vogel china and japan intro

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 twentiethcentury 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.