ØAS 101 Forelesningnotat 2: Japanese Imperialism in Korea and Taiwan (comparison)

 

  1. Pre-colonial Taiwan – relatively better developed than Korea commercially. Opened for Western commerce in 1858, Taiwan was an important tea exporter, and also actively traded in sugar with Japan. Value of its exports – almost 16% of Japanese exports (about 3-4 times higher figure than that of Korea).
  2. Korea – traded in Japan mostly in rice, other foodstuffs, and minerals, from 1876. Instead, imported textiles (more English than Japanese) and other manufactured goods from Japan – typical example of an “unequal exchange” between a “periphery” and a “core state” (Japan – rather a “semi-core”). The trade caused rice price hikes in Korea, which drove poorer peasants to hunger and rebellion, and generally destabilized the country. Tonghak rebellion in 1894-1895 – against the grain trade. At the same time: this trade contributed into building-up of Japan’s new “semi-core” status.

 

Journal of World-Systems Research: Volume 1, Number 3, 1995
RESTRUCTURING MARKETS, REORGANIZING NATURE:  AN EXAMINATION OF JAPANESE STRATEGIES FOR  ACCESS TO RAW MATERIALS by Stephen G. Bunker and Paul S. Ciccantell:

“In order to ascend within a world system hierarchy, economies

must organize themselves in such a way as to create, directly or

indirectly, and then coordinate (or core-dinate) multiple raw

materials production systems within their own political boundaries

and, more importantly, in other non-core areas whose basic

characteristics are substantially molded by the physical and

topographic features and the location of the raw materials that

they export.  Just as productive efficiency of firms within a

single industrial economy depends on a socially built environment

constructed by capital that reduces the cost of material and

informational flows to and within sites valorized by capital

(Harvey 1982), so too the productive efficiency of a core nation

requires a globally built environment that reduces the costs of

material flows to that economy from raw materials extracting regions”

 

“Ascendant national economies require expanding access to cheap

and secure sources of raw materials to sustain their challenge to

established industrial economies.  Lowering raw materials costs is

critical to competition in international markets, and is

particularly important to the ascendant economy because it is also

extending productive and transport infrastructure faster than the

average of the established economies.  Stability of supply is

required for operating plants at full capacity; this is

particularly important in the heavy industries in an ascendant

economy because these industries involve higher than average fixed

capital investments and inflexible sunk costs.  Because the states

and firms of established industrial economies have often already

succeeded in structuring global raw material markets to their own

advantage, the state and firms of the ascendant nation may have to

restructure these markets in order to compete effectively.  Such

restructuring, however, may collide with environmental and spatial

constraints imposed by the physical characteristics of the raw

materials and the location of their sources. Previously ascendant,

and still dominant, economies will have organized raw materials

markets in such a way as to reduce their own costs and increase

their own security of supply.  The established market systems are

therefore likely to accommodate the organization and location of

extraction, processing, and transport to the natural features and

locations of natural resources and their raw material forms.  

    

The ascendant economy must therefore find new ways to

accommodate to natural characteristics, and to use these so as to

loosen or restructure markets already built around these natural

features.  Historically, ascendant economies have done this via

several strategies.  The first strategy is to incorporate new

technologies that effectively change established relations between

economy and environment.  These can include new forms or expanded

scale of mining, processing, and transport.  The second strategy is

to induce host countries to assume a significant share of the cost

of reorganizing world markets, introducing new technologies, and

developing new transport routes.  The third strategy is direct

conquest of resource-rich peripheries, followed by wars or

diplomatic actions that impede access by the established economies.

 

     These three major strategies have evolved historically to

allow ascendant economies to continue their advance. The first

strategy has been employed in a number of instances. The adoption

of James Watt's vastly improved steam engine to remove water from

coal mines in Great Britain during the last twenty years of the

eighteenth century, for example, made huge reserves of deeply

buried coal that had previously been unextractable both

technologically and economically suddenly available on a large

scale at low cost to power Britain's Industrial Revolution.  Britain's

relatively early industrialization based on low cost coal was an

essential element of Britain's rise as a hegemonic core power. 

Similarly, the rapid expansion of a domestic transportation

infrastructure in the United States in the mid-nineteenth century

based on the newly developed technology of railroads served to link

the United States' widely dispersed raw materials and agriculture

producing peripheries to markets and industrial centers in the

East.  This creation of a low cost transport network was a central part of the United

States' rapid industrialization, the key to U.S. ascendence in the

world economy.

     The second strategy has a similarly long history in the

capitalist world economy.  Raw materials producing nations have

long been induced (and sometimes forced) by ascendent core powers

to pay a significant share of the costs of reorganizing world

markets, introducing new technologies, and developing new transport

routes. Imperial core powers, for example, taxed their colonies to

support armies to control indigenous populations and used corvee

labor to construct infrastructure.  Even in non-imperial

situations, ascendent core powers have been able to induce raw

materials extracting peripheries to finance the construction of

railroads, for example, often justified in terms of economic

development but mainly benefitting foreign investors and raw

materials consumers.  Numerous examples of the employment of this

strategy by Britain occurred in Latin America during the nineteenth

century.  Similarly, British and North American rubber buyers and consumers were able to

induce members of the economic elite in the Brazilian Amazon to

finance the expansion of the wild rubber industry in the region to

supply the core's industrial plants in the late nineteenth century

This strategy dramatically reduces both the costs to and risks assumed by the

ascendent core economy's firms and state in the raw materials

extracting region.

     The third strategy has an extremely long history, predating

the emergence of the capitalist world economy.  Direct imperial

conquest of resource rich peripheries and the defense of these

formal and/or de facto annexations by force and/or diplomatic

actions, such as Belgium's conquest of the copper-rich Congo region

of Africa have, however, become increasingly

difficult and expensive to carry out and maintain.  As we will

demonstrate in this paper, Japan has utilized all three of these

strategies at various points during its history.”

 

  1. Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895 – victory given Taiwan to Japan and “independence” from traditional suzerain, China, to Korea. Taiwan, after heated resistance, becomes a Japanese colony (the first modern Japanese colony), and the question of dominance in Korea becomes the key issue in Japan’s political debates. Russia – main competitor. Victory over Russia should not only grant Korea to Japan, but also reconfirm Japan’s newly gained status of a “power” – a “core” state. Russo-Japanese war (1904) gives Korea to Japan (“protectorate” – 1905; full annexation – 1910).  Thus, Japan becomes a centre of its own regional “dominance sphere” (Taiwan, Korea). The prospect – expansion onto North-Eastern China (Manchuria). This could not but lead to more conflicts with other “core” states which controlled parts of the region (Britain – “sphere of interests” in Central China; France – Southern China). As Japan was a “later imperialist” and the only Asian imperialist state, its quest for regional hegemony could take a curious form of “anti-imperialist imperialism” – with use of anti-European, Pan-Asianist phraseology. But Japan’s successes did inspire the whole generation of Asian nationalist leaders (Sun Yatsen, Gandhi, etc.).
  2. Political apparatus of colonial domination – overdeveloped bureaucracy of highly authoritarian kind (strong police force – 14,000 policemen in 1919 Korea), very centralized, often headed by military officials (all Governors-General of Korea, with one exception), with exclusion of the “natives” from the top (although many provincial administrative posts were given to Koreans and Taiwanese). Brutal suppressions of any “unrests” – more than 7000 Koreans killed during the suppression of March 1, 1919 nationalist movement. Mass expropriation of land by the colonial state – in Korea, but not on Taiwan. Collaboration of the landlords – main suppliers of rice for export in Korean case (but not so prominent in the Taiwanese case). Thus, in Korea – strongest hatred of the Japanese and “collaborators”, anti-Japanese sentiments becoming main basis for growing national consciousness.
  3. 1930s – general crisis of the world-system, ultranationalist movements all around the world, “fashion” for militarism. Japan – growth of anti-Western right extremist militancy (Kita Ikki – national socialism in Japan). Japan’s war of expansion in China – from 1931 (Manchurian Incident) onward. “Yen block” in Japan-conquered Northern China. “National general Mobilization” in Japan in 1938 – shift to fully state-controlled war economy. As China became new Japanese periphery, Korea and – less tightly – Taiwan are industrialized and given somewhat “semi-peripheral” status. Japan’s policy of “assimilation” in Korea – Koreans are given higher place in “racial hierarchy” than Chinese, much closer to the Japanese. As a result – creation of “regional hierarchy”. System of state control of the industry – largely survived Japan’s defeat and was used after the war as well.

 

 JAPANESE “RACE CONFLICT” IDEOLOGY (Japanization of racism and Social Darwinism):

 

Japanese felt had been discriminated against:

"Read this and the War is Won"

Japanese war a defensive one

A) West set to dominate world

B) West arrogant, greedy

C) Western values rotten

D) Japan had to create a new world.

For most Japanese war less abstract:

1. Reduce foreign influence in Asia

2. Live austerely

3, fight, if need be, to the death. Death in combat a sort of collective purification: "Attu Gyokusai." "A man of principal would break his jades rather than compromise to save his roof tiles."

4. The dead were not defeated, but were further purified: Kamikaze, suicide squads, etc.

(Dower, John W. War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War.)