JAPAN
Theme:
How a poor, weak, disunited country, endowed with miserable site and isolated situation, turned herself into a world power by deliberately changing her own geography.
Subtheme (1:)
That contrary to popular myth, geography is not permanent; that while it is not easy to produce major geographic change, such changes can occur, and do occur.
Subtheme (2)
That major geographic change in one part of the world almost always produces political change, often accompanied by shock waves which can be felt in distant places. And how those political changes often take a form which is both unexpected and highly unpleasant for those who set off the geographic changes in the first place.
Subtheme (3)
That major geopolitical changes, begun for whatever reason, often seem to acquire a kind of inertia--so that reversing them or even altering their direction can be accomplished only at great cost and with great turmoil.
Similarities and differences between Japan and South Asia:
Superficial similarities, especially as seen from a 19th Century European perspective
Profound differences--documentation from atlas maps: economic levels,
GNP, energy consumption, flows of exports and imports, literacy, and nature of population change and level of urbanization.
Other differences: internal political stability and unity.
The basic difference in relations with the rest of the world: Japan as active agent; Southeast Asia as passive.
Why Japan is worth studying: a classic place for the study of the relationship between geography and politics. Japan's amazing political history over the last century, and its geographic dimensions: a quick recital of events
(1) Japan's astonishing internal changes: from feudalism to sophisticated industrial power in a century. Components of Japanese industry: optics, shipbuilding, electronics, machine tools, automobiles--and what such a combination means in the contemporary world.
(2) Japan's crucial role in the great international affairs of the last century:
-- Undermining the Manchu Dynasty in China
-- Undermining the Romanov Dynasty in Russia
-- Provoking the Chinese Revolutions of 1911 and 1946-49
-- Destroying European colonial power in the Far East
-- Dragging the US into Far Eastern adventures
-- Possibly overturning US economic superiority with Asian help
Why, on any reasonable geographic grounds, none of this should have happened. A review of Japan's miserable situation and miserable site, which should have hampered the achievement of political power:
Japan's geographic situation: isolation as an elementary fact of political life
-- Isolation and the delay of Euro-American colonialism. The idea of Japan as "end of the line." "Intervening opportunities" for European imperial ambitions. Intervening opportunities for American ambitions. The importance of timing, and why Japan's time was beginning to run out by the 1850s. Why the Americans were interested.
-- Isolation from the Asiatic mainland in general, and from China in particular. Japan's peculiar permanent relationship with China. Japan's luck: China's continental political orientation, and the Chinese view of Japan as a barbaric land beyond the seas. Kublai Khan's attempted invasion of Japan as an exceptional event. Japan as a cultural dependency of China. The peculiar results of Japanese borrowing from China: religion and language as examples. The complicated results of laying the Chinese language atop Japanese. Language as isolator.
-- Isolation becomes public policy. Superficial resemblance between Japan and England. Japan as "the Britain of the Far East," and the analogue between Korea and Belgium. Why the analogue breaks down: the basic difference between a fragmented Europe and an east Asia, dominated by a single great power. Japan's permanent policy toward China.
Japan's geographic site: the grim facts
-- Size
-- Geology and landforms. Japan as part of the "Pacific Ring of Fire," and the results. Terrain, and a pitiful agricultural base. Japanese rivers. The poverty of important industrial minerals, and Japan's permanent need to import basic commodities. (See Atlas)
-- Climate, and its role in the traditional agricultural economy. How the details of Japanese climate fit into the grand world patterns of climate: more climatic analogues. Where rice grew, and why it mattered. "Old Japan," centered on Kyoto and Setonaikai vs. the frontier lands of Tohoku and Hokkaido.
The results: Japan on the eve of modernization in the 1850s
-- Setonaikai as the heart of traditional Japan. Analogue between Japanese feudal states and Greek city-states. Why genuine centralized authority was rare.
-- Japan's precarious condition: population and poverty. The Malthusian balance. Chronic rice riots.
-- The European image of Japan. Gilbert and Sullivan.
How Japan set about to redesign east Asian geography and join the world. And how, in the process, Japan changed the whole political face of east Asia and the western Pacific basin and caused shock waves that were felt across the world. A short chronology of recent Japanese political changes, and the geographic changes which occurred simultaneously.
(1) Japan on the eve of Perry's arrival. The Tokugawa Shogunate and what it involved. Tokugawa foreign policy. Tokugawa internal policies: the forcing of national unity. Feudal institutions and their persistence in present day Japan.
(2) Perry's arrival (1853), and the inability of the Shogunate to respond effectively without destroying itself. The Meiji Restoration (1867) and why it serves as a watershed in Japanese history and geography.
(3) Meiji government, and the emergence of a new Japan. Physical demolition of feudal power: the civil war of 1868. Fears of western conquest, and what they led to. The chain of reasoning that underlay the Meiji reforms. Army, navy, industry, urbanization, transportation, and agriculture. The population explosion. Efforts to produce more food. Japanese preoccupation about mineral deficiencies, and what it led to.
(4) Why Japan wanted an empire, and how she managed to get it.
-- Sino-Japanese War, 1895. The fortuitous weakness of Manchu China. What Japan got, and what she lost, due to Russian interference. The beginnings of permanent enmity with Russia.
-- Russo-Japanese War, 1904-05, and its earth-shaking results. Annexation of Korea. The occupation of Manchuria: why it mattered, and why it still matters. Conversion of Manchuria into an arsenal and reservoir for excess population. Why the industrial policy worked, but the demographic policy didn't. The long-term effects on Chinese economic and population geography. Railroads as the catalyst.
-- World War I, and how Japan used it to enlarge her empire. Japan's inheritance of the German Pacific empire, and why it mattered.
-- Collision between Japanese and American ambitions. Growth of Japanese militarism. Government by assassination.
-- The unending Chinese adventure. The "Manchukuo incident" (1931) as the opening gun of World War II. Invasion of China (1937). How China reacted to the invasion.
(5) World War II, and its shattering effects.
-- The overseas results: creation of a political vacuum with the disappearance of Japan's huge temporary empire. Role of the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" in provoking nationalist movements in Southeast Asia.
-- The internal effects of total defeat. Massive physical destruction, and how it cleared the way for building a new infrastructure, using the skeleton of the old. Discrediting of old values, and the paradoxical combination of pacifism and pro-Americanism.
(6) The success of the American occupation. Social and political democracy. "Miraculous" growth of Japanese industrial power. The growth of new markets for sophisticated Japanese products, especially optics and electronics and automotive equipment. The end of the population explosion. Current worries over the aging of the population but ingrained reluctance to allow an official "guest worker" program, not to mention formal inmigration. Conflict between racist feelings and Japan's need for closer ties with its Asian neighbors.
In the last twenty or so years, Japan has been shaken by a number of shocks. First was the restriction on shipments of American soybeans for U.S. domestic reasons. Then the first and second oil shocks. Then the forced revaluation (upward) of the Japanese Yen which made Japanese exports less competitive. The beginning of the end of the ideal of "lifetime employment" in large firms. Potential aggression by Japan's neighbors, North Korea and China. The collapse of the "bubble" economy of the late 1980s and slow recovery so far. And politically, the overthrow of the political establishment that dominated the postwar period and a period of turmoil until a new or revised system replaces it.
The "new geography," and the unprecedented questions it poses. The question of energy: nuclear vs. oil? Furor over shipment of plutonium from Europe to Japan for its fast breeder and plutonium-cycle reactors. Accidents in the nuclear sector shaking Japanese assumption of superiority in engineering and construction as much as the Kobe earthquake. Responding to foreign demands that Japan revise or discard its customary ways: open markets, acceptance of foreign labor and migrants, etc. The question of rearmament and stationing of Japanese troops overseas to support international operations. The question of how economic power is to be used. The absence of historic analogues to suggest answers.
News and other items:
"AP, Reuters join Japan press club," AP, 1992. After years of being excluded, the first non-Japanese news organizations were invited to join the Foreign Ministry's press club. It holds news briefings closed to nonmembers and allows access to officials at home for night briefings.
"Japan's health system provides effective though spartan care," NYT, 26De92, p.a1 and a8. Life expectancy for men (75.9) and for women (81.8) is the highest in the world. Cost is 6.8 percent of the GNP compared to 12.8 percent of GNP in the USA. Everyone in Japan is covered by the government controlled system.
"Gloom lifts in US and falls on Japan," NYT, 29Dec92, p.a4. Based on NYT, CBS News, Tokyo Broadcasting System poll: both people view their economy as bad; Americans are more optimistic about their future; Each country expects its economy to lead the world in the 21st century, and Americans and Japanese disagree on trade. More than two thirds of the Japanese in the poll thought their government was more corrupt than America's.
"Can Japanese politics be purified? Sumo and Democracy," NYT, 10Oc92, p.A21. Reiko Hatsumi says his people are finally aroused over government corruption. Interestingly, he ascribes previous fatality about such abuse to geography and history. "The reason for this situation must be sought not in the present but in our past. We live on a chain of islands. For more than a millenium we have had a powerful, highly centralized government. Until recently, escape was virtually impossible, especially in the days when building ocean-faring ships was punishable by death. I would think that under these circumstances people tend not to develop or express individualistic, self-assertive thoughts. ,,, In a pinch you could swim across the English Channel. And William Tell could escape across the Alps with his bow, arrows and his son, leaving the apple behind."
Shintaro Ishihara. The Japan that can say no: Why Japan will be first among equals. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990. A controversial and blunt manifesto by a Japanese politician.
"Japan and America: Forget the growl, look at the tails," The Economist, 9Ja88, pp..17-20. "..some people hear ominous echoes of the strains that produced a shooting war between Japan and America half a century ago. They are mistaken: the tensions are those of growing intimacy, not breakdown." Is this reasonable; and is it still true?
"Miyazawa's foreign mission," Economist 9Ja93, p31. "Japan has already used its expanding Asian influence to assist the Americans. It has refused to join the East Asian Economic Caucus, a club invented by Malaysia that has an anti-western tone. Instead, it has thrown its weight behind the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum; thanks in part to Japanese insistence, this group includes America. Japan is also keen on the Asian Development Bank; it and America are the bank's biggest backers."
"Behind Japan's economic crisis," Akio Mikuni, NYT 1Fe93, A19 (op ed). Mikuni is president of the only indpendent credit rating company in Japan. Japanese companies will be concentrating even more on foreign markets. Troubles not what Japanese people think or foreigners suspect. It's finance ministry, independent of Diet, prime minister, everyone. Controls financial information. Created "bubble economy."
"Japan Builders graded politicians in giving cash," David E. Sanger, NYT 28Mr93, p11. Money given according to how much influence officials had in awarding contracts..."virtually every major politician in the country was given a letter grade that determined exactly how large a contribution they would receive twice a year."