Global Entanglements and Japan, China and Korea, 1914-1919.
E-Book, Englisch, Band 35, 360 Seiten
Reihe: Eigene und Fremde Welten
ISBN: 978-3-593-44460-4
Verlag: Campus Verlag
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Wasserzeichen (»Systemvoraussetzungen)
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Contents
Acknowledgements9
The East Asian Dimension of the First World War: An Introduction11
Jan Schmidt and Katja Schmidtpott
I.The First World War and East Asian Thought
The First World War in East Asian Thought: As Seen from Japan39
Yamamuro Shin'ichi (translated by David De Cooman)
The First World War and Its Impact on Chinese Concepts of Modernity81
Eugene W. Chiu
II.The War and East Asia in the Mass Media
The Japanese Press and Japan's Entrance into the First World War101
Morohashi Eiichi and Tamai Kiyoshi Seminar
The "Yellow Monkey": Japan's Image during the First World War as Seen on German Picture Postcards125
Sepp Linhart
The First World War and Japanese Cinema: From Actuality to Propaganda 159
Ogawa Sawako
III.Political and Economic Entanglements
The Outbreak of the First World War and the Korean Independence Movement: Two Strategies Regarding the Twenty-One Demands on China185
Ono Yasuteru
Japanese Loan Policy to China during the First World War: Shoda Kazue and the Domestic Political Background
of the Nishihara Loans209
Kubota Yuji (translated by David De Cooman)
The First World War and Chinese-American Economic Networks?231
Wu Lin-chun
German-Japanese-US Mutual Perceptions and Diplomatic Initiatives over Mexico: New Perspectives on the Zimmermann Telegram247
Gerhard Krebs
IV.Warfare and Mobilisation in Europe and in the US as Studied in Japan
Lessons Learned: Japanese Bureaucrats and the First World War271
Shimizu Yuichiro (translated by Angelika Koch)
The Japanese Army's Studies of Germany during the First World War and Its Preparations of a System of General National Mobilisation291
Kudo Akira (translated by Angelika Koch)
Japanese Army Artillery and Engineering Officers' Study Visits to Europe and the "Japanese-German War"313
Suzuki Jun (translated by David De Cooman)
V.Individual Experiences: POWs, Civilian Internees and Chinese Workers
The Treatment of German Prisoners of War in Japan in the Global Context of the First World War333
Mahon Murphy
The Prisoner-Of-War Camp at Aonogahara near Kobe: The Austro-Hungarian Empire in Miniature349
Otsuru Atsushi
Japanese Civilians in Germany at the Outbreak of the First World War365
Naraoka Sochi
The British Recruitment Campaign for the Chinese Labour Corps during the First World War and the Shandong Workers' Motives to Enroll385
Zhang Yan (translated by Ernest Leung)
Authors and Editors409
The East Asian Dimension of the First World War: An Introduction
Jan Schmidt and Katja Schmidtpott In December 1914, about three months after the start of the First World War, the new Tokyo central railway station opened. Just a few weeks later it was the scene of a triumphal welcoming celebration for the Japanese troops that were returning from the German-leased area around the Chinese port of Qingdao on the Shandong peninsula, which the Japanese army had managed to take following several weeks of besieging the city and heavy fighting. Then, in the summer of 1918, the square in front of the station served as the site for exhibiting a British tank, as can be seen on the cover of this volume.1 This tank was a wooden model of a slightly smaller scale than the real early tanks that had been used in increasing numbers on the European Western front. Just like gas masks, submarines and fighter planes, the tanks had long since become a familiar sight even in East Asia due to their manifold representations in the media. The wooden tank, as the Japanese daily newspaper Tokyo Asahi Shinbun reported, formed part of a so-called “tank week”, a global publicity campaign by the allied power Great Britain for the purchase of British government bonds. The tank therefore was exhibited in a variety of public places throughout Tokyo and Yokohama from July 1, 1918 onwards. Over the course of just six days almost 3,000,000 Yen’s worth of bonds were sold, which at the time was a huge sum. During the spring of the same year a similar “tank week” had taken place in Shanghai.2 The previous year, on February 25, 1917, the Tokyo Asahi Shinbun had run a report on the sinking of the French troop carrier Athos, which had been torpedoed by a German submarine in the Mediterranean a few days earlier.3 The ship had been on its way back from East Asia to Europe after carrying 40 Japanese war volunteers in the opposite direction, from France to Japan, in December 1916. These war volunteers—originally work migrants from New Caledonia—had been denied permission to participate in the war by the Japanese Foreign Ministry (Gaimusho). On its return journey to Europe the Athos was carrying not just African colonial troops but also hundreds of Chinese workers from Shandong, who formed part of the 145,000 Chinese who had been recruited by France and Great Britain to support the Entente’s military machine behind the Western front. The sinking of the Athos cost the lives of 543 Chinese workers, and the news of this event was one of the factors that made China renounce its neutrality and declare war on the Central Powers.4 Both the wooden tank outside Tokyo train station and the fate of the ship Athos represent aspects of the East Asian dimension of the First World War. Nonetheless, although these individual events seem tiny compared to the large-scale battles raging in Europe, they are not marginalia of history. Rather, they exemplify the manyfold entanglements of East Asia and East Asians with the First World War—what we call its East Asian Dimension. Different aspects of this East Asian dimension, which scholarship has often overlooked so far, will be examined in this volume. In so doing, it is a central aim of this volume to include new studies that have been published by historians from the East Asian region over the last decade, largely as part of the global centennial of the First Word War. Most of their work has so far barely been considered in English-language research as it had generally been published in East Asian languages only. To help the reader situate the topics of the 16 contributions of this volume, this introduction will first give a short overview of the East Asian Dimension of the First World War on the basis of the body of already existing scholarship and then discuss problems of historiography, especially in the East Asian countries. Finally all contributions will be briefly introduced, followed by a critical evaluation of the desiderata of current scholarship, including this volume, that might remain with regard to the East Asian dimension of the First World War. The First World War and East Asia
East Asia emerged already early on as part of the global dimension of the First World War. On the side of the Entente Powers, the Japanese Empire declared war on the German Empire on August 23, 1914 and subsequently also on Austria-Hungary. This happened only a few weeks after fighting had broken out across large parts of Europe following a whole cascade of declarations of war. Subsequently, the empires of the major European powers also became part of the mobilisation efforts for the war. Japan engaged in outright military action against Germany in the Asia-Pacific region, later it supported British naval forces in the Mediterranean, and then joined the Siberian intervention from 1918 to 1922 as a major force. The war against Germany, which in Japan is remembered as the “Japanese-German War” (Nichi-Doku senso) of 1914,5 resulted in the acquisition of the German-leased territory of Qingdao in China and the German colonies in the South Pacific. However, as a result of the Western powers’ interference it had to hand back Qingdao to China in 1922 and received the former German colonies in the Pacific as a mandate by the League of Nations in 1919. The Siberian Intervention ended in a domestically highly unpopular political disaster, with no tangible outcome in terms of territorial acquisitions and a comparatively high number of Japanese casualties. While Japan finished the war as one of the five major powers at the Paris Peace Conference as a result of its engagement in the war, the long-term outcome for Japan has been described as ambiguous by many historians, as tensions with China heightened over the issues of Japan’s expansionist policy in China as reflected in the so-called Twenty-One Demands of 1915, and also with the United States over the issue of competing spheres of influence in the Pacific. At the same time the Japanese public was outraged by the decision in Paris not to include in the Covenent of the League of Nations a “Racial Equality” clause that Japan had submitted.6 The outbreak of the war in Europe led to a relative absence in China of the major European powers, who had had a strong position there before. Japan decided to capitalise on this situation by confronting the young Republic of China with the notorious Twenty-One Demands. They were intended to transfer the rights to the German-leased area of Qingdao to Japan, to ensure the renewal of existing Japanese rights that had been bestowed between 1895 and 1905, and to force the granting of extensive privileges for Japan in China.7 Korea had been a part of the Japanese Empire since its annexation in 1910. Koreans striving to regain Korean independence were hoping—in vain, as it turned out—to be able to use the war and the subsequent Paris Peace Conference for their aims. China remained neutral until August 1917 when it declared war on the Central Powers. China’s intention was that at the peace conference, which it was expecting to take place at the end of the war, it would be able to raise the Chinese position in the world and in East Asia. In particular it wanted the German privileges on the Shandong peninsula to be annulled. Ideally China also wanted to retract other privileges of different major powers that had been granted under duress during the time of 19th century informal imperialism and during the Boxer Rebellion. However, although China remained a neutral state until 1917, the largest active participation from East Asia in the military conflict in a wider sense came from there, in the form of 145,000 Chinese workers recruited by Great Britain and France. The majority of these workers came from the Shandong peninsula which was under de facto Japanese domination after the occupation of Qingdao and the former German railway network, with the Japanese actively supporting the English and French recruitment effort. Around an additional 150,000 Chinese workers migrated to Russia during the First World War, with many of them becoming embroiled in the Russian Revolution and the subsequent civil war.8 After a short period of strong uncertainty on the East Asian markets due to shortages and cancellations of imports from Europe and the consequent price rises, from 1915 onwards the war...
