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Theodore Roosevelt and Japan's Racial Identity at The Volume 18 | Issue 20 | Number 4 | Article ID 5499 | Oct 15, 2020 The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus A Japanese Anomaly: Theodore Roosevelt and Japan’s Racial Identity at the Turn of the Twentieth Century Tarik Merida from Africa, and the “brown race” from the Pacific islands.1 Inspired by Western geography Abstract: The nineteenth century saw the textbooks, Fukuzawa had compiled his work in consolidation of a pattern: the high age of order to, in his words, “teach women and imperialism had divided the globe into two children how the world is built.”2 He saw the spheres, one for the colonizers and the other concept of race as important and legitimate for the colonized. Various justifications were enough to include it in his own work. There is, used to rationalize the colonial venture, one of however, a small detail that attracts the eye of these being the idea of racial superiority. the attentive reader of Sekai kunizukushi: in its Geopolitical and scientific developments gave detailed description of the different races, birth to the idea of an unbreachable gulf Japan is conspicuously absent. Among the between the superior “white race” and the “yellow race,” where one would expect to find inferior “colored races.” While circumstances Japan, Fukuzawa lists only China, India, Persia in the colonies seemed to confirm that idea, and Turkey.3 Fukuzawa had his own reasons for Japan had, through a process of modernization, removing Japan from the category of the reached the civilizational level of the Western “yellow race,”4 but unwillingly, he foretold a powers, thereby becoming a racial anomaly. To later development: a few decades after the cope with this anomaly, the nations in the West publication of Sekai kunizukushi, Japan was had to devise a negotiation zone, in which the escaping the otherwise clear-cut distinction Japanese were temporarily granted privileged between the races. racial status without upsetting the racial status When Japan’s gates were forcibly opened to the quo. West in 1854, international relations had, as Keywords: Japan, Race, Meiji, Japanese- Paul Gordon Lauren suggested, long been American relations, Theodore Roosevelt interracial. The great age of exploration had brought adventurers from emerging European nations in contact with a plethora of new peoples. The geopolitical ramifications of such meetings are well known: a few generations after Columbus’ arrival on the American Escaping the Mold of Race continent, Native Americans were extinguished at rates peaking at 98 percent, leaving as many In 1869, the Meiji thinker Fukuzawa Yukichi as 80 million dead.5 The extermination and (1835–1901) introduced the readers of his failed enslavement of Native Americans led Sekai kunizukushi (World Geography) to a European ships to raid the African coasts for Western-inspired classification of mankind. The slave labor. This experience of enslaving world was divided into five races: the “white “nonwhites” propped up already widespread race” from Europe, the “yellow race” from Asia, theories of white superiority and colored the “red race” from America, the “black race” inferiority. Practice and theory mutually 1 18 | 20 | 4 APJ | JF reinforced each other and consolidated the civilization,” entailed, amongst others, having a allegedly natural order of the “white race” as state ruled by a political bureaucracy that rulers over the “nonwhite” peoples.6 guaranteed certain basic rights to its people.9 By 1905, Japan had not only evolved into such a Added to the human, economic, and political state, but had also passed a second consequences, the meeting with “nonwhites” civilizational test in defeating both China and had enormous scientific implications: the Russia in two separate wars. cascade of information that came back from the various new worlds required a revision of mankind’s classification. The Swedish botanist Carl von Linné (1707–1778), who, in 1735, Negotiating Japanese Racial Identity: The published his Systema Naturae, took the first American Example influential step in this direction. Linné’s racial The developments described above make Japan taxonomy comprised four races. However, an interesting exception in the history of more than the separation into different groups, Western imperialism. Even more interesting is it was Linné’s ascription of inherent the way that Western powers reacted to the characteristics to each of the races that Japanese anomaly: it is possible to argue that deserves critical attention: Africans were by the end of the nineteenth century, a childlike and lazy, Asians greedy, Americans negotiation zone had been created between the (i.e. Native Americans) hot-tempered, and Western powers and Japan—a sort of racial Europeans civilized, intelligent, and governed 7 middle ground—in which the latter could by law. This taxonomy was subsequently temporarily escape the subordinate status expanded and by the end of the nineteenth commonly reserved for “colored people” to century, scientists and politicians had divided receive preferential treatment. This not only the world along a color line, thereby creating a enabled them to uphold the racial status quo, strict dichotomy where the “white race” ruled but also to cope with the anomaly of having a over the “colored races.” Western expansion “colored race” equal to “whites.” further reinforced this fundamental idea. By 1914, less than one fifth of the world remained This special status, however, did not mean that free of European or American domination.8 the Japanese were granted universal racial equality. Rather, their civilizational This clear-cut racial hierarchy worked well on achievements enabled them to gain new paper and found footholds in most corners of relevance on the world stage, which the globe. Yet, with time, it becamesimultaneously necessitated a reassessment of increasingly difficult to fit the Japanese into it. their relationship with the Western powers. The civilizational developments in JapanThis suggests that the negotiation zone was brought about through the Meiji Restoration primarily a matter of diplomacy between nation problematized the association of white skin states, one that could eventually, but not color with higher civilization: by the beginning necessarily, grant Japanese individuals some of the twentieth century, the theoretically sort of protection against abuses common for yellow Japan was exhibiting less the alleged other “colored races.” As will be explained in peculiarities of a “colored race,” and instead, detail below, it is necessary to distinguish presenting all the attributes of a modern, between Japan as a nation and Japanese white, Christian nation. Furthermore, the individuals as members of a different race. The country was on the verge of becoming an relationship between Japan and the United imperial power. These attributes of modernity, States at the turn of the twentieth century is often comprising the term “standard ofillustrative of this need for distinction.10 2 18 | 20 | 4 APJ | JF As mentioned above, Japan had been victorious and Koreans; (2) League members should not in two wars, the first Sino-Japanese War employ or patronize Japanese people, nor (1894–1895) and the Russo-Japanese War persons employing Japanese people, and should (1904–1905). While these victories stirred up boycott products coming from firms employing anxieties over the “yellow peril,” i.e. the fear Japanese people; (3) a campaign to get the that the “yellow race” posed a threat to the attention of the President and the Congress had “white race,” the Western response to Japanese to be launched; and lastly, (4) the cause shall prowess in battle was overwhelminglybe supported by all labor and civic positive.11 For the Japanese people, theorganizations.13 victories gave them much needed confidence on the international stage. Believing that it had rightfully won a place amongst the civilized nations of the West, the island country also The California Crisis engaged in economic expansion and human The first real blow came in 1906. On October migration. Among the destinations for 11, the San Francisco Board of Education emigration, the United States became quite ordered all Japanese, Chinese and Korean popular: the number of Japanese people children to go to separate Oriental public entering the country doubled between 1906 schools, effectively instituting school and 1907, from 14,243 to 30,842.12 segregation for Asian pupils. What followed Despite their relatively small numbers, the was a diplomatic wrestling match, known as immigrants were soon accused of “flooding” the California Crisis, between the Japanese the west coast of the United States, and of government, United States President Theodore threatening the white labor market. The Roosevelt, and the State of California. In this Japanese immigrants who came to California crisis, the question of Japan’s racial alignment became victims not only of a long history of was of utmost importance. American racism, but also of a peculiar “west coast racism”: before their arrival, the country’s west coast had been the theatre of racial conflicts between settlers of European descent and respectively, Native Americans, Mexican and Chinese immigrants. The Japanese immigrants, upon arrival, were subjected to much of the same prejudices that had been directed at other “nonwhites,” especially their Chinese counterparts. The latter, however, ceased to be an acute problem after the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which prohibited the immigration of Chinese laborers. Despite the very
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