THE RUSSO-JAPANESE WAR in 1905 became a global moment of reflection on the legitimacy and structures of the imperialist world order. It was interpreted throughout the world as the first victory of an Asian nation belonging to the yellow race over a major white and Christian Western empire.1 In fact, the world historical significance of the Japanese victory over Russia was noted by a wide array of contemporary observers writing in the immediate aftermath of the war.2 This interpretation of the Japanese military victory transformed the character of reformist thought, perceptions of Western civilization, and critiques of the international order in the major centers of the non-Western world, from Egypt, Iran, and Turkey to India, Vietnam, and China.3 The celebration by Asian and African intellectuals of the Russo-Japanese War as a turning point in their critique of the Eurocentric world order was highly paradoxical, however. Japan fought the war with Russia over control of Korea and Manchuria. It achieved its military victory partly as a result of the support it received from the Western superpower of the time, Great Britain. The Japanese elite were proud of the Anglo-Japanese alliance, which symbolized the civilized status of their nation.4 Why, then, would Asian nationalists and intellectuals, who were aware that the Japanese victory over Russia was strengthening the pax Britannica in the Far East, still perceive it as a turning point in the history of decolonization from British and French imperial rule?5
We can only answer this question by analyzing how the war affected the terms of the global debates on race, civilization and progress, the three legitimizing pillars of the imperialist world order, and how it strengthened both modernist reformism and anti-Western critiques of pan-Islamism and pan-Asianism.
The immediate political and cultural responses to the Japanese victory all over the world were a reflection of the scope and synchronicity of the global intellectual sphere at that time. There was a surprising worldwide consensus on the larger historical and cultural meaning of the first modern war of the century throughout the world. While many Asian and colored intellectuals, including African-Americans in the United States, were welcoming Japan’s military achievements as a moral contribution to their struggles, European observers predicted a potential threat to their interests from the rising Japanese power.6 Asian newspapers were filled with articles on Japan, discussing either the positive implications of Japanese military victories for the “awakening” of Asia or the possible lessons other Asian societies could learn from the Japanese reforms.7 It is important to note that there had been references to the Japanese model of reform since the mid-1890s in the writings of Turkish, Egyptian, and Chinese reformists and nationalists. Furthermore, especially after Japan’s military victory against China in 1895, European newspapers and journals began to depict Japan as the singular successful case of Westernization and reform on the larger Asian continent, which overall was failing to reform itself. Even some European authors felt they had to examine Japan to rethink whether its achievements could teach European states anything.8 Mostly relying on the European press coverage of Japan, nationalist thinkers of the Middle East also developed a keen interest in Japanese successes. Middle Eastern writings often included discussions of modernity, Western civilization, and international order via references to the Japanese model.
The Russo-Japanese War represented a truly global moment as a world historical event that had a transformative impact on the intellectual and political histories of the following decade. It propelled all anticolonial nationalists to be more assertive and confident, strengthened the constitutional movements, and invalidated several key legitimacy discourses of the Eurocentric world order. First of all, the scope of the responses to the war was great proof that the circulation of news and ideas had already created a global public sphere. The reading public consumed news about the Russo-Japanese War in a multitude of languages, thanks to the availability of accurate and fast reporting from the fronts through the telegraph network and international news agencies.9 While the newspapers covered different battles of the war almost on a daily basis, the interpretations and discussions of the war were immediate among the reading public. Indian nationalist leader Jawaharlal Nehru noted in his autobiography how every morning he would impatiently check the English papers for recent news from the battles of the Russo-Japanese War and commented that he felt sympathetic and proud of the Japanese victories.10 Chinese nationalist leader Sun Yat-sen was amazed and pleased to receive congratulatory gestures and messages from Egyptians during his passage through the Suez Canal during the war. He reported how, as a Chinese nationalist, he established bonds of solidarity with ordinary Egyptians, who also thought it appropriate to congratulate a Chinese passenger on the news of a Japanese victory.11 The numerous articles and commentaries of Turkish, Arab, Persian, Indian, Vietnamese, and Chinese nationalists on the meaning of the Japanese victory popularized the shared interpretation of the war as proof of an Asian awakening and disproof of the Western claim to permanent racial and cultural superiority.
The similar interpretations of the world historical significance of the war making reference to racial and cultural identities such as “yellow race,” “white race,” “East and West” were yet more proof of the existence of a shared global intellectual sphere. Nehru was not an exception when he eagerly discussed the positive implications of the Japanese victory for Indian nationalism. Alfred Zimmern, who later became one of the founders of UNESCO, interrupted his Oxford University lectures on Greek history to speak to his students about the “most important event which has happened, or is likely to happen, in our lifetime; the victory of a non-white people over a white people.”12 One aspect of the various interpretations of the Russo-Japanese War was that, from Turkish and Indian nationalists to European intellectuals and African American leaders, there was a surprising convergence in the references to the notions of race and civilization in interpreting the political meaning of the war. Globally shared but European-originated terms such as “East and West” and “yellow race and white race” became a transnational force, utilized in legitimizing and delegitimizing structures of international politics and competing visions of world order at the turn of the twentieth century.
In chapter 2, I discussed the appropriation of the European concepts of “civilization” and “savagery” into the Ottoman and Japanese languages and how this process involved the transformation of the Islamic and Confucian concepts of civility, virtue, and perfection. Until the 1880s, most Ottoman intellectuals did not see Japan and the Ottoman world as part of the same general identity “Eastern.”13 In fact, Ottoman Muslims perceived themselves as closer to Europe than Asia. It was only after the 1880s that the Ottomans began to think of global cultures through the concept of “Şark ve Garp” (East and West). Throughout the 1890s, Ottoman references to Japan indicated that Muslim intellectuals had begun to perceive both the Ottomans and the Japanese as belonging to the category of East, defined in relation to their contrast with the civilization of the West. Ottoman intellectuals, who never perceived themselves as belonging to the yellow race, nevertheless began to identify themselves with the destiny and situation of the colored People’s in Southeast and East Asia around the turn of the century.
On the Japanese side, the concept of “tôyô” (East), originally adopted from the Chinese concept of the eastern seas, began, around the 1890s, to correspond to the concept of East and Orient in the European languages.14 Previously, the Japanese imagination of the East was limited to the Chinese cultural sphere of East Asia and thus did not include the Muslim populations of Asia or the Ottoman state. For example, even as late as 1890, when the Ottoman battleship Ertuğrul visited Japan, staying there for three months, it did not lead to any discourse of Asian solidarity or any discussion of shared Eastern identity in the Japanese press.15 When a typhoon off the coast of Japan sank the Ottoman battleship on its return journey in September 1890, the Japanese government and people showed great interest in the story of the death of five hundred Ottoman sailors. Through humanitarian aid and government initiative, sixty-nine Ottoman survivors of the Ertuğrul were returned to Istanbul by two Japanese battleships. Yet, even during the great media coverage of the disaster and Japanese aid campaign to the families of the lost Ottoman soldiers, there was no theme of shared Asian identity. On the contrary, as Michael Penn argues, the civilized image of Japan in the eyes of assumed Western observers was a major motive in the large-scale governmental and nongovernmental assistance to the victims of the sunk ship.16 It is only after the turn of the twentieth century that the scope of “East” (tôyô) was first extended from the Chinese cultural zone of East Asia to include India and then finally all of Asia. By the time of the Russo-Japanese War, the meaning of “tôyô” was shaped by the dichotomy of the Orient versus the Occident and compelled even the most pro-Western Japanese intellectuals never to doubt that Japan was an Asian nation belonging to the yellow race and Eastern civilization. The synchronization of the meanings of East and West in different Asian languages was possible because each language community was intimately connected to the Western-centered global intellectual sphere. They all knew what European authors, media, and politicians wrote and thought about them. Hence the shared engagement with the European center led to the emergence of a common Eastern identity between Ottoman Muslims and Japanese despite a minimum level of direct contact and shared cultural legacy between these two societies.17
Another reason for the global impact of the Russo-Japanese War derived from the fact that major nineteenth-century wars were taken as test cases and proofs of the validity of the ideals and moral values of the conflicting parties. The Opium War was not simply a military defeat but remembered as the collapse of a great Confucian civilization at the hands of Western modernity. Similarly, the Ottoman defeats by Russia were interpreted not only as proof of the Ottoman Empire’s status as the “sick man of Europe” but also as an indication of the decline of Islam. Within Europe, the German victory over France was seen as the defeat of the “soulless and technical” French civilization by the vitality of German national culture. More important, the successive series of European military victories in the process of worldwide colonization seemed to affirm the confident European perception of the global sphere as a hierarchy of races and civilizations. From the British show of superior military technology in suppressing the Egyptian nationalist movement at Tel al-Kabir in 1882 to the looting of the Chinese capital by a coalition of civilized nations in 1900, the high age of imperialism witnessed a series of military affirmations of Western hegemony.18 Even when non-Western intellectuals challenged the legitimacy of global Western hegemony, all knew that Western military power could not as easily be defied. Japan’s military power therefore gained great significance from this historical perspective, as it demonstrated that a non-Western nation could achieve parity in military power with (and even a superiority over) a European empire after only three decades of successful reform.
The global moment of the Russo-Japanese War influenced international history by shattering the established European discourse on racial hierarchies once and for all, thus delegitimizing the existing world order and encouraging alternative visions. For instance, when Abdullah Cevdet, the leading Ottoman Westernist and a believer in European ideas of race hierarchies, met Gustave Le Bon in 1905, he questioned Le Bon about where European thinkers had erred in their placement of the Japanese at the bottom of the racial hierarchy.19 After 1905 no discussion of racism and innate civilizational hierarchies in world politics could avoid the example of Japan, because it clearly challenged all that had been written by European social scientists and European newspapers on this issue in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. The powerful interconnection among the trinity of Eurocentric world order at the end of the nineteenth century—namely, imperialism, modernity, and Orientalism/racism—forced anticolonial nationalists to redefine the prevailing notions of the relationship among civilization, race, and modern progress to claim their rightful position as equal members of the international system. The Russo-Japanese War clearly contradicted the racial arguments and the moral universe that had justified the world order from 1882 to 1905, and thus it could be utilized to invalidate the idea of Western invincibility.20
Frequent references to the rapid rise of Japan as the first Eastern nation to attain great-power status inspired the imagination of a new world order in which Asia would be decolonized and become an equal partner to the West. Ottoman intellectual Ahmed Riza summarized this aspect of the war in the following paragraph:
How to explain the pretension of Europe, then, of wanting to civilize Asia, since, when a people of these regions endeavors to raise itself, [Europe] condemns it immediately as a “peril” of such and such color? . . . There are multiple well-merited lessons that the war permitted the Japanese to give to the “superior races”. . . . One cannot doubt the preeminence of the social and political institutions of Japan, a so-called inferior race by most of those People’s upon whom the patent of superiority is conferred. The splendid victory of the Japanese has proved the Christian world arrogant; that it is not indispensable for a people to embrace Christianity in order to acquire morality, civilization, and an aptitude for progress. . . . Likewise events of the Far East have put forth evidence of the uselessness of interventions, frequent if pernicious, of Europe reforming a people. On the contrary, the more isolated and preserved from contact with European invaders and plunderers a people is, the better is the measure of [its] evolution toward a rational renovation.21
The Russo-Japanese War became especially pertinent in discussions of the equal treatment of Asian nations in the international sphere. In the conception of international law in the early twentieth century, each country could have full legal rights in the international society if it was deemed “civilized” by the core European countries. The discourse of civilization was not only used by European newspapers and politicians to justify colonial adventures but also became a scholarly tenet in mainstream texts on international law. For example, Iran, Siam, China, and Ethiopia were identified as states not “fully civilized” and thus not qualified to earn full legal equality in international law.22 Even though the Ottoman state had technically been part of European international society since 1856, it was still treated as a non-Western and unequal member of the world nations in the European media and by European diplomats.
Because of the legal and political implications of the civilization discourse, Asian intellectuals were very sensitive about the politics surrounding the European colonial literature that had created an image of the Orient that, for them, bore no resemblance to the “real” Orient they knew or wanted to create.23 Thus they saw the European representation of the Orient as one of the greatest barriers to normal, healthy international relations based on mutual understanding and respect, because it proffered the image of a society unfit for equality with the Occidental cultures. After the Japanese victory, Asian intellectuals became more confident in their campaign against the image of a decadent inert East. Their concerns and critiques of Western viewpoints of Asia and the Orient, as well as the invalidation of Western images with reference to Japan, were embedded in the belief that correction of misperceptions about Asians could in turn correct their problems in international affairs.
Asian nationalists were also aware that the correction of Western misperceptions of the Orient alone would not be sufficient to create a just international order, as they recognized power relations as equally important. Thus some Asian nationalists maintained a parallel conviction that only military power and industrial modernization could save the weak Asian nations from the so-called mercy of the powerful Western nations. For example, several leading Ottoman nationalists maintained that the Ottoman government should give up relying on diplomatic initiatives and appeals to international morality and instead follow Japan’s path of industrial and military self-strengthening. The Japanese achievement was proof that only military victory, not just knowledge of legal rights and civilized ideas, could secure the path of equality and recognition in the chaotic and insecure international environment of the early twentieth century.24 This ideal compelled many Asian nationalists to search for power alliances through pan-Islamic and pan-Asianist visions to counterbalance the perceived cooperation and unity of European powers in their policies toward Asian and African societies.
The inspiration of the Japanese model of modernization, especially its achievements in constitutional government, inspired a wave of constitutional revolutions in Asia from 1906 to 1911, exemplified by the Iranian (1906), Ottoman (1908), and Chinese (1911) revolutions. Constitutionalists in all these societies utilized models and metaphors of Japanese modernity, that country’s constitution, and its military victories in mobilizing supporters and weakening authoritarian regimes.25 The very fact, however, that the Japanese model inspired not only anti-Western critiques of world order but also constitutional movements that were equally modernist and Western demonstrates the ambivalence of Asian admiration for Japan. On the one hand, recognition of Japan’s great-power status inspired nationalist movements in India, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Egypt tremendously.26 Nationalists in those nations adopted a vision of Asian or Eastern solidarity, potentially under Japanese leadership, as a possible path to overcoming Western hegemony. On the other hand, Japan inspired a radicalization of modernizing reforms, including a desire to establish a constitutional government.
The influential French journal Revue du Monde Musulman, published after 1906 under the auspices of the French Scientific Mission in Morocco, carried articles on the revival of Islam and pan-Islamic emotions in the post-Russo-Japanese War period.27 Pan-Islamism, nationalist thought, and the revival of the East were major themes of this journal, which saw the dynamism and transnational networks in Asia as a confirmation of the triumph of modernity in those Westernizing world regions.28 The energy, leadership, and dynamism of Western-educated modern Muslims, who were both nationalistic and anti-Western, became very apparent throughout the Muslim world. The presence of these groups challenged Orientalist assumptions and the civilizing mission ideology and thus prompted a twofold reaction from European observers. Progressive Europeans revised their old assumptions.29 A more racist camp, however, saw pan-Islamism as a new peril for the West against which the West should unite. One example of this reiterated racist ideology, expressed in a rather blunt and pseudoscientific fashion, was a book on the inferior racial psychology and irrational faith of the Muslims by Andre Servier.30
Interestingly, together with nationalism, three major non-Western world religions, namely, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism, seemed to experience a reawakening and revival in the aftermath of the Russo-Japanese War. The revival of a transnational Islamic identity thus was not an exceptional phenomenon in Asia, as Buddhism and Hinduism also underwent revival. There were signs of pan-Buddhism and a revival of Hindu universalism. Anagarika Dharmapala’s reputation represented the appeal of international Buddhism, and Swami Vivekananda became the symbol of a new Western interest in Asian spirituality and Hinduism. Both Vivekananda and Dharmapala became figures of international reputation after attending the Chicago World Religions Conference in 1893. They encouraged nationalist movements and decolonization and symbolized an assertive and dynamic notion of Asian civilization with regard to the West.
Given the way the Japanese victory over Russia energized and strengthened both nationalist movements and alternative visions of world order, it is evident that the Russo-Japanese War was an important turning point in the history of Asia’s decolonization before WWI. In its effect on international public opinion, discourses on Japan’s modern achievements, and the subsequent constitutional revolutions in Iran, Turkey, and China, it came to be defined as the moment of the “awakening of Asia.” As a matter of fact, slogans about the “rise” or “awakening” of the East associated with the Russo-Japanese War predate the image of the “decline” or “retreat” of the West, which only gained prominence after World War I.31 The “awakening of the East” during the 1905 to 1914 period coincided, however, with the ultimate victory of Westernization and the idea of universal modernity. The triumph of Western modernity as a model in Asia, paradoxically, is most evident in Asian observations on the Japanese model of modernization.
AN ALTERNATIVE TO THE WEST? ASIAN OBSERVATIONS ON THE JAPANESE MODEL
The rise of Japan as the only nonwhite power spurred an increase in Asian interest in the Japanese experience of modernization. Gradually, Japan began to serve as a metaphor for Asian modernity for the Ottomans, Egyptians, and Indians. Many reformers wanted to know what would be necessary for their own societies to copy in order to match Japan’s achievements in the three decades of reform after the Meiji Restoration. This question led to a search to understand the reasons, or “secrets,” behind the rise of Japan and to reflections not only about the Meiji reform experience but also the character of the Japanese people. The Japanese model became a pedagogic tool for almost all the conflicting ideological currents in the Ottoman state, Egypt, and India, ranging from Social Darwinist secularists to Muslim and Hindu modernists and from supporters of a strong monarchy to constitutionalists. Given that the educated Japanese elite had been emulating Western civilization since the 1870s, the new Asian interest in the Japanese model of modernization had to reflect on Japan’s Westernization as well.
The “secrets” of Japanese progress were commonly attributed to Meiji state policies regarding compulsory public education, participatory politics, and the constitution, as well as policies of industrial development. After describing these secrets, one Egyptian paper expressed the hope that Japan would become Asia’s teacher in terms not only of the tangible skills of successful military technology, commerce, and agriculture but also of the importance of education and patriotism.32 Ottoman, Egyptian, and Indian writings on the reasons for Japanese progress reflected a dilemma of interpretation on the issue of attributing Japanese success either to exceptional Japanese traits or to universally applicable policies that the Meiji leadership had executed. If the Japanese success was solely due to Japan’s peculiar traditions and national culture, as several well-known European and Japanese interpretations emphasized, Japan could only be the exception that proved the rule of Asia’s permanent backwardness. For example, Nitobe Inazo argued that the ethical training of Japanese individuals, inherited from the martial tradition of the samurai, Bushido, explained Japan’s extraordinary success in modernity. For Nitobe, understanding the principle and single driving force behind the success of Japan’s transformation after the Meiji Restoration required more than a focus only on education or technological and industrial advances. “It is the spirit that quickeneth, without which the best of implements profiteth but little.”33 This meant that other Asian nations were still incapable of reaching the same high levels of progress and civilization. Avoiding such a pessimistic conclusion, and in hopes of affirming an awakening of Asia through the symbol of the Russo-Japanese War, Asian commentators usually concluded, however, that Japan’s path to progress could be repeated by other Eastern nations, even if there remained certain peculiar aspects of the culture that explained Japan’s achievements.
An example of the tension between the particularistic and the universalistic interpretations of Japan’s achievement arose in the discussion stemming from a conference on the renaissance of Japan organized by the Committee of Union and Progress, the party of the 1908 Constitutional Revolution, in Istanbul in 1911. The audience included high-ranking and influential figures such as the Ottoman prince Abdülmecid Efendi and the minister of foreign affairs, both of whom would naturally have been interested in hearing secrets of the Japanese success that could serve as policy-oriented lessons for the Ottomans. The main speaker was the Austria-Hungarian adviser to the Ottoman Ministry of Justice, Comte Leon Ostrorog (1867–1932). Ostrorog explained the Japanese success not as a miracle but as a consequence of the fundamental inclinations of the Japanese people, the most important of which was the recognition of the value of adopting the ways of a superior foreign civilization. In addition to underscoring Japan’s historically unique ability to assimilate foreign cultures, Ostrorog’s explanations touched on major ideas accounting for the exceptionality of Japan’s modern successes, among them, Bushido ethics. Ostrorog concluded that the Japanese had achieved constitutional reform, instituted military conscription and compulsory education, founded universities, and reorganized the economy as a result of their exceptional national character.34
For Ottoman policy makers, the emphasis on Japan’s uniqueness could be translated into an argument of fatalism and predetermination. If Japanese culture explained the country’s progress, Ottoman-Muslim culture must have prevented progress and reform efforts. This kind of culture praise and culture blame implied that it would not be possible for the Ottomans to repeat the great achievements of their Oriental brothers in Japan.35 Aware of these implications, and contrary to Count Ostrorog’s emphasis on the role of peculiar Japanese characteristics, the conference organizer Salih Gourdji thus avoided mentioning cultural factors in his introductory speech. Instead, he made comparisons between Japan and the Ottoman state, concluding that had the absolutist regime of Abdulhamid II not stopped constitutional progress, the Ottomans could have reached similar achievements. The Ottomans could succeed like the Japanese if they took lessons from the political participation and constitutional leadership of Japan.36
Despite the immense proliferation of writings on the Japanese model, however, Asian discourses on the Japanese achievements in modernization did not offer any alternative to the view of modernity symbolized by Western societies. Modernity was still seen as essentially one and universal, and Meiji Japan’s achievement was to prove that this process was not unique to the West but possible in an Asian society. What Asian admirers learned from Japan was in fact no more than a Japanese interpretation of Western modernity and a confirmation of the earlier Asian interest in universalizing modernity. The experience of Asian students in Japan is a good example of this trend. For instance, for the more than ten thousand Chinese students who studied in Japan until WWI, the experience was regarded primarily as a cheaper and more effective way to learn the Western-originated but universal modernity from a nearby country that had already adopted it successfully. While Chinese intellectuals were much influenced by Japanese interpretations of Western modernity through this student network, the fact remains that their ultimate goal was to learn what Japan had previously learned from the West rather than any Japanese alternative to the West. Among Indian, Vietnamese, Turkish, and Arab students, those who chose to come to Japan must have done so more out of ideological inclinations than financial and geographical convenience. Most became admirers of Japan’s synthesis of Western modernity with its own cultural traditions. But they would also see Japanese modernity not as an alternative to the West but rather as its most successful application.37 Students who returned to their home countries from Japan therefore did not find themselves in contradiction to those who came back from European countries, because Europe remained the ultimate model of modernity and reform.38
Nevertheless, the Japanese model of modernization was valuable for Asian observers for three main reasons. First, it presented a shortcut to the Western level of civilization. According to the predominant views of modern world history, advanced Western nations had achieved their civilizational level over the course of several centuries. Non-Western intellectuals seeking to raise their own societies to an equal standard had to find some way to replicate the long years of Western development in a shorter period of time, especially given the widening power gap between the Western imperial powers and Asia. The success of the Japanese reforms since the Meiji Restoration was thus important as a demonstration that progress could be achieved over just a few decades by cultivating patriotism, dedication to the nation, and social morality. If thirty years of rapid and selective state-led reforms had brought Japan to a level equal with the West, many nationalists in Asia could also be optimistic about the future power and wealth of their own nations. The will to change, the energy to reform, and the availability of earlier models eliminated all the geographical, cultural, and historical constraints and conditions that European thinkers had identified as the causes of the rise of civilization in the West.39
Second, the Japanese example showed that non-Western cultural and religious traditions did not necessarily have to be regarded as obstacles to modern progress. By the turn of the century, the nature of the relationship between traditional culture and universal modernity had already become an important question for the nationalist agenda. In the literature on Japan’s modernization, the prevailing consensus held that Japan had successfully and intelligently selected the useful and essential aspects of Western civilization for adoption, without the need to appropriate “superficial and harmful” Western habits and deny its cultural heritage. In truth, the heritage that was preserved was more an invented image of traditional Japan than a reflection of the actual continuity of pre-Meiji Japanese culture.40 This concept of a “Japanese selectivity,” however, which could effectively synthesize Western and Eastern knowledge, was very significant from the perspective of Asian nationalism, which had been preoccupied with the question of the East-West encounter and civilizational harmony since the 1880s.41 For example, the “good wife, wise mother” ideology that Japan had adopted from European culture was regarded as a successful preservation of the Japanese tradition in a modernizing context, since women could actively serve the self-strengthening of the nation through Westernizing reforms without losing their traditional cultural role.42 Throughout the Middle East, imagery focusing on the creation of this progressive role for Japanese women in social life in harmony with the preservation of their traditional duties became a constant reference point among nationalists.43 For intellectuals thinking within the paradigms of a synthesis between East and West, then, Japan presented a far better model than Germany or France, since it offered proof that native cultural traditions could indeed be compatible with modern civilization. For instance, the most prominent theorist of Turkish national identity, Ziya Gökalp, often referred to the Japanese historical experience in relation to his arguments that modern Turkey need not be afraid of losing its Muslim religion and national culture in the process of appropriating universal modernity.44
Third, the rise of Japan engendered optimism that it was not too late for Ottoman, Egyptian, and Indian reformers to bring their own societies to modernity and international equality. At the time of Japan’s rise, Egypt and India were under colonial rule, while the Ottoman state, though politically independent, was still subject to unequal treaties and Western intervention in domestic affairs and had been dubbed the “sick man of Europe.” A widespread mood of pessimism over the failure of the Ottoman reforms was combined with the newly popularized Darwinist ideologies of racial and civilizational hierarchies, leading to the conviction that not only the Ottoman failures but the overall backwardness of Asian societies could be attributed to the inherent incapability of Easterners, as opposed to Westerners, to civilize themselves.45 In that context, Japan’s example of catching up with Western civilization in just three decades served as an inspiration to Ottoman reformers to rejuvenate radical reformism with renewed optimism.46 Similarly, in colonized societies such as Egypt, Indonesia, and India, an emphasis on the racial and cultural similarity they shared with the Japanese under the banner of Eastern identity made it possible for the nationalist movements in those societies to find new legitimacy in their struggle against colonialism. After all, if “the Japanese could succeed, the Javanese could do it, too,” and thus they would not need the civilizing mission of the Dutch colonial rule.47
DEFINING AN ANTI-WESTERN INTERNATIONALISM: PAN-ISLAMIC AND PAN-ASIAN VISIONS OF SOLIDARITY
In terms of the history of pan-Islamic and pan-Asian visions of world order in the aftermath of the Russo-Japanese War, two aspects were very visible. First was the further internationalization of the imagination of non-Western solidarity and world order, as evidenced in the attempt to establish links between Muslim West Asia and non-Muslim Japan. Second, there were new realist formulations of pan-Islamic and pan-Asianist solidarity, though both the Japanese and Ottoman governments avoided identifying with alternative visions of world order that could jeopardize their cooperation with the Western powers.
Pan-Asianism and pan-Islamism became the main internationalist visions of world order for many nationalists in Asia in the aftermath of the Russo-Japanese War. As these ideas circulated in the new global journalism, disseminated by the many travelers, adventurers, and activists, Tokyo became a center in the network of pan-Asianist and pan-Islamic thought. When the Revue du Monde Musulman carried an article about the impact of the Russo-Japanese War on the Muslim world in 1906, it predicted that the number of Muslim students going to Japan would increase.48 Before any students arrived in Tokyo, however, the leading pan-Islamist activist and intellectual of this period, Abdurreşid İbrahim, visited Tokyo, hosted by Japan’s pan-Asianist groups for several months. İbrahim was not the only Muslim who visited Japan to learn the secrets of its progress and establish solidarity. Yet his contacts with Japanese pan-Asianists became the most influential and long-lasting relationship of a Muslim figure with this intellectual and political movement.49
The stories of the meetings of the representatives of the pan-Islamic and pan-Asianist movements in Tokyo and their attempts to create global cooperation demonstrate the internationalist aspects and limitations of both these movements. Abdurreşid İbrahim and several prominent Japanese Asianists, including Toyama Mitsuru, Inukai Tsuyoshi, and Uchida Ryohei, formed Ajia Gi Kai (Association for the Defense of Asia) in 1909 to institutionalize their contacts and hopes for future cooperation. The new Asianist organization had ties with Konoe Atsumaro’s Tôa Dobunkai (East Asian Common Culture Society) as well as Kokuryukai and Genyosha, two major ultranationalist organizations advocating a more assertive Asia policy in Japan. There were several other pan-Asianist organizations in Tokyo in the first decade of the twentieth century because of the large number of students, political activists, exiles, and merchants from China, India, the Philippines, Vietnam, and other Asian countries. Differing from the earlier organizations, Ajia Gi Kai specifically focused on improving the ties between the Muslim world and the Japanese Empire. Its objectives included the establishment of branches in China (meant for Chinese Muslims), India, Persia, Afghanistan, and Turkey to achieve the goal of “Asia for Asians.” Ajia Gi Kai succeeded in registering nearly forty members from different parts of the Muslim world in addition to more than one hundred Japanese members.50
The intellectual and political charisma of Abdurreşid İbrahim, as well as his pan-Islamic networks in Russia, Ottoman Turkey, and Egypt, led to significant coverage in the Muslim press of Ajia Gi Kai’s establishment in Japan.51 Born in Russia and educated in Kazan, Mecca, Medina, and Istanbul, İbrahim was involved in Islamic reformism and had a reputation for activism as a journalist and pan-Islamic modernist thinker. During the troubled years of the first Russian Revolution and its aftermath, İbrahim was the leading figure in the national movement among Muslims of the Russian Empire. When the political activities of all non-Russian minorities in the Russian Empire were curtailed during the Third Duma (1907–1912), Abdurreşid İbrahim had to leave Russia. He set out on a long journey that covered much of Asia, from Central Asia, to Mongolia, China, Korea, and Japan, and then back to Istanbul by way of China, Singapore/the Malay Islands, India, and Mecca. He was one of the most traveled Muslim activists in modern times, visiting more Muslim lands than many other prominent pan-Islamic figures, such as Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani. Wherever Abdurreşid İbrahim visited, he was always focused on the questions of the progress and development of Muslims and other Asians, as well as their despair under colonial rule and the necessity for their unity.52 He stayed in Japan for seven months, and his writings and speeches advocating Japanese-Muslim collaboration shaped both the initial Japanese Asianist perception of the Muslim world and Muslim perceptions of Japan.
It is important to note the most notable Muslim publication on Japan, the book Shams al-Mushriqa (The rising sun),53 written just before the Russo-Japanese War by Mustafa Kamil (1874–1908), a nationalist leader who was also known for his pan-Islamic visions of world order. Kamil believed in the necessity of international solidarity between Egyptians and the rest of the Muslim world as well as non-Muslim Asia in the struggle against the hegemony of the British Empire. As the British Empire was truly a global force, the opposition to it had to have a global vision as well. Mustafa Kamil asked for Ottoman support for the cause of Egyptian independence from British rule through a vision of pan-Islamic solidarity. In his article “Europe and Islam,” published in the French daily Le Figaro in 1901, Kamil predicted that, as European aggression against the Muslim world continued, Muslims would rise to protect their faith and the Ottoman state.54 For him, modern Europe’s hidden Crusade against Islam would impel Muslims to unite around the leadership of the Ottoman caliph. In his search for international allies that would aid the Egyptian and Muslim cause against British colonialism, Mustafa Kamil also advocated Muslim cooperation in a larger Asian solidarity under the potential leadership of Japan.
Just a year before İbrahim’s visit to Japan in 1908, his fellow Muslim modernist from Russia, İsmail Bey Gaspirali (1851–1914), tried to establish the first major pan-Islamic congress in Cairo. Gaspirah’s project was partly inspired by his observations of the methods of the pan-Slavic movement and his experience with the Muslim Congresses of Russia in 1905 and 1906.55 Gaspirah’s appeal was for a cultural and social renewal and the search for a solution of the common issues of Muslims in the field of education, economy, and social solidarity. He was careful to add that such a congress likely would not arouse the suspicion of the great powers, because its primary concern would not be international politics. For example, in his petition to the Ottoman caliph, Gaspirali assured him that the congress would not cause any negative image of a reactionary Islamic alliance in European public opinion.56 In his speech in front of hundreds of leading Egyptian intellectuals, Gaspirali called for a reform and the awakening of the Muslim world, blaming Muslims themselves for their crisis of military weakness, colonial despair, and economic backwardness. Rashid Rida, the influential salafi modernist thinker, made comments agreeing with Gaspirali on the importance of Muslim commercial revival. Despite the enthusiasm behind the first meeting of the Cairo pan-Islamic congress, however, the planning for future conferences became the victim of intergroup rivalries among Egyptian intellectuals. The most salient aspect of the first pan-Islamic congress was the unsupportive and cautious approach of the Ottoman government of Abdulhamid II, who was otherwise known in the Western media for his informal pan-Islamic policies.
Abdurreşid İbrahim’s visit to Tokyo and the establishment of Ajia Gi Kai represented a search for new power centers by a leading pan-Islamic activist, and it was followed by a boom of Asianist publications in both Tokyo and Istanbul. Ajia Gi Kai published a journal in Japanese called DaiTô (The great East) that included many articles on Islam and the Muslim world.57 Muhammad Barakatullah, an Indian revolutionary and a pan-Islamist himself, started the publication of Islamic Fraternity in the English language, solidifying Tokyo’s position as a center for pan-Islamist and Asianist journals.58 Muslims were not alone in their contacts with Japanese pan-Asianists, who established contacts and networks among various nationalist groups from the Philippines, Vietnam, and China to India.59 For a while, Tokyo became an attractive destination for students, revolutionaries, intellectuals, and adventurers, especially from East Asia.
Barakatullah’s collaborator, Hasan Hatano Uho, a pan-Asianist convert to Islam, published other Islamic journals contributing to the positive image of Japan in the Muslim world.60 Hatano’s book on Asian solidarity was later translated into Ottoman Turkish by Abdurreşid İbrahim under the title Asya Tehlikede (Asia in danger) and published in Istanbul by a pan-Islamist publication house, Sebilürreşad.61 Meanwhile, in Istanbul, İbrahim’s own memoirs about his travels in Asia were published, and his highly didactic and political Asianist perspective proved a great influence on the Muslim perception of Japan.62 A Japanese pan-Asianist and Kokuryukai member named Yamaoka Kôtaro accompanied Abdurreşid İbrahim on his return to the Muslim Middle East. He converted to Islam, visited Mecca, and gave lectures in Ottoman cities.63 The activities of this small group gradually shaped the visions of pan-Asianists and pan-Islamists to encompass a notion of international solidarity that went beyond the zones of the Islamic world or the Chinese cultural sphere.
This Muslim-Japanese cooperation needed intellectual justification on both sides as to their shared ideas and visions. In Japan, Muslims of West Asia were not usually considered part of the yellow race. In fact, the memoirs of Yamada Torajirô (1866–1957), a young Japanese who stayed in Istanbul for around two decades after 1892, show that, as a member of the first-generation Western-educated Meiji elite, he did not initially have strong ideas about a shared Asian identity, despite his romantic interest in Ottoman culture. He developed the notion of an Asian identity encompassing both the Ottoman world and Japan only during the first decade of the twentieth century.64 It was the modernist and constitutionalist revolution in the Ottoman state in 1908 that convinced Yamada Torajirô to emphasize the shared characteristics of Japan and Ottoman society, in relation to the larger Asian awakening of the post-Russo-Japanese War period.65 The Japanese members of Ajia Gi Kai embraced an Asian identity including the Islamic world, beyond the usual references to Chinese cultural heritage or Buddhist religious heritage.
Similarly, pan-Islamism was initially a movement concerned with Ottoman connections with Muslim populations all over the world and Muslim solidarity against European colonial rule. Cooperation with Shinto/Buddhist Japanese and other non-Muslim East Asians by an influential pan-Islamist figure necessitated an explanation for the basis of this transreligious and transnational vision of solidarity.
A primordial conception of civilizational legacy cannot explain the emergence of a shared identity exhibited by the members of Ajia Gi Kai. At the turn of the century, pan-Asianism as defined by Okakura Tenshin and Rabindranath Tagore presented a vision of international solidarity grounded in the shared Buddhist legacy of India, China, and Japan.66 Interestingly, one of the earlier pan-Asianist organizations established by Chinese, Indian. and Japanese figures around 1907 had classified Muslims as one of the outsider occupiers of Asia, whose boundaries were defined by Buddhist legacy and the yellow race.67 Yet the trend was toward a more global consciousness of belonging to an Eastern and Asian unity that superseded religious and cultural legacies. Rebecca Karl has described the interest of Chinese intellectuals in the experiences of other non-Western societies, viewing them as global sharers of the traumatic experience of Western hegemony.68 Similarly, Muslim intellectuals extended their vision of solidarity beyond the scope of the Islamic world, showing interest in the fates of Japan and China. For instance, Abdurreşid İbrahim wrote about his dialogue with the eighth Jebtsundamba in Mongolia, his sympathies with the Tibetan and Mongolian People’s, and his hopes for the revival of China. Thus the ideal of solidarity against Western expansion gradually transcended religious identities, as pan-Islamists began to see the Chinese and Japanese as potential allies, while Japanese Asianists imagined the Muslim world as an essential component of Asian awakening and solidarity.
This broad identification with the non-Western world did not mean the elimination of religious, national, or communal identities, for Asian identity was not incompatible with any of these other identities. The accidental fact that Christian Ethiopia, the Muslim Ottoman state, and Buddhist-Shinto Japan were seen as three nominally independent nations resisting the West helped internationalists go beyond their religious affiliations. The basis of Eastern-Asian identity was defined not by religion but by the historical experience with Western expansionism that each Asian society had shared since the mid-nineteenth century. As Abd al-Rahman Shahbandar, an Ottoman intellectual and later a Syrian nationalist, said: “We do not want to unite with Easterners just for aggression against the Europeans but rather to save humanity.”69
The perception of a Western danger was fundamental to the anti-Western internationalism of Ajia Gi Kai. Pan-Islamist Abdurreşid İbrahim, like many others in his generation, sometimes expressed despair or fear that Asian societies and cultures would not survive because of global Westernization. Like his Muslim modernist contemporaries, İbrahim was very harsh in his condemnation of the existing Muslim cultures for their late embrace of the process of modernity. For him, the tide of modernization and Western expansion was unstoppable. If only Western civilization had used its power according to moral principles, it could have benefited all humanity. The West, however, had abandoned morality in the pursuit of power politics, and non-Westerners had to act immediately and in solidarity to avoid extinction while working in the long term for self-strengthening via modernization. This perception became the basis of a mission to defend the autonomy and dignity of Asian societies and to establish equality between Asia and Western civilization both politically and intellectually. The founding documents of Ajia Gi Kai demonstrate this missionary aspect of the pan-Asian internationalism:
Earlier, Asia was incomparably the richest continent in terms of nature, population, and agricultural products, and thus in history they gave birth to various civilizations and sages. But recently, because of internal discord, jealousy, and hate, Asia has been exposed to Western expansion and become weak. If this situation is not solved, the future of Asia will be grim and darker. Because we Asians have common customs and manners, common spirit and character, we must make a hard struggle ourselves for the betterment and development of Asia. For this purpose, we established Ajia Gi Kai, and we ask for the cooperation of our fellows in all Asia.70
In terms of their vision of modernity and international affairs, pan-Asianists and pan-Islamists of the post-Russo Japanese War period continued the already existing critiques of the imperialist West with reference to the ideals of a universal civilization. For Abdurreşid İbrahim, the concept of “civilization” functioned as the key term in his critique of Western hegemony and in his vision of a new order in Asia. By presenting numerous examples illustrating how colonialism had violated all the Enlightenment ideals espoused by the West, he underlined the hypocrisy and barbarity behind the idea of the white man’s mission to bring civilization to Asia. İbrahim’s critiques referred to the ideals of human dignity, racial equality, and national autonomy as the values of a real, humane civilization. To illustrate his critique of the “civilizing mission,” he narrates a conversation with a French traveler who commented to İbrahim on how Russian behavior toward non-Russians was uncivilized and unjust. İbrahim responded to this comment by saying, “When there is might, there is no question of rights and truth. You French people treat Algerians like animals, insult their religion, and violate their human rights. If ‘civilized’ nations like France are guilty of such a degree of injustice, oppression, and lack of clear consciousness, what can we expect from the Russians?”71 In this discursive strategy, there was still a commitment to the idea of the universal progress of world civilization. There was also a hope of addressing the European public opinion in order to generate pressure to end colonialism. For example, Muhammad Barakatullah, who published Islamic Fraternity in Tokyo, hoped to convince an imagined European reader when he wrote the following about the Dutch colonial rule in Java: “We do not desire to make political capital out of the unfortunate situation and hold the Dutch nation to the contempt of the civilized world. Our object in giving publicity to this account [of the barbarity of Dutch rulers in Indonesia] is simply to appeal to the conscience of the Dutch people that they may realize the enormity of the evil perpetrated by their representatives in the East Indies under the inhuman and barbarous system, or want of system, called government which they have sanctioned to exist in their possessions in the Indian Archipelago.”72
Abdurreşid İbrahim’s admiration for Japan was sometimes accompanied by almost Darwinist comments about the laziness and political weakness of other Asian societies, including Muslim nations. Occasionally he uses the example of Japan’s achievements to condemn the leaders and even the mass culture of the Muslim world for not resisting European colonialism. Yet İbrahim also hoped that once Asian societies reached a level of civilization comparable to Japan’s, they could demonstrate the real standards of civilization by a moral approach to international affairs. The new Asian or Eastern standards for a better human civilization implied the possibility of merging the best aspects of both East and West as a privilege of Asians. On the issue of Asian contributions to world civilization, affinity and agreement among Muslims and Japanese were more in formulation than in detail, because what each considered genuine Asian values and Eastern spirituality relied on different cultural traditions. In the most general framework, they could agree on several ambiguously defined and sometimes self-Orientalizing values such as the importance of family, a religious outlook on life, cleanliness, mercy for the weak, respect for elders, ethical behavior in international affairs, tolerance for people from all races and religions, cultural and religious diversity, and spiritualism.
JAPANESE PAN-ASIANISM AFTER THE RUSSO-JAPANESE WAR
The early Asian Monroe Doctrine of Konoe Atsumaro was of a defensive nature, reflecting Japanese concerns about increased imperialist activity on a global scale and interventions in China, without making any grand claim to Japanese leadership in liberating Asia from colonialism. The Japanese victory over Russia in 1905, however, allowed the defensive concerns that motivated Konoe Atsumaro’s Asian Monroe Doctrine to evolve into a confident assertion of Japan’s regional hegemony and its overarching mission in the world. As Japan came to be seen as the pioneer of Asian awakening and the model illustrating the compatibility of Asian culture with universal modernity, a new vision of Japan’s national mission emerged accordingly.73
Although the Asian Monroe Doctrine claimed to serve Japanese national interests and appeared at a time when the idea of Japan’s mission of leadership in Asia was beginning to penetrate public consciousness, it was still far from being a part of Japan’s official foreign policy. Japanese policies toward Asia remained in harmony with the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, in spite of the Japanese elite’s support for Asianist ideals or their sense of Asian identity. In some cases, differing visions of the role of Asianism in foreign policy led to disagreements among high-level bureaucrats. One well-known conversation between Itô Hirobumi and Gotô Shinpei illustrates this division within the elite.
In September 1907, the president of the South Manchuria Railway Company, Gotô Shinpei (1857–1929), described his vision of Japan’s world policy to Itô Hirobumi, then serving as resident general in Korea. At the beginning of this policy report, Gotô expressed his belief that helping Chinese leaders to create Tôyôjin no Tôyô (Asia for Asians) represented the true aim of “Great Asianism” (Dai Ajia Shugi) and the best means of establishing a real peace in East Asia (Tôyô). On hearing this, Itô interrupted Gotô and asked him to stop and explain what he meant by the term “Great Asianism.” He cautioned Gotô against carelessness in expressing such ideas, pointing out that no benefit could come to Japan from the idea of Great Asianism. Itô also warned that such references to Asianism would cause a misunderstanding in the eyes of Westerners, leading them to associate Japanese power and policies with their prejudiced concept of the “yellow peril.”74
From this conversation, which took place in the context of defining a long-term policy toward Russia, it is clear that some top-level Japanese officials in the period following the Russo-Japanese War supported an Asianist orientation in foreign policy for the national interest of Japan. They shared a belief in the nation’s cultural affinity with China and a feeling of pride that Japan alone had achieved a successful civilizational synthesis of East and West. They also perceived world events as constituting a racial conflict. Influential political figures such as Konoe Atsumaro, Inukai Tsuyoshi, Gotô Shinpei, Ôkuma Shigenobu, and Yamagata Aritomo all expressed Asianist ideals during their political careers.75 In fact, Asian nationalists visiting Japan met with some of these leading Japanese statesmen.76 On the whole, however, Japanese leaders cautioned that any kind of overt Asianist emphasis would threaten Japan’s relationship with the Western powers and might provoke anti-Japanese views.77 They made a deliberate effort to avoid appearing friendly to Japan’s Asian nationalist admirers. Rather, they demonstrated Japan’s pro-Western diplomacy by complying in 1909 with a request from the French embassy to expel a group of Vietnamese students who had come to Japan to study the secrets of Japanese progress.78 Similarly, it is highly instructive that in 1910 Prime Minister Ôkuma Shigenobu wrote a preface to a translation of Lord Cromer’s Modern Egypt emphasizing that the British colonial experience in Egypt could serve as a model for Japan’s management of Korea, at the same time that Egyptian nationalists were looking to Japan for inspiration in their national awakening.79
In Japanese intellectual life, however, Japan’s Asian identity was firmly established. There were two major political approaches to Asian identity. One group thought that Japan had become a world power despite its Asian legacy and because of its unique Japanese spirit. For them, then, Japan was a successful exception to the general rule of Asia’s inherent backwardness.80 In contrast, another group attributed the roots of Japan’s modern achievements to its Asian cultural heritage, interpreting the rise of Japan as the harbinger of a larger Asian awakening.81 Between these two perspectives, the idea of a dual Japanese mission was gradually born. One was a mission toward the West as the representative of the East for the purpose of harmonizing the best of both civilizations, and the other was aimed at Asia, with the goal of raising that continent’s level of civilization. Incorporating these two missions, a popular formulation making reference to the “harmony between East and West” (Tôzai Bunmei no Chôwa) became both an explanation for the rise of Japan and its new national mission.82 Two competing missions embedded in the ideal of the synthesis of East and West gave it two distinct political faces, however. On the one hand, it could be interpreted to mean that only Japan out of all Asian nations could achieve this synthesis, thus endorsing a civilizing mission toward Japan’s colonies in Asia. On the other hand, using a similar idea of East-West synthesis in a different fashion, Asianist thinkers began proposing a global alternative to Western civilization, advocating an end to the Western colonial order. As no concrete theorizing had been carried out to explain this duality, the idea of a civilizational synthesis of East and West remained one of the most popular but least clarified slogans of cultural nationalism in Japan.
The Russo-Japanese War was a turning point in the history of both modernist ideologies and anti-Western critiques. From the Russo-Japanese War until WWI, the contradictions in the legitimacy structures of the international order, namely, the civilizing mission ideology, became more obvious. Globally, the debates on the concept of racial hierarchies and the ideas of Eastern and Western civilizations became more intensified and politicized. Three aspects of these debates are especially important for the historical trajectory of anti-Western critiques and alternative visions of world order. First, the Russo-Japanese War sealed the existing Eurocentric world order’s loss of legitimacy. Anticolonial nationalists and intellectuals successfully utilized the Japanese victory to counter the earlier discourse of white race supremacy and the backwardness of Oriental cultures. Second, pan-Islamic and pan-Asianist visions became part of the realpolitik discourse of world politics. Many nationalist movements all over Asia embraced the anti-Western internationalism of pan-Asian and pan-Islamic thought as a potential form of empowerment in their demands for autonomy and equality in the international system. Third, the Russo-Japanese War and the subsequent series of constitutional revolutions in Asia (Iran in 1906, Turkey in 1908, and China in 1911) established a consciousness of the era as the “awakening of the East,” preceding the era of WWI described as the “decline of the West.” Gradually, the meanings of “Asia” and “East” in relation to the West were redefined, in a reverse Orientalist strategy, to match the political realities of the period. The global moment of the Russo-Japanese War became not only a turning point in the history decolonization of Asia, but also the precondition for the interpretation of WWI as the “decline of the West.” In the long trajectory from the 1880s to the 1930s, recognizing the moment of 1905 can help us to rethink the subjectivity of the non-Western world in the transformation of imperial world order in the first two decades of the twentieth century.