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Four Japanese: Their Plans for the Expansion of Japan to the Philippines
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 August 2009
Extract
Between 1886 and 1891, four Japanese nationalist-activists – Yoko Tosaku, Sugiura Jugo, Suganuma Teifu and Fukumoto Makoto – described their plans for Japanese expansion to the Philippines. These men, writing during the time of ideological ferment in the early Meiji period, represented a significant trend of thought when Japan was greatly concerned with the problem of attaining an international position to assure her national security. This was also a period when the Japanese government, guided by the Meiji oligarchs, adopted a “policy of restraint” from territorial expansion which might involve Japan in foreign conflicts while they were undertaking the modernization as well the industrialization of the country.
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- Copyright © The National University of Singapore 1963
References
1. By the term nationalist-activists, I refer to the energetic, Japanese nationalists who vigorously opposed the Meiji oligarchs' “policy of restraint” from Japanese expansion in order to avoid foreign involvement while Japan was modernizing her feudal institutions.
2. Neo-imperialism was not mainly a colonizing or a simple commercial imperialism. It can be described as an investment imperialism in regions not as well adopted to European habitation. See Hayes, C.J.H., A generation of Materialism, 1871–1900 (New York: Harper Bros. Pub., 1944), 217.Google Scholar
3. It was in the same year that the Japanese government sent Consul Minami to the Philippines in order to investigate existing conditions and a year before Foreign Minister Inoue Kaoru negotiated with the powers unsatisfactory terms for the revision of the “unequal treaties” and which, according to Prof. Delmar Brown, resulted in the birth of modern Japanese nationalism. See Brown, D., Nationalism in Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1955), 112.Google Scholar
4. Toraji, Irie, Meiji nanshin shiko (History of Japanese Expansion to the Southern Seas), (Tokyo: Idashoten, 1943), 73.Google Scholar
5. Then Chief of the Record Section of the metropolitan Police Office.
In 1876, Yoke Tosaku was a clerk at the Foreign Affairs section of the Metropolitan Police Office when the Japanese Minister to Russia, Enomoto Buyo, requested the newly appointed Japanese Minister to Spain and Portugal, Ueno Kagenori, who was then Minister to England, to unofficially sound out the Spanish government regarding its willingness to sell the Ladrones or the Marianas islands to Japan in case the latter would plan to purchase them. See Ibid., 34–35; 76–77.
6. Nanyo (the Southern Seas) was the term used by the Japanese to refer to the Spanish possessions in Oceania including the Philippines, the Marianas, the Palaus, the Carolinas, together with the Malay peninsula, Indochina and Indonesia.
7. Palawan, Sulu, Mindanao.
8. Ibid., 74.
9. Idem.
10. Whom he presented as totalling 320, 410 in Japan by 1885, Ibid., 75
11. For istance, the three islands of Palawan, Sulu, Mindanao.
12. Ibid., 76–77.
13. Sugiura Jugo was educated in England from 1877 to 1880 and was, therefore, familiar with the situation in Europe and European expansion into the South Seas. He often wondered why Europeans hwo had great respect for individual freedom could not do the same in their colonies. He was especially concerned with the tyrannical policy of Spain in the Philippines. Together with Miyake Yujiro (pen name, Setsurei) and Shiga Jukyo, Sugiura published one of the nationalistic magazines, the Nihonjin.
14. A summary of the story is found in Toraji, Irie, Meiji…, op.cit., 77–80.Google Scholar
15. By Irie Toraji, ibid.
16. Ibid., 81
17. Suganuma Teifu was born in 1865 at Ogaki in Hirado, an island off Nagasaki Prefecture. The author visited Suganuma's home at Ogaki during her stopover at Kirado on July 30, 1960. Upon viewing Suganuma's home which was nestled with in rice fields, and considering the material remains which indicated that Hirado was once a thriving port of foreign trade, it was not difficult to imagine how a brilliant mind like Suganuma's which underwent the discipline of Chinese scholarship directed by Hirado's Chinese scholars and later by professors at the Tokyo University, would be led to search relentlessly for a solution to the poverty of the people of his town who had to turn to the cultivation of a limited area of land since the center of foreign trade had been transferred elsewhere. It must also be remembered that Hirado is in the neighborhood of Fukuoka where economic discontent among the samurai reached a peak during the post-restoration period. Suganuma Teifu's solution was Japanese expanstion through trade with, and emigration to the Philippines. The people of Hirado count Suganuma Teifu as one of their town's famous men. So he occupies a special place at the Matsuura Museum of Hirado. For a short biography of Suganuma Teifu, see (1) Yoshihisa, Kuzuu, op.cit., 750–752Google Scholar; (2) Mikaai Keisho, Firipin jijo (The present condition in the Philippines), (Tokyo, Takushoku Shimposha, 1952), 273–279, where a reproduction of “The Life of Sadakaze Suganuma” which was published by the Philippine
Review of January, 1917, is included in its original English version; (3) Akauma Saburo, Suganuma Teifu. Tokyo: Hakubunkan, 1941.
18. This was when he returned for a short sojourn at his hometown, after his graduation at Tokyo University in the summer of 1888.
19. Irie Toraji, Meiji …., 81–82.
20. Idem.
21. “Suganuma Teifu-shi no shosho” (The detailed report on the cause of Mr. Suganuma Teifu's death), Nippon, 08 2, 1889, 1.Google Scholar
22. Suganuma Teifu left for the Philippines on April 1, 1889 when he was an employee of Nippon. Before his departure, he had convinced Fukumoto Makoto, another nationalist, to follow him. The latter sailed for Manila a month later. See “Suganuma Teifushi no fuon” (The sad news of Suganuma Teifu's death), Nippon, August 2, 1889, 1. In the last report, Fukumoto describes how Suganuma Teifu convinced him to go to Manila because both of them were interested in the South Sea area for the good of their country.
23. Toraji, Irie, Meiji.…., op.cit., 82.Google Scholar
24. Quoted in ibid., 84.
25. Quoted in ibid., 85.
26. Quoted in idem.
27. Quoted in ibid., 87.
28. It was his graduation thesis in Tokyo University.
29. Teifu, Suganuma, Dai Nihon shogyoshi (Comprehensive commercial history of Japan), (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1943).Google Scholar See also Irie Toraji's comments on Dai Ninon shogyoshi in Toraji, Irie, Meiji.…, op.cit., 89.Google Scholar
30. Ibid., 91.
31. Only part of the results of his investigation had been posthumously serialized in nine installments of the Nippon from June 23 to August 27, 1889, under the title of “Manira tsushin” (Communications from Manila).
32. Teifu, Suganuma, “Manira tsushin” (Communications from Manila, Nippon, 08 22, 1889, 1.Google Scholar
33. Nippon, . 06 23, 1889, 3.Google Scholar
34. Nippon, . 07 28, 1889, 3.Google Scholar
35. Nippon, . 08, 3, 1889, 1.Google Scholar
36. Idem.
37. Idem.
38. Jansen, M.B., Sun Yat-sen and Japan (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1954), 3.Google Scholar
39. Nippon, , 07 28, 1889, 3.Google Scholar
40. “Suganuma Teifu-shi byobotsu…,” loc.cit.
41. For a short biography of Fujumoto Nichinan, see (1) Taishi kaikoroku (Tokyo: Taishi Korosha Denki Hensankai, 1936), II, 875–880: (2) Yoshihisa, Kuzuu, op.cit., 542–546.Google Scholar
42. Toho kyokai hokoku, No.1 (March, 1891), 1–46. This work consists of Fukumoto's translation (he was fluent in reading and speaking French) of a report on the Spanish military organization and defense in the Philippines written by one of Fukumoto's friends at the French Consulate in Manila. To this report, Fukumoto added information he had gathered during his two visits to the Islands as well as his own observations and comments.
43. Who constituted the greater number of the men in the army and who were never promoted to the rank of officer (which was reserved only for Spaniards).
44. “Nanyo heibei teiyo”. (The Summing-up of Spanish defence in the South Seas), Toho Kyokai hokoku, no.1 (March, 1891), 11–12.
45. Fukumoto's great concern about German interest in the Philippines is gathered in the first installment of his first series of articles on the Philippines, entitled “Korairoku” (Incoming communications), Nippon, 06 19, 1889.Google Scholar
46. Nichinan, Fukumoto, “Ninon to nanyo” (Japan and the South Seas), Nihonjin, 05 3, 1890, 12.Google Scholar
47. No.44 (April 3, 1890), 19–21; (2) No45 (April 18, 1890), 21.23; (3) No.46 (May 3, 1890), 9–13; (4) No.47 (May 18, 1890, 6–10.
A French translation of the third installment (May 3, 1890) done by K.O. Oshimaru, interpreter of the Spanish Legation in Japan, together with its Spanish translation, was forwarded by the said Legation to the Governor General of the Philippines in the former's despatch dated May 27, 1890, “Consules,” (Mss; Philippine Archives deposited in the U.P. Main Library).
48. “Nihon to nanyo” (Japan and the South Seas), Nihonjin, No.44 (04 3, 1890), 20.Google Scholar
49. Ibid., 19–21.
50. Ibid., No.45 (April 18, 1890), 21.
51. Ibid., No.46 (May 3, 1890), 10–12.
52. Fukumoto might have had in mind ideas of earlier writers on Japanese expansion to the Philippines who proposed the plan of moving Japanese immigrants to the Philippines and that these immigrants were to engage in cultivation and to wait for an opportune time to rise up with the Filipinos against the Spanish colonial rule.
53. “Nihon to nanyo,” Nihonjin. No.47 (05 18, 1890), 9.Google Scholar
54. Ibid., 9–10.
55. The series started on June 19, 1889, and ended on November 23, 1889. It must be added, however, that there was a lapse of time between the eighth installment published on July 27, 1889, and the ninth installment published on November 7, 1889.
56. It was serialized in five instalments, from February, 11, 1891 to February 21, 1891.
57. See “Korairoku”, Nippon, 11 7, 1889, 3Google Scholar; November 9, 1889, 3. Fukumoto mentions his attempt to trice descendants of Japanese in Manila.
58. Nippon, , 07 5, 1889, 1.Google Scholar
59. Nippon, , 07 14, 1889, 3Google Scholar; July 17, 1889, 3; July 19, 1889, 1; July 20, 1889, 1; July 21, 1889, 1.
60. “Korairoku.” Nippon, 11 9, 1889.Google Scholar
61. To reinforce the first expedition sent to suppress the rebellion in those islands in 1890.
62. “Nanpenkibiroku” (The report on small yet unimportant symptoms [of unrest] in the Southern Provinces), Nippon, February 14, 1891, 1. See also Nichinan, Fukumoto, “Nanyo heibei teiyo,” op.cit., 13.Google Scholar
63. Because Spain weakly controlled the Islands and that this condition could lead to the acquisition of this colony by another strong European power, for instance, Germany.