contributed to the very different development of
the two nations after the incursion of the West in
eastern Asia.
In 1895 Japan had just brought to a victori-
ous conclusion a war with China over the ques-
tion of the suzerainty of Korea. As part of its
peace terms it had forced China into territorial
concessions. This step by the Japanese into what
the European powers wished to keep as their pre-
serve led to an angry reaction by France, Germany
and Russia, which demanded that Japan give up
its territorial spoils in China. It was with a
national sense of humiliation that the Japanese
rulers bowed to this pressure.
The Japanese, who had lived at peace with
China for close on a thousand years, had learned
from the West that a great power must acquire an
empire and exercise power beyond the national
frontier. But Japan was not treated as an equal.
This realisation marks a turning point in the
Japanese outlook. It was necessary to study every
move carefully; Japan would succeed only by the
judicious use of force coupled with guile and then
only if the Western powers were divided and so
could not combine against it.
A complex two-tier decision-making process
developed from 1901, after which time no indi-
vidual genro led the government; policy was first
discussed between the different groups in the gov-
ernment and then by the genro. This reinforced
the tendency to discuss fully all aspects, advan-
tages and disadvantages, of every important policy
decision. The emperor was the supreme authority.
The genro were expected in the end to submit to
him an agreed decision for his formal consent. But
in the Meiji era the emperor’s influence was con-
siderable and he could to some degree steer and
prolong genro discussions on important issues on
which there were differences of opinion. In its
fullest and most constructive form this deliberate
way of reaching group decisions after long and
careful discussion lasted until about the First
World War, when the advancing age of the surviv-
ing genro weakened their influence. The influence
of Emperor Meiji’s descendants did not match his
own. His son, whose reign lasted from 1912 to
1926, was weak in health and mind; his grandson,
Emperor Hirohito, was supreme only in theory
but followed until 1945 the advice of Japan’s mil-
itary and political leaders. The post-Meiji emper-
ors were kept aloof from any real role in the
making of decisions. In later decades the Japanese
looked back on the Meiji era as a period of brilliant
success abroad as well as at home, a golden age.
Japan’s policy towards the eastern Asian main-
land from 1900 until the outbreak of the Great
War in Europe illustrates both circumspection
and, ultimately, boldness. There was an attempt to
steer a middle course between the exponents of
expansion and the more cautious groups who
wished to strengthen Japan in Korea by means of
commerce and influence rather than outright ter-
ritorial control. With the acceptance of the alliance
Britain offered in January 1902 – after long debate
and scrutiny – the Japanese leaders knew that, if it
came to war with Russia, Japan could count on
Britain’s military help if any other power joined
Russia against it. By diplomacy the Japanese had
ensured that they would not be blocked by a
united European front aligned against it as in- The genro decided for war in February
- But in launching a war against Russia the
mood was not one of arrogance. The Japanese
leaders knew they were taking a carefully calcu-
lated risk. They hoped to do well enough to gain
Japan’s most important aims: expansion of terri-
tory on the Asian mainland and security for Japan
and its empire. Specifically the Japanese were
determined to achieve dominance over Korea and
southern Manchuria.
The genro, at the time they decided on war,
were already considering how the war might be
ended in good time. There was no expectation that
Russia could be completely defeated. Russia was
not brought to the point where it could not have
continued the war, although its navy was annihi-
lated and Japan also won spectacular successes on
land. Yet the Japanese, too, were exhausted by the
war and, through President Theodore Roosevelt’s
mediation, secured a peace treaty which brought
them great gains. These gains, however, fell short
of their expectations. There were riots in Japan
when the peace terms became known in September - The Japanese people wanted Russia to
acknowledge defeat by paying reparation. The
Russians refused to do so and the genro knew that