ERNEST (Toyo Bunko E-Resource Network Storage) / 東洋文庫リポジトリ
Not a member yet
7151 research outputs found
Sort by
Liberalism on the Edge: Tachibana Shiraki’s Theory of International Order from the End of World War I to 1923
Full text linkThis paper focuses on the discourse of Japanese journalist Tachibana Shiraki, who is mostly known for his “Asianist” regional vision following the Manchurian Incident. It will elucidate the liberal theory of international order that Tachibana held in the early 1920s when he served in a Japanese newspaper published in Beijing and Tianjin. By identifying both the critique and endorsement of imperialism inherent in his discourse, this paper will explore the possibilities and limits of liberalist theory on Sino-Japanese relations during the interwar period.
Becoming a focal point in Sino-Japanese relations after World War I, Tachibana acknowledged that the so-called Twenty-One Demands were outdated, bearing in mind the changes in the international environment after the war and the rise of nationalism in China since the May Fourth Movement. Tachibana argued that Japan should cooperate with relevant countries to respond to Chinese demands for the abolition of the leased territories. During the “Recovering Lüshun (Port Arthur) and Dalian Movement” and the Boycott of Japanese products in 1923, he criticized Japan’s Manchurian policy, which sought to maintain its interests by supporting Warlord Zhang Zuolin. He also argued that the deployment of a huge army in Manchuria was a factor that worsened Chinese sentiment toward Japan, and that the army should be reduced to the size it was before the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895. Tachibana radically criticized Japan’s ambitions for territorial expansion in China and its self-righteous economic activities.
On the other hand, Tachibana was optimistic that Chinese anti-Japanese sentiment would disappear if a bourgeois democratic government was established in China, and advocated cooperation between the Japanese and Chinese bourgeois. However, this did not address the ongoing competition and friction between Japanese and Chinese capitalists, hence it was not an effective measure to restrain the anti-Japanese movement. Furthermore, Tachibana, who deemed the Chinese people’s desire for social reform to be more fundamental than their opposition to foreign interference in internal affairs, argued that the only way for the weaponless Chinese people to subvert the warlords was to receive financial and military assistance from foreign countries. Following the breakout of the Lincheng Incident, he came to deny the legitimacy of the Beiyang government and to advocate a joint military deployment by the powers. Ultimately, Tachibana’s liberalism was ambivalent and could easily be transformed into a device generating a cycle of violence.journal articl
