The best way to ensure peace is through strong self-defence. This week, we officially inaugurated #Taiwan’s submarine manufacturing factory, taking a big step forward towards stronger self-defence capabilities.
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仏教の入門書を日本語で読むと、やたらと「輪廻」とか「涅槃」とか「諸行無常」とか独特の術語を有難そうに解説してあるのを、胡散臭く思っていた。そこで英語で仏教入門書を読もうと決意。はじめ Penguin Books の Buddhismって本を読もうと思ったが、本書の方が小さくて出版が新しいのでこっちにした。通勤電車の中だけで、約一ヶ月で読了。全く基礎知識の無い英米人向けに書かれているのが良い。ただ術語にパーリ語の原語がいちいち添えてあるのが、やや鬱陶しい。上座部と大乗を平等に扱っている点も好感が持てた。特に最終章 Buddhism in the West では日本の入門書ではあまり扱われていない西洋での仏教の受容について最近の状況まで述べられていて貴重。このシリーズはパラグラフの切り方が独特（インデント無しで一行空ける）で慣れないとやや戸惑う。句読法のミスプリも若干あった。
Achieving equality with the West was one of the primary goals of the Meiji leaders. Treaty reform, designed to end the foreigners’ judicial and economic privileges provided by extraterritoriality and fixed customs duties was sought as early as 1871 when the Iwakura mission went to the United States and Europe. The Western powers insisted, however, that they could not revise the treaties until Japanese legal institutions were reformed along European and American lines. Efforts to reach a compromise settlement in the 1880s were rejected by the press and opposition groups in Japan. It was not until 1894, therefore, that treaty provisions for extraterritoriality were formally changed.
During the first half of the Meiji period, Asian relations were seen as less important than domestic development. In 1874 a punitive expedition was launched against Formosa (Taiwan) to chastise the aborigines for murdering Ryukyuan fishermen. This lent support to Japanese claims to the Ryukyu Islands, which had been under Satsuma influence in Tokugawa times. Despite Chinese protests, the Ryukyus were incorporated into Japan in 1879. Meanwhile, calls for an aggressive foreign policy in Korea, aired by Japanese nationalists and some liberals, were steadily rejected by the Meiji leaders. At the same time, China became increasingly concerned about expanding Japanese influence in Korea, which China still viewed as a tributary state. Incidents on the peninsula in 1882 and 1884 that might have involved China and Japan in war were settled by compromise, and in 1885 China and Japan agreed that neither would send troops to Korea without first informing the other.
By the early 1890s Chinese influence in Korea had increased. In 1894 Korea requested Chinese assistance in putting down a local rebellion. When the Chinese notified Tokyo of this, Japan quickly rushed troops to Korea. With the rebellion crushed, neither side withdrew. The Sino-Japanese War formally erupted in July 1894. Japanese forces proved to be superior on both land and sea, and, with the loss of its northern fleet, China sued for peace. The peace treaty negotiated at Shimonoseki was formally signed on April 17, 1895; both sides recognized the independence of Korea, and China ceded to Japan Formosa, the Pescadores Islands, and the Liaotung Peninsula, granted Japan all rights enjoyed by European powers, and made significant economic concessions, including the opening of new treaty ports and a large indemnity in gold. A commercial treaty giving Japan special tax exemptions and other trade and manufacturing privileges was signed in 1896. Japan thus marked its own emancipation from the unequal treaties by imposing even harsher terms on its neighbour. Meanwhile, France, Russia, and Germany were not willing to endorse Japanese gains and forced the return of the Liaotung Peninsula to China. Insult was added to injury when Russia leased the same territory with its important naval base, Port Arthur (now Lü-shun), from China in 1898. The war thus demonstrated that the Japanese could not maintain Asian military victories without Western sufferance. At the same time, it proved a tremendous source of prestige for Japan and brought the government much internal support; it also strengthened the hand of the military in national affairs.
Reluctant to accept Japanese leadership, Korea instead sought Russia’s help. During the Boxer Rebellion (1900) in China, Japanese troops played a major part in the allied expedition to rescue foreign nationals in Beijing, but Russia occupied southern Manchuria, thereby strengthening its links with Korea. Realizing the need for protection against multiple European enemies, the Japanese began talks with England that led to the Anglo-Japanese Alliance (1902). In this pact both countries agreed to aid the other in the event of an attack by two or more powers but remain neutral if the other went to war with a single enemy. Backed by Britain, Tokyo was prepared to take a firmer stand against Russian advances in Manchuria and Korea. In 1904 Japanese ships attacked the Russian fleet at Port Arthur without warning. In the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05) that followed, Japanese arms were everywhere successful; the most spectacular victory occurred in the Tsushima Strait, where the ships of Admiral Tōgō Heihachirō destroyed the Russian Baltic fleet. But the war was extremely costly in Japanese lives and treasure, and Japan was relieved when U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt offered to mediate a peace settlement. The Treaty of Portsmouth, signed on September 5, 1905, gave Japan primacy in Korea, and Russia granted to Japan its economic and political interests in southern Manchuria, including the Liaotung Peninsula. Russia also ceded to Japan the southern half of the island of Sakhalin. The victory over Russia altered the balance of power in East Asia, and it encouraged nationalist movements in India and the Middle East. But at home Japan’s failure to gain an indemnity to pay for the heavy war costs made the treaty unpopular.
After the conclusion of the war, Japanese leaders gained a free hand in Korea. Korean opposition to Japanese “reforms” was no longer tolerated. Itō Hirobumi, sent to Korea as resident general, forced through treaties that gave Korea little more than protectorate status and ordered the abdication of the Korean king. Itō’s assassination in 1909 led to Korea’s annexation by Japan the following year. Korean liberties and resistance were crushed. By 1912, when the Meiji emperor died, Japan had not only achieved equality with the West but also had become the strongest imperialist power in East Asia.
Japan had abundant opportunity to use its new power in the years that followed. During World War I it fought on the Allied side but limited its activities to seizing German possessions in China and the Pacific. When China sought the return of former German holdings in Shantung province, Japan responded with the so-called Twenty-one Demands, issued in 1915, that tried to pressure China into widespread concessions ranging from extended leases in Manchuria and joint control of China’s coal and iron resources to policy matters regarding harbours and the policing of Chinese cities. While giving in on a number of specific issues, the Chinese resisted the most extreme Japanese demands that would have turned China into a Japanese ward. Despite its economic gains, Japan’s World War I China policy left behind a legacy of ill feeling and distrust, both in China and in the West. The rapaciousness of Japanese demands and China’s chagrin at its failure to recover its losses in the Treaty of Versailles (1919) cost Japan any hope of Chinese friendship. Subsequent Japanese sponsorship of corrupt warlord regimes in Manchuria and North China helped to confirm the anti-Japanese nature of modern Chinese nationalism.
The part played by Japan in the Allied intervention in Siberia following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1918 caused further concerns about Japanese expansion. One of the principal reasons for the disarmament conference held in Washington, D.C., in 1921–22, was to reduce Japanese influence. A network of treaties was designed to place restraints on Japanese ambitions while guaranteeing Japanese security. These treaties included a Four-Power Pact, between Japan, Great Britain, the United States, and France, that replaced the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, and a Five-Power Naval Limitation Treaty (with Italy) that set limits for battleships at a ratio of five for Great Britain and the United States to three for Japan. An agreement on the fortification of Pacific island bases was intended to assure Japan of security in its home waters. Finally a Nine-Power Pact would, it was hoped, protect China from further unilateral demands. Japan subsequently agreed to retire from Shantung, and, shortly thereafter, Japanese armies withdrew from Siberia and northern Sakhalin. In 1925 a treaty with the Soviet Union extended recognition to the U.S.S.R. and ended active hostilities.
The notion that expansion through military conquest would solve Japan’s economic problems gained currency during the Great Depression of the 1930s. It was argued that the rapid growth of Japan’s population—which stood at close to 65 million in 1930—necessitated large food imports. To sustain such imports, Japan had to be able to export. Western tariffs limited exports, while discriminatory legislation in many countries and anti-Japanese racism served as barriers to emigration. Chinese and Japanese efforts to secure racial equality in the League of Nations covenant had been rejected by Western statesmen. Thus, it was argued, Japan had no recourse but to use force.
