Comment le Japon a rattrapé l’Occident (et a été écrasé) ?

Comment le Japon a rattrapé l’Occident (et a été écrasé) ?

1603, Tokugawa Ieyasu was appointed shôgun of Japan, after numerous conflicts he finally held the country in his hands. Shortly later, he made the village of Edo, where his headquarters was located, the new capital of his regime; it will become present-day Tokyo. Japan has found a new leader, but it is no less exhausted, exhausted by too many wars between great lords for power, exhausted also by two attempted invasions of Korea where people died, for nothing , more than 100,000 Japanese warriors. It is all the more dangerous since, for several decades now, foreigners have been well established on the archipelago where they trade, seek to spread their religion and influence the political world: Portuguese, Spanish and Dutch are there, and the colonial threat is never far away. However, almost 300 years later Japan will be able to compete with the Western powers, With the establishment of this new, and last, shogunate, Japan entered a new era in 1603: the Edo Period. It was a long period of peace, which means that it is, among us, mainly known for something other than its shoguns, its politics, etc., what we often remember from it is isolationism. We constantly hear that at this moment Japan cuts all its ties with the rest of the world, that it puts an end to trade, that it closes in on itself; When you type Edo period on Google, the first link that comes up is a Radio France program whose title summarizes the period with: “period when the country closes itself, cutting off all trade with the outside world”. This is all terribly false. Japan never experiences isolationism, it never seeks to isolate itself from the world, in fact the problem at the root of all this misunderstanding is above all relations with Europeans, we will come to that. But first let’s make it clear that the archipelago maintains completely normal relations with its neighbors: upon the establishment of the shogunate, Ieyasu restored relations with Korea, despite the wars which took place a few years previously; the daimyos of Tsushima trade with the country and Edo receives eleven Korean embassies in two centuries. To the south, Ieyasu subjugated the neighboring kingdom of Ryûkyû in 1609 and made it a tributary, there again Edo received 18 embassies from it in two centuries. Japan also maintains commercial relations with China and with Taiwan, it continues to expand to the north by colonizing the island of Hokkaidô and the shogun Iemitsu even envisages a conquest of the Philippines then controlled by the Spanish, the project does not was aborted only because of a violent revolt which broke out in 1637, a revolt which was put down with the help of… the Dutch. Because we don’t cut off relations with Europeans either . Well, it depends which ones. The first Portuguese, then Spanish, ships obviously arrived with missionaries on board, as always. Catholics, so that conversions multiplied over time, there were perhaps 700,000 Christians on the archipelago in the 1620s. Beyond the promotion of their faith, the Portuguese and the Spanish also had the bad habit of trying to interfere in the affairs of every place they set foot. However, when they came into contact with the Dutch and the English, the Japanese learned of the role that Catholic missionaries played in the fall of the empires of pre-Columbian America, and they saw the threat of revolt and destabilization of the society that this new religion creates. Then, the shogunate repressed and then banned Catholicism, as well as certain Buddhist sects also considered dangerous, and expelled the Portuguese in 1639. We did not close ourselves off from trade with Europe, we only protected ourselves from foreign interference; in this sense, the Protestant intermediaries seem to be a much better option, it is then the Dutch who become the privileged partners of the Japanese, although the latter do not close themselves to other traders, for example English, in fact as long as these are not Portuguese or Spanish. Good accounts make good friends, the Dutch based in Nagasaki make huge profits trading between Asian countries, in Japan they buy precious metals and sell silk, medicines and sugar, everyone finds something to their advantage . These contacts also allow the Japanese to keep informed of European scientific discoveries, which are called rangaku, that is to say Dutch sciences, while the managers of the Dutch East India Company visit once every 4 years in Edo to keep the shôgun informed of developments in the political situation in Europe and the world. Japan always remains attentive to the world and still maintains commercial relations with its neighbors and with Europe, only it protects itself intelligently; what was taken on the old continent for isolationism is in fact perhaps what allowed it to avoid the fate of China or Kongo, for example. But limiting the Edo period to this simple question of isolationism would be stupid, the country obviously evolved a lot during these 3 centuries of peace, we should dwell a little on all that before continuing. The Edo period, probably thanks to the long peace it established, allowed an explosion in the population: it went from 12 million souls in 1600 to more than 26 million in 1721. It was accompanied by an economic boom : cultivable areas increase by 30% and agricultural productivity by 50%, landowners pay 50% taxes on their crops. These taxes are paid in rice, which serves as currency for most daily purchases; precious metals are only needed by the daimyos and the shôgun who undertake major works. Despite everything, the country urbanized greatly: in the 17th century Edo was the largest city in the world with its 1.1 million inhabitants, in the 18th century almost 12% of the Japanese population lived in city. The phenomenon of course accompanies the development of trade and the birth of extremely wealthy merchant families, some of them very powerful and indispensable to the shogunate; but despite everything, commercial activity remains frowned upon, as in ancient Greek thought, this bourgeoisie cannot access the political world and the status occupied by the aristocracy which owns the agricultural estates. It is obviously the shôgun who is at the top of society, his institutions directly administer the richest provinces of the archipelago, the mines from which precious metals are obtained and the large commercial cities, such as Nagasaki and Osaka. With the control of the mines, the shôgun also controls monetary production; copper, silver and gold coins are produced and are mainly used for trade. The territories which do not depend directly on the shôgun are in the hands of daimyos, great lords, the closer they are to Edo the more it means that the first shôguns trusted them. Finally, local administration is often managed by samurai, a warrior caste which no longer really has any reason to exist in such a period of peace. The system still has some problems, bad harvests and natural disasters that are too frequent in Japan cause the fiscal resources of the daimyos to stagnate even though they must invest to repair the damage caused by them; they must then go into massive debt with the merchant class and, through austerity, lower the pay paid to the samurai: the aristocracy weakens while the bourgeoisie gets richer. A good example of this is the eruption of the Asama volcano in 1783, it darkened the sky, polluted the soil, caused heavy rains and lowered the temperature, poor harvests continued for four years and caused serious famines which caused themselves revolts, in a few years the population fell from 26 to 23 million. In the 18th century, the merchant bourgeoisie began to invest in factories to produce silk, cotton, paper and a whole host of commercial goods demanded in the city, while in the villages this production was organized in winter on a smaller scale. scale: Japan begins to industrialize, almost 200 years after the great European trading powers. Despite everything, trade with the outside world has always been, since Ieyasu’s coming to power, a monopoly of the shôgun; protectionism remains the norm, there is only one port accessible to Dutch and Chinese merchants, and there is little interest in opening it to other partners. There were contacts with the Russians, but the goods offered did not convince the shogunate, while the English found trade with Japan too unprofitable. Over time, the country realizes its own weakness, its coasts are more and more regularly skirted by European ships which can now rely on steam to access them much more easily, and we learn the fate of China, forcibly opened to trade following the Opium Wars. To prevent this from happening to him, the shôgun undertook major works to fortify its coasts and chose to repel all foreign ships that approached too close to the country, apart from those authorized to trade in Nagasaki. This is annoying for Europeans who, beyond the commercial potential, deprive themselves of a practical stopover on Asian maritime routes; In the 1840s, the English planned to impress the Japanese militarily to force them to open their coasts, this is what we call gunboat diplomacy, but the project did not succeed. Ultimately, other Anglo-Saxons will take care of it. 1853, American admiral Matthew Perry entered Edo Bay at the head of 4 warships , he transmitted his demands to the shôgun and had his cannons fire blanks. When he returned the following year with double the number of ships, the Japanese were ready to give in, especially as their American counterparts promised them that a treaty would avoid the fate that China experienced with the Opium War. . The treaty, signed in 1858, opened six ports to trade, allowed Americans to live there, set relatively low customs tariffs and allowed the Japanese to purchase American weapons, including warships. The British and French then in turn signed similar treaties, as did the rest of the Western powers. For around ten years the country maintained a correct trade balance with its new partners, we imported weapons, machine tools or raw materials, while we exported silk, tea or food. But from 1866 the Japanese experienced a deficit in their trade balance vis-à-vis the West, the situation would not be reversed before 1930. In any case, the treaties were poorly perceived since they removed its customs sovereignty and legal in Japan, legal because Western nationals are judged by the courts of their own country when they commit offenses on Japanese soil; This is explained by the fact that Westerners do not see the Japanese as civilized, and this encourages the xenophobia of the Japanese population. But, at least, the country is avoiding the wars from which China suffered, notably because it represents fewer interests for Europeans. The shogunate sees what it has to gain from all this, it shows itself quite inclined to openness, but it is very poorly received by the population and some of the daimyos. The dissatisfied then turn to the other form of power in Japan: the emperor and his court, in Kyoto. This court, which had no real power under the shogunate, a bit like the British monarchy, regained political influence at this time. A real current of xenophobic thought is spreading, particularly among the samurai of the Mito domain, which can be abbreviated by their motto: “revere the emperor, repel the barbarians”. They became real political terrorists demanding a profound transformation of the shogunate and did not hesitate to go so far as to provoke attacks and assassinate ministers. But the most fiercely xenophobic daimyos, those of Satsuma and Chôshû, quickly realized the benefit of trade with Westerners and the technological gap that separated them, they ended up importing Western weapons and focused on the fight against shogunate rather than that against foreigners. The shôgun carried out major reforms, particularly military ones, to follow the European model, and in this sense benefited from the aid of France; on the contrary, the recalcitrant daimyos received support from Great Britain with whom they traded and supplied themselves with weapons. These, especially those from the domains of Satsuma, Tosa and Chôshû, ended up allying and demanding the abdication of the shôgun while proposing that he participate in the government set up to succeed him, before returning to this last point in deciding that it was necessary to get rid of everything that constituted the shogunate. On January 3, 1868 in Kyoto, occupied by the anti-shogunate coalition, the restoration of the imperial regime and the destruction of the shogunate was proclaimed , it was a real coup d’état. The country then descends into civil war. The shogun, Tokugawa Yoshinobu, was defeated less than a month later at the Battle of Toba-Fushimi; the imperial army captured Edo in April, and the last enemies of the emperor were crushed at the battle of Hakodate, on the island of Hokkaido where they had founded an independent republic with the support of France . This restoration of imperial power is accompanied by major revolutionary reforms with which Japan will modernize at great speed, until it can compete with the Western powers. The new regime is, at the start, quite fragile, it works on eggshells. Despite everything, this does not prevent him from carrying out the necessary reforms with, first of all, the abolition of hereditary classes; all those who do not belong to the nobility become common people, they receive a name, a privilege previously reserved for samurai, now have the right to change professions , to marry people from other classes and to buy land. This has a very simple objective, to allow the centralization of the country and the modernization of the army. The fiefs are abrogated , the daimyos must cede these to the new State which transforms them into departments, in exchange for which the former lords receive an annual annuity while the State takes responsibility for their old debts and the salaries of their samurai. . The various local armies are suppressed and the emperor creates one in the service of the State, it is a conscription army like in Europe with compulsory military service, it is soon modeled on the Prussian model and German officers surrender on the archipelago to provide their teachings. This army makes the samurai completely useless, especially since their salaries are expensive for the State; from 1873 they were prohibited from wearing sabers, reserved for state civil servants, soldiers and police, and a tax was levied on their pay. In the southwest of the country, they are trying to revolt against this social downgrading, but the regime’s new army has no trouble sweeping them away. On the navy side, it is the British model which is imitated; an English instructor is appointed as head from the Imperial Naval Academy in 1873, future officers were sent to study in Great Britain and orders for ships were placed in English shipyards. The new regime attracted considerable support from Westerners; it also sent half of the government on a trip to Europe and America for two years in 1871, a trip which would influence future reforms. With the agreement of these foreign powers, the emperor sent a military expedition to Taiwan in 1874, forced Korea to open up to trade in 1876 and annexed the kingdom of Ryukyu in 1879. For the political model, it was also the West which is taken as an example. In 1889, the emperor promulgated a Constitution, it was worked on for years with the help of German experts in constitutional law; the emperor retains a very important place at the head of the state and the army, he is supported by a parliament composed of two chambers, one whose members are hereditary and one whose members are elected via census suffrage, to At the moment, barely 1% of the population can vote. Finally, it remains to reform the economy, industrialization is a necessary step to be on par with the West. Japanese traders and businessmen do not have sufficient capital to adopt European techniques, so it is the State which makes the first investments: it pays the salaries of foreign experts, finances the training of Japanese students in Europe, plans the acquisition of new technologies, builds railway lines, creates businesses; the first of these, shipyard, coal mine and textile factory modeled on the European model, were privatized in the 1880s . The textile industry is a good example of the success of this industrialization, the number of weaving machines in Japan increased from 77,000 in 1887 to 970,000 in 1891. Japan is entering the big leagues for good, and it intends to make this known in Asia, especially since it is necessary to impress Westerners in order to renegotiate the unequal treaties which had been imposed on the shogunate thirty years earlier. It begins with a war against China, taking advantage of a disagreement over Korea, where the two countries have a strong influence, the emperor mobilizes 250,000 men who easily crush the Chinese army, the debacle is also total against a modernized Japanese navy. China signs peace after less than a year of conflict, it must recognize the independence of Korea, pay war compensation and cede several islands, Taiwan and the Liaodong peninsula; However, the French, Russians and Germans veto this last condition, Japan will not recover the peninsula. Aware that it still cannot ignore the great European powers, Japan invests all the compensation received from China in a vast arms program. Also, the country is moving closer to Great Britain, the only power which has not sought to hinder its expansion in China; in 1902 a treaty of alliance was signed: the two parties undertake to remain neutral if the other goes to war in Asia, and to help each other militarily if one of the two is attacked by two or more powers. For the first time, Japan places itself as an equal to a Western power, and it will quickly prove that this is not without reason. From 1896, the Russians were authorized to occupy the Liaodong peninsula, which Japan had been forced to abandon under European pressure. The region is particularly important for both countries: its position is very strategic, and it is economically interesting due to its agricultural and mining wealth; Russian and Japanese interests collide in Manchuria. The Japanese offer to recognize Russia’s rights to the Manchurian railways in exchange for recognition of its own interests in Korea. Refusal by the Russians, tempers are heating up. Japan issues an ultimatum in 1904, but Russia refuses to evacuate Manchuria; on February 6, diplomatic relations with the Tsar were broken off, and war was declared on the 10th. The Japanese quickly attacked Port Arthur, where the Russian fleet was stationed, it was destroyed and the city fell after a long siege. The Russian army was pushed further north , in 1905 the Japanese captured Mukden and, worse, destroyed the Russian Baltic fleet sent as reinforcements; it had to take a long detour to get there since its passage through the Suez Canal was prohibited by Great Britain. Japan was no less exhausted, more than 60,000 men had died and the war was hurting the economy. With the Treaty of Portsmouth, Russia ceded southern Sakhalin Island, the Liaodong Peninsula, control of the Southern Manchurian Railway and recognized Japan’s rights to Korea. Japan is now the leading power in Asia, but it must find compromises with the Europeans while it recovers from the war; we reaffirm the alliance with Great Britain, obtain important credit from France and sign an agreement with Russia, in exchange for the security of their interests in Asia the Westerners accept Japanese control over Korea. Thus, Japan annexed Korea in 1910, where it was already present even before the war against China. The First World War also gave Japan the opportunity to expand its interests; from 1914 it demanded the withdrawal of German troops from East Asia and occupied its counters in China and its islands in the Pacific. In 1915, he forced China to recognize his rights to territories that were under German control before the war, the right to build railways and recognition of his occupation of Manchuria. After the Russian Revolution, Japan sent troops to Siberia who marched to Irkutsk and occupied the northern half of the island of Sakhalin, but the operation came to nothing and the occupation of the island was abandoned in 1925. Japan’s status as a great power is confirmed, it sits victoriously at the Versailles Peace Conference and is promoted to fourth member of the council of the new League of Nations. At the same time, the country is experiencing an economic boom, it is taking advantage of the absence of the Allies, too busy in Europe, to increase its exports, its industry and its third sector are also exploding while the share of its agricultural sector is decreasing. The crisis of 1929 put a blow to this growth, many companies had to close their doors and prices increased, poverty increased and socialism began to affect both workers and peasants. As the crisis raged, the Shandong army invaded Manchuria in 1931 without the approval of the Tokyo government; it believed that it was accountable only to the emperor. She quickly took control of the territory where she established a puppet state, Manchukuo. The League of Nations condemned this invasion, which encouraged Japan to leave it in 1933. In Japan, discontent and attacks increased on the part of nationalist groups or radical factions of the army who wanted the end of the parliamentary regime and the establishment of a military regime. The army carries out intense propaganda against political parties and bureaucrats, the population increasingly rejects parliamentarism. But the regime held out, with difficulty, until 1937, when foreign policy finally led to the abandonment of parliamentarism: the war against China. Since 1927, civil war has raged in China between the nationalist Kuomintang regime and the Communist Party. Busy with all this, and in any case too poorly to resist, the Chinese army did not react to the invasion of Manchuria. Without officially recognizing Manchukuo, the Chinese accepted the status quo. The Japanese, well aware of their neighbor’s weakness , did not wait long before pushing their demands further. In 1935, Japanese troops burst into northern China and annexed the province of Hebei; Chinese nationalists and communists then opposed them with a common front. Finally, in 1937 the Shandong army took advantage of a skirmish to capture Beijing, which was the starting point of the war. Quickly, Tianjin and Kaglan were also captured, the troops extended following the railway lines until seizing the capital, Nanking, a few months later. At the end of 1938, all the territories east of Beijing and Canton were occupied by the Japanese; the population refused this occupation, the Kuomintang resisted it first with the support of Nazi Germany, then with that of the USSR, Great Britain and the United States. The Japanese committed terrible atrocities; the capture of Nanking was accompanied by the massacre of 40,000 to 300,000 civilians. But the conflict bogged down contrary to the predictions of the Japanese General Staff. In 1941, the United States and the British decreed a general embargo on Japan, Washington demanded a return to the pre-war situation, including the abandonment of Manchuria. Japan obviously refuses, and as we know that war is near, Tokyo decides to carry out a surprise attack to weaken the American forces. On November 26, the Japanese navy raided the Pearl Harbor base and destroyed part of the Pacific Fleet. He now has a free hand to seize European colonies in Southeast Asia without fear of American intervention; the Philippines were quickly occupied, Indochina and Burma had to be taken to cut off supplies to Chinese troops, while the Dutch East Indies harbored resources necessary for the war effort: oil and rubber. The occupied territories are pillaged and overexploited, the local populations are very hostile to the Japanese occupation. The empire is at its zenith, it measures more than 7 million km2. But the situation does not last, the military industry lacks raw materials and personnel while most young people are at the front. At the beginning of June 1942, the American fleet sank a good part of the Japanese aircraft carriers at the Battle of Midway, two months later they seized Guadalcanal from where they could deploy their air force, the Americans took the initiative. After the capitulation of Italy in September 1943, the Allies reinforced their troops in the Pacific; Japan gradually loses all its conquests. From 1944 the United States air force intensified its massive bombings on the Japanese archipelago. In July 1945, Japan no longer had the means to fight, almost the entire population was mobilized, raw materials were no longer arriving and anti-aircraft defense was non-existent. However, he did not respond to the Potsdam declaration with which the Allies demanded his surrender, notably because it led to the abdication of the emperor; he is a divinity in the eyes of his population, and Japan has always had an emperor for 1500 years, there is no question of doing without one. In any case, Japan is on the brink, unable to fight and terribly isolated; the surrender should not be long in coming, especially since we know that the USSR is preparing to invade the territories it has left on the continent. Yet…

1603, Tokugawa Ieyasu se fait nommer shôgun du Japon, après de nombreux conflits il tient enfin le pays entre ses mains. Le Japon s’est trouvé un nouveau chef, mais il n’en est pas moins épuisé, épuisé par les trop nombreuses guerres entre grands seigneurs pour le pouvoir, épuisé aussi par deux tentatives d’invasion de la Corée. C’est d’autant plus dangereux que, depuis quelques décennies maintenant, des étrangers sont bien implantés sur l’archipel : portugais, espagnols et hollandais sont bien là, et la menace coloniale n’est jamais loin. Pourtant, près de 300 ans plus tard, le Japon sera capable de rivaliser avec les puissances occidentales, de devenir lui-même une puissance coloniale et, pourquoi pas, de dominer toute l’Asie de l’Est.

Devenir membre de la chaine pour me soutenir : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQ-KEYxg3pz5KFSFb1hpgtA/join

Rejoindre le discord de la chaîne : https://discord.gg/5EtDkAKvQq

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Sources

Ouvrages principaux
• Calvet, R. L’histoire du Japon, de la Préhistoire aux enjeux contemporains. Armand Colin, 2022.
• Siary, G. Histoire du Japon, des origines à nos jours. Tallandier, 2020.

Ouvrages secondaires
• Bernard, N. La guerre du Pacifique, 1941-1945. Tallandier, 2016.
• Vié, M. Histoire du Japon, des origines à Meiji. Presses Universitaires de France, 2018.
• Whitney Hall, J. The Cambridge History of Japan, Early Modern Japan 1532-1841. Cambridge University Press, 1991.

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Musiques

Certaines musiques de la vidéo ont été réalisées par @AdrianvonZiegler :
• 歌舞伎 https://youtu.be/Hmp74VXlQgw?si=Wzgpt-Xe2j_SiafC
• Children of Darkness https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lCgpcqI7j8
• Lord of the Ashes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnFMLWvgQaI

La musique de fin a été interprété par Pete Seeger en 1963 :
• Never again the A-bomb https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxH4FWjHdMM

Les autres musiques de la vidéo proviennent de cette playlist
• Shinobi ☯ Japanese Lofi HipHop Mix https://youtu.be/mMw6UFZuL9o?si=2hBmQYVbWNLx_vhS

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Illustrations

Une bonne partie des illustrations proviennent des collections de ces musées :
• British Museum (en ligne : https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection)
• Rijksmuseum (en ligne : https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/rijksstudio)

Certaines autres viennent d’artistes indépendants :
• Mingho Tong (en ligne : https://www.artstation.com/suniii)
• Semithug (en ligne : https://www.artstation.com/semithug)

Les autres images sont issues de ces sources :
• Wikimedia Commons (en ligne : https://commons.wikimedia.org/)

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00:00 – Le dernier shôgunat
01:12 – Le Japon s’isole ?
05:27 – Trois siècles de paix
09:45 – La restauration Meiji
13:50 – Le pays se modernise
18:39 – Une puissance en Asie
22:53 – L’empire domine l’Asie