Category Archives: Japan

by Joel | 7 October 2026 · 6:57 am

Manchukuo Quagmire Spreads, 1930s

From Japan, 1941: Countdown to Infamy, by Eri Hotta (Vintage, 2013), pp. 75-78:

By February 1932, the three Manchurian provinces of Liaoning, Heilongjiang, and Jilin were all under the control of the Japanese army. That garrison forces could occupy portions of China without formal approval sent a dangerous signal. Young and frustrated soldiers, willing to blame those in power for various social and economic difficulties facing Japan, had been wanting to force radical change for some time. Now inaction in Tokyo and the absence of clear instructions from the top invited further violent actions. The ancient samurai would have called this a retainer supplanting his lord. In modern military terms, it was simple insubordination. Yet no army leader was willing to put his foot down.

Japan’s actions in Manchuria marked a major step toward political isolation, even though very few Japanese recognized it as such. The Kwantung Army’s establishment of the puppet state of Manchukuo—comprising the captured provinces—was proclaimed on March 1, 1932. International condemnation followed. On May 15, a group of young naval officers and army cadets burst into the prime minister’s official residence and shot Inukai; he died that evening. The killers were alarmed that Inukai was becoming soft on China, possibly yielding Japanese control of Manchukuo. Japan had been an exemplary member of the League of Nations throughout most of its existence, but the country renounced its membership in March 1933 on account of Manchukuo.

Sino-Japanese relations did not break down entirely, however, because of the confluence of pragmatic interests on both sides. Through the mid-1930s Tokyo oscillated between a more cautious, even friendly, China policy and a hardline approach backed by military pressure. Chiang, preoccupied by the problem of consolidating his control over the rest of China, and especially by fighting the Communists who had established independent “Soviet Republics” in the hinterland of southern and central China, seemed willing to overlook the sticky question of Manchukuo for the time being. He certainly did his best to avoid major clashes with Japan in the north. Recognizing a window of opportunity, the Kwantung Army expanded Japan’s sphere of influence first toward Rehe (Jehol) Province, west of Manchuria, which became part of Manchukuo in 1933, and then toward the nearby areas of Hebei and Chahar (Inner Mongolia). In a series of Sino-Japanese agreements reached in 1933 and 1935, the Guomindang accepted humiliating terms that included partial demilitarization of North China, the withdrawal of the Guomindang organizations from Manchukuo’s vicinity, and the establishment of autonomous, pro-Japanese governments in East Hebei and Chahar.

At home, as Japanese society struggled to recover from the economic slump caused by, among other things, the worldwide depression, fear and unrest were growing. In this dismal atmosphere, on February 26, 1936, a nearly successful coup was launched in Tokyo by young army officers. The officers assassinated several key government figures before surrendering. Prince Saionji, the principal target of the assassins, escaped. Prime Minister Hirota Koki’s cabinet was formed on March 9, but only after Prince Konoe had declined to assume the post, claiming poor health. (He may well have not wanted to purge elements sympathetic to the rebel officers, as he himself wished to remain on good terms with them. His later attempt to pardon the indicted officers only corroborates this view.)

Hirota’s government now adopted a tougher foreign policy as a way to divert domestic discontent. It called for a military buildup in preparation for a possible war with China, the Soviet Union, and the Western powers, all the while making plans for advancing into Southeast Asia. The Japanese policy shift was immediately felt in China, which explains the volatile atmosphere at the Marco Polo Bridge. The number of Japanese troops had tripled in 1936, to almost six thousand, without prior consultation with the Chinese.

China’s domestic situation had substantially changed by then. Japanese expansionism and Chiang’s ambition of leading a strong, unified China could only cohabit for so long. Because of his earlier concessions to Japan, Chiang had become increasingly vulnerable to Communist propaganda, which painted him as a traitor to the nation who gave into Japanese imperialist pressure and who was willing to sacrifice fellow Chinese. The decisive turning point happened in December 1936, when Chiang was kidnapped by the Young Marshal, Zhang Xueliang, the son of Zhang Zuolin, a Manchurian warlord assassinated by the Japanese in 1928; Zhang wanted Chiang to join a united front against Japan together with the Communists. To preserve his legitimacy as China’s national leader, Chiang decided he could no longer afford to look conciliatory toward Japan. This meant that he and the Japanese army stopped sharing the same priority of defeating the Communists, be they Chinese or Soviet. This development, in turn, persuaded the Japanese military hardliners to push for a more aggressive policy, especially in the north, to sustain and maximize its existing interests.

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Filed under China, industry, Japan, migration, military, nationalism, U.N., USSR, war

by Joel | 6 October 2026 · 5:33 am

Tangled Loyalties: Aizu, Meiji, U.S.

From Japan, 1941: Countdown to Infamy, by Eri Hotta (Vintage, 2013), pp. 124-127:

In the summer of 1882, the year the Imperial Rescript to Soldiers and Sailors was issued, a tall and slender beauty with a perfectly oval face stood on a college auditorium platform in Poughkeepsie, New York. She was one of the select few in the graduating class asked to deliver a valedictory address based on her dissertation. Yamakawa Sutematsu stood out among her classmates at Vassar. She was class president, graduated magna cum laude, and was a member of several prestigious societies. She behaved like a perfect Western woman, but beneath her soft, elegant appearance and impeccable manners lay a will of steel. She was the first Japanese woman to be awarded a bachelor of arts degree.

Having lived in the United States since the age of eleven, Stematz (as she spelled her name for the benefit of her American peers) was a product of the successful social engineering undertaken by the young Meiji government, with help from goodwilled Americans. She was one of five girls sent to the United States on government stipends to become prototypes of the modern Japanese woman, an idea originally conceived by the samurai-turned-statesman Kuroda Kiyotaka, who was in charge of developing Hokkaido, the northernmost island of Japan. The minister was impressed with the American women he saw on a trip to the United States in 1871. He was especially impressed with the sturdy ladies he saw tilling the soil of the frontier alongside their men. Just as the American West was pioneered by both men and women, Kuroda reasoned, Japanese women, as wives, mothers, and even hard laborers, should play their part in the birth of Japan as a great nation.

The Yamakawas, a venerable old samurai family, were in the service of the lord of Aizu. In the Japanese civil war, Aizu backed the declining Tokugawa shogunate and, along with several other northern domains that did the same, was branded an enemy of the imperial court. In August 1868, in one of the final and fiercest battles of the war, Stematz, eight years old, fought together with the men and women of Aizu, who were under siege by enemy forces. She was in charge of preventing explosions in the domain’s castle by covering unexploded cannon shells with futon mattresses. Those shells were fired by a Satsuma battalion led by her future husband, Army Minister Oyama.

The northern rebel domains proved utterly powerless in the face of the British-backed technologies of the southern forces. With the fall of Aizu, the fortunes of the Yamakawa family declined as well. Something drastic had to be done to regain social respectability. Education was the best, and often the only, way to recover one’s status. At the time, the government was calling for applicants to study abroad, urging young people to acquire knowledge in the West. Many young men from the formerly well-to-do families of those fallen domains took on the challenge. Although very few families were willing to send their daughters so far away for so long, the Yamakawas, in dire straits, decided to send theirs.

Stematz thrived in the home of Leonard Bacon, an abolitionist clergyman in New Haven, Connecticut. Growing up with his fourteen children, she attended local schools before enrolling at Vassar. Her best friend was Bacon’s youngest daughter, Alice Mabel, who would help establish a women’s college in Japan many years later. Unlike some other Japanese students, who assimilated to the extent of almost losing their mother tongue altogether, Stematz, determined to keep her Japanese language skills, wrote letters home every day.

In the early summer of 1882, Stematz’s loyalties were many: to the new Japanese government, which enabled her to study in the United States; to her family, who tried to clear its rebel name; to the Bacons, who raised her as one of their own; and to Vassar, which enabled her to become an independent-thinking woman. She was eager to be of use in the real world.

Stematz’s homecoming at the end of 1882, after eleven years abroad, would be something of a disappointment. She was overeducated and overqualified for the jobs available to women in Meiji Japan. Then she married one of the most powerful men in the Meiji government. Oyama Iwao was a widower eighteen years her senior. He was also the general responsible for bringing down her family’s feudal domain. This would have been a union unimaginable in less enlightened circles. After the marriage, Stematz was able to initiate various philanthropic and educational enterprises.

The story of Prince Oyama and his Vassar bride was an example of how individual innovation, industry, grand ambition, and imagination could overcome the historical wounds that divided Japan. It was a union in which Japan’s future enemy, the United States, was a prime inspiration. Both Japan and the United States were emerging powers coming into their own just as the world itself was going through profound change. In the words of one historian, it was “a world of empires gained and maintained by military power,” and yet it was also “an internationalizing world; a world yearly more conscious of its one-ness” owing to economic interdependence, peace movements, and mass media (though the term “globalization” had not yet been coined). In a world of competing agendas and great uncertainties, Japan looked to the United States as a sympathetic mentor. “To catch up to and surpass the West” was the mantra of Japan’s national quest. And more often than not, the West meant the United States, not old Europe.

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Filed under democracy, education, Japan, migration, military, nationalism, U.S.

by Joel | 5 October 2026 · 5:47 am

1940 Olympics & 1937 Kamikaze

From Japan, 1941: Countdown to Infamy, by Eri Hotta (Vintage, 2013), pp. 80-83:

The China War cost Japan the chance to recover the international respectability it had lost with its incursion into Manchuria. In July 1936, exactly one year before the outbreak of the war, Tokyo had won its bid to host the Olympic Games in 1940. The Japanese had lobbied tirelessly for the honor. It was to be one of the most important national projects for modern Japan, the first non-Western country to host the games. Construction of stadiums began swiftly. By 1938, though, international pressure on Japan to give up the games had been mounting. Some countries, including the United States, hinted at a boycott. With no end to the China War in sight, the military, worried about its resource requirements, suggested that only lumber and stone be used for projects related to the games. Major newspapers that had been the biggest cheerleaders for the Tokyo Olympics became conspicuously silent on the issue. In late June 1938, Konoe’s cabinet placed quotas on the use of industrial materials meant for projects other than war. This effectively put an end to Japan’s Olympic dream. Tokyo would have to wait another two dozen years for its moment of Olympic glory.

Ironically, the hardening of international opinion against Japan took place just as the country was experiencing a surge in self-confidence apart from its military might. At the 1937 Paris Exposition, the thirty-six-year-old architect Sakakura Junzo, a disciple of Le Corbusier, won the top prize for his Japanese Pavilion. In August, Tokyo proudly hosted the World Federation of Education Associations’ seventh biennial conference, the first to be held in Asia, which was attended by three thousand participants from forty-eight countries. And then there was the flight of the Kamikaze. When the two-seater left Tokyo on April 6, 1937, nobody in Europe seemed to have taken any notice of the great challenge that its twenty-four-year-old pilot, Iinuma Masaaki, and thirty-six-year-old flight engineer, Tsukagoshi Kenji, had undertaken. Japan was a completely unknown quantity in the glamorous but highly dangerous world of record-setting long-distance air races dominated by European and North American pilots. The Japanese flight was ostensibly planned to celebrate the coronation of King George VI, to be held on May 12, and to make goodwill visits to various European capitals. It was, in fact, a great publicity stunt for the Asahi, which followed in the footsteps of European newspapers by employing its own pilots to promote itself (and to gather news, of course).

The Kamikaze vogue became much more than a corporate advertisement as the whole nation became engrossed in the exploits of the two fliers. The aircraft, a test plane manufactured by Mitsubishi in Nagoya for military reconnaissance, was touted as “purely” Japanese-made, adding to the patriotic fervor. (Actually, the metals to construct it had come from somewhere else, as did the gasoline to fly it. And Tsukagoshi was half English.) The name of the plane was chosen from approximately five hundred thousand entries from Asahi readers. The naming ceremony on April 1 was presided over by Imperial Prince Higashikuni Naruhiko, the emperor’s uncle by marriage, making the flight’s success all the more a matter of national pride.

The Western media, indifferent at first, became enthralled. By the time the plane left Karachi and entered Mediterranean airspace on April 8, Europe began to hold its breath. On April 9, the plane appeared in the sky over the southern London neighborhood of Croydon. The aircraft circled around a few times, as if to please the cheering crowd of four thousand, including three hundred Japanese filled with joy and pride. The plane made an impeccable landing at half past three. The two aviators had established a long-distance world record, flying between Tokyo and London in fifty-one hours, nineteen minutes, and twenty-three seconds, with an average speed of 185.9 miles (299.2 kilometers) per hour. The Times of London reported: “As the airmen struggled to the ground from Divine Wind, they were greeted with cheers and cries of ‘Banzai’ (‘live forever’), were decked with garlands of flowers and were submitted to an ordeal of handshaking and congratulation.” The two continued to receive an enthusiastic welcome, winning great accolades, including the Legion of Honor accorded by the French government. In Brussels, on April 16, they were presented with flowers by Suwa Nejiko, a former child prodigy about to launch her career as a concert violinist in Europe, along with the family of the Japanese ambassador to Belgium, Kurusu Saburo.

Not unlike the Kamikaze aviators, the violinist Suwa had known something of the weight of enormous national expectations. Her success on the international stage had been a great source of Japanese pride for most of her young life. Still, she was like any other awestruck seventeen-year-old when she met the pilots. “How dreamy they are, both of them! Mr. Iinuma particularly is so very handsome … and I could just stare and admire him as much as I liked! Such a happy day it’s been!” she recorded in her diary. This brief encounter in a Brussels airport presented a snapshot of the youthful beauty and exuberance that would soon elude Japan, like an ever-fleeting mirage. It was an image of Japan that could have been.

To celebrate the success of the Kamikaze flight, the proud sponsor published a message to the British nation in the pages of The Times on April 10, 1937. The flight, it said, would foster “an atmosphere of peace and cordiality in the midst of the storms and thunder which rage over international relations today and threaten the world peace of tomorrow.” If only that had been true. Alas, Konoe’s leadership did not live up to the feats of the Kamikaze.

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Filed under Britain, China, France, industry, Japan, military, nationalism, science, travel, war

by Joel | 4 October 2026 · 6:05 am

Tojo’s Pessimism, 1941

From Japan, 1941: Countdown to Infamy, by Eri Hotta (Vintage, 2013), pp. 29-30, 35:

Tojo, in his selective explanation of the events leading to Pearl Harbor, insisted that the war Japan had just initiated was a “defensive” war. He faithfully echoed Japan’s deep-seated feelings of persecution, wounded national pride, and yearning for greater recognition, which together might be called, for the want of a better phrase, anti-Westernism. It was a sentimental speech, and it was notable for what was left unsaid.

There had been no clear-cut, overwhelming consensus among the Japanese leaders to take preemptive actions in the Pacific and Southeast Asia. Many remained hopelessly uncertain and ambivalent about their decision. True, Tojo is famous for having said, “Occasionally, one must conjure up enough courage, close one’s eyes, and jump off the platform of the Kiyomizu,” and these words, referencing a Buddhist temple in Kyoto known for a veranda that juts out over a cliff, are often cited as a sign of his rash adventurism. But even Tojo, vilified as a military dictator who blindly pushed Japan into war, felt torn, especially in the two months preceding the attack. Throughout the course of the government’s final discussions over going to war, Tojo was acutely aware of the small possibility of Japanese victory. As a result, at the last minute, he tried to conciliate those who argued for immediate war. When he became prime minister on October 18, 1941, the first task he set himself was to attempt to resurrect diplomatic options with the United States.

Some leaders were misguidedly hopeful, but none were confident of Japan’s eventual victory. Tojo’s predecessor, Prince Konoe Fumimaro, a civilian politician, was prime minister on and off for nearly three of the four years immediately prior to Pearl Harbor. His flirtations with a totalitarian style of leadership did incalculable damage to Japan’s international standing and helped to maximize the military voice in the government. But at the same time, Konoe was unmistakably against a war with the West. According to his aide and son-in-law, Hosokawa Morisada, upon hearing the news of Japan’s entry into war, Konoe barely managed to say, “What on earth! I really feel a miserable defeat coming. This [favorable situation for Japan] will only last two or three months.”

…

One should not, of course, underestimate the enormous pressure these leaders faced on the eve of Pearl Harbor. They felt they had to choose between waging a reckless war and giving up all of Japan’s imperialistic conquests of many years in order to stave off war. They tended to ignore that such extreme choices grew directly out of their own recent decisions and actions. As they made more diplomatic missteps and committed themselves to an impracticable war, claiming all the while to be more prepared than they ever were, their range of policy options both at home and with the outside world narrowed considerably. It was as if Tokyo had gotten stuck in the thin end of a funnel. The war option, it must have seemed to those leaders, provided the quickest and surest way of breaking free of that constricting situation. That they didn’t think about what would happen afterward was a tragic act of negligence.

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Filed under Japan, military, nationalism, Pacific, Southeast Asia, U.S., war

by Joel | 3 October 2026 · 5:11 am

Japan’s Diplomacy Fails, 1941

From Japan, 1941: Countdown to Infamy, by Eri Hotta (Vintage, 2013), pp. 47-48:

With the German military successes in Europe since the spring of 1940, the call for solidifying Japan’s ties with Germany resurfaced. Still believing that a fascist alliance would be a mistake, Navy Minister Yoshida Zengo, in the autumn of 1940, opposed the signing of an Axis pact with such vehemence that a heart condition (but some also speculate a failed suicide attempt) landed him in the hospital, forcing him to resign right before the German negotiators arrived in Tokyo. Without Yoshida, and with more and more admirers of Germany in their midst (owing in no small part to the initial blitzkrieg successes), the navy agreed to support the pact, as long as it was explicit that Japan would not automatically be required to participate in a German war with the United States. (For falling in line with the government and army preferences, the navy was promised a bigger budget.) A new era of Japanese diplomacy had begun.

In early 1941, rumors of war began to circulate within Tokyo’s diplomatic community. The deteriorating relations with Japan prompted the United States to start bringing back home family members of the U.S. embassy personnel stationed in Japan. An American school in Tokyo was forced to announce its closure in February, just as a major publisher released a book predicting and analyzing a hypothetical Japanese-American war (won by Japan, naturally), which sold fifty-three thousand copies in one month.

Japan’s relations with Britain, too, had been strained of late. Traditionally, the British attitude toward Japan had been one of pragmatism and conciliation. In July 1939, the two countries had reached the Arita-Craigie Agreement, signed by Foreign Minister Arita Hachiro and British ambassador Sir Robert Craigie: Britain had agreed to neither actively resist nor legally recognize Japanese conduct in China. One year after that agreement, in July 1940, Britain conceded to Japan’s request to close the Burma Road, a vital supply route for the transportation of materials to Chiang Kai-shek. But Japan’s occupation of northern Indochina finally prompted Britain to abandon its appeasement policy. In December 1940, Britain agreed to lend £10 million to the Guomindang and to reopen the Burma Road. And in the north, one shouldn’t forget, lurked the Soviet Union, with its threat of Bolshevism. Japan started 1941 facing more enemies than it was ever prepared to handle.

For the Japanese people, 1941 was a year of less and less food and fuel. The struggling epicurean Kafu, who had developed an overwhelmingly carnivorous appetite during his long stays in the United States and France, was always ready to pay a good price for a good meal. But even he had tremendous problems. “Compared to half a year ago,” he complained that spring, “the quality of meat and vegetables has declined drastically.” This was only the beginning. Within a few months, he would write: “I have not seen any vegetables or fruit for the past few days. Tofu isn’t sold, either. People are feeling distressed.” Even a gourmet grocer in the fashionable Ginza district, famous for its pampered fruits (the shiniest apples wrapped in delicate washi paper, fragrant melons sold in individual wooden boxes, and the like), did not have anything to sell, except for a few measly peaches. As for the meat that Kafu so craved: “No beef to be seen anywhere.” And for cooking and heating, citizens had to make do with charcoal, since petroleum and coal were reserved for military use. Public buses ran on charcoal, and those resources were beginning to get scarce.

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Filed under Britain, China, economics, energy, food, Germany, Japan, military, U.S., USSR, war

by Joel | 2 October 2026 · 4:47 am

Japan Celebrates, 1941

From Japan, 1941: Countdown to Infamy, by Eri Hotta (Vintage, 2013), pp. 20-21, 24:

In the early-morning hours of a frosty day, December 8, 1941, the Japanese nation woke to astonishing news. It was announced, shortly after seven, that Japan had “entered into a situation of war with the United States and Britain in the Western Pacific before dawn.” Though no specifics were given, by then the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, on Oahu, had been successfully attacked—the first wave of planes was dispatched at 1:30 a.m., Japanese time, and the surprise operation was completed by 5:30 a.m. When news of the attack arrived at 11:30 a.m., the nation was electrified. This was soon followed by Japan’s formal declaration of war on the Allies and the report of its further military successes in British Malaya and Hong Kong. (The Malayan operation actually preceded the Pacific offensive by almost two hours.) Throughout the day, the public broadcasting network, NHK, aired twelve special news reports in addition to six regularly scheduled ones for the millions of Japanese glued to their radios. On what, because of the time difference, had been December 7 in Hawaii, the air force division of the Imperial Japanese Navy had sunk or damaged numerous ships, aircraft, and military facilities. About twenty-four hundred people were killed in the raid or died shortly afterward from their injuries. The devastating attack was carried out without a formal termination of diplomatic relations by Japan, let alone a declaration of war, a heavy, infamous legacy for the nation. But such tactical details did not interest ordinary Japanese citizens on December 8. The immediate public reaction was one of celebration.

When Japan sent planes to attack Pearl Harbor, it was mired in economic and political uncertainties. A sense of helplessness pervaded its population as the state took more and more control of public life. From the beginning of Japan’s war with China in mid-1937, its people were led to believe a swift, decisive victory was imminent. Despite all the announcements of Japanese victories in China, however, the Guomindang (a.k.a. Kuomintang, frequently referred to as the Nationalist Party) leader Chiang Kai-shek was not about to give up. Similar to Napoleon’s army in Russia, the Japanese forces were drawn far too deep into harsh, unfamiliar terrain to carry out an effective operation. The jingoistic tone of Japan’s media coverage continued regardless, but people were privately beginning to question why the war had not ended. Though largely ignorant of the true state of Japanese diplomacy, they had been told that Nomura Kichisaburo, a navy admiral and former foreign minister, had been dispatched to Washington, D.C., in early 1941 to negotiate a peaceful solution to Japan’s international isolation. But no good news was forthcoming, and its absence made people fearful. Many knew the United States was upset over recent Japanese initiatives—such as allying with Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy and occupying first northern and then southern French Indochina—and seemed intent, unless a diplomatic settlement could be reached soon, on crippling Japan with economic sanctions.

…

But December 8, 1941, changed everything. The gloom of the national impasse that had arisen over the past couple of years turned almost instantly into euphoria as most Japanese cheered the successful attack. A man who was a second grader at the time of the attack, whose father owned a radio shop in Tokyo, recalled his surprise at the sight of a long line forming in front of his father’s store. People were waiting to get their radio sets repaired, in anticipation of more special government announcements. He never saw his father do so much business in one day before or after.

There was very little of the famous Japanese reserve. Strangers congratulated each other on the street. Others gathered at the public square outside the Imperial Palace in the heart of Tokyo, falling to the ground and thanking the emperor for his divine guidance of their nation. Aboard an overcrowded train that evening, the diarist Kafu detachedly observed “a fellow making speeches in shrill voice,” apparently unable to contain his excitement over the day’s news. This outpouring of emotion stood in stark contrast to the many contrived victory celebrations orchestrated by the government over the previous few years in an effort to rouse support for its lingering war in China.

Men of letters were not immune to the Pearl Harbor spell. One of the most distinguished poets of twentieth-century Japan, Saito Mokichi, fifty-nine at the time, recorded in his diary: “The red blood of my old age is now bursting with life! … Hawaii has been attacked!” The thirty-six-year-old novelist Ito Sei wrote in his journal: “A fine deed. The Japanese tactic wonderfully resembles the one employed in the Russo-Japanese War.” Indeed, that war started with Japan’s surprise attack on Russian ships in Port Arthur on February 8, 1904, two days before Japan’s formal declaration of war. Japan won that war.

Even those Japanese who had previously disapproved of their country’s expansionism in Asia were excited by Japan’s war with the West. In an instant, the official claim, gradually adopted by the Japanese government over the preceding decade, of liberating Asia from Western encroachment gained legitimacy in their eyes. Until then, the innately self-contradictory nature of fighting an anti-imperialist war for Asia against fellow Asians in China had tormented them.

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by Joel | 1 October 2026 · 2:11 am

Japan Promotes Austerity, 1940

From Japan, 1941: Countdown to Infamy, by Eri Hotta (Vintage, 2013), pp. 22-23:

The deglamorization of city life signified the resounding triumph of a publicity campaign to promote nationwide austerity—prompted by the prolongation of Japanese military engagement in China—that started in the summer of 1940. Fifteen hundred signs bearing slogans such as “A True Japanese Cannot Afford to Be Indulgent” and “Luxury Is the Enemy” (Zeitaku wa Tekida) were put up all over Tokyo (though the insertion of one syllable by a graffitist often turned the latter phrase into “Luxury Is Wonderful” [Zeitaku wa Su-Tekida]).

Volunteers from patriotic women’s associations took to the streets, leading this campaign. These righteous women admonished those who, in their vigilant eyes, wore the kind of lavish clothes they themselves had given up, and they handed out note cards asking them to “please exercise self-restraint.” Women who wore permed hairdos, rings, nail polish, lipstick, or gold-rimmed glasses were also targeted because they were seen as endorsing a “corrupt” and “individualistic” Western lifestyle. There was some angry resistance to this type of witch-hunting. One woman was spotted crying and shouting hysterically, “I can’t stand this!” A young man strutted down the street wearing makeup, daring the patriotic fashion police: “Well, aren’t you going to say something?” But these were very small acts of defiance in the larger scheme of things.

Department stores, once places where dreams were sold, came under strict surveillance, too. Every store was told to enforce a one-item-per-customer policy to discourage excessive spending, which was deemed disrespectful of the general austerity efforts. In 1935, the cosmetics company Shiseido began having beautifully presented “service girls” give free makeup lessons to customers at its department store counters, increasing sales of its beauty lotion twenty-three-fold within two years. But as the China War dragged on, “wartime care packages” replaced cosmetics as top-selling products. These packages, filled with little snacks, handkerchiefs, pencils, and notepads, were sent to soldiers at the front as a show of moral support from home.

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by Joel | 7 September 2026 · 5:54 am

Early Chinese Views of Taiwan

From Empire of the Winds: The Global Role of Asia’s Great Archipelago, by Philip Bowring (I.B. Tauris, 2018), Kindle p. 243:

Some of those Austronesian ways and skills could be found too among the peoples of Taiwan – except the sailing ability. Taiwan remained almost completely off the trade map despite the fertility of its western lowlands, its proximity to the China coast, to Okinawa and the Japan trade, and, via island stepping stones, to Luzon. Geographically Taiwan is linked to the Asian mainland, of which it was once a part, while separated from Luzon by the deep waters of the Bashi channel. But in other ways it was much closer to Luzon. Many of its peoples shared language and culture with those of the Philippine archipelago. Why was it that the inhabitants of this large island, unlike those of the Philippines and Ryukyus, turned their backs on the sea and made their living from the land and forests? There is no ready explanation. Although evidence of some overseas trade dating to around 2,500 BP is provided from discoveries of Taiwanese jade elsewhere and Indian glass beads on the island, the identity of the traders is not known. As in the archipelago, there was not a specific bronze age, iron- and bronze-working arriving about the same time.

Even Chinese annals had very little to say about Taiwan despite its proximity. There were occasional traders and fishermen visiting from the mainland, but almost nothing written about it. One of the few who did write was Ma Duanlin, a compiler of knowledge about China’s neighbours. Writing around 1300 and using varied sources, he described characteristics of the people including hair and dress styles, crops, foods, animals, intertribal wars and the freedom of the young men and woman to choose partners without parental consent. They were not literate and followed a lunar calendar but were strong and good fighters. Ma noted that in around 606, during the Sui dynasty, the emperor had sent a mission to learn more about the place and demand the king send tribute. This was refused, so the emperor sent forces which killed the king and many others and destroyed his palace. But thereafter ‘all communication with the country ceased.’ (Ma referred to the island as Liu Kiu (Ryukyu), but the size and position clearly meant that he was referring to Taiwan.)

The early seventeenth century saw a Chinese expedition against (mainland) pirates using Taiwan as a base, which gave rise to An Account of the Eastern Barbarians by Chen Di, written in 1603. Chen noted a matrilineal kinship system, and the easy relations between young men and women. He remarked on the ability of the men to run down and catch deer. They ate all parts of the deer including the intestines and their contents, which appalled the Chinese, but they in return were appalled by Chinese eating chickens. ‘Strange indeed are the Eastern Barbarians,’ wrote Chen.

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Filed under China, economics, food, Japan, language, migration, Philippines, Taiwan

by Joel | 5 September 2026 · 6:13 am

Flowering of Malay Law and Literature

From Empire of the Winds: The Global Role of Asia’s Great Archipelago, by Philip Bowring (I.B. Tauris, 2018), Kindle p. 224:

Melaka did not just become a renowned commercial centre. It also saw the flowering of Malay law, governance and literature. Long after the sultanate had ceased to exist, it remained the embodiment of all that was noble in the Malay world. This was the product both of its own Palembang-Melayu origins and of the multi-ethnic character of a city where Tamils, Gujaratis, Chinese, Javanese, Arabs, Persians, Ryukyans, Buginese and others could all be found. ‘In the port of Melaka alone very often 84 languages have been found spoken […] In the archipelago which begins at Singapore and Karimun up to the Malukus there are 40 known languages.’ Traders from Egypt, Persia and Arabia, and others such as Turks and Armenians were also there. They could not reach Melaka in a single monsoon but came via Gujarat with trade goods ranging from arms to pearls and including opium from Jeddah and Aden.

At its height prior to the Portuguese conquest, it had four syahbandars, or trade superintendents. The syahbandars were responsible for managing markets and warehouses and checking weights and coinage. There was one for (mostly Muslim) Gujaratis, the biggest group, one for Tamils and Bengalis, one for the archipelago including Java, Luzon and Maluku, and one for China, Champa and the Ryukyus. The syahbandar trader groups show that trade with India and points west was extensive while the Chinese role by the early sixteenth century, following official restrictions on trade by the Ming, was relatively modest. Disputes between trading communities were settled by the ruler. The reputation for good governance further increased Melaka’s role. No one did more for Melaka than Sultan Mansur (reigned 1459–77). In 1468 he wrote to the King of the Ryukyus, which were almost equally trade-dependent: ‘We have learned that to master the blue oceans people must engage in commerce even if their countries are barren […] Life has never been so affluent in previous generations as it is today.’ Likewise, in 1515 the Portuguese ruler of Melaka would write to his king: ‘Melaka has nothing of its own and everything of the world.’

Melaka gave birth to the Sulalat al-Salatin (Genealogies of the Sultans), which became the Sejarah Melayu (Malay Annals), a semi-historical work which aimed to entertain and inspire new generations with edifying stories of past monarchs, their trials and achievements. It traced the Melaka kings back to Alexander (Iskandar) the Great, via India and a sacred hill in Palembang. The dynasty, according to the Sejarah, prospered and long resisted Javanese domination, but was eventually driven out by treachery, forcing its move to Temasek, which it renamed ‘Singapura’, and eventually to Melaka.

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by Joel | 1 September 2026 · 6:35 am

Trade with Tang and Sung China

From Empire of the Winds: The Global Role of Asia’s Great Archipelago, by Philip Bowring (I.B. Tauris, 2018), Kindle pp. 170, 172:

Trade was very much two-way, with Chinese manufactures in strong demand in return for the exotic products of the south and west. Trade was also highly profitable for the government, which normally took 30 per cent of imported products to sell. Yet Chinese merchants were not involved in this burgeoning overseas trade. As in earlier times, as previously noted, it was foreign ships which carried Chinese monks and pilgrims to Sumatra or Java and then on to Sri Lanka or India. The expansion of trade led the central government to appoint a special official, the Commissioner for Trading with Foreign Ships, to regulate it and try to ensure that revenues were collected by the state and not by local officials. Foreign captains were required to register their names and cargoes and were imprisoned for attempting smuggling, though bribery of officials charged with inspecting cargoes was commonplace. But for a long time Chinese ships were not permitted to sail overseas.

This ban began to be relaxed during the Tang era. Local officials in the south were likely to be more sympathetic to trade than those in the capital. Later, members of the imperial family itself as well as senior officials may have engaged in it via middlemen. Nonetheless, the official ban combined with the volume of trade explains why Guangzhou came to be host to a huge population of foreign merchants and others to support trading activities, a population of Arabs, Persians, Parsees, Tamils, Jews and so on that may have numbered more than a hundred thousand. There was also a sizeable settlement at Yangzhou at the southern terminus of the Grand Canal. But relations were not always easy, and rich foreigners were sometimes a target. Many were massacred in Yangzhou at the time of a major rebellion against the Tang in 760, and thousands were said to have been killed in Guangzhou during the 878 rebellion. This shut down trade for several years.

…

Noting the profits, Song rulers finally saw the benefits of allowing Chinese to go overseas. As they did so, the need for the old state-focused tribute system declined. The Confucian disdain for trade had long been an elite facade, and now it was stripped away and the nobility participated directly in trade. The arrival of Chinese traders indeed helped the lesser ports of Nusantaria to develop, undermining the dominance of Srivijaya. There was a surge in shipbuilding, with Song-era wrecks found off the coasts of Fujian and Zhejiang revealing vessels up to 34 metres in length with a beam of 9 metres. Unlike Nusantarian designs, they had bulkheads and were joined by iron nails, not wooden dowels.

During the Song period China made advances in shipbuilding, advances that included the construction of large, ocean-going vessels which could reach India and beyond. However, it is not clear how much they were used in trade, which continued to be dominated by Arabs, with Persians, Tamils and Nusantarians all playing roles. With so little archaeological evidence to go on, it is difficult to track the evolution of ship designs and how far Song China borrowed ideas from the Nusantarian, Tamil and Arab vessels with which they were familiar – or vice versa. What we can be sure of is that China’s seagoing progress in the Song period, driven by the combination of commercial enterprise and the tax needs of the state, made possible the avowedly expansionist policy of its successor, the Mongol Yuan dynasty.

The main export cargoes were ceramics, which became common throughout Nusantaria and also in Japan. According to early thirteenth century Chinese sources, the ceramics trade was mainly in foreign hands. Ports that have now vanished thrived.