Notes on the Teaching of Far Eastern History

W. G. Beasley

Professor of the History of the Far East
University of London

Acknowledgments

Several colleagues at the School of Oriental and African Studies have given me valuable help in the preparation of this pamphlet, both by suggesting ideas and by providing material for inclusion. I would like to express my special thanks to Mr. J. Gray, Mr. M. A. N. Loewe, Dr. M. Sullivan and Prof. D. C. Twitchett.

W. G. Beasley

I. Notes on the Teaching of Far Eastern History

(1) The Far East

The area which we call the Far East, or East Asia, has been the home of one of the world’s great civilisations. It is a civilisation which originated in and centred upon China, but spread to a number of other lands, brought to them by trade, military conquest, their own desire to emulate it, or by a combination of all three, so that certain common features came to characterise life over much of the region, marking it off culturally as well as geographically from South East Asia, India and Central Asia. Since the geographical boundaries are not abrupt, the extent of Chinese influence, whether cultural or political, varied with the centuries. Nevertheless, its extreme limits can be readily defined. To the south and west are the Himalayan mountains and Tibetan plateau, to the north-west and north the desert and steppe of Central Asia. Chinese authority at its strongest might extend far into these areas. At its weakest it stopped short at the limits of settled agriculture. On the other hand, in the north-east and in the extreme south there were no such natural frontiers, with the result that Chinese culture became strongly established in Manchuria and Korea, the Japanese islands, Taiwan (Formosa), and parts of the Indo-Chinese peninsula, especially Tongking. These, with China proper, comprise the area of Far Eastern civilisation. The Philippine islands, Siam and Burma have for the most part remained outside it.

Despite its relative isolation, the area has not been entirely cut off from other major centres of human history. India contributed to it a vital formative influence, the Buddhist religion. The Silk Road even provided a tenuous link with imperial Rome and medieval Europe. None the less, it was not until the 19th century that Far Eastern civilisation came into direct and immediate contact with a rival which could challenge its assumptions of superiority: the assertive expansionist society of the industrial West. The conflicts and pressures which resulted brought far reaching changes. China fell into confusion and disorder, though even as an object of attack or conquest she remained a prime focus of the area’s history. Japan,

by contrast, reacted swiftly and effectively, building a modern state on Western lines and exploiting the advantage so gained to create an empire. The 20th century has seen the picture change again. Japan’s career of conquest ended in resounding defeat and military occupation, whereas China, through civil war and revolution, has once more emerged as a powerful, centralised state capable of influencing the whole region. Both countries, in the process, have departed in great measure from traditional ways and values, though enough of an older way of life remains to emphasise that society has been moulded by an historical experience quite distinct from that of other regions.

(2) Teaching Far Eastern History

The prospect of including Far Eastern history in the teaching at a British school raises formidable difficulties. One has the advantage that sixth-formers are likely to be made aware—by newspaper headlines, if nothing else—of the area’s importance in world affairs and that they could be led from this to a consideration of its historical background. One might even exploit the charm of the virtually unknown: many children, perhaps because the subject is never taught, manage to acquire a number of romantic, if quite erroneous, ideas about it. On the other hand, books and other materials are little known, expensive, often hard to find; teachers have rarely had any academic training that is directly relevant; and there is the ever-present problem of finding room for something more in an already crowded syllabus.

It is not the purpose of this pamphlet to argue that Far Eastern history should be included in the regular teaching of all, or even most, schools. The subject has an intrinsic interest and has acquired some academic standing in the universities—in London, for example, it is possible to read History Honours in a branch dealing extensively with the Far East—but it is one among many such subjects, not all of which can be taught at a single school. The decision about whether it can be included, and, if so, in what detail, must be left to the individual teacher. Yet even those who wish to teach it may be handicapped by a lack of factual information. It is here that these notes may be useful, both by indicating what might form the content of a course and by giving guidance on bibliography.

It would be unrealistic to suppose that time could be made available for a fully chronological treatment of Far Eastern history in schools. Even if one restricts the scope of study to China and Japan, as is done here, it is still necessary to be rigidly selective within that field. The following notes are therefore based on the assumption that only a two-part division of the material can be attempted: first, a description of traditional society, especially in China, with references to—but not a complete narrative of—its historical development; second, an account of the ways in which that society has been forced to adjust itself to the civilisation of the West, with which it has come into contact in relatively recent times.

II. Traditional Society

(A) (1) China: A Geographical Introduction

For those with no previous knowledge, the first need is for some introduction to the geographical environment. This might begin with an emphasis on distance, preferably in relation to time. The journey from Europe to the China coast, which a jet aircraft can now complete in less than 24 hours by the polar route, takes a modern steamship a little under 4 weeks via the Suez Canal. A century ago the tea clippers, the fastest sailing ships afloat, were doing exceptionally well to reach London from Canton in 90 days round the Cape of Good Hope. Earlier vessels were much slower. To revert to the 20th century, the journey from Russia to China by the Trans-Siberian Railway takes about 10 days. The old land route from the eastern Mediterranean, via the Tigris valley, Samarkand, Kashgar and the Gobi desert, took a great deal longer, and rarely did an individual travel it from end to end. In 1253 a Franciscan friar went from Constantinople to Mongolia in seven months. By contrast, Marco Polo took over three years to get from Italy to Peking, though this was not continuous travel.

The overland route (or Silk Road) makes a good starting point for a discussion of China’s geography, for its eastern terminal is on the Yellow River (Hwang Ho), one of the great waterways which have played so important a part in Chinese history. The Yellow River rises in the mountains of Tibet and enters China in a vast sweep round the Ordos desert in the north-west. At the point where it turns towards the sea it is joined by the Wei River, flowing out of a region characterised by heavy deposits of yellow silt, or loess, which supports rich harvests of wheat and millet. It is here that the Silk Road enters China proper. It was in this area, too, that the Chinese state first developed and China’s earliest capitals (Ch’ang-an and Loyang) were situated. Eastward, the Yellow River enters the plain which is China’s principal granary and a major centre of population, becoming navigable for several hundred miles, but nearer the coast its course becomes irregular and it divides into many channels, the main outlet having shifted both north and south of the Shantung peninsula at different times. Flooding is frequent and extensive.

Central China is dominated by the Yangtse River. Its upper course runs through Szechwan, a huge fertile basin east of the Tibet plateau. From here the river is navigable to the sea, though the gorges between Szechwan and the middle Yangtse limit larger ships to the last thousand miles. Along the banks of the river are some of China’s greatest cities, including Hankow, Nanking and (at the estuary) Shanghai. The whole area is thickly populated. It is also of enormous economic importance, producing rice, cotton and silk in particular. Northwards the Yangtse is linked with the Huai River by a canal system begun in the 4th century a.d. and later (chiefly in the 7th century) extended to the Yellow River and Peking. In fact, Chinese governments from earliest times have recognised the importance of canal-building as a means of improving and connecting the natural waterways. Thus, so long as administration remained efficient, the Yangtse, Huai and Yellow Rivers have formed a single communications system. Modern roads and railways have tended to supplement rather than replace it.

China south of the Yangtse basin is less well provided with internal communications, though its coastline has good deep-water ports. The West River (Si Kiang) gives some access to the mountainous interior from Canton, as also does the Red River from the Gulf of Tongking, but the region is in general more fragmented than the north. It is partly for this reason that it was much later before it was brought within China’s frontiers and has always retained marked cultural characteristics of its own. It still contains pockets of racial groups quite distinct from those of the rest of China.

(2) China: Dynastic History

The pattern of Far Eastern history has been so different from that of Europe that something must be said about its general characteristics. If one could imagine a Europe in which the Roman Empire had been re-established under new rulers in, say, the sixth and seventh centuries, then successively destroyed and revived again at intervals of about 300 years, one would have something comparable with what took place in China; for the political history of China is in one sense the story of the rise and fall of dynasties, each in its turn asserting effective control over the whole area of the empire, but gradually losing its power as generations passed, until it vanished in a period of weakness and disorder from which new rulers eventually arose to begin the cycle afresh. Throughout the process, despite the regular periods of chaos and civil war which it entailed, there was a remarkable continuity of political institutions. Very much the same kind of men continued to govern China as officials, whatever change there might be in the dynasty. Very much the same kind of philosophy continued to determine their views on government. It is this which has led Western historians to regard China as part of “the unchanging East”, to view Chinese history as a series of unvarying repetitions of “the cycle of Cathay”. There is no space here to assess the accuracy of this view. However, some notes on its historical elements might be in order.

(a) The dynastic cycle. The Chinese empire was first united under the short-lived Ch’in dynasty (221-207 b.c.). By this time the bronze age culture which had arisen in north China during the second millenium b.c. had created an ordered society, ruled by a recognised authority, not only in the Wei and upper Yellow River valleys, but also eastward to the coast and south to the Yangtse basin. Under the Chou (c. 1027-256 b.c.) this empire had comprised a loose federation of semi-independent feudal states. The Ch’in transformed it into a single, centralised kingdom. This was transmitted intact to their successors, the mighty Han (202 b.c.-a.d. 220, with an inter-regnum a.d. 9-23), under whom Chinese society took on many of the characteristics which were to distinguish it till modem times and the territories south of the Yangtse were brought within the empire’s frontiers. The Han period also established the classical pattern of the dynastic cycle: first, an age of efficient government, military conquest, economic growth, extensive public works; then one of growing financial difficulties, as administrative costs and official extravagance outpaced revenue; finally, the years of chaos, as financial weakness began to affect the maintenance of defences, irrigation works, food reserves and so on, opening the way to banditry, invasion, civil war. (For a discussion of this cycle, see Reischauer and Fairbank, East Asia. The Great Tradition, chap. 4.)

After the Han came 400 years of political disunity, but from the seventh century Chinese history is marked by the names of a series of great dynasties: T’ang (618—906); Sung (960—1279); Yüan, or Mongol (1260-1368); Ming (1368-1644); Ch’ing, or Manchu (1644-1912). Each period had certain special characteristics. The centuries between Han and T’ang saw the spread of Buddhism, which became the country’s major religion. Late T’ang and Sung were the golden age of traditional Chinese culture; but this was accompanied by a military weakness that eventually brought conquest from the steppe and the foundation of an alien Mongol rule. For a hundred years or so, under the Mongols, China was part of a larger whole and briefly re-established a link with Europe. Then the Ming, by revulsion from the immediate past, put new emphasis on the strictly Chinese tradition and created an inward- looking society that recoiled from outside contact. They in turn fell to barbarian attack, this time by the Manchus, but the Manchus were so closely assimilated to the civilisation of their Chinese subjects that the early part of their dynastic era has been described as the zenith of the traditional Chinese state. Certainly it was in its Manchu guise that China became best known to Europe.

(b) Mandarins. The government of China was in theory an autocracy. In practice, the emperor normally delegated his authority to a staff of bureaucrats, known in Western literature as “mandarins”, who were graded according to a strict hierarchy of salary and responsibility. They often enjoyed much personal power. For example, those who were appointed as provincial governors were able to exercise civil and sometimes military authority over areas larger than some European countries. Above them were posts in the bureaux of the capital, to which they might hope to be promoted. Below them was a range of district officers from whose ranks they might eventually be replaced. From T’ang times on, most of these men were recruited by a complex system of examinations and were subject to a routine of rotation which rarely allowed them to remain in one post for more than a few years. Nevertheless, while in their posts their power was great, for they rarely received any detailed instructions concerning policy from their superiors, who left them to decide their own means of reconciling general directives with local conditions. Discipline was maintained by the threat of punishment and the hope of promotion.

The bureaucracy was in effect China’s only “profession” and was socially, as well as politically, dominant. After the Han dynasty membership of the hereditary nobility was no longer keyed to political or economic power. Professional soldiers—except when they were conquerors, like the Manchus—ranked well below civil officials. Merchants, though numerous and wealthy, were formally of low status and could only achieve social recognition by becoming landowners or securing the entry of their sons to the bureaucracy. Landowning and office, in fact, were the hallmarks of respectability. They were also closely linked. Most recruits to the civil service were drawn from families which held large estates, for it took some wealth to provide young men with the kind of classical Confucian education on which the entrance examinations were always based. It was this connection between landowning, with its control of the countryside, and bureaucracy, with its control of state policy, that gave political society such a high degree of stability, despite dynastic changes. It also explains why the mandarins are sometimes called a “gentry” class.

(c) Confucian thought. The Mandarins have also been called literati, a fact which serves to emphasise the connection between Confucian philosophy and Chinese politics. Confucius himself, who lived in the late sixth and early fifth centuries B.c., was both philosopher and statesman. This was reflected in the ideas which we associate with his name. The systematic working out of these ideas was in fact accomplished by later writers, those of the Han dynasty in particular, but they never lost their strongly political flavour. They also remained essentially humanist. Confucianism in its developed form stressed the function of moral example (often translated “benevolence”) in political leadership and provided an ethical pattern on which personal behaviour must be based, that of the ruler as well as the ruled. Government must depend on virtue, not on force. The corollary was the duty of “propriety” on the part of the governed. This duty was extended to social, especially family, relationships, in addition to the more directly political, and so provided the basis for a hierarchical society. A proper subordination of wife to husband, of child to parent, of younger to elder formed part of the ethic, reinforcing benevolent paternalism with filial piety. It was this aspect of Confucianism which was emphasised by the 12th century scholar Chu Hsi and became orthodox thereafter.

Some of the books expounding these ideas were designated “Classics” and every educated Chinese was expected to know them. They also formed the basis of the examination by which candidates sought entrance to and promotion in the bureaucracy. Thus the whole body of belief, varying in emphasis from time to time, but substantially carried forward from generation to generation and dynasty to dynasty, gave a certain community of outlook to scholar-officials separated by great gaps of time or distance. This made it a vital element in Chinese government.

(3) Chinese Religion

Confucianism was not exclusively political. Nor was it China’s only philosophy. (Those who wish to pursue further the subject of Chinese philosophy and thought might consult W. T. de Bary, ed., Sources of Chinese Tradition.) However, it is doubtful whether a school course could deal adequately with philosophy in general or whether notes as brief as these could offer any useful guidance on the subject. Much the same is true of religion; and here also, therefore, it is proposed to concentrate on a single theme. Confucianism had its religious aspects, notably ancestor worship, which might be regarded as an extension in time of the duty of filial piety. In Taoism, China early developed a popular religion and even an organised church. Yet it was Buddhism which provided the most conspicuous features of Chinese religious history and which, through China, most influenced Far Eastern peoples as a whole. Accordingly, it is with Buddhism that these notes will deal.

It is probably best to begin with the historical Buddha (Sakyamuni), who lived in northern India about 500 b.c., that is, contemporary with Confucius and some hundred years before Socrates. In its original form, known as Hinayana (“the Lesser Vehicle”), the religion which evolved from his teachings stressed personal salvation, achieved through the monastic life. A variant, Mahayana (“the Greater Vehicle”), developed a greater emphasis on the possibility of salvation through the intercession of those who had already attained Buddhahood, a process which provided the religion with a complex pantheon and with codes of behaviour for the lay believer. It was Mahayana, largely, that entered China via Central Asia at the beginning of the Christian era. (A convenient short account of Buddhist doctrines is to be found in de Bary, Sources of Chinese Tradition.)

From the 3rd to the 8th centuries Buddhism grew powerful in China, with many Chinese pilgrims making the long journey to India to study the religion at its source. The priesthood became an alternative to the bureaucracy as a career. The monastery as an institution tended to acquire great landholdings. Both facts alienated the Confucian gentry and brought intermittent persecution of the Buddhist church. Partly for this reason Buddhism played in the end a far smaller part in Chinese history than did Christianity in that of Europe. It had less deep roots in society than had Confucianism and by the 10th century was for the most part in decline. However, it had by then left its mark on society in several ways:

Many Buddhist ideas, especially those connected with magic and divination, entered widely into the currency of popular belief. In this they linked up with the baser forms of Taoism, with its alchemists and their search for the elixir of life, both strands figuring prominently in popular literature.
One sect escaped the general decline and continued to have widespread influence: the contemplative sect, known as Zen (the word is Japanese; in Chinese it is Ch’an). Its emergence in China in organised form was comparatively late (c. 7th century), but it rapidly became influential, for its stress on meditation, oral tradition and intuitive insight, rather than scripture or ceremonial, was combined with a strong practical bent in daily life which gave it an appeal to laymen, especially men of affairs. The love of simplicity and of nature, with which it was also linked, greatly influenced Chinese art.
The missionary zeal of early Buddhism was not exhausted by its success in China. It spread also to neighbouring countries like Korea and Japan, where its power was often longer lived. It came to them, moreover, in its Chinese guise, acting as a vehicle for the transmission of many elements of Chinese culture, not only the religious. In this respect it played a vital part in the formation of Far Eastern civilisation.

(4) China: Art and Science

Any study of Chinese culture will reveal the fact that it originated much that is now familiar in the West. Silk-growing was long a Chinese monopoly; and even after Europe learnt to rear silkworms, Chinese silk textiles remained in demand for their quality and style. Tea was a beverage which China made her own and it long held pride of place in the country’s modern trade. In China, moreover, the technique of iron casting was known in the Han dynasty (202 b.c.-a.d. 220), the wheelbarrow invented sometime before the T’ang (a.d. 618-906), the compass in use in the 12th century several decades before its introduction into Europe. Gunpowder was also a Chinese invention, dating from the centuries between Han and T’ang, though its use in warfare was a much later development and even then was rather as an explosive in grenades than as a propellant in guns. In fact, the Chinese contributed less to the techniques of warfare than did their neighbours of the steppe.

Nevertheless, if one cannot subscribe to the view that Chinese culture was technologically backward, it remains true that some of the most characteristic Chinese contributions to world civilisation were those which reflected the importance of literary and aesthetic qualities: paper and printing; porcelain; a particular style of painting.

Paper and printing. Paper was invented in China towards the end of the Han dynasty (c. a.d. 100) and soon replaced wood, bamboo and silk for writing. Printing originated from the use of seals. By the 7th century full-page blocks were in use and the printing of whole books followed soon after. Movable type was also developed, but the nature of the Chinese script, involving the use of thousands of separate ideographs, made the technique less popular than it was later to prove in Europe. (For a discussion of the nature and historical significance of the Chinese writing system, see Reischauer and Fairbank, East Asia. The Great Tradition, pp. 39-44.)
Porcelain. Pottery glazes were known in China from an early date, and during the Han they began to develop into a kind of porcelain. Thereafter, development was continuous, until by T’ang and Sung (a.d. 960-1279) porcelain wares of the highest quality were being produced (and exported). The improvement was artistic as well as technical. The characteristic green wares of Sung, the blue-and-white of Ming (a.d. 1368-1644), the many-coloured products of the Ch’ing (a.d. 1644-1912), all are prized by collectors as great works of art. Illustrations of them—or better still a visit to a collection—will do more than most things to give an understanding of China’s cultural achievement.
Painting. This, too, is something which needs to be seen, if only in reproduction, not merely talked about. Characteristic were its severe selectivity of detail and its emphasis on line rather than colour, qualities which were at their best in the great landscape paintings of the Sung period. The parallel with the impressionist trends in modem European art will need no underlining, though the historical link is actually through Japan.

(5) China and the Barbarian

In view of their many notable achievements, it is not surprising that the Chinese acquired a consciousness of superiority in their dealings with nearby states. The feeling was justified at times by military as well as cultural prowess. Indeed, at the height of their power Chinese governments frequently sought to extend their influence by force, one motive being the desire to secure a settled frontier, especially against inroads from the steppe, another being the need to protect important trade routes. Success tended to extend Chinese rule, directly or indirectly, to a number of nonChinese peoples. Failure, or a period of weakness, enabled the barbarian to cross the frontier in his turn, sometimes bringing division and disorder, as in the centuries between Han and T’ang, sometimes bringing the establishment of an alien dynasty, such as Yüan (Mongol) and Ch’ing (Manchu). One relic of these constant struggles was the Great Wall, running for hundreds of miles across the north and north-west frontier regions. Another was the creation of an international system which both culturally and politically centred on China. Its main features were:

International. Chinese statesmen preferred to bind neighbouring rulers to them by a kind of vassal status which had benefits for both parties: China acquired a friendly neighbour, in whose external policy, especially, she had a strong voice (a relationship marked on the part of the inferior by acceptance of Chinese titles and use of the Chinese calendar and language in official correspondence); while the vassal acquired rights of trade (in the guise of tribute) and the assurance of Chinese military support in case of need. The relationship varied in intensity with time and place, but until the 19th century, when the West began to impose its own concepts of international relations on the area, it involved most states around China’s periphery.

Cultural. China’s military adventures in Central Asia helped to bring her into contact with other cultures: with India, for example, and occasionally with Europe. More continuously, political relations with her neighbours helped to spread knowledge of Chinese culture and give it prestige. The process was supplemented by trade and also by the spread of Buddhism in its Chinese form to countries such as Korea and Japan, resulting eventually in something which can be recognised as a single civilisation, despite local variations in it. For example, the Annamese, Japanese and Korean languages are all written in the Chinese script. Tongking shows Chinese influence in both race and customs. Korea for much of its history was thoroughly Chinese and even rivalled China in some of its finest products, like porcelain. Japan, though farther away and politically independent, also belonged within the group; and it is Japan, because of its importance in later times, that we can most conveniently use as an example of one of the peripheral states of the Chinese traditional system.

(B) Traditional Japan

The history of Japan before the 19th century can be described in terms of the interaction of imported Chinese ideas and institutions with others of indigenous origin. It is, therefore, convenient in teaching the subject to begin with China, so as to make the cross- references meaningful. The following notes assume that this has been done and thus classify Japanese society under headings which distinguish its Chinese and non-Chinese features.

(a) Geography. The southern part of the Japanese islands is about 100 miles from the Korean peninsula and 400 miles from the Yangtse estuary. These distances have been enough to ensure for Japan’s inhabitants a relative freedom from military attack, while leaving them still within range of China’s cultural influence, an influence which has been all the more accessible, because the deeply indented shoreline of Japan provides many sheltered harbours. Harbours have also played their part in encouraging the development of coastal navigation, which for much of history has provided the country’s most important means of internal transport. Land communications are difficult, except on the narrow coastal plains. Much of the interior is mountainous, a fact which has made for considerable regional differences in culture, even a high degree of local separatism in political development, though sea communications and small total size have together ensured that Japan has always remained a single unit in theory, however diverse its parts may have been in practice.

Population has been densest in the lowland areas, where rice is the main crop, especially in the favourable climate of the side which faces the Pacific. The main centres of concentration have been the plains round modern Tokyo and Kyoto, northern Kyushu, and the coastal strip along the Inland Sea (the sheltered waters between the islands of Honshu and Shikoku), where fertile soil and intensive cultivation have brought relative prosperity. It is these areas which loom largest in Japanese history.

(b) Japan and China. For much of history Japan was outside the area of Chinese military action, so that the early relations between the two countries were indirect ones, through Korea. It was not until the sixth century a.d. that they became important, with the introduction of Buddhism to Japan, the religion and its priests becoming the chief transmitters of Chinese civilisation and ideas in the new setting. The result was a great transformation of Japanese society in the seventh and eighth centuries. The loose confederation of tribal units which had previously constituted the Japanese state was brought into at least nominal subjection to an imperial institution modelled on that of China. Chinese ideas of rank, administration, taxation, land distribution and so on were all introduced, though, with varying success, and Japanese government took on many of the features of that of T’ang China. Simultaneously, there was a rapid spread of Buddhist monasteries; direct communication was established with the Chinese capital; and many Japanese aristocrats, at least, became versed in Chinese literary and artistic pursuits. In the centuries that followed, this first adoption of Chinese culture was extended and adapted to a Japanese environment. Accordingly, there still remains much in Japanese life that is recognisably of Chinese origin, especially in art, language, philosophy and religion. For example, Chinese is still the “classical” language of Japan and even modern Japanese is written largely in the Chinese ideographic script; the link between the painting and other visual arts of the two countries can be seen at a glance in any sizable collection, which will also reveal close similarities in such things as costume; and finally, Confucianism remains the basis of Japan’s most pervasive ethical concepts, Buddhism its most common religion.

Sino-Japanese relations in other spheres have been neither smooth nor continuous. In early centuries Japan was very much China’s client, though distance saved her from political domination and made trade intermittent. Later, Japanese rulers sometimes refused to admit Chinese claims to dominance in the region, but it was not until the 13th century that this brought a head-on clash in the shape of two unsuccessful Mongol attempts to invade Kyushu (in 1274 and 1281). After an interval of hostility, a growing Japanese desire for trade, especially for imports of Chinese silk and copper coins, brought a resumption of relations, and from about 1400 to 1550 an exchange of diplomatic and trading missions between the two took place on average every ten or fifteen years. The connexion was then broken off by China because of Japanese piracy in Chinese waters. Despite this, the junk trade between Kyushu and the China coast was soon resumed, but political relations remained severed until the 19th century, when their resumption led eventually to war. This, however, is a separate story.

(c) Non-Chinese institutions in Japan. Although Japan’s imperial institution was based on Chinese models, its existence was justified by reference to a strictly indigenous belief: that the imperial line was directly descended from the sun-goddess, Amaterasu. This idea formed part of Shinto, a primitive nature-worship in origin, on which were grafted elements of ancestor worship and also some features derived from Buddhism, so much so that for several centuries it became almost indistinguishable from a Buddhist sect. In fact, Buddhist images are still to be found at a number of Shinto shrines. Nevertheless the Shinto cult was still observed, especially in rural areas, and after the 18th century it was successfully revived. In modern Japan it became an important ingredient in nationalism. Equally persistent was a literary tradition, notably in poetry, which was derived from the spoken language and hence escaped much of the influence of China.

It was in politics, however, that Japan departed most clearly from the Chinese pattern. The attempt made in the 8th century to create an imperial bureaucracy on the Chinese model proved ineffective because of the weakness of the central authority; and as the system broke down, so there emerged something closely akin to European feudalism. From the 12th century to the 19th the warriors (Samurai) were dominant. They owed allegiance to the Shogun (known to early Western writers as the Tycoon), who, as the emperor’s military deputy, became in effect an hereditary monarch. He ruled in the emperor’s name, but was able almost at will to force an emperor’s abdication. Several great houses (ostensibly of common descent) held the office in succession, with occasional interregna, before the last of them, the Tokugawa, was overthrown in 1868. Meanwhile the country as a whole was broken up into great domains, whose lords were often able to defy the central government, though after the 16th century the Shogun was able to exercise a considerable degree of control over their persons, if not their lands. (The long period of feudal rule, from 1185 to 1868, with its recurrent civil wars, has provided Japan with most of its heroic figures and epic tales. These form the subject-matter of many modem novels and of several of the best Japanese films of recent years, like Rashomon and The Seven Samurai.)

III. Modern Society

(A) (1) Teaching Problems

The modern history of the Far East is probably most conveniently treated as the story of a meeting between two cultures: that of the West on the one hand, that of China and Japan on the other. The narrative impinges at several points on European history and is therefore in some respects easier to handle than that of earlier periods. Moreover, books dealing with it are more numerous and detailed (with the notable exception of those on China’s domestic history in the 19th and 20th centuries), so that teachers can more easily extend their knowledge of any particular aspect of the subject. Indeed, they may prefer to concentrate attention on this period, giving no more time to the discussion of traditional society than is necessary to serve as introduction. The notes which follow will accordingly seek to give, in addition to an outline of topics that might be taught, some indication of where further information can be found.

(2) The Coming of the West

Although a few visitors from Europe managed to reach China in medieval times, the most famous being Marco Polo, it was not until the 16th century, with the opening of new sea routes, that their numbers became significant. The Portuguese were first to arrive, reaching both China and Japan towards the middle of the century from bases established successively at Goa, Malacca and Macao. Spaniards reached the Philippines a generation later from America and founded Manila. English and Dutch began to appear about 1600. All managed to open trade, the Portuguese being much the most successful, but they did not at this time have a very great impact on Far Eastern civilisation. China remained aloof, rather grudgingly allowing trade to develop at her southern ports. Japan, after a period of apparent enthusiasm for relations with the West, acquired new feudal rulers at the beginning of the 17th century, the Tokugawa, who decided that foreign guns, and, especially, the foreign religion, were potential threats to their own authority. They therefore checked the activities of Japan’s own seafarers, began a savage persecution of Christianity and its converts, and put restrictions on foreign trade. By 1640 Chinese and Dutch were the only foreign merchants allowed to enter Japanese ports. (An excellent book on this period is C. R. Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan; so is G. B. Sansom, The Western World and Japan, which also outlines Western activities elsewhere in Asia at this time.)

In the 17th century China and Japan were able to insist on policies which were contrary to the interests of Western merchants, because there was no very great disparity between their own strength and that which European states could exert in Far Eastern waters. By 1800 this was no longer so. The intervening years in Europe had seen an enormous improvement in technology and military science, as well as in economic and political organisation. No corresponding advance occurred in China and Japan, so that, when they faced new demands in the 19th century from European countries seeking additional markets for manufactured goods, they were no longer able to resist successfully.

Leadership in the search for better markets was assumed by Britain, though in China she had at first comparatively little success. Indeed, in the late 18th century Britain herself became a market for Chinese tea and found it difficult to find means of payment for it, other than by exporting bullion. A solution was ultimately found in the use of Indian opium. The result was a triangular trade in which British goods were shipped to India, Indian opium to China, Chinese tea to Britain, but this never proved entirely satisfactory to either Britain or China. Chinese authorities objected strongly to the deleterious effects of opium smoking, though they were never able to stop the trade, partly because of official corruption. They were also complaining by the 1820s that the increase of opium sales was causing an excess of imports over exports and consequently a drain of specie from the country. For their part, British merchants resented the many restrictions on their activities. One of these was the existence of the East India Company’s monopoly, which their protests brought to an end in 1833. Others arose from Chinese policy, which limited trade to Canton, imposed irritating regulations on both the commercial and personal activities of foreigners, and prevented foreign officials from securing what they regarded as proper diplomatic status. Resentment came to a head when a Chinese special commissioner, Lin Tse-hsü, took steps to suppress the opium trade in 1839. His action in confiscating and destroying the opium held by British merchants precipitated war.

Since China had no navy and her troops were armed in the 17th century manner, British forces quickly laid the Chinese empire prostrate. A treaty settlement, imposed in 1842-3, made Hongkong a British colony, opened 5 Chinese ports to trade (including Shanghai), fixed China’s tariff at a low figure, exacted a war indemnity, and put British residents under the jurisdiction of their own consuls. Opium was tactfully ignored, though the trade went on. In the next few years, however, new disputes occurred over implementation of the agreement, leading to a second war in 1856-60, in which France took part as Britain’s ally. This time the peace treaty legalised the opium traffic, forced the acceptance of a British minister at Peking, and opened the Yangtse valley to trade. As had happened in 1842-3, other powers followed the British example and made similar treaties. These established a pattern of relations which kept China in a position of subordination—of so-called “semi-colonial” status—until the 20th century. (A detailed narrative of these events is to be found in W. C. Costin, Great Britain and China 1833-1860; economic relations are more fully treated in J. K. Fairbank, Trade and Diplomacy on the China Coast.)

The opening of Japan was later than that of China and arose from different circumstances, but the immediate result was much the same. The initiative in this case was taken by the United States, newly extended into Oregon and California and, therefore, looking to the Pacific for an extension of its trade. In 1853 an American squadron under Commodore Perry successfully demanded the opening of Japanese ports as ports of refuge and supply. In 1858 America s first consul in Japan extended the agreement to provide for commercial relations, an example which was quickly followed by others, so that Japan acquired a series of treaties with the powers closely parallel to those they had with China.

The resulting “treaty port system” continued to provide the framework of the West’s trade and diplomatic relations with the Far East for the rest of the 19th century and, in China, well into the 20th. Its characteristics were:—

The limitation of Western trade and residence to certain specified cities;
The provision in those cities of special privileges and facilities, including consular jurisdiction over foreigners (who were not subject to local courts), designated areas (“settlements”) for foreign residence, the right of foreigners to run their own newspapers, hospitals, even municipal government.

These conditions satisfied the desire of Western merchants for trade and protection, as well as the Chinese and Japanese wish to restrict the scope of relationships as far as possible. In fact, given the circumstances in which it developed the system was a not unreasonable compromise. Nevertheless, both sides expressed resentment of it. Foreign merchants tended to see its limitations more clearly than its advantages. Chinese and Japanese became aware of the inferior status which they were accorded and sought to end it.

(B) (1) The Reaction of Japan

In 1850 Japan was still in many respects a feudal state. The Emperor was a mere figurehead, real authority being vested in a de facto ruler, the Shogun, whose office had been hereditary in the Tokugawa family since the seventeenth century. He and his retainers held enormous estates. The rest of the country was divided into great domains, each largely independent except for the control which the central administration exercised over its lord in matters of marriage, fortification, and such activities as might lead to subversion of the regime. Social status and political office, both locally and nationally, depended on birth. Class structure was rigid, supported by a Confucian ideology which emphasised social order, hierarchy, loyalty, obedience. It was a society in which change was viewed with hostility.

None the less, change was taking place. Two hundred years of peace had increased agricultural production and greatly developed domestic commerce. Accompanying this was the rise of a merchant class, wealthy and organised in guilds, to which Japan s feudal rulers at all levels became steadily more indebted. In the villages, changes in the distribution and control of land brought increasing unrest. After the middle of the nineteenth century, moreover, a number of factors came together to make possible an anti-Tokugawa movement. A few great domains of the southwest, like Satsuma and Choshu, began to challenge the Shogun’s power. Many lower-ranking members of the feudal class, under the pressure of poverty, became increasingly hostile to the established order. Finally, the movement found a focus for loyalty (and a superficial legality) in its asserted purpose of restoring the ancient prerogatives of the Emperor in government of the country.

It was in this situation that the arrival of the West provoked greater turbulence and gave politics a new direction. Angry samurai, resentful of treaties signed at the point of a gun, attacked foreigners and their ships, provoking incidents that led eventually to major clashes, notably the bombardment of two Japanese cities in 1863 and 1864. The bombardments made obvious to many what had long been recognised by a few, that a feudal and backward Japan could not hope to match the strength of modern Europe. They also demonstrated the weakness of the Shogun’s government and increased its unpopularity. At the end of 1867 the Shogun was compelled to resign his office; and in January 1868 a coalition led by samurai of Satsuma and Choshu seized control of the boy emperor, Meiji, instituting a fresh government in his name. This was the so-called Meiji Restoration. It brought to power men determined that Japan should achieve equality with the West.

To do so involved, in their view, strengthening both the emperor’s prestige and their own authority as his servants. This led them in 1871 formally to abolish feudalism, that is, to abolish the feudal domains which were the greatest obstacle to centralised administration. In 1873 they established a systematic land tax and began to organise a conscript army, thereby acquiring financial and military independence of the old society, and within a year or two were engaged in organising a bureaucracy in which promotion would be by merit, not by birth. The whole country was thus firmly subordinated to central direction and control. When the new leaders were challenged, as they eventually were, by men who resented their policies and the increasingly autocratic methods by which these were enforced, they took refuge behind the facade of a constitution on the German model, promised in 1881 and announced in 1889, which created a Diet with an elected lower house, but did not give it the power to determine policy. Real authority remained in the hands of a Cabinet and Privy Council responsible to the Emperor, under whose guidance Japan continued the policies of modernisation already begun. (The best general account of this period is to be found in H. Borton, Japan’s modern century.)

The constitution, like much else of these years, was in many ways of obvious Western derivation. From the beginning the new leaders had shown themselves willing to learn from the West in technical and military matters: they had taken steps to provide Japan with postal and telegraph services, to begin the building of railways, to purchase and even manufacture modern military weapons of Western type. In 1871-3, moreover, a number of them had travelled extensively in America and Europe. This had enabled them to see for themselves the enormous gap which existed between the development of Japan and that of the West. They came back in 1873 determined that the gap should be closed. Thereafter progress was rapid. Foreign experts were brought to Japan as supervisors and teachers. Model factories were founded, usually with government capital, and technical training was encouraged. A system of compulsory elementary education was established in 1872, with provision later for secondary schools and universities, much of the curriculum being devised on Western lines.

By the decade 1880-90 the results of this policy were beginning to appear. Japanese were replacing the foreign experts in many fields and private individuals replacing the government in others. In the textile industry, especially, where the problems of providing capital and labour were least formidable, small entrepreneurs appeared in considerable numbers, while many of the state factories in other industries were sold to private companies. By 1890 Japan’s dependence on imports of manufactured goods was beginning to decline, though it remained considerable for many years thereafter. Her ability to export finished products also grew, though more slowly. In the military sphere, still more had been accomplished. The armed forces remained small, but they were well equipped and trained, with officers no longer dependent on visits to Europe for their technical education. In a little over twenty years, in fact, the resolute (and often ruthless) policies of the Meiji government had laid the basis of real national strength. The next thirty years were to see it used and developed. (The best survey of 19th century modernisation in Japan is in G. B. Sansom, The Western World and Japan. For its economic aspects see G. C. Allen, A Short Economic History of Modern Japan.)

(2) Japan Becomes a World Power, 1894-1922

During the early years of its modernisation programme, the Japanese government had exercised great restraint in foreign affairs, with the object of avoiding any clash with the powers. The policy was never popular at home, however, and after 1890 it became less necessary, as Japan grew stronger. In 1893-4 the “unequal treaties” were at last revised, to cancel most of the special privileges which foreigners had enjoyed in the country since 1858. Even clearer evidence of Japan’s growing international standing came in a clash with China in 1894. It arose over Korea, long a focus of Japanese interest and ambition, though claimed by China as a vassal state. Korea had been a source of Sino-Japanese friction ever since 1876 and when fresh disputes arose in the summer of 1894 Japan declared war. Within a few months a series of victories at sea and on the land forced China to sue for peace.

The treaty of Shimonoseki, which ended the war in April 1895, gave Japan possession of Formosa (Taiwan) and ended Chinese claims to Korea, though an attempt by Japan to take over Port Arthur and the Liaotung Peninsula was frustrated by the intervention of Russia, France and Germany, who insisted on the area being left to China. One result was to demonstrate China’s weakness, helping to precipitate a scramble among the powers for privileges in various parts of Chinese territory, motivated partly by greed, partly by fear that the Chinese government’s weakness might threaten the safety of Western investments in the country. Germany began by demanding concessions in Shantung in 1898. The example was soon followed by Russia in Manchuria, by Britain in the Yangtse valley, by France in the extreme south. Unable to resist, China was forced to lease ports and land, to grant railway and mining rights, to accept restrictions on her political and financial independence.

Japan had behaved with caution during these events, since she was still suffering from her rebuff by the powers in 1895. She had, however, taken steps to strengthen her armed forces and now began to work more closely with Great Britain, who shared her suspicions of Russian activities in Manchuria and the north. In 1901 cooperation led to formal negotiations for an Anglo-Japanese treaty of alliance, which was concluded in January, 1902. This enormously enhanced Japan’s prestige. It also strengthened her in her dealings with Russia. Russia continued to refuse proposals which would have left Manchuria as a Russian, and Korea as a Japanese, sphere of influence, with the result that relations between the two countries deteriorated rapidly in 1903-4. War broke out in February 1904 and again brought the Japanese victory. Japanese land forces seized all Korea and captured Port Arthur, while in May 1905 the Russian Baltic fleet was defeated in the Tsushima Straits, after steaming half-way round the world in an attempt to break the blockade of Vladivostock. This brought negotiations for peace. By the Treaty of Portsmouth (September 1905) Japan emerged as the dominant influence in Korea and took over Russia’s former rights in south Manchuria. She had, moreover, the prestige of having defeated one of the powers, albeit one handicapped by poor communications and unrest at home.

Such success fed Japanese ambitions, which next found an outlet during the European War of 1914-18. Before it broke out she had strengthened her position, internationally by the outright annexation of Korea (1910) and economically by development of her heavy industries with government help; and when she joined the Allies in war against Germany in August 1914, it was not so much in their interests as her own. In the first months of the war Japanese forces seized the German islands north of the equator in the Pacific and German bases in China, laying claim for Japan to inherit the privileges Germany had secured there. Early in 1915 she found a pretext for making demands on China. China, weaker and more divided than ever after the overthrow of the Manchu dynasty in 1911-12, found little help in a world preoccupied with war and had to grant most of what was asked, notably a series of important concessions concerning Shantung and Manchuria. They were embodied in treaties signed—after a Japanese ultimatum—in May 1915. Thereafter Japan’s policy was aimed at maintaining the position so gained. She did so both by intervening in Chinese political disputes and by bringing pressure to bear on her allies to secure their support in exchange for military help.

The end of the war found Japan a world power. Economically she had profited heavily from providing armaments and shipping for her allies, greatly expanding her heavy industry in the process. The relative lack of European competition had enabled Japanese textiles and other light manufactured goods to penetrate and even dominate new markets. There was thus a sound economic basis for her international status. As one of the victorious Allies, she played an important part in the Versailles conference and in founding the League of Nations. She also sought to secure confirmation of her privileges in China. However, China’s rejection of the 1915 treaties on the grounds that they had been signed under duress left a decision on this question in abeyance until 1922, when the Washington Conference was summoned to discuss naval disarmament and Pacific problems generally. During the Conference, Japan and China finally came to terms, though the settlement was weighted heavily in Japan’s favour in economic matters. Moreover, the wider agreements then made concerning naval disarmament left Japan the strongest naval power in the Pacific. With an almost impregnable defensive position and unlimited access to the Chinese mainland, her future seemed secure. (A reliable account of the events referred to in this section will be found in Borton, Japan’s modern century, chaps. 12 to 15.)

The Chinese Republic, 1911-1937

While Japan modernised and became strong, the weakness of the Manchu government and intolerable conditions in the countryside were stimulating a rising level of revolt in China. Most important was the Taiping Rebellion, which broke out in 1850 and devastated much of the south before it was finally suppressed in 1864. Other revolts were less successful and less radical, but all contributed to weakening the regime. Its officials, however, could not bring themselves to make drastic change. Though impressed, like the leaders of Japan, by the need to strengthen their country’s military position as against both domestic and foreign enemies, they were not prepared to take the risk of disrupting Confucian society. Accordingly, they sought to adopt Western arms and military science, while rejecting all else associated with the West. The compromise was shown to be ineffective, when the modern army and navy which they had slowly built up were destroyed by the Japanese in the war of 1894-5. Again for a short period in 1898 reformers gained power in Peking, the consciousness of defeat by Japan and new threats from the powers giving an added urgency to their actions. The reformers, however, were a small minority and their decrees were largely ineffective. They were soon dismissed, their fall being followed by outbreaks of anti-foreign violence, led by fanatical groups called Boxers, which were only with difficulty put down. Officials of the following decade reverted to the apparently safer policy of conservatism and piecemeal change.

The impetus to more fundamental change came not from the scholar-gentry, but from the new merchant communities in the treaty ports, from Chinese sent abroad to study Western technology, and from those who had emigrated to South East Asia. Among them there grew up a revolutionary movement under the leadership of Sun Yat-sen, who was himself the son of an emigrant Cantonese farmer and was educated in Hawaii and Hong Kong. In the early years of the twentieth century he organised a number of abortive risings inside China. His tenth attempt, which took place at Wuhan in 1911, was successful, leading to the overthrow of the Manchu house. China was declared a republic in 1912. This success, however, was achieved largely because of the support of an ambitious official, Yüan Shih-k’ai, who controlled the only modern armed forces which China then possessed, a fact which gave Yüan a decisive advantage and made it possible for him to insist that he, not Sun, should be president of the new republic.

Yüan Shih-k’ai ruled China, by violence and systematic corruption, until his death in 1916. Thereafter the country was controlled by his lieutenants, the provincial military governors, who became warlords of the areas they governed. Through their rapacity and quarrels, China was devastated by civil war and its provinces pillaged, there being no effective central government to enforce law and order. Sun Yat-sen’s Nationalist Party (Kuomintang) survived only in the south. Even there it was dependent on the support of local warlords.

In 1921 the foundation of the Chinese Communist Party on Russian initiative added a new element to the political situation. The Communists offered the Nationalists an alliance, which Sun Yat-sen at last decided to accept, and on Russian advice his party was turned into a disciplined group of revolutionaries. Its military leaders, including Chiang K’ai-shek, were given training in Russia. The Communists, moreover, acting within the new party organisation, built up an effective mass movement in the south, which by 1927 had enabled the Nationalists to conquer most of south and central China and launch a successful campaign against the warlords of the north. Communist success, however, alarmed the more conservative Nationalists. They found a leader in Chiang K’ai-shek, who broke with the Communists and set up a government of his own in Nanking.

Chiang K’ai-shek succeeded in uniting a large part of China under his rule after 1927, but his regime had serious weaknesses. One was the complete polarisation of Chinese politics which it occasioned. Reforms to which almost all other groups were willing to subscribe were rejected by Chiang’s main supporters, the businessmen of the treaty ports and the landlords of the interior. Under their influence peasant protests were suppressed with ruthless violence. Prosperity was no easier to achieve than stable government. Attempts to encourage industrial and commercial development had little success, for despite some growth in the textile trades, exports of tea and silk declined under Indian and Japanese competition, while heavy industry continued to languish and the fatal obstacle to economic growth, the low purchasing power of the farmers, remained as great as ever.

Indeed, much of the government’s energies were absorbed in attempts to destroy the Communists. The latter, however, found leaders who were capable of using peasant unrest and landlord oppression to their own advantage. Outstanding was Mao Tse-tung, who rejected the Russian dogma that revolution must be based on industrial workers—China, after all, had only half a million working in factories—and put himself at the head of the peasants in the south. In Kiangsi, by a ruthless policy of murdering landlords and redistributing the land, he gradually built a base large enough Jo supply him with revenue and recruits, making his heretical Soviet the most powerful part of the Communist movement. Chiang K’ai-shek, despite enormous efforts, was unable to destroy it. When at last a military expedition drove Mao from his mountains, he and his men retreated, after a march of 1500 miles, to Yenan, near the Manchurian border. There his Soviet was again established, resisting successfully both Chiang and the Japanese.

It was the Japanese, in fact, who brought a semblance of unity to China. Their attempts to establish supremacy in China in 1914-18 had done much to arouse Chinese nationalism. Their renewed attacks in Manchuria and the north after 1930 raised it to greater heights. In face of this outside threat, pressure was brought on Chiang to give up his campaign against the Communists and join with them in opposing Japan. This he agreed to do in 1936. The following year war with Japan became general. (The only detailed survey of this subject available is Li Chien-nung, A political history of China, 1840-1928. Most teachers will probably have to rely on the relevant chapters in one of the general histories by Vinacke, Eckel or Michael and Taylor; see bibliographical notes).

(4) Japan, China and the Second World War

The war of 1914-18 stimulated rapid growth in the Japanese economy and this in its turn had an effect on politics. During the decade of the 1920s the political parties, drawing much of their support from industry and commerce, acquired a larger degree of power, which they used to strengthen their own position, both against the bureaucracy and the military, on the one hand, and against a growing socialist movement, on the other. Overseas, they sought economic rather than territorial expansion.

However, by 1930 the parties were losing their precarious supremacy. Reactionaries blamed them for the increase in the adoption of Western habits, described as a subversion of Japanese tradition. Army and navy officers resented economies in the military budget and the signing of the London naval agreement (1930), which restricted naval building. Farmers, hard hit by a worldwide slump that forced down silk prices in particular, held the government responsible for their distress. These resentments found a focus in the so-called “patriotic societies" and groups of young officers, who began a series of assassinations of leading public figures in the hope that disorder would bring martial law, leading to a thorough “renovation” of society. They failed in their more extreme ambitions, but by 1932 they had reduced the political parties almost to impotence. By 1936 they had helped to give the army a dominant position in politics and virtual control of the country’s foreign affairs.

The army’s rise to power at home was accompanied by Japanese attacks on China. In 1931 a pretext was manufactured for seizing Manchuria and, despite protests from the League of Nations, it was made a Japanese puppet state (Manchukuo) in 1933. Army commanders also exerted pressure on China’s northern frontiers, gradually extending Japan’s activities through local agreements until much of the north was under Japanese control. This brought increasing hostility in China. Eventually, in the summer of 1937, China’s resistance and Japan’s ambition brought a clash which developed into open warfare. Japan launched a full scale invasion of the Chinese mainland. Within two years she had seized all China’s major ports, the great plains of the Yangtse and Yellow River valleys, almost all main communication centres. The Nationalists under Chiang K’ai-shek had been driven back to Chungking in the far south west, where they could do little more than organise guerilla fighting.

The war in China had led to Japanese disputes with the United States and Britain, the two countries with major interests there. In the same period Japan’s fear of Russia brought her into cooperation with Germany and Italy. This alignment was confirmed with the outbreak of war in Europe, for Germany’s victories in 1940 and her subsequent attack on Russia made it possible for Japan to envisage expansion into South-East Asia. Only the United States still constituted a serious threat to such a plan. In 1941 Japan’s leaders took the decision to forestall possible American action by destroying the U.S. Pacific fleet. There followed the attack on Pearl Harbour on 7 December 1941, which made the war world wide.

Within a few months Japanese troops had overrun a vast area, which included the Philippines, Burma, Malaya and the Netherlands East Indies (Indonesia). The victory was not final, however. American forces, backed by an enormous industrial effort, launched “island-hopping" campaigns across the central Pacific from Hawaii and through the south-west Pacific from New Guinea. By July 1944 bases had been secured which brought Japanese cities under attack from the air. A final campaign involved a land attack through Burma and amphibious assaults on islands immediately to the south of Japan. In fact, Japan was already tottering to defeat when, early in August, 1945, atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Surrender followed within a matter of days. (These subjects are dealt with at some length in the general histories; also in Borton, Japan’s modern century, chaps. 17 to 19.)

(5) Japan Since 1945

The military occupation of Japan, beginning in August 1945, led to far-reaching political changes. Allied policy under American leadership set out, not only to disarm Japan and punish her wartime leaders, but also to create the conditions in which democracy could develop. Accordingly, the first two or three years of the occupation saw a spate of reforms, initiated by the allied commander, General MacArthur, and his staff. Japan was given a new written constitution, in which the Cabinet was made responsible to an elected Diet of two houses (the Lower House being similar in its powers and functions to the British House of Commons, the Upper House being modelled rather on the U.S. Senate), the authority of the Emperor was sharply reduced, and the formation of new political parties and trade unions was encouraged. In addition there were reforms in the content and administration of education, as well as in the legal position of women (giving them equal status with men). In this way democracy was given an institutional framework which gave fresh impetus to social changes that had already begun under the influence of industrialisation.

This process was checked to some extent by growing world tensions after about 1948. Japan, in American eyes, became a potential ally, with the result that the policy of the occupation authorities began to emphasise economic recovery rather than political reform. In 1950 came a war in Korea between two regimes under Russian and American patronage respectively, in the course of which Japan became a major base for United Nations forces. This helped to stimulate the Japanese economy and also to bring a limited degree of re-armament in Japan. The logical end to this development came late in 1951, with a Japanese peace treaty signed by most of the Western bloc and the conclusion of a defence agreement between Japan and the United States. These came into force early in 1952. Despite many expressions of nationalist resentment and left-wing agitation against it, this American alliance has been maintained.

Since 1950 Japan’s economic position has steadily improved, despite a continually rising population and a lack of industrial raw materials (made all the more acute by loss of the China trade). Japanese markets in America and South-East Asia have grown considerably; and in trade generally new products like cameras and transistors have assumed an important place, signifying the higher level of technical skills now available to Japanese industry. Much of industry has been re-equipped, making it among the most modern in the world. In fact, in much of Japanese life things that were Western in origin have now taken their place as something completely normal: factories, modern transport, electricity, television, the curriculum of schools and universities, modem novels and films, social habits based upon them, clothing, even to some extent food. Traditional Japan is to be found in things like religion (Buddhism and Shinto), local festivals, domestic architecture, poetry and drama, some arts and crafts, many purely family relationships and much of the daily life of the remoter villages. Increasingly, however, the Japanese themselves are beginning to think of the traditional as “quaint”. Only a minority would wish it to return. (No one book deals adequately with Japan since 1945; those who wish to know more than the general histories give should follow up the bibliography given in Ivan Morris’s reading list on Japan, issued by the National Book League.)

(6) China Since 1945

In the closing stages of the war, when it became clear that Japan would be defeated, American mediators tried to effect a compromise between Chinese Nationalists and Communists. They failed, because the Nationalists would not relinquish their monopoly of office, and the Communists would not give up their separate army and territorial stronghold in Yenan. In fact, in 1947 fighting between the two sides became general. The Nationalists held the central and southern regions and the chief cities in the north. However, their communications were threatened by Communist guerillas in the countryside, especially on the route to Manchuria, where Russian policy had made Mao exceptionally strong. An unwise decision to fight for Manchuria led to the exhaustion of Chiang’s forces—initially more numerous and better equipped— and by 1949 the Communist Party’s control had been extended by its armies to the whole of China. Chiang K’ai-shek withdrew with the remnants of his followers to Formosa, while the mainland was declared a People’s Republic.

By this time the Nationalists had lost the support of most moderate elements in China by their police methods, corruption, and failure to check inflation. The Communists in Yenan, by contrast, had won a reputation for simplicity, tolerance, and sound government. Much of China, therefore, welcomed them and prepared to cooperate, not only peasants, who could hope for a redistribution of the land, but also many liberals, who were impressed by offers of a coalition government and by the effectiveness of Communist essays in economic policy. Policies which in varying forms.were common to almost all political parties in China were first put into operation. Land was redistributed and its working made cooperative. Industrialisation was begun under state leadership. Meanwhile the Communists used their better organisation to render all other parties powerless, so that while the rights granted by a superficially democratic constitution were not destroyed in theory, they came to exist in practice only at the pleasure of the Communist Party.

By 1956 the Communist Party had earned the reward of its political realism and patience, finding itself in a position to start the final stage of agrarian collectivisation and to absorb private trade and industry into a state system without bloodshed and with little discernible opposition. It had also begun to devote a massive part of the total national income to the building of heavy industry, producing a very high rate of industrial growth. Moreover, systematic prospecting has shown that China, far from being hampered by scarcity and awkward location of raw materials, has the means to become one of the three or four richest of the world’s industrial states. She has fine quality coal in virtually inexhaustible amounts, iron ore comparable with that of Canada in quality and quantity, copper resources as great as those of Chile, a substantial proportion of the world supply of molybdenum, antimony and tungsten.

China’s great industrial effort, entailing great sacrifices in other respects, has only been made possible by marshalling nationalist opinion. It is probable that most Chinese will judge the Communists, not only by changes in the standard of living, but also by whether or not China will be enabled, after a century of humiliation, to make her weight felt in the world. In this sense, China seems to be starting now on the course which Japan has already followed, albeit in a different political context. Certainly she has shown at least an equal sensitivity about foreign relations. Along her frontiers, in North Korea, Tongking (Viet Min) and Tibet, she has intervened by arms to protect her interests. A frontier dispute with India has been followed by what appears to be a political and ideological struggle with Russia over Communist world strategy. It remains to be seen how far these questions of foreign affairs may distract her from the task of building a strong industrial state at home. (The Chinese revolution is a controversial subject, on which the general histories all differ to some extent. A balanced and detailed account of its early stages will be found in B. Schwartz, Chinese Communism and the rise of Mao. Those who seek a more varied literature are recommended to the book list Modern China, prepared by Richard Harris and published by the National Book League.)

IV. Teaching Syllabus

The paragraphs above, outlining what might form the content of a course on Far Eastern history, are arranged as far as possible, in a manner which could fit into a fairly straightforward teaching syllabus, falling into two sections, one on traditional and one on modern society. Teachers will almost certainly differ widely in their decisions about the time to be devoted to each. Accordingly, in suggesting a division into five topics for each section, as is done below, it is assumed only that that this is a practicable mean, capable either of contraction or expansion.

A. Traditional Society

Geography
1. Approaches by land and sea
2. China and the neighbouring mainland
3. Japan
Traditional China: political structure
1. Dynasties
2. Mandarins
3. Confucianism
Traditional China: religion, art and science
1. Buddhism
2. Paper and printing; porcelain; painting
Traditional China: external relations
1. Relations with Europe (Silk Road, Marco Polo)
2. The steppe (Mongols, Manchus)
3. The area of Chinese culture (Tongking, Korea, Japan)
Traditional Japan
1. Chinese culture
2. Religion (Buddhism, Shinto)
3. Feudal institutions

Where less time is available, it would be possible with some pruning to combine item 2 with 3, and item 4 with 5. Where there is more time, greater attention could be given to relations with the West, as a separate lesson; to art and science, if there are facilities for illustrating the subject; and to traditional Japan, which is here very sketchily treated.

An alternative approach would be to make use of the links with Europe, or of names which are relatively familiar to the Western reader, as a means of introducing the various topics. For example, the Silk Road might serve as an approach to the area s geography, the travels of Marco Polo as a peg on which to hang a discussion or China’s external relations, Buddha and Confucius as names with which to open lessons on religion and political structure respectively. Similarly, it might be possible to refer to the more famous Japanese historical films of recent years (Rashomon and Seven Samurai) or to follow the career of Will Adams, the first Englishman to reach Japan, arriving there in 1600.

B. Modern Society

The Coming of the West
1. Maritime expansion in the 16th century
2. Growth of European trade in the 18th and 19th centuries
3. The treaty port system
The reactions of Japan
1. The creation of a modern state
2. Industrialisation
4. Social change
Japan’s external policies
1. Military modernisation
2. The wars of 1894-5, 1904-5, 1914-18
3. The origins and course of the Second World War
The reactions of China
1. The 19th century failure to reform
2. The revolution of 1911
3. The Republic and Kuomintang
The contemporary scene
1. Japan’s military defeat and its aftermath
2. The Chinese Communist revolution

Here again one might be able to combine item 2 with 3, item 4 with 5. Equally, one could easily expand the treatment of those aspects on which books are most readily available. This could be done in one of several ways: by a more detailed narrative of international history (using books by Fairbank, Langer, Jones); by a more extended study of Japanese society, especially by dealing at greater length with religion and with economic and social change (books by Dore, Holtom, Allen, Lockwood); or by an emphasis on recent developments in China (books by Schwartz and Fitzgerald).

V. Teaching and Reference Materials

(1) Maps

There is no historical atlas of Far Eastern history in a Western language and until recently relatively few good wall maps (except some German ones). However, a number of maps are now becoming available. Some of the more useful are those issued by George Philip and Son: a Graphic Relief Wall Map of Asia, which is excellent for illustrating the relationship of the Far East with the areas west of it; a Regional Wall Map of the Far East for general use; and a similar map of the Pacific Ocean which serves well for discussions of maritime exploration and such topics as the Second World War.

(2) Books

The following notes are intended primarily for the use of teachers, though some of the outline histories, at least, might well be read by pupils. Lists of other books that might be consulted appear in most of the general works listed here, as well as in two short Reader’s Guides issued by the National Book League: Japan by Ivan Morris (1960) and Modern China by Richard Harris (1961). Members of the staff of the School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London, Malet Street, London, W.G.l. will help with advice on specific difficulties wherever possible. (Enquiries should be addressed to the Education Officer.)

(a) General history and traditional society

On geography, the standard work is L. Dudley Stamp, Asia: a regional and economic geography (9th ed. London: Methuen, 1957). The best introductory surveys of Chinese and Japanese history, covering all periods, are L. C. Goodrich, A short history of the Chinese people (London: Allen and Unwin, 1948), and E. O. Reischauer, Japan Past and Present (London: Duckworth, 1947). There is an excellent book on traditional society, well illustrated and invaluable as a textbook: E. O. Reischauer and J. K. Fairbank, East Asia. The Great Tradition (London: Allen and Unwin, 1961); a second volume is in preparation, dealing with the 19th and 20th centuries. Another outstanding work on the period before 1800 is G. B. Sansom, Japan. A short cultural history (rev. ed. London: Cresset, 1952). For modem history, two useful textbooks are available: H. M. Vinacke, A history of the Far East in modern times (rev. ed. London: Allen & Unwin, 1960), and F. H. Michael and G. E. Taylor, The Far East in the modern world (London: Methuen, 1956). W. T. de Bary has edited two volumes of translations, with commentary, which provide an introduction to the history of religion and ideas, as well as illustrating much that appears in textbooks: Sources of the Japanese tradition (New York: Columbia U.P., 1958) and Sources of Chinese tradition (New York: Columbia U.P., 1960). Other books which might be consulted are:—

G. B. Cressey, Land of 500 million: a geography of China (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1955).

G. T. Trewartha, Japan. A physical, cultural and regional geography (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1945).

C. P. Fitzgerald, China. A short cultural history (London: Cresset, 1950).

G. B. Sansom, A history of Japan to 1334 (London: Cresset, 1958) and A history of Japan 1334-1615 (London: Cresset, 1961) A third volume covering the period 1615-1854 is in preparation.

P. E. Eckel, The Far East since 1500 (London: Harrap, 1948).

A. F. Wright, Buddhism in Chinese history (Stanford: Stanford U.P., 1959).

W. Willetts, Chinese Art (2 vols., Harmondsworth: Pelican, 1958).

L. Sickman and A. Soper, The art and architecture of China (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1956).

R. T. Paine and A. Soper, The art and architecture of Japan (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1955).

F. Hudson, Europe and China (London: Arnold, 1931).

The travels of Marco Polo (London: Everyman, 1950).

(b) Modern history and relations with the West

General textbooks on the modern history of the Far East have been mentioned above. Among more detailed studies, those concerning Japan are more plentiful (and often of higher standard) than those concerning China. For ease of reference they are listed here in three sections, dealing respectively with China, Japan and international relations; but it should be noted that some of those in the third category, notably the works of Fairbank, Boxer and Sansom, are also of major importance for the study of the domestic history of the countries concerned.

On China:—

Li Chien-nung, The political history of China, 1840-1928 (Princeton: Van Nostrand, 1956). Detailed, but not very readable.

C. P. Fitzgerald, Revolution in China (London: Cresset, 1952). An attempt to explain China’s latest revolution in Chinese terms.

Schwartz, Chinese Communism and the rise of Mao (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard U. P., 1951). The most reliable account of the origins of the present regime.

Teng Ssu-yu and J. K. Fairbank, China’s response to the West. A documentary survey, 1839-1923 (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard U.P., 1954). Translations illustrating Chinese attitudes to the problems of modernisation.

On Japan:—

Borton, Japan’s modern century (New York: Ronald, 1955). A balanced and fairly detailed account of Japanese history since 1850.

R. Storry, A history of modem Japan (Harmondsworth: Pelican. 1960). An introductory survey.

R. A. Scalapino, Democracy and the party movement in pre-war Japan (Berkeley: Univ, of Calif. Press, 1953). A good political history of the period 1868-1945.

G. C. Allen, A short economic history of modern Japan 1867-1937 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1946). A reliable, straightforward account.

W. W. Lockwood, The economic development of Japan. Growth and structural change 1868-1938 (Princeton: Princeton U.P., 1955). An analysis arranged under such topics as technology, capital, foreign trade, demand, resources, etc.

R. P. Dore, City life in Japan (London: Routledge, 1958). A sociological study of part of Tokyo in the 1950s, with special reference to the results of modernisation.

C. Holtom, The national faith of Japan. A study in modern Shinto (London: Routledge, 1938). Emphasises the relationship between Shinto and nationalism.

On international relations:—

R. Boxer, The Christian century in Japan, 1549-1650 (London: Cambridge U.P., 1951). A first rate account of Japan in the period of early contacts with the West.

G. B. Sansom, The western world and Japan (London: Cresset, 1950). A perceptive study of cultural relations from the 16th to the 19th century, with some early chapters on the Western approach to other parts of Asia.

W. C. Costin, Great Britain and China, 1833-1860 (Oxford, 1937). Diplomatic relations in the period of the “Opium” and “Arrow” wars, based largely on British archives.

J. K. Fairbank, Trade and diplomacy on the China coast (2 vols., Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard U.P., 1953). Covers only the years 1842-54, but makes excellent use of commercial archives and Chinese materials, as well as those of Western diplomacy.

W. L. Langer, The diplomacy of imperialism 1890-1902 (rev. ed. New York: Knopf, 1951). The standard work on Far Eastern international relations from the Sino-Japanese war of 1894 to the Anglo-Japanese alliance.

F. C. Jones, Japan’s New Order in East Asia: its rise and fall 1937-45 (London: O.U.P., 1954). Detailed and carefully documented.

J. K. Fairbank, The United States and China (2nd ed. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard U.P., 1958). An informative study of the background to present disputes between China and the United States.

(3) Museums

For those teachers who are able to make use of them, museum collections dealing with the Far East can help to give depth to a discussion of traditional society in the area. The following are the United Kingdom museums at which such collections are to be found:—

London:

British Museum: comprehensive collections of Chinese and Japanese art.

Victoria & Albert Museum: general collections of Chinese and Japanese art, but very few paintings. Particularly strong in ceramics and decorative arts and crafts.; also has some costumes and armour.

Percival David Foundation: Chinese ceramics of Imperial quality.

Oxford:

Museum of Eastern Art: general collection of Far Eastern art (includes the Ingram collection of Chinese bronzes and early ceramics).

Cambridge:

Fitzwilliam Museum: Chinese and Japanese ceramics; some jades, bronzes and minor arts.

Bristol:

City Art Gallery: Schiller collection of Chinese ceramics.

Port Sunlight:

Lady Lever Art Gallery: late Chinese ceramics.

Durham:

Durham University (Gulbenkian Museum of Oriental Art & Archaeology): small general collection of Far Eastern art, chiefly ceramics.

There are also smaller collections, chiefly of ceramics, in:

Glasgow Art Gallery.

Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.

Royal Scottish Museum, Edinburgh.

Stoke-on-Trent City Museum and Art Gallery.

W. G. Beasley. Notes on the Teaching of Far Eastern History. Teaching of History Leaflet No. 20. London, 1962

Notes on the Teaching of Far Eastern History

W. G. Beasley

Professor of the History of the Far East University of London

Acknowledgments

I. Notes on the Teaching of Far Eastern History

(1) The Far East

(2) Teaching Far Eastern History

II. Traditional Society

(A) (1) China: A Geographical Introduction

(2) China: Dynastic History

(3) Chinese Religion

(4) China: Art and Science

(5) China and the Barbarian

(B) Traditional Japan

III. Modern Society

(A) (1) Teaching Problems

(2) The Coming of the West

(B) (1) The Reaction of Japan

(2) Japan Becomes a World Power, 1894-1922

The Chinese Republic, 1911-1937

(4) Japan, China and the Second World War

(5) Japan Since 1945

(6) China Since 1945

IV. Teaching Syllabus

V. Teaching and Reference Materials

(1) Maps

(2) Books

Professor of the History of the Far East
University of London