Colonialism....It isnt for Everyone!

Arrival of Commodore Perry and his Black Ships in Japan

            Colonialism caused a great deal of devastation for Japan who at the time had limited natural resources. Japan a modest country in comparison to the United States desired to fight off the colonial western powers that interfered with what they considered their natural Asian heritage in  China. It is interesting to note that China and Japan had a very intimate relationship before colonialism and as fact most of the Japanese language contains the Chinese manuscript. However the United States and Japan had a very tense history especially after Japan was threatened to open her borders to western influence or suffer invasion.

             In 1849, Captain James Glynn sailed to Nagasaki, leading at last to the first successful negotiation by an American with "Closed Country" Japan. James Glynn recommended to the United States Congress that negotiations to open Japan be backed up by a demonstration of force, thus paving the way for CommodorePerry's expedition/forced treaty (Cullen, p.12-36). The Convention of Kanagawa in 1854 assured that the western powers who were a much stronger military power would always lay claim to the natural resources of Japan. According to Tokugawa Nariaki, a prominent daimyo who ruled the Mito domain, "To exchange our valuable articles like gold, silver, copper, and iron for useless foreign goods like woolens and satin is to incur great loss while acquiring not the smallest benefit "(Beasley, p.102-107). Japanese and U.S. relations had been strained since the encroachment of the U.S. on Japanese soil less than a century earlier and no forced treaty could ever resolve the devastating blow to the Japanese esteem.

Odaiba battery at the entrance of Tokyo, built in 1853-54 to prevent an American intrusion

  Colonialism was always a fear of Japan since the encroachment of their borders by the U.S. in the mid 19th century. The annexing of "Asian" heritage lands  fueled the Japanese with anti- American sentiments. According to a Japanese diplomat Mamoru Shigemitsu, "The Japanese were completely shut out from the European colonies. In the Philippines, Indo-China, Borneo, Indonesia, Malaya, Burma, not only were Japanese activities forbidden, but even entry into those nation/states. Ordinary trade was hampered by unnatural discriminatory treatment. In a sense the Manchurian outbreak was the result of the international closed economies that followed on the first World War. There was a feeling at the back of it that it provided the only escape from economic strangulation (Shigemitsu, 208)." Understanding the past relationship with the United States help shed light on the mindset of the Japanese government before the start of the war effort in which the atomic bomb was used killing more than 120,000 soldiers, men, women and innocent children.

Works Cited:

Beasley, W. G. "Select Documents on Japanese Foreign Policy 1853-1868, Oxford University Press.

Cullen, Louis M. (2003). A History of Japan, 1582-1941: Internal and External Worlds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.