These first encounters were a true presage of what was to follow. The war thus begun was disastrous for China. By the wide extent of her territories, her vast population, her seemingly inexhaustible resources and her traditions of conquest, not to mention her industrial and commercial activities, she had for centuries filled a big place in the world. Japan, on the other hand, was a comparatively small country, little known, that had just emerged from a long era of seclusion, and was regarded abroad with feelings which at the best, apart from the interest her art inspired, did not extend beyond sympathetic curiosity.

It was quite natural, therefore, that foreigners outside Japan who knew little of the silent progress made since the Restoration should have wondered at her audacity in challenging a neighbour who in all respects appeared to be so much more powerful than herself. In reality, however, the prospects of success for China were hopeless from the first. She was in an advanced stage of decadence. Her foremost statesman, Li Hung Chang, and the whole official hierarchy were notoriously corrupt, the arrogant policy the Government still pursued serving as a cloak to hide the real weakness that lay behind. Her ill-paid army, led by incompetent officers, was without training of a modern kind, or discipline; while her navy was a house divided against itself, the southern squadron refusing to fight on the ground that the war was not a national war, but one into which the country had been drawn through the self-seeking policy of Li Hung Chang. To the Japanese there was nothing that savoured of audacity in confronting an adversary of whose weakness they were well assured. Into the policy of reform which the Government had steadily pursued since the Restoration many considerations had entered. The course of recent events in China had been an object-lesson by which it had profited. Having realized that a chief cause of China’s troubled relations with Western Powers lay in her military inefficiency, it set to work to reorganize the army. This work was entrusted to Marshal Prince Yamagata (then a young officer), who had distinguished himself in the fighting which took place at the time of the Restoration. He and the younger Saigō (afterwards created a Marquis) were the chief members of a mission appointed to enquire into military matters which visited Europe in 1870. The results of this mission were the engagement of foreign military instructors and the establishment of conscription, which came into operation for the first time in 1873. A few years later the discipline and fighting qualities of the new conscript troops were tested to the satisfaction of the Government in the Satsuma rebellion. In 1884 a second military mission, at the head of which was the late Marshal Prince Ōyama, visited Europe. It was then that the services of a Prussian officer, the late General Meckel, were secured. The improvement in the Japanese army which showed itself from that time is generally ascribed to the ability and energy which that officer brought to the performance of his duties as military adviser. In consequence of the sedulous attention thus paid for several years to military organization, Japan, when military operations against China commenced, had at her disposal a conscript army of over 200,000 men, with a corresponding strength of artillery and a supply of efficient officers. Against an army of this quality, and of these dimensions, China, who was content to rely on troops recruited on the voluntary system, could do little, even had she not laboured under other disadvantages already mentioned.

For obvious reasons the development of the Japanese navy had lagged behind that of the army. The finances of the country did not permit of any large expenditure on both services. While the feudal system had kept alive the warlike spirit of the nation in spite of a prolonged period of peace, the closing of the country to foreign intercourse, accompanied as it was by the rigid limitations imposed on the size of vessels, had stifled maritime enterprise. Japanese naval training, therefore, had to begin with the rudiments of a sailor’s education. Service at sea did not at first appeal to a people whose military class, before it disappeared with the abolition of feudalism, had been brought up mainly in traditions of land fighting. There was another reason. Partly by design, partly, also, as the result of circumstances, the military control exercised by the two clans which virtually governed the country soon after the Restoration had from the first been arranged so as to give Chōshiū clansmen the larger share of army administration, the direction of the navy, on the other hand, being left chiefly to Satsuma clansmen, whose intelligence and energy fell short of the standard of their colleagues in the Government.

The same year (1872) in which the reorganization of the army began saw the first steps taken in the direction of naval reform. In that year the single department which had hitherto been responsible for the administration of both army and navy was replaced by separate departments for each of the two services. It was, as already noted, to Great Britain that Japan turned for assistance in the measures subsequently taken for the building up of a navy. British naval advisers and instructors, amongst whom were the late Admiral Sir Archibald Douglas and Admiral Ingles were engaged, and the first vessels of the new Japanese navy were constructed in England. In 1892 the determination of the Government to persevere in the task of creating a navy was shown by the Emperor’s decision to contribute £30,000 annually for eight years towards naval construction, the funds required for this purpose being obtained by proportionate reductions in the expenditure of the Court. When war was declared, it was the Japanese navy that struck the first blow. It then consisted of twenty-eight ships, aggregating roughly some 57,000 tons, besides twenty-four torpedo-boats. The day of destroyers had not yet come. The Chinese fleet at this time was stronger numerically than that of Japan, and had also an advantage in the fact that it included one or two ships of a more powerful class than any Japanese vessel. But this superiority was counterbalanced by the refusal of the Chinese Southern Squadron, for the reason already given, to take any part in hostilities; and early in the war the portion of the Chinese fleet which came into action showed that it had little stomach for fighting.

Though the war lasted for eight months—from August 1st, 1894, till the conclusion of an armistice on the 30th March in the following year—its result was never in doubt. The Chinese troops in the south of Korea had, as we have seen, been withdrawn to China after their defeat at Asan. Further north the Japanese at once made the port of Chemulpo the base of preliminary operations, and having, on the strength of a treaty of alliance, concluded at the outset of hostilities with the Korean Government, occupied the Korean capital, compelled the Chinese forces remaining in Korea to retire towards the frontier. The only engagement of any consequence in this early stage of the campaign occurred at Ping-yang, a town occupying a position of some strategic value in the north-west of the peninsula sixty miles from the Yalu river, which formed for some distance the boundary between China and Korea. This place was held in strength by the Chinese forces, and its capture by the Japanese on the 17th September involved some severe fighting, in the course of which a Chinese Mohammedan regiment distinguished itself by a stubborn resistance, which was in marked contrast to the behaviour of other Chinese troops. On the same day the Chinese northern fleet was beaten in the only important naval action of the war. In this engagement the two Chinese battleships, each more than a match for any Japanese vessel, suffered little damage, but the Chinese lost several smaller vessels, while no Japanese ships were damaged beyond repair. The beaten Chinese fleet made its way to Ta-lien-Wan, which lies at the neck of the Kwantung peninsula. There it stayed for some weeks until the landing of a Japanese army close to that port, which the Chinese made no attempt to defend, obliged it to take refuge in Weihaiwei. Thence it never again emerged, thus leaving to the Japanese until the end of the war the undisputed command of the sea.

The further course of the war is well known, the general control of operations remaining, as before, in the hands of Marshal Prince Yamagata. Nowhere were the Chinese forces able to offer any effective resistance to the Japanese advance, their experience, whenever they tried to make a stand, being a repetition of what occurred at Ping-yang, where their losses, as compared with those of the enemy (6000 to 200), told their own tale. Towards the end of October the two Japanese divisions operating on parallel lines in Korea crossed the Chinese frontier, driving before them the Chinese forces, which made but a feeble resistance. The Japanese divisions (some 40,000 strong), which had early in November driven the Chinese from Ta-lien-wan and occupied the isthmus of Chinchou, thus severing communications between the Kwantung peninsula and the northern portion of the Fêng-t’ien province, proceeded to invest Port Arthur. Later on in the month a Chinese army moving from the north was completely defeated in an attempt to relieve the fortress. On the 21st November, Port Arthur was stormed with small loss to the Japanese, considering the natural strength of the position, and its powerful fortifications. Early in December the Japanese forces operating from Korea, assisted by a third division detached for the purpose, continued their advance, occupying successively the towns of Kaiping and Haicheng. In the course of February and March, 1895, this army, now under the command of General (afterwards Prince) Katsura, pushed still further west, defeated the Chinese in three successive engagements in the neighbourhood of Newchwang and occupied that port, the Chinese retreating northwards along the course of the Liao river. Meanwhile an expeditionary force despatched from Ta-lien-wan in January had landed in Yung-chêng bay to the east of Weihaiwei, and, acting in co-operation with the Japanese fleet, had laid siege to that place. Its gallant defence by Admiral Ting was for China the only redeeming feature of the war. On 16th March it surrendered, after a siege of three months, its gallant defender dying by his own hand. The fall of Weihaiwei, and the uninterrupted success of the Japanese armies on the Liao river, convinced China of the hopelessness of further resistance, though she had still large military reserves in the vicinity of the Capital. An armistice was accordingly concluded on the 30th March. The Chinese Government had previously made informal overtures for peace through a foreign adviser in the Chinese Customs service, but these had come to nothing owing to Japan’s insistence upon treating directly with the responsible Chinese authorities. The peace negotiations which followed the armistice resulted in the signature of the Treaty of Shimonoséki on the 17th April. In the course of these negotiations a slight modification in its demands was granted by the Japanese Government as reparation for a fanatical attack made on the Chinese Plenipotentiary, Li Hung Chang, who fortunately escaped without serious injury.

The main provisions of this Treaty, some of which were altered by the subsequent intervention of Russia, France and Germany, were the recognition by China of Korea’s independence; the cession to Japan of the southern portion of the province of Fêng-t’ien, Formosa and the Pescadores; the payment by China of an indemnity of 200,000,000 Kuping taels—equivalent, roughly, at the then rate of exchange, to £40,000,000; and the opening to foreign trade of four new towns in China. These were Shasi, Chungking, Soochow and Hangchow. The Treaty also established the right of foreigners to engage in manufacturing enterprises in China, and provided for the subsequent conclusion of a Commercial Convention, and of arrangements regarding frontier intercourse and trade. And it was agreed that Weihaiwei should be occupied by Japan until the indemnity had been paid. Under the Commercial Convention, duly concluded three months later, Japan secured for her subjects extra-territorial rights in China, but these were withheld from Chinese subjects in Japan. In the following October a supplementary Protocol of four articles was added to this Commercial Convention.

It will be seen that Japan in making with China this one-sided arrangement regarding extra-territorial rights, which limited their enjoyment expressly to the subjects of one of the contracting parties, followed the example of Western Powers in their early treaties with Japan, which were still in existence, the revised Treaty with Great Britain not coming into operation until 1899. Apart from the question whether this caution on her part was justified or not by the conditions of Chinese jurisdiction, it is not easy to reconcile her action in this respect with her repeated protests against the extra-territorial stipulations of her own treaties with Western Powers and with the national agitation for their revision which resulted therefrom.

CHAPTER XXIII
Militarist Policy—Liaotung Peninsula—Intervention of Three Powers—Leases of Chinese Territory by Germany, Russia, Great Britain and France—Spheres of Interest.

The origin of the activity displayed by Japan in the reorganization of her army and navy, the efficiency of which was so strikingly demonstrated in the war with China, may be traced to the military tendencies of the two clans which had practically governed the country since the Restoration. It was the military strength of these clans which was, as we have seen, the determining factor in the struggle preceding the Restoration; it was this, again, that carried the new Government safely through the earlier internal troubles, and enabled it to pursue successfully in the face of many difficulties its policy of gradual reform. In the process of surmounting these difficulties, and even more, perhaps, in the very work of reconstruction, in so far as this related to naval and military reorganization, it was only natural that the tendencies in question should be developed. Other influences which worked in the same direction were the desire to attain equality with Western Powers, to assert the independence of the nation, still impaired, in public opinion, by offensive Treaty stipulations, and the wish to be in a position to act vigorously in matters concerning the nation’s intercourse with its neighbours on the continent of Asia. Even, therefore, before the war with China something very near to a militarist spirit had become apparent in administrative circles. The signal success achieved by both army and navy in the course of the campaign favoured the growth of this feeling. It became clear to all attentive observers that henceforth the existence of a militarist party in the country was a factor to be reckoned with in any estimate of the future course of Japanese policy. The leading exponents of this militarist policy were, of course, to be found amongst naval and military officers, but their views were shared by the Japanese statesmen who had taken a prominent part in military reforms; by others, whose declarations on foreign policy from time to time were tinged with a Chauvinism that deepened with the increase of Japan’s position in the world; and by a section of the Japanese Press.