Japan As a Distant Friend Scandinavian Countries Adjusting to Japan’S Emergence As a Great Power

Japan as a Distant Friend Scandinavian Countries Adjusting to Japan’s Emergence as a Great Power

Bert Edström

Origins of Japan-Scandinavia Relations

Despite a flurry of interest among the Scandinavian countries in Japan after the latter began to open its doors to the outside world during the mid- dle of the 19th century, relations between Japan and Scandinavia devel- oped very slowly. Three main factors drove the intensification of relations during the early 20th century: one, a shared concern with their mutual neighbor, Russia; two, rivalries among the Scandinavian states; and three, fluctuating evaluations of the relative importance of China and Japan for Scandinavian interests. In all cases, Japan’s rapid transformation into a great power conditioned the nature of the relationships that emerged at this time. These themes emerged in the earliest phases of Japanese- Scandinavian interactions. Relations between Japan and the Scandinavian countries have long been marked by the vast distance separating them, both geographically as well as in economic and psychological terms. Limited contacts and exchanges were not only the result of this distance, however; more important was Japan’s seclusion policy during the Tokugawa era. This policy derailed in the wake of Japan’s opening up as a result of US gunboat diplomacy. In 1853 Commodore Matthew Perry aboard his “black ships” delivered an ultimatum from the US president that forced the Tokugawa regime to establish diplomatic relations with the United States. The result of this exercise of raw power was a vindication of the use of gunboat diplomacy as an efficient means for securing foreign policy goals vis-à-vis Japan. It whetted the appetite of the Danish government, more- over, which proposed to Sweden in 1859 that the two countries send men-of- war to Japan. Sweden at this time had entered the throes of industrialization and was also increasingly affected by mass emigration to the United States. As a result, the Swedish government was not ready for such a venture, nor in a

* Research for this paper was partly conducted during the author’s stay as a visiting scholar at Keio University, Tokyo, in summer 2010. A generous travel grant from the Birgit and Gad Rausing Foundation is gratefully acknowledged.

PG1636 212 Edström position to afford it, and the plan did not materialize.1 Significant instead was that the most famous Swedish ship to come to Japan was not a man-of-war, but the scientist Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld’s Vega after having successfully traversed the Northeast Passage in 1878–1879. Japan and Denmark established diplomatic relations in 1867, and Japan and Sweden-Norway followed suit the next year. The bright prospects for trade with Japan lured Swedish trade and shipping circles, but the diplomatic treaties signed did not result in the expected expansion of exports to Japan. Not even the visit to Denmark and Sweden of the Iwakura Embassy in 1873 on its round the world tour did much to increase trade. And yet, growing curiosity about this exotic country in the Far East was visible after Japan’s opening up, when a number of Scandinavians began to travel to Japan. Some of them even settled in cities like Yokohama, Kobe and Osaka. At the time of the Vega’s visit to Kobe, Captain Louis Palander noted in his diary that three Swedes resided in the city.2 Around the turn of the 20th century, in the wake of a number of military and political developments, the small Scandinavian countries came under pressure from the great powers and found themselves increasingly drawn into the great power diplomacy. Most exposed was Finland, which had been under the yoke of Russian domination since 1809; Sweden-Norway, meanwhile, shared a long border with Russia, and Denmark with Germany. In the after- math of Japan’s victory over China in the war of 1894–1895, the world’s atten- tion came to rest on Japan, the Scandinavian countries being no exception. Japan’s name was “on everybody’s lips,” as the Swedish journal Ny illustrerad tidning wrote in its introduction to a series of articles on Japan published in 1895.3 In the Scandinavian press, a majority of reports on Japan reproduced articles from the international press but in some cases were authored by Scandinavians who had travelled to Japan, or had lived there for shorter or longer periods. One of them was Ida Trotzig. She arrived in Japan in 1888, and filed war reports to Swedish newspapers during the Sino-Japanese and the

1 Olof G. Lidin, “Japanese-Danish Official Contacts,” in Danes in Japan 1868 to 1940: Aspects of Early Danish-Japanese Contacts, ed. Mette Laderrière (Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, 1984), 16f. 2 “Dagboksanteckningar från Vegas ishavsexpedition 1878–1880, scrivner av Louis Palander,” Sjöhistoriska museets arkiv [Stockholm], 1955:008/2. One of the three Kobe residents was Herman Trotzig, who arrived in Japan in 1859 and became municipal superintendent in the Kobe Foreign Settlement in 1872. 3 Åke Holmberg, Världen bortom västerlandet: Svensk syn på fjärran länder och folk från 1700-talet till första världskriget (Göteborg: Kungl. Vetenskaps- och Vitterhets-Samhället, 1988), 345.

PG1636