Japan's Continental Expansion

This study will discuss the historical and ideological developments of Japan's continental expansionism from the time of Toyotomi Hideyoshi in the 16th century to 1937. Hideyoshi was a feudal lord who helped unify the country and develop centralized power after civil wars tore the nation apart. His distrust of missionaries and other foreigners was in part a result of the civil wars and of the fear of future disunity. Turning outward from domestic concerns, and using the military power he had assembled to put down internal strife, Hideyoshi developed "an obsession with China. In 1592 and 1598 he launched two invasions of Korea as the first steps toward the conquest of China" (Bunge 13). His efforts were unsuccessful, defeated by combined Korean-Chinese forces and later by a return of the internal disunity he had feared.

The Tokugawa Period followed Hideyoshi, and with it an internal order which lasted until the latter half of the nineteenth century. National seclusion rather than expansionism prevailed as the political ideology of the era (Pyle 30-31). However, the shogunate imposed a rigid, hierarchical, Confucian-based, socioeconomic and political structure which included nationalistic impulses, giving rise to "the cult of the emperor" (Bunge 18), which in turn would play a role in later expansionism.

Also, the efficiency of the Tokugawa system led to the modernization of Japan which in turn led to the drive for expansionism and the addition of foreign markets and res

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uted in 1859, he was to become the patron saint of Japanese ultranationalistic chauvinism (Bunge 20). In the half-century from the end of the Tokugawa period to 1912, Japan relied on prevailing ideas of expansion, fed by its own and Western notions of imperialism. Meyer writes that the country laid the bases for domestic growth and foreign expansion. Then, over the next several decades, through World War I and the 1920s, Japan in imperial guise rose to even greater heights of international standing. . . . The energy devoted to strengthening the nation was also reflected in the creation of the imperial foundations of territorial expansion (Meyer 131, 157). Accordingly, Japan launched two major wars, with China (1894-95) and Russia (1904-05). These wars gained for Japan "colonies or spheres of influence on mainland Asia and offshore islands." In addition, "in 1910, after long, careful periods of watchful waiting and careful diplomatic maneuvering, it annexed Korea" (Meyer 157). At the end of the 19th century, Japan was undergoing a period of industrialization, modernization and expansion of foreign affairs. All of these changes were in part results of the prevailing Bushido "way of the warrior," which was based on chivalric

Category: Foreign - J