothing short of madness.
Sugiuras point was corroborated by an unnamed friend who, having re-
cently returned from China, opined that those who wish to do business
in China would never succeed, unless they began as Goshu merchants had
done before. In short, Sugiura argued, we must update the old customs of
Goshu merchants, eradicate the evil custom of aping Westerners when go-
ing abroad, and devote ourselves solely to obtaining profit.63
In Sugiuras editorials, the weaknesses of his countrys merchants were
often cast into sharp relief by their juxtaposition to overseas Chinese. If the
globe-trekking Chinese were akin to O mi merchants, he implied, contem-
porary Japanese had become too insular to bear any resemblance to their
own forebears. The Japanese are prone to being bossy at home but timid
elsewhere [uchibenkei], he rued, thanks to the Tokugawa shogunates
policy of national seclusion, which made most countrymen introverted
(uchiki) and loath to work outside [dekasegi]. By staying put on the home
islands, the Japanese even allowed the Chinese to monopolize the sale of
their own manufactured goods in overseas markets, whether in San Fran-
cisco or South America.64
But no nation faced a more formidable competition on its own home soil

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.

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Uchida: Expansion from the Periphery 79

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.

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80 Journal of Japanese Studies 42:1 (2016)

In the final months of the Sino-Japanese War, Sugiura declared to his


fellow natives of Shiga that a larger battle awaited them in the realm of
commerce. Even though our brave imperial army may destroy the Chinese
empire, the Chinese people will not perish, he argued. Nor would the
powers that had maintained a position of neutrality . . . be foolish enough to
remain neutral in the coming economic war to be waged around the world.
At this critical juncture, he asked his readers, whose duty is it to obtain
commercial supremacy in the Orient with an abacus? The answer was none
other than our O mi shonin, descendants of expeditionary merchants. If
you have inherited anything from your ancestors, Sugiura exhorted the
people of O mi, you owe it to them to stake a claim on the worlds economic
battle front.68 Expansion, he suggested, was in their DNA.
Following Japans victory, Sugiura urged all Japanesenot only the
government authorities and entrepreneurs but the general publicto
make full use of the trade treaty newly signed with the Qing to energeti-
cally push forward in the area of foreign commerce, which would also be
key to preparing for treaty revision. Sugiura connected his argument for
expansion more explicitly to his abiding concern with Japanism. The so-
called progress that the people are apt to boast about our country was
in reality nothing more than an imitation of Western things, he claimed,
which has generated a tendency to despise the indigenous and revere the
foreign. We no longer see in Japan the spirit of enduring hardship and
remaining unfazed by difficulty [kennin fubatsu], he lamented, as if to
affirm his fear that O mi shonin were threatened with extinction. Prescrip-
tions for resuscitating the spirit of Nippon danji (traditionally masculine
Japanese men) were to be sought in economic expansion. In anticipation
of mixed residence, he argued, we must compete with the great powers
in enterprises of all kinds, at home and abroad. This required nurtur-
ing a grand and indefatigable character and expanding the indomitable
spiritin short, a fundamental and complete reform of Japanese nation-
ality. Overseas expansion was, in other words, a means of Japanese cultural
renewal, consonant with his ultimate goal of adopting the material merits
of Western culture and digesting them, while at the same time devoting
ourselves to our time-honored characteristic of spiritual training. All this
must begin with a recognition that the period of imitation is already over;
we have reached a point to make a new departure in order to surpass the

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.

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Uchida: Expansion from the Periphery 81

products of Western civilization. It was time for Japan to become a power


in its own right.69
Even as his contemporaries, including members of the Seikyosha, be-
gan to speak of Chinas decline in the late 1880s and 1890s, Sugiura treated
China not merely as an object of assistance but as a competitor that had still
many lessons to offer Japan. China may have ceded political leadership to
Japan in Asia, but Japan remained on the fringes of the global market domi-
nated by overseas Chinese. It is patently clear that to seek to reign over
these people as rivals requires no ordinary strategy, he observed at the turn
of the century.70 Apart from the United States, nowhere was the Chinese
commercial dominance more pronounced than in the South Seas or Nanyo,
a region of great interest to Japanese traders and emigrants, but one where
they would encounter formidable competitors in the decades to follow.

Southern Advance and Its Unlikely Agents


Sugiuras colonial discourse as examined so far reveals two basic and
conflicting vectors of Japanese expansion: the maritime and the continen-
tal. Although most scholars have emphasized the continental orientation in
the history of the Japanese archipelago since ancient times, Mark Peattie
and others have shown that the maritime orientation was equally or more
prevalent in the Meiji period.71 Sugiuras thinking further substantiates the
importance of the maritime orientation in Meiji colonial thought. A coun-
terpoint to Sugiuras argument for amity with China was precisely this focus
on the southern seas as the proper locus of Japans colonial activity. For
several decades before policymakers set their minds on the Chinese con-
tinent as a security concern, Nanyo occupied the hearts of many journal-
ists, politicians, intellectuals, and naval officers, who argued for redirecting
Japans colonizing drive from the northern borderland of Hokkaido to the
South Pacific islands, culminating in a call for southern advance (nanshin)
that reverberated into the 1910s. As early as 1886 in a Yomiuri shinbun
editorial, Sugiura argued that the tiny island nation of Japan must actively
expand its territory by choosing a prospective colony among the islands
of the East Indies. In addition to utilizing the navys vessels, he proposed
the creation of a private trading firm like the East India Company as a way

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.

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82 Journal of Japanese Studies 42:1 (2016)

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

72. Toyo ronsaku, Yomiuri shinbun, October 1, 1886; Shinshuron.


73. Sugiura Shigetake and Fukumoto Nichinan, Hankai yume monogatari: ichimei
shinheimin kaitendan (Tokyo: Sawaya, 1886). The name in the title, Hankai, refers to Fan
Kuai (?189 BC), a military general in the early Han Dynasty, whose original occupation was
a butcher of dog meat (Hankai, Nihon daihyakka zensho [Nipponica], JapanKnowledge
(online data base), http://www.jkn21.com, accessed on January 12, 2012). Given the subtitle
that includes shin heimin, Hankai can be construed as an oblique reference to burakumin.
Coauthor Fukumoto (Dai-Nihon Kyoikukai Shigaken Shibu, ed., Sugiura Jugo sensei zenshu,
Vol. 1 [Tokyo: Kenkyusha, 1945], p. 8) later wrote another short treatise on Japans historical
ties with the Philippines, arguing for reviving close trade relations and settling the islands to
supplant the declining Spanish empire. See his Firippiinu gunto ni okeru Nihonjin (Tokyo:
Hakubunsha, 1889).
74. For an insightful analysis of the relationship between liberalism and expansionism
in the work of Protestant intellectuals, see Nirei, Globalism.

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Uchida: Expansion from the Periphery 83

of our people: they are mostly descendants of prisoners and captives


brought to Japan as a result of Empress Jingus conquest of the Three King-
doms of Korea, a series of punitive expeditions to Ezo, and Hideyoshis
expedition to the Korean peninsula. He also discusses butchery and the
meat-eating custom among his people. This custom has led them to be os-
tracized (much like Indias outcastes and Europes Jews) since the arrival
of Buddhism, he notes, but it has also made them physically comparable
to Westerners and stronger than the other three classes of aristocrats,
warriors, and commoners.
Nevertheless, discrimination persists even since the Emancipation Edict
of 1871 when we social outcastes joined the commoners in name and in
law. So long as we stay in the [Japanese] empire, we will never be treated
as equal by this society, avers the leader, who subsequently proposes an
extraordinary measure: to secure a site for our permanent settlement
outside the home islands. Specifically, he proposes that each family put
forward one young adult male so that they can dispatch a total of 90,000
able-bodied men to build a [new] nation abroad. This idea both surprises
and delights the crowd. After ruling out Korea, China, and other candidates
for migration, the leader comes to the crux of his proposal by pointing to
one large region on the map, which he describes as not far from Taiwan
and located in the midst of a large mass of islands in the west of the Pa-
cific, east of the Indian Ocean, south of the East China Sea, and north of
Oceania. Although he does not state it explicitly, it can be inferred that he
is talking about the Philippines.75 If we obtained [this land], he explains,
we could, first, turn it into our permanent home; second, add to Japans
glory; and third, assist the strategy of raising Asia [koa no sakuryaku]. We
can kill three birds with one stone.
The burakumin leader argues that we should take every opportunity to
supplant the aging ruler of this islandthat is, the Spanish. When asked
if it is possible to conquer the island by force in light of international
law, he reassures the crowd that an army of 90,000 young men would be
dispatched to engage in a noble mission to liberate the natives from colonial
tyranny. The rest of the people should emigrate to these islands one by one
and engage in service, agriculture, manufacturing, and a host of lowly jobs.
He even proposes that they become Christians as a way to infiltrate the
colony, while biding our time for the opportunity to join the local people
in their fight for freedom, just like the day of American independence. Be-
cause Spanish rule is notorious for its cruelty and oppressive taxation,
he is certain the local people will rise to revolt within one or two years

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.

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84 Journal of Japanese Studies 42:1 (2016)

of burakumin settlement. In enthusiastic support of his plan, the people


stand up and begin to sing in unison, vowing to overcome their predicament
as shin heimin (new commoners, a euphemism for outcastes coined in the
Meiji period).
Presented as the dream of a recluse, the kernel of Sugiuras argument
buried in the novella was stated more explicitly in several editorials he
penned for Yomiuri that same year. In one article, he pointed out the in-
justice of ongoing discrimination against the shin heimin and enjoined his
readers to treat them the same as other Japanese. In another article he
wrote a month later, however, he frankly admitted that prejudice was a
long-standing custom that cannot be dispelled overnight. Given the failure
of law to protect and liberate them, he implied, there was no remedy to be
sought in a society inured to inequality. Rather than feeling indignant in
vain at home, members of shin heimin should venture abroad and engage
in foreign trade, using their strong bodies and capacity for endurance, nur-
tured by the custom of meat eating. Sugiuras proposition here was none
other than to enact the dream of the hermit outlined in his story, while add-
ing the Malthusian rationale of securing a source of foodstuff and an outlet
for Japans surplus population. Addressing the gentlemen of shin heimin,
he wrote: If you created a colony outside the 60-odd prefectures, opened a
New Japan, and came to hoist the rising-sun flag there, you would not only
recover your honor but also help project Japans national prestige overseas.
By mobilizing burakumin to spearhead the task of national expansion, Su-
giura hoped to recast a colonizing venture as an emancipatory project, or to
accomplish the two goals in one task.76
Hankai yume monogatari was among the earliest Meiji writings to ad-
dress the issue of discrimination against the former outcastes, and arguably
the only work to link it directly to southern expansionism. According to the
story, the colonization of the Philippines had a three-fold significance
salvation of the burakumin, expansion of national power, and assistance to
the strategy of koaadvancing Japans liberal, imperial, and Pan-Asian
projects at once. If Sugiuras proposal for using outcastes as colonial agents
was in keeping with his understanding of expansion as a means of nation
building, it also reflected his personal roots in Shiga, which had one of
the largest burakumin communities in prewar Japan.77 At the same time,

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.

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Uchida: Expansion from the Periphery 85

the story exposes some deep-seated assumptions about burakumin held by


the Meiji Japanese. For instance, the supposed alien origins of shin heimin
mentioned by the speaker underscored spurious Japanese claims about the
racial difference between former outcastes and the mainstream or Yamato
minzoku. These ideas were rooted in the rigid class system of the Toku-
gawa period and not entirely removed by the Emancipation Edict. When
considering that ideas about the alien origins of burakumin emerged in the
context of Japans colonization of Korea and pathological depictions of
burakumin and Koreans frequently blurred in Japanese discourse, one may
easily surmise how Sugiuras novella helped spread this pseudoscientific
view of racial difference, perpetuating the very discrimination he claimed
to combat.78 A related belief was that their alleged meat-eating custom
made burakumin physically fit for leading colonial activities abroad. Su-
giura even developed this claim into a eugenic argument for improving the
physical strength of the Japanese race. He demonstrated his point through
a comparison with the robust Chinese, who have already advanced a few
steps ahead of most Japanese by adopting a Western diet, creating greater
capacity for perseverance.79
A final presupposition undergirding Sugiuras thesis was that the former
outcastes would continue to suffer prejudice at home, so they would be bet-
ter off relocating abroad. Hankai yume monogatari in this regard painted a
grim portrait of Meiji Japan as a society whose promises of modernity and
freedom had fallen short. But was the authorial intent behind the proposi-
tion to export burakumin abroad emancipatory or discriminatory? Postwar
Japanese commentators are split over this question, as they are over the
novels impact on the social structure of discrimination at the time. Rather
than frame the issue in these terms, I consider it more fruitful to contextual-
ize and read Sugiuras proposal as one response among many to an epochal
challenge facing Meiji Japan: to meet the twin imperatives of fostering lib-
eralism at home and imperialism abroad.80 In the age of empire, we know,

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

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86 Journal of Japanese Studies 42:1 (2016)

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

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Uchida: Expansion from the Periphery 87

successors to the diasporic O mi shonin (whose continental origins were,


in a rather ironic coincidence, similarly entertained by local scholars in
Shiga84).
The reception of Hankai yume monogatari among Meiji publishers ap-
pears to have been mixed. While the Choya shinbun (October 26, 1886)
gave a lukewarm review of the novella as an interesting piece of writing
whose true intention nonetheless remains unclear, the Chugai nippo (No-
vember 10, 1886) enthusiastically embraced it, stirred by its message that
the old eta class should seize an island in the South Pacific, adding it
would be better to mobilize the 400,000-odd [former samurai] idlers [kuitsu-
bushi] for this task. Although the extent of its distribution is unfortunately
unknown, the work appears to have enthralled some young men of Meiji.
One zealous advocate of nanshin, Suganuma Teifu (186589), read Hankai
yume monogatari while studying at the University of Tokyo. After gradua-
tion, he brought the novella back to his hometown of Hirado and circulated it
among local students who competed to read it in excitement. And to these
young and earnest supporters of nanshin, he evidently proposed that they
should organize troops to prepare for an expedition, in order to open a place
to work for the men of Hirado. Suganumas desire to travel to the south was
so strong that he quit his teaching job at Koto Shogyo Gakko (Tokyo Higher
Commercial School) and left for the Philippines in May 1889, where he was
joined by Fukumoto Nichinan. It was after his meeting with Sugiura that
Fukumoto developed a new interest in the Philippines (and overseas coloni-
zation more generally), following the failure of his aforementioned venture
in Hokkaido and another trading venture in Shanghai.85
Although Suganumas death from cholera brought a sudden end to their
grand scheme of building a basis for future Japanese settlement, Sugiuras
vision of nanshin was to be inherited by Kuga Katsunan, chief editor of
Tokyo denpo. Kuga would offer a more concrete rationale for the mass colo-
nization of the Philippines, not only by pointing to its fertile land and rela-
tively low population density, but also by underscoring the alleged Malay
lineage in the Japanese race.86

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.

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88 Journal of Japanese Studies 42:1 (2016)

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

87. Iriye, Pacific Estrangement, p. 43.


88. See Lon Kurashige, Madeline Y. Hsu, and Yujin Yaguchi, Introduction: Conversa-
tions on Transpacific History, in Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 83, No. 2, special issue:
Conversations on Transpacific History (2014), pp. 18388. Although transpacific history
has yet to cohere as a disciplinary field, as the authors note, pioneering efforts have been
launched in this direction by the work of Matt K. Matsuda, Pacific Worlds: A History of
Seas, Peoples, and Cultures (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012) and authors in
this special issue.

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Uchida: Expansion from the Periphery 89

our understanding of Pan-Asianist thinkers in Meiji Japan, whose multifari-


ous discourse has been revisited in a recent flurry of publications.89 While
giving short shrift to Korea, he argued not for de-Sinification of Asia,
but for reidentification with China, even as public opinion turned increas-
ingly hostile. Sugiuras divergent stance on China and Korea straddled a
variety of Japans engagements with Asia as propounded by an array of
Pan-Asianist thinkers under the broad rubric of koa.
In the aftermath of the Sino-Japanese War, while burakumin disap-
peared from his colonial discourse, Sugiura argued more explicitly for
shifting Japans focus from the north to the south as a historically demon-
strated direction of expansion. The future of the Japanese empire lay in
the south, he argued, proposing Taiwan as a stepping stone for advancing
into the East Indies and the Nanyo islands.90 So did Tokutomi Soho and his
Minyusha colleagues, who envisioned the creation of new Japans across
the South Pacific region as a mission of our expeditionary people.91 Their
discourse had a significant collective impact on the Meiji public, alerting
them to the profitability of southern advance and turning their attention, if
momentarily, from domestic political battles to the shared goal of expan-
sion.92 It also shaped the emerging debate on hokushin (northern advance)
versus nanshin, which culminated in a protracted competition between the
army and the navy. Although the rhetoric of nanshin garnered little sus-
tained support from government leaders, whose concern for national secu-
rity increasingly focused on the continent, the navy pressed for expanding
its capabilities to protect the commercial activities of Japanese who had
begun to make the southern passage on their own. Aspirations to establish
naval hegemony in the western Pacific would begin to be realized after
World War I, when Japan took control of the former German possessions
in Micronesia.93
As an early advocate of overseas colonization, and through his ties to

89. For a comprehensive summary of the historiography on Pan-Asianism, see Intro-


duction, in Saaler and Szpilman, eds., Pan-Asianism, Vol. 1, pp. 142. For a useful overview
of the history of Japanese Pan-Asianism, with a focus on the interwar period, see Sven Saaler,
Pan-Asianism in Modern Japanese History: Overcoming the Nation, Creating a Region,
Forging an Empire, and Miwa Kimitada, Pan-Asianism in Modern Japan: Nationalism,
Regionalism, and Universalism, in Saaler and Koschmann, eds., Pan-Asianism in Modern
Japanese History, pp. 118, 2133.
90. Tonansetsu, Tokyo asahi shinbun, June 12, 1895; Shoku o tashi, hei o tasu, Tokyo
asahi shinbun, July 4, 1895.
91. The Minyusha (Friends of the Nation, 1887) was a group of Meiji liberals led by
Tokutomi Soho. The Minyusha initially advocated wholesale Westernization of Japan, but
became more nationalistic like its rival Seikyosha and actively supported overseas expansion
after the First Sino-Japanese War. See Pyle, The New Generation, pp. 4243, 16487.
92. Iriye, Pacific Estrangement, pp. 46, 4849; Watanabe, Sugiura Jugo, p. 60.
93. Schencking, Making Waves, pp. 4447, 5076, 90105, 2018.

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90 Journal of Japanese Studies 42:1 (2016)

Seikyosha, Sugiura influenced a new generation of colonial thinkersin-


cluding Fukumoto Nichinan, Suganuma Teifu, and Kuga Katsunanwho
would lead public opinion from the late 1880s. Meanwhile, Sugiuras voice
in colonial affairs would gradually fade after the turn of the century. He left
the world of journalism, partly due to ill health that also ended his short stint
as the head of the Toa Dobun Shoin in Shanghai. The locus of his career,
too, shifted from the periphery to the political center as he came to focus
singularly on education, culminating in his last major career as an ethics
tutor to the crown prince from 1914 to 1921.94 Nevertheless, his concern
with Japanism, like his ties to O mi, remained intact. While his Seikyosha
colleagues moved on to other pursuits, Sugiura continued to propagate his
Japanism, drawing an even sharper contrast between the material strength
of the West and the spiritual superiority of Japan.95 At the same time, this
Japanism increasingly functioned as an a priori explanation for the empire.
As he mused on the nations victory over Russia in 1910, six years after the
Russo-Japanese War:
the application of Western military science alone would not have led to the
fall of Port Arthur. Only when the Japanese adopted Western science and
attacked with Yamato spirit did it fall. Unless we apply Western science by
means of Japans unique spirit, we will not be able to maintain Japan today
and in the future, or actively expand into the global arena of competition.
[italics added]96

Having developed in response to the rise of imperialism in East Asia,


Sugiuras Japanism now became a central motor for Japans own project of
expansion.
Stanford University

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.

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