Japan: From the Japanese Government History

by Unknown

"Art. 7—The conditions under which armed assistance shall be afforded by either power to the other in the circumstances mentioned in the present agreement and the means by which such assistance shall be made available will be arranged by the naval and military authorities of the contracting parties, who will from time to time consult one another fully and freely on all questions of mutual interest.

"Art. 8—The present agreement shall be subject to the provisions of Art. 6 and come into effect immediately after the date of signature and remain in force for ten years from that date in case neither of the parties shall have been notified twelve months before the expiration of said ten years of an intention of terminating it. It shall remain binding until the expiration of one year from the day on which either of the parties shall have denounced it, but if, when the date for the expiration arrives, either ally is actually engaged in war the alliance shall be ipso facto and continue until peace shall be concluded."

The armistice was arranged between the Russian and Japanese armies on September 13. During the nineteen months of war between February, 1904, and September, 1905, Russia probably sent between eight and nine hundred thousand soldiers to the East, and Japan not less than six hundred thousand. Never before in the world's history had such large armies been sent to the seat of war in so brief a period. The Russian losses probably amounted to more than 350,000, including the killed, the wounded, the sick, and the captured, and Japan lost, in deaths alone, 72,490. Of the latter, 15,300 died of sickness, while the rest either fell in battle or subsequently died from wounds—an unusually low death-rate from the latter cause. Russia lost the major part of her Pacific and Baltic fleets, while the Japanese navy was increased in size by the surrender of the enemy's vessels and by the raising of several of the sunken ships. The war greatly intensified the otherwise strong national sentiment of the Japanese people and enhanced their position among the powers of the world, while the moderate terms of peace and the catholicity of national character have served as an efficient check against an undue expansion. On the other hand, the unexpected exposure of the weakness of Russia's bureaucracy has sensibly reduced the hitherto overestimated value of her political power. In Europe, as well as in Asia, her position in international affairs has already begun to show signs of this change. At the same time, the Russian people have renewed their conviction of the need of a true national administration, and the weakened autocracy is compelled to consider popular demands for reform. Not the least important result of the war is the fact that it has insured the humane principles of China's territorial integrity in Manchuria, and of equal opportunity for the trade and industry of all nations in that region and Korea. The Treaty of Portsmouth recognized these principles and the Anglo-Japanese agreement has insured them by a powerful coalition.

[1]On November 6, 1905, the Order of the Garter was conferred on the emperor by King Edward VII. of England, and the British legation in Japan was raised to an embassy. The emperor visited the shrine of Ise in November and there reported the successful conclusion of the war to the spirits of his ancestors. The end of the year was marked by a treaty with China which made Japan's position in Korea the same as Russia's had been before the war.

In October, 1906, the school board of San Francisco in the United States issued an order excluding the Japanese children from the public schools of that city and requiring them to attend a separate school for Orientals. This action was taken as an affront by the Japanese government and a protest was sent by the latter to the United States government on October 15. President Roosevelt took prompt action on the matter, sending Victor H. Metcalf, the Secretary of the Interior, to investigate and report. President Roosevelt also announced that Japan's treaty rights would be enforced at every hazard. Conferences were held between the State officials of California and the President, resulting in the President issuing an order on March 14, 1907, that all Japanese and Koreans without passports would be excluded from the United States and the San Francisco Board of Education deciding to admit Japanese pupils up to the age of sixteen to the schools. Sensational newspapers both in Japan and in the United States at this period were filled with rumors of war between the two countries and at times during the year 1907 they would insist that war was imminent.

In the meantime the Japanese government under the leadership of Viscount Hayashi, Minister of Foreign Affairs, took measures to enforce certain laws on her own statute books concerning the use of foreign coolies in Japan and to limit Japanese emigration to the United States. The visit of William Howard Taft, the American Secretary of War, to Japan on his way to the Philippines and the friendliness of his reception by the Japanese and his own words of assurance did much toward allaying whatever feeling of actual hostility still remained among the Japanese people and the visit of the American fleet of sixteen battleships in the next year ended all talk of a war. In 1907 similar friction occurred between Great Britain and Japan because certain Japanese merchants and laborers in Vancouver, Canada, were attacked and driven from their houses. This matter was adjusted peacefully by Viscount Hayashi and Sir Claude MacDonald, the British Ambassador. As a proof that Japan intends to keep her promises to regulate immigration to the United States may be cited some immigration figures for 1908: during that year there were admitted to the entire United States only 185 more Japanese of all classes than departed from it, and a great many more Japanese laborers left the United States than entered it.

In the fall of 1909 a Commercial Commission, sent by the merchants of Japan, visited the United States, studying American business and industrial methods and purchasing a large variety of manufactured articles which had never found a market in the Orient and buying the newest machinery used in lumber, mining, and milling industries, and also devices for food preservation, and learned many of the labor-saving methods used in banking and commercial offices.

A Franco-Japanese Agreement was signed on June 10, 1907, providing that the most-favored-nation treatment should be accorded the officials and subjects of Japan in French Indo-China for everything concerning their persons and the protection of their property, and that the same treatment should be granted the subjects of French Indo-China in the Empire of Japan and that these provisions should hold until the expiration of the Treaty of Commerce and Navigation concluded between France and Japan, August 4, 1896. In regard to the continent of Asia, the two countries agreed to "respect the independence and integrity of China as well as the principles of equality of treatment in that country for the commerce and subjects of all nations, and having a special interest in seeing that order and a pacific state of affairs guaranteed, particularly in the regions of the Chinese Empire adjacent to the territories where they have rights of sovereignty, protection, and occupation, bind themselves mutually to support one another in order to assure the peace and security of those regions, with a view to the maintenance of the respective positions and territorial rights of the two contracting parties on the Asiatic continent."

During 1907 several Russo-Japanese conventions were signed. The first, concluded on July 28, was a treaty of commerce and navigation in accordance with article 12 of the Treaty of Portsmouth; in the second, concluded two days later, each agreed to respect the territorial integrity of the other, the agreements then in force between the contracting parties and China, and the independence and integrity of China, and to uphold the status quo with all the peaceable means at their disposal; a third convention related to the fisheries of the Sea of Japan, the Okhotsk Sea, and the Behring Sea; the fourth provided for the joining of the Russian railways in Manchuria at Kwang-cheng-tsze. In August the legations at Tokio and St. Petersburg were raised to the status of embassies by their respective governments.

On February 5, 1908, Chinese custom officers seized the Japanese steamer Tatsu Maru in Portuguese waters off Macao, where it had landed to discharge arms shipped from a Japanese port to a Chinese merchant at Macao. The Japanese resented the seizure and complained to the Chinese authorities demanding an apology and an indemnity. At first the latter defended their action, but on the receipt of an ultimatum from the Japanese on March 5, China apologized and gave assurance that the indemnity would be paid and the responsible persons punished. Japan in return agreed to prevent the trade in arms and ammunition between Japanese and Chinese citizens. Thus a friendly feeling was restored between the two countries but public opinion had been greatly inflamed in China and a boycott of Japanese goods had begun. During the year many Japanese vessels left Chinese ports without the goods for which they had come. It is estimated that the Japanese lost some $8,000,000 by this boycott.