Book On East Asia and WWI

Frank Jacob
East Asia and the First World War

Frank Jacob
East Asia and the

First World War
ISBN 978-3-11-073708-0
e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-074567-2
e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-074571-9
DOI https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110745672
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0

International License. For details go to https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2022940533
Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie;
detailed bibliographic data are available on the internet at http://dnb.dnb.de.
© 2022 the author(s), published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

The book is published open access at www.degruyter.com.
Cover image: Tanaka Ryozo, The Illustration of The Great European War
No.16. - A humorous Atlas of the World. (Printing 13.09.1914).
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:World_around_1900.jpg.
Typesetting: Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd
Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck
www.degruyter.com
Contents
1 Introduction 1
2 China’s Eruption after the First World War: Japanese Imperialism,

Western Jingoism, and the Awakening of Chinese Nationalism 3
2.1 Introduction 3
2.2 China in 1914 8
2.3 China and the First World War 15
2.4 China at Versailles 33
2.5 The May Fourth Movement 40
2.6 Conclusion 51
3 Japan and the Great War: Imperialist Ambitions Abroad, Social

Change and Protest at Home 53
3.1 Introduction 53
3.2 Political Perspectives 55
3.3 The Economic Impact of the War 69
3.4 The War and Social Change in Japan 73
3.5 The First World War and the Protests at Home 90
3.6 Conclusion 102
4 Korea, the First World War, and the Hopes for a New World
Order 104
4.1 Introduction 104
4.2 Korea and Japanese Imperialism 108
4.3 Colonial Korea until the First World War 120
4.4 The First World War and the Chances for a Wilsonian
Moment 133
4.5 The March First Movement 141
4.6 Conclusion 149
Bibliography 151
Index 167
1 Introduction
Nobody would doubt that the First World War had a transnational impact or that
it tremendously affected both participating and non-participating countries.1 The
“seminal catastrophe,”2 as historian and diplomat George F. Kennan (1904–2005)
would describe it, was indeed a global one. While much attention has been paid to
the European theater of war and its major battles still have the potential to attract
a large number of interested readers,3 during the centennial of the events, one
could observe a growing interest in non-European contexts and topics that went
beyond “classical military studies.”4 However, there were also publications that,
despite intending to cover the First World War in its broadest possible sense, did
not succeed in offering more space for non-European and, in particular, East
Asian perspectives.5 The war was a watershed for many national histories, and its
impact was not only felt politically or economically but went much further than
that, as it changed human thoughts and beliefs as such.6
The present book is not especially interested in major battles, as there were
not many of those in East Asia in the first place,7 but rather in the impact of the
 Exemplary among other studies and regions of the world, see Claes Ahlund (Ed.), Scandina-
via in the First World War. Studies in the War Experience of the Northern Neutrals, Lund 2013;
Michael Jonas, Scandinavia and the Great Powers in the First World War, London 2019; Lina
Sturfelt, Introduction. Scandinavia and the First World War, in: Scandia 80 (2014) 2, online at:
https://project2.sol.lu.se/tidskriftenscandia/index-q=node-1096.html. Accessed May 30, 2022.
 George F. Kennan, The Decline of Bismarck’s European Order. Franco-Russian Relations,
1875–1890, Princeton, NJ 1979, p. 3.
 Olaf Jessen, Verdun 1916. Urschlacht des Jahrhunderts, second edition, Munich 2017.
 Stefan Rinke, Latin America and the First World War, New York, NY 2017; Jan Schmidt and
Katja Schmidtpott (Eds.), The East Asian Dimension of the First World War. Global Entangle-
ments and Japan, China and Korea, 1914–1919, Frankfurt am Main 2020; Marcel Bois and
Frank Jacob (Eds.), Zeiten des Aufruhrs (1916–1921). Globale Proteste, Streiks und Revolutio-
nen gegen den Ersten Weltkrieg und seine Auswirkungen, Berlin 2020; Ana Paula Pires, Jan
Schmidt and María Inés Tato (Eds.), The Global First World War. African, East Asian, Latin
American and Iberian Mediators, London/New York 2021.
 Jay Winter (Ed.), The Cambridge History of the First World War, vol. 1: Global War, Cam-
bridge 2014.
 For a broader debate of the war’s impact on the humanities see Frank Jacob, Jeffrey Shaw and
Timothy Demy (Eds.), War and the Humanities. The Cultural Impact of the First World War, Pa-
derborn 2019. For the debates in East Asia in relation to the peace talks in Versailles and a possi-
ble new “world order” also see Urs Matthias Zachmann (Ed.), Asia After Versailles: Asian
Perspectives on the Paris Peace Conference and the Interwar Order, 1919–33, Edinburgh 2018.
 Jürgen Melzer, Warfare 1914–1918 (Japan), in: 1914–1918-online. International Encyclopedia
of the First World War, ed. by Ute Daniel, Peter Gatrell, Oliver Janz, Heather Jones, Jennifer
Open Access. © 2022 the author(s), published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under
the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110745672-001
2 1 Introduction
First World War in this geographic region. It is also intended for a general audi-
ence as well as for introductory undergraduate courses on East Asian history or
the history of the First World War from a global perspective, as the single chapters
on China, Japan, and Korea, which could be read or assigned individually or in
totality, provide basic introductions to the respective national histories and contex-
tualize them to highlight the role and impact the First World War had in East Asia.
The chapters have been written so that they can be understood without reading
the others, and they can therefore also be rearranged to fit in different types of
courses as well. The main aim is to arouse further interest in East Asian history in
general and the region’s involvement and transformation during the First World
War in particular. Due to this specific intention, there are, of course, shortcomings
with regard to a variety of topics that could have been more heavily emphasized or
described in greater detail. However, the author still hopes that students and col-
leagues will find the work helpful and consider it an encouragement to look deeper
into the relationship between the First World War and the respective histories of
China, Japan, and Korea, which were much more impacted by the “European war”
than Western historians have been willing to acknowledge or to emphasize in their
works,8 in which Asia is often nothing more than a side note.
A truly global understanding of the 20th century’s “seminal catastrophe” de-
mands a broader approach to the topic, and it is hoped that the present book will
be part of the endeavor to provide it. As so many lives and individual stories were
influenced by the First World War in East Asia,9 the history of the region during
and after the war cannot be ignored if the decisive developments related to the
further history of the 20th century, especially in an Asian context, are taken into
consideration from long-term perspectives. While the focus of the book is East
Asia, repercussions from the European and American contexts are also highlighted
to show and further emphasize that the history of the world at the beginning of
Hobsbawm’s “age of extremes” cannot be understood in national isolation. The
history of East Asia during the First World War must consequently also be read as
a regional one that was embedded into a global course of events.10
Keene, Alan Kramer, and Bill Nasson, issued by Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, October 19,
2017. Accessed May 30, 2022. https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/warfare_1914-
1918_japan.
 See Jan Schmidt, Nach dem Krieg ist vor dem Krieg. Medialisierte Erfahrungen des Ersten
Weltkriegs und Nachkriegsdiskurse in Japan (1914–1919), Frankfurt am Main 2021, pp. 9–16.
The recently published study shows that the impact of the First World War on Japan was much
more important than previous historical studies assumed.
 Xu Guoqi, Asia and the Great War. A Shared History, New York 2017.
 Sebastian Conrad, What is Global History? Princeton, NJ 2016, pp. 10–11 emphasized this
as one central aspect of the study of global history.
2 China’s Eruption after the First World War:
Japanese Imperialism, Western Jingoism,
and the Awakening of Chinese Nationalism
2.1 Introduction
Considering that China is one of the global players and a true world power
today, it is almost hard to imagine that it was dominated by Western and Japa-
nese imperialism 100 years ago.1 For these imperialist nation states and their
representatives, China had always been a “point of focus”2 of the so–called Far
Eastern problem, especially since all of the great imperialist powers aimed to
get a piece of Chinese territory and access to the vast market there. The Chinese
Empire under the Qing Dynasty (1644–1911) was torn into colonial spheres of
influence,3 and attempts to limit the foreign influence or to force all foreigners
out of the country, e.g. the Opium War (1839–1842)4 and the Boxer Rebellion
(1899–1901),5 were answered with brute force. The revolution of 1911 that Brit-
ish historian Rana Mitter called “unanchored”6 was supposed to lead China
 This chapter is an extended version of Frank Jacob, China’s Eruption after the First World
War: Japanese Imperialism, Western Jingoism, and the Awakening of Chinese Nationalism, in:
Marcel Bois/Frank Jacob (Eds.), Zeiten des Aufruhrs (1916–1921). Globale Proteste, Streiks und
Revolutionen gegen den Ersten Weltkrieg und seine Auswirkungen, Berlin 2020, pp. 171–213.
 Wesley R. Fishel, The Far East and United States Policy: A Re–Examination, in: The Western
Political Quarterly 3 (1950) 1, pp. 1–13, here p. 1.
 Niels P. Petersson, Imperialismus und Modernisierung. Siam, China und die europäischen
Mächte 1895–1914, Munich 2000, pp. 35–90. On the impact of these experiences on China and
the Chinese see Matthew P. Fitzgerald/Peter Monteath (Eds.), Colonialism, China and the Chi-
nese, New York/London 2019.
 For dicussions of this war see Peter Ward Fay, The Opium War, 1840–1842, paperback edi-
tion, Chapel Hill, NC, 1997 [1975]; Haijian Mao, The Qing Empire and the Opium War. The Col-
lapse of the Heavenly Dynasty, Cambridge 2016; Stephen R. Platt, Imperial Twilight. The
Opium War and the End of China’s Last Golden Age, New York 2019.
 Susanne Kuß/Bernd Martin (Eds.), Das Deutsche Reich und der Boxeraufstand, Munich
2002; Mechthild Leutner/Klaus Mühlhahn (Eds.), Kolonialkrieg in China. Die Niederschlagung
der Boxerbewegung 1900–1901, Berlin 2007; Jean Jaques Wendorff, Der Boxeraufstand in
China 1900/1901 als deutscher und französischer Erinnerungsort. Ein Vergleich anhand ausge-
wählter Quellengruppen, Frankfurt am Main 2016. For a detailed discussion of German vio-
lence related to the Boxer Rebellion also see Susanne Kuß, Deutsches Militär auf kolonialen
Kriegsschauplätzen. Eskalation von Gewalt zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts, Berlin 2005.
 Rana Mitter, 1911. The Unanchored Chinese Revolution, in: The China Quarterly 208 (2011),
pp. 1009–1020.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110745672-002
4 2 China’s Eruption after the First World War
into modernity and independence, but the First World War (1914–1918) would
prove that these dreams had not yet been fulfilled, although the war was tre-
mendously important for Asia in general and East Asia in particular, as Chinese
historian Xu Guoqi remarked: “Research on the war’s impact there and Asians’
contributions has been insufficient, especially from Asian perspectives.”7 One
simply has to agree with Xu’s evaluation, and he claims that “given the rele-
vance and importance of the Great War to Asian countries, it was as defining
an event there as elsewhere.”8 When one considers how the war and its Asian
events determined China’s future, one of course cannot deny its impact on
Sino–Japanese relations.
To quote Xu once more, “Asians may not be aware of the Great War, but that
war nonetheless shaped their modern fate in significant ways,” and it is impor-
tant to consider “national aspirations and development, foreign relations, and
Asians’ perceptions of themselves and the world”9 when talking about the First
World War from a more global perspective. Asia is an important region of the
world today, which is why it is even more important to better understand its
past, as it was embedded in the global events of the 20th century. Many hopes,
dreams, and aspirations were attached to the conflict in China, as well as in
Japan, and the political leaders of both nation states attempted to profit from the
war in Europe. Therefore, it is worth taking a closer look at the events in East
Asia between 1914 and 1918, because they would determine the history of both
countries in the years to come, even up to today. Contemporaries, like the British
philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), had realized that
“[t]he most urgent problem in China’s relations with foreign powers is Japanese
aggression.”10 This aggression marked the 20th century from a Chinese per-
spective, because the Sino–Japanese War (1894–1895), the Russo–Japanese War
 Xu Guoqi, Asia and the Great War. A Shared History, New York 2017, p. 2. This evaluation is
correct, considering that Xu provided the only chapter on Asia in the three volumes of the
Cambridge History of the First World War, edited by Jay Winter, historian and professor at
Yale University. Xu Guoqi, Asia, in: Jay Winter (Ed.), The Cambridge History of the First World
War, Vol. 1, Cambridge 2014, pp. 479–510.
 Xu, Asia and the Great War, p. 2.
 Ibid., p. 3.
 Bertrand Russell, The Problem of China, London 1922, p. 130. On Russell’s experiences in
China see: Mirela David, Bertrand Russell and Ellen Key in China. Idividualism, Free Love, and
Eugenics in the May Fourth Era, in: Howard Chiang (Ed.), Sexuality in China. Histories of
Power and Pleasure, Seattle, WA 2018, pp. 76–98; Eric Hayot, Bertrand Russell’s Chinese Eyes,
in: Modern Chinese Literature and Culture 18 (2006) 1, pp. 120–154; Suzanne P. Ogden, The
Sage in the Inkpot. Bertrand Russell and China’s Social Reconstruction in the 1920s, in: Mod-
ern Asian Studies 16 (1982) 4, pp. 529–600.
2.1 Introduction 5
(1904–1905), and the First World War brought Japan’s ambitions for expansion
to light.11 However, the latter one also stimulated China’s internationalization as
a political power, and its representatives were interested in participating in as
well as influencing matters of global politics. The war, regardless of its destruc-
tion, had also promised the establishment of a new international order, one from
which Chinese intellectuals and politicians alike were hoping to receive a new
chance to redefine China’s fate and position in the world.12
The Japanese expansionist ambitions on the Asian mainland, however, left
no space for such idealist hopes. Like Japan, the Chinese republican govern-
ment had entered the war trying to secure its own position within the East
Asian region, but all in all, as Xu correctly highlights, “[t]he China–Japan con-
nection in the Great War is one of tragedy, irony, and contradiction.”13 Both
governments tried to gain from their participation in the war, but while Japan
used its Anglo–Japanese Alliance with Britain to be part of the winning side in
the war and to gain control over Shandong, i.e. Chinese territory that had been
leased by the German Kaiserreich, China only joined the Allies later to recover
the rights to its own possessions. Between these two decisions, Japan pre-
sented the Twenty–One Demands, which will be discussed in more detail later,
to China in 1915, which, according to Russell, “gave the Chinese Question its
modern form.”14 The British philosopher continues his evaluation as follows:
These demands involved, as is obvious, a complete loss of Chinese independence, the

closing of important areas to the commerce and industry of Europe and America, and a
special attack upon the British position in the Yangtze. We [the British, F.J.], however,
were so busy with the war that we had no time to think of keeping ourselves alive. Al-
though the demands constituted a grave menace to our trade, although the Far East was
in an uproar about them, although America took drastic diplomatic action against them,
Mr. Lloyd George never heard of them until they were explained to him by the Chinese
Delegation at Versailles.15
Japan had clearly undertaken the quest to gain from the absence of the Euro-
pean powers in East Asia, and China could only hope for foreign intervention to
 On Japan’s growing military and expansionist ambitions in Asia between 1868 and 1905
see Da Yang, Leng yan jia wu. Kan Riben jun shi di guo de gou jian he bao fa (1868–1905),
Beijing 2015. On the local and global impact of the Russo–Japanese War see Frank Jacob, The
Russo–Japanese War and Its Impact on the Twentieth Century, paperback edition, London/
New York 2019 [2018].
 Xu, Asia and the Great War, p. 10.
 Ibid., p. 38.
 Russell, Problem of China, p. 131.
 Ibid., pp. 132–133.
avoid being ripped off and losing a large part of its territorial and political
rights, even its independence. China’s position, according to the understanding
of many Chinese intellectuals and politicians, could only be saved by a new
world order that was based on Woodrow Wilson’s (1856–1924) demands for
such an order.
When the peace conference at Versailles failed to deliver Wilson’s princi-
ples in the form of actual politics, China and its people felt betrayed, and pro-
tests, namely the May Fourth Movement, demanded fair treatment for the
Chinese Republic and a return of its rights to Shandong from the Germans. The
movement therefore had a clearly anti–imperialist character, something that
made Mao Zedong (1893–1976) interpret it in 1939 as a stage in the long–term
history of the Chinese Revolution, “a step beyond the Revolution of 1911”:
The May [Fourth] Movement twenty years ago marked a new stage in China’s bourgeois–
democratic revolution against imperialism and feudalism. The cultural reform movement
which grew out of the May [Fourth] Movement was only one of the manifestations of this
revolution. With the growth and development of new social forces in that period, a power-
ful camp made its appearance in the bourgeois–democratic revolution, a camp consisting
of the working class, the student masses and the new national bourgeoisie.16
For Mao, the movement resembled the awakening of Chinese intellectuals, who
“were more numerous and more politically conscious than in the days of the Rev-
olution of 1911.” Of course, retrospectively, and from Mao’s communist viewpoint
and according to his theoretical assumptions, “the intellectuals will accomplish
nothing if they fail to integrate themselves with the workers and peasants.”17
Regardless of such doctrinaire evaluations, 1919 marked a watershed year in
modern Chinese history, marking one of two attempts – the other being in 1898 –
for an “intellectual break with the values of Confucian civilization.” The May
Fourth Movement was consequently not only an expression of anti–imperialist na-
tionalism, but at the same time was seen by traditional elites “as an attack upon
 Mao Tse–tung, The May 4th Movement, in: Selected Works of Mao Tse–tung, Vol. 2, https://
www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-2/mswv2_13.htm (17. 9. 2019).
A similar evaluation can be found in Mao Tse–tung, The Chinese Revolution and the Chinese
Communist Party, in: Selected Works of Mao Tse–tung, Vol. 2, https://www.marxists.org/refer
ence/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-2/mswv2_23.htm#p4 (17. 9. 2019), where Mao states:
“The Opium War, the Movement of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, the Sino–French War, the
Sino–Japanese War, the Reform Movement of 1898, the Yi Ho Tuan Movement, the Revolution of
1911, the May 4th Movement, the May 30th Movement, the Northern Expedition, the Agrarian
Revolutionary War and the present War of Resistance Against Japan – all testify to the Chinese
people’s indomitable spirit in fighting imperialism and its lackeys.”
 Mao, May 4th Movement.
2.1 Introduction 7
the traditional moral and social orders as well.”18 Modernizing universities

under an enlightened leadership – Beijing University (Beida) was led by Cai
Yuanpei (1868–1940), a philosopher educated in China and Germany (Leipzig
University)19 – provided the ground for the “great intellectual upsurge of
1919,” because students were presented with new educational opportunities
when men like Yuanpei “welcomed ideas from all over the world and collected
a faculty of brilliant young men of diverse backgrounds.”20 These academic
changes created a self–confident student body, whose representatives were in-
terested in China’s modernization and wanted to gain recognition for their na-
tion within the international order as well. They shared this latter aspect with
a large number of Chinese people, who had realized that Japan’s ambitions, well
and clearly expressed in the Twenty–One Demands, threatened not only the in-
tegrity of China but even its whole existence as an independent nation state.
Eventually, when more than 3,000 students protested on 4 May 1919 at the Gate
of Heavenly Peace (Tiananmen), whose protests were violently met by the gov-
ernment, it was “[t]he whole patriotic public [that] was aroused,”21 and the con-
sequence was further student protests in around 200 places, as well as strikes in
factories in Shanghai and other cities. The American political scientist and Sinol-
ogist Benjamin I. Schwartz (1916–1999) therefore described the events correctly
when he characterized them as “[a] student movement [that] was born in which
women participated, broad public support was enlisted, and the sanction of sav-
ing China was invoked to achieve an unprecedented degree of student organiza-
tion and activism. This was a new political expression of nationalism, all the
more significant because it was unpremeditated.”22
Nevertheless, the events of 4 May 1919 and its consequences should not
solely be understood from a political perspective, but must be analyzed with all
 Charlotte Furth, Intellectual Change. From the Reform Movement to the May Fourth Move-
ment, 1895–1920, in: Denis Twitchett/John K. Fairbank (Eds.), The Cambridge History of
China, Vol. 12: Republican China 1912–1949, Part 1, Cambridge 1983, p. 322.
 Ibid., p. 323. For a more detailed analysis of Cai’s role in early 20th century China see Cai
Jianguo, Cai Yuanpei. Gelehrter und Mittler zwischen Ost und West, Münster 1998; William
J. Duiker, Ts’ai Yuan–p’ei. Educator of Modern China, University Park, PA 1977. On Cai’s edu-
cational concepts see Peili Wang, Wilhelm von Humboldt und Cai Yuanpei. Eine vergleichende
Analyse zweier klassischer Bildungskonzepte in der deutschen Aufklärung und in der ersten
chinesischen Republik, Münster/New York 1996.
 Benjamin I. Schwartz, Themes in Intellectual History. May Fourth and After, in: Denis
Twitchett/John K. Fairbank (Eds.), The Cambridge History of China, Vol. 12: Republican China
1912–1949, Part 1, Cambridge 1983, p. 406.
 Schwartz, Themes, p. 407.
 Ibid.
its cultural complexities, since a new generation was beginning to demand a

new China that was not only politically independent, but also culturally and
intellectually different from its past.23 The present chapter will therefore show
why 1919 must be considered a watershed year in Chinese history and what
role the First World War played in it. At first, China’s situation at the beginning
of the war will be described and then the country’s role and development during
the global conflict will be discussed. Eventually, China’s position at the Peace
Conference in Versailles will be analyzed before a closer look is taken at the May
Fourth Movement. The chapter will thereby show how the global conflict shaped
the Chinese position in the early 20th century and which forces were awakened
by Japanese imperialism, Western jingoism, and Chinese conservatism to be
finally combined in a national protest movement. The First World War is con-
sequently considered to have acted as a cataclysm that provoked this national
upheaval in China as part of an international wave of protest movements in the
aftermath of the war that was considered to end all conflicts and to introduce a
new international order, based on the liberal ideas of Wilson and his like–minded
colleagues.
2.2 China in 1914
Economically, China as a whole seemed to change only between 1912 and the
end of the civil war in 1949.24 The average individual’s income neither in-
creased nor decreased, and the rapid growth since the late 19th century seems
to have been stopped by internal turmoil and the wars the Chinese have been
involved in since their revolution in 1911. American historian Albert Feuer-
werker highlighted that “[t]he relative factor supplies of land, labour and capi-
tal remained basically unaltered” and “[t]he occupational distribution of the
population was hardly changed.”25 China, and this might have been one of the
most important problems of the May Fourth Movement in 1919 as well, was
mainly agricultural, with people in this sector making their living on family
farms that numbered from 60 to 70 million across the country. 50% of these
farms were owned by peasants, while 25% were partly rented farms, and the
 Fabio Lanza, Behind the Gate. Inventing Students in Beijing, New York 2010, p. 101.
 The description of China’s economy follows, if not indicated otherwise, Albert Feuerwerker,
Economic Trends, 1912–49, in: Denis Twitchett/John K. Fairbank (Eds.), The Cambridge History
of China, Vol. 12: Republican China 1912–1949, Part 1, Cambridge 1983, pp. 28–127.
 Ibid., 28.
2.2 China in 1914 9
remaining 25% were in the hands of tenant farmers. Most Chinese were conse-
quently living in smaller villages, making their living as peasants. They were
consequently not only hard to reach in the centralizing attempts by the govern-
ment, but also for those who chanted the song of Chinese nationalism in 1919.
While the larger cities with ties to foreign powers became hubs of economic
and intellectual exchange, the rural areas of the country remained peripheral.
The consequence was “larger regional marketing complexes” with important
centers that linked “inter–provincial and inter–regional commerce.”26 In cities
like Nanking, Hankow, Chungking, etc., along with the capital Beijing and inter-
nationally important trade centers like Hong Kong and Shanghai, an economic
increase was visible and changed the urban environments, but almost none of it
was felt in the far–away provinces, where local identity determined the daily life
of the Chinese farmers. Due to the economic processes that could be observed in
these larger cities, the urban population of China was growing during the late
19th century, even increasing the speed of urbanization after 1900. Nevertheless,
in 1938, only around 27 million people – out of a population of 500 million –
were living in cities with more than 50,000 inhabitants. China could therefore
hardly be called an urban society, which is why Mao’s claim from 1939, that a
revolutionary party would need to include the workers and peasants to be suc-
cessful, is correct, especially when one wants to explain one of the problems of
the May Fourth Movement, which will be taken into closer consideration later.
The contacts with Western and Japanese traders had an impact on China,
for sure, but primarily on those who operated in the named economic centers,
where national companies got connected to the global market. Most of the
430 million Chinese people (1912) did not gain from the economic developments
in these, sometimes far away, urban centers. Twenty years after the First World
War, almost 80% of people were still working in the agrarian sector, although
the end of the Qing Dynasty in 1911 had stimulated the founding of manufactur-
ing companies and mining enterprises that were privately owned by Chinese
rather than foreign investors. These more than 500 enterprises, however, could
only accumulate a capital of around Ch.$ 20 million, i.e. only a fraction of the
invested foreign capital in China at the time.27 Before and also during the war,
 Ibid., 32.
 For a detailed discussion of the development of capitalism in China see Wu Chengming, A
Brief Account of the Development of Capitalism in China, in: Tim Wright (Ed.), The Chinese
Economy in the Early Twentieth Century. Recent Chinese Studies, London 1992, pp. 29–43. For
an analysis of China’s relation to the global market William N. Goetzmann/Andrey D. Ukhov/
Ning Zhu, China and the World Financial Markets 1870–1939. Modern Lessons from Historical
Globalization, in: The Economic History Review 60 (2007) 2, pp. 267–312 is recommended.
however, Chinese–owned industry expanded, and more than 2,000 new facto-
ries had been established by 1920.28 The Chinese economy, like that of the
Japanese (as will be shown in another chapter), profited from the absence of
European competition during the First World War. That China would be un-
able to use this positive trend, however, is related to political instabilities
rather than economic incapacities. Most of the said companies, to name just
one problem, were based in Shanghai or other urban centers, so the gained cap-
ital was not equally invested in the growth of a national economic sector. In ad-
dition, the immense growth of the Chinese industry of more than 13% that was
reached between 1912 and 1920 also led to a post–war recession, especially in
1921–1922, when foreign, i.e. first and foremost European, competitors returned
to the Asian markets.
The traditional manufacturing of handicrafts at the same time declined fur-
ther “as a result of competition from both imported foreign goods and the out-
put of Chinese– and foreign–owned modern industry in China.”29 By 1919, the
output in two out of three of China’s main industries – coal, cotton yarn, and
cotton cloth – was still dominated by foreign firms (Table 2.1).
Table 2.1: Percentage of total output for China’s main

industries in 1919.30
Chinese Foreign
Coal Industry .% .%

Cotton Yarn % %
Cotton Cloth % %
Although China could claim the majority of the production with regard to cot-
ton yarn, more than 60% of the spindles were working in Shanghai, keeping
the industrial progress within an urban environment. In addition, “[t]he con-
centration of modern industry in coastal cities, the large foreign–owned compo-
nent, the predominance of consumers’ goods, and the small size and technical
backwardness of most factories – all of these are correlates of the very small
share of modern industry in China’s national product before 1949.”31
 Feuerwerker, Economic Trends, pp. 41–42.

 Ibid., p. 51. China’s cotton industry and trade is discussed in Kang Chao, The Development
of Cotton Textile Production in China, Cambridge, MA 1977, ch. 4–6.
 Numbers according to Feuerwerker, Economic Trends, p. 60.
 Ibid., p. 62.
2.2 China in 1914 11
In the republican period, the country was also suffering from its very poor
transportation system that could hardly link the modernizing industrial centers
in the coastal regions with the agrarian hinterland of peripheral provinces. High
transportation costs made Chinese–produced coal coke and pig iron more expen-
sive than competing products from Japanese or Western sources of production.
China might have had the advantage of comparatively extremely low wages, but
“[t]he wages of coolie labour were incredibly low, but the economic efficiency of
the human carriers who dominated transport at the local level was even lower.”32
Between 1912 and 1927, there were only around 3,500 kilometers of railways built
through China, which is not surprising when one considers that railways were
early on financed through foreign capital and were often used as instruments for
informal imperialism.33 Considering that the initial wave of railway building in
China between the end of the Sino–Japanese War in 1895 and the Chinese Revo-
lution of 1911 caused the construction of more than 9,000 kilometers of track, the
outcome for the first one and a half post–revolutionary decades is rather low.
This lack of infrastructure had tremendous consequences on the attempts to in-
dustrialize China, since the “inland [. . .] continued to depend much more on tra-
ditional means of transport, by water and land, for local and regional carriage
than it did on motor vehicles or trains.”34 During the First World War, junk ton-
nage would even increase before this river–related transportation method was re-
placed by modern steamships in the early 1920s and railway track construction
intensified.35
Another economic problem for China was its lack of financial centraliza-
tion. The republican government was unable to collect revenues on a broader
scale, which is why many possible modernization–oriented measures were
hard to finance and why “government policies, while not without far–reaching
 Ibid., p. 91.
 The best examples are probably the South Manchurian Railway or the Eastern Chinese Rail-
way, financed by Japan and Russia respectively. Files of the Peking Legation: South Manchurian
Railway, The National Archives London, Foreign Office and Foreign and Commonwealth Office
Records, FO 676/140. See also S.C.M. Paine, The Chinese Eastern Railway from the First
Sino–Japanese War until the Russo–Japanese War, in: Bruce A. Elleman/Stephen Kotkin (Eds.),
Manchurian Railways and the Opening of China. An International History, New York/London
2009, pp. 13–36 and Y. Tak Matsusaka, Japan’s South Manchuria Railway Company in Northeast
China, 1906–34, in: ibid., pp. 37–58; Mi Rucheng, Di guo zhu yi yu Zhongguo tie lu, 1847–1949,
Beijing 2007; Okabe Makio (Ed.), Minami Manshū tetsudō gaisha no kenkyū, Tokyo 2008.
 Feuerwerker, Economic Trends, p. 98.
 Wang Yuru, Economic Development in China between the Two World Wars (1920–1936),
in: Tim Wright (Ed.), The Chinese Economy in the Early Twentieth Century. Recent Chinese
Studies, London 1992, pp. 58–77, here pp. 66–67.
consequences for the economy, were never realistically capable of pushing the
Chinese economy forward on the path of modern economic growth.”36 After the
revolution in 1911, the government struggled with the transformation of the old
fiscal system, however, without being able to better control the financial re-
sources of the country, i.e. taxes. New regulations could hardly be enforced, es-
pecially since China was becoming more and more politically fractured. The
provinces remained responsible for most of the taxes, however most of the
money remained in the provincial capitals, where warlords began to act accord-
ing to their own political and economic agenda without paying much attention
to the demands of the central government. As a consequence, foreign loans
needed to fill the financial gaps and, starting in 1913, the Chinese government
had to take on obligations of around US$ 270 million during the next two deca-
des. The so-called Nishihara loans in particular, granted by Japan, also in-
creased the Chinese dependency on Japan.37 China was, however, not only
weakened by economic problems, but also by the political factionalism that
prevented a united national front against the menace of Japanese imperialism
and Western jingoism during and after the war. Therefore, the reasons for the
political weakness of China should also be addressed here, before the impact of
the First World War is dealt with in more detail.
After the death of Yuan Shikai (1859–1916), the first president of the Chi-
nese Republic, China would be divided between powerful warlords, eventually
showing the division of the country, and was prepared by those who controlled
the prefectures and would use taxes to secure their own position instead of sup-
porting the central government. While the central government officially repre-
sented the state’s power after Yuan’s death in 1916, especially since no dynasty
or dominant ruler existed, in reality, different families and warlords were pur-
suing their own goals in the provinces, waiting for their bid for power.38 This
factionalism, however, already existed before the First World War. The early re-
publican governments were led by a generation born around 1870, who were
 Feuerwerker, Economic Trends, p. 99.

 Murao Hideo, The Ideas and Philosophy of Nishihara Kamezō. In the Context of His Role in
the Nishihara Loans, in: Nagasaki kenritsu daigaku ronshū 30 (1997) 3, pp. 433–473; Michael
Schiltz, “Separating the Roots of the Chrysanthemum”. Nishihara Kamezō and the Abortive
China Loans, 1917–18, (2007), MPRA Paper No. 7100 https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/7100/
1/MPRA_paper_7100.pdf (3. 10. 2019); Suzuki Takeo (Ed.), Nishihara shakkan shiryō kenkyū,
Tokyo 1972.
 Andrew J. Nathan, A Constitutional Republic. The Peking Government, 1916–28, in: Denis
Twitchett and John K. Fairbank (Eds.), The Cambridge History of China, vol. 12: Republican
China 1912–1949, Part 1, Cambridge 1983, pp. 256–283, here p. 256.
2.2 China in 1914 13
interested in securing their own position as traditional elites on the one hand,
but who were also, due to their experience as students abroad at Western or Jap-
anese universities, interested in modern forms of government and economy on
the other. Sun Yat–sen (1866–1925) was also recruiting his revolutionary fol-
lowers among Chinese students in Japan and at home, waiting to launch a new
revolutionary attempt against the old order.39 The revolution, however, did not
create a united China, although the government in Beijing operated on the basis
of the provisional constitution of 1912 from Yuan’s death in 1916 until 1928. The
ruling president, “elected by parliament for a five–year term, had the symbolic
functions and potentially the prestige of a head of state,” yet it was “his person-
ality and factional backing [that] determined whether he could translate these
into real power.”40 The cabinet, in the meantime, was usually unable to agree
upon a political course because its members were supporting different factions,
each of them longing for their own political goals. Only a strong president was
able to at least partly rule, usually based on the control of crucial ministries, like
the Ministry of Finance or Ministry of the Interior. Since essential decisions, e.g.
budgets or war declarations, needed the support of parliament, it was hard to
rule in the aftermath of the revolution in 1911. In 1914, China was consequently
not only suffering from economic problems but also from political instability.
When the Chinese government eventually declared war against Germany in 1917,
it did so because it hoped to gain from such a step. Next to a better stance against
Japanese imperialism, it was hoped that the prestige of being one of the victors
at the peace conferences after the war would help to better position China within
a new world order. Its financial dependency on Japan and foreign capital in gen-
eral, as described above, however, further weakened the position of the central
 Sun Yat–sen’s relationship to Japanese right–wing pan–Asianist organizations and military

representatives, who were interested in a pro–Japanese order in a possible post–revolutionary
China is described in detail by Marius B. Jansen, The Japanese and Sun Yat–sen, Stanford 1970
[1954]. Some of the right–wing contacts of the Chinnese revolutionary are also discussed in de-
tail in Frank Jacob, Japanism, Pan–Asianism, Terrorism. A Short History of the Amur Society
(Black Dragons) 1901–1945, Palo Alto, CA 2014 and Frank Jacob, Die Thule–Gesellschaft und die
Kokuryūkai. Geheimgesellschaften im global–historischen Vergleich, Würzburg 2013. There
were, however, also pro–Chinese supporters of the revolutionary movement in Japan. For one
source of such a supporter see Miyazaki Tōten, My Thirty–Three Year’s Dream. The Autobiogra-
phy of Miyazaki Toten, transl. and ed. by Marius B. Jansen and Etō Shinkichi, Princeton 2014.
On the different varieties of pan–Asianism in Japan, see: Sven Saaler/J. Victor Koschmann
(Eds.), Pan–Asianism in Modern Japanese History. Colonialism, Regionalism and Borders, Lon-
don 2007.
 Nathan, Constitutional Republic, p. 264.
government, whose constitutional role during and in the aftermath of the First
World War was purely a facade.
In reality, power lay in the hands of the different factions and “personal
followings, cutting across the boundaries of official institutions,” wherein each
faction was “centred on a particular leader and composed of his individually
recruited, personally loyal followers.”41 There were several factions that had
gained influence since the revolution and would struggle for influence during
the war years. Some of them were military cliques, like the Zhili Clique42 or the
Fengtian Clique,43 while others were formed by politicians or journalists, like
the so–called Research Clique.44 Regardless of such categorizations, it has to be
emphasized that the larger and more successful cliques were heterogeneous
with regard to their supporters and followers in parliament. The first elected
parliament (1913–1914) was dissolved twice in its first three years of existence
when Zhang Kun (1854–1923) proclaimed himself Prime Minister of the Imperial
Cabinet in early July 1917 while trying to reinstall Emperor Puyi (1906–1967),
who had abdicated.45 Eventually, it was the Anfu Club, the political wing of the
Anhui Clique, represented by Duan Qirui (1865–1936),46 who served as Prime
Minister between 1916 and 1918, that won a majority in parliament after Zhang’s
failed imperial restoration attempt. Of 470 seats, 342 were controlled by the
Anfu Club. Due to its dominance, parliamentarian politics, at least for a while,
functioned much better; this becomes obvious when considering that 1918 saw
a new prime minister and cabinet in Beijing, both of whom went through the
supposed process of confirmation by the Chinese parliament.47 Nevertheless,
 Ibid., p. 271.
 The Zhili clique was led by General Feng Guozhang (1859–1919) and General Cao Kun
(1862–1938), who also served as President of the Chinese Republic between 1923 and 1924.
 The Fengtian clique was led by Zhang Zuolin (1875–1928), who started his career as a ban-
dit, became warlord of Manchuria, and was eventually assassinated by officers of the Japanese
Kwangtung Army. On his role in Northeast China between the revolution and his death see
David Bonavia, China’s Warlords, New York 1995, ch. 2; Gavan McCormack, Chang Tso–lin in
Northeast China, 1911–1928. China, Japan, and the Manchurian Idea, Stanford, CA 1977.
 For a more detailed survey of factionalism in China, especially in the years after the First
World War, Andrew J. Nathan, Peking Politics, 1918–1923. Factionalism and the Failure of Con-
stitutionalism, Berkeley/Los Angeles 1976; Hsi–sheng Ch’i, Warlord Politics in China 1916–1928,
Stanford, CA 1976 and Hatano Yoshihiro, Chūgoku kindai gunbatsu no kenkyū, Tokyo 1973 are
recommended. For a short survey see Edward A. McCord, Warlordism in Early Republican
China, in: David A. Graff/Robin Highman (Eds.), A Military History of China, Lexington KY, 2012,
pp. 175–192.
 Madeleine Chi, China Diplomacy 1914–1918, Cambridge, MA 1970, p. 127.
 Duan Qirui was also provisional President of the Chinese Republic between 1924 and 1926.
 Nathan, Constitutional Republic, p. 278.
this short period of dominance would later lead to new fractions within China’s
political landscape again. The protests in 1919 were consequently not only stimu-
lated by foreign events, but also by the anger about the lack of a clear national
political agenda within the parliament, where factional struggles rather than na-
tional necessities dominated political decisions. There were numerous moments
during the First World War when intellectuals and students alike might have
hoped for a more China–oriented political agenda by the ruling power, but even-
tually these hopes were disappointed, since power and influence were the main
driving forces of political action within the parliament. This political weakness
was also obvious to foreign observers, and Japanese military officers in particular
believed that the First World War provided a good opportunity to expand the in-
fluence of Japan on the Asian mainland.48 Japan had kept forces on the continent
after the Russo–Japanese War, namely in Manchuria, where it maintained “some
garrison troops [. . .] on the pretext of protecting their railways and they exerted
significant military influence over Manchuria, despite China’s official sovereignty
in this region.”49 The First World War naturally provided Japan with an opportu-
nity, one that not only its military leaders but also the politicians in Tokyo were
willing to use to extend its influence in China. The war consequently tied both
countries’ ambitions to each other: while China wanted to regain its sovereignty,
Japan wanted to further expand on the cost of its East Asian neighbor. Both
had high expectations, triggered by the conflict, which paralyzed the West. Need-
less to say, the war was a watershed moment in the history of Sino–Japanese re-
lations, as it was in both national histories. The following section will show how
the war as such determined developments in East Asia.
2.3 China and the First World War
After Japan had issued an ultimatum and then declared war against Germany on
23 August 1914, China was something of an observer of the war in East Asia since
Yuan Shikai and his supporters had decided to stay neutral, and had to watch as
Japan occupied Shandong on 7 November 1914, taking over the imperial rule in
the region from Germany.50 As American historian Stephen G. Craft correctly
 On the expansive policy of the Japanese military see Kitaoka Shin’ichi, Nihon rikugun to
tairiku seisaku, 1906–1918, Tokyo 1978.
 Asada Masafumi, The China–Russia–Japan Military Balance in Manchuria, 1906–1918, in:
Modern Asian Studies 44, no. 6 (2010), pp. 1283–1311, here p. 1285.
 Ian Nish, Japan and the Outbreak of War in 1914, in: The Collected Writings of Ian Nish,
Vol. 1, Tokyo 2001, pp. 173–187.
evaluated, China could not do much about it: “Without a powerful army, and
with the European powers preoccupied with the Western Front, China had no
choice but to use diplomatic means to regain control.”51 Yuan had multiple rea-
sons to keep China out of the war and therefore used his military power and the
backing of his decision by the Western powers to suppress the voices that de-
manded Chinese action in 1914. One problem he had to face was the increase in
the number of bandits and criminal organizations in Republican China, who,
among other things, regularly kidnapped foreigners.52 Yuan had also realized
that while all the European powers were involved in the war, American sup-
port alone might not have been enough to keep Japan’s imperial ambitions
with regard to China in check. He consequently did not want to “waste” his
power in a solely European war, leaving Chinese interests undefended. Other-
wise, Yuan realized, Japan could have used the political and probably military
vacuum to further extend its sphere of influence.53 He consequently declared Chi-
nese neutrality on 6 August 1914, demanding that the United States and Japan
guarantee it. Japan, however, did not address this demand, but rather, in accor-
dance with Great Britain, declared war against Germany. While Britain needed
Japanese support, especially with regard to its battleships for control of and pro-
tection of transports in the Mediterranean Sea, the British Minister to China, John
Jordan, promised Chinese diplomat V. K. Wellington Koo (1888–1985) on 19 Au-
gust 1914 that the Chinese rights to Shandong, and its capital Qingdao, would be
returned to China in the aftermath of the war.54 Yuan, and with him the Chinese
people, therefore “maintained an expedient, watchful neutrality, which would
last until August 1917, and was prepared to give it up the moment the opportu-
nity rose.”55
It only took Japan two weeks to land 20,000 soldiers on the Liaodong Penin-
sula on 3 September 1914 in order to gain control of Qingdao and the Shandong
Railway as fast as possible. The 3,000 German soldiers and 3,000 reservists who
defended the Chinese possession of the German Kaiserreich did not stand a
chance. Japan eventually gained control of the whole province of Shandong,
 Stephen G. Craft, Angling for an Invitation to Paris: China’s Entry into the First World War,
in: The International History Review 16 (1994) 1, pp. 1–24, here p. 1.
 On banditry in Republican China see Phil Billingsley, Bandits in Republican China, Stan-
ford 1988; Cai Shaoqing (Ed.), Minguo shiqi de tufei, Beijing 1993. Due to the rise of the war-
lords in China since 1916, the number of bands of robbers would even further increase.
 Dieter Kuhn, Die Republik China von 1912 bis 1937. Entwurf für eine politische Ereignisge-
schichte, 3. überarbeitete und erweiterte Auflage, Heidelberg 2007, p. 146.
 Xu, Asia and the Great War, p. 39.
 Ibid., p. 40.
which was de facto transformed into a Japanese protectorate on the Asian main-
land.56 This process received relatively little attention from the European powers,
who were just realizing that a fast end to the war had been a wish based on wild
assumptions rather than on facts. Japan had only done what it had been longing
to do since the end of the Russo–Japanese War, namely to secure its influence in
Manchuria and to extend it if at all possible. During the Chinese Revolution, the
government in Tokyo only feared for its possessions in China, which is why For-
eign Minister Uchida Kōsai (1865–1936) and Minister to Peking Ijūin Hikokichi
(1864–1924) argued in favor of support for the Qing Dynasty so as not to endan-
ger Japan’s rights in Manchuria. An unknown revolutionary government seemed
less reliable than the autocrats they had been dealing with since the 1860s.57
Agreements were signed and Japan would sell arms to the government, but at
the same time, it proposed a joint military intervention in China to Britain.
Yuan Shikai, using British intermediaries, would, however, eventually reach
an agreement with the revolutionaries, who were holding the provinces Great
Britain was mainly interested in, and a military intervention became unneces-
sary. In the meantime, Japanese “patriots” (shishi) had been sent to China by
the Black Ocean Society (Gen’yōsha) and the Amur Society (Kokuryūkai), sup-
porting the Chinese revolutionaries in the hope of gaining influence over the
post–revolutionary government. Kita Ikki (1883–1937) was one of those sent
on such a mission, but the revolutionary leaders realized relatively fast that
these Japanese agents had a more expansionist interest and interpretation of
pan–Asianism.58 During the so–called Second Revolution against Yuan’s rule by
Sun Yat–sen and others like General Li Liejun (also referred to as Li Lieh–chun),
Japan also granted asylum to the defeated revolutionaries, since it was unclear
if their service, according to Japan’s long–term goals in the region, could be
 Kuhn, Republik China, p. 146.

 Shinkichi Etō, China’s International Relations, 1911–1931, in: John K. Fairbank/Albert
Feuerwerker (Eds.), The Cambridge History of China, Vol. 13: Republican China 1912–1949,
Part 2, Cambridge 1983, pp. 74–115, here p. 92.
 Kita Ikki had already worked with Chinese revolutionaries in Japan before 1911, e.g. on the
publication of the Naigai jiji gekkan (Monthly Correspondence on Home and Abroad). See: Ōsh-
ima Tōto, Tōyama–ō no doko ga erai ka, in Fujimoto Hisanori (Ed.), Tōyama seishin, Tokyo
1940, pp. 82–110, here p. 86; Hatsuse Ryūhei, Dentōteki uyoku. Uchida Ryōhei no kenkyū, Fu-
kuoka 1980, p. 214. For Kita Ikki’s vita see Kimura Tokio, Kita Ikki to Ni–niroku jiken no inbō
Tokyo 2007, pp. 318–322; Marion Laurinat, Kita Ikki (1883–1937) und der Februarputsch 1936.
Eine historische Untersuchung japanischer Quellen des Militärgerichtsverfahrens, Berlin 2006,
pp. 46–48; Matsumoto Ken’ichi, Kita Ikki ron, Toyko 1996, pp. 348–359; Tanaka Sōgorō, Kita
Ikki. Nihonteki fashisuto no shōchō, second edition, Tokyo 1971, pp. 427–453.
used at a later time.59 There were also incidents related to the Second Revolution
in China that riled the Japanese miliary: “the detention of a Japanese army cap-
tain, the arrest of an army second lieutenant, and acts of violence by Yuan’s
troops as they entered Nanking which resulted in the deaths of three Japa-
nese.”60 The relations between the two East Asian countries were consequently
already bad when the First World War opened another window for Japan to deal
with the main antagonist to its claim for leadership in the region.
China had declared its neutrality and demanded “that belligerents were not
to occupy or conduct warfare on Chinese soil or in Chinese territorial waters,”61
but these claims were simply ignored by the Japanese government as it launched
the above–described attack against the German possessions in Shandong. The
government in Tokyo had willingly voted for the Japanese Empire to play an ac-
tive role during the war, and once the territory of interest had been occupied by
its troops, it would be no easy task to get it back from Japan. The military opera-
tions already showed that the Japanese military did not care for Chinese neutral-
ity at all when the leading officers “decided to attack German fortifications from
the rear, [because] to do so it would have to pass through Chinese territory and
violate”62 it. Pressured by Tokyo, the government in Beijing eventually had to
take Shandong off its map of neutral territory, since Japan had presented a fait
accompli in Shandong. It was clear from the beginning of the military operations
by the Japanese army that Tokyo had no interest in taking just Qingdao from the
Germans because, early on, railway lines and geostrategic places in the province
were captured by Japan’s soldiers. Once Germany had surrendered, the Japanese
military just left its troops where they were to secure rule over the whole prov-
ince, while China could only observe, according to its declared neutrality. The
European powers, in the meantime, did not pay attention to this at all, and if
they did, it was because they had their own ambitions for China that determined
their non–intervention. Britain, allied with the Japanese, did not favor the larger
intervention of Japan in China, but its strong presence in the northeastern prov-
inces might have had a positive and stabilizing impact on China’s central and
southern provinces, where the main British interests were centered. With the
pressing developments of the war in Europe, the British military planners and
politicians felt a more intensive need for Japanese assistance, which is why they
might simply have looked the other way. China could only rely on American help
and sympathy.
 Etō, China’s International Relations, p. 94.

 Ibid.
 Ibid., p. 95.
 Ibid.
In Japan, the situation stimulated the demands of right–wing pressure

groups like the Amur Society, whose leader Uchida Ryōhei (1874–1937) de-
clared in October 1914 that Japan had the chance to solve its Asian problems
due to the absence of the European powers. He criticized the reluctant posi-
tion of the Japanese government and urged the politicians in Tokyo to act in
favor of a more aggressive foreign policy towards China.63 Uchida formulated
ten demands – very similar to the official Twenty–One Demands of 1915 – that
requested special rights for Japan in China, including a right for military inter-
vention. And he was correct insofar as the European powers really could not
have intervened, since they “had no time or resources for Asian concerns.”64
The Chinese wish to regain control over its own territory in Shandong was
eventually countered by the Twenty–One Demands, which were drafted by
Prime Minister Ōkuma Shigenobu (1838–1922) and Foreign Minister Katō Ta-
kaaki (1869–1926) and handed over to Yuan Shikai by the Japanese on 18 Janu-
ary 1915.65 The Japanese cabinet had agreed on 14 demands, grouped into four
sections, as well as on a fifth section of “wishes” on 11 November 1918. An accep-
tance of the Twenty–One Demands would have degraded China to the status of
being a servant state to Japan. The Japanese not only demanded the German
rights to Shandong, but also the acceptance of special interests in the Manchur-
ian provinces of Liaoning and Jilin as well eastern Inner Mongolia, the elongation
of leasing rights in Lushun and Dalian, including for the local railways, a joint
venture between the two countries for the Hanyeping iron and steel works, and a
prohibition for further concessions or lease treaties for coastal or domestic harbor
towns with other states.66 Two demands directly threatened China’s sovereignty,
because the Japanese demanded their own consultants for Chinese politics, econ-
omy, and finances. Furthermore, Tokyo demanded a combined police force and
a joint defense industry.67
While Yuan was requested by the Japanese representative in Beijing, Hioki
Eki (1861–1921), to keep the demands secret, they were leaked by Wellington
Koo68 who, due to his good contacts with the US Minister in China, Paul Reinsch
 Kokuryūkai, 8 Tai–Shi mondaikaiketsu iken, 9 October 1914, Gaimushō gaikōrshiryōkan

(Archive of the Foreign Ministry of Japan), B–1–1–2–156; Uchida Ryōhei, 15 Tai–Shi mondai-
kaiketsu iken, 29 October 1914, Gaimushō gaikōrshiryōkan, B–1–1–2–151.
 Etō, China’s International Relations, p. 96.
 For a detailed description of the initial demands see ibid., pp. 98–99; Xu, Asia and the
Great War, p. 40.
 Kuhn, Republik China, p. 147.
 Ibid.
 For Koo’s vita see Stephen G. Craft, V.K. Wellington Koo and the Emergence of Modern
China, Lexington, KY 2003.
(1869–1923), hoped for support from the Americans. Yuan, in contrast, dealt di-
rectly with the Japanese politicians in more than 40 negotiation meetings, and
after 84 days, a revised version of the initial demands was finally presented. Re-
gardless of the negotiations, when the international press, like The Times of Lon-
don, reported the Japanese demands, the wider public opinion in the West, as far
as it was concerned with the events and developments in the Far East, expressed
sympathy for the Chinese.
In the end, Tokyo had to abandon the fifth group of its demands, since
these would have transformed China into a Japanese protectorate, but still, the
acceptance of the first four groups would have been a humiliation for the Chi-
nese, who had initially hoped to regain their own territory but instead had to
accept further political degradation by the Japanese.69 The fact that Yuan even-
tually agreed upon a final, much–diffused version of the demands, however,
further separated him from revolutionaries like Sun Yat–sen who, in contrast to
Yuan, did not consider the final agreement a Chinese success, but treason.70
With its aggressive policy, Japan now left no doubts about its aims in East Asia
and lost some of its prestige, especially since the political procedure was almost
amateur–like. Etō Shinkichi’s overall evaluation should therefore be quoted
here in some detail:
What was distinctive about the demands was the insensitivity and clumsiness of Japanese
diplomacy. The world, and especially America, saw a crafty Japan taking advantage of its
weaker neighbour at a time when the Western powers were preoccupied elsewhere. Japa-
nese diplomats, by requesting secrecy, enabled Chinese statesmen to build up alarm and
distrust by leaking the contents of supposedly non–existent demands. The final ultima-
tum served on Yuan Shih–k’ai in May 1915 completed the picture of Japanese insensitiv-
ity. It gained Japan little the Chinese had not already agreed to, and provided the
symbolism for what became, each 25 May, a Day of National Humiliation.71
The acceptance of the demands by China could consequently only be considered

to be a “Pyrrhic victory,”72 and it was not only the American public that began to
look at Japan more critically. During the negotiations, China also was shaken by
a first wave of anti–Japanese resentment when more than 40,000 demonstrators
assembled in Shanghai in March 1915 to protest against the Twenty–One De-
mands, because intellectuals like Liang Qichao (1873–1929) had criticized the
content of the demands and warned the government as well as the people that
 Etō, China’s International Relations, pp. 97–99.

 Kuhn, Republik China, p. 148.
 Etō, China’s International Relations, p. 99.
 Ibid., p. 100.
Japan was trying to turn China into a second Korea.73 Anti–Japanese protests
took place in most of the larger Chinese cities – like Shanghai, Beijing, Shenyang
or Hankow – where students went on strike, held protest meetings, organized
rallies and delivered pamphlets and leaflets to the wider public, and where mer-
chants organized a boycott against Japanese products. The government, in the
meantime, decided to suppress these protests, as they were considered to be act-
ing against the rule of Yuan Shikai, and violence was used to force the protesters
to dissolve.74 Mao Zedong not only realized in 1915 that “Japan is a powerful
enemy,” but he also concluded that China as a nation “could not survive without
fighting in the next twenty years.”75 The people who remembered the national
humiliation by Japan 20 years before, when China had been defeated in the First
Sino–Japanese War, were now being challenged again by Japanese imperialism.
The students, who had considered Japan to be a successful example of Asian
modernization, were disappointed and now realized that the Japanese govern-
ment had no real interest in solidarity with its neighbors, but rather wanted to
replace the Western imperialist powers as the leader of East Asia. This knowledge
stimulated a wave of nationalism in China, which, however, was not exclusively
related to the foreign menace.
China’s leaders, due to the Japanese bid for expansion, also realized that they
needed to try to counter the imperialist behavior of their neighbor and tried to link
their own aims with the Allies, who were still struggling to decide the war in Eu-
rope. Britain had had an interest in China’s participation in the war, but the Japa-
nese government had declared its reservations, especially since a stronger Chinese
voice within the international community was against the natural interests of
Japan. Due to the Japanese reservations, Britain eventually decided against negoti-
ating with China about its participation in the war.76 The war, however, trans-
formed the British Empire into a rather unfelt presence in China, where its
activities decreased, and eventually Britain was reduced to a minor power in
East Asia when Japan took over its political and economic might in the region.77
 Xu, Asia and the Great War, p. 40.

 Kuhn, Republik China, p. 148.
 Mao to Xiao Zisheng, 25 July 1916, in: Stuart R. Schram (Ed.), Mao’s Road to Power. Revolu-
tionary Writings, 1912–1949, Armonk, NY 1992, Vol. 1, p. 103, cited in Xu, Asia and the Great
War, p. 41.
 Etō, China’s International Relations, p. 100.
 Clarence B. Davis, Limits of Effacement. Britain and the Problem of American Cooperation
and Competitionin China, 1915–1917, in: Pacific Historical Review 48 (1979) 1, pp. 47–63, here
p. 47. For two studies about the Anglo–Japanese relations during and after the First World
War see Peter Lowe, Great Britain and Japan, 1911–1915. A Study of British Far Eastern Policy,
Regardless of these developments, the British government kept its pro–Japanese

stance and did not criticize its East Asian ally either for the Twenty–One De-
mands or for its aggressive policy in Shandong. Actually, only a few officials in
the Far Eastern Department were worried about the developments in China, but
their voices could hardly be heard during the loud and heated debates about the
Western Front. That the Japanese had shown that they considered the British as
their rivals in East Asia since the Chinese Revolution in 1911 seemed to be unim-
portant during the war, due to which the British Empire needed to tighten all its
muscles and activate all its allies, no matter how avaricious they may have
been.78 Even America’s attempts, namely by Paul Reinsch as well as Edward
T. Williams (1854–1944),79 who led the US State Department’s Far Eastern Divi-
sion, and President Woodrow Wilson himself, could not persuade the British to
be more aware of their East Asian ally. However, once the details of Japan’s de-
mands had been leaked, Britain also put diplomatic pressure on the government
in Tokyo, although the Chinese Minister in London, Alfred Sao–ke Sze (1877–
1958),80 was informed by Foreign Minister Edward Grey (1862–1933) that the Brit-
ish government recommended the acceptance of the final version of the Japanese
demands.
Regardless of his position, Yuan Shikai did not seem too concerned by his
lack of allies against Japan, especially since he, as mentioned before, consid-
ered the final version of the demands of the Japanese government a success of
his long negotiations. In fact, Yuan was rather more interested in internal mat-
ters, since he was trying to overcome China’s post–revolutionary republican
order. He was trying to reestablish the monarchy in China and longed for him-
self to be the first post–revolutionary emperor of the country.81 His plans, how-
ever, met resistance, even from former supporters. Liang Qichao, who had
supported Yuan in the past, began to publicly criticize his bid for a reinstalla-
tion of the monarchy and was supported by some of the military leaders who
had supported Yuan in the past but were, however, unwilling to serve him in
the role of a Chinese Emperor. On 11 December 1915, Yuan’s preparations were
New York 1969 and Ian Nish, Alliance in Decline. A Study in Anglo–Japanese Relations,
1908–1923, London 1972.
 Davis, Limits of Effacement, p. 50.
 Williams’ letters related to “Chinese problems” can be found in Box 1 of the Edward
Thomas Williams Papers at the Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley. For
his later involvement in the peace talks in Paris, see his diary, Carton 3, Vol. 7.
 Ian Nish, Japan and China, 1914–1916, in: F. Harry Hinsley (Ed.), British Foreign Policy
Under Sir Edward Grey, Cambridge 1977, pp. 452–465.
 Kuhn, Republik China, p. 149.
finished and a process began that would lead to further fractions within Chi-
nese politics. The Deputy Council for Legislation (daixing lifayuan) requested
Yuan to take on the throne and the title of Emperor, but the general declined
the offer. When asked for a second time on 13 December 1915, Yuan agreed and
declared that he would reign the country as its new emperor under the maxim
“great constitution” (hongxian), beginning on 1 January 1916. Two weeks after
these events, Cai E (1882–1916), a disciple of Liang and the former military gov-
ernor of Yunnan Province, established the National Protection Army (huguojun)
and declared Yunnan’s independence.82 Other military leaders followed Cai’s
lead and also revolted against the self–proclaimed emperor.
The revolt in Yunnan prevented Yuan Shikai from following his original plan,
and he postponed his inthronization until 9 February 1916, but the antagonism
against his person in the south of China clearly showed that he would be unable
to keep the power for himself. His decline had begun. Yuan was internally and ex-
ternally isolated, unable to gain any valuable support for his claim, which is why
he eventually had to abandon his ideas and the throne itself. On 22 March 1916,
Yuan officially renounced his claim.83 Regardless of the end of the ambitious impe-
rial plans of the formerly mightiest military leader in China, the break up of the
provinces and the growing power of individual generals was irreversible. In
early April 1916, Guangdong declared its independence from Beijing, and other
provinces would follow. Duan Qirui, who as Prime Minister had been sum-
moned to the capital to try to solve this crisis, was also unable to repair the
damage that had been done to the country by the ambitions of Yuan. The latter
had laid the foundations for the era of the warlords, who would determine the fate
of the Chinese republics in the years to come until Chiang Kai–shek (1887–1975)
began his rule in 1928, though this was not fully uncontested by the continuing
existence of autonomous warlords. Duan did, however, keep control in northern
China, where he ruled the remains of the Beiyang government, while the south,
the southwest, and the northeast were held by powerful military leaders. The Japa-
nese had stimulated these developments in northern China as well when they sup-
ported a Manchu–Mongol movement that longed for independence from the
republic. Japan’s foreign ministry had supported this movement, but when
Yuan eventually died on 6 June 1916, it withdrew its support since China had
been weakened already and no additional separatist movement was needed to
weaken the central government further. After Yuan’s death, the Japanese changed
 Xie Benshu, Cai E yu minchu zhengju, in: Shehui kexue zhanxian 6 (1996), pp. 220–226,
cited in ibid., p. 150.
 Ibid., pp. 150–151.
their tactics with regard to their foreign policy, and when Ōkuma Shigenobu was
replaced as Prime Minister by Terauchi Masatake (1852–1919) in October 1916, the
latter, together with the new foreign minister, Motono Ichirō (1862–1918), at-
tempted to gain influence over the new Chinese cabinet by sending a personal
envoy to Beijing, namely the businessman Nishihara Kamezo (1873–1954), who
would initiate the so–called Nishihara Loans, a form of indirect imperialism that
would achieve what the Twenty–One Demands could not.84
The death of Yuan, however, also created another opportunity for China to
gain some more weight in the international theater, because the opponents
against the active involvement of the Chinese Republic in the First World War
could no longer resist the urge felt by so many of his fellow politicians. Since
1915 a scheme had been worked out, according to which China would provide
labor for the war in Europe. According to the motto “laborers in place of sol-
diers” (yigong daibing),85 Beijing was willing to support the war effort of the al-
lied powers with human capital. After Yuan Shikai’s death, the way was clear
for laborers to go to Europe, and “his successors feuded with each other but
managed to provide ca. 150,000 laborers,86 who worked on the Western Front
during the war.”87 China thereby sent a number of working men to Europe, sur-
passing the number of involved civilians of any other country. When the British
Legation in Beijing requested support and demanded that British missionaries
could recruit men in north China for the Chinese Labor Corps, it was clear that
the Chinese government would eventually participate in the war and could
hope for better treatment once the enemy in Europe had been defeated. A lot of
laborers, however, would be sent to France as well. It is ironic that a French
ship with Chinese workers was sunk on its way to Europe in February 1917, not
only causing 542 deaths among the workers, but also leading to a further re-
quest by the Allies to the Japanese government, demanding support from its
navy for protection against German submarines. Japan, on the other hand,
used this request to demand the former German possessions in China and the
Pacific above the equator, something that was secretly granted by Britain, France,
Russia, and Italy.88 While China was still recruiting and sending its workers to
 Etō, China’s International Relations, p. 101.

 On this strategy see Xu, Asia and the Great War, pp. 45–48.
 Xu claims a number of 140,000 laborers, Wang speaks of 175,000. Peter Chen–main Wang,
Caring beyond National Borders. The YMCA and Chinese Laborers in World War I Europe, in:
Church History 78 (2009) 2, pp. 327–349, here p. 327.
 Xu, Asia and the Great War, p. 45.
 Etō, China’s International Relations, p. 101.
foreign countries, its hopes to thereby regain its sovereignty as a state could
already never be fulfilled.
As such, recruitment was not an easy task for the foreign missionaries.
Most of the laborers were illiterate and had never even heard of the countries
they were supposed to be working for or sent to. The British missionaries, who
were able to use the Chinese language and were accustomed to China’s culture,
were obviously helping with the progress, but the involvement of the Chinese
government during the process to ensure its successful operation seemed to be
inevitable.89 In Europe, the workers were eventually housed in camps that were
provided and run by the British, French, and American militaries (Table 2.2).
Table 2.2: Chinese Labor Camps on the Western Front.90
French organization British organization American organization
Number   
of camps
Size –, men  camps of more than Ca. , men in each camp
of camps  men
Other camps with
–, men
Contractually, the Chinese workers had a right to food, clothing, and a salary,
but the contractual agreement was obviously not kept in every camp, which is
why conflicts between the men and their military supervisors occurred early
on. While the laborers from China were allowed to move around their new envi-
ronment freely and even to travel to other cities, if the required documents had
been obtained before, the foreign workers were also confronted with racism
and jingoism from the Western soldiers.91 Eventually, however, China not only
benefitted economically from sending workers to Europe but also through ex-
ports, e.g. rifles that were secretly sent to the British through Hong Kong. In
 Wang, Caring beyond National Borders, p. 330.

 Data according to ibid., p. 332. For a more detailed analysis of the role of the Chinese
Labor Corps on the Western Front, see: Xu Guoqi, Strangers on the Western Front. Chinese
Workers in the Great War, Cambridge, MA 2011 and Alex Calvo/Bao Qiaoni, Forgotten Voices
from the Great War. The Chinese Labour Corps, in: The Asia–Pacific Journal 13 (2015) 1, http://
apjjf.org/-Bao-Qiaoni–Alex-Calvo/4411/article.pdf (30. 9. 2019).
 Michael Summerskill, China on the Western Front. Britain’s Chinese Work Force in the
First World War, London 1982 provides a more detailed account for those Chinese laborers,
who worked under British surveillance.
contrast to Japan, whose government and businesses gained immense sur-

pluses during the war, no long–lasting or major impact could be seen in China.
The government in Beijing, especially due to its political problems, needed
money, and Japan seemed to be the only option to hand.
Nishihara had arranged a first loan to the Chinese government in January
1917, due to which Duan’s government was receiving five million Yen in gold.92
These loans were funneled through Zhang Zuolin, who ruled in the northeast of
the country. Due to the incoming money, Duan was able to keep his allies around
him, namely Zhang and the conservatives of the Chinese Republic, represented in
the national assembly. The revolutionaries, gathered around Sun Yat–sen, in the
meantime opposed the Chinese participation in the war, fearing that it would fur-
ther strengthen the position of the current government. The Japanese eventually
decided to put their lot in with Duan’s rule and centered their loan policy on his
person, abolishing any support for the revolutionaries in the south, who had
been traditionally supported through existent pan–Asianist connections. This, in
the end, created a political schism, because Duan’s opponents, i.e. more than 130
members of the national assembly, met in Guangzhou (Canton) in August 1917,
where they elected Sun as the new leader of a southern military government.93
Between 1917 and 1918 the northern government therefore received further eight
Nishihara loans – a total of 145 million Yen – that were supposed to strengthen
Duan’s position against his enemies, but which also stimulated nationalist and
anti–Japanese feelings among the population, who felt betrayed and sold out to a
foreign power. It was, however, not solely the corruption of the government but
also, and especially, the dissolution of China, which was becoming more and
more divided among warlords, that would eventually stimulate the protests of
1919. Accordingly, the early warlord period from 1916,94 as one of the long–term
reasons for the national upheaval after the First World War, should be discussed
in a bit more detail, after which the occasion for the protests in 1919, i.e. the Chi-
nese attempts at Versailles to be treated as an equal by the other great powers,
will be thoroughly analyzed.
The warlord period determined China’s further political development and, in
a way, prevented it from taking a united stand against the Japanese imperialist
 Etō, China’s International Relations, p. 101.

 Ibid., p. 102.
 The description will, if not explicitly stated otherwise, follow James E. Sheridan, The War-
lord Era. Politics and Militarism under the Peking Government, 1916–28, in: Denis Twitchett/
John K. Fairbank (Eds.), The Cambridge History of China, Vol. 12: Republican China 1912–1949,
Part 1, Cambridge 1983, pp. 284–321.
menace, especially during the second half and the aftermath of the First World
War. A warlord is usually considered as someone “who commanded a personal
army, controlled or sought to control territory, and acted more or less indepen-
dently,”95 but the group of these men, who determined China’s political fate, was
very heterogeneous. Some might have started their career in the military, others
as bandits, and their values and motives were definitely as different as the char-
acters themselves. There were hundreds of warlords in China and only some of
them, especially the ones who ruled larger territories, have been intensely stud-
ied so far. Controlling their own armies, they were first and foremost trying to
expand their own influence, looking for allies if necessary, but then suppressing
them if possible. Chinese politics between 1916 and 1928 consequently offers a
rich field for Machiavellian studies, as power was the only motive for these “prin-
ces,” who obviously did not identify with the Chinese nation and the vision of a
strong nation state in the region.
For the warlords, there existed no national community, imagined or real,96
but they considered other ties as valuable, namely family ties, which is why
many of them tried to install their own family members in key military or politi-
cal positions. In addition, marriages continued to be used as a political instru-
ment, while personal bonds between officers and their military subordinates
would also help to strengthen the position of the warlords. If they wanted to re-
main in control, the warlords needed to control territory, because revenue se-
cured loyalty within their private armies. Without territory, the army would
dissolve and the warlord would consequently lose his position at the top of the
province he controlled. Naturally, a helix of violence and attempted expansion
by the warlords to increase their own power by increasing their army and the ter-
ritory they controlled was the consequence of these simple interrelations be-
tween possession and rule. For the common people, this helix, however, created
actual problems, especially when they were living in a contested area. There, dif-
ferent warlords might have claimed possession of the territory and demanded tax
payments at the same time. The loyalty of his subordinates was the most impor-
tant but also, at the same time, the most expensive asset of a warlord. In addi-
tion, a steady supply of weapons, ammunition, and other military goods was
necessary, next to the payments for food and other necessary supplies. Since it
 Ibid., p. 284. On the warlord definition and related questions see also Harold Z. Schiffrin,
Military and Politics in China. Is the Warlord Model Pertinent?, in: Asia Quarterly 3 (1975), p. 195
and Arthur Waldron, The Warlord. Twentieth–Century Chinese Understandings of Violence, Mil-
itarism, and Imperialism, in: The American Historical Review 96 (1991) 4, pp. 1073–1100.
 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Na-
tionalism, revised edition, New York 1998 [1991].
was not certain that the occupied territories would still belong to them in the
near future, most warlords tended to try everything to financially drain the occu-
pied regions as far as possible. In addition to taxes, successful businessmen in
particular would draw the attention of a warlord, as they promised to provide
exactly what the military leaders were looking for: easy money. Loyalty to the
different cliques was also almost always negotiable, depending on the cui bono
of the moment. Some warlords had rather loose ties with other cliques or other
generals, while some had developed closer relations, usually fortified by a com-
mon enemy. The Anhui, Zhili and Fengtian cliques dominated the early warlord
period. The warlords, like Zhang Zuolin, could have had very interesting biogra-
phies, and like the condottieri of earlier times, they rose to power through oppor-
tunity, pure will, and an acceptance of the violent deaths of those who opposed
their own ambition for power. Once in power, some of the warlords were success-
ful in expanding their local rule into the riparian territories. Once they had occu-
pied larger territories and could claim rule their uncontestedly, they became a
nationally important factor and were able to counter the interests of the govern-
ment in Beijing in the region. The warlord period was consequently a very violent
episode in Chinese history, because it was determined by hundreds of smaller
and larger conflicts between single warlords or different cliques. They might
have fought for influence in a whole province, but there were also smaller battles
for geostrategically important spots or due to specific economic interests. While
“China was nominally a republic, with a parliament, a premier, a president, po-
litical parties and elections,”97 nothing could be done in most parts of the coun-
try without the consent of a warlord.
Politically the warlords’ positions were also very diverse. Yan Xishan
(1883–1960), who controlled Shanxi Province, was a modernizer, while Zhang
Xun (1854–1923) was interested in the re–establishment of a Chinese Dynasty.
There were of course other political forces in the years between 1916 and 1928, like
the republican government in Beijing, the intellectuals and their agenda for mod-
ern education, new political forces based on the impact of Marxism–Leninism, es-
pecially since the Russian Revolution in 1917, and the students and workers who
protested against a growing Japanese influence on China’s politics, but they were
all unable to overcome the rule of the warlords and were consequently in some
way dependent on their decisions. The warlords were eventually responsible for a
fragile China, where the political structure remained republican but where, in
twelve years, one can count four presidents and, depending on the counting
 Elisabeth Forster, 1919 – The Year That Changed China. A New History of the New Culture
Movement, Berlin/Boston 2018.
method, 25 to 45 cabinets, as well as seven different constitutions.98 In these

years, 26 people served as prime minister, with terms ranging from two days to 17
months. More than 90 ministers were part of the different governments, in which
the south dominated overall by a ratio of 2:1. The nationalists and the communists
alike would later refer to the warlords as a junta, a term that emphasized the ego-
centric aspect of their politics, which was irresponsible and in no way interested
in the needs and sorrows of the ordinary people.99 The rise of the warlords went
hand in hand with increasing criminality, as bandits and other criminal organiza-
tions often cooperated with the new military rulers or were even incorporated
into their armies. Many common people, i.e. civilians, were also victims of the vio-
lent conflicts between the 1,300 warlords, who waged around 140 small–scale
wars within or between different provinces. The civilian death count has been es-
timated at more than 600,000 people. None of these wars was waged to reunite
China under one political leadership, but rather for the profit and territorial ex-
pansion of the warlords.100
The steady wars between China’s military rulers increased the demand for
soldiers, arms and ammunition, as well as war–related supplies, while more
and more provinces were drawn into these violent conflicts (Table 2.3).
Table 2.3: War–related increases in soldiers between 1916 and 1928.101
Year Soldiers in China Provinces involved in conflicts

between the warlords
 ,
 ,
 , 
 ,
 
 ,,
 
/ ,, 
 ,, 
The permanent need to arm larger forces stimulated an arms trade with the for-
eign powers, who exported weapons to China. In addition, the warlords tried to
establish their own arms production facilities in larger cities like Shanghai or
 Kuhn, Republik China, p. 164.

 Ibid.
 Ibid., pp. 164–165.
 Data according to ibid., p. 166 and Ch’i, Warlord Politics, p. 137.
Wuhan, from where their troops would be supplied with firepower. Due to
these industrial structures, Chinese logistics were also improved, although an
overall economic increase was prevented by the violent destruction wrought by
the wars between the single bidders for power. It was first and foremost Britain
and Japan that exported infantry rifles and other weapons to China and there-
fore gained from the warlords twice over. Not only were they paid for the arms,
but they also used them to keep the country politically unstable, a factor that
was quite useful for the imperialist interests of the two exporting powers. As
well as rifles, the warlords also imported artillery and were able to count close
to 1,500 field guns in 1918. Compared to the Western powers, the provision of
field guns or machine guns was still rather sparse, however, because there was
only one of them for every 1,000 soldiers.102
Regardless of the lack of unity and the further division of large parts of the
country among several mighty warlords, the Chinese government, led by Presi-
dent Li Yuanhong (1864–1928), who had taken over that position after Yuan
Shikai’s death, and Prime Minister Duan Qirui, discussed China’s possible par-
ticipation in the First World War to secure its interests in the aftermath of the
global conflict.103 After heated internal discussions and negotiations with the
United States, who had given China some hope of regaining its territory after
the war, i.e. Shandong Province, the Chinese government declared war against
Germany on 14 August 1917. This happened after a debate that had lasted five
months, but the internal struggles in China did not end with the declaration.
Members of the revolutionary party, i.e. the Guomindang (Nationalist Party of
China), including its leader Sun Yat–sen, opposed China’s participation in the
war, since they also realized that Duan intended to use it to strengthen his own
position further. The country was more divided than others, and, due to the se-
cret agreements between Japan and the other allies, had no chance of regaining
its territorial rights anyway.
Regardless of China’s willingness to participate in the war effort of the Al-
lied Powers, it was hardly necessary to send troops to Europe, since the Chinese
soldiers were not well equipped enough and the Western powers were rather
uninterested in a military contribution, but they appreciated, as mentioned
above, the support of laborers from China, who could be used for the logistics
related to the war effort on the Western Front. In mid–1918, therefore, between
140,000 and 200,000 workers represented China’s contribution to the Allied
victory. Among them were also close to 30,000 students and other intellectuals,
 Kuhn, Republik China, pp. 166–167.

 Craft, Angling for an Invitation, p. 1.
who came into contact with socialist and communist ideas, which they would
spread at home after their return in the 1920s.104 In the meantime, in China, the
national turmoil intensified more and more. Parliament, which had been dis-
solved in June 1917, was not summoned again. Instead, Duan Qirui continued
to extend his own power. Many members of parliament, as already mentioned
above, eventually fled to the south, where they supported Sun Yat–sen, who
established, backed by the Chinese Navy, a military government in Guangzhou
(Canton) in September 1917. Sun and his supporters claimed to protect the con-
stitution of 1912, but the existence of two governments would make it difficult
for China to demand something from the other Allied Powers in the aftermath
of the war. A disunited nation state could hardly demand anything from the
West. Sun could not remain in his leading position for very long and had to
abandon it in early May 1918, but the north–south division of China had been
intensified by his actions and a united front against Japanese and Western im-
perialism was impossible.105
The political schism had also intensified the dependency of Duan Qirui on
Tokyo’s financial support and opened the door for an economic form of Japanese
imperialism. He needed money for the military operations of the Anhui clique
and therefore was responsive to the offer of the Nishihara loans, which, on the
other hand, further increased Japan’s control over the political fate of China.
40 million Yen would be used to modernize the military and the banking system
of the country, as well as the development of a phone and telegraph network,
30 million Yen were supposed to be invested in mining and forestry, and likewise
50 million Yen for the railway networks in Manchuria and Shandong, which
would have supplied the Japanese with another tool with which to strengthen
their grip in these regions. Japan, in exchange, received guarantees that were re-
lated to Chinese natural resources as well as special trading rights in the country.
The loans made Duan’s position particularly strong and he was politically uncon-
tested in fall 1918, but he had sold out China’s integrity to gain such a powerful
rule.106 Japan had supported Duan’s rise to power since 1916, when the govern-
ment in Tokyo had “launched a policy of full support to [his] government [. . .]
 Some of the students also remained in France, some Chinese arrived after leaving China
after the May Fourth Protests. Zhou Enlai (1898–1976) was one of those, active in France in the
1920s, before later becoming influential within the communist movement in China. Chae–jin
Lee, Zhou Enlai. The Early Years, Stanford 1994, pp. 75–117; Han Suyin, Eldest Son. Zhou Enlai
and the Making of Modern China, 1898–1976, New York 1995, pp. 50–62.
 On Sun’s southern government see Marie–Claire Bergère, Sun Yat–Sen, trans. Janet Lloyd,
Stanford 1998, pp. 270–273.
 Kuhn, Republik China, pp. 174–175.
to establish close ties of political and economic cooperation, and financial ob-
ligation between China and Japan.”107 The Japanese government had realized
that an informal empire would secure its interests much better than open and
aggressive demands, which had failed in 1915. The money invested in military
training and modernization, of course, did not serve the war effort of China as
a member of the Entente Powers in the First World War, but was rather used to
suppress internal enemies of Duan’s government. The Japanese consequently per-
fectly understood how to exploit the internal turmoil in China and to use money
where diplomatic pressure had failed in the past. At the same time, the govern-
ment in Tokyo tried to gain exclusive influence in northeast China by supporting
Zhang Zuolin:
While the imperial government is not unwilling to give friendly consideration to financial
aid according to circumstances, it is important to do so by means of economic loans, es-
pecially by adopting the form of investment in joint enterprises, in order to avoid the sus-
picion of the powers and the jealousy of the central government. If [Zhang] too will strive
increasingly to promote the reality of Sino-Japanese cooperation, exerting himself, for ex-
ample, in relation to the lease of land, the management of mines and forests, and other
such promising enterprises, and if he will apply every effort to implementing the princi-
ples of so–called coexistence and coprosperity and devise methods of joint control both
in already existing and in newly-to-be-set-up Sino-Japanese joint venture companies,
then the finances of the Three Eastern Provinces can be made to flourish of their own ac-
cord and in an inconspicuous way.108
It was China’s political instability, the rivalry of the warlords, and the lack of a
truly national agenda that made it easy for Japan to economically infiltrate the
country, to use its leaders as puppets for its own agenda, and to not waste any
doubts on its position within China related to the peace conferences after the
First World War. Japan was uncontested, since the one and only Chinese govern-
ment as such did not exist and, since Tokyo had already secretly prepared its ter-
ritorial gains for the aftermath of the war, it could simply wait to harvest the
fruits of its long–term strategy in East Asia.
The philosopher and founding member of the Communist Party of China,
Chen Duxiu (1879–1942), would argue in an article on the foundations for the
realization of democracy (“Shixing minzhu de jichu”, 1 December 1919) that the
reasons for the failure of the republic were diverse:
 Sheridan, Warlord Era, p. 304.

 Gaimushō, Nihon gaikō nenpyō narabi ni shuyō monjo, Vol. 1, p. 525, cited in ibid.,
p. 305.
1) The Republic of China is still young.

2) The revolutionaries underestimated the problems related to the foundation
of a republic.
3) The warlords control the military in China.
4) The parties do not understand the true nature of democracy.
Chen also criticized the fact that the people were not involved in Chinese poli-
tics, as the country was ruled by bureaucrats, not by true representatives of the
people.109 The peace negotiations at Versailles and the failure of the delegation
to secure Chinese interests, however, would eventually lead to a first national
outcry in China and would stimulate the genesis of a first national movement
and the discussion about the nation state’s political fate in the aftermath of the
First World War.
2.4 China at Versailles
Recent publications have dealt with the Treaty of Versailles and its political
shortcomings, and the German historian Jörn Leonhard correctly called it a
“global epochal threshold” (“Globale Epochenschwelle”).110 For China, the trip
of its delegation to France would end with another national trauma that would
mark the direct cause for the May Fourth Movement. While the members of the
Chinese delegation had to counter only one imperialist antagonist, namely
Japan, because the Czarist Empire had fallen victim to the Russian Revolution,
and the Bolshevists were not represented in Paris but would deal with China in
bilateral treaties later,111 it was from the beginning no easy task for the govern-
ment in Beijing to reach its aims. Ge–Zay Wood, who had published an analysis
of the Sino–Japanese conflict in 1919 for the Chinese Patriotic Committee in
New York, highlighted that “[t]he arrival of peace in Europe has lifted the velvet
curtain on the Far East which has been hidden behind the scene of world
 The text can be found in Hans J. van de Ven, From Friend to Comrade. The Founding of
the Chinese Communist Party, 1920–1927, Berkeley 1991, pp. 19–20, and is also cited in Kuhn,
Republik China, pp. 151–152.
 Jörn Leonhard, Der überforderte Frieden. Versailles und die Welt 1918–1923, Munich
2018, p. 1254. Also see Eckart Conze, Die große Illusion. Versailles 1919 und die Neuordnung
der Welt, Munich 2018.
 Allen S. Whiting, The Soviet Offer to China of 1919, in: The Far Eastern Quarterly 10 (1951)
4, pp. 355–364.
politics for the last four years of war.”112 The Chinese author made it clear that
the peace conference would not only determine the future fate of Europe, but
would have a tremendous impact on East Asia as well:
The war in Europe has come to an end. It is high time to consider, not only peace in Eu-
rope, but peace in the whole world. The war is a world war, and the problem of peace is
certainly and necessarily a world problem. Now can this problem be solved with any sat-
isfaction without rightly settling the Far Eastern question? Can the world have peace
while China is every day threatened with War [sic!]?113
For Wang, it was also clear that “the Far Eastern is essentially a [S]ino–Japanese
question”114 and that China’s treatment during the peace conference would de-
cide the fate of the whole region.
A lot of Chinese hoped that the peace negotiations in France would provide
opportunities to regain the territorial rights to Shandong Province and to over-
turn some of the Twenty–One Demands that had had to be accepted by the gov-
ernment of Yuan Shikai in 1915. There was unity about these goals and a political
compromise between the northern and southern governments of China was
achieved, due to which they would send a shared delegation led by Lu Zheng-
xiang (1871–1940) for the north and Wang Zhengting (1882–1961) for the south.
The conference in Paris was the first international one that China attended, and
Wellington Koo used the opportunity there to give a speech that emphasized the
Chinese interest in a new world order that would supposedly follow the ideals US
President Woodrow Wilson had spread during the First World War. Regardless of
the hopes in China that were also shared by some of its delegates, the East Asian
nation state did not receive equal treatment and the Chinese government was not
considered to represent one of the victorious Allied Powers, but was considered
an inferior participant in the peace talks. This position towards China was influ-
enced by jingoist stereotypes, which were shared by many British diplomats, to
name just one example, like Edward T.C. Werner, who wrote about his experien-
ces in the consular service and as a Sinologist in 1920. In his work China and the
Chinese, he provided a negative image of the Chinese people:
Emotionally the Chinese are mild, frugal, sober, gregarious, industrious, of remarkable en-
durance, but at the same time cowardly, revengeful, very cruel, unsympathetic, menda-
cious, thievish, and libidinous. They are taciturn, but spasmodically vehement. [. . .]
Intellectually the Chinese are non–progressive; though in modern times some have shown
a desire for Western learning, most have always been and still are slaves to uniformity and
 Ge–Zay Wood, China Versus Japan, New York 1919, p. 3.

 Ibid., p. 7.
 Ibid., p. 9.
mechanism in culture. They are unimaginative, imitative, lacking free individuality and cre-
ative power, slow in organizing, lacking reflection and foresight, vague in expression, un-
able to take a comprehensive grasp of a subject; they attach little importance to accuracy.
They are also exceedingly suspicious and superstitious.115
The Chinese delegation soon realized that many Western diplomats had similar
views about China and that they would not receive equal treatment. Eventually,
they failed, like Japan failed in its attempt to be considered equal by the West-
ern allies. However, Japan was important enough to secure its territorial inter-
ests in Paris, while “Chinese diplomats rallied their meager resources but were
ignored in their efforts to recover what had been taken from China.”116
For the British delegation, it was clear from the beginning that Japan would
not accept less than the German rights to Shandong, which, as mentioned be-
fore, had been secured in secret agreements with the Western allies already.
The Japanese press, as observed by the British Foreign Office, had also made
clear the main points of interest:
1. Questions in Europe were not the concern of Japan.
2. Qingdao must not be returned to Germans but the question of its future dis-
posal must be settled directly between China and Japan.
3. If Great Britain retains the South Sea Islands south of the equator, Japan
would certainly want to retain those to the north.
4. Japan would have something to say as regards the settlement in Eastern
Siberia.
5. The question of discrimination against the Japanese in America, Canada,
and Australia would appear likely to be brought up at the Conference as
arising out of the proposal for a League of Nations.117
To avoid discussions about racism and Japanese immigration to the British do-
minions, London might also have been in favor of letting Japan take its stand
against China. The Chinese rights for self-determination and territorial integrity
were consequently sacrificed for the interests of the British Empire as a whole.
Since the Japanese “came to Paris with three demands: first, a formal recognition
of the principle of racial equality; second, title to the German islands of the North
Pacific; and third, acquisition of Germany’s economic and other rights in the Chi-
nese province of Shandong,”118 it was clear that not all of them could be denied.
 Edward T.C. Werner, China of the Chinese, London 1920, pp. 7–8.
 Xu, Asia and the Great War, p. 153.
 British Embassy, Tokyo to Balfour, November 12, 1918, FO 608/211, cited in ibid., p.155.
 Ibid., p. 157.
The American position towards the Chinese was not as bad as the British
one, but only because the US diplomats distrusted the Japanese, as they were
competing with them over economic interests in the Pacific region in general,
and in China in particular. Robert Lansing (1864–1928), a member of the US dele-
gation, even compared Japan with Germany, with the former claiming a position
for itself in East Asia as Germany had claimed in Europe. The Japanese expan-
sionist demands as such consequently represented a threat to the new liberal
and peaceful order that Wilson had not only recommended but requested to se-
cure peace after the war.119 The Japanese delegation, however, pressed for the
rights to Shandong, and even threatened on 24 and 30 April 1919 not to sign the
peace treaty at all. Furthermore, they would not only withdraw from the confer-
ence, but also from the League of Nations and thereby sabotage Wilson’s project
of a new international and peaceful order from its beginning. As Xu remarked,
the US President’s “dilemma was this: if he gave Shandong to Japan, China
might not vote for the League; if he gave Shandong to China, Japan would not
vote for the League.”120 In the end, China’s national division and lack of interna-
tional recognition as a worthy and powerful ally in East Asia were responsible for
the final swing towards Japan. Since Italy had already left the peace talks due to
its claims for Fiume, Wilson could not afford another power leaving, because
“the defection of Japan might well break up the conference and destroy the
League of Nations.”121 Considering the later problems the League of Nations had
to face in the United States, as well as with Japan in its more aggressive and
expansionist period, one could critically ask if its establishment was worth the
sacrifice of Chinese interests in Versailles.122 Regardless of the future develop-
ments, China had to live with the new facts, despite the hopes for a better and
more equal world to live in having been so high in the East Asian country.
When the war in Europe ended, the people in China were happy to read
news about the allied victory in the war against the Central Powers. An official
national holiday was declared by the government, and three days off work did
their part in cheering up the common people. When it became known that Wil-
son would be in Paris to negotiate over the new world order, people across the
 For Lansing’s memoirs of the peace talks see Robert Lansing, Die Versailler Friedensver-
handlungen. Persönliche Erinnerungen, Berlin 1921.
 Xu, Asia and the Great War, p. 159.
 Ibid., p. 160.
 On Japan and the League of Nations see Thomas W. Burkman, Japan and the League of
Nations. Empire and World Order, 1914–1938, Honolulu, HI 2007. For the Chinese relations to
the League see Alison Adcock Kaufman, In Pursuit of Equality and Respect. China’s Diplomacy
and the League of Nations, in: Modern China 40 (2014) 6, pp. 605–638.
country cheered, because they were hoping for the US President’s success at
the green table. The mood in the capital was good, and especially the students
were full of hope:
Chinese students in Beijing gathered at the American Legation, where they chanted ‘Long
live President Wilson!’ Some of them had memorized and could easily recite his speech
on the Fourteen Points. Chen Duxiu, Dean of the School of Letters at Peking University, a
leading figure in the New Cultural Movement, and later a co–founder of the Chinese Com-
munist Party, was then so convinced of Wilson’s sincerity and noble objectives that he
called Wilson ‘the best good man in the world.’123
The intellectuals, like Cai Yuanpei, connected Wilson’s ideas and the end of the
war with a watershed moment in history, since the future seemed brighter and
the League of Nations promised peace, based on the self–determination of na-
tions and an international sister– and brotherhood of human beings. In Beijing,
more than 50,000 people marched through the streets during the national holi-
day as participants in the victory parade.124 In Paris, however, the expectations
many Chinese had for the peace talks were bitterly disappointed and would
consequently turn the joy about the end of the war into anger, especially since
imperialism had shown its face again, just at the moment the destruction of so
many lives due to imperialist aims had ended. Nothing had changed, and the
diplomats the Chinese had sent to France could only try to resist the imperial-
ism and anti–Chinese jingoism of the Western powers and Japan.
60 delegates were led by Lu Zhengxiang and Wang Zhengting, representing
their respective Chinese governments, and many of the diplomats involved had
been active in China’s diplomatic service in several Western countries, some
even for decades, having started their careers under the Qing Dynasty. Consider-
ing the intellectual power the Chinese government had mobilized for the peace
talks in France, it is obvious that it was attempting to achieve bigger things than
just being treated as an inferior participant. In contrast to Japan, whose govern-
ment was granted five seats at the negotiation table and therefore was ranked as
a great power, China was granted only two seats and therefore degraded to the
status of an unimportant participant. The high expectations related to former
promises and to Wilson’s declarations during the war had been replaced by
blunt great power policy again. The Chinese could do nothing to overcome the
jingoist treatment it had had to deal with since the Opium Wars of the previous
century. Regardless of this treatment, however, the Chinese delegation and its
 Xu, Asia and the Great War, p. 161.

 Ibid., pp. 162–163.
diplomats did everything possible to achieve the goals the government in Beijing
had announced to regain its political and territorial sovereignty:
1) The restoration of rights related to foreign concessions in China and related
lease treaties, i.e. the Shandong issue,
2) the sovereignty of China as a nation state by abolishing the so–called
Boxer protocol of 1901, i.e. first and foremost the end of foreign troops and
jurisdiction in China, and
3) the reintroduction of tariff autonomy.125
The expression of these aims was answered with a rejection from the other
powers, who were not interested in discussing things unrelated to the First
World War, although China could insist on a discussion of the Shandong issue.
Wellington Koo, who presented the Chinese demands on 28 January 1919,
provided a detailed explanation of this issue, arguing on behalf of the self–
determination of nations – the people of Shandong were Chinese – and empha-
sizing that the existent agreements with Japan, which had been signed during
the war, had only been accepted due to Japanese pressure. The peace conference
could hardly accept such treaties, so Koo’s argument went, and since Germany
had been at war with China as well, it could have hardly transferred Chinese
rights to a third power, i.e. Japan. The Chinese made these points because they
truly believed in the idea of the League of Nations and that there was a genuine
interest at the peace conference to establish equality and a secure peace. They
must have been surprised, to say the least, when it emerged that the Western
powers had already signed secret treaties with Japan, in which the question of
Shandong had already been dealt with. Another treaty between Duan Qirui and
Japan showed that the Japanese government had also already received rights
with regard to the territory that ran along the railway tracks in the province.126
China was one of the victims of the peace negotiations in France. Wilson’s
claim for the self–determination of nations obviously only counted when geostra-
tegically relevant for the Western powers, and nobody seemed to be willing to
challenge Japanese expansionism. China was consequently robbed by its neigh-
bor while the world discussed a future without war. Considering these issues, the
peace talks were rather more interested in securing the interests of the Entente
than in truly preparing the ground for a solid post–war order based on peace
and equality.127 The delegation from China could hardly do anything, although
 Ibid., p. 165.

 Kuhn, Republik China, pp. 175–176.
 Stephen G. Craft, John Bassett Moore, Robert Lansing, and the Shandong Question, in:
Pacific Historical Review 66 (1997) 2, pp. 231–249, here p. 233.
they had prepared themselves by recruiting international help in advance as

well. An authority on international law, John Bassett Moore (1860–1947), had
been recruited as a legal advisor for the Chinese delegation to serve and assist it
during the Paris Peace Conference. He had signed a three–year contract, receiv-
ing US$ 4,000 per year for his services. The agreement was secret, because
China, while knowing that it would need such a specialist to help their cause, did
not want to arouse too much interest in its preparations. Moore, however, was
aware that it would not be international lawyers who would be discussing the fu-
ture of the world in general, and China’s fate in particular. He let his daughter
know “that they [Wilson, as well as other political leaders of the Western powers]
do not want ‘international lawyers,’ as they are likely to be prejudiced in favor of
the past, with all its evil associations and practices.”128 Regardless of his consider-
ations, he tried to help the Chinese delegation with a legal claim to get their rights
to Shandong back, but Wilson was not willing to argue about any Sino–Japanese
treaties. In the end, China had only two choices: sign the Versailles Peace Treaty
with reservations or not sign it at all. The Big Four of the conference – Britain,
France, Italy, and the United States –, however, declared that a signature with res-
ervations was not going to be accepted and that China would only have the right
to complain after signing the treaty.129
The Japanese at the same time offered a compromise, namely the declaration
of 30 April 1919, according to which China would receive its rights to Shandong
back at a future moment in time; however, it did not define when exactly that was
supposed to be. Although the economic privileges for Japan would remain, this
declaration was considered a friendly offer from Japan’s delegation by the diplo-
mats representing the Western powers. Next to Wilson, British Prime Minister
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) and French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau
(1841–1929) eventually took a pro–Japanese stance. Ultimately, Germany, accord-
ing to paragraph 156 of the Treaty of Versailles, had to transfer its rights in Shan-
dong to Japan. The Chinese delegation, on the other hand, did not sign the treaty
in the end.130 Of course, this was a bitter moment for China, and on 2 May 1919, its
“delegation asserts that the reported action of the Council of Three in transferring
the German rights to Japan is not in keeping with the principles of peace laid
down by the Allied and associated powers.”131 What happened needed no expla-
nation, as the motives for the decisions of the major Allied powers were well
 Cited in ibid.

 Ibid., pp. 238–240.
 Kuhn, Republik China, pp. 177–178.
 China Calls Decision of Big 3 ‘Unfair’, in: New York Tribune, 4 May 1919, p. 4.
known. The explanation in the New York Tribune was as frank as possible when it
stated: “It appears clear, then, that the council has been bestowing on Japan the
rights, not of Germany, but of China; not of an enemy, but of an ally. The more
powerful ally has reaped a benefit at the expense, not of the common enemy, but
of the weaker ally.”132 And from a Chinese perspective, as The Sun (New York) de-
clared, nothing but injustice had been done: “in the opinion of the Chinese dele-
gation the decision had been made without regard for justice or the protection of
the territorial integrity of China.”133 The violation of Chinese rights was the direct
reason for the protests, but, as has been shown before, the long–term reasons also
played a role. Now, with another humiliation at hand, a nationalist protest would
arise in China that criticized the Treaty of Versailles, but at the same time de-
manded reforms to the political structures so as to eventually achieve Chinese
unity that would secure the nation state’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
2.5 The May Fourth Movement
The May Fourth Movement (wusi yundong) in China was a heterogeneous protest
movement that was in a way a direct result of the Treaty of Versailles and the
political mistreatment of the Chinese nation state by Japan and the West; how-
ever, it was also the result of long–term developments in China, e.g. the faction-
alism that divided the country or the increase of violence in the era of the
warlords. The movement combined different protests into one national upheaval
that shook the country in the direct aftermath of the First World War. It might
have begun as a student movement on 4 May 1919, but it became a national
protest movement rather fast. While the focus is usually on the year 1919, one
can also consider the events in May as a culmination of an intellectual renewal
movement that spanned over the years between 1917 and 1921. It was a clash
between tradition and modernity, young and old, so to speak, and the strug-
gles would supposedly decide China’s fate and future. The intellectuals at Bei-
jing University were interested in a Chinese modernity that would break with
the conservative traditions and confronted the students at this institution with
new thoughts and alternatives. The demand for a break with the past was even
more imminent due to the results of the Paris Peace Conference, as the negotia-
tions showed that while new ideas were prominently promoted during the war,
nothing had changed. China was still treated like a colonial sphere, equality was
 Ibid.
 China Also Balks, in: The Sun, 7 May 1919, p. 1.
a wish rather than a reality, and corruption still determined Chinese politics,
as Duan Qirui was considered as responsible for China’s misery as the Allied
Powers, whose demands against imperialism and for the self–determination
of nations were nothing more than a tool, only to be used when it fitted the
great power policies of the West. Capitalism and therefore imperialism still
dominated world politics, and the frustration about the fact that nothing had
changed was an immense factor with regard to the outbreak of protests in Bei-
jing in May 1919.
It has been argued that it makes sense to trace the May Fourth Movement
back to 1915, when the journal Xin qingnian (New Youth) had been founded in Bei-
jing, and to extend its impact and role until the mid–1920s.134 In a political sense,
the May Fourth Movement marked the awakening of the Chinese nation as well as
the starting point of a broader anti–Japanese and therefore anti–imperialist move-
ment in China, which not only demanded a fight against the warlord system, but
would also lead to the establishment of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in
1921.135 The working class joined forces with the students for the first time, al-
though China’s industrial working class was not large enough to claim representa-
tion for the mass of people. Others who protested demanded the emancipation of
women and equality of the sexes. It was consequently a broad revolutionary and
nationalist movement, combining heterogeneous forces that were brought to-
gether by their wish for a better China. To claim that the Treaty of Versailles was
the only reason for the existence of the May Fourth Movement would conse-
quently not be sufficient.136 Of course, the decision about Shandong was perceived
as “unjust” and had “violated the principles of international law,”137 and Chinese
students in the US claimed that “for Japan to retain these concessions and claim
them by the right of conquest is to justify the retention of the plundered goods of
a burglar.”138 Nobody who had believed in Wilson’s motto of self–determination
could believe that Japan was supposed to keep the rights it had received during
the war years, and the editors of The Chinese Students’ Monthly, a journal for Chi-
nese students in the US, declared that the
treaty of 1915 [i.e. the acceptance of the attenuated Twenty–One Demands, F.J.] was made
under circumstances which would render it null and void. It was made with a threat of war.
 Kuhn, Republik China, pp. 188.

 On the early years of the CPC see Hans J. Van de Ven, From Friend to Comrade. The
Founding of the Chinese Communist Party, 1920–1927, Berkeley, CA 1991.
 Kuhn, Republik China, p. 189.
 China’s Grievances over Shantung, in: The Chinese Students’ Monthly 15 (1919) 1, pp. 3–6,
here p. 3.
 Ibid., p. 4.
It was signed under the duress of an ultimatum. The consent contained therein was wrested
from China at the point of the bayonet, and as such, it could not justify Japan’s retention of
the German concessions. [. . .] No more can Japan justify her possession of the German con-
cessions in Shantung by the Treaty of 1915 than can a burglar justify his claim to the pos-
session of the robbed goods by a written consent signed at the point of the revolver.139
Nobody in China could stand by in 1919, just observing these events, which so
resembled Chinese weakness, due to its leaders’ incapacities as well as the na-
tion state’s lack of modernization. Therefore, multiple forces that had criticized
the current state of political affairs, the rise of the warlords, and the lack of a
Chinese national identity – namely, the modernization or Westernization move-
ment of the 1860s (yangwu yundong),140 the reform movement of 1898 (wuxu
bianfa),141 and the revolutionaries of 1911 (xinhai geming) – eventually joined
forces and became part of the larger national movement, i.e. the May Fourth
Movement.
Many of the intellectuals who supported the movement had been studying
abroad, and when they returned to China, they had naturally become agents of
modernization.142 For them especially, who might have been true believers in
the chances of a better world after 1918, the events in France were more than
humiliating. They naturally became important leaders of the new protest move-
ment.143 In the years during the First World War, many new journals had been
founded and offered a broader variety of discussions, especially to students,
whose most important concern was the future of education. A conflict about
the right path to a better future was naturally occurring when traditionalists,
who wanted to stick with social values and tradition, as they were related to
 Ibid.
 Ding Xianjun, Yangwu yundong shihua, Beijing 2000. In English see John King Fairbank/
Merle Goldman, China. A New History, second edition, Cambridge, MA 2006, pp. 217–234.
 Mao Haijian, Wuxu bianfa shi shikao, Beijing 2005. For a broader discussion of the reform
movement in English see Paul A. Cohen/John E. Schreckner (Eds.), Reform in Nineteenth–Century
China, Cambridge, MA 1976.
 For a contemporary discussion of Chinese students abroad see Y. S. Tsao, A Challenge to
Western Learning. The Chinese Student Trained Abroad – What He Has Accomplished – His
Problems, in: News Bulletin (Institute of Pacific Relations), December 1927, pp. 13–16. For a
broader discussion of Chinese students abroad, especially in Germany and the US, Thomas
Harnisch, Chinesische Studenten in Deutschland. Geschichte und Wirkung ihrer Studienau-
fenthalte in den Jahren 1860 bis 1945, Hamburg 1999; Edward Rhoads, Stepping Forth into the
World. The Chinese Educational Mission to the United States 1872–1881, Hong Kong 2011 and
Weili Ye, Searching Modernity in China’s Name. Chinese Students in the United States,
1900–1927, Stanford 2001 are recommended.
 Nancy F. Sizer, John Dewey’s Ideas in China 1919 to 1921, in: Comparative Education Re-
view 10 (1966) 3, pp. 390–403, here p. 390.
Confucianism, and modernists, who depicted a more Western modernization

for China, clashed over who was rightfully determining the country’s eventual
course. What a majority of intellectuals shared in 1919 was a belief in a demo-
cratic form of government as well as evolutionary progress that was based on
modern education.144 While Chinese students had traditionally had to memo-
rize the classics and not critically think and argue, Cai Yuanpei considered edu-
cation “a means of cultivating virtuous or moral character in the young. This
moral training was to be supplanted by an industrial and military education
and rounded out by an aesthetic one.”145 Students initially admired Japan,
whose modernization process since the beginning of the Meiji Restoration in
1868 had been considered successful. The May Fourth Movement, however,
was directed against both Chinese traditional education and Japan as an idol-
ized modern Asian nation state. The protesters were seeking other solutions for
what a modern education and an independent and sovereign Chinese nation
state should be based on. The students who returned from abroad, not only
from Japan but the US and Germany as well, brought new ideas with them and
wanted to use their newly gained knowledge to transform the existent society
at home.
The people who initially formed the May Fourth Movement, like in many
protest and probably revolutionary movements, represented a young genera-
tion, mostly born in the 1890s, who longed for change because they did not
consider the current state of China to be a place where their ambitions and
dreams could be reached or fulfilled. Intellectuals like Hu Shi (1891–1962), Gu
Jiegang (1893–1980), Fu Sinian (1896–1950), and Mao Zedong dreamed of a
new Chinese society, especially since they had witnessed the Russian Revolu-
tion of 1917, which seemed to promise a chance for a new age and a more equal
and classless society. In 1919, not too much information about the internal state
of Soviet Russia and the corruption of the revolution by Lenin was known
abroad, and intellectuals and revolutionaries worldwide hoped for a near world
revolution in the name of equality.146 It was argued that the Chinese Revolution
of 1911 had failed because people were not willing to modernize, but rather
were trapped between tradition and modernity, paralyzed and unable to bring
 Ibid.
 Cyrus H. Peake, Nationalism and Education in Modern China, New York 1932, p. 76 cited
in ibid., p. 391.
 Criticism was often seen as an attempt to undermine the achievements of the Russian Revo-
lution, and even later critics had initially believed that it would change the world instead of es-
tablishing another regime. Frank Jacob, From Aspiration to Frustration. Emma Goldman’s
Perception of the Russian Revolution, in: American Communist History 17 (2018) 2, pp. 185–199.
the revolution to a fruitful end. Modernization could hardly change the Chinese
mentality, and therefore the revolutionary attempt was incomplete. While a
Chinese Republic had been created on paper, the Chinese people were still liv-
ing in the past. Charles K. Edmund (1876–1949),the President of the Canton
Christian College in 1918 and 1919, described the problems modern educators
faced in China as follows: “Religion, government, and reverence for antiquity
have been the dominant influences in shaping the course of Chinese educa-
tion.”147 He also emphasized that the country was simply too large, and since
the revolution in 1911, there was an insufficient number of higher education in-
stitutions to offer a broader education to the Chinese people.148
For the reformers and revolutionaries like Sun Yat–sen, who demanded a
“national rescue” in 1911, Western education was only considered a tool, and
the slogan “Chinese learning for fundamental principles, Western learning for
practical applications” (zhongxue wei ti, xixue wei yong) was promoted; how-
ever, in contrast to Japan’s government–promoted “Japanese spirit, Western
technology” (wakon yōsai) strategy, it failed to achieve permanent results.149
The attempts to enlighten China, i.e. to overcome the Confucian tradition of rit-
ualized submission, were not easy to achieve, since the three principles (san-
gang) that ordered the relationships between ruler and subordinate, father and
son, and husband and wife were essential to the lives of the Chinese, as were
the five basic relations (wulun) between ruler and minister, father and son,
older and younger brother, husband and wife, and between friends.150 To pre-
pare the path towards a new China meant breaking these existent relations and
the rules they were based on. Of course, education played an important role
because new values needed to be taught. As a consequence, academics, educa-
tors, and intellectuals in general “were experiencing major upheavals and inno-
vations in the 1910s, trying to define their institutional structure, intellectual
ideals and intellectuals’ role in society.”151
 Charles K. Edmunds, Modern Education in China, Department of the Interior, Bureau of
Education, Bulletin 1919, No. 44, Washington 1919, p. 5.
 Ibid., pp. 24–25.
 Geng Yunzhi, An Introductory Study on China’s Cultural Transformation in Recent Times,
Berlin 2014, pp. 79–116. On wakon yōsai see Peter Lutum, Das Denken von Minakata Kuma-
gusu und Yanagita Kunio. Zwei Pioniere der japanischen Volkskunde im Spiegel der Leitmo-
tive wakon–yōsai und wayō–setchū, Münster 2005 and Hirakawa Sukehiro, Wakon yōsai no
keifu. Uchi to soto kara no Meiji Nihon, Tokyo 1992.
 Kuhn, Republik China, pp. 191–192.
 Forster, 1919, p. 20.
In 1905, Empress Dowager Cixi (1835–1908) was responsible for a first reform
when she abolished exams for civil servants. In the past, civil servants had to be
familiar with Confucian works. Now, students were learning in schools and uni-
versities that were teaching according to Western or often Japanese examples.
Their learning experiences were consequently totally different, and although the
classics were still part of their education, the students had to read them “as part
of history or the history of literature, rather than as timeless truths.”152 Due to
these changes it also became easier for intellectuals to criticize politics, because
they were acting based on reason than following traditional paradigms of sub-
mission. The consequence was some kind of Chinese Enlightenment, and the cor-
ruption as well as failures of the warlords’ politics were more openly discussed.
Such discussions were in addition more public, as the press created a new sphere
of publicity in the early 1900s when more and more newspapers, periodicals and
journals reached an increasing number of readers, thereby stimulating national-
ist discourse at the same time.153 Schools and universities were also responsible
for this increase in periodicals because many of them published their own news-
papers or journals, like the Beijing University Daily. Eventually, there was an over-
lap between academia and the press, between intellectual discourse and politics.
The weakness of the government during the warlord period also gave more
room to critical voices, and many intellectuals began open and critical discus-
sions about the future of China. In these circles, especially at Beijing University,
however, traditionalists (Old Faction) and modernizers (New Faction) also clashed
over their opinions on the form of education as well as the future of the nation.154
On the face of it, they might have discussed the use of language, i.e. tradi-
tional vs. actually spoken Chinese, but this was not all. Nevertheless, the front
line between the two factions was not always clear, as it was often presented
later, because there were many blurred positions that tended to be found on both
sides from time to time.155 While the intellectuals as Beijing University struggled
over the correct use of language, they indirectly fought over the future of China
as such. Conservative ideas and positions, on the one hand, demanded a stron-
ger focus on genuinely Chinese values, while progressive intellectuals pressed
for the modernization of China by a stronger focus on values and thoughts that
 Ibid., p. 21.

 The Shanghai News sold 20,000 issues in 1917, and 30,000 in 1920, while the number of
periodicals as such reached more than 800 in the late 1910s and 2,000 in the early 1920s.
Ibid., p. 23.
 For a more detailed analysis of the struggle between the two academic factions at Beijing
University see ibid., pp. 30–32.
 Ibid., p. 39.
had been imported to the country from abroad. That such discussions origi-
nated at the university of the Chinese capital is not surprising. Beijing Univer-
sity was the only remnant of the Hundred Days’ reform in 1898.156 Before Cai
Yuanpei took over the presidency in December 1916, his predecessors like Yan
Fu (1854–1921) had already begun to implement initial reforms with regard to
the education of the university’s students.157 Other intellectuals like Chen
Duxiu, Hu Shi and Li Dazhao (1889–1927) followed Cai’s call to serve at Beijing
University, where they would provide the core group of educators that stimu-
lated a more open and critical education, poetically named the “wind of learn-
ing at Beijing University” (Beida xuefeng).158 The new educational program,
“education with a worldview” (shijieguan jiaoyu), also positively influenced
the position of the students, who became more involved, more active, and
eventually more demanding. Confucianism was criticized as something that
prevented China’s modernization, and an active struggle with the nation’s own
past began. Some clamored “Down with Confucian teachings” (dadao ruxue),
others “Down with tradition” (dadao chuantong).159 Li Dazhao, who worked in
the university library before being promoted to the rank of professor, studied
and taught Marxism there, and referred to the Russian Revolution as a historical
success that could be an example for China. Like Lenin in Russia, he considered
a revolution possible, as long as the majority of peasants were led by an intellec-
tual avant–garde. For that, the agrarian population of China needed to be liber-
ated from its suppression by the corrupt warlords as well as the government of
men like Duan Qirui.160
In spring 1918 Li founded a study group for socialism (shehui zhuyi yanjiu-
hui) at the university, and a special issue of the journal New Youth (Xin qingnian)
provided a detailed discussion of Marxism in May of the same year. Li pub-
lished an article in this issue, in which he provided a survey of his own views
on Marxism, “My Views on Marxism” (“Wo de Makesi zhuyiguan”), and there-
fore became one of the early influential Marxist leaders in China. When Mao
Zedong had finished his studies in Hunan, he supposedly also joined the stu-
dent group that mostly consisted of Marxists as well.161 However, it was not
 Rebecca E. Karl/Peter Gue Zarrow (Eds.), Rethinking the 1898 Reform Period. Political
and Cultural Change in Late Qing China, Cambridge, MA 2002.
 Kuhn, Republik China, pp. 192–193.
 Ibid., p. 194.
 Ibid., p. 197.
 On Li see Maurice Meisner, Li Ta–Chao and the Origins of Chinese Marxism, Cambridge,
MA 1967.
 Kuhn, Republik China, pp. 199.
only Marxist ideas that were discussed. New input was received in many fields,
such as economics, literature, art, etc. All in all, the years of the First World War
had been very vibrant at Beijing University. The results of the Paris Peace Confer-
ence would eventually set the critical potential of the students free, and they not
only went onto the streets to protest against Western and Japanese imperialism,
but they also protested against an antiquated China that should exist no longer:
too traditional, disunited, corrupt, and, most importantly, weak. The May Fourth
Movement was supposed to break the chains that constrained the Chinese na-
tion, no matter if they had been forged in foreign environments or at home.
The events of 4 May 1919 clearly showed that the students were not willing
to accept another humiliation from Western or Japanese imperialism, that they
wanted to change their country, and that they wanted to live in a sovereign and
independent nation that was ruled according to reason and by the masses of
the people, not by a corrupt government that would sell out Chinese territory to
the Japanese just to remain in power. The reaction of the young intellectuals
showed that the republican policy since the revolution in 1911 had failed to cre-
ate a modern nation state that the young generations could identify themselves
with and in which they felt they had a perspective. The universities had become
revolutionary hubs where a generation was educated that would no longer ac-
cept the existent structures. When the news arrived from Paris on 2 May 1919, it
was clear that the barrel was going to overflow. Demonstrations and protests
that had been planned for 7 May 1919, the day China had received an ultimatum
to sign the final version of the initial Twenty–One Demands in 1915, were
brought forward to 4 May.162 Fu Sinian,163 who had been radicalized at Beijing
University, was one of the initiators of the movement and, as a native of Shan-
dong Province, felt particularly humiliated by the decision that Japan should
receive the German rights there. On 3 May 1919, he was nominated at a meeting
of the planning committee of all universities and colleges of the city to act as
their chairman, and it was decided that the protests should begin the next day,
Sunday, at the Gate of Heavenly Peace (Tiananmen).
Around 3,000 male and female students had gathered on Tiananmen Square
by 1:30 pm, more than 50% of all students in Beijing at that time, representing
the 13 universities and colleges as well as the Female Teacher College (Beijing
 Ibid., p. 206. On the heterogenous organization of the protests and the involved groups
and ideas see Arif Dirlik, Ideology and Organization in the May Fourth Movement. Some Pro-
plems in the Intellectual Historiography of the May Fourth Period, in: Republican China 12
(1987) 1, pp. 3–19.
 On Fu’s life and work see Wang Fan–sen, Fu Ssu–nien. A Life in Chinese History and
Politics, Cambridge/New York 2006.
nüzi shifan). They marched to the Legation Quarter wearing flags and banners
bearing anti–Japanese slogans and demands for the return of Shandong to
China. They protested against Japanese imperialism as well as against their
own political leadership, which was deemed corrupt and unable to lead China
to a prospective future. Flyers were handed out, demanding that the Allied
Powers rethink their decision and give Shandong back to China. The manifesto
of the May Fourth Movement had been provided by the author Luo Jialun
(1896–1969), who, together with Fu Sinian, edited the journal New Flood (Xin-
chao). The protesters wanted to march to the embassies of the United States,
Great Britain, France, and Italy, but the police did not allow them to enter the
Legation Quarter. Consequently, the students changed their route and instead
continued their protest march to the house of former Vice–Minister of Foreign
Affairs Cao Rulin (1877–1966), who was a member of the Anhui Clique and had
negotiated with the Japanese over the Twenty–One Demands. He was one of
the politicians that were friendly to Japan, and due to his involvement in the
talks with the Japanese government during the war years, he was a natural tar-
get for the protesters.164
It was originally not the intention of the organizers of the demonstration to
use violence, but when they reached the house of Cao, some of the students went
in and, since the pro–Japanese politician was no longer there, they destroyed the
interior and looted some rooms. The students found Zhang Zongxiang (1879–
1962), a politician responsible for Japanese matters, in hiding, and he was even-
tually beaten up by the protesters until he lost consciousness. When the police
arrived, most of the students had fled, but Fu Sinian, Luo Jialun, and some 30
others were arrested. They, however, had to be released again, because the gov-
ernment was under extreme pressure and public opinion demanded freedom for
the protest’s leaders. In fact, a nationalist wave went through the country, and
sympathy for those who had protested on 4 May 1919 could clearly be felt. The
demonstrations spread across the country, and more protests, no longer only by
students, were witnessed in other cities.165 Businessmen called for a boycott of
Japanese goods, and workers and artisans went on strike. In the harbors, the
ships from Japan remained loaded, and in Hangzhou, rickshaw drivers would
no longer offer their services to the Japanese. Until July 1919, the import of cotton
and cement from Japan collapsed, and the amount of other imported goods was
also decreasing.166 The students in Beijing had already begun to strike on 19 May,
 Kuhn, Republik China, pp. 207–208.

 For Shanghai, to name just one example, see Joseph T. Chen, The May Fourth Movement
in Shanghai. The Making of a Social Movement in Modern China, Leiden 1971.
 Kuhn, Republik China, p. 209.
and many from other cities solidarized themselves with their fellows in the capital
when they began to strike in Shanghai, Wuhan and other cities. Luo Jialun de-
scribed the national wave of protests on 23 May when he argued that the spirit of
the students ended the lethargy of society.167 It was this spirit, as Luo highlighted,
that was necessary for the birth of a new, nationally united China. Three days
later, 12,000 students and pupils protested in Shanghai, hoisting the flag of the
Chinese Republic to express their national identity. In Wuhan, the pro–Japanese
military governor suppressed the protests and ordered his soldiers to beat up or
even shoot the students if they did not comply with his orders. Chinese President
Xu Shichang (1855–1939) declared that the students should go to the universities
and learn, instead of protesting in the streets. Regardless of such attempts to
contain the protest movement, it had reached a national level.168 The strikes
had motivated workers, artisans, and soldiers to follow the students’ example,
but in Beijing the government answered the national outcry with mass arrests
in early June 1919. When more than 1,000 students were held prisoner in the
rooms of Beijing University, 60–70,000 people protested in Shanghai on
5 June 1919. On the same day, thousands of female protesters gathered at Xu
Shichang’s residence to show solidarity with the imprisoned students.169
The protest could not be localized and suppressed by the government, and
it eventually reacted to some of the demands when pro–Japanese ministers, in-
cluding Cao Rulin, were dismissed from their duties. In Paris, the Chinese dele-
gation did not sign the Treaty of Versailles on 28 June 1919, and thereby at least
protested symbolically against the imperialist nature of the document’s con-
tents. In 1916, Chen Duxiu had already demanded a form of democracy that re-
ally represented the will of the people, who should rule and hold the political
power within an independent nation state.170 On 1 December 1919, he published
an “Idealist Manifesto of the New Youth” (“Xin qingnian xuanyan”) in which
he argued that the demand for possessions, be it by plutocrats or warlords,
must be countered and that democracy demanded equal rights for all people.
The parties, who only represented the wishes and needs of a few, of the privi-
leged classes so to speak, should not be something the common people would
be members of. The manifesto also demanded the emancipation of women,
 Vera Schwarcz, The Chinese Enlightenment. Intellectuals and the Legacy of the May
Fourth Movement of 1919, Berkeley 1986, p. 22.
 Kuhn, Republik China, pp. 210–211.
 Ibid., 211.
 Edward X. Gu, Populistic Themes in May Fourth Radical Thinking. A Reappraisal of the In-
tellectual Origins of Chinese Marxism (1917–1922), in: East Asian History 10 (1995), pp. 99–126,
here p. 109.
among other changes that would establish a better society in the future.171 It
was, in a way, the disappointment of the hopes and dreams of the young gener-
ation in China that had stimulated the outbreak of the protests on 4 May 1919.
For Li Dazhao, with the end of the First World War, a new epoch had begun in
1919:
[T]his new epoch has brought with it new life, new civilisation, a new world. [. . .] From
today onwards we realise the gross error [of imperialism and social Darwinism] for we
now know that material evolution does not rely upon competition, but rather mutual aid.
The weakness of mankind is that they wish for survival, wish to enjoy happiness and
wellbeing, for which purpose the relationship between us should be fraternal love, we
should not slaughter each other by force of arms.172
The reality, however, had proved the Chinese hopes wrong. Western and Japa-
nese imperialism did not end with the First World War, nor did China receive a
more democratic government. Hence the students were also no longer willing
to accept that as their eternal fate and demanded change. Others in China lis-
tened to their demands and joined the protests, because they had realized that
change demanded action.
Elisabeth Forster is consequently absolutely correct when she calls 1919
“a year of radical cultural transformation in China,”173 and many of the stu-
dents who protested as part of the May Fourth Movement would have an im-
mense impact on China’s further historical course. In the summer of 1919, the
term “New Culture Movement” was coined to describe the heterogeneity of the
protest movement as such, “with a matrix of reference points [. . .] used to sell a
variety of the cultural reform agendas that were then competing” and used “as a
buzzword [it supposedly] determined which of the agendas would be successful
in the competition they were all engaged in, and in this way it shaped China’s
cultural path.”174 All participants, especially the intellectuals involved, projected
their own agenda on the movement, which consequently was a heterogenous
rally (Sammlungsbewegung) whose participants all channeled their own ideas
through it, or, to quote Forster again, “May Fourth intellectuals were people of
 Chen Duxiu, Duxiu wencun, Xianggang 1965, Vol. 1, pp. 366–368, cited in Kuhn, Repub-
lik China, pp. 212–213.
 Li Dazhao, Xin jiyuan, in: Li Dazhao quanji, Shijiazhuang 1999, Vol. 3, p. 128, cited in: Xu
Jilin, Historical Memories of May Fourth. Patriotism, but of What Kind?, in: China Heritage
Quarterly 17 (2009), http://www.chinaheritagequarterly.org/features.php?searchterm=017_
mayfourthmemories.inc&issue=017 (30. 9. 2019).
 Forster, 1919, p. 1.
 Ibid., p. 13.
2.6 Conclusion 51
flesh and blood, not abstract agents of a vision.”175 The protesters, however, did
not long solely for a Western modernity, as Rana Mitter has Eurocentrically ar-
gued, but demanded their own modernity, which would, of course, have been
partly influenced by Western thoughts, but was definitely not solely Western in
its nature.176 A breakup of the Chinese traditions would not have meant the abo-
lition of China’s identity as such. All in all, the movement achieved larger public-
ity because the actions of activists from different origins – academia, public
media, and politics – joined with each other to express their criticism together.177
Since people from different regions participated, due to being able to coordinate
their actions through modernized means of transportation and print capitalism,
the rise of nationalism as described by Karl W. Deutsch (1912–1992), Ernest Gell-
ner (1925–1995), and Benedict Anderson (1936–2015) was a natural consequence,
especially since it could also turn against a foreign and antagonistic Other, i.e.
Japan.178
2.6 Conclusion
Regardless of China’s political instability and its division by the imperialist

claims from the Western powers and Japan, political scientist Brantly Womack
is correct to highlight that “it has never scattered.”179 The bipolarity of Japan
and China in East Asia, however, was very openly and aggressively emphasized
by the actions of the Japanese government, whose representatives used the
First World War as a good opportunity to extend its sphere of influence, or, to
quote American historian Ernest R. May (1928–2009), it “liberated Japanese ambi-
tions.”180 At the same time, it stimulated Chinese nationalism, as many intellec-
tuals, students, workers, businessmen, women, soldiers, etc. felt humiliated by
both Japan’s Twenty–One Demands and the Treaty of Versailles alike. They gath-
ered to protest against these events, but eventually formed part of a heterogeneous
 Ibid., p. 15.

 Rana Mitter, A Bitter Revolution. China’s Struggle with the Modern World, Oxford 2004.
 Forster, 1919, p. 16.
 Anderson, Imagined Communities; Karl W. Deutsch, Nationalism and Social Communica-
tion. An Inquiry into the Foundations of Nationality, Cambridge, MA 1953; Ernest Gellner, Na-
tions and Nationalism, Ithaca, NY 1983.
 Brantly Womack, China between Region and World, in: The China Journal 61 (2009),
pp. 1–20, here p. 6.
 Ernest R. May, American Policy and Japan’s Entrance into World War I, in: The Missis-
sippi Valley Historical Review 40 (1953) 2, pp. 279–290, here p. 279.
protest movement, whose members demanded a better future for a united and
strong Chinese nation state that would resist any further humiliation from Japan or
the West.
Regardless of the potential of the May Fourth Movement to overcome Chi-
nese fragmentation, as this was caused by the corruption of its politicians, the
rise of the warlords, and the imperialist expansion of Japan, the protests lacked
consistency beyond 1919 and were not able to achieve or enforce any political
changes.181 Mao Zedong’s evaluation, as quoted before, highlighted two prob-
lems. China, to become a true and unified nation, needed to include the majority
of its people, i.e. the agrarian population, and, as history would prove, it would
have to fight Japan. The ordinary people did not have any idea about some of the
abstract demands of the intellectuals – e.g. political sovereignty or the dignity of
women – and therefore could neither identify themselves with the protest move-
ment nor with China as a nation in general. The May Fourth Movement was a
first national upheaval, directed against Japanese and Western imperialism, and
would be an important step for the development of the Chinese communist
movement. While it was unsuccessful in 1919, its impact would be tremen-
dous. It would be the communists who would gain from the initial combina-
tion of anti–imperialism and nationalism in China, but they would eventually
succeed in one aspect that the May Fourth Movement could not. It was the com-
munists who reached out to the provinces, to the common Chinese people, the
uneducated masses, and who could use the war against Japan to form a true po-
litical mass movement, whose leaders and their successors determined the fate
of China and continue to do so even today. That Chinese nationalism turned
from an anti–imperialist to an imperialist one is probably the fate of that of any
nation state, no matter if it claims to be communist or not. Today, the bipolarity
in East Asia and the struggle between China and Japan still determines the fate
of the region, but the relationship is still poisoned by its past, especially the
Twenty–One Demands and the loss of Shandong in 1919. Due to the centennial,
tensions rose again when the humiliation of China by the Japanese was remem-
bered, even though the Chinese eventually achieved national unity, at least on
paper. The events in Hong Kong in 2019 show that there is now a new generation
of students who demand change and a different future to the one proclaimed by
the government in Beijing. It remains to be seen if they have the right ideas and
the means to reinvigorate a national protest movement in the near future or if
they will be crushed by a violent regime, as their predecessors were on Tiananmen
Square in 1989.
 Kuhn, Republik China, p. 226.

3 Japan and the Great War: Imperialist
Ambitions Abroad, Social Change
and Protest at Home
3.1 Introduction
Regardless of the recent centennial the Great War,1 the focus of many studies pub-
lished in the last four years, has remained Eurocentric as “[b]oth popular and aca-
demic accounts of the First World War often omit East Asia, and any reference to
Japan,”2 despite the war having “permanently laid to rest a Europe-centered power
system.”3 The war changed East Asia tremendously and had a great impact on the
national level in this region because it caused a “regional restructuring” there,
namely the transition from a China-centered to a Japan-centered political and eco-
nomic system.4 For Japan the Great War was therefore naturally very important
and caused change in multiple ways, although works on Japan and that period
mainly focus on the political history of the country, and the centennial did not
change this perspective too much.5 On the one hand, this change is emphasized
by Western scholars like the Dutch historian Dick Stegewerns, who critically dis-
cussed the war’s character as a turning point in Japanese history, but for Japanese
historians the landmark was and often still is the Russo–Japanese War of 1904/05,
while the First World War was often, especially by Western historians, considered
 This chapter is a revised and extended version of Frank Jacob, Japan and the Great War:
Imperialist Ambitions Abroad, Social Change and Protest at Home, in: Marcel Bois/Frank
Jacob (Eds), Zeiten des Aufruhrs (1916–1921). Globale Proteste, Streiks und Revolutionen gegen
den Ersten Weltkrieg und seine Auswirkungen, Berlin 2020, 352–391.
 Oliviero Frattolillo/Antony Best, Introduction: Japan and the Great War, in: Oliviero Fratto-
lillo/Antony Best (Eds.), Japan and the Great War, New York 2015, pp. 1–10, here p. 1.
 Thomas W. Burkman, Japan and the League of Nations. Empire and World Order, 1914–1938,
Honolulu 2007, p. 2.
 Tosh Minohara/Tze–ki Hon/Evan Dawley, Introduction, in: Tosh Minohara/Tze–ki Hon/
Evan Dawley (Eds.), The Decade of the Great War. Japan and the Wider World in the 1910s,
Leiden 2014, pp. 1–17, here p. 2.
 Frederick R. Dickinson, War and National Reinvention. Japan and the Great War, 1914–1919,
Cambridge, MA 1999; idem., World War I and the Triumph of a New Japan, 1919–1930, Cambridge,
MA 2013; Tosh Minohara/Tze–ki Hon/Evan Dawley (Eds.), The Decade of the Great War. Japan and
the Wider World in the 1910s, Leiden 2014. Two works by German scholars changed this and pro-
vided important new insights for the study of the topic. Jan Schmidt, Nach dem Krieg ist vor dem
Krieg. Medialisierte Erfahrungen des Ersten Weltkriegs und Nachkriegsdiskurse in Japan (1914–-
1919), Frankfurt 2020; Jan Schmidt/Katja Schmidtpott (Eds.), The East Asian Dimension of the First
World War. Global Entanglements and Japan, China and Korea, 1914–1919, Frankfurt 2020.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110745672-003
54 3 Japan and the Great War
as a bilateral conflict between Japan and Germany6 of second rank from a national
perspective.7 The Japanese political scientist Maruyama Masao (1914–1996), in ad-
dition, did not characterize 1919 as the climax of Taishō democracy, but rather
called it the starting point for Japanese fascism.8 In a way this characterization
was correct, as Japan contradicted the new political world order of the interwar
period, as it was supposed to be established in Versailles, with its colonial policies
in the years leading to the full–scale expansion of the Japanese Empire during the
early Shōwa period (1926–1945).
For other Japanese researchers, like the political scientist Hosoya Chihiro
(1920–2011), the First World War rather marked the beginning of a new order of
Japanese–American rivalry that was eventually cemented by the Washington
Conference (1921/22).9 Nevertheless, it was the European conflict between 1914
and 1918 that allowed Japan to replace China in the East Asian political order
and allowed the Japanese economy to grow due to the absence of European
competitors. With regard to its own status in the region of East Asia, for Japan,
the war and its consequences can hardly be called less than decisive.10 The war
against Germany in Shandong, a Chinese province, was not “a brief, narrow,
bilateral conflict that was limited to East Asia in the autumn of 1914,” but “part
of the profound global clash between two opposing alliance systems that lasted
for four long years.”11 One also has to emphasize that the impact of the First
World War on Japan as a nation state, and in consequence on East Asia as a re-
gion, was not limited to the political level, but, to quote the work of historians
 Minohara/Hon/Dawley, Introduction, p. 1.
 Dick Stegewerns, The End of World War One as a Turning Point in Modern Japanese History,
in: Bert Edström (Ed.), Turning Points in Japanese History, London/New York 2002, pp. 138–162,
here p. pp. 142–151. The number of Japanese works published on the First World War was in the
years leading to and even during the centennial period rather little. Publications include: Yama-
noue Shōtarō, Dai–ichiji Sekai Taisen. Wasurerareta sensō, Tokyo 2010; Yamamuro Shin’ichi
et al., Gendai no kiten Dai–ichiji Sekai Taisen, 4 vols., Tokyo 2014; Kimura Seiji, Dai–ichiji Sekai
Taisen, Tokyo 2014; Itaya Toshihiko, Nihonjin no tame no Dai–ichiji Sekai Taisenshi. Sekai wa
naze sensō ni totsunyū shita noka, Tokyo 2017. In contrast, a three volume history of the
Russo–Japanese War was published in 2016. Handō Kazutoshi, Nichiro SensōshI, 3 vols., Tokyo
2016. For a very detailed survey of the Japanese historiography related to the First World War
see Schmidt, Nach dem Krieg ist vor dem Krieg, pp. 33–74. Schmidt’s extremely important study
also highlights that the war had actually caused important debates within Japan and therefore
must not be only seen as a Western event that aroused little attention in the Japanese context. It
is therefore hoped that Schmidt’s book will soon be translated into English as well.
 Cited in Stegewerns, End, p. 146.
 Hosoya Chihiro, Ryō taisenkan no Nihon no gaikō, 1914–1945, Tokyo 1988, p. 75.
 Minohara/Hon/Dawley, Introduction, p. 3.
 Frattolillo/Best, Introduction, p. 1.
Oliviero Frattolillo and Antony Best again, “both Japan’s experience within the
war and its observations of the impact of the conflict were major catalysts for
change and . . . its effects went beyond the further expansion of Japanese politi-
cal and military influence in continental East Asia.”12
Japan had not only succeeded in “display[ing] its national glory”13 but, as a
signatory power of the Treaty of Versailles, helped to create what Japanese For-
eign Minister Uchida Yasuya (1865–1936) had called the “Magna Carta of a new
world”14 in Tokyo’s Asahi Shimbun on 23 January 1920. If the Russo–Japanese
War had introduced Japan to the international stage as a world power, the First
World War strengthened this role and underlined Japanese demands in a more
globalized world after 1918. For the Japanese nation state, as the American his-
torian Frederick R. Dickinson correctly remarked, “the interwar years were an
extraordinary era of change kindled by a singular global event.”15 In addition,
in the later part of the Taishō period (1912–1926), namely the years between
1918 and 1926, a more democratic expression of the wishes of the Japanese peo-
ple seemed to be possible, even against old elites like the military or navy.16
The present chapter will provide a survey of the impact and the consequen-
ces of the First World War in Japan. It will therefore cover the political perspec-
tives of Japan’s war participation and the economic impact of the war. Afterward,
the social changes, as they were achieved due to the war, will be described in
more detail. Eventually, the protests in 1918 and in the aftermath of the war shall
be taken into closer consideration to show how Japan was shocked by an in-
crease in social unrest and democratic forms of criticism against capitalism and
an economic crisis created by a globalized conflict and its consequences.
3.2 Political Perspectives
The Meiji period (1868–1912) was one of transition, because the Meiji Restoration
had transformed the country as a whole since 186817 and created a modern nation
 Ibid., p. 2.
 Frederick R. Dickinson, The First World War, Japan, and a Global Century, in: Oliviero Frat-
tolillo and Antony Best (Eds.), Japan and the Great War, New York 2015, pp. 162–182, here p. 162.
 Cited in ibid.
 Dickinson, World War I and the Triumph, p. 6.
 Harukata Takenaka, Failed Democratization in Prewar Japan. Breakdown of a Hybrid Re-
gime, Stanford, CA 2014, p. 87.
 On the Meiji Restoration see: Inoue Kiyoshi, Meiji ishin, Tokyo 2003; Osatake Takeki, Meiji
ishin, Tokyo 1978; Tōyama Shigeki, Meiji ishin, Tokyo 2018.
state that was industrialized and whose economy was no longer based on rice cul-
tivation.18 The struggle of the Japanese people with Westernization and the defense
against Western imperialism was consequently expressed in ideas that wanted to
combine a Japanese soul with Western technology (wakon yōsai)19 on the one
hand, while preparing the country for self–defense with riches and a strong army
(fukoku kyōhei) on the other.20 The Meiji state had fought two wars to consolidate
its position within East Asia and to counter Chinese and Russian ambitions in
Korea. During these wars, the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy were not only
able to wage a fast and successful war against the much bigger Chinese Empire
but were also, as the first Asian nation state, able to defeat a European army on
the battlefield. However, the Peace Treaty of Portsmouth did not secure Japanese
interests in the region, especially since the United States considered the island em-
pire in the Far East as its antagonist of the future.21 Nevertheless, the Meiji period
saw the establishment of a politically and militarily consolidated Japanese state
whose policy makers were interested in the Asian mainland, especially since the
costs of the war against Russia needed to be paid and Japan’s economy needed
access to the raw materials and resources of the continent.
When the First World War began in 1914, the Japanese policy makers and
military planners alike realized that this war would be more than just a Euro-
pean conflict.22 They eventually considered the war to be a chance to solve
some of the problems that had been troubling the country since the Meiji Resto-
ration, because, as Frattolillo and Best so expertly described it,
Japan had a dual identity. On the face of it, it appeared on the world scene as an up–and–
coming country, militarily and economically. Indeed, it was the only Great Power in Asia
and, moreover, was allied with the only world power, Britain. Beneath the surface, though,
it was troubled in a number of ways. At the broadest social level, many of the issues that it
faced were a natural result of the modernization process that it had begun after 1868.23
 David H. James, The Rise and Fall of the Japanese Empire, London/New York 2010 [1951],
p. 157.
 Hirakawa Sukehiro, Wakon yōsai no keifu. Uchi to soto kara no Meiji Nihon, Tokyo 1992;
Peter Lutum, Das Denken von Minakata Kumagusu und Yanagita Kunio. Zwei Pioniere der ja-
panischen Volkskunde im Spiegel der Leitmotive wakon–yōsai und wayō–setchū, Münster
2005.
 Ban’no Junji, Meiji kenpō taisei no kakuritsu. Fukoku kyōhei to minryoku kyūyō, Tokyo
1992; Nakano Takeshi, Fukoku to kyōhei. Chisei keizaigaku josetsu, Tokyo 2016.
 For a detailed discussion of the US role during the Russo–Japanese negotiations at Ports-
mouth and the American interest in a pro–Russian peace treatey, see Frank Jacob, The
Russo–Japanese War and Its Shaping of the Twentieth Century, London 2018, pp. 90–113.
 Dickinson, The First World War, p. 164.
 Frattolillo/Best, Introduction, p. 2.
Representatives of the Japanese Imperial Navy in particular had realized that

the war in Europe offered a chance to regain both influence on the political
scene and support for a restrengthening of the naval power of Japan. In Janu-
ary 1914 the Siemens Scandal (Shīmensu jiken) had weakened the position of
the navy, whose representatives were accused of corruption.24 In addition, the
national expenditure for the Japanese navy had been steadily cut since 1911
(Table 3.1).
Table 3.1: Navy Expenditure 1911–1914.25
Year Expenditure in ¥
 ,,
 ,,
 ,,
 ,,
The navy’s leaders had initially hoped for an expansion of its budget in early
1914, but due to the scandal these hopes were destroyed. In an attack in the
Lower House Budget Committee meeting, Shimada Saburō (1852–1953) of the
Dōshikai26 accused the navy’s leaders of having lost their “moral integrity”
and, even worse, of having “soiled Japan’s reputation abroad.”27 In the follow-
ing days the pressure on the government increased, although a motion of no
confidence was rejected by 205 votes to 164 in the Diet.28 Eventually, however,
Prime Minister Admiral Yamamoto Gonnohyōe (1852–1933) resigned, and he
was then degraded, together with Navy Minister Saitō Makoto (1858–1936), by a
naval court, which also punished leading officers in Japan’s navy with fines
and jail time. The months before the First World War were therefore a trouble-
some time for the navy, whose representatives realized that the war in Europe
might help them to get back on track quickly. However, when the war began
in August 1914, it was not yet clear what Japan would do. Of course, the elderly
 On the scandal see: J. Charles Schencking, Making Waves. Politics, Propaganda, and the
Emergence of the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1868–1922, Stanford, CA 2005, pp. 187–191. On Sie-
mens’ role in Japan Toru Takenaka, Siemens in Japan. Von der Landesöffnung bis zum Ersten
Weltkrieg, Stuttgart 1996 is recommended.
 Numbers were taken from Schencking, Making Waves, p. 186.
 The party, originally called Rikken–Dōshikai (Association of Allies of the Constitution)
founded by Prime Minister Katsura Tarō (1848–1913) in 1913 only existed until 1916.
 Schencking, Making Waves, p. 191.
 Ibid., p. 193.
statesmen (genrō) around Yamagata Aritomo (1838–1922) were responsible for

the fate of the country, but they were not really interested in being drawn into a
larger European conflict. Allied with Britain through the Anglo–Japanese Alli-
ance since 1902, it was likely that they would support the Allied Powers, but
the German–ruled Chinese province of Shandong also triggered the Japanese
interest in the region as a reason to get involved, as it represented an opportu-
nity to extend Japan’s influence in East Asia while supporting a European war
effort.29
Historian J. Charles Schencking clearly describes the ambivalence of the
First World War, with regard to its European and East Asian perspectives, when
he states that “the cataclysmic event that forever altered European history was
a war, if not the war, of opportunity for Japan.”30 The military commitment to
the war effort in Europe was limited to naval support for the security of British
convoys, while East Asia, especially China, got quite unprotected and therefore
presented a good opportunity for Japan to gain what it had not been able to
during its own wars there in the Meiji period. For the navy, the war was also a
game changer. To quote Schencking again: “Acting opportunistically in the
opening months of the war, initially without the consent of the cabinet, the
navy used the war to further its institutional, strategic, and budgetary aims,
and did so with astonishing success.”31 The increase of naval necessities could
be explained by the demands of its British allies as well as the growing navy of
the US, which must have been considered as a competitor for the Pacific Rim in
the days after the war was over. Financially, the increased spendings were
made possible by the overall economic boom that will be discussed in more de-
tail later. However, due to a surplus of almost ¥ 1.5 billion between 1915 and
1918 and ¥ 1.3 billion in 1919, the navy could demand, and was granted, more
money for new ships and increased personnel costs.32
Japan’s Foreign Minister Katō Takaaki (1860–1926), in contrast, contacted
British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey (1862–1933) to find out what Japan was
supposed to do according to Britain’s war plans.33 The situation for the British
government was, however, really ambivalent when it came to the question of Jap-
anese support: “On the one hand, certain members of the British government,
namely in the Admiralty Office, strongly desired Japanese naval assistance. On
the other hand, British diplomats in China and Hong Kong believed that Japanese
 A. Morgan Young, Japan under Taisho Tenno 1912–1926, London/New York 2010, p. 70.
 Schencking, Making Waves, p. 201.
 Ibid.
 Ibid., p. 202.
 Ibid., p. 203.
participation would diminish Britain’s ‘future political influence in China and our
prestige in Asia generally’ and ‘would involve deplorable complications now and
hereafter.’”34 Identifying the war as an opportunity to extend Japan’s influence in
China while supporting the British war effort in Europe, Katō, as well as Prime
Minister Ōkuma Shigenobu (1838–1922), agreed to get involved. The support of
the Entente and the war against Germany also provided Japan, and especially its
navy, with the opportunity to acquire an empire in the Pacific, where the German
colonial islands were waiting for the ambitious Japanese to take them into their
possession.35
On 15 August 1914 the Japanese government sent an ultimatum to Germany,
demanding the Germans’ surrender in Shandong, the transfer of their rights in
this province to Japan, and the dismantling of warships in Chinese waters. The
note did not receive any reply, which is why Japan formally declared war on
23 August.36 Due to the lack of a German war plan for the East Asian theater of
war and the Japanese superiority therein, the campaign against the central
power in China was a rather short one, as were the operations against German
warships in the Pacific. According to the Japanese perspective, they were only at
war and fighting against the German Empire due to their obligations related to
the Anglo–Japanese Alliance. The former ambassador to America and lecturer at
Columbia University, Iyenaga Toyokichi (1862–1936), explained this fact to a
US audience in Buffalo, New York on 7 February 1915: “Japan entered the war
[at] last. [. . .] I will assure you, she will not be the last to quit the bloody
scene, but will leave it at the same time and in company with her ally.”37 By
stating this, the former Japanese ambassador highlighted the role of the Brit-
ish request for Japanese participation in the global conflict, because “[t]o cap-
ture this stronghold of Germany in the Far East, and to destroy the warships
that preyed upon British merchantmen, was then the duty that was imposed
upon Japan when she was called by her ally to her assistance.”38 Regardless
of the attempt to create an image of the Japanese decision makers that resem-
bled the idea of a reluctant Japan when it had to enter the war,39 the military
 Ibid., p. 204.
 Ibid., p. 206.
 Young, Japan under Taisho Tenno, pp. 71–73.
 Frederik R. Coudert et al., Why Europe Is At War? The Question Considered from the Points of
View of France, England, Germany, Japan and the United States, New York/London 1915, p. 115.
 Ibid., p. 121.
 Iyenaga makes this point quite clear, when he writes: “Japan whole–heartedly went to her
ally’s aid in fulfilment of the obligations imposed upon her by her Anglo–Japanese Treaty.
Had Japan desisted from taking such action she would have been forever branded as a cow-
ardly, selfish nation, and none would in future have trusted or befriended her.” Ibid., p. 134.
operations in China40 soon revealed the real interest of the government in

Tokyo. Iyenaga had already claimed the Japanese right for expansion in Shan-
dong to be just in early 1915, because to him it was more than obvious that “if
the Allies finally win, Japan will have proper claims to make for the blood and
treasure expended for the capture of Kiao–chau [sic!] and in running the great
risk of having for her foe a power so formidable as Germany. Even should
Japan decide to retain Kiao–chau, it would not be a violation of China’s integ-
rity, for Kiao–chau was not a part of China; its complete sovereignty, at least for
ninety–nine years, rested in Germany.”41 With regard to the European theater of
war, it was declared that the Japanese soldiers were no “hirelings” and would
never fight for money, as for example many Hessian soldiers had done in the
past. It was rather hoped “that the Allies will be able to crush by their own hands
the German militarism.”42 The ambivalence of the Japanese perception of the
First World War was consequently already visible early on. On the one hand, the
war, supposedly only waged for the sake of the Anglo–Japanese Alliance, would
secure Japanese rights in Asia, especially since Japan had to fight a strong
enemy there, i.e. Germany. On the other hand, it was natural that the Japanese
nation state should be granted the German rights in the region, once the enemy’s
troops in Shandong had been defeated.
Consequently, the Japanese operations in Shandong focused on a fast siege
of the German fortress of Kiao–chow. In contrast to the experience of Port Arthur
during the Russo–Japanese War a decade before, a combined naval–land assault
secured the Japanese victory quickly and without the large number of casualties
caused by the siege of Port Arthur in 1904/05.43 This time, the Japanese were
much better prepared and did not face an enemy that neither had a larger amount
of soldiers in the region nor was similarly willing to resist as the Russians had
been a decade before. It seemed unlikely that the Japanese would face any
problems in Shandong. The Bay of Kiao–chow was blocked by the Second
Squadron of the Japanese Navy under the command of Vice–Admiral Katō Sada-
kichi (1861–1927) by late August 1914, and the landing of troops began on 2 Sep-
tember. Again, Japan sent troops to fight a war against a foreign power on
Chinese soil, ignoring China’s neutrality. The Japanese commanders, experi-
enced and with vivid memories of the Russo–Japanese War, prepared the attack
 Ibid., pp. 121–122.

 Ibid., p. 138.
 Ibid., pp. 138–139.
 Joseph I. C. Clarke, Japan at First Hand. New York 1918, pp. 384–385.
on the German fortifications in Shandong with caution as well as care, and there-
fore landed large siege guns and naval guns.44 The majority of casualties of the
Japanese Army or Navy were rather related to accidents, like the sinking of the
Takachiko, an old cruiser that hit a mine in mid–October 1914 and whose crew of
280 sailors drowned in the sea.45 The German garrison was bombarded by Japa-
nese shells for a week before its commander decided to surrender. 8,000 people,
of whom 3,000 had been soldiers, became prisoners of war of the Japanese,
whose army had lost 200 men – in addition to almost 900 wounded – in the last
assault. On 7 November 1914 the German capitulation was received, and the rela-
tively short campaign ended for the Japanese Empire with a victory and the take-
over of the colonial rights in Shandong Province.46
Although the Japanese victory was celebrated at home, Germany was not
really considered an enemy, especially since Japan’s military had been trained
and educated by German officers in the past, and because Russia was rather
considered the natural enemy of the Japanese Empire in East Asia. In Europe,
the war, however, went on, and some politicians and military leaders there
hoped that Japan would also participate in the fight against Germany on Euro-
pean soil, but the Japanese government did not want to take such responsibili-
ties. In addition, suspicions in London and Washington argued against the
further incorporation of Japan with regard to the Allied war effort. Japan had
already shown in Shandong that it was willing to take over the rights and pos-
sessions of the German Empire, and it was feared that its further involvement
in the war could lead to tremendous demands related to the postwar era.47
With regard to Japan’s influence on the Asian mainland, the course of Tokyo
seemed clear: “It had been determined in Japan that there had never been an
opportunity like the present, and that there was never likely to be one so fa-
vourable again, for bringing China under Japanese control.”48 The First World
War had created a window of opportunity for Japanese imperialism on the
Asian continent, or as Frattolillo and Best described it, “the power vacuum cre-
ated by the retreat of the European Powers from the region allowed Japan not
only to seize Germany’s Qingdao lease and resolve the Guandong issue, but
also to begin to exercise a degree of influence over the Chinese government.”49
By the time the war ended, Japan had increased its influence in East Asia quite
 Young, Japan under Taisho Tenno, p. 73.

 Ibid., p. 74.
 Ibid.
 Ibid., pp. 75–76.
 Ibid., p. 76.
 Frattolillo/Best, Introduction, p. 4.
dramatically, while the Japanese Navy ruled in German Micronesia and parts of
the Pacific Rim in 1919 as well.50 The victory over the German troops in Shan-
dong in 1914 was essential for this development, as it not only allowed them to
take over the islands in the Pacific controlled by the German Empire, but also
to intensify the pressure on Beijing, where Japanese politicians attempted to
replicate their imperial policy in Korea before 1910. China was supposed to be
transformed into a Japanese protectorate, something that was solely possible
because the Western imperial powers were involved in the First World War, try-
ing to destroy each other on the European battlefields.
A “turning point in Japanese diplomatic history”51 was reached in 1915 when
Japan issued the Twenty–One Demands, according to which the colonial transfor-
mation of China was to be completed within the coming years, with Japan as the
sole and exclusive colonial power. It was solely due to American diplomatic inter-
vention52 and the pressure of a nationalist wave at home that the government in
Beijing was able to achieve changes to the demands, especially the last group of
them that was dropped in the end, as this would have really damaged China’s
national integrity and “brought much criticism because it attempted to violate
Chinese sovereignty and clashed with existing British privileges.”53 While the Jap-
anese government had requested to keep Group V54 of the demands secret, the
leaking of their content provided the Chinese leadership with international sup-
port and a chance to resist Japan’s aggressive imperial policy. The Japanese
 Dickinson, The First World War, p. 166.

 Sōchi Naraoka, A New Look at Japan’s Twenty–One Demands. Reconsidering Katō Takaa-
ki’s Motives in 1915, in: Tosh Minohara/Tze–ki Hon/Evan Dawley (Eds.), The Decade of the
Great War. Japan and the Wider World in the 1910s, Leiden 2014, pp. 189–210, here p. 189.
 The US intervention, however, was not an expression of a pro–Chinese policy, but of an
imperialist anti–Japanese agenda. An article in the journal “The Revolutionary Age” from 1919
therefore criticized the US position: “The motive behind these protests about Shantung are
purely imperialistic. China, before the war, was the scene of a fierce struggle, between compet-
ing Imperialisms for control; and the struggle must become more acute now. The only consid-
erbale competitor in the Far East of American Imperialism is the Imperialism of Japan; and
there is a natural protest, accordingly, against soldifying Japenese control in China.” The
Shantung Controversy, in: The Revolutionary Age 2, no. 4, July 26, 1919, p. 2.
 Naraoka, A New Look, 189.
 These demands would have turned China into a Japanese puppet state, as Naraoka’s short
summary confirms: “The fifth group was the most notorious and controversial. It included the
following articles. China was to engage some influential Japanese people as political, financial
and military advisers (article 1); Sino–Japanese control of the police was to be implemented
where necessary (article 3); and China was to grant Japan the right to construct railways in the
Yangtze (article 5).” Ibid., p. 191. A detailed description of all demands is provided by Young,
Japan under Taisho Tenno, pp. 76–77.
image abroad was damaged by this imperialist attempt, especially since “some
in the West felt that Japan, despite the I[mperial] J[apanese] N[avy] having con-
tributed to the defence of the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean, had done
relatively little to support the Allied cause and that its outlook in international
affairs was selfish and increasingly anachronistic in a world that was being re-
defined by Wilsonian internationalism.”55
Regardless of such animosity against Japan’s expansionist actions, the gov-
ernment in Tokyo continued its overall policy of attempting to use every opportu-
nity to extend the borders of the Japanese Empire. The Russian Revolution and
the international participation in the Russian Civil War against the Bolsheviks
provided them with another opportunity to do exactly that. Due to the revolu-
tions in February and October 1917, the Czarist Empire not only dropped out of
the war, but it also ceased to exist and was replaced by a Bolshevik party regime
under Lenin’s (1870–1924) leadership, who had corrupted the revolution as a
whole.56 Due to the attempt of the Czech Legion57 that had been fighting in the
Czar’s army to reach their home by crossing Asia, as they wanted to sail from
Vladivostok to America and then back to Europe, an international intervention
on their behalf and against the Bolsheviks was initiated by the British and French
governments, who were aiming at a containment of the communist menace as
well.58 The United States and Japan were informed about the case and an inter-
vention was requested, and both agreed to send a small force of 7,000 soldiers to
Russia. The Japanese Army eventually sent 9,000 men from its Twelfth Division
on Kyūshū in August 1918, and on 23 August, a combined force of British, Czech,
French, and Japanese troops led by Ivan Kalmikoff, a Cossack, began the war
 Frattolillo/Best, Introduction, p. 4.
 Frank Jacob, 1917 – Die korrumpierte Revolution, Darmstadt 2020. For the impact of the
Russian Revolution on anti–left sentiments and politics in Japan, see: Tatiana Linkhoeva, The
Russian Revolution and the Emergence of Japanese Anticommunism, in: Revolutionary Russia
31 (2018) 2, pp. 261–278; Tatiana Linkhoeva, Revolution Goes East. Imperial Japan and Soviet
Communism, Ithaca, NY 2020. For a more general discussion of the Russian Revolution and its
impact on Japan, see: Hosoya Chihiro, Roshia kakumei to Nihon, Tokyo 1972.
 On the Czech Legions see: Gerburg Thunig–Nittner, Die Tschechoslowakische Legion in
Russland. Ihre Geschichte und Bedeutung bei der Entstehung der 1. Tschechoslowakischen Re-
publik, Wiesbaden 1970 and Joan McGuire Mohr, The Czech and Slovak Legion in Siberia from
1917 to 1922, Jefferson, NC 2012.
 Sumiko Otsubo, Fighting on Two Fronts. Japan’s Involvement in the Siberian Intervention
and the Spanish Influenza Pandemic of 1918, in: Tosh Minohara/Tze–ki Hon/Evan Dawley
(Eds.), The Decade of the Great War. Japan and the Wider World in the 1910s, Leiden 2014,
pp. 461–480, here p. 468.
against the Bolshevik Red Army at Kraevski.59 Additional troops were sent from
Japan and Manchuria to the Siberian Transbaikal province, where a strong con-
tingent of the Red Army, supposedly 30,000 men, was waiting for the foreign in-
vaders. An advance of the latter to the city of Chita in September was successful
and Japan could strengthen its control over the Chinese Eastern and Amur rail-
way lines in the province, although smaller struggles with Russian partisans con-
tinued there in the following weeks. By November 1918 Japan had sent more than
70,000 soldiers to Eastern Siberia, and the three provinces in that region were
under the firm control of the international troops that stayed there uncontested
during the winter.60
Regardless of its rather promising start, the Siberian Intervention became
rather a disaster for Japan. On the one hand, the Spanish flu was imported to
Japan as a consequence of the intervention, because Japanese soldiers got infected
with it due to their operations in Siberia,61 and on the other, the Bolshevik victory
in the Russian Civil War could not ultimately be prevented by the international
intervention and the troops sent from Britain and its empire, France, Italy, China,
and Japan. The military operations were costly and, with regard to the gains,
rather a waste of Japanese financial and military capacities, but the government in
Tokyo had hoped to achieve its expansionist vision in Siberia, which had been ex-
pressed since the early Meiji period.62 What turned out to be nothing more than a
costly “adventure” in Siberia, however, was also an essential part of the overall
wartime strategy of Foreign Minister Uchida Yasuya, who intended to strengthen
 Ibid., pp. 468–469.

 Ibid., pp. 469–470. For a more detailed analysis of Japan’s Siberian Intervention see: Izao
Tomio, Shoki shiberia shuppei no kenkyū. Atarashiki kyūseigun kōsō no tōjō to tenkai, Fukuoka
2003; Hosoya Chihiro, Shiberia shuppei no shiteki kenkyū, Tokyo 2005; Paul E. Dunscomb, Ja-
pan’s Siberian Intervention, 1918–1922, Lanham, MD 2011.
 Hayami Akira, Nihon o osotta supein infuruenza. Jinrui to uirusu no dai ichiji sekai sensō,
Tokyo 2006, pp. 284–293. According to Iijima Wataru, the Spanish flu had hit China between
1918 and 1920, from where the disease supposedly reached China. Wataru Iijima, Spanish In-
fluenza in China, 1918–20. A Preliminary Probe, in: Howard Phillips/David Killingray (Eds.),
The Spanish Influenza Pandemic of 1918–19. New Perspectives, London 2003, pp. 101–109,
here p. 109, cited in Otsubo, Fighting on Two Fronts, p. 466. On Epidemics in Modern Asia,
including the Spanish flu, also see Robert Peckham, Epidemics in Modern Asia, Cambridge
2016.
 Especially right wing secret societies, like the Gen’yōsha or the Kokuryūkai had demanded
a Japanese expansion until the Amur River, which was considered the natural border of a Jap-
anese interest zone on the continent. For a detailed analysis of these societies, their positions,
and impact, see: Frank Jacob, Japanism, Pan–asianism and Terrorism. A Short History of the
Amur Society (the Black Dragons) 1901–1945, Bethesda, CA 2014.
Japanese interests in Northern Manchuria and China alike. The Twenty–One De-
mands and the dispatch of Japan’s troops to Siberia were meant to achieve these
goals and therefore present Tokyo’s overall strategy during the war, namely to use
it to further extend and strengthen the Japanese Empire on the Asian continent,
where Korea (since 1910) and the railway rights in Southern Manchuria only pro-
vided the necessary bridgeheads for the further expansion of Japan’s imperialist
ambitions.63
The eventual end of the Siberian Intervention was the result of a strong par-
liament, whose members, with the support of Army Minister, and later Prime
Minister (1926–1929), Tanaka Giichi (1864–1929), were able to avoid the interfer-
ence of the Japanese Imperial Army. The General Staff was only informed once
the Emperor had already approved parliament’s decision.64 This act further em-
phasized the rather powerful position of the elected leaders of Japan, in contrast
to the previous Meiji period and the later Shōwa years, when the military would
decide the political course of the country. Regardless of the fact that Japan had
failed to reach its ultimate aims in China and Siberia, the war had left its impact
on the island country, and for many people a new age seemed to have begun in
1918/19.
When news of the armistice between the Entente and the Central Powers
reached Japan, a national school holiday was declared and more than 60,000
businessmen and shopowners gathered for a lantern parade.65 In 1922, they
also sponsored the Tokyo Peace Exposition in Ueno Park and the Japanese
League of Nations Association kept the commemoration of the armistice alive
through the 1920s. In Japan, many people believed in the proclaimed new age
of internationalism, reflected in Wilson’s idea for the League of Nations. That
these dreams at the end of the conflict in Europe went beyond the later realities
was already expressed during the negotiations of the peace treaty in Versailles,
where Japan was present as a victor nation as well.66 In November 1918, For-
eign Minister Uchida had drafted a memorandum, outlining something like a
general agenda for Japan’s delegates who were supposed to participate in the
peace treaty negotiations.67 The Foreign Minister of Japan was well aware that
 Rustin B. Gates, Out with the New and in with the Old. Uchida Yasuya and the Great War
as a Turning Point in Japanese Foreign Affairs, in: Tosh Minohara/Tze–ki Hon/Evan Dawley
(Eds.), The Decade of the Great War. Japan and the Wider World in the 1910s, Leiden 2014,
pp. 64–82, here p. 65.
 Takenaka, Failed Democratization, p. 88.
 Dickinson, The First World War, p. 174.
 Ibid., p. 166.
 Kobayashi Tatsuo (Hrsg.), Suiusō Nikki, Tokyo 1965, pp. 285–286.
the League of Nations was rather an idealistic project, determined by racism

and jingoism from the beginning, and therefore unable to solve the main
questions related to the postwar era, in which the main imperialist powers
would try to regain as much control, and even intensify their influence, in the
colonial world to become as powerful as they had been before the war. Uchi-
da’s overall strategy suggested being a complying voice in the choir of the
great powers and not creating any form of antagonism. While the League of
Nations might not have been attractive for Japan, the latter could not afford to
stay outside.68 The Foreign Minister knew that the Japanese attempts to ex-
pand its control and influence on the Asian continent needed to be accepted
in Versailles, or as the American historian Rustin B. Gates explained it, “[w]
ith the end of World War I, Uchida had to go along with the trends of the
times to pursue his past policy of cooperation. This policy would be tested in
Paris over the question of Japanese control of Shandong.”69 While the years
between 1912 and 1926 were often referred to as a more democratic period in
Japan, where internationalist ideas, represented by the League of Nations,
were stronger than nationalist ones, this is contradicted by the continuity of
Japanese imperialism, here expressed in Uchida’s considerations about the
expansion of the empire in China and Manchuria. Japan’s interest in its neigh-
boring regions was not related to Wilsonian ideals, but “a consistent line in
Japanese policies towards Asia” becomes very obvious and “has little to do
with a new spirit of democratic international cooperation.”70
The main interest of the Japanese delegation in Paris was consequently not
to establish a new peaceful international order, but to secure gains from the
war, especially the German rights in Shandong, which naturally had to lead to
a conflict with China.71 Manchuria and Mongolia were also considered rather
exclusive zones of interest for Japan, which is why they were not supposed to
be discussed as part of the Chinese question.72 The talks in Paris were conse-
quently quite ambivalent: “[W]orld leaders forged the institutional framework
for a new system that they believed would relieve humanity of the threat of
 Gates, Out with the New, p. 72.

 Ibid.
 Kurt W. Radtke, Nationalism and Internationalism in Japan’s Economic Liberalism. The
Case of Ishibashi Tanzan, in: Dick Stegewerns (Ed.), Nationalism and Internationalism in Im-
perial Japan. Autonomy, Asian Brotherhood, or World Citizenship? London/New York 2003,
pp. 169–195, here p. 180.
 See the chapter by Jacob on China in the present volume for a more detailed discussion of
this conflict at the Versailles Peace Conference.
 Radtke, Nationalism, p. 182.
war. For Japan the rapid changes in international affairs produced uncertainty
concerning future relationships with its Asian neighbors and the victorious
powers.”73 While Wilson had hoped to recreate an international political sys-
tem, the Japanese in particular had gained from disrupted relations during the
war years, as the East Asian region could now be politically and economically
dominated by the Japanese. Their interest in the latter field increased due to
the transformation of its production, as their main export goods were no longer
just textiles but goods from its heavy industry as well. Ships were exported
from Japan during the war, and the industrial sector in particular could rely on
unforeseen profits. With the financial surplus, the Japanese government could
also use loans to China and Russia to gain more influence in the regions of her
imperial ambitions.74 However, the boom and subsequent recession after the
war also politically challenged the existent order in Japan, when rice riots and
strikes steadily shook the order and endangered the country’s internal stability.
Although the government in Tokyo could see itself in the camp of the victorious
powers, it still was able to lose a lot in 1919. In Paris, the delegation therefore
had to secure a success for Japan. Uchida had consequently prepared the Japa-
nese diplomats to remember the following four points: “First, Japan approved
the Wilsonian program in theory. Second, details of the program would create
circumstances disadvantageous to Japan. Third, Japan should attempt to delay
the program’s actual implementation. Fourth, if its realization appeared inevita-
ble, Japan should not press reservations to the point of nonparticipation or dip-
lomatic isolation.”75 The Japanese prepared for the peace talks with a lot of care,
as they feared a repetition of the diplomatic loss they had experienced during the
negotiations leading to the Peace Treaty of Portsmouth in 1905. The ambassadors
to London and Paris, Chinda Sutemi (1857–1929) and Matsui Keishirō (1868–1946),
were chosen to represent Japan at the Versailles Peace Treaty Conference, but the
former had informed the government in Tokyo that he might not be suitable for
this task, as the other states were sending plenipotentiaries that were heads of
state at the time.76 Since Prime Minister Hara Takashi (1856–1921) was not willing
to leave Japan and was also not willing to send his foreign minister, whose support
he needed at home, the cabinet eventually appointed Marquis Saionji Kinmochi
(1849–1940) to lead the Japanese delegation, because “[h]is qualifications included
Imperial lineage, past service as premier and foreign minister, and stints as Japa-
nese minister in Austria, Belgium, and Germany. During a decade–long stay in
 Burkman, Japan and the League of Nations, p. 2.

 Ibid., pp. 2–3.
 Ibid., p. 45.
 Ibid., p. 57.
Paris as a student, he had acquired fluency in the French language and the friend-
ship of Georges Clemenceau.77 Moreover, the sixty–nine–year–old Saionji was a
recognized senior statesman of quasi–genrō status.”78 Regardless of Saionji’s offi-
cial leadership, Makino Nobuaki (1861–1949) “acted as the real strategist and
major spokesman for the delegation” and made sure that Japan’s interests were
taken into full consideration by the other powers.79
On 21 April 1919 the delegation received a message from Foreign Minister
Uchida requesting them to deny Japan’s participation in the League of Nations if
the other powers did not accept the takeover of German rights in Shandong Prov-
ince by the Japanese government. It was therefore clear that Uchida wanted to
use the idealist plan for the internationalist postwar order as leverage to gain the
Germans’ colonial rights in China for Japan.80 In the end, US President Woodrow
Wilson sacrificed the Chinese territorial integrity for his vision of an international
order based on free trade and peaceful understanding. Japan ripped away Chi-
nese rights and claimed to be a guarantor of this new order when it became a
founding member of the League of Nations.81 Japan was unable, however, to se-
cure racial equality as a foundation of the new order, which meant full accep-
tance by the Western powers. The negotiations in Paris were another blow for
Japan’s ambition to be accepted as a full member of the imperial club, and its
policy would change in the years to come when Tokyo would eventually argue in
favor of freeing Asia from white supremacy while replacing it with Japanese he-
gemony. Due to the political impact of the First World War, what Frattolillo and
Best called “a search for a new cultural identity among intellectuals and radical
activists”82 began as well. Eventually, the discourse of the Meiji period, when
leading figures argued in favor of leaving Asia,83 was replaced by demands for a
return to Asia, especially since it was obvious that the West had never accepted
 Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929) was French Prime Minister during the peace conference
in Versailles.
 Burkman, Japan and the League of Nations, p. 58.
 Wada Hanako, Dai–ichiji Sekai Taisengo ni okeru Nihon gaikō zaigai kōkan, in: Journal of
the Graduate School of Humanities and Sciences, Ochanomizu University 8 (2005) 6, pp. 1–13.
 Haruno Saru/Shen Chun Ye, Pari kōwa kaigi to Nichi–Bei–Chū kankei. „Santō mondai“ o
chūshin ni, in: Hokusai kōkyū seisaku kenkyū 9 (2005) 2, pp. 189–206; Qian Yang, Pari kōwa
kaigi to taika ni jū ichi–kajō. Santō mondai o chūshin ni, in: Hokudai shigaku 58 (2018),
pp. 80–95.
 Gates, Out with the New, p. 74.
 Frattolillo/Best, Introduction, p. 6.
 For a detailed discussion of Fukuzawa Yukichi’s (1835–1901) „Datsu–A–ron“ see: Fukuzawa
Naomi, Fukuzawa Yukichis Datsu–a–ron (1885). Wegbereiter des japanischen Imperialismus
oder zornige Enttauschung eines asiatischen Aufklarers?, in: Tātonnemen 13 (2011), pp. 210–224.
Japan as an equal. Regardless of its anti–Western resentment, Japan had prof-

ited from the war, but was forced to face a dangerous recession after the war
ended, which is why her interest in the Asian markets must have been even
stronger then than before the First World War. However, the war’s economic im-
pact was quite intense, and not only demanded a new foreign policy once the
European battles had ended. It is therefore necessary to take a closer look at the
socio–economic watershed,84 as it was caused by the war that marked the be-
ginning of the “age of extremes,” and that, of course, not only in Europe but in
Asia as well.
3.3 The Economic Impact of the War
That the First World War caused tremendous changes in Japan is not a surprise,
especially when one considers the huge economic impact the conflict had on the
country’s trade balance and industrial production.85 In 1914 Japan was still pay-
ing interest, namely ¥80 million per annum, on the loans it had been granted a
decade before when it defeated Russia with American and British credit.86 While
under economic pressure, the government, as mentioned before, also received
steady demands from the army and navy, whose representatives wanted to in-
crease their share of the budget, making sure to strengthen Japan’s military posi-
tion on the Asian continent and the Pacific alike. This “budget rivalry in a time of
financial distress”87 was a heavy burden for the Japanese state before the First
World War began. Although the Japanese Navy had suffered from budget cuts
and the Siemens Scandal, as described before, the rivalry with the army did not
cease to exist and would continue, even after the war. When the First World War
began, there was consequently not only a “grievous depression”88 but also an
internal political instability that had the potential to cause more than just a small
problem.
 Frank Jacob, Der Erste Weltkrieg als ökonomisch–soziale Zäsur der japanischen Moderne,
in: Stephan Köhn/Chantal Weber/Volker Elis (Eds.), Tokyo in den zwanziger Jahren Experi-
mentierfeld einer anderen Moderne? Wiesbaden 2017, pp. 17–32.
 Tamura Kosaku, who worked in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and later became a profes-
sor at Tokyo’s Chūō University had written an early analysis of the impact of the war on for-
eign trade. Tamura Kosaku, Dai–ichiji Sekai Taisen to Nihon gaikō, in: Diplomatic Archives of
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, B10070135800.
 Frattolillo/Best, Introduction, p. 3.
 Ibid.
 Young, Japan under Taisho Tenno, p. 90.
In some way, one could argue that the First World War presented some kind
of salvation, because “[f]or some years the tendency of imports to exceed exports
had been a source of anxiety to Japanese economists, and it was noted with satis-
faction that in the first half of 1915 exports exceeded imports, though the satisfac-
tion was somewhat damped by the fact that the change was even more due to the
decline in imports than to the increase in exports.”89 Initially, the prices of the
main Japanese trade goods, namely rice and silk, fell tremendously, and Prime
Minister Ōkuma therefore established companies that acted on behalf of the gov-
ernment and bought rice and silk to stabilize the economy. This was a dangerous
move, but once the Japanese stock market boomed after one year of the war, his
strategy paid off, as it held Japan in order until the advantages of increasing trade
volume due to the European conflict kicked in. Due to the events since 1914, their
Western competitors had left the Asian markets to Japanese trade, which is why a
boom was the natural consequence of the now hegemonic and monopolistic posi-
tion of the single supplier for the goods needed in the region. Due to the immense
surplus created by the war, Japan went through a speedy second phase of industri-
alization and urbanization, and income tax eventually the main direct taxation.
For the Allied powers, Japan became the main source to buy arms from, but also
textiles, war supplies, and other industrial goods were ordered in Tokyo and other
larger Japanese cities, which is why the value of exports soon outnumbered that of
imports and Japan eventually became a creditor, handing out loans to Britain,
France, and Russia so that these allied nation states were able to buy goods from
Japanese companies.
During the war years, Japan, when it comes to war–related sales, had a very
fortunate trade relation with Russia, having “sent over a million rifles, with am-
munition for small arms and artillery and kept the Osaka factories working
night and day in supplying these, besides boots, hats, blankets, clothing and
various supplies for the Russian army.”90 Since the Allies, like Britain, also
forced their own economies to respond to the war necessities, they no longer
produced for the colonial markets in Asia but for the battlefields in Europe. It
was Japan that could exploit this situation as it began, step by step, to take over
these markets as the main supplier for textile goods, and due to the lack of com-
petition the prices rose. Japan’s exports in the textile sector, in the meantime,
increased by over 60%, and this development was greeted with joy, especially
by politicians like Finance Minister Taketomi Tokitoshi (1856–1938).91 While
 Ibid.
 The North American Review, 1918, p. 727.
 Young, Japan under Taisho Tenno, p. 91.
demands for stronger Japanese involvement in the European war effort could be
ignored, the country gained from the absence of its rivals, who tried to destroy
themselves in the years of bloodshed. The short struggle against the Germans in
Shandong was sufficient involvement for the Japanese government, whose rep-
resentatives now, albeit while struggling for more influence in China, rather
tended to enjoy the economic surplus created by the far–away conflict.
The prices charged for the Japanese goods were “extortionate,”92 and by
1916 the First World War was widely “regarded [. . .] as a heaven–sent opportu-
nity to make money”93 while the war, i.e. the battles and the casualties, at least
from a Japanese perspective, was already over. Japan’s position with regard to
the First World War was consequently an ambivalent one. On the one hand, it
had actively participated in defeating Germany, even if it only did so in the
Asian and Pacific context; on the other hand, it profited like a neutral nation
state from the lack of competitors for Asian trade during the war and could sell
goods to the Allied powers, whose demands were constantly high, because the
conflict in Europe was a total one, demanding all economic capacity to be
thrown at the enemy in this global battle of material. Within this global context,
Ōkuma could observe the rise of a new Japan:
The old Marquis was at the helm at the important crisis of the outbreak of war; he had
embarked on a policy of successful aggression in China which most of his countrymen
frankly admired. He had made daring deals in rice and silk, and had proved them to be
good business. Above all, he saw the country pass from a state of commercial depression
to one of unprecedented prosperity. New industries were started on all sides, often with
bountiful subsidies, a special and lasting effort being made in the manufacture of electri-
cal apparatus. Ships were in such demand and the supply of shipbuilding materials was
so scarce that the firm of Suzuki, ordering a new steamer in September 1916, had to pay
the unprecedented price of 385 yen (then about £40) a ton. The scenes on the stock ex-
changes were described as fit only for a madhouse.94
Having been dependant on foreign loans in the past, Japan had eventually be-
come a creditor to many other great powers, something that definitely created a
feeling of pride for the Asian island nation. And Japan’s prosperity in these few
years seemed to be unmatched: “The war had not progressed very far when
Japan found herself in the position of a monopolist supplier of a multitude of
goods. In the Indian and Chinese markets she had hardly a competitor. The
Dutch Indies and Australia depended increasingly on her factories for a number
of their commodities; and before the war was ended South Africa and South
 Ibid., p. 92.
 Ibid., p. 93.
 Ibid., p. 95.
America were offering almost any price for her manufactures.”95 At the same
time, however, Japan also had trouble with getting possession of the goods nec-
essary to keep up its production rate, which is why, to name just one example,
“new import–substitution industries, in areas such as chemicals and optics, to
make up for the loss of trade with Germany”96 had to be built up from scratch.
Nikon was one of these companies, initially providing war–related materials to
the Japanese Navy. While Japan had enormous financial reserves in 1918 – up to
¥1.6 billion – the following tables (Tables 3.2 and 3.3) show that this was only
possible due to the rise in exports since 1914.
Table 3.2: Japan’s Foreign Trade 1910–1924.97
Years Imports in millions of ¥ Exports in millions of ¥
– . .

– . .
– . .
In particular, the war years 1915, 1916, and 1917 showed an extreme increase with
regard to the excess of exports (Table 3.3), as a US report from 1919 indicates.98
Table 3.3: Japan’s Foreign Trade 1914–1917.99
Year Imports in thousands Exports in thousands Excess of Exports in

of ¥ of ¥ thousands of ¥
 , , –,

 , , ,
 , ,, ,
 ,, ,, ,
With regard to Japan’s share of world trade during the First World War, her po-
sition seemed almost totally uncontested, especially since she was the Allied
Powers’ favorite trade partner during the first years of the conflict.
 Ibid., p. 110.
 Frattolillo/Best, Introduction, p. 5.
 Xu, Asia and the Great War, p. 50.
 United States Tariff Commission, Japan. Trade During the War, Washington (Government
Printing Office) 1919.
 Ibid., p. 8.
An increase in factories could be observed due to the economic surplus,

with the number of those with more than five workers rising from 31,000 in 1914
to 43,000 in 1919.100 The economy as a whole grew extremely fast until the early
1920s, and Japan’s exports became dominated by manufactured goods, which
needed to be produced by an increasing urban labor force. The cities were con-
sequently growing, e.g. Tokyo, where the population tripled to around 1 million
in 1920. Osaka, the “industrial capital of Japan,” had even reached 2 million in-
habitants by 1925.101 This urbanization, in combination with increasing prosper-
ity, created a new urban middle class in Japan, which was no longer only male:
10% of Tokyo’s workforce during the war years were women, and therefore a
female consumer culture developed as well. There were consequently not only
geopolitical changes due to the Japanese wealth created by the war, but also so-
cial changes within the country that would have a tremendous impact. Due to
the economic boom, as Andrea Revelant highlighted, “the state’s dependence
on agriculture had dramatically decreased”102 and changed existent structures
as well as the relationship between urban centers and countryside peripheries
as well. At the same time, inflation became a problem in the early 1920s, further
weakening the economic position of small farmers and other producers in the
agricultural sector. When one considers the impact of the First World War on
Japan and the long–term reasons for the protests in its aftermath, one has to
take the social transformation of Japanese daily life into further consideration.
3.4 The War and Social Change in Japan
The above–mentioned urbanization in the war years led to a migration of peo-

ple from the countryside to find employment in the new factories, where the
wages had increased due to the increase in prices and a more expensive life.
The cities, however, not only promised well–paid work, but also the chance to
participate in a modern lifestyle.103 This chance was nevertheless very often an
illusion, and what awaited the migrants in reality was totally different. Miki
Kiyoshi (1897–1945), a Japanese philosopher who described his arrival in Tokyo
 Xu, Asia and the Great War, p. 50.

 Ibid., p. 51.
 Revelant, Rethinking Japanese Taxation, p. 120.
 Susan C. Townsend, The Great War and Urban Crisis. Conceptualizing the Industrial Me-
tropolis in Japan and Britain in the 1910s, in: Tosh Minohara/Tze–ki Hon/Evan Dawley (Eds.),
The Decade of the Great War. Japan and the Wider World in the 1910s, Leiden 2014,
pp. 301–322, here 301.
in 1917, for example, was shocked when he realized his loneliness in the urban
environment.104 The urban poverty also influenced the Marxist Kawakami Ha-
jime (1879–1946), whose “Bimbō monogatari” (“Tale of Poverty”, 1916)105 pro-
vides an insight into the rather dark side of the war for those living in the larger
cities of Japan at that time. Due to the rising poverty rate and low wages com-
pared to company profits and inflation, socialist ideas were also able to gain
ground during the First World War. With the existence of more and more urban
centers – there were only 39 in 1889, but this number had more than doubled
to 83 by 1920106 – a larger number of people started to wish for opportunities
for consumption, e.g. journals, movies, food, cosmetics, etc. On the other hand,
the city space needed to be shared with more and more people, which is why
the density of Japanese cities during the First World War was much higher than
in other countries. In Tokyo, to name just one example, more than 25,000 peo-
ple shared a square kilometer.107 The rapid influx of new labor created a sur-
plus of inhabitants, and while Osaka became known as the “Manchester of the
Orient,” the city life of the lower classes was characterized by long working
hours and general poverty. Osaka was no longer only known for its textile in-
dustry, but also for its slums.108 Even before the war, the city had appeared
crowded to Western visitors: “This flourishing industrial city, with its 5000 fac-
tories, its teeming population in crowded, narrow streets, its forest of smoking
chimneys, its numerous great stone buildings in ‘foreign’ style, and, unfortu-
nately, its paupers and its slums, represents the ‘new industrialism’ of Japan in
its most extreme form.”109 Already facing the consequences of fast industriali-
zation and urbanization, the problems in the urban space, as the British histo-
rian Susan C. Townsend correctly highlighted, were tremendously worsened
due to the economic boom in the war years between 1914 and 1918:
[N]early a thousand new factories opened. Floods of immigrant workers or ‘new arrivals’
(gairaisha) poured into the heavily polluted slum areas around the factories on [the] city’s
 For Miki’s experiences in Tokyo see: Miki Kiyoshi, Miki Kiyoshi zenshū, Tokyo 1984, vol. 1,
pp. 366–400. On the philosopher’s life and work see: Susan C. Townsend, Miki Kiyoshi
1897–1945. Japan’s Itinerant Philosopher, Leiden 2009.
 Kawakami Hajime, Bimbō monogatari, Tokyo 1983. A German translation can be found
in: Reiner Schrader, Die Erzählung von der Armut, in: Oriens Extremus 30 (1983–1986),
pp. 154–245.
 Townsend, The Great War and Urban Crisis, p. 308.
 Ibid.
 Ibid., p. 311.
 Sidney and Beatrice Webb, The Webbs in Asia. The 1911–12 Travel Diary, edited by George
Feaver, Basingstoke 1992, p. 70. cited in ibid.
fringes ‘where living conditions were so poor that they posed a threat to public morals.’ The
worst areas were those adjacent to factories erected close to the harbor and along the rivers,
especially the incorporated districts of Nishinari–gun and Higashinari–gun. Nishinari–gun
reported a 47 per cent increase from 170,000 to 250,000 during the First World War and
Higashinari–gun a 43 per cent increase from 140,000 to 200,000 turning these areas [. . .]
from residential purgatory into something like Hell.110
The urban labor force, impoverished and exploited, eventually presented a

high potential of social unrest, as was explicitly expressed in the Rice Riots of
1918, when the wartime boom and rice speculations on the one hand met with
popular discontent and sorrow on the other.
The end of the war did not lead to a recession immediately, as it took a
while until the European factories and producers began to reach their former
capacities. Accordingly, “the change came with a little breathing–space,”111
and the boom went on. The Japanese leadership and many businessmen seem
to have ignored that the end of the war would bring back the former competi-
tion for the Asian markets and that prices would drop due to this as well. Due
to this fact the recession hit Japan even harder, but for the time being, her peo-
ple could still enjoy the economic surplus and the advantages it had created.
There was also much enthusiasm shared by the government in its time about
their own place in the country’s history: “Japan after the Great War resembled
the heady days of early Meiji, when the entire country rallied to conform to the
new standards of modern civilization as originally introduced by Commodore
Matthew Perry. In fact, Japanese statesmen after 1918 referred explicitly to the
latter nineteenth–century transformation in their proclamation of a new fu-
ture.”112 With the same enthusiasm, those who got rich during the war began to
display their new wealth, and “the ostentation and extravagance of the newly
rich attracted attention and condemnation”113 at the same time. It was a spec-
tacular time period, due to which those who had made a fortune due to their
export business or shipbuilding – the latter of whom were called fune narikin –
were very often wasting money, which is why they were very often caricatured
for their almost shameless relationship with money.114 With “extra money and
 Ibid., p. 313. Townsend here refers to Jeffrey E. Hanes, The City as Subject: Seki Hajime
and the Reinvention of Modern Osaka, Berkeley/Los Angeles, CA 2002, pp. 197–200.
 Young, Japan under Taisho Tenno, p. 145.
 Dickinson, The First World War, p. 169.
 Young, Japan under Taisho Tenno, p. 112.
 For an example see: Iizawa Ten’yō, Envelope for the series “The Nouveau Riche at
New Year” (Narikin no shinnen), Part 1, Leonard A. Lauder Collection, Museum of Fine Arts,
Boston.
time to spend on recreation”115 that now could no longer only be afforded by

the rich, but also by a growing middle class, more possibilities that offered ex-
actly this were created.
Some people spent their money on a European wing of their house, built in
stucco, where they tended to entertain their Europhile Japanese friends. However,
the luxury on the one hand could hardly cover the hardships on the other, and
Japanese society was divided. While many gained financially from the war and
the export business, many lived in poverty, exploited by global capitalism and the
trade monopoly existent for their own country. One consequently has to be careful
when evaluating the developments in Japan during the war period. Of course, a
lot of people gained from the economic rise of the island nation, but many were
further impoverished while they had to witness the reckless spending of many of
the nouveaux riches as well. Regardless of this conflict, which will be described
later in more detail together with its impact, i.e. protest movements in Japan in the
aftermath of the First World War, the influx of money into the country also re-
sulted in better infrastructure and therefore established a relatively high national
connectedness of the people, no matter if they lived in the cities or in the country-
side. In the four years between 1918 and 1922 the railway network in Japan was
extended by more than 30% and the number of kilometers traveled by passengers
tripled.116 In 1914 ca. 165 million passengers and 35 million tons of freight were
transported by train, increasing to 245 million and 49 million respectively in 1917,
before reaching 405 million passengers and 57 million tons of freight three years
later.117 At the same time, wages actually decreased – ¥ 30.9 in 1914, ¥ 33.7 in
1915, ¥ 31.2 in 1916, ¥ 27.6 in 1917, ¥ 22.9 in 1918, and ¥ 20.0 in 1919 – due to infla-
tion and higher living costs.118 In 1920 the railway authorities reacted and raised
the real wage to ¥ 36.3.119 Due to the economic developments during the war
years, the medical service provided by the employers for the railway employees
also changed, and better opportunities were created for railway workers and even-
tually their families. The demand for and expansion of the railway network, like in
many other economic branches as well, increased the demand for experienced
 Gennifer Weisenfeld, MAVO. Japanese Artists and the Avant–Garde, 1905–1931, Berkeley/
Los Angeles, CA 2002, p. 167.
 Dickinson, The First World War, p. 171.
 Chaisung Lim, Railroad Workers and World War I. Labor Hygiene and the Policies of Jap-
anese National Railways, in: Tosh Minohara/Tze–ki Hon/Evan Dawley (Eds.), The Decade of
the Great War. Japan and the Wider World in the 1910s, Leiden 2014, pp. 415–438, here p. 423.
 Ibid.
 Ibid., p. 433.
employees, who were consequently able to gain not only better wages but also
better benefits from the enterprise they worked for.120
The railway had become the symbol of advancement, not only technologi-
cal, but also social, as more and more people were able to travel, extend their
individual horizon, and therefore reach modernity with regard to time and
space.121 Between 1912 and 1925 almost 1,300 power plants were built, since the
increase in produced manufactured goods also demanded more electricity in the
factories. This also led to increased private use of electricity, or better, its avail-
ability in private homes. The increase in productivity also affected Japanese fac-
tories abroad. To name just one example, the number of cotton spindles in
China, which were owned by companies from Japan, increased from ca. 50,000
in 1910 to more than 800,000 in 1920.122 These “explosions” in almost all eco-
nomic sectors did not remain unnoticed, and on 1 January 1917 the Asahi Shim-
bun in Osaka announced that “during the span of the past two years Japan has
secured a place in the sun, and she has become one of the happiest countries in
the world [. . .]. Her national wealth has increased by leaps and bounds, and the
volume of her foreign trade has witnessed an unprecedentedly [sic!] tremendous
increase.”123 Social changes could nevertheless not only be observed in the cit-
ies, where the new financial capacities created a new consumer culture.
In general, the productive structures in the agricultural sector did not change
a lot, although many people left for the cities to make more money and to secure
a supposedly better life. However, the relationship between landowners and ten-
ants changed a lot. American sociologist Theda Skocpol emphasized that espe-
cially peasants have some kind of generic potential for unrest that is related to
change,124 but the rapidness of the events overwhelmed even the Japanese peas-
antry. Due to their gains, many rich landowners moved to the cities, namely
Tokyo or Osaka, to participate in the new and luxurious urban life and culture,
as it was represented by the new department stores.125 Custodians took over the
 Ibid., p. 438.

 On this issue: Woflgang Schivelbusch, Geschichte der Eisenbahnreise. Zur Industrialisier-
ung von Raum und Zeit im 19. Jahrhundert, Seventh Edition, Frankfurt am Main 2000. The
development of railways in Japan is well documented: Nihon Kokuyū Tetsudō – Sōsaishitsu –
Shūshika, Nihon kokuyū tetsudō hyakunenshi, 17 vols., Tokyo 1969–1974.
 Dickinson, The First World War, p. 171.
 Ōsaka asahi shinbun, 1 January 1917, cited in ibid.
 Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions, Cambridge 1979, p. 115.
 Fujioka Rika. The Development of Japanese Department Stores in the Early 20th Century.
The Process of Western Adaptation, http://www.gla.ac.uk/media/media_167604_en.pdf (3. 7.
2016). Also see: Hatsuda Tōru, Hyakkaten no tanjō, Tokyo 1993; Jinno Yuki, Hyakkaten ga tsu-
kutta teisuto, Tokyo, 1994.
administration of their properties in the countryside, and the relations between

owners and tenants loosened. The custodians had no close relationship to the ten-
ants due to which the relationship was often soured, especially when money
could not be paid on time. The last remains of the feudal order in Japan conse-
quently disappeared, and capitalism on its full scale finally reached the Japanese
countryside. A relationship that had been based on reciprocal gains transformed
into a harsh dependency, only evaluated according to capitalist demands. This
transformation also stimulated the decision of smaller farmers to leave the coun-
tryside, as they hoped for a better future in the city. On the other hand, more and
more tenants began to organize themselves to argue for lower rent, especially
since the costs for necessary supplies had increased during the war years as
well.126 Tenant conflicts (kosaku sōgi) were the consequence, and their number
increased by the end of the war. Tenant unions eventually took over the represen-
tation of the peasants who had rented their land from rich landowners, and the
conflict was brought out into the open more and more. It showed that not all
parts of Japanese society had gained from the First World War and that the new
splendor of city life was paid for by the work and debts of those who were ex-
ploited in the countryside. While life in the city became more and more luxurious
and speculations with rice at the stockmarket produced enormous profits, the
agrarian population was not allowed to participate in this development and, at
the same time, lost human capital when people decided to give up their poor life
in the countryside to move to the cities in the hope of gaining a glimpse of the
richness that was promised to them.
Peasants were not the only ones who started to organize themselves; they
were also joined by industrial workers, teachers, female office workers, and others.
They all demanded higher wages, as life in the city had got more expensive since
1914. More and more unions began to be established, as the workforce had realized
that a potential strike movement needed a large number of people to get involved
to really threaten company owners and to have the possibility of gaining some-
thing through a strike declaration.127 As part of the Union of Wage and Salary
Earners in Tokyo (Tōkyō hōkyū seikatsusha dōmei kyōgikai), the first all–female
union of office workers was established in 1920. Its members demanded the equal
and gender–neutral payment of wages.128 However, this was not the first female
 Andrew Gordon, A Modern History of Japan. From Tokugawa Times to the Present,
New York 2003, pp. 146–147.
 Ibid., p. 150.
 Andrew Gordon, The Short Happy Life of the Japanese Middle Class, in: Olivier Zunz/ Leo-
nard Schoppa/Nobuhiro Hiwatari (Eds.): Social Contracts Under Stress. New York 2002,
pp. 108–129, here p. 115.
union activity. During the war, many women had already joined Suzuki Bunji’s
(1885–1946)129 Workers’ Union that counted 30,000 members in 1919 and de-
manded better wages and working conditions.130 During the war years, many
workers joined unions or other labor–related organizations, where they also got in
contact with Marxist or socialist ideas, especially in the aftermath of the Russian
Revolution. They all demanded not only higher wages but also better working con-
ditions, and it can be stated that the war did not solely create an increase in trade
and production. It also increased the self–awareness of the worker and the de-
mands of the working class, especially in the urban and industrial centers of
Japan. The solidarity among the exploited therefore intensified at the same speed
as the exploiting upper classes gained money from Japan’s special position within
the First World War.
The economic prosperity in the city, regardless of the fact that not everyone
was on the winning side, “laid the foundations for a mass–consumer society
and invited an unprecedented transfer of power that nurtured representative
politics in Tokyo.”131 The urban middle class was no longer just willing but in
many cases also now able to spend money, be it for educational institutions, in
the new department stores, or new media like journals or cinemas.132 The al-
ready mentioned large and very often Western–looking department stores pro-
vided “a place and space that became central to modern Japanese life and a
disseminator of modernist aesthetics to the general Japanese public during the
early twentieth century”133 and “Mitsukoshi and its rival Shirokiya had led the
way in introducing advanced technology and Western architecture as well as
innovative retailing methods since their beginnings as department stores dur-
ing the first decade of the twentieth century.”134 The higher wages of the war
years now allowed more and more people to enjoy the things such a place
could offer, and the excitement related to the new Mitsukoshi building, whose
three stories were opened in 1914, is easily understood. The two large lions
flanking its entrance gave the customers the feeling of visiting Trafalgar Square
 On Suzuki’s life and work see: Stephen S. Large, The Japanese Labor Movement,
1912–1919. Suzuki Bunji and the Yūaikai, in: The Journal of Japanese Studies 29 (1970) 3,
pp. 559–579.
 For the development of unions in wartime Japan see: Chen Ta, Labor Conditions in
Japan, in: Monthly Labor Review 21 (1925) 5, pp. 8–19.
 Dickinson, The First World War, p. 175.
 Dickinson, World War I, p. 7.
 Elise K. Tipton, The Department Store. Producing Modernity in Interwar Japan, in: Roy
Starrs (Ed.), Rethinking Japanese Modernism, Leiden 2011, pp. 428–451, here p. 428.
 Ibid., p. 431.
in London.135 At the same time, it was supposed that the store could provide a
feeling of life in America, especially to female customers.136
A visit to a department store also opened different culinary experiences to
the customers in the form of diverse restaurants. Furthermore, the shopping ex-
perience in the department stores in the big Japanese cities was no different
from “Macy’s in New York, Wanamaker in Philadelphia, and [. . .] Marshall
Field in Chicago.”137 New journals were introduced that addressed the specific
needs of the new urban middle class and thereby also opened up new possibili-
ties for discussion, e.g. of gender roles, aesthetics, and many other things. The
growing middle class wanted to spend money, and it did not seem hard to find
opportunities for that in the consumer–oriented world of the big cities after the
First World War. Consumption, however, was not only used to create leisure
and excitement, it was also an expression of class, as the rise of the new gentry
of the Taishō period was based on the unspoken agenda to spend money ex-
travagantly. Referring to Ernest Gellner’s (1925–1995) theories about national-
ism, the new middle class that was established by the second industrialization
wave during the war developed class consciousness and therefore demanded
an expression of their own status, especially due to the spending of money, yet
not only for the education of the next generation, as we will see later, but first
and foremost to express their own belonging to the new middle class.138 The
members of the new Taishō middle class spent money to prove that they had
achieved their social advancement, and in now amusement was available for
everyone who could afford it. Even before the First World War, cinemas had
shown films from Hollywood, which now reached even more spectators who
looked for relaxation from their daily life, especially when watching movies.
Japanese also danced to American Jazz, and like the Meiji oligarchs, defined
their status especially by the consumption of foreign goods, including music.
Money was also spent on Western clothes or food, and one market that gained
tremendously from the prosperity of the new middle class was the print mar-
ket. Books, magazines, and daily newspapers boomed because a larger audi-
ence could now be reached. This not only stimulated the establishment of
what Benedict Anderson (1936–2015) called an “imagined community”139 that
 Ibid., p. 433.

 Hatsuda, Hyakkaten, p. 124,.
 Tipton, The Department Store, p. 434.
 Ernest Gellner, Change and Thought, Chicago 1964.
 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Na-
tionalism, London 1983.
was based on print capitalism, but also allowed people who had been outside
of the general mainstream before to participate in discourses about Japanese
society.
Journals like Friend of the Housewife (Shufu no tomo, 1917–1935)140 provided
articles that were written for a female audience, including fashion tips, news
about the modern female lifestyle, and other things. The journal therefore pro-
vided new role models for women as well as new social definitions of woman-
hood. It was the financial potential of the female readers that had stimulated
the production of such journals, but other players, like the cosmetic company
Shiseidō, also realized the potential of the female buyer. Beauty products be-
came more popular, especially due to the discussions about their use in jour-
nals for women, and new images about beauty and the female gender were the
consequence.141 The role of women within society was discussed, and issues
like education, political roles, workers’ rights, the rights of mothers and daugh-
ters in the Japanese family, and sexual self–control became topics of popular
interest.142 In the early Taishō period social tensions were created by these dis-
courses and conflict–laden energies were freed, especially indirectly by the eco-
nomic impact of the First World War. In those days modern boys and girls,
called mobo (modern boys) and moga (modern girls), appeared and were often
staged as an expression of the new Taishō lifestyle in different mass media,
though they were not representing a mass phenomenon. The style of these new
representatives of Japanese modernity resembles that of the people in the
so–called “Roaring Twenties” in Europe or the United States.143 The self was
eventually staged as representing the beginning of a new era, something that
was only possible due to the increased financial capacities of the urban middle
class who had gained from the developments during the war years.
Diversity was sought and expressed in many ways, including through enter-
tainment and its consumption in any form. The more money was available, the
more opportunities needed to be created because, as American philosopher Doug-
las Kellner highlighted correctly, “[d]ifference sells. Capitalism must constantly
multiply markets, styles, fads, and artifacts to keep absorbing consumers into its
 On this journal see: Christine Gross, Japanische Frauen. Ein Leitbild im Wandel. Die Zeits-
chrift Shufu no tomo 1917–1935, Dissertation, Universität Zürich, 2009.
 Toya Riina, Ginza to Shiseidō. Nihon wo “modān” ni shita kaisha, Tokyo 2012.
 Barbarba Molony, Women’s Rights, Feminism, and Suffragism in Japan, 1870–1925, in:
Pacific Historical Review 69 (2000) 4, pp. 639–661, here pp. 645–654.
 James L. Huffman, Japan in World History, New York 2010, pp. 91–94.
practices and lifestyles.”144 Modern technologies also played an important role in

creating these possibilities, which excited masses of people:
[The] movie projector and against the mesmerizing images it cast on the big screen in the
multiplex performance center of Entertainment Heaven (Rakutenchi); and carnies light-
heartedly cajoled thrill–seekers into elevator rides up Tsûtenkaku Tower at the entrance
to Luna Park in The New World (Shin Sekai) amusement park. The epoch–making tech-
nologies that embodied this new ‘media culture’ defined the spectacle of urban life; and
the cultural processes of importation, adaptation, amplification, production, distribution,
reproduction, and reinvention that helped assimilate these technologies into the everyday
world had begun to work a powerful influence on the urban identity.145
Japan had not only turned into an “industrial dynamo”146 during the First
World War, but new technologies were very often also used to entertain the
masses. This did not solely include the recently established urban middle class,
but also the working class consumers, as “Japan witnessed a mass mania for
conspicuous consumption fueled by status envy.”147 Japanese scholar Ishikawa
Hiroyoshi has identified three periods of working class consumption. The first
one (1916–1919) was marked by the wish for the consumption of food and
drink, the second (1919–1922) by spending on clothes and housing, and the
third (1922–1927) was dominated by the expectations of the working class as
related to society and culture.148 However, as Jeffrey E. Hanes emphasized,
“[w]orkers and their families were not absorbed into the mass consumer mar-
ket. With the help of able and willing (even enthusiastic) cultural producers,
they carved out a distinct niche within it.”149 Those who offered pleasure and lei-
sure related to new media in the Japanese metropolis at the same time, to quote
Hanes once more, “offered to salve the workers’ wounded spirits, interpret their
unspoken dreams, and sell them an afternoon’s excursion into a liminal world of
sensory pleasure.”150 The entertainment industry in particular consequently
 Douglas Kellner, Media Culture. Cultural Studies, Identity and Politics Between the Mod-
ern and the Postmodern, London 1995, p. 40.
 Jeffrey E. Hanes, Media Culture in Taishō Osaka, in: Sharon Minichiello (Ed.), Japan’s Com-
peting Modernities. Issues in Culture and Democracy 1900–1930, Honolulu 1998, pp. 267–287,
here p. 270.
 Ibid.
 Ibid., p. 271.
 Ishikawa Hiroyoshi, Goraku no senzenshi, Tokyo 1981, pp. 100–102, cited in ibid.
 Hanes, Media Culture, p. 271.
 Ibid., p. 272.
provided the possibility of modern consumption for the masses as well, and cities
like Osaka were able to offer any kind of entertainment to any kind of customer.
Greater income, however, was not only leading to consumption, but was also
displayed through the education of the next generation, as recently wealthy peo-
ple not only longed for leisure, but also the advancement to the next social level
of their children, who would then naturally gain greater influence with regard to
the political development of Japan.151 Educational opportunities were plenty as a
consequence of the described economic developments, because the larger finan-
cial capacities allowed the representatives of the new middle class to send their
children to educational facilities. The number of male students in Japanese mid-
dle schools increased from 128,973 to 272,973 between 1912 and 1924. The number
of female students that attended higher schools tripled, reaching 246,928. For the
first time, parity between male and female students was achieved in Japan.152 In
addition to this trend, the famous private schools in Japan, i.e. Keiō, Waseda,
Dōshisha, Chūō, and Meiji, were officially recognized as universities in the after-
math of the First World War, signaling the start of the further growth of Japan’s
university system that continued until 1930. In the Taishō period the number of
academic professors increased from 792 to 8,946, and that of students from 4,567
to 52,186.153 The indirect impact of the First World War, which means the direct
impact of the increased financial capacities of the new urban middle class, could
consequently also be felt with regard to the development of academia and higher
education in Japan, a trend that reflected the necessities of those who had reached
this new status and wanted the next generation to advance further.
This also caused gender–related changes, as the “attempt to strengthen
the nation by educating its citizens was extended to females when girls’
schools were built throughout the country [and] [b]y the time of the Great War
(1914–1918), Japanese women’s higher education had been developed into a
gendered institution.”154 However, the girls and young women were no longer edu-
cated according to the Meiji agenda to create “good wives and wise mothers” (ryō-
sai kenbo) but rather to resemble a modernized society, in which the female right
 A general discussion of the relation of income and political participation see: Jimmy
Szewczyk, The Effects of Income Inequality on Political Participation. A Contextual Analysis.
Honors Thessis, Sewanee 2015. https://www.sewanee.edu/media/academics/politics/The-Ef
fects-of-Income-Inequality-on-Political-Participation.pdf (3. 7. 2016).
 Dickinson, The First World War, p. 167.
 Ibid.
 Chika Shinohara, Gender and the Great War. Tsuda Umeko’s Role in Institutionalizing
Women’s Education in Japan, in: Tosh Minohara/Tze–ki Hon/Evan Dawley (Eds.), The Decade
of the Great War. Japan and the Wider World in the 1910s, Leiden 2014, pp. 323–348, here
p. 323.
for a good education was addressed appropriately.155 While the first Japanese
female exchange students had already been sent to the United States in the
1870s, it was the First World War that “had minimized the enrollment disparity
between girls and boys and thus established a good basis for developing higher
education amongst all citizens, regardless of gender.”156 The years of the Great
War had also witnessed a reconsideration of the role that women, especially
well–educated ones, were supposed to play for the advancement of Japan’s so-
ciety. Educated mothers were supposed to raise the next generation of Japanese
children and were therefore considered to be part of a national strategy, accord-
ing to which their educational capacities would secure the country’s prosperity
in the future.157 The education of girls and women was consequently turning
into a necessary demand and was no longer perceived as something luxurious
and probably inappropriate. With the import of Western ideas about education,
new interpretations of gender roles also entered Japan and led to a discussion
about Japanese society in general, often spearheaded by educators like Tsuda
Umeko (1864–1929).158 Initially, girls’ schools were part of the work of Christian
missionaries, especially during the early Meiji period when famous educational
institutions like the United School for Girls (1871), the Aoyama Institute for
Girls (1874), the Kobe Institute for Girls (1875), the Tokyo Academy for Girls
(1876), the Doshisha School for Girls (1878) and others were established.159 The
internationalization of Japan during the First World War, with regard to both
global trade and the further exchange of ideas, as Chika Shinohara highlighted,
“fostered an awareness of women’s important social roles, impacts, and their
rights, particularly among highly educated women in Japan.”160 It was espe-
cially the latter ones who claimed more rights within society for themselves,
and since the number of students who had studied abroad during the Great
War increased the mass of people who shared similar ideas, there was not only
an intellectual debate about gender roles but actual reforms were also initiated
in these crucial years.
It was understood that a generally good education, not only the one provided
to upper class girls and women, was essential to strengthen Japan’s national
 Ibid.
 Ibid., pp. 330–331.
 Ibid., p. 334.
 On her life and works see: Yoshiko Furuki, The White Plum. A Biography of Ume Tsuda,
Pioneer in the Higher Education of Japanese Women, New York 1991; Kameda Kinuko, Tsuda
Umeko. Hitori no meikyōshi no kiseki, Tokyo 2005.
 Shinohara, Gender and the Great War, p. 337.
 Ibid., p. 342.
capacities that were deemed necessary to protect the wealth of the nation state.
The percentage of girls who continued their study at institutes of secondary edu-
cation doubled between 1905 and 1920, although it “only” reached 10%.161 It was
the indirect impact of the First World War that “shaped women’s education and
gender ideology or socially expected gender roles,”162 although many women did
not consider their education to contradict their position within the state as a sup-
portive force. The discussion was consequently often not directed against the ex-
istent social norms, but rather pointed to the necessity of better education for
female students, who would willingly fulfill this demand. The actual gender dis-
courses in relation to education were consequently rather fueled by political
ideas, not the sense of righteousness of female demands.
The dispute about gender roles was related to political discourse and led by
the Japanese Left, whose members demanded more equality, and that not only
for male workers. While the Left was dealing with other issues following the
Russian Revolution, especially the ana–boru debate (anarchism vs. Bolshe-
vism), due to which anarcho–syndicalists led a theoretical struggle against
Marxist socialism, female anarchists and socialists argued about the shape of a
post–revolutionary society from a woman’s perspective.163 Gender equality was
one of the main aspects demanded by these women because this was one of the
central expressions of revolutionary change, although the feminist perspectives
of anarchists and socialists were quite different: “anarchist feminists generally
espoused gynocentric or woman–centered feminism while socialist feminists
adhered to a version of humanist feminism.”164 While the latter were repre-
sented by Yamakawa Kikue (1890–1980),165 the anarchist position was argued
 Ibid., p. 345.

 Ibid., p. 346.
 E. Patricia Tsurumi, Visions of Women and the New Society in Conflict. Yamakawa Kikue
versus Takamure Itsue, in: Sharon Minichiello (Ed.), Japan’s Competing Modernities. Issues in
Culture and Democracy 1900–1930, Honolulu 1998, pp. 335–357, here p. 335.
 Ibid.
 Elyssa Faison, Women’s Rights as Proletarian Rights. Yamakawa Kikue, Suffrage, and the
“Dawn of Liberation”, in: Julia C. Bullock/Ayako Kano/James Welker (Eds.), Rethinking Japa-
nese Feminism, Honolulu 2018, pp. 15–33. On Yamakawa’s role during the First World War
also see Frank Jacob, The First World War, Women’s Education, and Yamakawa Kikue’s Social-
ist View of Gender Roles in Japan, in: Sebastian Engelmann/Bernhard Hemetsberger/Frank
Jacob (Eds.), War and Education. The Pedagogical Preparation for Collective Mass Violence,
Paderborn 2022, pp. 119–141.
for by Takamure Itsue (1894–1964).166 While the theoretical struggle took place
in the late 1920s, it was initiated by the changes taking place during the years of
the First World War. Yamakawa Kikue published an article about “Women’s
Opinion that Stabs Women in the Back” (“Fujin o uragiru fujin ron”) in the jour-
nal Shin Nippon (New Japan) in August 1918. This article expressed criticism
against bourgeois–conservative feminism as it was expressed, e.g. by Yamada
Waka (1879–1957),167 in the tradition of the Meiji state’s “good wife and wise
mother” ideology. It was argued that the biological differences between the two
sexes were overemphasized by conservative feminists and, according to the arti-
cle, the conservatives used “biology as an excuse to defend male absolutism.”168
While “[a]ttacking Waka’s arrogant proclamations about woman’s nature, Kikue
did not directly offer her own definition of woman’s nature,” and the socialist
feminist “was content to express her hopes for the future in terms of the awak-
ening of women, the building of a women’s movement, a changed economic sys-
tem, and equality of men and women.”169
Kikue might have agreed with Yosano Akiko (1878–1942), another feminist of
the Meiji and Taishō periods, that “more and better education was urgent,” but
she disagreed with regard to Yosano’s “hopes for individual effort to achieve edu-
cation, employment, financial independence, and political suffrage illusory within
a society that systematically denied equal opportunity to the vast majority of its
members.”170 For the socialist Kikue the problem was not an individual one but
one that could only be saved by a transformation of the existent society. The indi-
vidual path to emancipation was consequently only available for a few Japanese
women who had access to sufficient monetary assets, i.e. the bourgeois women in
Japan, especially since the majority of women were exploited, as “in the capitalist
labor market women were paid very little, and their presence there was manipu-
lated to lower remuneration for all laborers, while women’s work within the family
was entirely unremunerated.”171 Kikue pointed out that conservative feminists had
neglected the social responsibility to reach gender equality and demanded that
the problem be addressed on a broader scale, as the majority of women were not
 For her autobiography see: Takamure Itsue, Hi no kuni no onna no nikki. Takamure Itsue
jiden, Tokyo 1966. For a collection of her anarcho–feminist writings see: Takamure Itsue, Zoku
anakizumu josei kaihō ronshū, Tokyo 1989.
 On Yamada’s life and impact see: Tomoko Yamazaki, The Story of Yamada Waka. From
Prostitute to Feminist Pioneer, Tokyo 1985.
 Cited in: Tsurumi, Visions of Women, p. 337.
 Ibid., pp. 337–338.
 Ibid., p. 339.
 Ibid.
able to secure a better education because they were unable to afford it. The bour-
geois conservative feminists had only made the argument for upper class women
and not taken into consideration that most Japanese female workers or mothers
had neither access to nor the capacities for a social advance on an individual level.
According to Kikue, only a change of the existent economic system could eventu-
ally pave the way for the development of true equality. As long as women were
exploited by a capitalist system, they would be unable to obtain a better education
and therefore the precondition for true gender equality.172 The female author was
also influenced by the Russian Revolution, although she never demanded a combi-
nation of the socialist revolution with the liberation of women in Japan.
A different position was taken by the anarchist Itsue. Her works focused on
two main aspects, namely 1) community care for Japanese mothers and 2) the
abolition of marriage. Since women were responsible for the upbringing of the
next generation, they should not take care of this task alone and in isolation,
but should be supported by society: “Reproduction and child care were to be
supported by a self–governing, nonhierarchical community in which men and
women would be equal producers and womanhood highly esteemed. A corol-
lary of this was [the] abolition of institutionalized marriage. The purpose of
both was to allow [the] woman to enjoy passionate carnal and spiritual loving
that, along with motherhood, was part of her basic nature.”173 She reflected
upon the role of women, but in contrast to many others, did so not as a single
reinterpretation of Western discourses but as it related to the development of
the Japanese society in the recent years and decades. She consequently offers
an original insight into the feminist discussions during the war and shows how
it determined the necessity for such discourse. However, there were not only
immediate consequences related to the First World War, but also a long–term
impact on the perception of gender issues in Japan.
Usually the Taishō period is described as a dawn with regard to urban life
in the metropolis, but such views neglect the other side of the coin, namely the
Japanese countryside, where the “jump” into global capitalism and the con-
sumer modernity it represented did not happen abruptly but took much longer
to manifest itself. Nevertheless, it did not stay outside of the processes that
took place, nor can it be considered traditional or premodern.174 The “modern
girls” eventually also reached the countryside, although they were not really
 Ibid.
 Ibid., p. 342.
 Mariko Asano Tamanoi, The City and the Countryside. Competing Taishō “Modernities”
on Gender, in: Sharon Minichiello (Ed.), Japan’s Competing Modernities. Issues in Culture and
Democracy 1900–1930, Honolulu 1998, pp. 91–113, here p. 92.
welcomed there and not considered modern, as a letter by a Japanese man, Su-
zuki Saburō, who lived somewhere in the countryside, to the journal Ie no Hikari
(The Light of the Home), shows: “I occasionally meet a woman who cuts her hair
very short and makes up her face with rouge, lipstick, and an eyebrow pencil.
But when I scrutinize her clothes, I find them not matching her hair style and
makeup. She seems to be satisfied with herself only because she can catch the
attention of others. I find her modern, but my feeling toward her is that of con-
tempt. She lacks something to be truly modern.”175 The modern urban girl of the
Taishō city was “a glittering, decadent, middle–class consumer who, through
her clothing, smoking, and drinking, flaunt[ed] tradition,”176 but she was rather
an urban phenomenon of the war years and did not immediately show up in lit-
tle villages, which remained rather peripheral. Regardless of this fact, however,
the migration of people to the cities, who then might have visited their home-
towns or villages, would sooner or later spread new fashions even to far away
spots. The availability of train travel in particular made it easier for people to
cross the distances that separated the two spaces from each other.
When the boom created by the First World War ended in the early 1920s
and the prices for crops began to fall while taxes increased, many farmers in
the countryside began to detest modernity, resembled by the perverted city life,
globalized markets, and international stock markets. Even the silk farmers lost
due to the decrease in prices and suffered due to their steadily decreasing in-
come. When the global depression then hit Japan in the late 1920s and early
1930s and the prices for rice and silk dropped even further, it caused “distress
[for] the roughly two million farm households engaging in agriculture through-
out rural Japan.”177 When the now unemployed workers from the city then re-
turned to their rural hometowns, it increased the economic and social pressure
there, where different ideas and experiences naturally clashed in such a time of
crisis. The above–mentioned tenant disputes tended to increase year by year
and socialist and communist ideas naturally spread because they offered an al-
ternative, especially for the impoverished farmers. The state, in the meantime,
tried to suppress dangerous ideas, i.e. anarchism, socialism, and communism,
to avoid the recruitment of “Marukusu bo’oisu” (Marx boys), as young Japanese
 Ie no hikari, October 1928, p. 144 cited in ibid., p. 93.

 Miriam Silverberg, The Modern Girl as Militant, in: Gail L. Bernstein (Ed.), Recreating Jap-
anese Women, 1600–1945, Berkeley 1991, pp. 239–266, here p. 239 cited in ibid.
 Tamanoi, The City and the Countryside, p. 95.
interested in politically left ideas were called, into the ranks of the labor move-
ment and the related party structures.178
The growth of print capitalism was also responsible for a growing number
of newspaper publications in the smaller villages, which thereby were more
and more integrated into political discourses of the time, although the main
topics of interest, e.g. the self–government of smaller villages, were quite differ-
ent sometimes. Next to such discussions, the main information from the gov-
ernment and that which was related to state issues also reached this particular
space of Japan. In some issues, the voices of women were also expressed, al-
though this was still an exception and not the norm.179 New media, i.e. the pho-
tograph or the radio, provided other forms of audio–visual communication that
were used as platforms for the discussion of social issues, including gender
roles. As a consequence of all these possibilities and the steady discourses
about gender norms, as Mariko Asano Tamanoi’s research confirms, “the clear
division of labor by gender became blurred in the Taishò period; there emerged
masculine women, independent and self–confident, as well as feminine men,
dependent, fragile, and indecisive.”180 One of these local publications in 1925
summed up the demands for rural women, as they were requested to
(1) use time in the most effective way;
(2) curtail unnecessary costs in their everyday lives;
(3) save money for the education of their children;
(4) buy daily necessities with cash, not on credit;
(5) use public markets;
(6) use simple makeup;
(7) wear simple clothes;
(8) respect work, do side jobs, and utilize scraps;
(9) curtail unnecessary costs of weddings;
(10) respect the Shinto–style wedding ceremony; and, lastly,
(11) reserve one day a month as a day of women’s volunteer work.181
At the same time, other articles criticized the modern girls in the cities, who
should not have left their countryside home to begin with:
 Ibid., pp. 96–97. The role of the countryside for revolution was later also debated by
Marxist intellectuals. See: Germaine A. Hoston, Marxism and the Crisis of Development in Pre-
war Japan, Princeton, NJ 1986, pp. 223–250.
 Tamanoi, The City and the Countryside, pp. 97–99.
 Ibid., p. 100.
 Motohara jihō, 15 June 1925, cited in ibid., p. 103.
Why, Ms. N, do you have to transmogrify yourself with such heavy makeup every morn-
ing? [. . .] When you walk carrying a big bag on the glittering city streets at night, you
really look like a monkey. [. . .] Ms. N, I secretly adored you when you were here [in this
village] working so diligently picking mulberry leaves, wearing a white cotton apron.
Don’t you know that the sweat on your forehead sparkled in the sun? A woman’s beauty
shines only when she works in the countryside.182
There obviously existed a conflict about different identities related to the city
and the countryside, respectively. For those in favor of the countryside, wom-
en’s and girls’ true beauty was destroyed by city life, as Japan’s tradition might
be destroyed by the mix of influences in the urban space. Traditional Japan and
its beauty, represented by rural womanhood, could only be found far away
from the pulsing centers of modernity, i.e. the Japanese metropolises. The coun-
tryside was consequently part of the sphere that was impacted by the First
World War and discourses about modernity, here expressed through the dis-
course about gender roles and true beauty. The transformations eventually
reached all parts of Japan, although with a little delay, and demanded a dis-
course about modernity. It can consequently be stated that the war years were
the trigger for a national process of change that would lead into the second half
of the Taishō period, when its impact reached all regions of the country. That
the multiple socio–economic transformation processes would not be accepted
without hesitation or resistance, however, must be clearly understood, which is
why a much closer look must be taken at the protests that accompanied these
transformations.
3.5 The First World War and the Protests at Home
Although the Japanese economy had flourished during the war years, prices
rose at a faster pace than wages did. This increased the sorrows of those who
were not part of the new urban middle class or those who got tremendously rich
during the war. Many people suffered from low wages and the increasing living
costs, which is why socialist or communist ideas became more and more inter-
esting for many people, especially in the cities. In the industries that boomed
during the war, e.g. shipbuilding, more and more unions were established to
represent the demands of the workers who, due to the actual demands of the
workforce, were in a position to better and more often successfully express their
demands. Although the war triggered the activities and establishment of unions
 Kamishina jihō, 15 January 1925, cited in ibid., p. 104.

in all kinds of industries, the socialist activities during the war represented a
continuation of the years before.
While socialist publications and anti–war activities had been suppressed
during the Russo–Japanese War, the aftermath of the war was characterized by
increased activity of the socialist movement in Japan. Socialists had been active
in different mines since the early 1900s, and when in 1907 a riot at the famous
Ashio copper mine occurred, the riots there spread to other mines across the
country once the military had crushed the socialist–led riot after three days of
protests.183 The national impact of the riot at Ashio emphasized that the social-
ists had established a network of cooperation and solidarity and were actually
no longer solely an intellectual phenomenon expressed in local study groups.
The Left in Japan, however, was disunited about the future course it should
take. The anarchists assembled around Kōtoku Shūsui (1871–1911)184 demanded
direct action, while the socialists led by Katayama Sen demanded reforms
within the legal limits of the state.185 Like the European Left, the Japanese anar-
chists and socialists discussed theory, often weakening their own movement
due to internal divisions and struggles.186 The government had already taken
fierce action against the anarchist movement in 1911 due to the so–called High
Treason Incident, when 26 anarchists were accused of having planned the as-
sassination of the Meiji Emperor and were tried in secret. 11 of them, among
them Kōtoku, were eventually executed, an act that showed that the govern-
ment was not willing to accept the uncontested existence of dangerous ideas of
the political Left. This caused further tension between anarchists and socialists
on the one side and the state on the other.187 The repression of the state was
immediately felt when “[a]ll books on socialism were confiscated and all the
public libraries were ordered to withdraw socialist books and papers. Even
moderate papers like ours were severely censored and a few months after the
said trial it was practically suppressed by the authorities.”188
The First World War, however, also presented a chance for the socialist move-
ment in Japan, whose members were now able to spread their ideas in unions and
 Katayama Sen, The Labor Movement in Japan, Chicago 1918, p. 112. On the riot see:
Kazuo Nimura, The Ashio Riot of 1907. A Social History of Mining in Japan, Durham, NC 1998.
 On Kotoku’s influence and the conflict with the state authorities see the important study
Maik Hendrik Sprotte, Konfliktaustragung in autoritären Herrschaftssystemen. Eine histori-
sche Fallstudie zur frühsozialistischen Bewegung im Japan der Meiji–Zeit, Marburg 2001.
 Katayama, The Labor Movement, p. 122.
 Ibid., p. 124.
 Ibid., p. 135.
 Ibid., p. 140.
among workers, especially the recently increased working class of the cities,
where the demand for manufactured goods had increased not only the number of
workers representing the industrial proletariat of Japan but also the chances for
them to use their potential for a fight for better wages. Katayama Sen therefore
correctly argued that the members of the working class of Japan “have lately
awakened.”189 This was also related to the impact of the Russian Revolution,
which had shown that the dictatorship of the proletariat could be established,
and many Japanese socialists admired the results of the protests in February 1917,
although not all agreed with the Bolshevists’ actions since October. As Katayama
put it: “The living fact that the Russian revolution was accomplished by the joint
action of the workers and the soldiers is the great revelation to the Japanese who
are oppressed under militarism and conscription.”190 While the revolutionary
events in Russia might have stimulated the discourse among the socialist intellec-
tuals, it was the consequences of the growth of the war industry and global capi-
talism in Japan that were responsible for the workers’ demands related to better
wages and other benefits.191 Katayama later described the rise of socialism during
the First World War, but had remarked in an article in 1910 that the working
class lacked “any form of lawful protection and [were] totally defenseless when
[. . .] at the mercy of capitalist exploitation.”192 He added that there was “no law,
no constitution, and no freedom”193 for socialists and the Japanese police were,
according to his own experiences, “worse than the Russian.”194 In 1911, he wrote
that a small upper class that profited from the suffering of the working class
ruled Japan, while emphasizing that this order was based on violence: “To per-
petuate this regime of violence by a small minority over the large mass of the
people, the government and the bourgeoisie have to betake themselves to police
despotism and suppress every freer government.”195 According to Katayama, so-
cialists suffered the most from this situation. The municipality of Tokyo was said
to have spent ¥ 50,000 in 1910 to spy on 170 members of the Socialist Party, leav-
ing no space for socialist activities at all.196 The leadership was arrested within
a year, and those who were still free were not only constantly monitored but also
 Ibid., p. 5.
 Ibid., p. 7.
 Ibid., pp. 5–6.
 Katayama Sen, Industrie und Sozialismus in Japan, in: Die neue Zeit. Wochenschrift der
deutschen Sozialdemokratie 28 (1910) 25, pp. 874–880, here p. 878.
 Ibid., p. 880.
 Ibid.
 Katayama Sen, Die politischen Zustände Japans, in: Die neue Zeit. Wochenschrift der
deutschen Sozialdemokratie 29 (1911) 4, pp. 107–111, here p. 109.
 Ibid.
struggled to earn a living.197 In 1914, Katayama eventually left Japan and would
never come back. He had surrendered and did not believe he was able to achieve
anything in Japan, where police violence suffocated popular movements.198 In
exile, however, he remained in touch with leftist activists in Japan and was an
active member of the global socialist network as well as a leading figure within
the Communist International.
Due to the Russian Revolution of 1917, Katayama himself became more radi-
cal and wrote numerous works on behalf of Lenin’s Bolshevism. He instructed
members of the Socialist Party of America to join the Communist International
in March 1919 and furthermore encouraged the founding of the Communist
Party of the United States in September 1919. In addition, he led a group of Japa-
nese communists who joined the American party.199 In the same year, in a com-
munication with the People’s Russian Information Bureau in London, Katayama
criticized Japan’s position towards Soviet Russia, which is why his influence on
the Japanese socialists was considered dangerous by the government in Tokyo.
According to Katayama, the Japanese involvement in the Siberian Intervention
was useless:
Our soldiers in Siberia, since the beginning of the intervention, died ‘a dog’s death,’ a
useless death, and war expenses are simply wasted. We regret the loss on account of our
mistaken policy, indeed! But by withdrawing our troops now we shall hereafter commit
no more of such a senseless sacrifice and, moreover, the inimical attitude of the Russians
can be eliminated. This is the opinion of the best people of Japan. [. . .] The Japanese
Government’s Siberian policy is upheld by the Allies, including America. It is a most out-
rageous policy. To them the Russian people are only the bourgeois class who are against
the Bolshevik government and trying to sell Russia to the foreign capitalists!200
Such criticism was considered dangerous in Japan, where the government in-
tended to use the Siberian Intervention to push back the Russian zone of inter-
est in East Asia and strengthen the country’s position on the Asian continent.
 Ibid., p. 111. Katayama declared the Japanese proletariat to be the most exploited in the
world. Katayama Sen, Die Ausbeutung der Arbeiter in Japan, in: Die neue Zeit. Wochenschrift
der deutschen Sozialdemokratie 29, 52 (1911), pp. 917–921, here 921.
 Katayama Sen, Der Verfall des bureaukratischen Regimes in Japan, in: Die neue Zeit. Wo-
chenschrift der deutschen Sozialdemokratie 32 (1914) 1, pp. 16–20, here p. 18.
 Rudolf Hartmann, Japanischer Revolutionär und proletarischer Internationalist. Sen Ka-
tayama, in: Beiträge zur Geschichte der Arbeiterbewegung 26 (1984) 2, pp. 238–246, here
p. 243.
 Katayama Sen, Japan and Soviet Russia, London, 6 September 1919, Warwick Digital Col-
lection, 36/R30/22, 2.
Critical anti–government voices such as that of Katayama were suppressed, es-

pecially during the later years and immediately after the First World War. Ka-
tayama therefore also emphasized that Soviet Russia was the victim of corrupt
capitalist governments, like that of Japan:
All lies, falsehoods and twisting the facts about the Russian Soviet Republic and its
doings have been poured on the people of the world over for the past eighteen months to
fool and mislead them. These lies, skillfully fabricated by the capitalists and their paid
agents – journalists, editors and pressmen of big dailies, even those truth–loving Christi-
ans and god–fearing men, may mislead and cheat the people for a while, but they are like
a house built on sand, or storm clouds before the sun: they will soon fall away before the
truth.201
In his criticism, Katayama seems to have been blinded by his hope in the Com-
munist International and his strong belief in Lenin and that the Bolshevik leader
was working for a better world. The Japanese socialist did not realize that Lenin
was rather the leader of a regime that would use yet another ideology to sup-
press the people while employing the same brute force the Japanese government
had used in the years before. Emphatically, Katayama argued: “Capitalistic gov-
ernments and their diplomats will not make a lasting peace in the world. We
know that. There is only one true lasting peace of the world, that is the Russian
Bolshevik peace proposed by Lenin and Trotsky when they formed the Soviet
government. At least this is the consensus of opinion among the great masses of
the world, and I am glad to say that the Japanese Socialists are of firm belief on
this aspect.”202 Such pro–Bolshevik statements from a leader whom the Japa-
nese government perceived as an agent of the Comintern further discredited the
socialist movement and naturally incited further anti–leftist persecution at the
end of the First World War. The rice riots that will be discussed in more detail
below were at the same time the result of Japan’s economic problems, and the
post–war crisis made the government tighten its grip on the labor movement to
prevent instability and suppress its revolutionary potential.203 It feared a repeti-
tion of the Russian events on Japanese soil too much to let the activities of the
socialist movement among Japanese workers be carried out uncontested.
 Ibid.
 Ibid.
 On the rice riots, see: Inoue Kiyoshi/Watanabe Tōru, Kome sōdō no kenkyū, Tokyo 1997.
In 1920, when Katayama gave the lecture “Recent Tendencies in the Labor
Movement in Japan”204 at the Rand School of Social Science in New York,205 he
argued that the First World War and its aftermath had vitalized the labor move-
ment in Japan (Tables 3.4 and 3.5). Socialists had been effective as union leaders
during the war, and Katayama’s statistics, dated 31 December 1919, show the in-
crease in union membership and provide numbers for the increasingly numerous
strikes since 1914, especially those related to or within the workers’ movement.206
Table 3.4: The Status of Unionism in Japan, December 31, 1919.
Industry Total Number Total Percentage Average

number of union number of unionized number
of workers organizations of members workers of workers
per union
Textiles ,  , . 

Machinery ,  , . 
Chemicals ,  , . 
Mining ,  , . 
Total ,,  , . 
Table 3.5: The Increase in Strikes in Japan between 1914 and 1919.
Year Number Number Average number

of strikes of strikers of strikers per strike
  , 

  , 
  , 
  , 
  , 
  , 
Total , ,
 Katayama Sen, Recent Tendencies in the Labor Movement in Japan, Rand School of Social
Science Papers (Dep’t of Labor Research), The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Til-
den Foundations, Box 2, Katayama–Tractenberg, Folder 1, Katayama–Laidler. Following
quotes will refer to Katayama Sen, Labor Union Movement, New York, October 21, 1920, a
handwritten lecture manuscript within the named folder.
 On the school, see Rachel Cutler Schwartz, The Rand School of Social Science, 1906–1924.
A Study of Worker Education in the Socialist Era, PhD Thesis, State University of New York at
Buffalo, 1984.
 Katayama, Labor Union Movement, p. 2. The two charts are taken from these notes
(pp. 2–3).
The government, frightened by possible further unrest in the country, sup-

pressed the strikes by force: “In Aug[ust] 1919, there was a general [printers’
union] strike of [. . .] the daily papers (17) in Tokyo for few days. The metropolis
of 2,000,000 without a daily paper! But violent suppression of [the] strike and
arrests of strikers executed during and after the strike and many other big
strikes were suppressed by brutal police forces and some by calling out troops
killing many strikers.”207 Katayama reported that the government’s brutality
was a consequence of “Japanese workers [showing] . . . a deep interest in the
Russian revolution.”208 However, the interest in the revolution in Russia was
not as important as the actual sorrows the workers in Japan had to face in their
daily struggle against inflation and too low wages.
The rice riots of 1918 were a chance for the socialists to gain the attention
and support of the masses who had suffered from the economic boom, while
the upper class had simultaneously made a fortune out of it, especially due to
the exploitation of cheap labor.209 Katayama therefore considered the rice riots
to be “direct revolutionary training,”210 and the 7,831 rioters who were arrested
and tried were the first representatives of the coming revolution. The Japanese
government could consequently not tolerate such “revolutionary activities,” es-
pecially not during the war itself. Thus, the fact that the “labor strikes [that]
developed from the riots [. . .] [had] always [been] crushed by troops” was not a
surprise at all, at least not for Katayama.211 The strike of 26,000 laborers at the
Yedamitsu Steel Works, to name just one example, was violently crushed, and
many strikers were injured or killed.212
Katayama’s account highlighted that the Japanese government, 14 years
after the end of the Russo–Japanese War, continued its harsh anti–left course.
The war had initially caused an economic boom, which was, however, followed
by a recession after the war, and the danger of internal turmoil needed to be pre-
vented again. Like in 1905, anti–left persecution and violence seem to have been
the accurate means used to achieve these governmental aims. More than 50,000
workers had already participated in close to 400 strikes in 1917, which means
that the potential for unrest was not suddenly expressed, but rather increased
during the war. The financial gains of the nouveaux riches were criticized, not
only by the workers but by publicists in Japan as well, but there was little one
 Ibid., p. 4.
 Ibid., p. 5.
 James, The Rise and Fall, pp. 160–161.
 Katayama, Labor Union Movement, p. 5.
 Ibid., p. 6.
 Ibid.
could do against the capitalist development that had created this super–rich
class. Its representatives continued to gain from cheap labor and the political au-
thorities did not seem interested in challenging them or their wrongdoings.213
However, when the price of rice took off and due to ruthless speculation reached
a level unknown before,214 many people saw no other option but to openly chal-
lenge this development and the political order it stood for.
Between 1914 and 1920 the price of rice had increased by 174%, which is
why it got more and more unattainable, especially in the non–urban parts of
the country, where wages had not gained value during the war years.215 This
became even more problematic once the boom ended in 1920 and more and
more people felt the beginning recession.216 The end of war–related exports to
the Allied powers hit the Japanese economy quite hard, and while the political
leaders discussed the future world order at Versailles, Japanese producers had
to face the end of the golden years created by the financial surplus due to the
steady export of manufactured goods to the warring Europeans. Regardless of
this initial shock, Japanese companies were able to recover and continued to
record positive balances until the crash followed with its full impact in 1920.
The economic bubble in Japan burst, and prices fell so fast that factory workers
lost their job without any warning. The price of Japanese yarn dropped by 60%,
and that of silk by 70%. The stock market in Tokyo crashed and lost 55%.217
The unavailability of competitors in Asia had led to an overproduction of Japa-
nese manufactured goods that now, after the return of the European trade com-
panies, could no longer be sold. The consequence, in addition to dropping
prices, was overproduction, and a financial crisis was inevitable. This crisis
had been accompanied by rice riots since 1918, due to which the newly rich and
other upper class representatives, as well as speculators, were accused of being
responsible for the misery of the poor people in Japan.218
Producers and export companies had probably acted too jauntily during
the war years, not considering that the economic boom could and would end
with the conclusion of the First World War. They were probably intoxicated by
 Young, Japan under Taisho Tenno, p. 114.

 Ibid., p. 115.
 Tobata Seiichi, Nihon nōgyō no ninaite, in: Nihon Nōgyō Hattatsushi Chōsakai et al.
(Ed.), Nihon nōgyō hattatsushi, vol. 9, Tokyo 1956, pp. 561–604.
 Andrew Gordon, A Modern History, pp. 139–140.
 Ōno Ken’ichi, World War I and the 1920s. Export–led Boom and Bust, http://www.grips.
ac.jp/teacher/oono/hp/lecture_J/lec07.htm (4. 7. 2016).
 Michael Lewis, Rioters and Citizens. Mass Protest in Imperial Japan, Berkeley et al. 1990,
pp. 100–110.
the extreme margins and profit and did not wish for this trend to end, eventu-
ally neglecting the simple possibility that time would change again. The over-
priced products of the war years could no longer compete on the Asian markets
and left many of the nouveaux riches impoverished again. Their luxurious life-
style disappeared as quickly as it had occurred. Due to the crisis of the silk mar-
ket and the crash of the Japanese stock market, the banks also faced a severe
crisis, and the money owned by the common people lost a lot of its worth. On
the one hand, the number of unemployed workers rose, while on the other, the
rift between poor and rich got more intense, especially since most of the wages
remained low while the rice prices exploded. This situation was intensified due
to speculations with rice. In more than 350 cities, rice riots (kome sōdō) pro-
tested against the exploitation of ordinary consumers.219 The latter attacked
real and supposed speculators and many rice traders.
Considering the long–term perspective with regard to the postwar years,
the developments were even worse. The Japanese economy entered a “chronic
crisis.”220 This was also due to the international crises in the 1920s and 1930s,
which further intensified the problems already faced at the end of the First
World War. The gross national income rose by 6.2% between 1914 and 1919, but
this trend declined to 0.7% in 1931.221 The economist and political scientist Shi-
zume Masato divided Japan’s economic history from 1914 (when the First World
War started) to the late 1930s (when the Second World War began in East Asia
in 1937/39) into five time periods.222 First, there was an economic boom between
1914 and 1919, with high rates of economic growth and inflation, then came a
decade of deflationary measures between 1920 and 1929 before the Shōwa de-
pression in 1930/31. Between 1932 and 1936 the economy partly recovered, be-
fore another upswing occurred in the first period of the Sino–Japanese War
(1937–1945).223
Regardless of these long–term developments, we should return to the local
riots between 1918 and 1920 once more, as they resembled the global unrest at
the end of the Great War and therefore must be seen as a symptom for the
 Reinhard Zöllner, Geschichte Japans: Von 1800 bis zur Gegenwart, Second edition, Pader-
born 2008, p. 341.
 Shizune Masato, The Japanese Economy during the Interwar Period. Instability in the Fi-
nancial System and the Impact of the World Depression, in: Bank of Japan Review. Institute
for Monetary and Economic Studies, 2009–E–2, Tōkyō 2009. https://www.boj.or.jp/en/re
search/wps_rev/rev_2009/data/rev09e02.pdf (10. 4. 2016).
 Ibid.
 Ibid.
 Ibid. On the Shōwa depression see: Iwata Kikuo, Shōwa kyōkō no kenkyū, Toyko 2004.
shortcomings of a globalized capitalist world order that had been based on im-
perialism and the exploitation of the working class alike. In 1918 the Japanese
authorities had to face a strong and, due to union and socialist party activities,
well–organized working class. At the same time, the unrest of the farmers in the
countryside was followed by protests by the fishermen, although the price for
fish had increased as well, “but there was a complicated system of marketing
under which commodities passed through several hands before reaching the con-
sumer, so that the producers were the last to feel the benefit of a rise in market
prices.”224 Even if more money for fish was available and the income of the fish-
ermen increased, it could hardly match the prices of other consumer goods that
needed to be bought in exchange. The food producers, i.e. farmers and fisher-
men, were consequently left out from the economic gains of the new middle and
upper class, suffering even while making more money than in the past.
In Kobe, protests against the price of rice, which went up by 300% between
1915 and 1918, eventually culminated in a violent eruption when the nouveaux
riches, the rice speculators, and other traders were attacked by an angry mob
in early August 1918, and the deployment of troops was necessary to avoid a
further spreading of the violent potential in the city.225 However, Kobe can only
be considered the peak of the protests that spanned the whole country; rice
riots seem to have taken place almost everywhere in Japan, in which people
demanded some kind of moral economy instead of capitalism–oriented exploita-
tion.226 Consequently, the protests could be understood as an expression of
anti–globalization in Japan, where the producing and working classes demanded
an end to a capitalist–driven and in some way immoral form of economy. In
Kobe in August 1918, this was one of the sentiments that made the masses act
and attack those they had identified as the ones responsible for their misery. It
was there that the riots also reached their most violent potential:
Crowds collected at Minato–gawa [. . .]. They were harangued by spokesmen whom the
tide of excitement carried on its crest. The names of the principal profiteers were de-
nounced. Presently the crowd began to move towards Suzuki’s, a firm which had become
very wealthy during the war and whose operations on the rice market particularly at-
tracted the mob’s hostile attention. Actually Suzuki’s had been buying rice chiefly on the
Government’s behalf as commission agents, but it was believed that they were responsi-
ble for forcing up the price. Doors were battered in, kerosene poured over the furniture
 Young, Japan under Taisho Tenno, p. 115.

 James, The Rise and Fall, p. 161.
 On the rice riots see the following recent article: Tomie Naoko, 1918–nen kome sōdō ni
okeru „seizonken“. Moraru ekonomī to shitizenshippu, in: Fukushi shakai gakken 14 (2017),
pp. 95–119.
and the premises fired. The fire brigade – a branch of the police service – was driven
away when it came up, and its hoses were cut. The firemen attempted to play on the
flames from the windows of a Japanese newspaper office that stood opposite, whereupon
the mob burnt the office as well. The same night the offices of a big house agency which
had got the greater part of the dwellings in Kobe into its avaricious hands were burnt,
besides the houses of a couple of unpopular money–lenders.227
Troops needed to intervene the following day to end the riots. Soldiers had to be
brought in from Himeji, because they could not be sent from the nearer Osaka as
this city was facing a similar situation, where angry crowds smashed shop win-
dows as well as cars. The mob, naturally, like in Kobe as well, “expended its ener-
gies in minor mischief, but came into no extensive collisions with the troops.”228 It
took the government a few days to reestablish order in the cities and bring life
back to normal. In twenty places all over Japan, the military had to intervene and
suppress the activities of angry mobs. At least a hundred protesters had been
killed, although there is no exact number, because the government prohibited any
news about the riots in their aftermath. The Japanese press, however, did not fol-
low this order and even protested against it, which is why at least some reports
provide a contemporary image of the events.
Regardless of their intensity, the riots could be suppressed, as they hap-
pened in a rather unorganized and very spontaneous manner. The fact, how-
ever, that protesters assembled all over Japan also highlights the dangerous
situation the government in Tokyo had to face. The army remained loyal, how-
ever, and did not support the protests. Many people were arrested during and
after the riots and were harshly sentenced in the aftermath, some protesters
even facing the death sentence.229 The Prime Minister, Terauchi Masatake
(1852–1919), nevertheless, could not survive the discussions related to the
events and had to resign on 17 September 1918. The new Prime Minister, Hara
Takashi (1856–1921), was appointed a few days later and was “enthusiastically
greeted” by labor leaders like Suzuki Bunji because he “was a common man,
not a peer, and his cabinet was a party government.”230 Social change was sup-
posed to be resembled by the new government, and although these hopes
might have been a bit too high, there were, of course, also some long–term im-
pacts from the events of 1918 on the Japanese labor movement.
 Young, Japan under Taisho Tenno, p. 116.

 Ibid., p. 117.
 Ibid.
 Takenaka, Failed Democratization, p. 92.
In May 1919 the first meeting of the Rōdō Dōmeikai (Labor League) met in
Tokyo, and next to Suzuki Bunji, Ōsugi Sakae (1885–1923),231 “a man of powerful
mind, profoundly read in all revolutionary literature, and with a fanatical devotion
to individual liberty,”232 was a central figure. While a quarter of the participants of
this meeting were supposedly policemen, the course of the meeting showed that
confrontations between the labor movement and the state had become more se-
vere since 1918: “[I]n spite of this ejectment the speeches continued to offend the
police, who stopped them one after the other, until the assembly broke up in a
storm of indignation. This became the type of Labour meeting henceforth, and
though the most passionate outbursts greeted these prohibitions, disobedience
and force were very rarely attempted.”233 Once the Treaty of Versailles had been
signed, politicians thought they had established a return to a peaceful interna-
tional order, but “the restlessness which pervaded the whole world manifested it-
self in industrial strikes, and Japan had rather more than her share.”234 With prices
rising again, again faster than the real wages of the workers, it became quite com-
mon to request an adjustment through a strike. Considering the intensity of these
developments, A. Morgan Young speaks of “an epidemic”235 Japan had never
faced before. It might have been this impression that led to the consideration that
the Taishō period was a time of strong liberal demands and public unrest, i.e. a
“Taishō democracy.”236 The struggle between the government and the labor move-
ment continued in numerous ways during the period, but it is clear that the First
World War had been a stronger trigger to mobilize the masses due to the created
public interest than the war against Russia a decade before. In 1905, riots criticized
the loss of Japan at the diplomatic table in the struggle for its future empire. In
1918 and afterward, people protested against capitalist exploitation instead. The
impact of the Great War on unrest and protests in Japan, especially in the months
after the war’s end, can consequently not be neglected.
 On his life and impact see: Thomas A. Stanley, Ōsugi Sakae, Anarchist in Taishō Japan.
The Creativity of the Ego, Cambridge, MA 1982; Herbert Worm, Studien über den jungen Ōsugi
Sakae und die Meiji–Sozialisten zwischen Sozialdemokratie und Anarchismus unter beson-
derer Berücksichtigung der Anarchismusrezeption, Hamburg 1981.
 Young, Japan under Taisho Tenno, pp. 152–153.
 Ibid., p. 153.
 Ibid., p. 167.
 Ibid.
 Harald Meyer, Die „Taishō–Demokratie“. Begriffsgeschichtliche Studien zur Demokratier-
ezeption in Japan von 1900 bis 1920, Bern 2005.
3.6 Conclusion
The First World War had established Japan as the “only major non–Western colo-
nial power in the twentieth century,”237 and in 1919, Tokyo controlled parts of the
neighboring mainland as well as some islands in the Pacific Rim. The Japanese
government had used the war as a pretext for its imperialist expansion in China,
which it needed to secure at Versailles at all cost, eroding the principles of the
League of Nations before it even existed. At the same time, Japan had gained from
its rather “light” involvement in the Great War, as it had economically profited
from its trade with the Entente powers and the absence of European competitors
for manufactured goods on the Asian markets. Japan’s economy boomed, and the
nouveaux riches enjoyed the urban city life in the metropolises. As has been
shown above, however, the consequence was social transformations, and not
only in the urban context, and new consumer markets led to discussions about
Japanese society as a whole. New gender roles were as publicly discussed as the
situations of those who were not able to participate in the advantageous boom of
the economy.
Regardless of its growing publicity, which print capitalism had provided
for broader audiences, the social question did not become really interesting be-
fore the end of the war when the boom abruptly ended and rice prices went
through the roof. At the same time, low real wages were leading to massive im-
poverishment and, marking the start for more critical and confrontational mass
eruptions in Japan, the rice riots of 1918 marked a new period of consciousness
for the Japanese working class and the socialist movement. The latter’s leading
figures could use the steady suffering caused by capitalist exploitation, which
had been globalized and therefore increased during the war years, to make
themselves heard among the workers, whether in union or party meetings.
Once social unrest had erupted in Kobe and many other Japanese cities at
the end of the war, the government also realized the danger and tried to contain
dangerous ideas and punish protesters to avoid increasing revolutionary poten-
tial spreading. The anger of the protesters, however, was less stimulated by rev-
olutionary dreams, as Katayama Sen might have had them, than by capitalist
realities that caused sorrows for the majority of Japanese people, which could
be felt in the cities and the countryside as well. The protests in Japan were con-
sequently an expression of social unrest that must be seen in their global
 Michele M. Mason/Helen J.S. Lee, Introduction, in: Michele M. Mason/Helen J.S. Lee
(Eds.), Reading Colonial Japan. Text, Context, and Critique, Stanford, CA 2012, pp. 1–17, here
p. 1.
3.6 Conclusion 103
context. Many people had reasons to rebel against the existent order around
the globe, and it was a pity that the leaders in Versailles were unable to estab-
lish a better one but instead continued to believe in principles that had just
turned the world to ashes. In Japan, the new order was greeted enthusiastically,
but in reality and from a long–term perspective, it worsened the situation of the
workers’ movement and led the country into a war that was neither glorious
like the Russo–Japanese War nor economically profitable, but would instead
destroy much of the country and the region for the sake of capitalist exploita-
tion and the imperialist ruling class.
4 Korea, the First World War, and the Hopes
for a New World Order
4.1 Introduction
The impact of the First World War on Korea was similar to its impact on China,
especially with regard to there being a nationalist eruption at its end, although
the direct implications of the war were less distinct than in the national contexts
of China or Japan. With regard to the Korean position during the war years, it can
be emphasized that thoughts about the country’s independence were often only
shared or debated among Koreans, no matter if they lived within the national
borders or somewhere abroad. The Japanese annexation in 1910 had been ac-
cepted relatively silently, but the end of the First World War and the debates
about a new and peaceful world order sparked the nationalist ambitions of many
Koreans, who demanded their sovereignty and independence be regained from
Japan. It can therefore be argued that the “confrontation with Western imperial-
ism” caused a stress test that the different dynasties in China, Japan, and Korea
had to react to, and while “the painful disintegration of the Qing imperial state
in China” would cause internal power struggles and factionalism that weakened
the former center of East Asia, “the creation of the centralized Meiji state out of
the ruins of the Tokugawa shogunate in Japan”1 paved the way for Japanese ex-
pansion toward the Asian mainland, where Korea would soon be turned into a
colonial space for Tokyo’s imperialist ambitions. The intertwined course of the
three countries, however, met yet another possible turning point at the end of
the First World War, when Chinese nationalists demanded maintaining indepen-
dence from Japan, while nationalists throughout Korea demanded their status as
an independent nation again. Considering these preconditions for the course of
events that will be recaptured in this chapter from a Korean perspective, one
could argue that the three national contexts can be understood as a kind of East
Asian microcosm of Immanuel Wallerstein’s world system, where Japan is the
expansionist core, China the semiperiphery, where Japanese ambitions for con-
trol were still held back by some kind of national interest, and Korea an almost
completely suppressed and exploited colonial space. The three histories are con-
sequently linked to each other not only by individual ties between people but
 Anne Walthall, From Private to Public Patriarchy. Women, Labor and the State in East Asia,
1600–1919, in: Teresa A. Meade and Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks (Eds.), A Companion to Gender
History, New York 2006, pp. 444–458, here p. 444.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110745672-004
also by international developments within East Asia, which, as a space, must be

considered to be highly connected according to the economic, social, and politi-
cal dynamics Wallerstein emphasized with regard to the functioning of larger
world systems.2
Stressed by the arrival and the demands of the foreign powers, Japanese
foreign policy turned into an aggressive and expansionist Asian form of colo-
nialism that sought to expand the country’s influence in Korea and China and
thereby became, together with Italy and Germany, one of the imperialist late-
comers, but it was also “the only non-Western colonizer in modern history.”3 In
contrast to the Western colonial powers in many of their colonies, Japan consid-
ered its colonial territories not only as “markets for exports, but also as strategi-
cally integrated parts of the so-called ‘Greater Japan.’ Therefore, the Japanese
colonial state put considerable effort into developing infrastructure in the colo-
nies.”4 Due to this fact, those who seek to whitewash or at least somehow ex-
cuse Japanese colonialism tend to emphasize the many positive developments,
e.g. economic growth, in the territories that had been controlled by Imperial
Japan in the past.5 Such arguments are similar to the narratives of the “White
Man’s Burden”6 or a “Civilizing Mission”7 in the name of the progress and mod-
ernization that was necessary to bring culture and civilization to underdevel-
oped parts of the world and which are repeated even today to glorify the
empires of the past.8
 Immanuel Wallerstein, Welt-System-Analyse. Eine Einführung, Wiesbaden 2019, pp. 17–22.

Also see Daniel Chirot and Thomas D. Hall, World-System Theory, in: Annual Review of Sociol-
ogy 8 (1982), pp. 81–106, here p. 84. On the value of Wallerstein’s concept as a theoretical ap-
proach in different fields also see Frank Jacob (Ed.), Wallerstein 2.0. Thinking and Applying
World-Systems Theory in the 21st Century, Bielefeld 2022.
 Jitendra Uttam, Political Economy of Korea: Transition, Transformation and Turnaround,
London 2014, p. 73.
 Ibid.
 Dong-No Kim, National Identity and Class Interest in the Peasant Movements of the Colonial
Period, in: Hong Yung Lee, Yong-Chool Ha and Clark W. Sorensen (Eds.), Colonial Rule and
Social Change in Korea, 1910–1945, Seattle, WA 2013, pp. 140–172, here p. 140.
 Rudyard Kipling, The White Man’s Burden (1899), in: Modern History Sourcebook, Fordham
University. Accessed May 28, 2022. https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/kipling.asp.
 Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize. The Republican Idea of Empire in France and West
Africa, 1895–1930, Stanford, CA 1997.
 One example for such an approach toward the history of the British Empire, which Kim
Wagner correctly called a “whitewash for Britain’s atrocities” would be Jeremy Black, Imperial
Legacies. The British Empire Around the World, New York 2019. For Wagner’s full review see
Kim Wagner, Imperial Legacies by Jeremy Black. Review – Whitewash for Britain’s Atrocities,
106 4 Korea, the First World War, and the Hopes for a New World Order
Japan’s rise to hegemony in East Asia was related to its successful economic
and military policy that demanded it match the Western powers to prevent the
colonization of its own territory. At the same time, older expansionist traditions
that reached back to the 16th century9 were revived, and the idea of invading
Korea had already been prominently discussed in the 1870s.10 Following the
Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895) and the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905), not
only was Japan eventually able to become accepted as a great international
power, but its military victories also allowed it to push its geostrategic influence
further toward the other Asian countries.11 While the so-called Triple Intervention
by France, Germany, and Russia in 1895 prevented the Japanese Empire from an-
nexing the Liaodong Peninsula in China,12 the Sino-Japanese War had decided
the struggle for influence in Korea between China and Japan, and the war against
Russia would eventually cement Japan’s standing on the Korean Peninsula, a
space the Japanese decision-makers considered to be exclusively Japanese. Oper-
ating there with a free hand, Korea was soon turned into a colony that was sup-
posed to serve Japanese interests, and its governor-general was appointed by the
Emperor. This important post was given to “a military man directly responsible
to the Japanese prime minister”13 and whose main task was to secure uncon-
tested rule in the name of Japan. The colony was, as Jitendra Uttam emphasizes,
hierarchically centralized to tighten the Japanese grip as much as possible:
The governor-general appointed all the provincial governors and the county superintend-
ents, who finally appointed heads of each district and village. The colonial administration
took one step further to assume the nation’s tradition of centralized governance. The total
in: The Guardian, August 10, 2019. Accessed May 28, 2022. https://www.theguardian.com/
books/2019/aug/10/imperial-legacies-jeremy-black-review-empire-multiculturalism.
 Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537–1598) had already attempted to establish an Asian Empire under
Japanese rule. For a detailed discussion of these attempts see Kitajima Manji, Hideyoshi no
Chōsen shinryaku, Tokyo 2002; Kenneth Swope, A Dragon’s Head and a Serpent’s Tail. Ming
China and the first great East Asian War, 1592–1598, Norman, OK 2016.
 The so called “debate about the invasion of Korea” (seikanron) in 1873 caused trouble for
the Japanese government, although it there was no disagreement about the idea of an invasion
as such, but rather about the suitable timing of such an advance. Pŏm-sŏk Kang, Seikanron
seihen. Meiji rokunen no kenryoku tōsō, Tokyo 1990.
 Frank Jacob, The Russo-Japanese War and Its Shaping of the Twentieth Century, London
2018, pp. 46–73.
 Urs Matthias Zachmann, Imperialism in a Nutshell: Conflict and the “Concert of Powers”
in the Tripartite Intervention, 1895, in: Japanstudien 17 (2006) 1, pp. 57–82.
 Uttam, Political Economy, 72.
number of officials in 1910 numbered 10,000; however, by 1937 that number grew to
reach 87,552, comprising 52,270 Japanese and 35,282 Koreans.14
Ultimately, the Japanese not only intended to exploit their colony but also
wanted to assimilate it to turn it into an integral part of their empire.
From 1905, and even more so after 1910, when the country was officially an-
nexed, it was therefore the colonial experience that determined the experience of
every Korean. This colonial experience, to cite Korean scholar Dong-No Kim, can-
not be overemphasized with regard to understanding modern Korean history:
Understanding Japanese colonialism in Korea is essential not only for recon-
structing Korea’s historical experience, but also for understanding the current
functioning of contemporary Korean society, which has been considerably condi-
tioned by its colonial legacy.15 The First World War determined the second half of
Korea’s first decade as a Japanese colony and, at the same time, marked the first
nationalist eruption against Japanese rule when the March First Movement in
1919 challenged the existent order. What has been called a “Korean Revolution”16
was part of an international wave of protests at the end of the war,17 especially
since the peace treaty negotiations seemed to promise a better future based on
enlightened ideas that were particularly linked to US President Woodrow Wil-
son.18 As has been shown in the previous two chapters, there were riots and pro-
tests in all East Asian countries, but “[w]hereas in Japan men and women had
rioted over the price of rice in 1918, in China they marched in support of national
self-determination and democracy, and in Korea they demonstrated against Japa-
nese imperialism.”19 The extent to which this “Wilsonian Moment”20 influenced
 Ibid.
 Kim, National Identity, p. 140.
 Korean Delegation, Petition. The Claim of the Korean People and Nation for Liberation
from Japan and for the Reconstitution of Korea as an Independent State, Paris, April 1919, Co-
lumbia University Library, 97-84261-16, p. 4.
 Marcel Bois and Frank Jacob (Eds.), Zeiten des Aufruhrs (1916–1921). Globale Proteste,
Streiks und Revolutionen gegen den Ersten Weltkrieg und seine Auswirkungen, Berlin 2020.
Also see Enrico Dal Lago, Róisín Healy and Gearóid Barry (Eds.), 1916 in Global Context. An
Anti-Imperial Moment, London 2018.
 Derek Heater, National Self-Determination. Woodrow Wilson and His Legacy, New York
1994; Massimo Mori, Friede und Föderalismus bei Kant, in: Zeitschrift für Politik 53 (2006) 4,
pp. 379–392, here 379; Giuseppe Bottaro, Internazionalismo e democrazia nella politica estera
Wilsoniana, in: Il Politico 72 (2007) 2, pp. 5–23.
 Walthall, From Private to Public Patriarchy, p. 445.
 James Chase, The Wilsonian Moment? in: The Wilson Quarterly 25 (2001) 4, pp. 34–41;
Christopher Hobson, The Rise of Democracy. Revolution, War and Transformations in Interna-
tional Politics since 1776, Edinburgh 2015, pp. 140–170; Erez Manela, Imagining Woodrow
the events in Korea at the end of and after the First World War will therefore be
taken into closer consideration in this chapter. Before that, however, an overview
of the history of Japanese imperialism and the extent to which it changed Korean
society from the 1870s, and in particular from 1905, will be provided to better
contextualize the events of 1919.
4.2 Korea and Japanese Imperialism
In 1876, just about a quarter-century after its own forceful opening, Japan used
international law to force Korea to open its borders and become part of the inter-
national economic and political system. The year consequently marked an impor-
tant watershed in Korean history, as it “brought foreign economic and political
penetration” and led to the growth of internal tensions because “the increased
presence of foreign traders, missionaries, and even military troops provided a tar-
get for growing peasant discontent.”21 Although there were debates about reforms
in the following years, the monarchy was initially not eager to allow more foreign
contacts than necessary, especially since these contacts seemed to threaten not
only the traditions within Korea but, first and foremost, the hierarchical order that
had shaped the existent society. Young progressives, however, looked to Japan as
an example of a successful modernization, i.e. Westernization, and therefore the
young intellectuals who had founded the Enlightenment Party (Kaehwadang) de-
manded a similar course in Korean politics. One such intellectual was Park Yung-
hyo (1861–1939),22 who, as Anne Walthall remarks, while staying in Japan, “urged
the king to modernize and strengthen Korea and insisted that elevating the status
of women was essential to such efforts. He wanted to prohibit spousal abuse,
child marriages, and concubinage. Women should be educated by the state, wid-
ows should be allowed to remarry, and marriage should be permitted between
people of different statuses.”23 The treaty with Japan in 1876 – the so-called Gang-
hwa Treaty24 – consequently “opened a Pandora’s box of economic, intellectual,
Wilson in Asia: Dreams of East-West Harmony and the Revolt against Empire 1919, in: The
American Historical Review 111 (2006) 5, pp. 1327–1351; Brad Simpson, The United States and
the Curious History of Self-Determination, in: Diplomatic History 36 (2012) 4, pp. 675–694.
 Michael Edson Robinson, Cultural Nationalism in Colonial Korea, 1920–1925, new edition,
Seatlle, WA 2014 [1988], p. 14.
 Sano-shi kyōdo hakubutsukan (Ed.), Kim Ok-kyun to Paku Yon-hyo wo meguru hitobito,
Sano 2016.
 Walthall, From Private to Public Patriarchy, p. 454.
 Key-Hiuk Kim, The Last Phase of the East Asian World Order. Korea, Japan, and the Chi-
nese Empire, 1860–1882, Berkeley, CA 1980, pp. 205–209.
political, and cultural forces that ultimately led to the fall of the Chosŏn dy-
nasty”25 that had ruled Korea since 1392. Although the Korean negotiators of the
treaty were under the assumption that they had minimized future foreign influ-
ence as far as possible, the changes that followed, especially with regard to the
capitalist transformation that would also have a tremendous impact on the coun-
try’s social structure, would challenge more than just the economic order in
Korea. Peasant unrest, also stimulated by anti-foreign sentiments, increased, and
Christian missionaries were not only preaching a new religious belief but also act-
ing as cultural mediators.26 As Michael E. Robinson emphasized, they
became the first Westerners to systematically study Korean history, culture, and lan-
guage; their work formed a growing Orientalist literature on Korea, with its curious mix-
ture of exotica, condescension, critique, and praise that subsequently shaped attitudes
about Korea in the West for several generations. Mission schools were active in the 1890s
and became models for the establishment of secular Korean schools devoted to a nontra-
ditional, Western-studies curriculum, which also appeared in the 1890s. The missionary
schools and hospitals attracted Koreans interested in new ideas and institutions.27
The rule of the monarchy that had been centralized over the previous centuries
and forged a relatively homogenized mass of people now began to be eroded by
pressure from without and by subsequent struggles within. The “monarch’s au-
thority was, in theory, absolute; his authority was augmented by Confucian ide-
ology, a state orthodoxy that supported a stratified social structure,”28 but the
influx of new ideas that stimulated a debate about the future of Korea did not
halt at the dynasty’s role. Conflicts between the Korean monarchy and the so-
cial elites on the one hand and the masses of the people on the other were con-
sequently intensified by the changes that occurred in the latter part of the 19th
century as Japan gradually began to increase its influence and control over its
neighbor.
The struggle with modernity within Korea, like in other national contexts,
was also one regarding the elite’s position and its legitimization. Confucianism,
as well as education according to the Chinese classics and Chinese language,
were essential for the self-understanding of the Korean elites, as the “great
houses of the . . . yangban [the gentry of dynastic Korea] followed meticulously
formal Confucian family ritual, and relations between yangban families and
 Michael E. Robinson, Korea’s Twentieth-Century Odyssey. A Short History, Honolulu, HI

2007, p. 9.
 Ibid., 9–10.
 Ibid., 11. On the role of North American missionaries in Korea see Elizabeth Ann Under-
wood, Challenged Identities. North American Missionaries in Korea, 1884–1934, Seoul 2004.
 Robinson, Cultural Nationalism, p. 15.
individuals were governed by strict adherence to rules of etiquette strongly influ-

enced by Chinese norms.”29 The values of the elites, however, were, in the years
after 1876, challenged by Christian ideas as well as by new religious movements,
like the Donghak movement (Eastern Learning),30 which challenged the existent
order and led to internal struggles and turmoil in the late 19th century as well.
King Kojong (1852–1919) was initially a relatively weak king, and his wife, Em-
press Myeongseong (1851–1895) – better known as Queen Min in the West –, an
ambitious and powerful woman, could not make up for this weakness alone, es-
pecially since the king’s father, Yi Ha-eung (1820–1898), who had ruled Korea
under the title of Heungseon Daewongun (Grand Internal Prince Heungseon) be-
tween 1864 and 1873, tried to remain in power after his son had reached the age
to take over rule from his father.31 During his reign, however, “the Taewongun
failed to redress the original balance of social and political forces that weakened
the monarchy,”32 a fact that weakened the Korean position toward the interna-
tional menaces that were becoming more and more dangerous. Like Western co-
lonialism in the Americas, the Japanese ambitions were consequently profiting
from internal struggles that had been ongoing for several years before the coun-
try was eventually opened up to and connected with the existent world order.
Furthermore, Korea had to sign a treaty in the tradition of the unequal treaties
Japan itself had been trying to revoke since the 1860s as they weakened the inter-
national standing of all Asian countries. The fact that Japan used similar meth-
ods with regard to Korea already points to the fact that Japan’s ambitions in that
region were not really driven by Pan-Asianist ideas that considered Japan’s Asian
neighbors as equals.33
 Ibid., 18. The yangban eventually were particularly criticized in nationalist writings, as
they were considered to represent the major ills of Korean society. See Andre Schmid, Korea
between Empires, 1895–1919, New York 2002, pp. 122–123.
 Juljan Biontino and Sang-wook Yim, Der Deutsche Bauernkrieg und die “Tonghak Bauern-
revolution”. Rezeption in Sǔdkorea und Perspektiven des Vergleichs, in: Zeitschrift für Ge-
schichtswissenschaften 66 (2018) 2, pp. 147–166; George L. Kallander, Salvation through
Dissent. Tonghak Heterodoxy and Early Modern Korea, Honolulu, HI 2016.
 On this relationship and see Tatiana M. Simbirtseva, Queen Min of Korea. Coming to
Power, in: Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society, Korea Branch 71 (1996), pp. 41–54. On Em-
press Myeongseong and her role within Korean (foreign) politics see Frank Jacob, Queen Min,
Foreign Policy and the Role of Female Leadership in Late Nineteenth-Century Korea, in: Elena
Woodacre et al. (Eds.), The Routledge History of Monarchy, London 2019, pp. 700–717.
 Robinson, Cultural Nationalism, p. 18.
 Sven Saaler, Pan-Asianism in Modern Japanese History. Colonialism, Regionalism and Bor-
ders, London 2009. Pan-Asianist societies, like the Black Ocean Society (Gen’yōsha) or the
Amur Society (Kokuryūkai) shared such an aggressive vision of pan-Asianism under Japanese
leadership. On these societies see Frank Jacob, Die Thule-Gesellschaft und die Kokuryūkai.
From a Korean perspective, the danger was obviously downplayed, as its

“leaders continued to view these arrangements as secondary to the primary re-
lationship with China. Treaties simply recognized foreign demands, and multi-
ple treaty arrangements balanced foreign powers against each other, thus
preserving Korean autonomy.”34 The Korean political leadership simply under-
estimated the decline of China as the leading regional power and the new role
of Japan as its replacement, a change in positions that would become even
more obvious during and after the First World War. The opening of Korea inten-
sified the problems the monarchy and the yangban had to face, and the foreign
powers, first and foremost China and Japan, would use internal turmoil as a
reason to intervene in their neighboring country. When a mutiny broke out in
1882 within the Korean Army due to poor pay and other issues within its organi-
zational structure, both foreign powers sent troops to Korea. Due to the quick
action of the Chinese, the rebels within the military were suppressed and Ko-
jong was reinstalled in power, and the Treaty of Chemulpo, another unequal
treaty with Japan, secured the latter’s reimbursement for the destruction of Jap-
anese property and allowed it to station Japanese soldiers in Seoul for the pro-
tection of the legation in Korea in the future.35
Korean progressives like the already-mentioned Park Yung-hyo and Kim Ok-
gyun (1851–1894) were worried about these foreign interventions, and their Kaeh-
wadang party tried to stimulate a more reform-oriented course within national
politics. They had been influenced by their experiences in Japan, and intellec-
tuals like Fukuzawa Yukichi (1835–1901), “a foremost popularizer of Western
thought,”36 as well as Pan-Asianists like Tōyama Mitsuru (1855–1944), influenced
their pro-Japanese- and pro-modernization-oriented arguments.37 The events of
1882 eventually “turned frustration into despair and desperation,”38 such that
Kim Ok-gyun and his followers began to think a coup was the only possible solu-
tion for Korea. The Gapsin Coup of 1884 was the consequence of these thoughts,
and the progressives, who were supported by Japanese troops, seized control of
Geheimgesellschaften im global-historischen Vergleich, Würzburg 2013 and Frank Jacob, Ja-

panism, Pan-Asianism and Terrorism. A Short History of the Amur Society (the Black Dragons),
1901–1945, Bethesda, CA 2014. There were, however, also Japanese intellectuals that inter-
preted pan-Asianist ideas from a more equal perspective. See, among others, Miyazaki Tōten,
Sanjūsannen no yume, Tokyo 1902.
 Robinson, Cultural Nationalism, p. 19.
 Peter Duus, The Abacus and the Sword, paperback edition, Berkeley, CA 1998, p. 69.
 Robinson, Cultural Nationalism, p. 21.
 Ōshima Tōto, Tōyama-ō no doko ga erai ka, in: Fujimoto Hisanori (Ed.): Tōyama seishin
Tokyo 1940, pp. 82–110.
 Robinson, Cultural Nationalism, p. 21.
the government in Seoul. The king was kidnapped and some prominent conser-
vatives murdered, but Kim and his men lacked popular support for their act, es-
pecially since their coup was publicly perceived as a Japanese plot against
Korean independence. The Gapsin Coup failed, and not only did it fail to achieve
a true change, but it also “besmirched the image of reform in the eyes of officials
and the public alike.”39 Japanese right-wing forces had hoped that similar events
would stimulate a crisis in Korea and a war with China, which is why they sent
small sabotage units to the peninsula to stir up trouble,40 but the war between
the Middle Kingdom and Japan would not break out until 1894 when a Donghak
rebellion shook Korea and forced the monarchy to ask for China’s help, an act
that allowed Japan to formulate a reason to go to war.41 During the conflict, how-
ever, the Japanese military and other extremists used the opportunity to assassi-
nate Empress Myeongseong, and Kojong had to escape to the Russian legation.
While China was defeated in 1895, Russia had expressed its ambitions not only
in the Triple Intervention against Japan but also in its support of Kojong, who
tried to maneuver between the interests of the two great powers.
After the Sino-Japanese War, Kojong launched the Gwangmu Reform (1897–
1904), and its agenda – “old foundation, new participation” (kubon sinch’am) –
was supposed to bring about reforms without antagonizing the traditionalists too
much.
However, it was not only the war between China and Japan that had further
weakened Korea, which was already in turmoil before. The Donghak movement
had also demanded more equality and was directed toward the strictly hierarchical
and patriarchal family structures that existed in the country.42 While the authori-
ties had been able to repress the movement in the 1860s, in the 1890s, it reap-
peared stronger than before because economic changes had impoverished many
peasants in the previous decades. This is why the Donghak movement, although it
was based on religious considerations and motivations, also had a social compo-
nent that made it attractive to many Koreans at the end of the 19th century. Its
leaders had created it as a “syncretic religion combining Confucianism, Buddhism,
 Ibid. On the history and consequences of the Kaspin Coup see Yŏng-ho Chʻoe, The Kapsin
Coup of 1884. A Reassessment, in: Korean Studies 6 (1982) 1, pp. 105–124.
 Jacob, Japanism, pp. 41–54; Miyagawa Gorīsaburō, Ten’yūkyō kyūen no keirinkō, in in: Fu-
jimoto Hisanori (Ed.): Tōyama seishin Tokyo 1940, pp. 117–129; Ōsei Yoshikura, Ten’yūkyō,
Tokyo 1981.
 S.C.M Paine, The Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895. Perceptions, Power, and Primacy, Cam-
bridge 2003, pp. 109–164.
 Walthall, From Private to Public Patriarchy, p. 458.
Taoism, and practices of lower-class popular religion,”43 and they initially de-
manded reforms while backing the traditional role of the monarchy. When the
Donghak movement reappeared in the 1890s, it was far more dangerous to Ko-
jong, which is why he believed he had no other choice than to ask for help from
abroad, especially since the demands of the movement were quite revolutionary
with regard to the scale of the reforms requested. The issues that needed to be
addressed, according to the followers of the movement, were “local governmen-
tal corruption, yangban privileges, rural poverty, and the growing foreign pres-
ence in Korea.”44 It was the impoverished peasants who flocked to the banners
of the movement and made it powerful enough to threaten the political order,
which, by asking for foreign help, could neither defend itself against the decline
nor prevent Japanese expansionist ambitions from gaining ground on the Ko-
rean Peninsula.
There were, of course, also nationalist elements within the Donghak move-
ment, as its name and the reference to the East emphasize. Strong anti-foreign
sentiments moved the rural population as much as the increasing poverty they
had been suffering from since the opening of Korea in 1876. Such sentiments
would continue in the early 20th century, especially when the Righteous Army
movements (ŭibyŏng, 1905, 1907–11) instrumentalized them against the Japa-
nese. Japan had nevertheless taken advantage of the turmoil and used the
Sino-Japanese War to claim special rights in Korea while the prestige of the
monarchy further declined.
Regardless of these developments, young reform-oriented intellectuals and
progressive officials took the initiative to stimulate further reforms in Korea. In
1896, they founded the Independence Club (Tongnip hyŏphoe),45 which was led
by Seo Jae-pil (1864–1951, a.k.a. Philip Jaisohn), a young medical student who
had previously been exiled in the United States.46 While the club was reform-
oriented,47 it was also nationalist in nature and initiated the demand to reform
Korea as an empire and make the king its emperor so as to, in a way, gain inde-
pendence from China and increase the country’s status at the same time.48
 Robinson, Cultural Nationalism, p. 23.

 Ibid.
 Vipan Chandra, Sentiment and Ideology in the Nationalism of the Independence Club
(1896–1898), in: Korean Studies 10 (1986), pp. 13–34.
 Se-Eung Oh, Dr. Philip Jaisohn’s Reform Movement, 1896–1898. A Critical Appraisal of the
Independence Club, Lanham, MD 1995; Robinson, Cultural Nationalism, p. 25; Robinson, Ko-
rea’s Twentieth-Century Odyssey, p. 23.
 Vipin Chandra, The Independence Club and Korea’s First Proposal for a National Legisla-
tive Assembly, in: Occasional Papers on Korea 4 (1975), pp. 19–35.
 Robinson, Cultural Nationalism, pp. 25–26.
Furthermore, the club published The Independent (Tongnip sinmun), which is

“recognized as Korea’s first vernacular (Han’gŭl script) newspaper and the first
to include a section written in English.”49 The publication was therefore ob-
served with suspicion by conservatives, especially since “classical Chinese had
continued as the official court written language as well as the literary language
of the yangban,” and the use of han’gŭl was “controversial, opposed by conser-
vative officials as vulgar and demeaning.”50 Furthermore, the Independence
Club and the ideas expressed in The Independent were considered to be too rad-
ical, even if the members of the club presented themselves as Korean patriots.
One could not support the monarchy and debate its policies at the same time.
This was unheard of and caused a lot of criticism of and problems for the Inde-
pendence Club.51
Regardless of these issues, the time was ripe for change, and more and
more voices began to critically debate the future of Korea. The influx of Western
knowledge had stimulated political debates, and study societies opened new
spaces for debate about the ideas imported from the West. The Independent, re-
gardless of the reactions the publication received from within official circles,
paved the way for new journals that allowed young intellectuals to publicly de-
bate their views and ideas while also enabling a growing number of readers to
read about them and thereby become part of a wider and more diverse national
print culture.
The Capital Daily (Hwangsong sinmun), published in a mix of Korean and Chi-
nese, was one of the later successful publication projects between 1898 and the
annexation in 1910, although it reached mainly upper- and middle-class intellec-
tuals with its articles about reform ideas. The editorial board had prominent intel-
lectuals as members, including the historian Chang Chi-yŏn (1864–1921) and the
anarchist and historian Shin Chae-ho (1880–1936).52 The “first truly mass publica-
tion in Korea,”53 however, was the Korea Daily News (Taehan maeil sinbo), which
was published in higher numbers, distributed all over the country, and thereby
“shared a large role in enlightening the people and inspiring a patriotic fervor.”54
In addition to these daily newspapers, “[s]mall specialized magazines augmented
 Mark E. Caprio, Marketing Assimilation. The Press and the Formation of the Japanese-
Korean Colonial Relationship, The Journal of Korean Studies 16 (2011) 1, pp. 1–25, here p. 3.
 Robinson, Cultural Nationalism, p. 26.
 Ibid.
 Yŏng-ho Ch’oe, An Outline History of Korean Historiography, in: Korean Studies 4 (1980),
pp. 1–27.
 Robinson, Cultural Nationalism, p. 29.
 Chai-Shin Yu, A New History of Korean Civilization, Bloomington, IN 2012, p. 211.
the growth of the Korean press after 1900. These magazines focused on discus-
sions of Western thought, translations of Western classical literature and political
philosophy, and treatises on educational reform.”55 Journals were published by
political societies, like the Korea Self-Strengthening Society (Taehan cha’gan-
ghoe)56 and other academic societies with a broad variety of topics. These publica-
tions helped to strengthen Korean nationalism as well, as they increased the
existence of a sense of national belonging and created what Benedict Anderson
named an “imagined community.”57 The new publications and the growing print
capitalism helped to link intellectuals across the country, and the “growing nation-
alist intelligentsia”58 would spread new ideas about the Korean nation in their
spheres of influence. There were, of course, also debates about the right course for
reforms. While the younger intellectuals often preferred a radical break with the
past and traditions, more moderate voices argued on behalf of a symbiosis of Ko-
rean traditions and Western knowledge, something that was quite similar to the
debates in China and Japan in the last decades of the 19th century.
A break with the past, however, could be observed in Korea with regard to
education, since private schools boomed after 1900 and former students who
returned from their study stays abroad, especially from Japan, opened such
schools and taught according to radically different curricula. The intellectual
Park Eun-sik (1859–1925), who would also write a history of the March First
Movement,59 “stressed the importance of instilling in students a new sense of
cultural and social responsibility as a prerequisite to creating new citizens (sin-
min). The new citizens would have an appreciation of science as well as a deep
understanding of the Korean cultural and historical experience. It was impor-
tant to galvanize identification with the nation or the fruits of the new educa-
tion would be wasted.”60 Like in every other national context, the Koreans had
to come to terms with regard to their own idea of a nation, and multiple posi-
tions and thoughts in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were struggling to
define what was considered the ideal nation for Korea. It is almost tragic that
this debate was being led while the Japanese continued to erode the existence
of the Korean state, and thus the independent nation-state could not be created
for another three and a half decades. The struggle between the nationalist
 Robinson, Cultural Nationalism, p. 28. Robinson, Cultural Nationalism, p. 29.

 The journal was called Taehan Chaganghoe wŏlbo.
 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Na-
tionalism, London 1983.
 Robinson, Cultural Nationalism, p. 29.
 Park Eun-sik, Han’guk tongnip undong chi hyŏlsa, Shanghai 1920.
 Robinson, Cultural Nationalism, p. 30.
modernizers and reformers on the one hand and the traditionalist and conserva-
tive elites on the other eventually weakened the Korean position as it prevented
unity. Some intellectuals cited Japan as a successful model of a combination of
Western knowledge and Asian traditions, but although Western ideas were some-
times presented as being close to Confucian ideals, they were not convincing
enough to create a powerful symbiosis that could attract the approval of the wider
public. Ultimately, there was maybe just not enough time to find an answer, and
Japan was the winner in this situation.
With its victory against Russia in 1905, and although the military victories
on the battlefields and on the seas61 were not turned into a diplomatic victory
during the peace negotiations in Portsmouth, New Hampshire,62 Japan was
able to establish a kind of protectorate in Korea, and it used its influence to
force Kojong to abdicate in 1907.63 It was the Japanese victory that “ultimately
determined the fate of the dynasty,” and the Korean state “became a Japanese
diplomatic dependency with no rights of self-representation in the world sys-
tem.”64 With its international alliances and diplomatic agreements, such as the
Anglo-Japanese Alliance (1902)65 or the Taft-Katsura Agreement (1905),66 Japan
had secured its uncontested influence on the Korean Peninsula, and, after
1905, the Japanese resident-general would secure particular influence on the
country’s politics.67 Kojong’s protest against his forced abdication at the inter-
national court in The Hague did not result in any anti-Japanese protest or ac-
tion from the international community, and when his son was installed as the
new emperor in Seoul, it was the Japanese colonial authorities that used the
 Frank Jacob, Tsushima 1905. Ostasiens Trafalgar, second edition, Paderborn 2021.
 Jacob, Russo-Japanese War, pp. 90–113.
 Todd A. Henry, Assimilating Seoul. Japanese Rule and the Politics of Public Space in Colo-
nial Korea, 1910–1945, Los Angeles, CA 2014, p. 28.
 Robinson, Korea’s Twentieth-Century Odyssey, p. 12.
 Ian Nish, The Anglo-Japanese Alliance. The Diplomacy of Two Island Empires, 1894–1907,
London 1966.
 Kirk W. Larsen and Joseph Seeley, Simple Conversation or Secret Treaty? The Taft-Katsura
Memorandum in Korean Historical Memory, in: Journal of Korean Studies 19 (2014) 1,
pp. 59–92. Also see Seung-young Kim, American Diplomacy and Strategy toward Korea and
Northeast Asia 1882–1950 and After. Perception of Polarity and US Commitment to a Periphery,
London 2009, pp. 13–66.
 Mizuno Naoki, Shokuminchi Chōsen ni okeru Itō Hirobumi no kioku. Keijō no Hakubunji
wo chūshin ni, in: Itō Yukio and I Sunhan (Eds.), Itō Hirobumi to Kankoku tōchi. Shodai Kan-
koku tōkan wo meguru hyakunenme no kenshō, Tokyo 2009, pp. 212–215. For Itō’s vita see
Kurokawa Hidenori, Nihon no dai-seijika. Itō Hirobumi mo, Chōsenjin ni totte ha gokuakunin
datta! in: Kaku Kōzō (Ed.), Nihonshi jinbutsu “sono go no hanashi”, fourth edition, Tokyo
1996, pp. 312–313; Takii Kazuhiro, Itō Hirobumi. Chi no seijika, Tokyo 2010, pp. 372–376.
boy to further intensify their control within Korea. In addition, Tokyo could
also rely on pro-Japanese organizations like the Iljinhoe (Progress Party) that
supported the idea of a “unification” with Japan.68 Arguments were made on
behalf of Japanese interventions with regard to the idea of necessary reforms in
Korea, which is why the historical developments thereby further discredited the
radical reform movement, as reforms in general came to be identified with Japa-
nese aggression.
However, there was also resistance against the increasing Japanese influ-
ence and their tightened political grip on the monarchy and government in
Seoul. Intellectuals would use the new print media to speak out against Japa-
nese expansionism, and the above-mentioned Righteous Armies, i.e. small gue-
rilla bands, were formed to fight against the Japanese police and military forces
that had been stationed in the country. Between 1907 and 1911, the Japanese
Army and the police exerted some amount of effort to deal with these national-
ist elements in Korea, but the final annexation of the country could not be pre-
vented.69 This, however, does not mean that other forms of resistance against
the developments in the aftermath of the Russo-Japanese War did not exist. The
Korea Daily News, whose non-Korean editor Ernest Bethell (1872–1909)70 could
not be censored so easily by the Japanese authorities, could express criticism,
at least for some years, before new publication laws prevented this critical
voice against Japan from continuing its work.71 However, with the steady inten-
sification of Japanese rule in Korea, the nationalist reform movement went
through a transformation, and in 1910, it turned into an independence move-
ment directed against Japan. The latter’s control over the peninsula was never-
theless made possible because there were also forces at work in Korea that
collaborated with the Japanese authorities. The old elites, namely the royal and
yangban families, were bought by stipends, and other collaborators received
privileges or other forms of advantages within the new political order, which
was increasingly centralized and occupied by representatives of the Japanese
colonial government. When Resident-General Itō Hirobumi (1841–1909) was as-
sassinated by a Korean nationalist, the Japanese finally had a suitable reason
to formalize their colonial rule, and they annexed the country to become part of
the Japanese Empire. On 22 August 1910, Japanese Resident-General Terauchi
 William G. Beasley, Japanese Imperialism 1894–1945, Oxford 1987, p. 90; Jacob, Japanism,
pp. 81–82.
 Robinson, Cultural Nationalism, p. 38.
 Joohyun Jade Park, Journalism behind Bars. Bethell’s Anti-Japanese English-Korean News-
papers, in: Victorian Periodicals Review 51 (2018) 1, pp. 86–120.
 Robinson, Cultural Nationalism, p. 38.
Masatake (1852–1919) and the Korean Prime Minister Yi Wan-yong (1858–1926)

signed the official Treaty of Annexation,72 which “further stipulated that the
Japanese government assumed control of Korea’s administration.”73
At the same time, Koreans were turned into Japanese citizens, and although
many left the country to escape Japanese rule, they would indirectly become
agents of Japanese imperialism when the expansionists in Tokyo demanded that
the borders be pushed into regions where Koreans – who, after 1910, were Japa-
nese citizens – were living.74 The American press at that time did not protest a lot
but rather considered this step quite natural, especially since the Treaty of Ports-
mouth a couple of years earlier seemed to have prepared for precisely such a step.
Considering the already-mentioned agreements with Western powers, Japan was
assumably acting within the limits of its internationally accepted capacity.75 The
hope for foreign support was useless, as Kim Sik-hun, a Korean diplomat who
was quite familiar with American politics due to his service in Washington, DC,
remarked in an interview with the New York Times: “Everywhere, he says, there is
a patriotic uprising burning fiercely despite frequent defeat of the Koreans by the
better-equipped Japanese soldiers, and kept aflame by the hope that in the near
future Japan will find herself with a more powerful enemy on her hands, when
Korea can regain her 4,243-year-old independence and throw off the yoke of an-
nexation.”76 Since nobody would interfere with Japanese imperialism in 1910, the
outlook for Korea was rather hopeless. The country was also supposed to be Japa-
nized according to an assimilation program, which was announced soon after the
annexation was formalized. Korea, as mentioned earlier, was not only supposed
to act as a colony for exploitation but was also to be transformed into an impor-
tant part of the Japanese Empire.77 Terauchi Masatake, who acted as the country’s
first governor-general after the annexation process had been formalized, therefore
 The treaty’s text can be found at https://international.ucla.edu/institute/article/18447. Ac-

cessed My 30, 2022.
 Juergen Kleiner, Korea. A Century of Change, London et al. 2001, p. 29.
 One of these regions was Manchuria. Frank Jacob, The Korean Diaspora in Manchuria. Ko-
rean Ambitions, Manchurian Dreams, Japanese Realities, in: Entremons UPF Journal of World
History 6 (2014), pp. 1–11; Frank Jacob, Reflections on the Korean Diaspora in Manchuria, in:
Florian Kläger and Klaus Stierstorfer (Eds.): Diasporic Constructions of Home and Belonging,
Berlin 2015, pp. 111–122.
 E. Taylor Atkins, Primitive Selves. Koreana in the Japanese Colonial Gaze, 1910–1945, Ber-
keley, CA 2010, p. 13.
 Cited in ibid., p. 14.
 Kleiner, Korea, p. 30.
“noted the close proximity, shared culture, and ethnic origins shared by Japan
and Korea as proof of the possibility of eventual assimilation.”78
The newly appointed governor-general was supposed to be assisted in his
work, and for this purpose, “[s]ix central offices which functioned like minis-
tries were established: for General, Home, Financial, Agricultural, Commercial
and Industrial as well as Judicial Affairs.”79 With the annexation, the number
of Japanese settlers and officials in Korea grew as well (Table 4.1).
Table 4.1: Number of Japanese living in Korea.80
Year Number of Japanese
 ,
 ,
 ,
At the same time, the number of policemen increased as well (Table 4.2), espe-
cially since the police force was turned into the “main instrument of Japanese
control in Korea.”81
Table 4.2: Number of policemen in colonial Korea.82
Year Number of Policemen
 ,
 ,
 ,
 ,
Regardless of the strict and close control of life in colonial Korea, the resistance
against Japanese rule on the peninsula did not totally vanish. However, it was
at the end of the First World War when massive resistance erupted and thereby
created a real stress test for the Japanese authorities in the colony. How the lat-
ter tried to assimilate the Korean population in the years between 1910 and the
First World War will now be taken into closer consideration.
 Robinson, Cultural Nationalism, p. 40.

 Kleiner, Korea, p. 30.
 Ibid., p. 31.
 Ibid.
 Ibid. and Chung-Shin Park, Protestantism and Politics in Korea, Seattle, WA 2003, p. 129.
4.3 Colonial Korea until the First World War
The first decade after the annexation by Japan is usually referred to as the
“dark period,”83 in which the Korean population, its traditions, its culture, and
their national sense of being an independent people were suppressed by Japa-
nese force. Yong-Chool Ha has emphasized that it is not easy to generalize the
colonial experience of the Korean people, which is why he remarked that “in
understanding colonial society it is essential to see the inherent contradictions
created by the conflicting needs of colonial rule and the intersectoral imbalance
or disequilibrium arbitrarily imposed by colonial control.”84 Ha further stressed
that “essential elements of Japanese colonialism in Korea include foreign domi-
nance, in which the domestic and numerical majority is controlled by a foreign
and numerical minority with the intent of economic and strategic exploitation
based on an overwhelming disparity in coercive force.”85 According to Ha’s fur-
ther elaboration, the Japanese tried to fully control the “Colonial Superstruc-
tural Space,” which is to be understood as “the space in which the colonial
authority attempts, within the inevitable constraints of material possibility, to
establish its hegemony over the colonized and to inaugurate institutional, soci-
etal, and ideological arrangements to implement and maintain such hege-
mony.”86 A centralized and omnipotent bureaucracy was one aspect of this
attempt, while the cultural assimilation of the Korean people, who had to speak
Japanese, worship the emperor, and give up their own national identity, was a
demanded consequence. In this regard, Japan was simply “aggressive, coloniz-
ing, and rapacious”87 when satisfying its own cravings for expansion at the ex-
pense of its East Asian neighbors.88
In 1910, the power struggle for Korea was decided when Japan won against
its competitors, i.e. China and Russia. Due to its military victories in 1895 and
1905, Japan had secured its power on the peninsula and could now exert it
without any foreign intervention. The relationship between the two countries
 Robinson, Cultural Nationalism, p. 42.

 Yong-Chool Ha, Colonial Rule and Social Change in Korea. The Paradox of Colonial Con-
trol, in: Hong Yung Lee, Yong-Chool Ha and Clark W. Sorensen (Eds.), Colonial Rule and Social
Change in Korea, 1910–1945, Seattle, WA 2013, pp. 39–75, here p. 39.
 Ibid., p. 43.
 Ibid., p. 47.
 Sang-Kyung Kwak and Hun-Chang Lee, Conditions of Economic Devvelopment in Korea in the
First Half of the Twentieth Century, in: Aiko Ikeo (Ed.), Economic Development in Twentieth-
Century East Asia. The International Context, London/New York 1997, pp. 75–85, here p. 75.
 Jinwung Kim, A History of Korea. From “Land of the Morning Calm” to States in Conflict,
Bllomington, IN 2012, p. 321.
was consequently marked by a sense of Japanese entitlement regarding the in-

clusion of the Korean territory in its future Asian Empire. Although generalizing
the economic developments in Korea is not recommended, in many ways,
“Japan had a one-way economic relationship with Korea and the utilization of
human and nonhuman resources was designed for the purpose of Japanese na-
tional strategy. Any economic relationships between Korea and Japan were fo-
cused on Japanese policy.”89 The colonial government and the authorities that
represented it were therefore acting in Seoul on behalf of orders that were sup-
posed to serve Tokyo more than the Korean population.90 Regardless of these
imperialist realities, the Japanese would argue that their actions were for the
greater good of Korea. Considering these issues, it is tragic that the Korean at-
tempts to modernize the country in the late 19th century failed, as this failure
was also responsible for the internal weakness that made the aggressive moves
of the Japanese possible. After 1910, however, the lives of the Korean people
would be tremendously transformed, yet this transformation would no longer
follow a genuine Korean interest.
The colonial government was probably the most intense and thorough form
of foreign penetration in the long and brutal history of colonialism and imperi-
alist expansion, as every angle of the Korean society was penetrated by the new
ruling power. Michael E. Robinson highlighted in this regard that, “[n]ot con-
tent with simple compliance, the colonial state not only dominated Korea fol-
lowing the usual paternalistic logic of colonialists, but they also believed they
could actually ‘assimilate’ Koreans culturally.”91 Using their experience from
Taiwan,92 the Japanese colonizers had a clear agenda to follow, and the author-
ities also “mobilized archeology, ethnography, and historical studies to justify
their rule in Korea as a matter of lifting up a wayward sibling culture and re-
turning it to its proper course as part of the destiny of the Yamato race.”93 As
“the first steward of the state-building process as governor general,”94 Terauchi
was in a powerful position and willing to do everything necessary to fulfill the
ambitions of Imperial Japan and the people that represented it. Appointed from
 Kwak and Lee, Conditions, p. 76.

 Kim, A History of Korea, p. 322.
 Robinson, Korea’s Twentieth-Century Odyssey, p. 36.
 Leo T. S. Ching, Becoming “Japanese”. Colonial Taiwan and the Politics of Identity Formation,
Berkeley, CA 2001; Chih-Ming Ka, Japanese Colonialism in Taiwan. Land Tenure, Development,
and Dependency, 1895–1945, London 2019; Ping-hui Liao and David Der-Wei Wang (Eds.), Taiwan
Under Japanese Colonial Rule, 1895–1945. History, Culture, Memory, New York, NY 2010.
 Robinson, Korea’s Twentieth-Century Odyssey, p. 36.
 Ibid., p. 37.
high army ranks – only Saitō Makoto (1858–1936), who served in this position
between 1919 and 1927 as well as between 1929 and 1931, was an admiral in the
Japanese navy before –, the governor-general was supposed to act under the
supervision of the Diet, the Home Ministry, and the Ministry of Colonial Affairs,
although the governor-general reported directly to the emperor and could
thereby circumvent any form of political control.95 The governor-general had a
powerful position beyond his political might because he ruled over more than
20 million subjects, could collect and control taxes, was the commander of the
Japanese Army and police in Korea, and directed the actions of the thousands
of bureaucrats who kept the machinery of colonial control running.
After the annexation, the main task was to keep the peninsula pacified and to
avoid the eruption of any nationalist or anti-Japanese protests. Once the guerilla
bands of the Righteous Army were suppressed and the former elites sufficiently
heavily bribed, the colonial government could rule relatively uncontested. Due to
“a blatantly fabricated plot to assassinate the governor general in 1911,”96 the Japa-
nese arrested around 700 Koreans, though only around 100 were eventually prose-
cuted, and just five were sentenced to spend 5–10 years in prison. This was “the
first major political show trial in the colony” and highlighted how easy it was to
bring people to trial. The police in Korea also acted relatively brutally, and, to-
gether with a “rigid, highly intrusive administrative colonialism,”97 they turned
the life of the common people into one marked by agony and fear. The police and
other representatives of the colonial government, as Robinson points out,
counted everything and created a myriad of regulations governing daily life from slaugh-
tering a worn-out draft animal to the placement of a family grave; they established new
land and family registers, health regulations, detailed sanitation procedures in the reor-
ganized city administrations, fishery regulations, rules governing water rights and irriga-
tion ditches, standard operating procedures for periodic markets, and licenses and
permission forms for just about everything else. The gendarmerie – swords dangling from
the men’s uniforms as symbols of their authority – was given summary powers to enforce
the regulations.98
At the same time, the legal regulations and punishments for Koreans and Japa-
nese who lived in Korea were different, e.g. with regard to whipping, which
was only used as a punishment for the former group. Public resistance was no
longer possible, and organizations like the New People’s Association (Sinmin-
hoe), which was organized by the intellectuals and social activists Shin Chae-
 Ibid.
 Ibid., p. 38.
 Ibid.
 Ibid.
ho, An Chang-ho (1878–1938), Park Eun-sik, and Lim Chi-jung (1880–1932), had
to go into hiding and continue their activities in secret. It was through educa-
tional means in particular that the association members tried to forge new na-
tionalist leaders for the future struggle against the Japanese, but their work was
not easy in the colonial environment.99 In the years after 1910, more and more
Koreans were consequently imprisoned by the Japanese authorities because the
latter feared a spread of Korean nationalism and anti-Japanese sentiments
across the peninsula (Table 4.3).
Table 4.3: The number of imprisoned Koreans

in the period 1911–1916.100
Year Number of Imprisoned Koreans
 ,
 ,
 ,
 ,
 ,
 ,
Since, during the “dark period,” Koreans were not allowed to join any political
organization or spend time engaged in activities that could be interpreted polit-
ically, religious institutions and churches, e.g. the Protestant Church, whose
missionaries would also link Korea to the outside world during the First World
War,101 became important spaces for political activism. Because the Japanese
had divided the colony into 13 provinces and a large number of colonial bu-
reaucrats and officers administered them locally, divided into cities and coun-
ties, there were not many alternatives left for the Korean population to organize
or exchange anti-Japanese thoughts.102 To avoid any threatening resistance, the
Japanese decision-makers also sent additional troops to the colony over the
years to tighten their grip there. It is therefore not surprising that Koreans
abroad, in the United States but also in Japan, would play an important role in
 For a discussion of Shin Chae-ho’s nationalist interpretations see Michael Robinson, Na-
tional Identity and the Thought of Sin Ch’aeho. Sadaejuŭi and Chuch’e in History and Politics,
in: The Journal of Korean Studies 5 (1984), pp. 121–142.
 Park, Protestantism, p. 130.
 A. Hamish Ion, The Cross and the Rising Sun, vol. 2: The British Protestant Movement in
Japan, Korea and Taiwan, 1865–1945, Waterloo, ON 2009, pp. 100–104.
 Kim, A History of Korea, p. 322.
the spread of nationalist ideas and the organization of Korean resistance,

which in a way culminated in March 1919.103
The economic structure of Korea was also adjusted to fit the Japanese de-
mands.104 To see how the Japanese changed the structures within the country,
it is important to take a short look at the land allotment schemes that existed
before the opening of Korea and its annexation by Japan. It has been assumed
that, in the 17th and 18th centuries, “about 10% of the landholders owned 40%
to 50% of the registered land, while middle or poor peasants comprising about
60% of the rural population controlled only about 10% to 20%.”105 The larger
landowners were, of course, yangban, whose social status was closely linked to
their possessions. While per capita landholding during the later years of the
Chosŏn dynasty had declined, peasants avoided poverty through “crop special-
ization, technological innovation, and labor intensification.”106 The opening of
Korea changed this situation, as export markets were now dictating domestic
demands, and rice and beans became the dominant crops in Korean fields, as
they “constituted more than 60% of total exports in the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries.”107 Before 1905, Japanese economic interests had al-
ready influenced the Korean agricultural setting considerably,108 but after
1900, and especially after 1910, the colonial interests of Japan would tremen-
dously alter the existent land tenure structures and decrease the percentage of
land that was actually owned by Koreans.
The Japanese authorities had already tried to take possession of Korean
lands before the official annexation but met fierce resistance. With the official
“integration” of Korea into the Japanese Empire, however, the governor-general
simply confiscated large parts of public land and farmland (around 65,000
acres) as well as forests (around 45,000 acres).109 Consequently, the colonial
annexation was accompanied by a “real land grab”110 since the Japanese also
took control of the Royal Household’s land possessions. Many of the new lands
were handed over to “Korean investors and private land companies such as the
 Kenneth M. Wells, Background to the March First Movement. Koreans in Japan, 1905–1919,
in: Korean Studies 13 (1989), pp. 5–21.
 Kim, A History of Korea, p. 324.
 Gi-Wook Shin, Peasant Protest and Social Change in Colonial Korea, Seattle, WA 1996, p. 22.
 Ibid., p. 25. Cotton, tobacco, silk, ginseng and other commercial crops were grown as a
consequence.
 Ibid., p. 28.
 Karl Moskowitz, The Creation of the Oriental Development Company. Japanese Illusions
Meet Korean Reality, in: Occasional Papers on Korea 2 (1974), pp. 73–121, here p. 77.
 Kim, A History of Korea, p. 324.
 Robinson, Korea’s Twentieth-Century Odyssey, p. 40.
Fuji Land Company or the huge semigovernmental Oriental Development Com-

pany.”111 From its start, the Japanese colonial policy was consequently deter-
mined by the economic interests of Japanese investment companies as well.
The loss of large parts of public land, the increased population, and volatile
rice prices harshened the lives of many Korean peasants in the following years,
such that, “[b]y the end of the colonial period, tenancy rates approached 80 per-
cent in the densely populated and most productive rice-growing areas of the
Cholla provinces in the southwest. And many peasants chose to leave the land
altogether, ending up in the cities in search of jobs.”112 The new system of land
possession and capitalist-oriented agriculture provided numerous advantages
for landowners, which is why the yangban naturally supported, or at least did
not resist, the Japanese measures. The farmers’ voices were simply not heard,
and the yangban maintained their position as the main landowning class in the
new colonial order.113
With their control of the forests, mines, and fisheries established, the Japa-
nese could also begin to effectively exploit Korea’s resources, and they would
soon also have tight control over the industrial sector and finances on the penin-
sula. The forests were of particular interest, which is why in May 1918, according
to a new law, all forest owners had to register their possessions, and all former
forest lands that had been owned by the Korean state were officially seized and
became the property of the governer-general.114 Eventually, the colonial authori-
ties took over more than 50% of the forests and farmland and thereby physically
controlled the country.115 When Japanese companies lumbered large quantities
of wood in the areas around the Yalu and Tumen rivers in the north of the coun-
try, the profits from the forests went to these companies as well.116 Similar devel-
opments can be observed with regard to the exploitation of the vast Korean
fishing grounds. In 1912, “the vast fishing grounds, held formerly by the Chosŏn
royal household and private Koreans, were placed under the administration of
the Government-General. The colonial government encouraged Japanese fisher-
men to immigrate to Korea.”117 With the more sophisticated Japanese fishing
 Ibid.
 Ibid.
 Kim, A History of Korea, p. 325.
 Ibid., p. 326.
 For a detailed study of Japan’s policies regarding the Korean forests see David Fedman,
Seeds of Control. Japan’s Empire of Forestry in Colonial Korea, Seattle, WA 2020.
 The Japanese interest in the forests in the northern peninsula was not new. See United
States Bureau of Manufactures (Ed.), Monthy Consular and Trade Reports 86, Washington,
D.C. 1908, pp. 91–92.
 Kim, A History of Korea, p. 326.
techniques, the number of fish that could be taken out of Korean waters in-
creased tremendously, but the fishing grounds were systematically overfished,
and the Japanese colonial policy thereby also harmed the ecosystem within the
borders of the former Korean waters.
The mineral resources in the north of Korea were similarly exploited by Jap-
anese mining companies, but these acts were legalized by a mining ordinance
in December 1915. The profits went to Japanese zaibatsu like Mitsui, which had
almost unlimited access to Korean ores.118 Although attempts to relativize the
economic gains colonialism created for Japan have been made, it can be said
without any doubt that the Korean colony was exploited in numerous ways for
the sake of Japanese prosperity in the first half of the 20th century.119 The fi-
nance sector was also regulated by a new Company Law (1910), and a close sur-
veillance of the banks – including the Bank of Chōsen, which was supposed to
become the colony’s central banking institution, and the Chōsen Industrial
Bank – secured the financing of projects related to the colony’s infrastructure,
like building railways, as well as ventures that would stimulate further Japa-
nese expansion toward the north, especially in Manchuria.120
As this short survey has already shown, “[v]irtually all industries were mo-
nopolized either by Japanese-based corporations or by Japanese corporations
in Korea.”121 and access to natural resources and financial transactions was
tightly controlled and increasingly limited for Koreans, whose enterprises were
closely monitored by the Japanese colonial authorities as well. Without the ap-
proval of the latter, a new company could not be founded, and Korean eco-
nomic activities were thereby systematically limited and even purposefully
underdeveloped. Considering underdevelopment an essential aspect of colonial
rule, Japan’s hold over Korea was consequently similar to those of Western
 Ibid.
 Mitsuhiko Kimura, The Economics of Japanese Imperialism in Korea, 1910–1939, in: The
Economic History Review 48 (1995) 3, pp. 555–574.
 Robinson, Korea’s Twentieth-Century Odyssey, p. 41. Also see Herbert P. Bix, Japanese
Imperialism and the Manchurian Economy, 1900–31, in: The China Quarterly 51 (1972),
pp. 425–443. Japan had actively applied a form of “railway imperialism.” See Janet Hunter,
Japanese Government Policy, Business Opinion and the Seoul–Pusan Railway, 1894–1906, in:
Modern Asian Studies 11 (1977) 4, pp. 573–599; Jun Uchida, “A Scramble for Freight”. The Poli-
tics of Collaboration along and across the Railway Tracks of Korea under Japanese Rule, in:
Comparative Studies in Society and History 51 (2009) 1, pp. 117–150. More broadly on the
“brokers of empire,” see Jun Uchida, Brokers of Empire. Japanese Settler Colonialism in Korea,
1876–1945, Cambridge, MA 2011.
 Kim, A History of Korea, p. 326.
imperialist powers in their respective colonies.122 It is therefore hardly surpris-

ing that more than 90% of all invested capital in Korea was in Japanese hands,
which is why arguments setting out the positive impact of Japanese colonialism
on Korea’s development – e.g. the increase of railroad lines from 677 miles in
1911 to 1,777 miles in 1930 – often seem to be quite absurd and only serve to
relativize the abuse of power to exploit the peninsula for the sake of Japanese
imperialism and the building of an East Asian empire.123 The railways in partic-
ular served the interest of the colonial government, as they 1) linked the south-
ern ports with the northern production and mining sites and 2) allowed troop
transports that would be essential for further Japanese expansion toward the
north.124
However, there was not only an economic side to Japanese colonialism in
Korea. “After the annexation of Korea, the Japanese were ever sensitive to the
education of the Koreans”125 to assimilate the Korean population as well as possi-
ble. Robinson clearly emphasized the Japanese aims in this regard when he
stated that “[f]rom the beginning of their colonial rule, the Japanese had in-
tended that Korea would not be absorbed just politically by the empire but that it
would also be culturally assimilated (dōka), to become one with Japan in all re-
spects.”126 To secure “one voice” with regard to the intellectual and educational
efforts aimed at the Korean population, the Japanese authorities limited the ac-
cessibility of information by issuing a Newspaper Law and a Publication Law in
1907 and 1909, respectively. Once the annexation was completed, access to any
kind of unfiltered information became more and more restricted, and, as men-
tioned before, religious organizations and meetings remained the only space for
Koreans’ political activism. The colonial government also built large Shintō
shrines in Korean cities to prepare for the locals’ assimilation on this level as
well, although this policy did not go uncontested. The cultural assimilation pol-
icy was also expressed by architectural changes when the former capital of the
Korean dynasty was turned into a modern city space that was supposed to echo
Japanese achievements.127
 Christopher Chase-Dunn, Jackie Smith, Patrick Manning and Andrej Grubačić, Remem-
bering Immanuel Wallerstein, in: Journal of World-Systems Research 26 (2020) 1, pp. 5–8, here
p. 5. For theoretical considerations and reflections about colonial underdevelopment also see
Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Washington, D.C. 1982, pp. 1–30.
 Kim, A History of Korea, p. 327.
 Robinson, Korea’s Twentieth-Century Odyssey, p. 43.
 Kim, A History of Korea, p. 328.
 Robinson, Korea’s Twentieth-Century Odyssey, p. 43.
 Henry, Assimilating Seoul, pp. 1 and 29.
Step by step, the intention was to reinterpret Korean national history such
that it would fit better with the Japanese narratives of unity and pan-Asian soli-
darity, although the latter were exclusively understood according to their pro-
Japanese interpretation. Between 1932 and 1937, a multi-volume History of Korea
(Chōsenshi) was published, and, according to Robinson, it “rewrote the entire
history of the peninsula into an elaborate justification of colonial rule.”128 Korean
historians and intellectuals tried to counter such reinterpretations, but they often
did not have the means or the access to the popular audiences to actively resist
Japan’s attempt to rewrite Korea’s past in the name of its future assimilation. For
the colonial administration, the task was to foster the acceptance of the idea that
the Japanese policy in Korea was for the greater good of its people. According to
their narrative, “[a]n incompetent Korean government had stifled Korean poten-
tial,” but now, “[p]lacing the people under a benevolent government would
allow them to realize their potential.”129 Regardless of such assumptions, there
were also debates about the proper assimilation policies and the overall potential
for such a task to be successful. The Japanese ethnohistorian Kita Sadakichi
(1871–1939),130 who was tied to the Ministry of Education, compared the Koreans
to the Ainu131 and argued that “assimilation was appropriate because it repre-
sented a return to the historical, and natural, relationship that the two peoples
once shared.”132
While those in favor of a fast assimilation process were particularly fond of
their position and had high hopes after 1910, as this task could now be taken
into full consideration by the colonial authorities, there were also those who
cautioned against moving too fast, warning that “[d]espite the apparent ease
that Japanese imagined in the people’s assimilation, Koreans would first have
to demonstrate their ability to rise to Japanese standards before they could be
accepted into their inner circles.”133 After the Second World War, the historian
Hatada Takashi (1908–1994) remarked in relation to Japan’s assimilation at-
tempts that
 Robinson, Korea’s Twentieth-Century Odyssey, p. 44.

 Mark E. Caprio, Japanese Assimilation Policies in Colonial Korea, 1910–1945, Seattle, WA
2009, p. 81.
 Etsuko H. Kang, Kita Sadakichi (1871–1939) on Korea. A Japanese Ethno‐Historian and
the Annexation of Korea in 1910, in: Asian Studies Review 21 (1997) 1, pp. 41–60.
 The indigenous people of Japan that had been forcefully assimilated. Brett L. Walker, The
Conquest of Ainu Lands. Ecology and Culture in Japanese Expansion, 1590–1800, Berkeley, CA
2009; Sasaki Toshikazu, Ainu shi no jidai he. Yoreki shō, Sapporo 2013.
 Caprio, Japanese Assimilation Policies, p. 83.
 Ibid., 85.
[d]espite the rhetoric of Korean-Japanese similarity provided by participants in the debate

over assimilation policy, those painting images of Koreans portrayed the people in terms
only slightly more encouraging than those that predated annexation. Koreans remained
an underdeveloped people trapped in the distant past, a spiritless people in desperate
need of enlightened government to awaken them to present reality. While some saw po-
tential in the Korean people, the views of difference in others hardened as they observed
one of the results of annexation: Japanese and Koreans residing in closer proximity.134
Some Japanese also had doubts about Koreans’ rapid assimilation, since they
were considered to be too different for immediate success in this regard. The poli-
tician Arakawa Gorō (1865–1944) had warned in 1906 that although Koreans “all
look just like the Japanese,” they would not match the intellectual level of their
Japanese neighbors.135
The Japanese education policy in colonial Korea was consequently oriented
toward achieving an assimilation in the future, and “Japanese reformers and
educators thus sought to reorganize Korean education around a new pedagogy
founded on moral instruction and disciplinary techniques”136 that addressed
the demands and regulations of Imperial Ordinance No. 229 of August 1911. Ter-
auchi requested the schools in Korea to be classified according to three levels
or categories, namely futsū (common), jitsugyō (industrial), and senmon (spe-
cialized).137 Boys and girls would spend four years in primary education and
four and three years, respectively, in a secondary educational institution after
that. Koreans and Japanese were also separated within the schools, and only
the latter could also send their children to Japan to get schooled there. In 1911,
school textbooks were sanctioned and needed to be pre-approved by the colo-
nial government to ensure the accuracy of the content that was being taught.
The educational experiences of many Korean children and youths were conse-
quently tremendously impacted by the colonial reality: “Japanese language
study was compulsory in all accredited schools, and the Korean secondary sys-
tem stressed vocational and technical education. The only higher liberal arts
education available to Koreans was in private religious or secular colleges; in
short, opportunities for Koreans in Korea to study law, medicine, engineering,
and the humanities remained very limited.”138 Only a few Korean students
 Cited in ibid., p. 89. Also see Takashi Hatada, Nihon to chōsen, Tokyo 1965.
 Cited in ibid., p. 92.
 Theodore Jun Yoo, The Politics of Gender in Colonial Korea. Education, Labor, and
Health, 1910–1945, Berkeley, CA 2008, p. 61. On a discussion of the Japanese education policy
in colonial Korea also see Caprio, Japanese Assimilation Policies, pp. 92–100.
 Yoo, The Politics of Gender, p. 61.
 Robinson, Korea’s Twentieth-Century Odyssey, p. 45.
could afford to enroll in higher education institutions in Japan or other foreign

countries, although the Korean independence movement would later especially
rely on these students who had been part of the national diaspora abroad.
The reasons to leave Korea were numerous, but white-collar professions in
particular were hardly accessible for Koreans because the financial sector, trad-
ing companies, public schools, railways, and the colonial bureaucracy were
mostly dominated by Japanese or at least pro-Japanese personnel. In addition,
a secondary degree of Japanese provenance was often necessary to have the
possibility to work in one of these jobs. The small Korean elite was conse-
quently kept that way through educational means.139 One could consequently
argue that the nationalist and anti-Japanese eruption of 1919 was related to in-
creasing social tension, as especially a younger and probably more radical gen-
eration of Koreans realized that the colonial order would not grant them similar
access to a secure and prosperous future. Similarly to in China, the hopes for
change in the aftermath of the First World War would consequently generate
what nationalist forces perceived as a window of opportunity to loosen the
yoke of Japanese colonialism and the tight control of almost every aspect that
had determined life in Korean society since 1910. In Korea itself, it was, as men-
tioned before, churches and religious organizations that allowed gatherings
and discussions in a relatively secure space that the Japanese authorities could
not control. The “Protestant church came to serve as a place for solace, a politi-
cal forum, a communication network, and an organizational base for Korean
nationalist activities,”140 a fact that was also related to the Christian missionary
history in Korea, where many schools for girls and women had been opened by
foreign missionaries since the late 1880s.141 In the colonial era, the Protestant
Church’s influence was quite important, as Chung-shin Park highlights:
The Protestant church’s organizational potential at the time was useful for Korean nation-
alists, but dangerous for the colonial government. The church contained thousands of
pastors and church workers who led some 200,000 adherents and more than 2,000
churches in the peninsula. There were almost one thousand church-affiliated schools,
and Protestants published their own newspapers and periodicals. These organizations
were arranged in a hierarchy, and thus were connected closely in terms of organization
and church administration. The Protestant church provided a nationwide communication
 Ibid., p. 46.

 Park, Protestantism and Politics, p. 117.
 Walthall, From Private to Public Patriarchy, p. 455. On the relation between missionary
work and geneder norms in colonial Korea also see Hyaeweol Choi, An American Concubine in
Old Korea. Missionary Discourse on Gender, Race, and Modernity, in: Frontiers: A Journal of
Women Studies 25 (2004) 3, pp. 134–161.
network. According to Ch’oe Myŏngsik, a political activist at the time, Korean patriotic
activities indeed proceeded in and through churches, and the Protestant church was the
best meeting place and political forum for nationalist activities. It is natural that a Korean
nationalist leadership was formed in this religious community.142
Church leaders had also been active in the Sinminhoe, a connection that created
close ties between church and nationalist activism even before the colonial pe-
riod officially began in 1910. The Sinminhoe’s members secretly met at the San-
dong Church in Seoul, and under Japanese colonial rule, church meetings turned
out to become camouflaged resistance activities for those nationalists who had to
act without being recognized by the Japanese colonial authorities as political rad-
icals. In addition to such forms of church support, missionaries also intervened
by making their own comments on the colonial order when they “interpreted the
Scripture deliberately to reflect the current political situation. The church taught
that the exodus of the people of Israel from Egypt could be likened to the need
for Koreans to free themselves from Japan. This was an instance of political lan-
guage in the guise of religious teaching.”143 Regardless of these numerous forms
of resistance related to Korean church organizations, it was first and foremost the
nationalists abroad who tried to draw attention to the situation within colonial
Korea, especially at the end of the First World War.
There were many Korean nationalists who were either forced to leave the
Korean peninsula or proactively chose to do so in the aftermath of the Russo-
Japanese War and, in particular, from 1910. This decision was also influenced
by the absence of organizational structures and activities that could be under-
taken there. The Japanese had control of the press, prohibited political organi-
zations, and anyone who acted suspiciously was probably soon to be surveilled
by the police. Therefore, as Robinson worded it, “the situation within Korea ap-
peared hopeless”144 to many political activists, who instead chose to continue
their activities in exile in Manchuria, Shanghai, or Vladivostok. In the Manchur-
ian context, they could use their access to land in the region to support the
cause of the resistance economically, and military bases could even be erected
there. The most prominent example of such activities is probably the Military
School of the New Rising (Sinhŭng mugwan hakkyo), where, in the late 1910s,
Korean independence fighters would be trained. Similar training facilities were
established on Russian soil during the First World War.145
 Park, Protestantism and Politics, p. 120.

 Ibid., p. 131.
 Robinson, Cultural Nationalism, p. 41.
 Kim, A History of Korea, p. 329.
Other Korean nationalists organized themselves in Shanghai, where a Mutual

Assistance Society (Tongjesa) was founded in 1912. In 1919, the New Korea Youth
Corps (Sinhan ch’ŏngnyŏndan) was established, and Kim Kyu-sik (1881–1950)
chose to travel to Paris to attend the peace conference there and to make the voi-
ces of Korea heard.146 Others like Syngman Rhee (1875–1965), who would become
the first president of South Korea in 1948,147 were active in the United States.
Rhee founded the Korean National Association in 1909 in Hawai’i, and, a year
later, he received a doctoral degree in political science from Princeton University
after having studied at George Washington University and Harvard University.
His close ties to the intellectual and politically influential circles of the United
States helped him to publicize the situation of the Korean people, and he hoped
that diplomatic means would eventually help to regain Korea’s independence. Re-
gardless of his being abroad, Rhee was elected as the first president of the Korean
Provisional Government, which was announced in Shanghai in April 1919.148 In
August of the same year, he created the Korean Commission in Washington, DC,
an organization that was supposed to lobby for Korea’s independence. Although it
was not successful with regard to this aim, Rhee became probably the most well-
known Korean abroad, and his popularity would play an important role as South
Korea’s president after the end of the Second World War.
While Rhee had argued for a diplomatic solution, others like Park Yong-
man (1881–1928) demanded a violent uprising against Japanese rule, and, like
others in Manchuria or Russia, he established a military training school in Ha-
wai’i. There, the Korean activists were split into two camps, one supporting
Rhee, one supporting Park. However, these were not the only alternatives: An
Chang-ho (1878–1938) founded the Society for the Fostering of Educational Ac-
tivities (Hŭngsadan) in San Francisco in 1913 because he believed that the
strengthening of a particularly Korean education would help spark national
sentiments and activate the necessary powers for an anti-Japanese liberation.
While Korean expatriates were united by their hope to end the colonial rule of
Japan in their home country, they did not share the same ideas about the
 Ibid., pp. 329–330. Timothy S. Lee called Kim one of the “most important figures in
modem Korean history.” Timothy S. Lee, A Political Factor in the Rise of Protestantism in
Korea. Protestantism and the 1919 March First Movement, in: Church History 69 (2000) 1,
pp. 116–142.
 On his life and impact see Young Ick Lew, The Making of the First Korean President. Syng-
man Rhee’s Quest for Independence, 1875–1948, Honolulu, HI 2013; David Fields, Foreign Friends.
Syngman Rhee, American Exceptionalism, and the Division of Korea, Lexington, KY 2019.
 Kim, A History of Korea, p. 330.
4.4 The First World War and the Chances for a Wilsonian Moment 133
means and methods to achieve it.149 That the influence of those political acti-
vists who worked outside of Korea between 1910 and 1919 should not be taken
lightly is obvious when one considers that there were Korean immigrants to the
United States who returned to their home country in 1919 to help to organize
the March First Movement because they wanted to support the national struggle
against Japan.150 That even people who had lived abroad for years were willing
and eager to return to Korea to participate in the demonstrations for Korean in-
dependence was also related to the fact that, almost ten years after the annex-
ation by Japan, the First World War and the post-war quest for a new political
order that was supposed to determine a better and more peaceful future had
created an opportunity many Koreans considered suitable to reclaim what had
been taken from them due to Japan’s expansion since the end of the Russo-
Japanese War: the right of self-determination.
4.4 The First World War and the Chances for a Wilsonian
Moment
The First World War, although it was definitely not solely a European war, was
not really a military concern for Korea. Japan’s involvement was also relatively
limited, both geographically and with regard to the time span for actual mili-
tary activities by Japanese troops. Nevertheless, as recent studies have clearly
emphasized, the war was well perceived in Japan and definitely had an impact
on the country that should not be underestimated and goes way beyond eco-
nomic developments.151 In Korea, the “sudden outbreak of the Korean indepen-
dence movement shook the Japanese empire to its core,”152 especially since the
colonial authorities were totally surprised at such massive protests throughout
the whole peninsula.
 Ibid.
 Ji-Yeon Yuh, Moving within Empires: Korean Women and Trans-Pacific Migration, in:
Catherine Ceniza Choy and Judy Tzu-Chun Wu (Eds.), Gendering the Trans-Pacific World, Lei-
den 2017, pp. 107–113, here p. 108.
 The recently published and very important study about Japan and the First World War by
Jan Schmidt shows clearly the transnational impact during and after the war. Jan Schmidt,
Nach dem Krieg ist vor dem Krieg. Medialisierte Erfahrungen des Ersten Weltkriegs und
Nachkriegsdiskurse in Japan (1914–1919), Frankfurt am Main 2021.
 Jun Uchida, Brokers of Empire. Japanese and Korean Business Elites in Colonial Korea,
in: Caroline Elkins and Susan Pedersen (Eds.), Settler Colonialism in the Twentieth Century.
Projects, Practices, Legacies, London: Routledge, 2005), pp. 153–170, here p. 155.
These countrywide protests were stimulated or aroused by a “combination of

catalytic factors”153 that will be discussed later in some detail. One main element,
however, was the perception of US President Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points
that sparked the idea that Korean independence was in reach if sufficient people
in the country expressed their wish to be freed from the Japanese yoke of imperi-
alism. Korean nationalism had aimed for independence since 1910, but it was
only in 1919 that the struggles of oppositional forces inside and outside Korea
were able to link their own activities to an international idea that not only stimu-
lated the hopes of the masses but also united them to actively demand indepen-
dence for a sovereign Korean nation. The “heavy-handed control measures”154 of
the Japanese colonial authorities might have limited the possibilities for unified
action from the different nationalist organizations and their respective representa-
tives, but they had also alienated the masses of the Korean population. Therefore,
as Robinson expertly formulated it, “Korea resembled an enormous pressure
cooker,”155 and in 1919, the steam had to get out. While some Koreans had tried to
search for their own possibilities for reforms, change, and a future marked by com-
mon international ideas about modernity,156 the search for identity, e.g. the discus-
sions about the “new woman” (Sin yŏja), also stimulated reflections about the idea
of the Korean nation and independence. Prominent women activists from Japan
like Yosano Akiko (1878–1942) and Hiratsuka Raichō (1886–1971) became role
models for some women in Korea, but at the same time, the critical thinking about
gender roles also took place in a colonial context that naturally became an aspect
of the intellectual struggle. Korean feminist Na Hyesŏk (1896–1948) criticized the
Japanese ideal of the “good wife and wise mother” that had been prominent since
the Meiji period and wrote about the “Ideal Woman” in 1914:
I also believe that it is not wise to only pursue the customary ideal of “good wife, wise
mother” (yangch’ŏ hyŏnmo). It seems that that ideal is one of the favorite marketing strat-
egies used by teachers. The man is both husband and father; but I have never heard of
any curriculum that emphasizes “good husband, wise father” (yangbu hyŏnbu). It is only
women whose conduct as good spouse and wise parent is reinforced through our educa-
tion, making women into mere appendages of men. Such an education does not develop
the mind. Also, the idea of a warm and compliant womanhood, a necessary point of pro-
paganda to turn women into slaves, cannot be an ideal for women.157
 Ibid.
 Robinson, Cultural Nationalism, p. 43.
 Ibid.
 Hyaeweol Choi, New Women in Colonial Korea. A Sourcebook, London 2012, p. 26; Yoo,
Politics of Gender, p. 3.
 Na Hyesŏk, “Isang chŏk puin,” Hakchigwang 3 (December 1914), pp. 13–14, in: Choi, New
Women, pp. 28–29, here p. 29.
She consequently demanded a drastic change with regard to the education of

women, as Na demanded nothing less than enlightenment all Korean women:
Until now, women have been raised in the ideology that instructs them to devote themselves
entirely to the welfare of men. They are so accustomed to the domestic arena that they can-
not tell right from wrong in matters that are outside of the private domain. Given this, how
can a woman evolve into an ideal woman? Of course, she needs knowledge, skills, and artis-
tic talent. She should be prepared to judge right from wrong in any matter, based on her
common sense. She should be self-aware, with the desire to discover her unique abilities in
realizing certain goals in life. She must understand contemporary thought, knowledge, and
sensibility. Only then can she become a pioneer, equipped with all the power and qualifica-
tions that she needs in order to be an enlightened, ideal woman.158
The inaugural editorial of the journal New Woman (Sin yŏja) declared in 1920
that the experience of the First World War would demand a total reconfigura-
tion of human society, not only in Korea, but in the world, where imperialism
and exploitation had caused enormous destruction:
Reform (kaejo)! This is the outcry of humankind after painfully grieving over the terrifying
gunshots of the past five years [referring to World War I]. Liberation (haebang)! This is
the call of women who have been confined to the deep, dark, inner chambers for thou-
sands of years. Excessively greedy ambition and egoism caused the war, breaking the
peace of springtime and bringing mountains of death and oceans of blood. This war op-
posed the will of heaven and the correct path of humankind. . . . Reform! Reform! This
call for reform is echoed high and loud from every corner of the world. Truly the time has
come for change. Ah, the new era has arrived. Time has come to break away from old
things and bring in new things. The time has come to throw off the wrong-headed, evil
practices of the past. The time has come to reform all things.159
The Japanese authorities were only interested in effective colonial bureaucracy

and the strong assimilation of the Koreans; they did not pay attention to such
thoughts about reforms. In 1915, the governor-general of Korea organized the
Chosŏn Industrial Exposition, which “was clearly an embodiment of colonial
hegemony”160 and would prove, first and foremost to the Koreans themselves,
what Japanese colonial rule had done for the people. The exposition was visited
by more than one million people, who were supposed to witness the greatness
of the Japanese Empire and come to appreciate the fact that, for half a decade,
Koreans had been part of this empire. In an evaluation of this exhibition, Hong
Kal argues that “the visually oriented spectacle of the 1915 exposition was far
 Ibid.
 “Ch’anggansa,” Sin yŏja 1 (1920), pp. 2–3, in: Choi, New Women, pp. 29–30.
 Hong Kal, Aesthetic Constructions of Korean Nationalism. Spectacle, Politics and History,
London/New York 2011, p. 14.
more effective in reaching out to the masses and relate them to the idea of na-
tion than any other medium available at that time.”161 The official report of the
event further emphasized the Japanese narrative of a “civilizing mission” when
it stated that
[s]ince the decline of Korea from ancient times . . . the country’s destiny was in danger.
Koreans had been suffering, its industry had deteriorated, and its land had been ruined.
In 1910, the empire set up the Government General of Korea, and . . . for the first time,
the spirit of the country [Korea] was restored. However, it is not easy to awaken people
from a hundred years of slumber. Under the blessing of the emperor, people have now
realized the need to cultivate fields, plant trees, open ports, disseminate education, and
improve morality. By the order of the emperor, the Government General has accomplished
its colonial mission for the last five years. . . . It is worthwhile to compare the present
achievement with the past. . . . Therefore, the Government General has organized the Ko-
rean Industrial Exposition.162
The exposition in particular tried to diminish the value of Korean precolonial pro-
duction through a comparison with Japanese goods: “The comparison was also
made between customary objects as they were invested with meanings of the old
and the new: the old signified the Chosŏn era and the new signified colonial
Korea or Japan by extension.”163 Japan, which had profited economically during
the war years, displayed its full capacity as an industrialized role model whose
impact on Korea was supposedly an important necessity for the country’s own
modernization, albeit within the realm and the realities of the Japanese Asian Em-
pire. As Hong Kal, in her detailed analysis of the exhibition, further emphasizes,
[t]his rhetoric was also evident in the Reference Hall (Ch’amgogwan) and the Machinery
Hall (Kigyegwan) in which advanced industrial instruments, products and machines from
Japan (and a few from Taiwan) were displayed as a visual witness of Japanese modernity
and at the same time served as a visual reference for Koreans to follow in the course of
progress under the guidance of Japanese colonialism.164
This “principle of hierarchical comparison located colonial Korea within a linear

evolutionary trajectory of history in which Korea moved from its pre-industrial to
an industrial phase under the tutelage of Japan.”165 The exhibition, in a way,
proves that the Japanese colonial authorities considered their assimilation policy
to have been successful, and this success was to be displayed to the visitors. At
 Ibid., p. 15.

 Cited in ibid., p. 16.
 Ibid., p. 22.
 Ibid.
 Ibid.
the same time, they believed a silent agreement based on the admiration of Ja-
pan’s achievements had been reached. It is probably because of this belief that
the policy of assimilation’s further course would remain uncontested that the
eruption of nationalist demands for independence in 1919 initially shocked the
Japanese.
It may be that the authorities had simply been unaware of this possibility,
but with regard to the criticism directed at them, the colonial government was
unable to understand that, regardless of the public absence of protests, disagree-
ment with the Japanese rule was strong among many Koreans. The censors had
tried during the First World War to keep any discussion about the idea of the
self-determination of nations out of Korean newspapers, but Wilson’s Fourteen
Points166 were popular and sparked hope for a new era in Korea’s history with a
return to independence.167 Wilson’s ideas also gained momentum because the
aforementioned Korean expatriates were spreading the word about them and
linking these ideals that had been formulated in a Kantian tradition with the am-
bition to regain the right to self-determination from Japan.168 It was the Korean
nationalists who looked at the European post-war developments and the Ameri-
can President and “adopted the Wilsonian vision of a new international order as
an unprecedented opportunity for Korea to emerge – or to reemerge, as they saw
it – as an independent, equal member in the expanding community of na-
tions.”169 What has been described as a “dark period” was consequently ended
by an ex occidente lux, personified by the academic and champion of democracy,
Woodrow Wilson. That the Korean nationalists were inspired by his thoughts
and demands was in a way also due to Japanese restrictions, because “Korean
students, encouraged to attend Japanese universities as part of the assimilation
policy, had access to literature promoting liberal ideas and criticizing Japanese
rule that the military authorities had banned from Korea itself.”170
 Woodrow Wilson, Fourteen Points Speech, in: Arhurt S. Link et al. (Eds.), The Papers of
Woodrow Wilson, Princeton, NJ 1984, vol. 45, p. 536. Also see Trygve Throntveit, The Fable of
the Fourteen Points. Woodrow Wilson and National Self-Determination, in: Diplomatic History
35, no. 3 (2011), pp. 445–481.
 Erez Manela, The Wilsonian Moment. Self-Determination and the International Origins of
Anticolonial Nationalism, Oxford 2007, p. 119.
 Robert Bernasconi, Ewiger Friede und totaler Krieg, in: Alfred Hirsch and Pascal Delhom
(Eds.), Denkwege des Friedens. Aporien und Perspektiven, München 2019, pp. 50–70, here
p. 61. The connection between Kant and Wilson was already emphasized by contemporary au-
thors. See, among others, Klaus Vorländer, Kant und der Gedanke des Völkerbundes, Leipzig
1919, pp. 67–85.
 Manela, The Wilsonian Moment, p. 120.
 Ibid., p. 125.
The Korean National Association in the United States was important in this
regard, especially as its early leading members not only provided important in-
formation about the events related to the First World War but also because, since
the early 1910s, they had tried to keep Korea and its fate as a topic in the public
debates of the United States. In December 1918, an open letter by the association
asked Koreans in North America to stay united and prepare for an independence
struggle that would soon bring Korea back into the community of sovereign na-
tion-states. It was furthermore argued at a meeting in San Francisco that “in light
of Wilson’s vision for the postwar settlement, Koreans should submit a petition
to the peace conference after the war and make an appeal to the United States
and to Wilson himself to recognize Korean independence.”171 Syngman Rhee,
among others, was selected to be part of a delegation to the peace conference,
where the representatives of the Korean cause were to make sure that the matter
really got the attention it needed. The delegates also informed President Wilson
early on of their trip to Paris and their intentions, and it is not surprising that
they put all their hopes on the United States and its leading representative at
that time. As Erez Manela explains, the perceptions of Wilson and US democracy
were decisive for the Korean expatriates’ assumption that their cause at the
peace conference would best be served by the American delegation:
As with other anticolonial activists, Korean perceptions of Wilson and their hopes for his
support drew on long-standing views of the United States as an exemplar of modern civi-
lization and the power most sympathetic toward colonial aspirations for independence.
Among Korean nationalists, moreover, such perceptions of the United States were more
common and more deeply entrenched than among other colonial peoples, given the im-
pact of Protestant missions in Korea and the prominence among expatriate activists of
men who studied and lived in the United States.172
Around the same time, there were also activities in Japan, where Korean stu-
dents did not just passively observe the events but intended to use the opening
window of opportunity at the end of the war to strengthen the chances of a suc-
cessful attempt to regain independence.
Chang Tŏksu (1895–1947), a prominent Korean student and nationalist activ-
ist in Japan, met with Yŏ Unhyŏng (1886–1947), who ran a school for Koreans in
Shanghai, where they established the New Korea Youth Association that was
supposed to coordinate the work of Korean student exiles in China and Japan to
use their power to demand independence. They also hoped to use their contact
 Ibid.
 Ibid., p. 127.
with the American businessman Charles R. Crane (1858–1939)173 to get in touch

with Wilson, especially since Crane had outlined the idea of self-determination at
several events he spoke at in China.174 Like the Korean National Association in the
US, the New Korea Youth Association elected a delegate to be sent to Paris. Kim
Kyu-sik, an orphan raised and trained by the US missionary Horace G. Underwood
(1859–1916) and who had studied in the United States – at Roanoke College, VA
and later Princeton University –, was elected, and although there were numerous
issues that made it almost impossible for him to get to Paris, he managed to travel
there with a Chinese passport and under a false name.175 Another organization,
the Korean Youth Independence Association, which had been organized by Ko-
rean students in Japan, also became active during the peace talks that were held
in Paris. The students wanted to do something that would draw the international
community’s attention to the Korean cause, which is why the writer Yi Kwang-su
(1892–1950) was requested to draft a declaration of Korean independence. On
8 February 1919, the declaration was read out loud in front of the YMCA building
in Tokyo.176 The text was then sent by other Korean activists through their Chinese
channels to Korea, where it found a fruitful ground and much attention in the na-
tionalist circles. The American consul general in Korea described the situation
there in January 1919 as follows:
There can be no doubt that the present general movement throughout the world looking
towards the self-determination of peoples, and particularly of the subject races, has pro-
duced its effect on the thought of the people in this country. At the outset of the war there
was a strong undercurrent among the Koreans of hostility to the Allies, a feeling that
arose from a not unnatural antagonism to Japan, one of the Allies. As the war progressed,
however, and the ultimate aims of the Allies were more carefully and fully stated, those
Koreans who are accustomed to look beyond immediate conditions in their own country
and to view affairs here in light of world conditions began to see that they might also be
affected in no adverse manner by the victory of the Allies.177
The situation was then further intensified by the death of Kojong, the former
Korean emperor who had been forced to abdicate his throne in 1907 by the Jap-
anese. William Massy Royds (1843–1919), the British consul-general in Seoul, re-
ported in early March about the interrelationship of this event with the March
 On Crane’s life and activities see Norman E. Saul, The Life and Times of Charles R. Crane,
1858–1939. American Businessman, Philanthropist, and a Founder of Russian Studies in Amer-
ica, Lanham, MD 2013.
 Manela, The Wilsonian Moment, p. 128.
 Ibid., p. 129.
 Kim, A History of Korea, p. 332.
 Cited in Manela, The Wilsonian Moment, p. 131.
First Movement, stating that “His Highness’ death . . . called forth remarkable
manifestations of grief throughout the Peninsula”178 and that
Everywhere the ex-Emperor is spoken of as a martyr in his country’s cause, the idea being
that he took his own life to prevent his son’s marriage, and a popularity, which had rather
waned since his abdication, was revived tenfold in his death. For many days immediately
following the event, crowds of people assembled daily outside his palace, and prostrated
themselves on mats, weeping loudly, and the whole nation went into mourning.179
The preparations for the funeral coincided with the massive protests on 1 March
1919 that would find their place in the history books as the March First Movement.
In his first report thereupon, William Massy Royds made this interrelationship be-
tween the immediate events in Korea and the and the prepared declaration of in-
dependence clear when he stated that
[t]wo days before the funeral, a so called demonstration of independence took place in
several parts of Seoul and in many large centres in the country simultaneously on a con-
siderable scale. The city was then full of people from all parts of the country, who had
been arriving for some time in large numbers, and the principal demonstration took place
in front of the palace where the ex-Emperor’s body was lying . . . several hundreds of stu-
dents suddenly rushed the guards at the palace gate, and burst into the grounds wildly
cheering their declaration of independence. No attempt was made by them to use force,
and fortunately no weapons were used by the police or soldiers, with the result that the
demonstrators withdrew without any damage being done and dispersed in smaller bands
to different parts of the city, where similar outbreaks had occurred.180
After Kojong’s sudden death, rumors spread that he had been poisoned by the
Japanese. The funeral also caused many Koreans to travel to Seoul to pay their
tribute to the former emperor of Korea. This large influx of people made nation-
alist leaders debate the possibilities of how to use the current situation for the
sake of Korean independence. The March First Movement would eventually
unite the Korean intellectuals and the masses in their struggle to regain na-
tional freedom from Japan, which supposedly had the support of the interna-
tional community and, in particular, of the United States.181
 William Massy Royds, British Consulate-General, Seoul to Sir W. Conyngham Greene,
H.M. Ambassador, Tokio, March 4, 1919. FO-262-1406, p. 1.
 Ibid.
 Ibid., pp. 1–2.
 For a short summary of the March First Movement see Kim, A History of Korea,
pp. 331–334.
4.5 The March First Movement
Korean students in Japan had witnessed the local rice riots in the aftermath of
the First World War and probably also realized that anti-Japanese sentiments in
China had been on the rise since 1915. These observations, in addition to the
wishes for an international order that had been expressed by US President Wil-
son and many others, might have encouraged them in early 1919 to move to-
ward more concrete actions to regain Korean independence, especially a public
declaration of it in the first place. On 1 March 1919, thousands of Koreans fol-
lowed their example and marched through the streets of Korean towns, de-
manding freedom and national sovereignty. The outburst had, in addition,
been stimulated by the harsh assimilation policy of the colonial government
and the Japanese suppression of the Korean population.182 In this light, it is cor-
rect to say that “[t]he disaster for the Japanese of the March First movement
proved the failure of their initial colonial policy, and for Korea it signaled the
maturity of the nationalist movement.”183 The mass protests were “a defining
moment in modern Korean history,” and they remain an important focal point
within the Korean nationalist memory even today, as they presented “a shining
moment of national unity during the long dark night of Japanese rule.”184
Japan was unable to contain the spread of information about the events within
and outside of Korea, and, as part of a global protest wave against imperialism
at the end of the First World War, the March First Movement countered the Jap-
anese narrative of progress and unity within the Japanese Empire, especially in
its colonial possessions. The Korean declaration of independence showed the
unity of its people and their wish to get rid of the imperialist yoke of Japanese
rule.
While radical students were part of the movement’s preparation, the major-
ity of its leadership had a religious background, as the churches and other reli-
gious organizations had been, as described before, the main organizational
units for Korean resistance and nationalist activism since 1910. Information
about the developments in international politics had made its way into the
country through the Koreans living abroad, and the Wilsonian moment had
sparked nationalist ambitions within the religious organizations that the time
to claim independence had come. Originally, the protests were supposed to
take place on the day of Kojong’s funeral, 3 March 1919, but the fear that the
 Caprio, Japanese Assimilation Policies, pp. 111–112.

 Robinson, Cultural Nationalism, p. 43.
 Robinson, Korea’s Twentieth-Century Odyssey, p. 47.
Japanese police could prevent the plot caused the organizers to speed things
up. The official declaration of independence itself had been signed by 33 lead-
ing Christian, Buddhist, and Ch’ŏndogyo religious leaders.185 The proclamation
document clearly stated as follows:
We proclaim, herewith, Korea an independent state and her people free. We announce it
to the nations of the world and so make known the great truth of the equality of all hu-
manity. We also make it known to our posterity for ten thousand generations that they
may hold this right as a free people for all time. With the authority and dignity of 5,000
years of history and the devotion and loyalty of 20,000,000 people behind us, we make
this proclamation. Thus we take this responsibility on behalf of the eternal freedom of
our people. In order that we may move in accord with the opportune fortunes of a new
era, when the conscience of humanity has awakened, we so act. It is the evident com-
mand of God, the trend of the age in which we live, the natural step in accord with the
right of all peoples to live and move together. There is nothing in the world that should
prevent it or stand in its way.186
The declaration of independence also emphasized that, without such indepen-

dence, there would be no future for Korea and the following generations of
Koreans:
If we would rid ourselves of resentment over the past; if we would be free from the agony
of the present; if we would escape violence for the future; if we would awaken once again
the conscience of our people, now oppressed, or rouse the fallen state to a true endeavor;
if we would rightly develop character in every man; if we would not pass on to our unfor-
tunate children an inheritance of shame and distress; if we would have future generations
for all time enjoy the perfection of blessing, we must, first and foremost, secure complete
independence for our people.187
Emphasizing the timing of the declaration, the text also argued that the future
of East Asia would also depend on a peaceful path for the future, because Japa-
nese expansionism, a “disturbance to the peace of the Far East,” would eventu-
ally and “undoubtedly [only] result in calling down on the whole of East Asia
the sad fate of universal destruction.”188 According to Wilson’s Fourteen Points
and the accompanying demands for a peaceful international order that would
be formed by self-determination and equal coexistence, the proclamation also
emphasized the beginning of a new era: “A new world opens before our eyes,
the age of force departs and that of truth and righteousness comes on. The
mind of humanity, refined, clarified, matured, trained by the ages of the past,
 Ch’ŏndogyo was a successor movement of the Donghak.

 Copy of the Proclamation of March 1, 1919. FO-262-1406, p. 1.
 Ibid.
 Ibid., p. 2.
now begins to cast the morning light of a new civilization on the history of the
race. A new spring dawns upon the world and all life hastens to awaken.”189
Of those who signed the proclamation, 29 met on 1 March at a restaurant
near Pagoda Park, where the declaration of independence was also to be read
out. That Saturday, flyers were handed out and posters were posted in the streets
that public gatherings would be held that day. Naturally, masses of people at-
tended the events, and when the declaration of independence was read out, peo-
ple cheered and the nationalist outcry was heard almost everywhere in the
country, where similar gatherings followed in the next days. Those who had
signed the declaration later gathered at a hotel and called the authorities to be
arrested.190 The mass protests in the meantime remained peaceful and no acts of
violence were committed by the Koreans, although “[a]t one point mounted gen-
darmes charged the crowd and inflicted some sabre cuts [and t]he police were
arresting as many as they could.”191 Regardless of this immediate and aggressive
response, around 1,500 demonstrations with around two million participants fol-
lowed countrywide. Royds reported about these events on 13 March as follows:
The unrest . . . brought about simultaneous disturbances of a violent nature in most of

the large centres throughout Corea, showing the movement to be the outcome of a re-
markable organization. In several places the troops and police used their weapons, with
the result that a considerable number of people including gendarmes were killed or
wounded. . . . A printed manifesto . . . was issued on the 1st instant, proclaiming the in-
dependence of Corea, and appealing to the Peace Conference to uphold their claims.
Stress was laid on the fact that resistance should not be made to the Authorities, and that
force should not be used, the protest to be made being solely of a peaceful nature. . . .
Twenty-nine of the 33 signatories were at once placed under arrest.192
Due to the involvement of religious groups and organizations, the British diplo-
mat was at the same time also worried for the foreign missionaries in Korea be-
cause, as he continued in his report, “the missionaries doubtless sympathize at
heart with the natural desire of the Coreans to preserve their existence as a na-
tion, though they all scrupulously refrain from any interference of a political na-
ture and from any discussion of the subject with Coreans.”193 He furthermore
emphasized that the Japanese assimilation policy was responsible for the nature
 Ibid.
 Martin Uden, Times Past in Korea: An Illustrated Collection of Encounters, Customs and
Daily Life Recorded by Foreign Visitors, London/New York 2003, p. 67.
 Ibid.
 William Massy Royds, British Consulate-General, Seoul to Sir W. Conyngham Greene,
H.M. Ambassador, Tokio, March 13, 1919. FO-262-1406, p. 1.
 Ibid., p. 2.
of this massive protest movement, as the “Japanese policy at present openly

aims at depriving the Coreans of even their own language and customs, and
their total assimilation by Japan, and the deliberate attempt to enforce this pol-
icy by every available means is the cause of the universal hatred in which the
Japanese are held throughout the land.”194
While the demonstrations per se were peaceful, the Japanese reaction was
rather harsh and, in some cases, particularly violent. The colonial authorities did
not see this nationalist wave coming and were really surprised by the nationwide
coordination of the protests. By mid-April, 7,500 demonstrators had been killed,
16,000 had been wounded, and more than 45,000 people had been arrested in
relation to the events. In addition, more than 700 houses as well as two schools
and 47 churches had been destroyed.195 The March First Movement was so pow-
erful because it united all Koreans in a national struggle for independence and,
as the Korean Information Bureau stated in 1919, “farmers, mechanics and la-
borers are equally as eager as the educated class to contribute their mite [sic!] in
the efforts to regain their political independence.”196 It was such organizations,
as well as Western observers and concerned politicians or diplomats, that re-
ported about the events in Korea and linked them to the current moment of mod-
ern history. Carlton Waldo Kendall, a delegate of the Paris Peace Conference,
published The Truth about Korea in 1919, in which he linked the events with the
diplomatic negotiations: “The time to strike had come. When the Peace Confer-
ence, with its ideals of ‘self-determination,’ met in Paris, it gave to the oppressed
Koreans the longed-for chance to place their problem before the world.”197 Ken-
dall further emphasized that the Korean protesters were not dangerous political
radicals or violent revolutionaries, two things the world – and especially the
US – feared in 1919, two years after the revolution in Russia.198 He pointed out
that the Korean organizers’ “plan was to begin a ‘Passive Revolution’. No one,
not even the Japanese, was to be harmed. No property was to be destroyed or
 Ibid.
 Kim, A History of Korea, p. 333. Also see Kendall, The Truth about Korea, p. 10. These
numbers are estimates by Korean historians. The Japanese authorities only confirmed 553
deaths, 1,409 injured people, and a number of 12,522 arrests. Robinson, Korea’s Twentieth-
Century Odyssey, p. 48. For the Japanese reports of the events see Chōsen sōjō keika gaiyō,
Japan Center for Asian Historical Records (JACAR), A04017275800.
 Korean Information Bureau, Little Martyrs of Korea, Philadelphia, PA 1919, p. 5.
 Carlton Waldo Kendall, The Truth about Korea, second edition, San Francisco, CA 1919,
p. 25.
 Frank Jacob, The Russian Revolution, the American Red Scare, and the Forced Exile of
Transnational Anarchists. Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman and their Soviet Experi-
ence, in: Yearbook of Transnational History 4 (2021), pp. 113–134.
injured. No radicalism, no I.W.W.-ism, no Bolshevism was to be tolerated or asso-

ciated in any way with the movement. But a persistent passive agitation was to
be instituted and continued until success attended their object-freedom from Jap-
anese Military Autocracy.”199 Kendall also argued that the organizers had fo-
cused on protests in Seoul as they wanted to use the proximity of the foreign
legations to arouse international attention to the Korean cause.200 The sheer
mass of people who had answered the nationalist call across the whole country
was simply too much for the Japanese to bear, and frustration might have played
an important part in the violent measures taken by the colonial police in the af-
termath of 1 March 1919.201
Six days after the initial protests, Governor-General Hasegawa Yoshimichi
(1850–1924) urged the Koreans not to resist Japan’s colonial rule due to false
rumors when he published the following instructions: “Rumour was recently
circulated that at the preliminary peace conference in Paris the independence
of Chosen was recognized by foreign Powers, but the rumour is absolutely
groundless. It need hardly be said that the sovereignty of the Japanese Empire
is irrevocably established in the Peninsula and will never be broken in the fu-
ture.”202 While the colonial authorities wanted to show strength in Korea,
Tokyo tried to avoid attracting too much international attention to the recent
events, but the reports by missionaries from Korea damaged the Japanese
image abroad. The Korean Information Bureau published reports that empha-
sized that even children who wanted to support the nationalist cause of the
people of Korea were severely punished by the Japanese police apparatus. One
such report stated the following:
After the leaders and adults had a demonstration in Seoul, the boys and girls of all the
schools in that city, without the knowledge of their elders, gathered in Pagoda Park and
declared themselves in sympathy with their elders. They read the Declaration of Indepen-
dence, and then giving their national cry of “Toknip Mansei” (Independence Forever),
they rushed down the principal streets of the city, holding up their hands and waving
their caps, lustily shouting for their independence. These children were immediately met
by the Japanese gendarmes and police, with drawn swords and fixed bayonets and were
driven back with many casualties. About six o’clock, when the sun disappeared behind
the western hills, these brave little patriots disappeared from the streets.203
 The Truth about Korea, p. 25.

 Ibid., p. 26.
 Ibid., pp. 27–30.
 Urgent Instructions by Governor-General, in: The Seoul Press, March 7, 1919, FO-262-
1406.
 Korean Information Bureau, Little Martyrs, p. 6.
Another report about a young Korean girl is quite heartbreaking:

One of the girls in our school came to the principal, and said: “I must go home to see my
mother on a very important matter.” The principal immediately gave her permission to
leave, so she packed her belongings and started for home. When she entered her home
she greeted her mother, and then with a very determined look on her young face, said,
“Mother, I have come to see you for a few minutes, as I have decided to give my life for
my country, and wanted to see you once more and say good-bye.” Her mother was igno-
rant of the demonstrations taking place all over the country, and asked her daughter for
an explanation. The little girl then gave her some of the story she had heard of the inde-
pendence movement, and then exclaimed, “Mother, I must do something for my country;
I must go out and shout for our independence and give my life for our freedom.”204
From the perspective of foreign observers, the “Japanese reaction bordered on

hysteria,”205 but when one considers the history of the industrial exposition in
1915 and the belief that the assimilation of the Koreans into the Japanese Empire
had been fast and successful, the surprise of the mass protests must have aroused
anger and desperation within Japanese colonial circles that caused them to re-
spond extremely violently to the Korean wish for independence. Or, as a contem-
porary pamphlet argued, “shame and self-remorse quickly gave went to Prussian-
like brutality.”206 Since the protests continued until the early summer, they could
not easily be repressed, and therefore this added frustration further intensified
the violent responses from the police and the Japanese authorities. As Michael
Robinson has pointed out, it was Japanese helplessness that was leading to ex-
treme forms of violence:
By mid-April rioting was widespread, and police violence led to a number of well-
documented atrocities: the burning of villages, shooting on crowds, mass searches, ar-
rests, and the disappearance of demonstrators. The police also seized printing presses,
closed schools, and declared a colony-wide curfew. Still the rioting continued sporadi-
cally into the summer of 1919 and was controlled only after additional troops arrived from
Japan.207
The violent reactions were also causing problems for Japan’s international rep-
utation: “The horror and brutality of some of the deeds committed are beyond
belief. In the name of crushing the Independence Movement, the military au-
thorities have transgressed the laws of all civilization and proved beyond the
shadow of a doubt that Japanese Military Autocracy is no longer fit to be
 Ibid., p. 11.

 Robinson, Cultural Nationalism, p. 44.
 The Korean Independence Movement, Shanghai n.d. [1919?].
 Robinson, Korea’s Twentieth-Century Odyssey, p. 48.
respected by any civilized people.”208 The acts of the police were described in
detail, and the fact that women and children were among the victims who
“were knocked down with the butts of rifles”209 gave rise to harsh criticism,
and not only from the Korean communities abroad. The authenticity of reports
about the atrocities and massacres conducted in Korea became a topic of inter-
national debate.210
A particularly cruel “incident” was reported in Cheam-ni, in the south of
Seoul, on 15 April 1919, when the Japanese locked the doors of a church and set
it on fire, and 29 people were burned alive. The “incident” became known as
the “Cheam-ni Massacre,”211 and although the Japanese officer responsible was
charged and sentenced, the history of the massacre would further poison Japa-
nese-Korean relations in the years to come. Considering the fact that the protests
were answered so violently and yet did not cause any international intervention
against Japanese rule, “a general tenor of disillusionment, frustration, and de-
spondency set in.”212 The poet O Sang-sun remarked on these feelings in an edi-
torial in his journal P’yeho (Ruins):
Our land of Korea is in ruins. These are times of sorrow and agony. Saying this will
wrench the heart of our youth. But I must, for it is a fact that I can neither deny nor even
doubt. In ruins lie all our defects and shortcomings, inside and outside, physical as well
as mental: emptiness, grievances, discontent and resentment, sighs and worries, pain
and tears – all these evils will lead to extinction and death. As we stand before the ruins,
darkness and death open their fearsome, cavernous mouths, threatening to gobble us up.
Again, we are struck by the feeling that the old ruins spell extinction and death.213
The situation was particularly devastating for so many Koreans because the US
President had not interfered on behalf of their right to self-determination; in-
stead, he and the great international powers had simply accepted the realities
Japan had created in Korea by the use of brute force. The Korean delegates who
were sent to Paris had urged Wilson to understand the situation. They “simply
wish[ed] to expose certain facts and truths and only solicite your impartial
judgment for the sake of HUMANITY AND JUSTICE that are being trampled over
under the iron heel of the Asiatic Kaiser who really surpasses his Prussian
 Kendall, The Truth about Korea, p. 33.

 Ibid., 31.
 Japanese Atrocities in Korea. Reports Emphasized and Made Convincing by Japanese Pro-
paganda, n.p. n.d. [1920].
 Arita-chūi ni kakaru saiban senkoku no kudan hōkoku, JACAR, C03022465000.
 Park, Protestantism and Politics, p. 139.
 Cited in ibid.
pattern.”214 The petition that was handed to Wilson emphasized the injustice of
Japanese colonial rule in Korea and warned the international community about
the future, which would be dangerous for peace due to Japan’s “continental
policy” and its “policy in operation” in Korea.215 There were, of course, Western
voices that called for support for the Korean claim for independence, but they
were unheard in the chambers of power where the new world order was eventu-
ally negotiated. Demands were, however, made, especially with regard to Wil-
son’s ideas about self-determination:
The principles which underlie the right of self-determination must be applied universally
if they are to be applied at all. The doctrines which President Wilson has been preaching
and for which America has so solidly stood throughout the war, and which are now being
promulgated by the League of Nations, are mere words if they can not be applied con-
cretely. No nation in the world has a better claim to independence than Korea. It is there-
fore timely to consider the plight of this people. . . . With the development of the doctrine
of self-determination there has come a recrudescence of nationality in Korea, the Hermit
Kingdom, the Land of the Morning Calm, that has manifested itself in rioting in Seoul and
other large centers, the establishment of revolutionary headquarters in Siberia and in the
sending of a delegate to the Peace Conference at Paris with a plea for recognition of the
rights of the Korean people to govern themselves without the interference of Japan. . . .
Self-determination is one of the accepted policies of the Peace Conference. It is just as im-
portant to the world that democracy should be safe in Korea as it is that, for the protection
of the balance of power in Europe, the national aspirations of Poland, Czecho-Slovakia
and Jugo-Slavia should be recognized. The Koreans, notwithstanding the assertions of cer-
tain eminent Japanese at present in this country, are capable of self-government and are
entitled to it unless the Peace Conference is going to put the Far East and its subject na-
tions upon a different basis from those of Eastern Europe. Such a result would be a stultifi-
cation of all of the principles for which the war was fought and upon which the world
expects peace to be established.216
Such interventions nevertheless could not change the fact that the Korean peo-
ple and their fate were simply ignored. The international community was not
willing to really live up to the ideals they had all claimed to long for, and the
people of Korea were the victims of the fact that Japan was to be kept a member
of the world’s major powers, regardless of its colonial policies.
Eventually, Japan reacted by adopting a new course when the Hara Cabinet
appointed a new governor-general, Saitō Makoto, and “replaced naked coercion
 Letter by the Korean Delegation, Paris, May 14, 1919, in: Korean Delegation, Petition.
 Korean Delegation, Petition, pp. 1–3.
 Arthur MacLennan, Diplomacy and Force in Korea, San Francisco, CA 1919, pp. 1, 13 and
16.
4.6 Conclusion 149
with a softer but even more effective policy of manipulation and co-optation.”217
The “attitudinal changes”218 in the aftermath of the March First Movement never-
theless did not change the fact that Korea was to be assimilated and remain an
essential part of Japan’s overseas empire. Korean political activists radicalized
further, and those who had organized anti-Japanese resistance were now leaning
more toward communist support from China than hoping for democratic lip ser-
vice from Western powers.219 Regardless of these trends, there were also numer-
ous provisional governments that were formed in the aftermath of the March
First Movement in which prominent figures of post-war Korean history, like
Syngman Rhee, were active,220 while the Koreans in exile continued to keep the
fate of their home country in the global consciousness.
4.6 Conclusion
The March First Movement was tragic but also, at the same time, “a historic
event that helped define a nation in a time of need.”221 It showed that the Ko-
rean nation was still alive and that Japanese assimilation policies had failed,
regardless of the fact that the Japanese authorities claimed to have modernized
Korea according to their own standards. The tragedy of Korea in 1919 was Ja-
pan’s strength and importance after the First World War. The Western powers
did not want to sacrifice their good relations with their war-time ally for an
ideal like self-determination, even if President Wilson had argued on behalf of
this ideal in the latter phase of the First World War. The war years had instead
intensified Japanese rule, and Korea’s attempt at its end to regain indepen-
dence was not able to gain international support. For all nationalist activists,
 Robinson, Korea’s Twentieth-Century Odyssey, p. 49. Also see Uchida, Brokers of Empire.
Japanese and Korean Business Elites, pp. 155–156. Regardless of Saitō’s supposedly milder
course, his aims were the same: “The kernel of Saitō’s strategy for dealing with Korean nation-
alism, however, was to mobilize local men of influence, Korean as well as Japanese. From the
outset, the Saitō administration labored hard to crystallize whatever tenuous ties the colonial
state had forged with the Korean upper class.” Ibid., p. 156.
 Caprio, Japanese Assimilation Policies, p. 112.
 Hongkoo Han, Colonial Origins of Juche. The Minsaengdan Incident of the 1930s and the
Birth of the North Korea-China Relationship, in: Jae-Jung Suh (Ed.), Origins of North Korea’s
Juche. Colonialism, War, and Development, Lanham, MD 2012, pp. 33–62, here p. 34; Don-
gyoun Hwang, Anarchism in Korea. Independence, Transnationalism, and the Question of Na-
tional Development, 1919–1984, Albany, NY 2016, p. 1.
 Lew, The Making of the First Korean President, pp. 333–334.
 Ibid., p. 89.
this marked the weakness of the post-war order and the failure to achieve a true
Wilsonian moment that could have initiated a new, peaceful world order. Nation-
alisms and imperialist ambitions were still too powerful, and the Korean protest-
ers seemed to have suffered without any tangible result. What they nevertheless
proved was the fact that Korea had a strong national identity and that its people
would not give in to the Japanese narrative of their benevolent empire.
The nationalist struggle therefore continued, but the hope for a democratic
intervention was replaced with anger about international imperialism in general
and Western indifference in particular. It is therefore also important to under-
stand the shortcomings of the post-war order from a more global perspective, as
the results of the peace treaties that were established in the aftermath of the First
World War not only determined European history for the years to come but also
poisoned the existent political relations in East Asia, especially between Japan
and Korea.
Bibliography
Unpublished Sources
Dimplomatic Archives of the Foreign Ministry of Japan

Kokuryūkai, 8 Tai–Shi mondaikaiketsu iken, 9 October 1914, B–1–1–2–156.
Tamura Kosaku, Dai–ichiji sekaitaisen to Nihon gaikō, B10070135800.
Uchida Ryōhei, 15 Tai–Shi mondaikaiketsu iken, 29 October 1914, B–1–1–2–151.
Museum of Fine Arts Boston

Iizawa Ten’yō, Envelope for the series “The Nouveau Riche at New Year” (Narikin no shinnen),
Part 1, Leonard A. Lauder Collection.
National Archives, UK
FO–262–1406
FO 676/140
New York Public Library

Katayama Sen, Recent Tendencies in the Labor Movement in Japan, Rand School of Social
Science Papers (Dep’t of Labor Research), The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and
Tilden Foundations, Box 2, Katayama–Tractenberg, Folder 1, Katayama–Laidler
Published Sources and Secondary Works
Ahlund, Claes (Ed.). Scandinavia in the First World War. Studies in the War Experience of the
Northern Neutrals, Lund 2013.
Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of
Nationalism, London 1983.
Atkins, E. Taylor. Primitive Selves. Koreana in the Japanese Colonial Gaze, 1910–1945,
Berkeley, CA 2010.
Asada, Masafumi. The China–Russia–Japan Military Balance in Manchuria, 1906–1918,
in: Modern Asian Studies 44 (2010) 6, pp. 1283–1311.
Ban’no Junji– Meiji kenpō taisei no kakuritsu. Fukoku kyōhei to minryoku kyūyō, Tokyo 1992.
Beasley, William G. Japanese Imperialism 1894–1945, Oxford 1987.
Bergère, Marie–Claire. Sun Yat–Sen, trans. Janet Lloyd, Stanford 1998.
Bernasconi, Robert. Ewiger Friede und totaler Krieg, in: Alfred Hirsch and Pascal Delhom
(Eds.), Denkwege des Friedens. Aporien und Perspektiven, München 2019, pp. 50–70.
Billingsley, Phil. Bandits in Republican China, Stanford 1988.
Biontino, Juljan and Yim, Sang–wook. Der Deutsche Bauernkrieg und die “Tonghak
Bauernrevolution”. Rezeption in Sǔdkorea und Perspektiven des Vergleichs, in: Zeitschrift
für Geschichtswissenschaften 66 (2018) 2, pp. 147–166.
Bix, Herbert P. Japanese Imperialism and the Manchurian Economy, 1900–31, in: The China
Quarterly 51 (1972), pp. 425–443.
Black, Jeremy. Imperial Legacies. The British Empire Around the World, New York 2019.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110745672-005
152 Bibliography
Bois, Marcel and Jacob, Frank (Eds.). Zeiten des Aufruhrs (1916–1921). Globale Proteste,
Streiks und Revolutionen gegen den Ersten Weltkrieg und seine Auswirkungen, Berlin
2020.
Bonavia, David. China’s Warlords, New York 1995.
Bottaro, Giuseppe. Internazionalismo e democrazia nella politica estera Wilsoniana, in: Il
Politico 72 (2007) 2, pp. 5–23.
Burkman, Thomas W. Japan and the League of Nations. Empire and World Order, 1914–1938,
Honolulu, HI 2007.
Cai, Jianguo and Cai, Yuanpei. Gelehrter und Mittler zwischen Ost und West, Münster 1998.
Cai Shaoqing (Ed.), Minguo shiqi de tufei, Beijing 1993.
Calvo, Alex and Qiaoni, Bao. Forgotten Voices from the Great War. The Chinese Labour Corps,
in: The Asia–Pacific Journal 13 (2015) 1. Accessed September 30, 2019. http://apjjf.org/-
Bao-Qiaoni–Alex-Calvo/4411/article.pdf.
Caprio, Mark E. Japanese Assimilation Policies in Colonial Korea, 1910–1945, Seattle, WA
2009.
Caprio, Mark E. Marketing Assimilation. The Press and the Formation of the Japanese–Korean
Colonial Relationship, The Journal of Korean Studies 16 (2011) 1, pp. 1–25.
Chandra, Vipan. Sentiment and Ideology in the Nationalism of the Independence Club
(1896–1898), in: Korean Studies 10 (1986), pp. 13–34.
Chandra, Vipin. The Independence Club and Korea’s First Proposal for a National Legislative
Assembly, in: Occasional Papers on Korea 4 (1975), pp. 19–35.
Chase, James. The Wilsonian Moment? in: The Wilson Quarterly 25 (2001) 4, pp. 34–41.
Chase–Dunn, Christopher; Smith, Jackie; Manning, Patrick and Grubačić, Andrej.
Remembering Immanuel Wallerstein, in: Journal of World–Systems Research 26 (2020) 1,
pp. 5–8.
Chen, Joseph T. The May Fourth Movement in Shanghai. The Making of a Social Movement in
Modern China, Leiden 1971.
Ch’i, Hsi–sheng. Warlord Politics in China 1916–1928, Stanford, CA 1976.
China Also Balks, in: The Sun (New York, NY), May 7, 1919, p. 1.
China Calls Decision of Big 3 “Unfair”, in: New York Tribune, May 4, 1919, p. 4.
China’s Grievances over Shantung, in: The Chinese Students’ Monthly 15 (1919) 1, pp. 3–6.
Ching, Leo T. S. Becoming “Japanese”. Colonial Taiwan and the Politics of Identity Formation,
Berkeley, CA 2001.
Chirot, Daniel and Hall, Thomas D. World–System Theory, in: Annual Review of Sociology
8 (1982), pp. 81–106.
Ch’oe, Yŏng–ho. An Outline History of Korean Historiography, in: Korean Studies 4 (1980),
pp. 1–27.
Ch’oe, Yŏng–ho. The Kapsin Coup of 1884. A Reassessment, in: Korean Studies 6 (1982) 1,
pp. 105–124.
Choi, Hyaeweol. An American Concubine in Old Korea. Missionary Discourse on Gender, Race,
and Modernity, in: Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 25 (2004) 3, pp. 134–161.
Choi, Hyaeweol. New Women in Colonial Korea. A Sourcebook, London 2012.
Clarke, Joseph I. C. Japan at First Hand. New York 1918.
Cohen, Paul A. and Schreckner, John E. (Eds.). Reform in Nineteenth–Century China,
Cambridge, MA 1976.
Conklin, Alice L. A Mission to Civilize. The Republican Idea of Empire in France and West
Africa, 1895–1930, Stanford, CA 1997.
Published Sources and Secondary Works 153
Conrad, Sebastian. What is Global History? Princeton, NJ 2016.

Conze, Eckart. Die große Illusion. Versailles 1919 und die Neuordnung der Welt, Munich 2018.
Coudert, Frederik R. et al. Why Europe Is At War? The Question Considered from the Points of
View of France, England, Germany, Japan and the United States, New York/London 1915.
Craft, Stephen G. Angling for an Invitation to Paris: China’s Entry into the First World War, in:
The International History Review 16 (1994) 1, pp. 1–24.
Craft, Stephen G. V.K. Wellington Koo and the Emergence of Modern China, Lexington, KY
2003.
Craft, Stephen G. John Bassett Moore, Robert Lansing, and the Shandong Question, in: Pacific
Historical Review 66 (1997) 2, pp. 231–249.
Dal Lago, Enrico; Healy, Róisín and Barry, Gearóid (Eds.). 1916 in Global Context. An
Anti–Imperial Moment, London 2018.
David, Mirela. Bertrand Russell and Ellen Key in China. Idividualism, Free Love, and Eugenics
in the May Fourth Era, in: Chiang, Howard (Ed.), Sexuality in China. Histories of Power and
Pleasure, Seattle, WA 2018, pp. 76–98.
Davis, Clarence B. Limits of Effacement. Britain and the Problem of American Cooperation and
Competitionin China, 1915–1917, in: Pacific Historical Review 48 (1979) 1, pp. 47–63.
Da Yang. Leng yan jia wu. Kan Riben jun shi di guo de gou jian he bao fa (1868–1905), Beijing
2015.
Deutsch, Karl W. Nationalism and Social Communication. An Inquiry into the Foundations of
Nationality, Cambridge, MA 1953.
Dickinson, Frederick R. The First World War, Japan, and a Global Century, in: Frattolillo,
Oliviero and Best, Antony (Eds.), Japan and the Great War, New York 2015, pp. 162–182.
Dickinson, Frederick R. World War I and the Triumph of a New Japan, 1919–1930, Cambridge,
MA 2013.
Ding Xianjun. Yangwu yundong shihua, Beijing 2000.
Dirlik, Arif. Ideology and Organization in the May Fourth Movement. Some Proplems in the
Intellectual Historiography of the May Fourth Period, in: Republican China 12 (1987) 1,
pp. 3–19.
Duiker, William J. Ts’ai Yuan–p’ei. Educator of Modern China, University Park, PA 1977.
Dunscomb, Paul E. Japan’s Siberian Intervention, 1918–1922, Lanham, MD 2011.
Edmunds, Charles K. Modern Education in China, Department of the Interior, Bureau of
Education, Bulletin 1919, No. 44, Washington, D.C. 1919.
Etō, Shinkichi. China’s International Relations, 1911–1931, in: Fairbank, John K. and
Feuerwerker, Albert (Eds.), The Cambridge History of China, Vol. 13: Republican China
1912–1949, Part 2, Cambridge 1983, pp. 74–115.
Fairbank, John King and Goldman, Merle. China. A New History, second edition, Cambridge,
MA 2006.
Faison, Elyssa Women’s Rights as Proletarian Rights. Yamakawa Kikue, Suffrage, and the
“Dawn of Liberation, in: Bullock, Julia C.; Kano, Ayako and Welker, James (Eds.),
Rethinking Japanese Feminism, Honolulu 2018, pp. 15–33.
Fay, Peter Ward. The Opium War, 1840–1842, paperback edition, Chapel Hill, NC, 1997 [1975].
Fedman, David. Seeds of Control. Japan’s Empire of Forestry in Colonial Korea, Seattle, WA
2020.
Feuerwerker, Albert. Economic Trends, 1912–49, in: Twitchett, Denis and Fairbank, John
K. (Eds.), The Cambridge History of China, vol. 12: Republican China 1912–1949, Part 1,
Cambridge 1983, pp. 28–127.
154 Bibliography
Fields, David. Foreign Friends. Syngman Rhee, American Exceptionalism, and the Division of
Korea, Lexington, KY 2019.
Fishel, Wesley R. The Far East and United States Policy: A Re–Examination, in: The Western
Political Quarterly 3 (1950) 1, pp. 1–13.
Fitzgerald, Matthew P. and Monteath, Peter (Eds.). Colonialism, China and the Chinese,
New York/London 2019.
Forster, Elisabeth. 1919 – The Year That Changed China. A New History of the New Culture
Movement, Berlin/Boston 2018.
Frattolillo, Oliviero and Best, Antony. Introduction: Japan and the Great War, in: idem. (Eds.),
Japan and the Great War, New York 2015, pp. 1–10.
Fukuzawa, Naomi. Fukuzawa Yukichis Datsu–a–ron (1885). Wegbereiter des japanischen
Imperialismus oder zornige Enttauschung eines asiatischen Aufklarers?, in: Tātonnemen
13 (2011), pp. 210–224.
Furth, Charlotte. Intellectual Change. From the Reform Movement to the May Fourth
Movement, 1895–1920, in: Twitchett, Denis and Fairbank, John K. (Eds.), The Cambridge
History of China, vol. 12: Republican China 1912–1949, Part 1, Cambridge 1983,
pp. 322–405.
Furuki, Yoshiko. The White Plum. A Biography of Ume Tsuda, Pioneer in the Higher Education
of Japanese Women, New York 1991.
Gates, Rustin B. Out with the New and in with the Old. Uchida Yasuya and the Great War as a
Turning Point in Japanese Foreign Affairs, in: Minohara, Tosh; Hon, Tze–ki and Dawley,
Evan (Eds.), The Decade of the Great War. Japan and the Wider World in the 1910s, Leiden
2014, pp. 64–82.
Gellner, Ernest. Change and Thought, Chicago, IL 1964.
Gellner, Ernest. Nations and Nationalism, Ithaca, NY 1983.
Geng, Yunzhi. An Introductory Study on China’s Cultural Transformation in Recent Times,
Berlin 2014.
Goetzmann, William N.; Ukhov, Andrey D. and Zhu, Ning. China and the World Financial
Markets 1870–1939. Modern Lessons from Historical Globalization, in: The Economic
History Review 60 (2007) 2, pp. 267–312.
Gordon, Andrew. A Modern History of Japan. From Tokugawa Times to the Present, New York
2003.
Gordon, Andrew. The Short Happy Life of the Japanese Middle Class, in: Zunz, Olivier;
Schoppa, Leonard and Hiwatari Nobuhiro (Eds.), Social Contracts Under Stress. New York
2002, pp. 108–129.
Griffis, William Elliot. Japan in the World War, in: The North American Review 208 (1918) 756,
pp. 722–728.
Gross, Christine. Japanische Frauen. Ein Leitbild im Wandel. Die Zeitschrift Shufu no tomo
1917–1935, Dissertation, Universität Zürich, 2009.
Gu, Edward X. Populistic Themes in May Fourth Radical Thinking. A Reappraisal of the
Intellectual Origins of Chinese Marxism (1917–1922), in: East Asian History 10 (1995),
pp. 99–126.
Ha, Yong–Chool. Colonial Rule and Social Change in Korea The Paradox of Colonial Control, in:
Lee, Hong Yung; Ha, Yong–Chool and Sorensen, Clark W. (Eds.), Colonial Rule and Social
Change in Korea, 1910–1945, Seattle, WA 2013, pp. 39–75.
Han, Hongkoo. Colonial Origins of Juche: The Minsaengdan Incident of the 1930s and the Birth
of the North Korea–China Relationship, in: Suh, Jae Jung (Ed.), Origins of North Korea’s
Juche. Colonialism, War, and Development, Lanham, MD 2012, pp. 33–62.
Han, Suyin. Eldest Son. Zhou Enlai and the Making of Modern China, 1898–1976, New York
1995.
Handō Kazutoshi. Nichiro SensōshI, 3 vols., Tokyo 2016.
Hanes, Jeffrey E. Media Culture in Taishō Osaka, in: Minichiello, Sharon (Ed.), Japan’s
Competing Modernities. Issues in Culture and Democracy 1900–1930, Honolulu 1998,
pp. 267–287.
Hanes, Jeffrey E. The City as Subject. Seki Hajime and the Reinvention of Modern Osaka,
Berkeley/Los Angeles, CA 2002.
Harnisch, Thomas. Chinesische Studenten in Deutschland. Geschichte und Wirkung ihrer
Studienaufenthalte in den Jahren 1860 bis 1945, Hamburg 1999.
Hartmann, Rudolf. Japanischer Revolutionär und proletarischer Internationalist. Sen
Katayama, in: Beiträge zur Geschichte der Arbeiterbewegung 26 (1984) 2, pp. 238–246.
Haruno Saru and Shen Chun Ye, Pari kōwa kaigi to Nichi–Bei–Chū kankei. “Santō mondai”
o chūshin ni, in: Hokusai kōkyū seisaku kenkyū 9 (2005) 2, pp. 189–206.
Hatano Yoshihiro. Chūgoku kindai gunbatsu no kenkyū, Tokyo 1973.
Hatsuda Tōru. Hyakkaten no tanjō, Tokyo 1993.
Hatsuse Ryūhei. Dentōteki uyoku. Uchida Ryōhei no kenkyū, Fukuoka 1980.
Hayot, Eric. Bertrand Russell’s Chinese Eyes, in: Modern Chinese Literature and Culture 18
(2006) 1, pp. 120–154.
Heater, Derek. National Self–Determination. Woodrow Wilson and His Legacy, New York 1994.
Henry, Todd A. Assimilating Seoul. Japanese Rule and the Politics of Public Space in Colonial
Korea, 1910–1945, Los Angeles, CA 2014.
Hirakawa Sukehiro. Wakon yōsai no keifu. Uchi to soto kara no Meiji Nihon, Tokyo 1992.
Hobson, Christopher. The Rise of Democracy. Revolution, War and Transformations in
International Politics since 1776, Edinburgh 2015.
Hosoya Chihiro. Roshia kakumei to Nihon, Tokyo 1972.
Hosoya Chihiro. Ryō taisenkan no Nihon no gaikō, 1914–1945, Tokyo 1988.
Hosoya Chihiro. Shiberia shuppei no shiteki kenkyū, Tokyo 2005.
Hoston, Germaine A. Marxism and the Crisis of Development in Prewar Japan, Princeton,
NJ 1986.
Huffman, James L. Japan in World History, New York 2010.
Hunter, Janet. Japanese Government Policy, Business Opinion and the Seoul–Pusan Railway,
1894–1906, in: Modern Asian Studies 11 (1977) 4, pp. 573–599.
Hwang, Dongyoun. Anarchism in Korea. Independence, Transnationalism, and the Question of
National Development, 1919–1984, Albany, NY 2016.
Inoue Kiyoshi and Watanabe Tōru. Kome sōdō no kenkyū, Tokyo 1997.
Inoue Kiyoshi. Meiji ishin, Tokyo 2003.
Ion, A. Hamish. The Cross and the Rising Sun, vol. 2: The British Protestant Movement in
Japan, Korea and Taiwan, 1865–1945, Waterloo, ON 2009.
Ishikawa Hiroyoshi. Goraku no senzenshi, Tokyo 1981.
Itaya Toshihiko. Nihonjin no tame no Dai–ichiji Sekai Taisenshi. Sekai wa naze sensō ni
totsunyū shita noka, Tokyo 2017.
Izao Tomio. Shoki shiberia shuppei no kenkyū. Atarashiki kyūseigun kōsō no tōjō to tenkai,
Fukuoka 2003.
156 Bibliography
Jacob, Frank. 1917. Die korrumpierte Revolution, Marburg 2020.

Jacob, Frank. Der Erste Weltkrieg als ökonomisch–soziale Zäsur der japanischen Moderne, in:
Köhn, Stephan; Weber, Chantal and Elis, Volker (Eds.), Tokyo in den zwanziger Jahren
Experimentierfeld einer anderen Moderne? Wiesbaden 2017, pp. 17–32.
Jacob, Frank. Die Thule–Gesellschaft und die Kokuryūkai. Geheimgesellschaften im
global–historischen Vergleich, Würzburg 2013.
Jacob, Frank. Japanism, Pan–Asianism and Terrorism. A Short History of the Amur Society (the
Black Dragons), 1901–1945, Bethesda, CA 2014.
Jacob, Frank. Queen Min, Foreign Policy and the Role of Female Leadership in Late
Nineteenth–Century Korea, in: Elena Woodacre et al. (Eds.), The Routledge History of
Monarchy, London 2019, pp. 700–717.
Jacob, Frank. Reflections on the Korean Diaspora in Manchuria, in: Florian Kläger and Klaus
Stierstorfer (Eds.): Diasporic Constructions of Home and Belonging, Berlin 2015,
pp. 111–122.
Jacob, Frank. The First World War, Women’s Education, and Yamakawa Kikue’s Socialist View
of Gender Roles in Japan, in: Sebastian Engelmann/Bernhard Hemetsberger/Frank Jacob
(Eds.), War and Education. The Pedagogical Preparation for Collective Mass Violence,
Paderborn 2022, pp. 119–141.
Jacob, Frank. The Korean Diaspora in Manchuria. Korean Ambitions, Manchurian Dreams,
Japanese Realities, in: Entremons UPF. Journal of World History 6 (2014), pp. 1–11.
Jacob, Frank. The Russian Revolution, the American Red Scare, and the Forced Exile of
Transnational Anarchists. Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman and their Soviet
Experience, in: Yearbook of Transnational History 4 (2021), pp. 113–134.
Jacob, Frank. The Russo–Japanese War and Its Shaping of the Twentieth Century, London
2018.
Jacob, Frank. Tsushima 1905. Ostasiens Trafalgar, second edition, Paderborn 2021.
Jacob, Frank (Ed.). Wallerstein 2.0. Thinking and Applying World–Systems Theory in the 21st
Century, Bielefeld 2022.
Jacob, Frank; Shaw, Jeffrey and Demy, Timothy (Eds.). War and the Humanities. The Cultural
Impact of the First World War, Paderborn 2019.
James, David H. The Rise and Fall of the Japanese Empire, London/New York 2010 [1951].
Jansen, Marius B. The Japanese and Sun Yat–sen, Stanford 1970 [1954].
Japanese Atrocities in Korea. Reports Emphasized and Made Convincing by Japanese
Propaganda, n.d. [1920].
Jessen, Olaf. Verdun 1916. Urschlacht des Jahrhunderts, second edition, Munich 2017.
Jinno Yuki. Hyakkaten ga tsukutta teisuto, Tokyo, 1994.
Jonas, Michael. Scandinavia and the Great Powers in the First World War, London 2019.
Ka, Chih–Ming. Japanese Colonialism in Taiwan. Land Tenure, Development, and Dependency,
1895–1945, London 2019.
Kal, Hong. Aesthetic Constructions of Korean Nationalism. Spectacle, Politics and History,
London/New York 2011.
Kallander, George L. Salvation through Dissent. Tonghak Heterodoxy and Early Modern Korea,
Honolulu, HI 2016.
Kameda Kinuko. Tsuda Umeko. Hitori no meikyōshi no kiseki, Tokyo 2005.
Kang, Chao. The Development of Cotton Textile Production in China, Cambridge, MA 1977.
Kang, Etsuko H. Kita Sadakichi (1871–1939) on Korea. A Japanese Ethno‐Historian and the
Annexation of Korea in 1910, in: Asian Studies Review 21 (1997) 1, pp. 41–60.
Kang, Pŏm–sŏk. Seikanron seihen. Meiji rokunen no kenryoku tōsō, Tokyo 1990.
Katayama Sen. Der Verfall des bureaukratischen Regimes in Japan, in: Die neue Zeit.
Wochenschrift der deutschen Sozialdemokratie 32 (1914) 1, pp. 16–20.
Katayama Sen. Die Ausbeutung der Arbeiter in Japan, in: Die neue Zeit. Wochenschrift der
deutschen Sozialdemokratie 29 (1911) 52, pp. 917–921.
Katayama Sen. Die politischen Zustände Japans, in: Die neue Zeit. Wochenschrift der
Katayama Sen. Industrie und Sozialismus in Japan, in: Die neue Zeit. Wochenschrift der
Katayama Sen. Japan and Soviet Russia, London, 6 September 1919, Warwick Digital
Collection, 36/R30/22, 2.
Katayama Sen. The Labor Movement in Japan, Chicago 1918.
Kaufman, Alison A. In Pursuit of Equality and Respect. China’s Diplomacy and the League of
Nations, in: Modern China 40 (2014) 6, pp. 605–638.
Kawakami Hajime. Bimbō monogatari, Tokyo 1983.
Kendall, Carlton Waldo. The Truth about Korea, second edition, San Francisco, CA 1919.
Kennan, George F. The Decline of Bismarck’s European Order. Franco–Russian Relations,
1875–1890, Princeton, NJ 1979.
Kim, Dong–No. “National Identity and Class Interest in the Peasant Movements of the Colonial
Period, in: Lee, Hong Yung; Ha, Yong–Chool and Sorensen, Clark W. (Eds.), Colonial Rule
and Social Change in Korea, 1910–1945, Seattle, WA 2013, pp. 140–172.
Kim, Jinwung. A History of Korea. From “Land of the Morning Calm” to States in Conflict,
Bloomington, IN 2012.
Kim, Key–Hiuk. The Last Phase of the East Asian World Order. Korea, Japan, and the Chinese
Empire, 1860–1882, Berkeley, CA 1980.
Kim, Seung–young. American Diplomacy and Strategy toward Korea and Northeast Asia
1882–1950 and After. Perception of Polarity and US Commitment to a Periphery, London
2009.
Kimura, Mitsuhiko. The Economics of Japanese Imperialism in Korea, 1910–1939, in: The
Economic History Review 48 (1995) 3, pp. 555–574.
Kimura Seiji. Dai–ichiji Sekai Taisen, Tokyo 2014.
Kimura Tokio. Kita Ikki to Ni–niroku jiken no inbō Tokyo 2007.
Kipling, Rudyard. The White Man’s Burden (1899), in: Modern History Sourcebook, Fordham
University. Accessed May 28, 2022. https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/kipling.asp.
Kitajima Manji. Hideyoshi no Chōsen shinryaku, Tokyo 2002.
Kitaoka Shin’ichi. Nihon rikugun to tairiku seisaku, 1906–1918, Tokyo 1978.
Kleiner, Juergen. Korea. A Century of Change, London et al. 2001.
Kobayashi Tatsuo (Hrsg.). Suiusō Nikki, Tokyo 1965.
Korean Delegation. Petition. The Claim of the Korean People and Nation for Liberation from
Japan and for the Reconstitution of Korea as an Independent State, Paris, April 1919,
Columbia University Library, 97–84261–16.
Korean Information Bureau. Little Martyrs of Korea, Philadelphia, PA 1919.
Kuhn, Dieter. Die Republik China von 1912 bis 1937. Entwurf für eine politische
Ereignisgeschichte, thrid revised and extended edition, Heidelberg 2007.
Kurokawa Hidenori, Nihon no dai–seijika. Itō Hirobumi mo, Chōsenjin ni totte ha gokuakunin
datta! in: Kaku Kōzō (Ed.), Nihonshi jinbutsu “sono go no hanashi”, fourth edition, Tokyo
1996, pp. 312–313.
158 Bibliography
Kuß, Susanne and Martin, Bernd (Eds.). Das Deutsche Reich und der Boxeraufstand, Munich
2002.
Kuß, Susanne. Deutsches Militär auf kolonialen Kriegsschauplätzen. Eskalation von Gewalt zu
Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts, Berlin 2005.
Kwak, Sang–Kyung and Lee, Hun–Chang. Conditions of Economic Devvelopment in Korea in
the First Half of the Twentieth Century, in: Ikeo, Aiko (Ed.), Economic Development in
Twentieth–Century East Asia. The International Context, London/New York 1997,
pp. 75–85.
Lanza, Fabio. Behind the Gate. Inventing Students in Beijing, New York 2010.
Large, Stephen S. The Japanese Labor Movement, 1912–1919. Suzuki Bunji and the Yūaikai, in:
The Journal of Japanese Studies 29 (1970) 3, pp. 559–579.
Larsen, Kirk W. and Seeley, Joseph. Simple Conversation or Secret Treaty? The Taft–Katsura
Memorandum in Korean Historical Memory, in: Journal of Korean Studies 19 (2014) 1,
pp. 59–92.
Laurinat, Marion. Kita Ikki (1883–1937) und der Februarputsch 1936. Eine historische
Untersuchung japanischer Quellen des Militärgerichtsverfahrens, Berlin 2006.
Lee, Chae–jin. Zhou Enlai. The Early Years, Stanford 1994.
Lee, Timothy S. A Political Factor in the Rise of Protestantism in Korea. Protestantism and the
1919 March First Movement, in: Church History 69 (2000) 1, pp. 116–142.
Leonhard, Jörn. Der überforderte Frieden. Versailles und die Welt 1918–1923, Munich 2018.
Leutner Mechthild and Mühlhahn, Klaus (Eds.). Kolonialkrieg in China. Die Niederschlagung
der Boxerbewegung 1900–1901, Berlin 2007.
Lew, Young Ick. The Making of the First Korean President. Syngman Rhee’s Quest for
Independence, 1875–1948, Honolulu, HI 2013.
Liao, Ping–hui and Wang, David Der–Wei (Eds.). Taiwan Under Japanese Colonial Rule,
1895–1945. History, Culture, Memory, New York, NY 2010.
Lim, Chaisung. Railroad Workers and World War I. Labor Hygiene and the Policies of Japanese
National Railways, in: Minohara, Tosh et al. (Eds.), The Decade of the Great War. Japan
and the Wider World in the 1910s, Leiden 2014, pp. 415–438.
Linkhoeva, Tatiana. Revolution Goes East. Imperial Japan and Soviet Communism, Ithaca, NY
2020.
Linkhoeva, Tatiana. The Russian Revolution and the Emergence of Japanese Anticommunism,
in: Revolutionary Russia 31 (2018) 2, pp. 261–278.
Lutum, Peter. Das Denken von Minakata Kumagusu und Yanagita Kunio. Zwei Pioniere der
japanischen Volkskunde im Spiegel der Leitmotive wakon–yōsai und wayō–
setchū, Münster 2005.
Lowe, Peter. Great Britain and Japan, 1911–1915. A Study of British Far Eastern Policy,
New York 1969.
Lutum, Peter. Das Denken von Minakata Kumagusu und Yanagita Kunio. Zwei Pioniere der
japanischen Volkskunde im Spiegel der Leitmotive wakon–yōsai und wayō–
setchū, Münster 2005.
MacLennan, Arthur. Diplomacy and Force in Korea, San Francisco, CA 1919.
Manela, Erez. Imagining Woodrow Wilson in Asia: Dreams of East–West Harmony and the
Revolt against Empire 1919, in: The American Historical Review 111 (2006) 5,
pp. 1327–1351.
Manela, Erez. The Wilsonian Moment. Self–Determination and the International Origins of
Anticolonial Nationalism, Oxford 2007.
Mao, Haijian. The Qing Empire and the Opium War. The Collapse of the Heavenly Dynasty,
Cambridge 2016.
Mao Haijian. Wuxu bianfa shi shikao, Beijing 2005.
Mao Tse–tung. The Chinese Revolution and the Chinese Communist Party, in: Selected Works
of Mao Tse–tung, vol. 2. Accessed September 17, 2019. https://www.marxists.org/refer
ence/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-2/mswv2_23.htm#p4.
Mao Tse–tung. The May 4th Movement, in: Selected Works of Mao Tse–tung, vol. 2. Accessed
September 17, 2019. https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/
volume-2/mswv2_13.htm.
Mason, Michele M. and Lee, Helen J.S. Introduction, in: idem. (Eds.), Reading Colonial Japan.
Text, Context, and Critique, Stanford, CA 2012, pp. 1–17.
Matsumoto Ken’ichi. Kita Ikki ron, Toyko 1996.
Matsusaka, Y. Tak. Japan’s South Manchuria Railway Company in Northeast China, 1906–34,
in: Elleman, Bruce A. and Kotkin, Stephen (Eds.), Manchurian Railways and the Opening
of China. An International History, New York/London 2009, pp. 37–58.
May, Ernest R. American Policy and Japan’s Entrance into World War I, in: The Mississippi
Valley Historical Review 40 (1953) 2, pp. 279–290.
McCord, Edward A. Warlordism in Early Republican China, in: Graff, David A. and Highman,
Robin (Eds.), A Military History of China, Lexington KY, 2012, pp. 175–192.
McCormack, Gavan. Chang Tso–lin in Northeast China, 1911–1928. China, Japan, and the
Manchurian Idea, Stanford, CA 1977.
McGuire Mohr, Joan. The Czech and Slovak Legion in Siberia from 1917 to 1922, Jefferson,
NC 2012.
Meisner, Maurice. Li Ta–Chao and the Origins of Chinese Marxism, Cambridge, MA 1967.
Melzer, Jürgen. Warfare 1914–1918 (Japan), in: 1914–1918–online. International Encyclopedia
of the First World War, ed. by Ute Daniel, Peter Gatrell, Oliver Janz, Heather Jones, Jennifer
Keene, Alan Kramer, and Bill Nasson, issued by Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin,
October 19, 2017. Accessed May 30, 2022. https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/arti
cle/warfare_1914-1918_japan.
Meyer, Harald. Die “Taishō–Demokratie”. Begriffsgeschichtliche Studien zur
Demokratierezeption in Japan von 1900 bis 1920, Bern 2005.
Mi Rucheng. Di guo zhu yi yu Zhongguo tie lu, 1847–1949, Beijing 2007.
Miki Kiyoshi, Miki Kiyoshi zenshū, Tokyo 1984, 20 vols.
Minohara, Tosh; Hon, Tze–ki and Dawley, Evan. Introduction, in:idem. (Eds.), The Decade of
the Great War. Japan and the Wider World in the 1910s, Leiden 2014, pp. 1–17.
Mitter, Rana. 1911. The Unanchored Chinese Revolution, in: The China Quarterly 208 (2011),
pp. 1009–1020.
Miyagawa Gorīsaburō. Ten’yūkyō kyūen no keirinkō, in in: Fujimoto Hisanori (Ed.): Tōyama
seishin Tokyo 1940, pp. 117–129.
Miyazaki Tōten. Sanjūsannen no yume, Tokyo 1902.
Miyazaki, Tōten. My Thirty–Three Year’s Dream. The Autobiography of Miyazaki Toten, transl.
and ed. by Marius B. Jansen and Etō Shinkichi, Princeton 2014.
Mizuno Naoki. Shokuminchi Chōsen ni okeru Itō Hirobumi no kioku. Keijō no Hakubunji wo
chūshin ni, in: Itō Yukio and I Sunhan (Eds.), Itō Hirobumi to Kankoku tōchi. Shodai
Kankoku tōkan wo meguru hyakunenme no kenshō, Tokyo 2009, pp. 212–215.
Molony, Barbarba. Women’s Rights, Feminism, and Suffragism in Japan, 1870–1925, in: Pacific
Historical Review 69 (2000) 4, pp. 639–661.
160 Bibliography
Mori, Massimo. Friede und Föderalismus bei Kant, in: Zeitschrift für Politik 53 (2006) 4,
pp. 379–392.
Moskowitz, Karl. The Creation of the Oriental Development Company. Japanese Illusions Meet
Korean Reality, in: Occasional Papers on Korea 2 (1974), pp. 73–121.
Murao, Hideo. The Ideas and Philosophy of Nishihara Kamezō. In the Context of His Role in the
Nishihara Loans, in: Nagasaki kenritsu daigaku ronshū 30 (1997) 3, pp. 433–473.
Nakano Takeshi. Fukoku to kyōhei. Chisei keizaigaku josetsu, Tokyo 2016.
Naraoka, Sōchi. A New Look at Japan’s Twenty–One Demands. Reconsidering Katō Takaaki’s
Motives in 1915, in: Minohara, Tosh; Hon, Tze–ki and Dawley, Evan (Eds.), The Decade of
the Great War. Japan and the Wider World in the 1910s, Leiden 2014, pp. 189–210.
Nathan, Andrew J. A Constitutional Republic. The Peking Government, 1916–28, in: Twitchett,
Denis and Fairbank, John K. (Eds.), The Cambridge History of China, vol. 12: Republican
China 1912–1949, Part 1, Cambridge 1983, pp. 256–283.
Nathan, Andrew J. Peking Politics, 1918–1923. Factionalism and the Failure of
Constitutionalism, Berkeley/Los Angeles 1976.
Nihon Kokuyū Tetsudō – Sōsaishitsu – Shūshika, Nihon kokuyū tetsudō hyakunenshi,
17 vols., Tokyo 1969–1974.
Nimura, Kazuo. The Ashio Riot of 1907. A Social History of Mining in Japan, Durham, NC 1998.
Nish, Ian. Alliance in Decline. A Study in Anglo–Japanese Relations, 1908–1923, London 1972.
Nish, Ian. Japan and China, 1914–1916, in: Hinsley, F. Harry (Ed.), British Foreign Policy Under
Sir Edward Grey, Cambridge 1977, pp. 452–465.
Nish, Ian. Japan and the Outbreak of War in 1914, in: The Collected Writings of Ian Nish, Vol. 1,
Tokyo 2001, pp. 173–187.
Nish, Ian. The Anglo–Japanese Alliance. The Diplomacy of Two Island Empires, 1894–1907,
London 1966.
Ogden, Suzanne P. The Sage in the Inkpot. Bertrand Russell and China’s Social Reconstruction
in the 1920s, in: Modern Asian Studies 16 (1982) 4, pp. 529–600.
Oh, Se–Eung. Dr. Philip Jaisohn’s Reform Movement, 1896–1898. A Critical Appraisal of the
Independence Club, Lanham, MD 1995.
Okabe Makio (Ed.). Minami Manshū tetsudō gaisha no kenkyū, Tokyo 2008.
Ōno Ken’ichi, World War I and the 1920s. Export–led Boom and Bust. Accessed July 4, 2016.
http://www.grips.ac.jp/teacher/oono/hp/lecture_J/lec07.htm.
Osatake Takeki. Meiji ishin, Tokyo 1978.
Ōsei Yoshikura. Ten’yūkyō, Tokyo 1981.
Ōshima Tōto. Tōyama–ō no doko ga erai ka, in: Fujimoto Hisanori (Ed.): Tōyama seishin Tokyo
1940, pp. 82–110.
Otsubo, Sumiko. Fighting on Two Fronts. Japan’s Involvement in the Siberian Intervention and
the Spanish Influenza Pandemic of 1918, in: Minohara, Tosh; Hon, Tze–ki and Dawley,
2014, pp. 461–480.
Paine, S.C.M. The Chinese Eastern Railway from the First Sino–Japanese War until the
Russo–Japanese War, in: Elleman, Bruce A. and Kotkin, Stephen (Eds.), Manchurian
Railways and the Opening of China. An International History, New York/London 2009,
pp. 13–36.
Paine, S.C.M. The Sino–Japanese War of 1894–1895. Perceptions, Power, and Primacy,
Cambridge 2003.
Park, Chung–Shin. Protestantism and Politics in Korea, Seattle, WA 2003.
Park Eun–sik, Han’guk tongnip undong chi hyŏlsa, Shanghai 1920.

Park, Joohyun Jade. Journalism behind Bars. Bethell’s Anti–Japanese English–Korean
Newspapers, in: Victorian Periodicals Review 51 (2018) 1, pp. 86–120.
Peckham, Robert. Epidemics in Modern Asia, Cambridge 2016.
Petersson, Niels P. Imperialismus und Modernisierung. Siam, China und die
europäischen Mächte 1895–1914, Munich 2000.
Pires, Ana Paula; Schmidt, Jan and Tato, María Inés (Eds.), The Global First World War. African,
East Asian, Latin American and Iberian Mediators, London/New York 2021.
Platt, Stephen R. Imperial Twilight. The Opium War and the End of China’s Last Golden Age,
New York 2019.
Radtke, Kurt W. Nationalism and Internationalism in Japan’s Economic Liberalism. The Case of
Ishibashi Tanzan, in: Stegewerns, Dick (Ed.), Nationalism and Internationalism in Imperial
Japan. Autonomy, Asian Brotherhood, or World Citizenship? London/New York 2003,
pp. 169–195.
Revelant, Andrea. Rethinking Japanese Taxation in the Wake of the Great War, in: Frattolillo,
Oliviero and Best, Antony (Eds.), Japan and the Great War, New York 2015, pp. 116–141.
Rhoads, Edward. Stepping Forth into the World. The Chinese Educational Mission to the
United States 1872–1881, Hong Kong 2011.
Rinke, Stefan. Latin America and the First World War, New York, NY 2017.
Robinson, Michael Edson. Cultural Nationalism in Colonial Korea, 1920–1925, new edition,
Seatlle, WA 2014 [1988].
Robinson, Michael E. Korea’s Twentieth–Century Odyssey. A Short History, Honolulu, HI 2007.
Robinson, Michael. National Identity and the Thought of Sin Ch’aeho. Sadaejuŭi and Chuch’e
in History and Politics, in: The Journal of Korean Studies 5 (1984), pp. 121–142.
Rodney, Walter. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Washington, D.C. 1982.
Russell, Bertrand. The Problem of China, London 1922.
Saaler, Sven and Koschmann, J. Victor (Eds.) Pan–Asianism in Modern Japanese History.
Colonialism, Regionalism and Borders, London 2007.
Sasaki Toshikazu. Ainu shi no jidai he. Yoreki shō, Sapporo 2013.
Saul, Norman E. The Life and Times of Charles R. Crane, 1858–1939. American Businessman,
Philanthropist, and a Founder of Russian Studies in America, Lanham, MD 2013.
Schencking, J. Charles. Making Waves. Politics, Propaganda, and the Emergence of the
Imperial Japanese Navy, 1868–1922, Stanford, CA 2005.
Schiffrin, Harold Z. Military and Politics in China. Is the Warlord Model Pertinent? in: Asia
Quarterly 3 (1975), p. 195.
Schiltz, Michael. “Separating the Roots of the Chrysanthemum”. Nishihara Kamezō and the
Abortive China Loans, 1917–18, (2007), MPRA Paper No. 7100. Accessed October 3, 2019.
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/7100/1/MPRA_paper_7100.pdf.
Schivelbusch, Woflgang. Geschichte der Eisenbahnreise: Zur Industrialisierung von Raum und
Zeit im 19. Jahrhundert, Seventh Edition, Frankfurt am Main 2000.
Schmid, Andre. Korea between Empires, 1895–1919, New York 2002.
Schmidt, Jan. Nach dem Krieg ist vor dem Krieg. Medialisierte Erfahrungen des Ersten
Weltkriegs und Nachkriegsdiskurse in Japan (1914–1919), Frankfurt am Main 2021.
Schmidt, Jan and Schmidtpott, Katja (Eds.). The East Asian Dimension of the First World War.
Global Entanglements and Japan, China and Korea, 1914–1919, Frankfurt am Main 2020.
Reiner Schrader, Die Erzählung von der Armut, in: Oriens Extremus 30 (1983–1986),
pp. 154–245.
162 Bibliography
Schwartz, Benjamin I. Themes in Intellectual History. May Fourth and After, in: Twitchett,
Denis and Fairbank, John K. (Eds.), The Cambridge History of China, vol. 12: Republican
China 1912–1949, Part 1, Cambridge 1983, pp. 406–450.
Schwartz, Rachel C. The Rand School of Social Science, 1906–1924. A Study of Worker
Education in the Socialist Era, PhD Thesis, State University of New York at Buffalo, 1984.
Sheridan, James E. The Warlord Era. Politics and Militarism under the Peking Government,
1916–28, in: Twitchett, Denis and Fairbank, John K. (Eds.), The Cambridge History of
China, vol. 12: Republican China 1912–1949, Part 1, Cambridge 1983, pp. 284–321.
Shin, Gi–Wook. Peasant Protest and Social Change in Colonial Korea, Seattle, WA 1996.
Shinohara, Chika. Gender and the Great War. Tsuda Umeko’s Role in Institutionalizing
Women’s Education in Japan, in: Minohara, Tosh; Hon, Tze–ki and Dawley, Evan (Eds.),
The Decade of the Great War. Japan and the Wider World in the 1910s, Leiden 2014,
pp. 323–348.
Shizume Masato, The Japanese Economy during the Interwar Period. Instability in the
Financial System and the Impact of the World Depression, in: Bank of Japan Review.
Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies, 2009–E–2, Tōkyō 2009. Accessed April 10,
2016. https://www.boj.or.jp/en/research/wps_rev/rev_2009/data/rev09e02.pdf.
Silverberg, Miriam. The Modern Girl as Militant, in: Bernstein, Gail L. (Ed.), Recreating
Japanese Women, 1600–1945, Berkeley 1991, pp. 239–266.
Simbirtseva, Tatiana M. Queen Min of Korea. Coming to Power, in: Transactions of the Royal
Asiatic Society, Korea Branch 71 (1996), pp. 41–54.
Simpson, Brad. The United States and the Curious History of Self–Determination, in:
Diplomatic History 36 (2012) 4, pp. 675–694.
Sizer, Nancy F. John Dewey’s Ideas in China 1919 to 1921, in: Comparative Education Review
10, (1966) 3, pp. 390–403.
Skocpol, Theda. States and Social Revolutions, Cambridge 1979.
Sprotte, Maik Hendrik. Konfliktaustragung in autoritären Herrschaftssystemen. Eine
historische Fallstudie zur frühsozialistischen Bewegung im Japan der Meiji–Zeit, Marburg
2001.
Stanley, Thomas A. Ōsugi Sakae, Anarchist in Taishō Japan. The Creativity of the Ego,
Cambridge, MA 1982.
Stegewerns, Dick. The End of World War One as a Turning Point in Modern Japanese History,
in: Edström, Bert (Ed.), Turning Points in Japanese History, London/New York 2002,
pp. 138–162.
Sturfelt, Lina. Introduction. Scandinavia and the First World War, in: Scandia 80 (2014) 2,
online at: https://project2.sol.lu.se/tidskriftenscandia/index-q=node-1096.html.
Accessed May 30, 2022.
Summerskill, Michael. China on the Western Front. Britain’s Chinese Work Force in the First
World War, London 1982.
Suzuki Takeo (Ed.). Nishihara shakkan shiryō kenkyū, Tokyo 1972.
Swope, Kenneth. A Dragon’s Head and a Serpent’s Tail. Ming China and the first great East
Asian War, 1592–1598, Norman, OK 2016.
Szewczyk, Jimmy. The Effects of Income Inequality on Political Participation. A Contextual
Analysis. Honors Thessis, Sewanee 2015. Accessed July 3, 2016. https://www.sewanee.
edu/media/academics/politics/The-Effects-of-Income-Inequality-on-Political-
Participation.pdf.
Ta, Chen. Labor Conditions in Japan, in: Monthly Labor Review 21 (1925) 5, pp. 8–19.
Takamure Itsue. Hi no kuni no onna no nikki. Takamure Itsue jiden, Tokyo 1966.
Takamure Itsue. Zoku anakizumu josei kaihō ronshū, Tokyo 1989.
Takashi Hatada. Nihon to chōsen, Tokyo 1965.
Takenaka, Harukata. Failed Democratization in Prewar Japan. Breakdown of a Hybrid Regime,
Stanford, CA 2014.
Takenaka, Toru. Siemens in Japan. Von der Landesöffnung bis zum Ersten Weltkrieg, Stuttgart
1996.
Takii Kazuhiro. Itō Hirobumi. Chi no seijika, Tokyo 2010.
Tamanoi, Mariko Asano. The City and the Countryside. Competing Taishō “Modernities” on
Gender, in: Minichiello, Sharon (Ed.), Japan’s Competing Modernities. Issues in Culture
and Democracy 1900–1930, Honolulu 1998, pp. 91–113.
Tanaka Sōgorō. Kita Ikki. Nihonteki fashisuto no shōchō, second edition, Tokyo 1971.
The Korean Independence Movement, Shanghai [1919?].
The Shantung Controversy, in: The Revolutionary Age 2 (July 26, 1919) 4, p. 2.
Throntveit, Trygve. The Fable of the Fourteen Points. Woodrow Wilson and National
Self–Determination, in: Diplomatic History 35, no. 3 (2011), pp. 445–481.
Thunig–Nittner, Gerburg. Die Tschechoslowakische Legion in Russland. Ihre Geschichte und
Bedeutung bei der Entstehung der 1. Tschechoslowakischen Republik, Wiesbaden 1970.
Tipton, Elise K. The Department Store. Producing Modernity in Interwar Japan, in: Roy Starrs
(Ed.), Rethinking Japanese Modernism, Leiden 2011, pp. 428–451.
Tobata Seiichi. Nihon nōgyō no ninaite, in: Nihon Nōgyō Hattatsushi Chōsakai et al. (Ed.),
Nihon nōgyō hattatsushi, vol. 9, Tokyo 1956, pp. 561–604.
Toya Riina. Ginza to Shiseidō. Nihon wo “modān” ni shita kaisha, Tokyo 2012.
Tsao, Y. S. A Challenge to Western Learning. The Chinese Student Trained Abroad – What He
Has Accomplished – His Problems, in: News Bulletin (Institute of Pacific Relations),
December 1927, pp. 13–16.
Tsurumi, E. Patricia. Visions of Women and the New Society in Conflict. Yamakawa Kikue
versus Takamure Itsue, in: Minichiello, Sharon (Ed.), Japan’s Competing Modernities.
Issues in Culture and Democracy 1900–1930, Honolulu, HI 1998, pp. 335–357.
Townsend, Susan C. Miki Kiyoshi 1897–1945. Japan’s Itinerant Philosopher, Leiden 2009.
Townsend, Susan C. The Great War and Urban Crisis. Conceptualizing the Industrial
Metropolis in Japan and Britain in the 1910s, in: Minohara, Tosh; Hon, Tze–ki and Dawley,
2014, pp. 301–322.
Tōyama Shigeki. Meiji ishin, Tokyo 2018.
Uchida, Jun. Brokers of Empire: Japanese and Korean Business Elites in Colonial Korea, in:
Elkins, Caroline and Pedersen, Sudan (Eds.), Settler Colonialism in the Twentieth Century.
Projects, Practices, Legacies, London 2005, 153–170.
Uchida, Jun. Brokers of Empire. Japanese Settler Colonialism in Korea, 1876–1945, Cambridge,
MA 2011.
Uchida, Jun. “A Scramble for Freight”. The Politics of Collaboration along and across the
Railway Tracks of Korea under Japanese Rule, in: Comparative Studies in Society and
History 51 (2009) 1, pp. 117–150.
Uden, Martin. Times Past in Korea. An Illustrated Collection of Encounters, Customs and Daily
Life Recorded by Foreign Visitors, London/New York 2003.
Underwood, Elizabeth Ann. Challenged Identities. North American Missionaries in Korea,
1884–1934, Seoul 2004.
164 Bibliography
United States Bureau of Manufactures (Ed.), Monthy Consular and Trade Reports 86,
Washington, D.C. 1908.
United States Tariff Commission, Japan. Trade During the War, Washington, D.C. 1919.
Uttam, Jitendra. Political Economy of Korea. Transition, Transformation and Turnaround,
London 2014.
Vorländer, Klaus. Kant und der Gedanke des Völkerbundes, Leipzig 1919.
Wada Hanako. Dai–ichiji Sekai Taisengo ni okeru Nihon gaikō zaigai kōkan, in: Journal of the
Graduate School of Humanities and Sciences, Ochanomizu University 8 (2005) 6,
pp. 1–13.
Wagner, Kim. Imperial Legacies by Jeremy Black review – whitewash for Britain’s atrocities, in:
The Guardian, August 10, 2019. Accessed May 28, 2022. https://www.theguardian.com/
books/2019/aug/10/imperial-legacies-jeremy-black-review-empire-multiculturalism.
Wallerstein, Immanuel. Welt–System–Analyse. Eine Einführung, Wiesbaden 2019.
Walker, Brett L. The Conquest of Ainu Lands. Ecology and Culture in Japanese Expansion,
1590–1800, Berkeley, CA 2009.
Walthall, Anne. From Private to Public Patriarchy. Women, Labor and the State in East Asia,
1600–1919, in: Teresa A. Meade and Merry E. Wiesner–Hanks (Eds.), A Companion to
Gender History, New York 2006, pp. 444–458.
Wang, Fan–sen and Fu, Ssu–nien. A Life in Chinese History and Politics, Cambridge/New York
2006.
Wang, Peili; von Humboldt, Wilhelm and Cai. Yuanpei. Eine vergleichende Analyse zweier
klassischer Bildungskonzepte in der deutschen Aufklärung und in der ersten
chinesischen Republik, Münster/New York 1996.
Wang, Peter Chen–main. Caring beyond National Borders: The YMCA and Chinese Laborers in
World War I Europe, in: Church History 78 (2009) 2, pp. 327–349.
Wang, Yuru. Economic Development in China between the Two World Wars (1920–1936), in:
Wright, Tim (Ed.), The Chinese Economy in the Early Twentieth Century. Recent Chinese
Studies, London 1992, pp. 58–77.
Webb, Sidney and Beatrice. The Webbs in Asia. The 1911–12 Travel Diary, edited by George
Feaver, Basingstoke 1992.
Weisenfeld, Gennifer. MAVO. Japanese Artists and the Avant–Garde, 1905–1931, Berkeley/Los
Angeles, CA 2002.
Wells, Kenneth M. Background to the March First Movement. Koreans in Japan, 1905–1919, in:
Korean Studies 13 (1989), pp. 5–21.
Wendorff, Jean Jaques. Der Boxeraufstand in China 1900/1901 als deutscher und französischer
Erinnerungsort. Ein Vergleich anhand ausgewählter Quellengruppen, Frankfurt am Main
2016.
Werner, Edward T.C. China of the Chinese, London 1920.
Whiting, Allen S. The Soviet Offer to China of 1919, in: The Far Eastern Quarterly 10 (1951) 4,
pp. 355–364.
Wilson, Woodrow. Fourteen Points Speech, in: Arhurt S. Link et al. (Eds.), The Papers of
Woodrow Wilson, Princeton, NJ 1984, vol. 45, p. 536.
Winter, Jay (Ed.). The Cambridge History of the First World War, vol. 1: Global War, Cambridge
2014.
Womack, Brantly. China between Region and World, The China Journal 61 (2009), pp. 1–20.
Wood, Ge–Zay. China Versus Japan, New York 1919.
Worm, Herbert. Studien über den jungen Ōsugi Sakae und die Meiji–Sozialisten zwischen
Sozialdemokratie und Anarchismus unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der
Anarchismusrezeption, Hamburg 1981.
Wu, Chengming. A Brief Account of the Development of Capitalism in China, in: Wright, Tim
(Ed.), The Chinese Economy in the Early Twentieth Century. Recent Chinese Studies,
London 1992, pp. 29–43.
Xu, Guoqi. Asia, in: Winter, Jay (Ed.), The Cambridge History of the First World War, vol. 1,
Cambridge 2014, pp. 479–510.
Xu, Guoqi. Asia and the Great War. A Shared History, New York 2017.
Xu, Guoqi. Strangers on the Western Front. Chinese Workers in the Great War, Cambridge, MA
2011.
Xu, Jilin. Historical Memories of May Fourth. Patriotism, but of What Kind?, in: China Heritage
Quarterly 17 (2009). Accessed September 30, 2019. http://www.chinaheritagequarterly.
org/features.php?searchterm=017_mayfourthmemories.inc&issue=017.
Yamamuro Shin’ichi et al. Gendai no kiten Dai–ichiji Sekai Taisen, 4 vols., Tokyo 2014.
Yamanoue Shōtarō. Dai–ichiji Sekai Taisen. Wasurerareta sensō, Tokyo 2010.
Yamazaki, Tomoko. The Story of Yamada Waka. From Prostitute to Feminist Pioneer, Tokyo
1985.
Yang, Qian. Pari kōwa kaigi to taika ni jū ichi–kajō. Santō mondai o chūshin ni, in: Hokudai
shigaku 58 (2018), pp. 80–95.
Ye, Weili. Searching Modernity in China’s Name. Chinese Students in the United States,
1900–1927, Stanford 2001.
Yoo, Theodore Jun. The Politics of Gender in Colonial Korea. Education, Labor, and Health,
1910–1945, Berkeley, CA 2008.
Young, A. Morgan. Japan under Taisho Tenno 1912–1926, London/New York 2010.
Yu, Chai–Shin. A New History of Korean Civilization, Bloomington, IN 2012.
Yuh, Ji–Yeon. Moving within Empires. Korean Women and Trans–Pacific Migration, in: Choy,
Catherine Ceniza and Wu, Judy Tzu–Chun (Eds.), Gendering the Trans–Pacific World,
Leiden 2017, pp. 107–113.
Zachmann, Urs Matthias. Imperialism in a Nutshell. Conflict and the “Concert of Powers” in
the Tripartite Intervention, 1895, in: Japanstudien 17 (2006) 1, pp. 57–82.
Zachmann, Urs Matthias (Ed.). Asia After Versailles. Asian Perspectives on the Paris Peace
Conference and the Interwar Order, 1919–33, Edinburgh 2018.
Index
An, Chang-ho 123, 132 Chungking 9
Amur Society (Kokuryūkai) 13, 17, 19, 64, 110 civil war 8, 63–64
anarchism 85, 88 Cixi, Empress Dowager 45
Anderson, Benedict 51, 80, 115 Clemenceau, Georges 39, 68
Anfu Club 14 Columbia University (New York City) 59
Anglo–Japanese Alliance 5, 58–60, 116 Communist International 93–94
Anhui Clique 14, 31, 48 Confucianism 43, 46, 109, 112
Aoyama Institute for Girls 84 Craft, Stephen G. 15
Arakawa, Gorō 129 Crane, Charles R. 139
Asahi Shimbun (Tokyo) 55, 77 Czech Legion 63
Bank of Chōsen 126 Dalian 19

Beijing 7, 9, 13–14, 18–19, 21, 23–24, 26, Deutsch, Karl W. 51
28, 33, 37–38, 40–41, 45–49, 52, 62 Dickinson, Frederick R. 55
Beijing University (Beida) 7, 40, 45–47, 49 Donghak movement 110, 112–113
Best, Antony 55 Dōshikai 57
Bethell, Ernest 117 Doshisha School for Girls 84
Black Ocean Society (Gen’yōsha) 17, 64, 110 Duan, Qirui 14, 23, 26, 30–32, 38, 41, 46
Bolshevism 85, 93, 145
Boxer Rebellion (1899–1901) 3 Edmund, Charles K. 44
British Empire 21–22, 35, 105 Empress Myeongseong (aka Queen Min)
British Foreign Office 35 110, 112
Buddhism 112 Entente 38, 59, 65, 102
Buffalo (New York) 59 Etō, Shinkichi 20
Cai, E 23 Fengtian Clique 14, 28

Cai, Yuanpei 7, 37, 43, 46 Fiume 36
Canton Christian College 44 Forster, Elisabeth 50
Cao, Rulin 48–49 Frattolillo, Oliviero 55–56, 61, 68
Central Powers 36, 65 Friend of the Housewife (Shufu no tomo) 81
Chang, Chi-yŏn 115 Fu, Sinian 43, 47–48
Chang, Tŏksu 138 Fuji Land Company 125
Cheam-ni Massacre 147 fukoku kyōhei 56
Chen, Duxiu 32–33, 37, 46, 49 Fukuzawa, Yukichi 68, 111
Chiang, Kai–shek 23
Chika, Shinohara 84 Ganghwa Treaty 108
Chinda, Sutemi 67 Gapsin Coup 111–112
Chinese nationalism 9, 51–52 Gate of Heavenly Peace (Tiananmen)
Chinese Patriotic Committee (New York 7, 47, 52
City) 33 Gates, Rustin B. 66
Chinese Revolution 6, 11, 17, 22, 43 Gellner, Ernest 51, 80
Chosŏn dynasty 109, 124 German Kaiserreich 5, 16
Chōsen Industrial Bank 126 German Micronesia 62
Chosŏn Industrial Exposition 135 Grey, Edward 22, 58
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110745672-006
168 Index
Guangzhou 26, 31 Kim, Dong-No 107

Gu, Jiegang 43 Kim, Kyu-sik 132, 139
Gwangmu Reform 112 Kim, Okgyun 111
Kita, Ikki 17
Ha, Yong-Chool 120 Kita, Sadakichi 128
Hanes, Jeffrey E. 82 Kobe 99–100, 102
Hankow 9 Kobe Institute for Girls 84
Hanyeping iron and steel works 19 Kojong, King of Korea 110–113, 116, 139–141
Hara, Takashi 67, 100 Koo, V. K. Wellington 16, 19, 34, 38
Hasegawa, Yoshimichi 145 Korea Daily News (Taehan maeil sinbo)
Hatada, Takashi 128 114, 117
Heungseon Daewongun (Grand Internal Korea Self-Strengthening Society (Taehan
Prince Heungseon) 110 cha’ganghoe) 115
Hioki, Eki 19 Korean Information Bureau 144–145
Hiratsuka, Raichō 134 Korean National Association 132,
Hobsbawm, Eric J. 2 138–139
Hollywood 80 Kōtoku, Shūsui 91
Hong Kong 25, 52 Kraevski 64
Hosoya, Chihiro 54
Hu, Shi 43, 46 Lansing, Robert 36
League of Nations 35–38, 65–66, 68,
Ie no Hikari (The Light of the Home) 88 102, 148
Ijūin, Hikokichi 17 Leipzig University 7
Iljinhoe (Progress Party) 117 Lenin, Vladimir I. 43, 46, 63, 93–94
Independence Club (Tongnip Leonhard, Jörn 33
hyŏphoe) 113–114 Li, Dazhao 45, 50
Inner Mongolia 19 Li, Liejun (Li Lieh–chun) 17
Ishikawa, Hiroyoshi 82 Li, Yuanhong 30
Itō, Hirobumi 117 Liang, Qichao 20, 22
Iyenaga, Toyokichi 59–60 Liaodong Peninsula 16, 106
Liaoning 19
Japanese imperialism 3, 8, 12–13, 21, 31, Lim, Chi-jung 123
47–48, 50, 61, 66, 107–108, 118, 127 Lloyd George, David 5, 39
Japanese League of Nations Association 65 London 20, 22, 35, 61, 67, 80, 93
Jilin 19 Lushun 19
Lu, Zhengxiang 34, 37
Kal, Hong 135–136
Kalmikoff, Ivan 63 Makino, Nobuaki 68
Katayama, Sen 91–97 Manchuria 15, 17, 19, 31, 64–67, 126,
Katō, Sadakichi 60 131–132
Katō, Takaaki 19, 58v59 Manela, Erez 138
Kawakami, Hajime 74 Mao, Zedong 6, 9, 21, 43, 46, 52
Kendall, Carlton Waldo March First Movement 107, 115, 133, 140,
144–145 141–149
Kennan, George F. 1 Maruyama, Masao 54
Kiao–chow 60 Matsui, Keishirō 67
May, Ernest R. 51
Index 169
May Fourth Movement (wusi yundong) 6, P’yeho (Ruins) 147

8–9, 33, 40–50, 52
Meiji period 55–56, 58, 64–65, 68, Qingdao 16, 18, 35, 61
84, 134 Qing Dynasty (1644–1911) 3, 9, 17, 37
Meiji Restoration 43, 55–56
Miki, Kiyoshi 73 Rand School of Social Science (New York
Military School of the New Rising (Sinhŭng City) 95
mugwan hakkyo) 131 Reinsch, Paul 19–20, 22
Mitsukoshi 79 Research Clique 14
Mitter, Rana 3, 51 Revelant, Andrea 73
Moore, John Bassett 39 Rhee, Syngman 132, 139, 143
Motono, Ichirō 24 Rice riots (Japan) 67, 75, 94, 96–99, 102, 141
Mutual Assistance Society (Tongjesa) 132 Robinson, Michael E. 109, 121–122, 127–128,
131, 134, 146
Na, Hyesŏk 134 Rōdō Dōmeikai (Labor League) 101
Nanking 9, 18 Royds, William Massy 139–140, 143
National Protection Army (huguojun) 23 Russell, Bertrand 4–5
“New Culture Movement” (China) 50 Russian Civil War 63–64
New Korea Youth Corps (Sinhan Russian Revolution 28, 33, 43, 46, 63, 79,
ch’ŏngnyŏndan) 132 85, 87, 92–93, 96
New People’s Association (Sinminhoe) 122 Russo–Japanese War (1904–1905) 4, 15, 17,
Nishihara, Kamezō 24 53, 55, 60, 91, 96, 103, 106, 117, 131, 133
Nishihara loans 12, 24,
26, 31 Saionji, Kinmochi 67–68
Saitō Makoto 57, 122, 148
Ōkuma, Shigenobu 19, 24, 59, 70–71 Sandong Church (Seoul) 131
Opium War (1839–1842) 3, 37 San Francisco 132, 138
Oriental Development Company 125 Schencking, J. Charles 58
O, Sang-sun 147 Schwartz, Benjamin I. 7
Osaka 70, 73–74, 77, 83, 100 Second World War 98, 128, 132
Ōsugi, Sakae 101 Seo, Jae-pil 114
Seoul 111–112, 116–117, 121, 131, 139–140,
pan–Asianism 17 145, 147–148
Paris 33–37, 49, 66–68, 132, 138–139, Shandong 5–6, 15–16, 18–19, 22, 30–31,
144–145, 147–148 34–36, 38–39, 48, 52, 54, 58–62, 66,
Paris Peace Conference 39v40, 47, 144 68, 71
Park, Chung-shin 130 Shanghai 7, 9–10, 20–21, 29, 49,
Park, Eun-sik 115, 123 131–132, 138
Park, Yong-man 132 Shenyang 21
Park, Yung-hyo 111 Shimada, Saburō 57
Peace Treaty of Portsmouth 56, 67 Shin, Chae-ho 114
People’s Russian Information Bureau Shin Nippon (New Japan) 86
(London) 93 Shōwa period 54
protest movement 8, 40, 42, 49–50, Siberia 64–65, 93, 148
52, 76, 144 Siberian Intervention 64–65, 93
Puyi (last emperor of China) 14 Siemens Scandal (Shīmensu jiken) 57, 69
170 Index
Sino–Japanese War (1894–1895) 4, 11, 21, US State Department’s Far Eastern

106, 112–113 Division 22
Socialist Party of America 93 Uttam, Jitendra 106
Society for the Fostering of Educational
Activities (Hŭngsadan) 132 Versailles, Treaty of 33, 39–41, 49, 51,
Stegewerns, Dick 53 55, 101
study group for socialism (shehui zhuyi Vladivostok 63, 131
yanjiuhui) (at Beijing University) 46
Sun, Yat–sen 13, 17, 20, 26, 30–31, 44 wakon yōsai 44, 56
Suzuki, Bunji 79, 100–101 Walthall, Anne 108
Sze, Alfred Sao–ke 22 Wang, Zhengting 34, 37
warlord period (China) 26, 28, 45
Taft-Katsura Agreement 116 Washington Conference 54
Taishō democracy 54, 101 Werner, Edward T.C. 34
Taishō period 55, 80–81, 83, 86–87, Western jingoism 8, 12
89–90, 101 Williams, Edward T. 22
Takamure, Itsue 86 Wilson, Woodrow 6, 8, 22, 34, 36–39, 41,
Taketomi, Tokitoshi 70 65, 67–68, 107, 134–135, 137–139, 141,
Tanaka, Giichi 65 147–149
Taoism 113 Wilsonian Moment 107, 133–140, 141, 150
Terauchi, Masatake 24, 100, 117–118,
121, 129 Xin qingnian (New Youth) 41, 46, 49
The Capital Daily (Hwangsong sinmun) 114 Xu, Guoqi 4
The Independent (Tongnip sinmun) 114 Xu, Shichang 49
The Times (London) 20
Tokugawa shogunate 104 Yalu 125
Tokyo 15, 17–20, 22, 31–32, 55, 61–65, Yamada, Waka 86
67–68, 70, 73–74, 77, 79, 92–93, 96, Yamagata Aritomo 58
100–102, 117–118, 121, 139, 145 Yamakawa, Kikue 85–86
Tokyo Academy for Girls 84 Yamamoto Gonnohyōe 57
Tokyo Peace Exposition 65 Yan, Fu 46
Tōyama, Mitsuru 111 Yan, Xishan 28
Trafalgar Square 79 Yedamitsu Steel Works 96
Triple Intervention 106, 112 Yi, Ha-eung 110
Tsuda, Umeko 84 Yi, Kwang-su 139
Tumen 125 Yi, Wan-yong 118
Twenty–One Demands 5, 7, 19–20, 22, 24, Yosano, Akiko 86, 134
34, 41, 47–48, 51–52, 62, 65 Yŏ, Unhyŏng 138
Yuan, Shikai 12, 15, 17, 19, 21–24, 30, 34
Uchida, Kōsai 17 Yunnan 23
Uchida, Ryōhei 19
Uchida, Yasuya 55, 64 Zhang, Kun 14
Ueno Park 65 Zhang, Xun 28
Underwood, Horace G. 139 Zhang, Zongxiang 48
Union of Wage and Salary Earners in Tokyo Zhang, Zuolin 26, 28, 32
(Tōkyō hōkyū seikatsusha dōmei Zhili Clique 14
kyōgikai) 78

Book On East Asia and WWI

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Book On East Asia and WWI

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Book On East Asia and WWI

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Frank Jacob

East Asia and the First World War

East Asia and the

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022940533

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

© 2022 the author(s), published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

2 China’s Eruption after the First World War: Japanese Imperialism,

3 Japan and the Great War: Imperialist Ambitions Abroad, Social

These demands involved, as is obvious, a complete loss of Chinese independence, the

the traditional moral and social orders as well.”18 Modernizing universities

its cultural complexities, since a new generation was beginning to demand a

2.2 China in 1914

Table 2.1: Percentage of total output for China’s main

Coal Industry .% .%

 Feuerwerker, Economic Trends, pp. 41–42.

 Feuerwerker, Economic Trends, p. 99.

 Sun Yat–sen’s relationship to Japanese right–wing pan–Asianist organizations and military

2.3 China and the First World War

 Kuhn, Republik China, p. 146.

 Etō, China’s International Relations, p. 94.

In Japan, the situation stimulated the demands of right–wing pressure

 Kokuryūkai, 8 Tai–Shi mondaikaiketsu iken, 9 October 1914, Gaimushō gaikōrshiryōkan

The acceptance of the demands by China could consequently only be considered

 Etō, China’s International Relations, pp. 97–99.

 Xu, Asia and the Great War, p. 40.

Regardless of these developments, the British government kept its pro–Japanese

 Etō, China’s International Relations, p. 101.

Table 2.2: Chinese Labor Camps on the Western Front.90

French organization British organization American organization

 Wang, Caring beyond National Borders, p. 330.

contrast to Japan, whose government and businesses gained immense sur-

 Etō, China’s International Relations, p. 101.

method, 25 to 45 cabinets, as well as seven different constitutions.98 In these

Table 2.3: War–related increases in soldiers between 1916 and 1928.101

Year Soldiers in China Provinces involved in conflicts

 Kuhn, Republik China, p. 164.

 Kuhn, Republik China, pp. 166–167.

 Sheridan, Warlord Era, p. 304.

1) The Republic of China is still young.

2.4 China at Versailles

 Ge–Zay Wood, China Versus Japan, New York 1919, p. 3.

 Xu, Asia and the Great War, p. 161.

 Ibid., p. 165.

they had prepared themselves by recruiting international help in advance as

 Cited in ibid.

2.5 The May Fourth Movement

 Kuhn, Republik China, pp. 188.

Confucianism, and modernists, who depicted a more Western modernization

 Ibid., p. 21.

 Kuhn, Republik China, pp. 207–208.

Regardless of China’s political instability and its division by the imperialist

 Ibid., p. 15.

 Kuhn, Republik China, p. 226.

3.2 Political Perspectives

Representatives of the Japanese Imperial Navy in particular had realized that

Table 3.1: Navy Expenditure 1911–1914.25

statesmen (genrō) around Yamagata Aritomo (1838–1922) were responsible for

operations in China40 soon revealed the real interest of the government in