18 The Russo-Japanese War and the Emergence of the Notion of the ‘Clash of Races’ in Japanese Foreign Policy

SVEN SAALER

‘ in the war, and Japan will be denounced as the “Yellow Peril”; Wlose the war, and Japan will be labelled “barbarian” ’ – this was Mori Ogai’s assessment of the significance of the Russo-Japanese War (Mori 1993: 59). Ogai (1862–1922), who had spent several years in Germany, had observed increasing racial resentment in Europe towards the rising ‘yellow’ power, Japan. The Russo-Japanese War should become a watershed in Japanese foreign policy along with the role of the notion of ‘race’ in Japan’s foreign relations. This paper will analyse the roots of racial notions in Japanese foreign policy and examine the effects of European ‘Yellow Peril’ propaganda on and in Japan. How, if at all, did Japan react to this kind of propaganda? How did Japanese foreign policy change as a consequence of it?1

THE CONCEPT OF ‘RACE’ IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND THE IDEA OF THE ‘YELLOW PERIL’ The increasing use of the concept of ‘race’ in international politics can be observed from the mid-nineteenth century, as part of the accelerating imperialist dash for control of even the remotest parts of the world.2 Racial prejudice and racism, as a ubiquitous phenomenon accompany- ing the rise of the concept of race during the era of imperialism, can be defined as ‘an integral part of an intricate, complex and often changing set of interrelated threads composing the tapestry of politics and diplo- macy’. (Lauren 1988: 3) For US President Theodore Roosevelt, the highly Emergence of the Notion of the ‘Clash of Races’ 275 praised mediator after the Russo-Japanese War, imperialism basically meant a ‘racial war’. (Lauren 1988: 62) The invention of ‘race’ had taken place in the atmosphere of nine- teenth century nationalism and imperialism and the European search for its own ‘modern’ identity vis-à-vis the rest of the world. In the era of imperialism, when European expansionism reached its climax, new con- cepts such as pseudo-scientific biological and anthropological studies as well as social-Darwinist concepts entered the sphere of foreign policy and were used to legitimize colonial rule, sometimes combined with notions referring to ‘civilization’, such as the ‘white man’s burden’ (Rudyard Kipling; cf. Lauren 1988: 63).3 Particularly important for the application of the concept of ‘race’ to international relations were the writings of Joseph Arthur Comte de Gobineau (1816–82), Houston Stewart Chamberlain4 (1855–1927) and others, who manipulated the term to legitimize European (white) colonial rule, claim the supremacy of the ‘white race’ and deny non-white peoples’ equality and establish a firm ‘hierarchy of races’.5 Due to the demographic situation in the world, i.e. the by far higher population of large parts of Africa and Asia in compar- ison to Europe, the notion of ‘race’ became indispensable to legitimize and stabilize colonial rule by the white European powers. It does not need any explanation that the appearance of Japan as a non-white and non-European (and moreover, non-Christian) power from the European point of view posed a serious threat to ‘white’ supremacy over large parts of the world. It was in this context that the concept of race surfaced in international relations in East Asia and took the form of the notion of a ‘Yellow Peril’. A modernized Japan, so the scenario underlying fears of a ‘Yellow Peril’, allied to a populous China might not only resist European attempts at colonial control, but even strike back, just as other ‘Asian hordes’ had done before: the Huns, the Magyar peoples, the Mongols, the Islamic Arabs or the Ottoman Empire. Before entering the sphere of interna- tional relations, the phrase Yellow Peril, was instrumentalized in the context of sentiments against Chinese immigrant labourers in North America, which eventually led to a racial exclusion policy beginning in the mid-nineteenth century. In a similar fashion, racial exclusion poli- cies also were practised in Australia (‘White Australia’), South Africa, New Zealand and Canada (Lauren 1988: 51–56; Iikura 2004: ch. 8). German Emperor Wilhelm II, notwithstanding quite cordial relations between Japan and Germany before 1895, took the leading role in applying the notion of race to imperialist Realpolitik after the Sino-Japanese War 1894–95 (Gollwitzer 1962). The Sino-Japanese War had heralded the rise of a non-European rival in the imperialist-colonialist competition (Hashikawa 2000; Gollwitzer 1962; Iikura 2004; Saaler 2002a). Germany under Wilhelm II had increased colonial activity and racism became an integral part of the ‘new course’, which was also advocated by right-wing pressure groups, such as the Pan-German League (Alldeutscher Verband) (cf. Hering 2003;