A history of the Japanese people

by F. Brinkley; Dairoku Kikuchi

PEACE RESTORED

After the battles of Mukden and Tsushima, which were great enough to terminate the greatest war, the Russians and the Japanese alike found themselves in a position which must either prelude another stupendous effort on both sides or be utilized to negotiate peace. Here the President of the United States of America intervened, and, on the 9th of June, 1905, the American minister in Tokyo and the ambassador in St. Petersburg, instructed from Washington, handed an identical note to the Japanese and the Russian Governments respectively, urging the two countries to approach each other direct. On the following day, Japan intimated her frank acquiescence, and Russia lost no time in taking a similar step. Two months nevertheless elapsed before the plenipotentiaries of the two powers met, on August 10th, at Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Russia sent M. (afterwards Count) de Witte and Baron Rosen; Japan, Baron (afterwards Marquis) Komura, who had held the portfolio of Foreign Affairs throughout the war, and Mr. (afterwards Baron) Takahira. The Japanese statesmen well understood that much of the credit accruing to them for their successful conduct of the war must be forfeited in the sequel of the negotiations. For the people of Japan had accustomed themselves to expect that Russia would recoup a great part, if not the whole, of the expenses incurred by their country in the contest, whereas the ministry in Tokyo knew that to look for payment of indemnity by a great State whose territory has not been invaded effectively or its existence menaced must be futile.

Nevertheless, diplomacy required that this conviction should be concealed, and thus Russia carried to the conference a belief that the financial phase of the discussion would be crucial. Baron Komura's mandate was, however, that the only radically essential terms were those formulated by Japan prior to the war. She must insist on securing the ends for which she had fought, since she believed them to be indispensable to the peace of the Far East, but beyond that she would not go. The Japanese plenipotentiaries, therefore, judged it wise to submit their terms in the order of the real importance, leaving their Russian colleagues to imagine, as they probably would, that the converse method had been adopted, and that everything prefatory to questions of finance and territory was of minor consequence.

The negotiations, commencing on the 10th of August, were not concluded until the 5th of September, when a treaty of peace was signed. There had been a moment when the onlooking world believed that unless Russia agreed to ransom the island of Saghalien by paying to Japan a sum of 120 millions sterling,—$580,000,000, the conference would be broken off. Nor did such an exchange seem unreasonable, for were Russia expelled from the northern part of Saghalien, which commands the estuary of the Amur, her position in Siberia would have been compromised. But Japan's statesmen were not disposed to make any display of territorial aggression. The southern half of Saghalien had originally belonged to Japan and had passed into Russia's possession by an arrangement which the Japanese nation strongly resented. To recover that portion of the island seemed, therefore, a legitimate ambition. Japan did not contemplate any larger demand, nor did she seriously insist on an indemnity. Thus, the negotiations were never in real danger of failure.

The Treaty of Portsmouth recognized Japan's "paramount political, military, and economic interests" in Korea; provided for the simultaneous evacuation of Manchuria by the contracting parties; transferred to Japan the lease of the Liaotung peninsula, held by Russia from China, together with that of the Russian railways south of Kwanchengtsz and all collateral mining or other privileges; ceded to Japan the southern half of Saghalien, the fiftieth parallel of latitude to be the boundary between the two parties; secured fishing-rights for Japanese subjects along the coasts of the seas of Japan, Okhotsk, and Bering; laid down that the expense incurred by the Japanese for the maintenance of the Russian prisoners during the war should be reimbursed by Russia, less the outlays made by the latter on account of Japanese prisoners, by which arrangement Japan obtained a payment of some four million sterling $20,000,000, and provided that the contracting parties, while withdrawing their military force from Manchuria, might maintain guards to protect their respective railways, the number of such guards not to exceed fifteen per kilometre of line. There were other important restrictions: first, the contracting parties were to abstain from taking, on the Russo-Korean frontier, any military measures which might menace the security of Russian or Korean territory; secondly, the two powers pledged themselves not to exploit the Manchurian railways for strategic purposes, and thirdly, they promised not to build on Saghalien or its adjacent islands any fortifications or other similar works, or to take any military measures which might impede the free navigation of the Strait of La Pérouse and the Gulf of Tatary.

The above provisions concerned the two contracting parties only. But China's interests also were considered. Thus, it was agreed to "restore entirely and completely to her exclusive administration" all portions of Manchuria then in the occupation, or under the control, of Japanese or Russian troops, except the leased territory; that her consent must be obtained for the transfer to Japan of the leases and concessions held by the Russians in Manchuria; that the Russian Government should disavow the possession of "any territorial advantages or preferential or exclusive concessions in impairment of Chinese sovereignty or inconsistent with the principle of equal opportunity in Manchuria," and that Japan and Russia "engaged reciprocally not to obstruct any general measures common to all countries which China might take for the development of the commerce and industry of Manchuria."

This distinction between the special interests of the contracting parties and the interests of China herself, as well as of foreign nations generally, is essential to clear understanding of a situation which subsequently attracted much attention. From the time of the Opium War (1857) to the Boxer rising (1900), each of the great Western powers struggled for its own hand in China, and each sought to gain for itself exclusive concessions and privileges with comparatively little regard for the interests of others and with no regard whatsoever for China's sovereign rights. The fruits of this period were permanently ceded territories (Hongkong and Macao); leases temporarily establishing foreign sovereignty in various districts (Kiao-chou, Weihaiwei, and Kwang-chow); railway and mining concessions, and the establishment of settlements at open ports where foreign jurisdiction was supreme. But when, in 1900, the Boxer rising forced all the powers into a common camp, they awoke to full appreciation of a principle which had been growing current for the past two or three years, namely, that concerted action on the lines of maintaining China's integrity and securing to all alike equality of opportunity and a similarly open door, was the only feasible method of preventing the partition of the Chinese empire and averting a clash of rival interests which might have disastrous results. This, of course, did not mean that there was to be any abandonment of special privileges already acquired or any surrender of existing concessions. The arrangement was not to be retrospective in any sense. Vested interests were to be strictly guarded until the lapse of the periods for which they had been granted, or until the maturity of China's competence to be really autonomous.

A curious situation was thus created. International professions of respect for China's sovereignty, for the integrity of her empire, and for the enforcement of the open door and equal opportunity co-existed with legacies from an entirely different past. Russia endorsed this new policy, but not unnaturally declined to abate any of the advantages previously enjoyed by her in Manchuria. Those advantages were very substantial. They included a twenty-five-year lease—with provision for renewal—of the Liaotung peninsula, within which area of 1220 square miles Chinese troops might not penetrate, whereas Russia would not only exercise full administrative authority, but also take military and naval action of any kind; they included the creation of a neutral territory on the immediate north of the former and still more extensive, which remained under Chinese administration, and where neither Chinese nor Russian troops might enter, nor might China, without Russia's consent, cede land, open trading marts, or grant concessions to any third nationality; and they included the right to build some sixteen hundred miles of railway (which China would have the opportunity of purchasing at cost price in the year 1938, and would be entitled to receive gratis in 1982), as well as the right to hold extensive zones on either side of the railway, to administer these zones in the fullest sense, and to work all mines lying along the lines.

Under the Portsmouth treaty these advantages were transferred to Japan by Russia, the railway, however, being divided so that only the portion (521.5 miles) to the south of Kwanchengtsz fell to Japan's share, while the portion (1077 miles) to the north of that place remained in Russia's hands. China's consent to the above transfers and assignments was obtained in a treaty signed at Peking on the 22nd of December, 1905. Thus, Japan came to hold in Manchuria a position somewhat contradictory. On the one hand, she figured as the champion of the Chinese empire's integrity and as an exponent of the new principle of equal opportunity and the open door. On the other, she appeared as the legatee of many privileges more or less inconsistent with that principle. But, at the same time, nearly all the great powers of Europe were similarly circumstanced. In their cases, also, the same incongruity was observed between the newly professed policy and the aftermath of the old practice. It was scarcely to be expected that Japan alone should make a large sacrifice on the altar of a theory to which no other State thought of yielding any retrospective obedience whatever. She did, indeed, furnish a clear proof of deference to the open-door doctrine, for instead of reserving the railway zones to her own exclusive use, as she was fully entitled to do, she sought and obtained from China a pledge to open to foreign trade sixteen places within these zones.

For the rest, however, the inconsistency between the past and the present, though existing throughout the whole of China, was nowhere so conspicuous as in the three eastern provinces (Manchuria); not because there was any real difference of degree, but because Manchuria had been the scene of the greatest war of modern times; because that war had been fought by Japan in the cause of the new policy, and because the principles of the equally open door and of China's integrity had been the main bases of the Portsmouth treaty, of the Anglo-Japanese alliance, and of the subsequently concluded ententes with France and Russia. In short, the world's eyes were fixed on Manchuria and diverted from China proper, so that every act of Japan was subjected to an exceptionally rigorous scrutiny, and the nations behaved as though they expected her to live up to a standard of almost ideal altitude. China's mood, too, greatly complicated the situation. She had the choice between two moderate and natural courses; either to wait quietly until the various concessions granted by her to foreign powers in the evil past should lapse by maturity, or to qualify herself by earnest reforms and industrious developments for their earlier recovery. Nominally she adopted the latter course, but in reality she fell into a mood of much impatience. Under the name of a "rights-recovery campaign" her people began to protest vehemently against the continuance of any conditions which impaired her sovereignty, and as this temper coloured her attitude towards the various questions which inevitably grew out of the situation in Manchuria, her relations with Japan became somewhat strained in the early part of 1909.