Chapter XV: Japan’s Requirements and China’s Future

The official reasons for the war between Russia and Japan are known, but there are matters which lie deeper than the ostensible excuses made for the serious step Japan has taken. All know that Russia has curtailed Japan’s fisheries; that she has the control in south-western Manchuria of all the supplies of beancake upon which the Japanese depend entirely for the intensive cultivation of the poor and shallow soil which covers their islands; and they know that Russia, by her policy in reference to Korea, intended to control the supplies of both timber and rice so necessary to the welfare of the Japanese. What people wish to know is how far Japan is prepared to carry the war into the enemy’s country if she continues to be successful, and what are now the conditions upon which she will accept peace.

I have endeavoured to find out from the Japanese themselves what is the minimum gain which will content them. I have asked Russians, too, but the only reply they have made is that Japan must be utterly vanquished--many of them still believe that she will be--must relinquish everything she has gained temporarily, and be taught a lesson of humiliation she will never forget. They do not descend to particulars when asked how this is to be accomplished. The position, therefore, must be taken from the Japanese point of view, as that is the only one profitable for examination in detail now.

In the first place, Japan was determined not to be bluffed by Russia: her first stroke was intended to make that known to her adversary. Next, she intended to drive the Russians out of Korea: that she promptly effected. Then her object was to destroy the Russian fleet, and deprive Russia of a naval base in the Far East, so that for many years to come Japan may enjoy peace so far as Russia is concerned. This is in process of execution, and will be effected before Japan stays her hand. Thus far we are upon firm ground.

It is doubtful whether Japan intends to turn Russia out of the three provinces which comprise Manchuria, or even means to attempt so much.

Japan would like the Russian forces to retreat upon Harbin quickly. If that were done, she believes that with the forces now at her command she could attack and capture Harbin--which has only improvised defensive works--and so bring about a further withdrawal, compelling the Russian Commander-in-Chief to decide whether he will attempt to hold the railway between Harbin and Vladivostok, or abandon the eastern line and fall back towards Khailar and Siberia. It will be a serious situation. With the Japanese at Harbin, the Russian retreat westward may be cut off by a river force proceeding up the Nonni to the railway crossing south of Tsitsikar. The abandonment of the eastern line will mean the fall of Vladivostok, and leave the Ussuri province and all the Russian settlements on the Amur at the mercy of the Japanese army.

There cannot be any doubt that Japan will try her utmost to reach and occupy Harbin. Very possibly she will attempt to occupy that position permanently, since it is the junction of the railways from Port Arthur and Vladivostok, and is also valuable because the Sungari, the most important tributary of the Amur, gives communication to many of the Russian settlements in Northern Manchuria and Eastern Siberia.

If Russia wills it so, and is prepared to accept conditions, it seems possible that the actual Japanese invasion will terminate at Harbin, and that Japan will establish herself there, and hold a large force in readiness for emergencies, possibly for a further advance at some future time. The potentialities of such a military situation will be enormous. Assuming that Japan will halt at the second crossing of the Sungari river, she will be in possession of the Fengtien and Kirin provinces, the two most densely populated territories of Manchuria, the richest in mineral and agricultural wealth, and the better part of the Chinese Empire occupied by Russia since the Boxer rising. She will command absolutely the railway approach to Port Arthur, Dalny, Vladivostok, and the Ussuri lines. Japan’s ambition extends somewhat further. The territory west of Harbin between the Sungari River and Tsitsikar is a high plain, well suited to grazing but of no immediate agricultural value. It has no attractions for the Japanese The land to the east of Harbin is better from the agriculturist’s point of view. The Ussuri Province of Eastern Siberia is a fertile, fairly settled and partly cultivated territory rich in promise. It is well wooded, possesses large timber, and has coal, iron, silver, and other valuable mineral deposits. The deep inlets of its shores, from Possiet northwards to the Amur river, are like Norwegian fiords, and the seas teem with fish and that marine vegetable life from which much of the food supply of Japan and Northern China is drawn. The coast fisheries are of the first importance to the welfare of both Japan and Korea. Japan wishes, and will attempt to obtain, the freedom of these waters. In order to prevent Russia from reimposing the taxes she has levied on the fisheries and restricting the rights of Korean and Japanese fishermen, or excluding them from earning their livelihood on the littoral of the Primorski province, Japan will dominate the Ussuri Province, if not annex it, or restore it to the Chinese empire from which it was taken a generation ago.

Japan is unlikely to seek any territorial aggrandisement beyond the frontier of Korea; but she does wish to attain and maintain a position which will allow her to dictate absolutely in what manner the two southern provinces of Manchuria and the Ussuri province of Siberia shall be occupied and exploited. If she has a strong military force at Harbin she will be able to effect this end. It is, I believe, a part of Japan’s policy. It means that Japan will control the sea board from the southernmost point of Korea to the mouth of the Amur, if not still farther north to the sea of Okhotsk and Kamtschatka. Japan views as rightly within her sphere of influence all the territory eastward of the Liao river, the southern branch of the Eastern Chinese Railway, and eastward of the Sungari from Harbin, the northern boundary being the River Amur. In this territory Japan hopes to see Russia’s influence wane and ultimately vanish. It is to that end she is working.

Japan may have to be content with very much less. Russia will give most grudgingly ever so little, and only the force of very adverse circumstances would compel her to grant so much. Possibly Japan must be satisfied with a dominion which does not extend far north of Mukden, but certainly will reach to the Liao.

Beyond Korea, therefore, certain portions of Manchuria will be won from the Russians by the Japanese. It may be assumed that the territory extends to the Amur, or the Sungari, or the Liao, or any other point. What are the intentions of Japan with regard to such territory?

As conqueror she may, presumably, annex and occupy it absolutely. For several reasons she has no intention of occupying Manchuria permanently. She intends that the territory she wins back from Russia shall revert to China, upon conditions.

The first condition is that the provinces ceded shall not again be invaded by Russia; that there shall not again be any possibility of Russia threatening Korea and Japan. Russia must not have an ice-free port, not a naval base, not a dock, or repairing yard, nor must she be allowed to occupy any fortified post which from its position may be regarded as dangerous to Korea or Japan.

Port Arthur will be dismantled; the earthworks will be demolished; the dockyard cleared, and the place reduced to an unimportant railway terminus and fishing village, with some commerce coastwise in small native craft. The fame and the value of Port Arthur are wholly artificial. It is not the proper situation for the terminus of the trans-continental railway; as a naval base it is useful only to Russia, or some other European power having a forward policy in the Far East. It will sink again to the obscurity from which Russia raised it--not until then will it be handed over again to China.

Of Dalny even the expenditure of much government money has been unable to make a success. The site was ill chosen; the place has no trade, serves no real purpose, and by the Russians was termed “Lishni,” the “unwanted.” Dalny is dead.

The Eastern Chinese Railway, of which Port Arthur was the military and Dalny the commercial terminus, will continue to serve both places so long as there is any traffic, and local traffic there always will be. It may increase, but it will do so slowly unless nursed by some such artificial methods as Russia employed. The Eastern Chinese Railway will be joined to the Imperial Chinese Railways by a line of about forty miles over a flat country between Mukden and Hsinmintun. That is the direction most of the trans-continental and local traffic will take; it will give through railway communication between Europe and Peking.

The railway between Port Arthur and Harbin may be acquired directly from Russia by the Chinese Government. It is much more likely to be taken by the Japanese and sold to either the Chinese Railways Administration, or to a syndicate of British and American capitalists. The line runs through a rich country, and already there is sufficient traffic obtainable to pay not only the expenses of working but a fair interest on the actual heavy cost of construction. In fact, the Harbin-Dalny section is the most profitable of all the Siberian railways and its prospects are excellent. Should it be acquired either by the Chinese, or by a foreign syndicate, it will be doubtless converted to the standard gauge of the Chinese railways, and be worked by a similar staff. Already the Japanese are reducing the gauge over the sections in their possession.

The fate of that section of the Eastern Chinese Railway between Harbin and Pogranichnaya cannot be foreseen. If the Japanese establish themselves at Harbin, it may be disposed of in the same manner as the southern section, or the Russian authorities may have running powers over it, or it may be allowed to remain wholly in the hands of Russia--since it connects with the Ussuri railway which has one terminus at Vladivostok, and the other at Khabarovsk on the River Amur. For obvious reasons, I think Japan will endeavour to obtain and keep control of this eastern section, and of the Ussuri railway. Should she do this the Russian terminus of the Trans-Siberian Railway will be Harbin, unless the northern, original route be continued and the line prolonged eastward from Stretensk on the Shilka. Russia will be asked to relinquish the Island of Saghalien--taken from Japan when she was a weak power--the Aleutian, Prybilov, and other sealing islands of the north Pacific. These Japan wishes to have absolutely, valuing them higher than a foothold upon the mainland of Siberia. Japan would also like to occupy permanently the port, harbour, and works at Vladivostok, which she considers to be of greater value to her than is Port Arthur. In short, Japan wishes to possess, or dominate, every place which Russia might eventually utilize as a naval base. More than this, Japan is determined to be the naval power of the East Pacific, and should Russia ever possess a fighting navy, Japan intends to make it impossible for that navy to have any permanent establishment in the Far East. It is for this reason, the blocking of Russia from approaches to ice-free water and the eastern seas, that Japan may find it necessary to hold Harbin and dominate the lower reaches of the Amur, and the Ussuri province.

Another point upon which Japan will insist is the opening up of Manchuria to foreign trade. She will require of China, as a condition precedent to handing over the territory, that at every place along the railway lines and rivers at which Russia has, or had, settlements, foreigners shall be free to reside and to carry on their calling, as in the treaty ports. This has already been made known to China. As usual the Chinese authorities demur to concede this, but Japan remains firm; she will insist, and if necessary she will defy China, occupying and administering the country, and dare China to turn her out by force of arms.

This attitude of Japan is undoubtedly correct. By it she proves to the powers that she has been fighting Russia on their behalf, and probably she believes that she will have their moral support in obtaining her end. But moral support may prove insufficient. Already the Chinese know that Russia is not the great invincible military power they believed her to be. They think that they are capable of doing what Japan has done, and the northern viceroys talk of fighting Japan in preference to having only a limited authority granted them in Manchuria. Their attitude must be taken into account when the conditions of peace are ripe for decision.

The next point profitable to consider is the intention of Japan with reference to the immediate exploitation or development of those portions of China she is winning back from Russia. As already stated, Port Arthur is to be dismantled. No foreigners will in any circumstances be allowed to stay there until after the conclusion of the war. The same rule will apply to Dalny and Talienwan, for the whole of the Kuan-tung peninsula is required by Japan as a naval and military base. After the war, if it ends in favour of Japan, it is improbable than any European firm will desire to become established there, other places offering greater inducements.

For sufficient reasons, which need not be set forth in detail, the Japanese will object to any Russians remaining longer on Manchurian territory in their military occupation. They will object also to persons of French, German, and Scandinavian nationality. Both French and German subjects in the Far East, and especially those in Manchuria, Siberia, and the quondam treaty port of Newchwang, have shown themselves sympathisers with Russia, if not actual partisans in the war. The Scandinavians, chiefly through the Danish East-Asiatic Company, are still more closely identified with Russians, and the Japanese even go so far as to say that the Danish and the Russian flags are for all practical purposes identical. Throughout the Far East Denmark is represented by the Russian Consuls; some of the Danish East-Asiatic Company’s steamers were owned in their entirety and absolutely by Russians, a fact the Japanese do not overlook, and will not forget.

Manchuria therefore will be open first to persons of British and American nationality. If they are quick to establish themselves there, other nationals will be subject to the same adverse conditions as British subjects endured under Russian rule and occupation.

Another point upon which Japan has decided is the future rule of Manchuria. Japan does not intend that the three provinces shall revert to the cruel despotism that obtained there under Chinese sovereignty. Japan has proved in Formosa that brigands, outlaws, and the savage natives the Chinese exploited, have become industrious law-abiding peasants under the just administration of equitable laws.

The Hunghuses and outlaws of Manchuria are more likely than the Formosan natives to appreciate a liberal government, and laws administered with justice. All nations should support Japan in her endeavour to free the enslaved Manchurian peasant. The Chinese coolie is capable of being made into a law-abiding, sober, industrious, frugal labourer, and if the experiment succeeds in Manchuria it may lead to a reform in the government of the eighteen provinces of China Proper. Possibly the moral, social, and physical welfare of the people count for less than the correct division of the territorial spoils of war among the conquerors; but this issue is fraught with such gigantic potentialities, that it is to be hoped Japan will obtain her end, and be the means of freeing the Chinese peoples from the tyranny of a corrupt mandarin rule. The real opening up of Manchuria to foreign settlement and trade will effect more than centuries of missionary effort to the enlightenment of the people and the amelioration of their lot. This opportunity must on no account be missed, whatever the opinion of the Chinese Court may be on the subject.

The spoils of war which will go to the victors will include government, freehold and leasehold estate; fortresses, dockyards, armaments and munitions of war. The Chinese Eastern Railway may be regarded as government property, and such rights as Russia legally possesses in it will pass to the Japanese. There will be a war indemnity, but in the Far East it is believed that whichever side wins, the war indemnity, whatever its amount, will have to be paid by China. Should the Japanese prove ultimate conquerors the war indemnity levied upon Russia will be collected of China on account of the territory returned to the dominion of the Chinese Emperor. Should Russia win, Japan will be unable to pay a heavy indemnity, and China will be required to reimburse Russia for the expense to which she will have been put in repelling the Japanese invasion of Chinese territory. China’s protests will be futile in either event.

The material gain Japan expects to win by the war may be summarized as follows:--

(_a_) Saghalien and the sealing islands to become Japanese territory.

(_b_) The port and harbour of Vladivostok to be occupied by Japan indefinitely.

(_c_) Port Arthur to be dismantled and made over to China on conditions.

(_d_) The rights of Russia in the Chinese Eastern Railway and in the territory leased from China by Russia.

(_e_) The opening of Manchuria to Japanese trade and exploitation.

(_f_) The opening of the Amur and its tributaries to international navigation.

(_g_) A war indemnity of unknown amount, to be paid by China.

These requirements are for the most part immaterial to European Powers. The supporters of Japanese policy may expect to share in the privileges Japan secures for her own people as traders in Manchuria, and in the right of way in Siberian waters.

They will be neither gainers nor losers by the transference of Saghalien, and the Russian islands in the Pacific, nor by the change in the ownership of Vladivostok. Whilst some nationals will be losers by the dismantling of Port Arthur and the disappearance from the Pacific of the Russian naval stations, in all probability the world will be distinctly the gainer, if, as is proposed, Manchuria and “Japanese Siberia,” are opened to free commerce.

The empire of China expects to benefit largely if Japan wins, but if this benefit is to be paid for by the Chinese people in extra taxes levied in order that Japan may be paid out her share in the reconquered Manchuria, then the Chinese people will have good reason to curse a war which has added to their burdens and in no other way ameliorated their condition.

China is as corrupt as her empire is vast; even the Japanese with whom I have conversed on the subject declared that the task of regenerating China was too great for them to attempt; the Chinese were hopelessly incorrigible.

The bulk of the Chinese, though bound by tradition and the slaves of their environment, are sensible, law-abiding people, whose greatest need is a good government. It is not that there is one law for the rich and another for the poor--there are laws for any and every class--but there is justice for no one, only the foreigner.

I will take an instance. A rich corporation had a difference with a rich contractor as to the quality of certain material supplied. In England it would have been a case for a civil court, but in order to obtain the return of their money they put the man in the _yamen_, and being rich, paid the expected cumshaws, and in the course of time the sum they demanded was extorted from the contractor. By that time the _yamen_ officials had discovered that he was wealthy, and he was not released until he was not only beggared, but his daughters had been sold into slavery. The handful of snow thrown at the man became an avalanche which overwhelmed him.

The magistrates are appointed for a term of three years, and count upon receiving in cumshaws the first year as much as they paid in order to secure the position; double that sum the second year, and the third year double the second year’s income.

Is there any crime which justifies the State in flaying a woman to death?

Perchance the visitor to a big Chinese city may happen on such an execution in one of its streets. He may shut his eyes to the horrible spectacle and pass by as the foreign resident does, or as a tourist he may stay and watch, and as a souvenir buy at a German photographer’s a set of snap-shots showing the various stages of the ghastly performance of tearing the skin from the sentient flesh of a writhing human being tied to the stake.

Only last September in modern Shanghai, a man was slowly starved to death whilst exhibited in a wooden cage outside the gates of the city, but only one English newspaper in the settlement thought the affair called for mention. And Shanghai is the model settlement possessing a municipal council which recently thought “shocking” an application to permit newspapers to be sold in the streets!

A woman employed at one of the mills stole a small quantity of cotton which she said she wrapped round her body in order to keep herself warm; she was sentenced to 100 blows for this offence at the Mixed Court, when the American assessor was on the bench with the Chinese magistrate. The case is reported, without comment, in the _North China Daily News_, January 20, 1904. This is a punishment which would not be inflicted in England, and British mill owners in China ought to work with conditions similar to those made in this country.

In another case, a British boy, name not published, was prosecuted in the Consular Court for a long series of petty thefts from his employers. In order not to spoil his future career he was ordered one day’s imprisonment and immediately set free.

There are different punishments for an identical offence, the variation being due to the nationality of the culprit. The penalty inflicted upon a Chinese offender also varies in accordance with the nationality of the accuser, or the assessor. The purpose of a European assessor sitting conjointly with a Chinese magistrate is that a guilty person shall not escape sentence, but the magistrate is not influenced by Chinese law or the gravity of the offence so much as the consideration of the penalty which will satisfy the foreigner. A convict may get 100, 200, or 500 blows, the number depending upon whether the assessor is British, French, or German.

Generations of foreign intercourse, and the establishment of great foreign settlements at her ports do not seem to have affected in the least the essentially barbaric legal customs of China, or to have ameliorated appreciably the condition of her people.

Missionary effort has not been much more successful. The very afternoon that I sat with the Rev. John Ross in his beautiful home at Mukden, outside the west gate of the city a woman of twenty-two was being cruelly hacked into a thousand pieces before the eyes of an indifferent concourse of idlers. For thirty years Mr. Ross has laboured valiantly in Manchuria, but the customs, the laws and the barbarity of the people continue as of old. And Mr. Ross is only one of some 4,000 missionaries in China, men who strive and work on year after year, and hope, but see no marked change in the masses, or prospect of changes to be inaugurated by their rulers.

One reason for this failure is that Chinese converts are for the most part men of poor station, men without power and possessing little or no influence with the high officials. Indeed many of them are destitute, the “rice-Christians” maintained by foreign charity, and despised by their fellows.

The status of a Christian convert in China is similar to that of an avowed atheist in this country. His relations plead with him and reproach him, the bulk of the people contemn him, the officials despise him and are not ready to help him. If persuasion will not win him back to the conventions of the public his family try threats; the rage of his ancestors at his apostasy, the dishonour he has brought upon them and upon his living relatives; such wickedness as the gods will not allow to go unpunished. If he remain obdurate they tell him of the fate of other Christian converts, ask him if he wishes to be a tortured martyr, hint that there is a strong secret body of the orthodox faith, the old true believers of China, who mean to drive out of China the foreign devils, and destroy all who believe as the foreigners believe, and have forsaken the sacred faith of their forefathers and mock the true religion. And the Chinaman, timid by nature, is influenced at last; terrorized by these hints he goes to the missionary with a story of a secret society of blood-thirsty vegetarians, the fearful _tsiliti_, who are plotting to murder the missionaries and their converts. The same story in various forms comes from so many converts that the missionaries become alarmed, and write to the Consul, and if the Consul has many such communications he too takes fright and requests the presence of a gunboat, or some other drastic remedy, and at once you have all the ingredients of an ugly international incident.

The Chinaman, of course, has not much chance if he tries to set the law in motion against the foreigner. He has just to suffer what they put on him.

When I was in Tientsin there was a coolie staggering under a prodigious load of bricks, slowly pushing the barrow to which he was harnessed along the correct side of the road, when a Cossack rode up from behind, and finding a carriage coming the other way, so not allowing him room to pass until it had gone by the barrow, he commenced to lash the bare coolie with his whip for no other reason than that he was where he was, and where he had a perfect right to be. An Englishman interfered, but it was in the French Concession, and there, no more than in the British or the Russian Concessions, would the coolie be likely to obtain redress.

The future of the Chinese empire is of less moment than the fate of the Chinese people. After so many attempts have been made to coerce the Government, and to influence the people, it seems hopeless that any plan will succeed.

But this war affords an opportunity for an experiment which I hope will be tried--the establishment of a real Japanese control in China, in the reconquered province of South Manchuria. Let the Japanese prove there that they are not only warriors, but of a race capable of raising the eastern people to their own level, able to instil new ideals, to imbue others with self-respect. Let them establish in their midst courts of justice, and schools such as exist in Japan. In the country they have won let them govern. In China as in Japan let there be only one law, applicable both to natives and foreigners; let there be fostered a respect for justice and for authority; let there be a beginning made with the real work of regenerating China, and the work done where the Peking official will be powerless to interfere with its development, to check its growth, or to stamp it out and reduce Manchuria to the level of the China of to-day. If this be the outcome of the war, then Japan, as a true civilizing force, will not have expended her strength and her treasure in vain.

Butler & Tanner, The Selwood Printing Works, Frome, and London.

The Russo-Japanese Conflict

Its Causes and Issues

By K. ASAKAWA, PH.D.

_Lecturer on the Civilization and History of East Asia at Dartmouth College;
Author of the “Early Institutional Life of Japan” etc._

With an Introduction by FREDERICK WELLS WILLIAMS

_Assistant Professor of Modern Oriental History in Yale University._

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After an introduction discussing the economic issues and showing the vital necessity that Japan should have opportunity for expansion, the Author reviews the historical and diplomatic events of the last fifty years as they affect Japan, China, Korea, Manchuria, and Russia, and threshes out for us the questions of Chinese neutrality and Korean integrity. The book is written with vigour and clearness and is illustrated with portraits of leading diplomats on either side.

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Transcriber’s Notes.

Italic text is indicated with _underscores_, bold text with =equals=. Small/mixed capitals have been replaced with ALL CAPITALS.

Evident typographical and punctuation errors have been corrected silently. Inconsistent spelling/hyphenation has been normalised.

A Half-title page has been discarded.

Text in the list of illustrations has been amended to match the illustration captions.

The text "and Manchuria" has been added to the heading for Chapter II, to match the table of contents.

A "tipped-in" addendum has been appended to the list of illustrations.

To improve text flow, illustrations have been relocated between paragraphs.