3 - Between Two Races – The Birth of the Racial Middle Ground between Japan and the West

Summary

In the previous chapter, we saw how Fukuzawa Yukichi translated the concept of race and adapted it to suit the needs of modern Japan. This was a crucial step, as it acquainted the Japanese people with race and gave the Japanese elite an additional conceptual tool to understand the West. The nation was now aware that international relations were also conducted through the lens of race, and that Japan was at the bottom of a racial hierarchy alongside other ‘coloured’ people. However, this understanding makes us reach the crossroads mentioned in the introduction of this book. Fukuzawa's work is essential for further discussions about the conceptualisation of race at the domestic level. Yet, it is not enough to grasp the process behind the construction of the Japanese racial identity on the world stage. The reason is that, simply put, race was a game for which the rules were decided in the West. The adaptations Fukuzawa made to the concept did not influence the international racial standing of the Japanese inside. It is safe to assume that at the beginning of the Meiji period, policy makers in the West were not interested to know that some Japanese intellectual rejected biological determinism. In fact, keeping an international mindset, it is of secondary importance whether the Japanese even truly believed in the validity of race. The Western nations did, and that meant that if Japan wanted to have a place in international relations, it had to take the Western definition of it into account. The Japanese, however, were not forced to remain passive. If one continues the metaphor of a game, they may not have been able to decide the rules, but they were certainly able to influence the way in which these were interpreted.

As already mentioned, during the Meiji period, international relations had long become interracial relations as well. As the Australian Prime Minister Alfred Deakin (1856–1919) put it, the British Empire was ‘divided broadly in two parts, one occupied wholly or mainly by a white ruling race, the other principally occupied by coloured races who are ruled’. This pattern became so common that by 1914, less than one fifth of the world was free of European or American encroachment. This clear-cut distinction between a ruling White race and ruled ‘coloured’ races worked well enough on paper and did find confirmation in most corners of the globe.