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It is three days’ easy journey from Japan to China. It is doubtful whether anywhere in the world another journey of the same length brings with it such a complete change of political temper and belief. Certainly it is greater than the alteration perceived in journeying directly from San Francisco to Shanghai. The difference is not one in customs and modes of life; that goes without saying. It concerns the ideas, beliefs and alleged information current about one and the same fact: the status of Japan in the international world and especially its attitude toward China. One finds everywhere in Japan a feeling of uncertainty, hesitation, even of weakness. There is a subtle nervous tension in the atmosphere as of a country on the verge of change but not knowing where the change will take it. Liberalism is in the air, but genuine liberals are encompassed with all sorts of difficulties especially in combining their liberalism with the devotion to theocratic robes which the imperialist militarists who rule Japan have so skilfully thrown about the Throne and the Government. But what one senses in China from the first moment is the feeling of the all-pervading power of Japan which is working as surely as fate to its unhesitating conclusion—the domination of Chinese politics and industry by Japan with a view to its final absorption. It is not my object to analyze the realities of the situation or to inquire whether the universal feeling in China is a collective hallucination or is grounded in fact. The phenomenon is worthy of record on its own account. Even if it be merely psychological, it is a fact which must be reckoned with in both its Chinese and its Japanese aspects. In the first place, as to the differences in psychological atmosphere. Everybody who knows anything about Japan knows that it is the land of reserves and reticences. The half-informed American will tell you that this is put on for the misleading of foreigners. The informed know that it is an attitude shown to foreigners only because it is deeply engrained in the moral and social tradition of Japan; and that, if anything, the Japanese are more likely to be communicative—about many things at least—to a sympathetic foreigner, than to one another. The habit of reserve is so deeply embedded in all the etiquette, convention and daily ceremony of living, as well as in the ideals of strength of character, that only the Japanese who have subjected themselves to foreign influences escape it—and many of them revert. To put it mildly, the Japanese are not a loquacious people; they have the gift of doing rather than of gab.

When accordingly a Japanese statesman or visiting diplomatist engages in unusually prolonged and frank discourse setting forth the aims and procedures of Japan, the student of politics who has been long in the East at once becomes alert, not to say suspicious. A recent illustration is so extreme that it will doubtless seem fantastic beyond belief. But the student at home will have to take these seeming fantasies seriously if he wishes to appreciate the present atmosphere of China. Cables have brought fragmentary reports of some addresses of Baron Goto in America. Doubtless in the American atmosphere these have the effect of reassuring America as to any improper ambitions on the part of Japan. In China, they were taken as announcements that Japan has about completed its plans for the absorption of China, and that the lucubration preliminary to operations of swallowing are about to begin. The reader is forgiven in advance any scepticism he feels about both the fact itself and the correctness of my report of the belief in the alleged fact. His scepticism will not surpass what I should feel in his place. But the suspicion aroused by such statements as this and the recent interview of Foreign Minister Uchida and Baron Ishii must be noted as evidences of the universal belief in China that Japan has one mode of diplomacy for the East and another for the West, and that what is said in the West must be read in reverse in the East.

China, whatever else it is, is not the land of privacies. It is a proverb that nothing long remains secret in China. The Chinese talk more easily than they act—especially in politics. They are adepts in revealing their own shortcomings. They dissect their own weaknesses and failures with the most extraordinary reasonableness. One of the defects upon which they dwell is the love of finding substitutes for positive action, of avoiding entering upon a course of action which might be irrevocable. One almost wonders whether their power of self-criticism is not itself another of these substitutes. At all events, they are frank to the point of loquacity. Between the opposite camps there are always communications flowing. Among official enemies there are “sworn friends.” In a land of perpetual compromise, etiquette as well as necessity demands that the ways for later accommodations be kept open. Consequently things which are spoken of only under the breath in Japan are shouted from the housetops in China. It would hardly be good taste in Japan to allude to the report that influential Chinese ministers are in constant receipt of Japanese funds and these corrupt officials are the agencies by which political and economic concessions were wrung from China while Europe and America were busy with the war. But in China nobody even takes the trouble to deny it or even to discuss it. What is psychologically most impressive is the fact that it is merely taken for granted. When it is spoken of, it is as one mentions the heat on an unusually hot day.

In speaking of the feeling of weakness current in Japan about Japan itself, one must refer to the economic situation because of its obvious connection with the international situation. In the first place, there is the strong impression that Japan is over-extended. Even in normal times, Japan relies more upon production for foreign markets than is regarded in most countries as safe policy. And there is the belief that Japan must do so, because only by large foreign sellings—large in comparison with the purchasing power of a people still having a low standard of life—can it purchase the raw materials—and even food—it has to have. But during the war, the dependence of manufacturing and trade at home upon the foreign market was greatly increased. The domestic increase of wealth, though very great, is still too much in the hands of the few to affect seriously the internal demand for goods. Item one, which awakens sympathy for Japan as being in a somewhat precarious situation.

Another item concerns the labor situation. Japan seems to feel itself in a dilemma. If she passes even reasonably decent factory laws (or rather attempts their enforcement) and regulates child and women’s labor, she will lose that advantage of cheap labor which she now counts on to offset her many disadvantages. On the other hand, strikes, labor difficulties, agitation for unions, etc., are constantly increasing, and the tension in the atmosphere is unmistakable. The rice riots are not often spoken of, but their memory persists, and the fact that they came very near to assuming a directly political aspect. Is there a race between fulfillment of the aspirations of the military clans who still hold the reins, and the growth of genuinely democratic forces which will forever terminate those aspirations? Certainly the defeat of Germany gave a blow to bureaucratic militarism in Japan which in time will go far. Will it have the time required to take effect on foreign policy? The hope that it will is a large factor in stimulating liberal sympathy for a Japan which is beginning to undergo the throes of transition.

As for the direct international situation of Japan, the feeling in Japan is that of the threatening danger of isolation. Germany is gone; Russia is gone. While those facts simplify matters for Japan somewhat, there is also the belief that in taking away potential allies, they have weakened Japan in the general game of balance and counter-balance of power. Particularly does the removal of imperialistic Russia relieve the threat on India which was such a factor in the willingness of Great Britain to make the offensive-defensive alliance. The revelation of the militaristic possibilities of America is another serious factor. Certainly the new triple entente cordiale of Japan, Italy and France is no adequate substitute for a realignment of international forces in which a common understanding between Great Britain and America is a dominant factor. This factor explains, if it does not excuse, some of the querulousness and studied discourtesies with which the Japanese press for some months treated President Wilson, the United States in general and its relation to the League of Nations in particular, while it also throws light on the ardor with which the opportune question of racial discrimination was discussed. (The Chinese have an unfailing refuge in a sense of humor. It was interesting to note the delight with which they received the utterance of the Japanese Foreign Minister, after Japanese success at Paris, that “his attention had recently been called” to various press attacks on America which he much deprecated). In any case there is no mistaking the air of tension and nervous overstrain which now attends all discussion of Japanese foreign relations. In all directions, there are characteristic signs of hesitation, shaking of old beliefs and movement along new lines. Japan seems to be much in the same mood as that which it experienced in the early eighties before, toward the close of that decade, it crystallized its institutions through acceptance of the German constitution, militarism, educational system, and diplomatic methods. So that, once more, the observer gets the impression that substantially all of Japan’s energy, abundant as that is, must be devoted to her urgent problems of readjustment.

Come to China, and the difference is incredible. It almost seems as if one were living in a dream; or as if some new Alice had ventured behind an international looking-glass wherein everything is reversed. That we in America should have little idea of the state of things and the frame of mind in China is not astonishing—especially in view of the censorship and the distraction of attention of the last few years. But that Japan and China should be so geographically near, and yet every fact that concerns them appear in precisely opposite perspective, is an experience of a life time. Japanese liberalism? Yes, it is heard of, but only in connection with one form which the longing for the miraculous deus ex machina takes. Perhaps a revolution in Japan may intervene to save China from the fate which now hangs over her. But there is no suggestion that anything less than a complete revolution will alter or even retard the course which is attributed to Japanese diplomacy working hand in hand with Japanese business interests and militarism. The collapse of Russia and Germany? These things only mean that Japan has in a few years fallen complete heir to Russian hopes, achievements and possessions in Manchuria and Outer Mongolia, and has had opportunities in Siberia thrown into her hands which she could hardly have hoped for in her most optimistic moments. And now Japan has, with the blessing of the great Powers at Paris, become also the heir of German concessions, intrigues and ambitions, with added concessions, wrung (or bought) from incompetent and corrupt officials by secret agreements when the world was busy with war. If all the great Powers are so afraid of Japan that they give way to her every wish, what is China that she can escape the doom prepared for her? That is the cry of helplessness going up all over China. And Japanese propagandists take advantage of the situation, pointing to the action of the Peace Conference as proof that the Allies care nothing for China, and that China must throw herself into the arms of Japan if she is to have any protection at all. In short, Japan stands ready as she stood ready in Korea to guarantee the integrity and independence of China. And the fear that the latter must, in spite of her animosity toward Japan, accept this fate in order to escape something worse swims in the sinister air. It is the exact counterpart of the feeling current among the liberals in Japan that Japan has alienated China permanently when a considerate and slower course might have united the two countries. If the economic straits of Japan are alluded to, it is only as a reason why Japan has hurried her diplomatic coercion, her corrupt and secret bargainings with Chinese traitors and her industrial invasion. While the western world supposes that the military and the industrial party in Japan have opposite ideas as to best methods of securing Japanese supremacy in the East, it is the universal opinion in China that they two are working in complete understanding with one another, and the differences that sometimes occur between the Foreign Office in Tokyo and the Ministry of War (which is extra-constitutional in its status) are staged for effect.

These are some of the aspects of the most complete transformation scene that it has ever been the lot of the writer to experience. May it turn out to be only an extraordinary psychological experience! But in the interests of truth it must be recorded that every resident of China, Chinese or American, with whom I have talked in the last four weeks has volunteered the belief that all the seeds of a future great war are now deeply implanted in China. To avert such a calamity they look to the League of Nations or to some other force outside the immediate scene. Unfortunately the press of Japan treats every attempt to discuss the state of opinion in China or the state of facts as evidence that America, having tasted blood in the war, now has its eyes on Asia with the expectation later on of getting its hands on Asia. Consequently America is interested in trying to foster ill-will between China and Japan. If the pro-American Japanese do not enlighten their fellow-countrymen as to the facts, then America ought to return some of the propaganda that visits its shores. But every American who goes to Japan ought also to visit China—if only to complete his education.

May, 1919.