china and japan preface

If the relationship between China and the United States, the world’s two largest economies, is the most important relationship in the world, then arguably the second most important
relationship is that between China, which is about to become the world’s largest economy, and its neighbor,Japan, the third largest economy. China’s biggest trading partner is the
United States, and its second biggest trading partner is Japan. Japan’s largest
trading partner is China.
The relationship between China and Japan is tense, dangerous, deep, and
complicated. Ships and planes from the two countries confront each other
regularly over the Senkaku / Diaoyu Islands, which Japan administers but
China claims as its territory, and the risk of dangerous incidents is high.
After
incidents that occurred in 2010 and 2012, fewer than 10 percent
of the
Chinese polled expressed positive feelings toward
Japan and fewer than
10 percent
of the Japanese
expressed positive feelings toward
China. In
China, emotions about Japan run high enough that officials can easily
mobilize the Chinese public to join anti-Japanese
demonstrations and
protests, as witnessed in recent years when protesters, roused by anti-Japanese
sentiment in the media, have thrown rocks at the Japanese
ambassador’s
residence and at Japanese
stores in China. Fewer Japanese
tourists travel to
China now than some years ago, and Japanese
citizens living and working
in China have sometimes tried to disguise their nationality.
If the Sino-Japanese
relationship is mishandled, it could lead to vast military
spending by both nations, frustrate cooperation on bilateral, regional,
and global issues, and even descend into conflict. If handled well, the two
countries could cooperate in preserving the international order and supporting
regional organizations
that provide a framework for collaboration
in trade, construction, scientific research, peacekeeping, and responding to
natural
disasters.
Leaders of both countries have said that for relations to improve, the
other side must deal properly with history. No countries can compare
with China and Japan in terms of the length of their historical contact:
1,500 years. Given the depth of emotion among the Chinese and Japanese
Preface
. viii .
people
concerning their past, it would be impossible for them to gain a
balanced perspective without discussing history.
Japanese
and Chinese scholars have a much deeper understanding of
their own history than we foreigners can match. Unfortunately, when
scholars from China and Japan come together to try to resolve differences,
the meetings result in renewed tensions and a lack of agreement on important
issues. Outsiders can potentially contribute to their mutual understanding
by examining the history with more objectivity and balance. The
Chinese have a saying, “Bystanders can be clearer” (pangguanzhe qing), and
the Japanese
have made this expression into a Japanese
saying as well.
I see myself as a friend of both China and Japan. I undertook this study
as a bystander sympathetic to both countries, which I have been studying
for more than half a century.
I want both countries to succeed. Therefore,
in this book I attempt to the best of my ability to provide an objective understanding
of the history of relations between the two countries, in the
hope that it will
help them improve their relations with each other. I see
my mission as seeking truth from facts, not slanting the truth toward
the
interests of any one country, including my own.
Throughout my career,
I saw it as my responsibility to convey the results
of my research on China and Japan to an audience of Americans and
other Westerners who want to understand those
two countries. While
writing this book, however, I was thinking about how I might reach audiences
not only in the West but also in China and Japan. I am aware that
many Chinese and Japanese
people
who dislike the other country will
not
be interested in reading a book on Sino-Japanese
relations written by a
Westerner, no matter
how accurate the book might be. However, I have
written this book for those
in China and Japan who do seek, as I do, to
achieve an objective understanding of the other country. I feel a responsibility
as a bystander who can potentially reach audiences in both countries.
I have had the unique good fortune of having the Japanese
translation of
my book Japan as Number One become a bestseller in Japan, and my book
Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China, in Chinese translation, become
a bestseller in China. As a friend of both China and Japan, I fervently
hope the two countries can improve their ability to work together for their
common interests. I believe their cooperation is also in the interest of the
rest of the world.
Preface
. ix .
I have no training as a professional historian. I am a sociologist who until
now has focused on the broad features of contemporary
society. In this book,
I write as a historical sociologist, following the perspective of my teacher
(and later
my senior
colleague) Talcott Parsons. A leading specialist on Max
Weber, Parsons analyzed societies
in terms of their basic political,
economic,
and social structures and their underlying
values. My interest in using a
broad sociological
framework to analyze the history of national societies
dates back to my graduate-student
days before I became an Asia specialist,
when I benefited from the teaching of Parsons and from discussions in the
circle of graduate
students gathered around him, including Bob Bellah, Cliff
Geertz, Chuck Tilly, Jesse Pitts, Norman Bell, Ed Tiryakian, and Bob
LeVine. We were
all passionately absorbed in an effort to understand the
broad structural features and values of national societies.
I have organized
this book sequentially, covering the 1,500 years of
recorded
contacts between China and Japan. Throughout, in addition to relating
the most important
events, I have endeavored to consider the larger
social structures of China and Japan and the structure of their relationship.
The history of Sino-Japanese
relations was shaped
not only by broad
forces but also by individual people.
For recent centuries, when more biographical
information is available, I also include brief biographies of some
of the main individuals involved; these
are found in the Biographies of Key
Figures section. My purpose is to understand what drove them, how they
related to the other country, and what impact they had on history.
I am unable to read original documents in classical Chinese or classical
Japanese.
The task of reading all the relevant original documents to cover such
a vast period is beyond my ability, and perhaps beyond the ability of any single
scholar or any small group of scholars. I do read modern Chinese and Japanese.
In preparation for this book I spent years reading works on the history
of relations between China and Japan by Western, Japanese,
and Chinese
scholars. There
are many outstanding books by dedicated scholars of great
ability from China, Japan, and the West who have studied the interactions
between China and Japan throughout history. I also had the opportunity to
speak with many of the authors. I am deeply indebted to all of the scholars
who made it possible
for me to attempt to write this historical overview. For
each chapter, I include at the back of the book a section on “Sources and
Further Reading.”
Preface
. x .
To make this book accessible to general readers, I have minimized the
use of notes. I have also simplified transliterations. I do not use macrons in
Japanese
terms, but for scholars seeking to use the sources, I use them in
the notes. For Chinese names, I use the most widely accepted transliterations
for the names of familiar figures, such as Chiang Kai-shek,
Chiang
Ching-kuo,
and Sun Yat-sen;
otherwise
I use pinyin, following the current
mainland usage. For Chinese cities, I use their current names throughout,
with one exception. I refer to Beijing, the “Northern Capital,” as Beiping
when it was not the capital, to make it clear when it was and when it was
not the capital city. I use the name Guangzhou even in the era when it was
known as Canton, and I use Shenyang rather than Mukden (the city’s
Manchu name), Hoten (its Japanese
name), or Fengtian. I present
Chinese
and Japanese
personal names in their original order, surnames first.
Two chapters were
written jointly with friends, Paula Harrell and Rick
Dyck, who were
extraordinarily generous with their time, expertise, and
contributions. Harrell, who studies late nineteenth-and
early twentieth-century
Sino-Japanese
relations using both Chinese and Japanese
sources,
has written outstanding books on exchanges between China and Japan after
the Sino-Japanese
War of 1894–1895. Dyck, who received his Ph.D. from
Harvard, has spent more than four decades
living in Japan, where he is an
exceptional scholar as well as a successful businessman.
In this book, I pay special attention to the three periods when one
country was engaged in deep learning from the other: from 600 to 838, when
Japan was learning the basics of Chinese civilization, and two later
periods,
1895 to 1937 and 1972 to 1992, when China was learning from Japan. I have
arranged the chapters chronologically with the exception of Chapters 5
through 7, which address different
aspects of the period from 1895 and 1937,
when important
developments—China’s
learning from Japan, Japanese
colonialism,
and the politics that led to war—were
so diverse that I chose to
cover them in three separate chapters. Since my goal is to understand contemporary
East Asia, I have written about the past 200 years in more detail
than earlier
centuries. Chapters 1 and 2, however, trace the relations between
the two countries across more than 1,200 years, from 600 to 1862. In
those
initial chapters I have tried to provide an overview while also focusing
on issues that are particularly crucial for understanding current
Sino-Japanese
relations.