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punctuated by wars, feuds, and revolutions; it climbed to its present position as one of the Great Powers on the guns of its battleships and the bayonets of its soldiers; it has always been ruled by military men. The militarism which pervades the nation is vitalized, moreover, by Japan's obsession that she is hemmed in by a ring of enemies. The truth of the matter is that the great majority of Japanese look to the militarists as the saviors of the Empire.

Although the Japanese are gradually becoming more democratic in their tendencies, let us not delude ourselves into thinking that the disappearance of militarism is a probability of the not far distant future. That it will eventually disappear is as certain as that dawn follows the dark. But it may take a generation, or more. That the militarists will remain in the ascendant during the lifetime of the Elder Statesmen there can be little doubt. Not until the grip of those aged dictators has been relaxed by death is the power of the militarists likely to wane. Nor is there any certainty that it will wane then; for in recent years their power has been immensely strengthened by a force far mightier and more sinister than that of the Elder Statesmen. I refer to the force of organized capital, of Big Business. As Mr. Nathaniel Peffer, one of the shrewdest and best-informed students of Far Eastern politics, has shown, it is Big Business that has reinforced and is keeping in power the unseen government the military party.

Only recently has modern industrial Japan awakened to a realization of its own strength. But it is now fully alive to the almost unlimited power, the endless possibilities, to be realized by the great business interests of the country joining hands and working together for a common purpose. One who could trace, through the political structure of the Empire, the ramifications of the

great industrial and trading companies would be in a position to analyze Japanese politics, domestic and foreign. Those policies of the Japanese Government which are usually attributed by foreigners to the ambitions of the militarists are in reality due to the machinations of the capitalists. Here you have the key to the annexation of Korea, to Japanese aggression in Manchuria and Siberia, to the unreasonable demands made on China, to the opposition to the restoration of Shantung. All of those regions are immensely rich in natural resources; they offer unlimited possibilities for profitable exploitation. And it is Japanese Big Business which proposes to do the exploiting. So, in order to obtain control of the territories which it proposes to exploit, it has joined forces with the land-hungry militarists. It is the most sinister combination of high politics and Big Business that the world has ever seen.

Dominating Japanese business and finance are a few great corporations: Mitsui, Mitsubishi, Suzuki, Okura, Sumitomo, Kuhara, Takata, Furukawa. So much larger than the others that they are in a class by themselves are the Mitsui and Mitsubishi companies, owned respectively by the Mitsui and Iwasaki families. Indeed, it is a common saying in Japan that no one knows where Mitsui ends and the Government begins. Their tentacles sink deep into every phase of national life-commercial, industrial, financial, political. They own banks, railways, steamship lines, mills, factories, dockyards, mines, forests, plantations, insurance companies, trading corporations. They and the leaders of the unseen government are as intertwined by marriage, mutual interest, and interlocking directorates as President Wilson boasted that the Treaty of Versailles was intertwined with the Covenant of the League of Nations.

Each of these great companies, according to Mr. Peffer, has its political, financial, or family alliances with the leaders of the unseen government. Marquis Okuma, one of the Elder Statesmen, is related by marriage to the Iwasakis, who, as I have said, own the great house of Mitsubishi. The same house is connected with the opposition party through its leader, Viscount Kato, who is Baron Iwasaki's son-in-law. Another of the Elder Statesmen, Marquis Matsukata, is adviser to one of these political dynasties. The late Marquis Inoue, who held in turn the portfolios of agriculture and commerce, home affairs, finance, and foreign affairs, was closely connected with the house of Mitsui. The late Field-Marshal Terauchi, at one time Prime Minister of Japan and one of the foremost leaders of the military party, was equally close to Okura, a relationship which explains that house's success in obtaining army contracts and concessions on the mainland of Asia. And so with the highest military men of the Empire and the leading statesmen of both political parties. Each has his relationship to some great financial house, to some captain of industry. Big Business uses these affiliations with the militarists to obtain for its schemes the support of the unseen government, which is enormously strengthened by the affiliations of the militarists with Big Business. It is like a cross-ruff at bridge.

III

'Japan's future lies oversea.' In those four words is found the policy of the military-financial combination that rules Japan. The annexation of Formosa and Korea and Sakhalin, the occupation of Manchuria and Siberia and Shantung, are not, as the world supposes, examples of haphazard landgrabbing, but phases of a vast and

carefully laid scheme, which has for its aim the eventual control of all Eastern Asia. Ostensibly to solve the problems with which she has been confronted by her amazing increase in population and production, but in reality to gratify the ambitions of the militaristic-financial clique, Japan has embarked on a campaign of worldexpansion and exploitation. Convinced that she requires a colonial empire in her business, she has set out to build one as she would build a bridge or a dry-dock. The fact that she had nothing, or next to nothing, to start with did not worry her at all. Having once made up her mind that the realization of her political, economic, and territorial ambitions necessitated the acquirement of overseas dominions, she has permitted nothing to stand in the way of her getting them. In other words, wherever an excuse can be provided for raising a flagstaff, whether on an ice-floe in the Arctic or an island in the Pacific, there the Rising Sun flag shall flutter; wherever trade is to be found, there Yokohama cargo-boats shall drop their anchors, there Osaka engines shall thunder over Kobe rails, there Kyoto silks and Nagoya cottons shall be sold by merchants speaking the language of Nippon. It is a scheme astounding by its very vastness, as methodically planned and systematically conducted as an American presidential campaign; and already, thanks to Japanese audacity, aggressiveness, and perseverance, backed up by Japanese banks, battleships, and bayonets, it is much nearer realization than the world imagines.

In China, Siberia, and the Philippines, in California, Canada, and Mexico, in the East Indies, Australia, and New Zealand, on three continents and on all the islands of the Eastern seas, Japanese merchants and Japanese money are working twenty-four hours

a day, building up that overseas empire of which the financiers and the militarists dream. The activities of Japan's outposts of commerce and finance are as varied as commerce and finance themselves. Their voices are heard in every Eastern market-place; their footsteps resound in every avenue of Oriental endeavor. Their mines in Siberia and China and Manchuria rival the cave of Al-ed-Din. The railways that converge on Peking from the north and east, the great trunk-line across Manchuria, and the eastern section of the trans-Siberian system are already in their hands. They work tea-plantations in China, coffee-plantations in Java, rubber-plantations in Malaya, cocoanut-plantations in Borneo, hemp-plantations in the Philip pines, spice-plantations in the Celebes, sugar-plantations in Hawaii, pruneorchards in California, apple-orchards in Oregon, coal-mines in Manchuria, gold-mines in Korea, forests in Siberia, fisheries in Kamchatka. Their argosies, flying the house-flags of the Toyo Kisen Kaisha, the Nippon Yusen Kaisha, the Osaka Shosen Kaisha, and a score of other lines, bear Japanese goods to Japanese traders on all the seaboards of the Orient, while Japanese warships are constantly a-prowl, all up and down the Eastern seas, ready to protect the interests thus created by the menace of their guns.

In regions where Japanese banks are in control and Japanese settlers abound, it is seldom difficult for Japan to find an excuse for aggression. It may be that a Japanese settler is mistreated or a Japanese consul insulted, or that a Japanese bank has difficulty in collecting its debts. So the slim cables flash the complaint to Tokyo; there are secret consultations between the militaristic leaders and the chieftains of Big Business; a spokesman of the unseen government rises in the Diet to

announce that, in Siberia or China, Japanese interests have been endangered or Japanese dignity affronted; the newspapers controlled by Big Business inflame the national resentment; the heads of the invisible government, speaking with the authority of the Emperor, issue the necessary orders to the Ministers of War and Marine; and before the country in question awakens to a realization of what is happening, Japanese transports are at anchor in her harbors and Japanese troops are disembarking on her soil. Before they are withdrawn, if they are withdrawn, Japan usually succeeds in extorting a concession to build a railway, or to work a coal-field, or to underwrite a loan, or a ninety-nineyear lease of a harbor which can be converted into a naval base, or the cession of a more or less valuable strip of territory and so the work of building up an overseas empire goes merrily and steadily on.

Now this steady territorial expansion -or, rather, the aggressive militarism that has produced it has naturally aroused suspicion abroad of Japan's intentions. In less than a quarter of a century the area of the Empire has grown from 148,000 to 261,000 square miles. And virtually every foot of this great territory has been won by the sword. We have seen Formosa and the Pescadores filched, as spoils of war, from a helpless China. We have witnessed the rape of Korea. We have observed Manchuria become Japanese in fact, if not in name. We have watched first Southern and now Northern Sakhalin brought under the rule of Tokyo. We have seen the Rising Sun flag hoisted over Kiaochow, the Marshalls, and the Carolines. We have noted Japan's reluctance to withdraw from Shantung or to permit the neutralization of Yap. We have watched the armies of Nippon pushing deeper and deeper into Siberia

instead of withdrawing altogether, as the Tokyo Government had promised. Let the honest-minded Japanese ask himself, then, if, in the face of such aggressive imperialism, we are not justified in our suspicion and apprehension.

Not a little of our suspicion of Japanese imperialism is directly traceable to the circumstantial stories told by Americans returning from the East, particularly army and navy officers, of Japan's secret designs against the Philippines. In substantiation of these stories they point to the temptation offered by the great natural wealth of the islands; to the alleged alarming increase in the number of Japanese settlers, particularly in Mindanao; and to the geographical fact that the Philippines form a prolongation of the Japanese archipelago. (Were you aware that Taiwan [Formosa], the southernmost Japanese island, can be seen from the highlands of Luzon on a clear day?) That the Philippines would be an objective of Japanese attack in the event of war between the United States and Japan is a foregone conclusion. What Japan's attitude might be were we to withdraw from the islands, leaving the natives to paddle their own canoe, is, perhaps, open to question. But of this I am convinced: as things stand to-day Japan harbors no designs whatsoever against the Philippines. Look at it from the standpoint of common sense. Why should Japan embark on a war with a rich and powerful country like the United States, in order to seize the Philippines, which, as she doubtless realizes, she could not permanently hold, when, without the risk of war, she can help herself to even more valuable territory much nearer home? It is quite true that Japan is opposed to the fortification of the Philippines, which she would regard as a threat against herself, just as we are opposed to and would probably prohibit the establish

ment of a fortified Japanese naval base on the coast of Mexico. While on the subject of the Philippines, here is an interesting bit of secret history. Viscount Kaneko told me that, some years prior to the Spanish-American War, Spain approached Japan with an offer to sell her the Philippines for eight million dollars gold, and that Japan declined the offer on the ground that the islands were too far away for her to administer satisfactorily and that their climate was not suitable for Japanese to live in.

Another reason for our distrust of the peacefulness of Japanese intentions is to be found in the fact that, at a time when other nations are seriously discussing the question of disarmament, Japan announces a military programme which calls for an army with a wartime strength of close to five million men, thereby making her the greatest military power on earth, and a naval programme designed to give her eight battleships and eight battle-cruisers, each to be replaced by a new vessel every eight years. Japan asserts that these vast armies, this powerful armada, should not be interpreted as a threat against ourselves. But, we naturally ask, against whom, then, are they intended? Surely not against her ally, England, or against revolution-torn Russia, or against prostrate Germany, or against decrepit China. Leaving these out of the question, who is left?

But there are two sides to every question. Let us look for a moment at Japan's. Is it not fair and reasonable to judge her by ourselves? What should we say if the Japanese charged us with planning a war against them because we are increasing our naval strength? We are building a navy for national defense. Japan is building one for precisely the same reason. Defense against whom, you ask? Well, if you wish to know the truth, defense against

the United States. For, grotesque as such an assertion may appear to Americans, the majority of Japanese are convinced that we are deliberately trying to force a war upon them. As evidence of this, they point to the discriminatory and humiliating treatment which we have accorded to Japanese in the United States; to our opposition to Japan's legitimate ambitions on the mainland of Asia; to our blocking the insertion in the Covenant of the League of Nations of a clause recognizing Japanese racial equality; to our refusal to recognize the Japanese mandate for the former German possessions in the Pacific; to our unofficial but none the less active support of China in the controversy over Shantung; to the strengthening of our naval bases at Cavite and Pearl Harbor; and finally, to the long succession of sneers, gibes, and insults indulged in by American jingoes, antiJapanese politicians, and certain sections of the American press. Viewing the situation without prejudice, it seems to me that Japan has as good ground for her suspicion of us as we have for our suspicion of her.

IV

Finally, we come to the most pressing, the most delicate, and the most dangerous of all the questions in dispute between the two countries — that of Japanese immigration into the United States. Now I have no intention of embarking on a discussion of the pros and cons of this question. But, because I have found that most Americans have of it only an inexact and fragmentary knowledge, and because a rudimentary knowledge of it is essential to a clear understanding of the larger question, our relations with Japan, it is necessary for me to sketch in briefest outline the events leading up to the present immigration situation.

Under the administrative interpre

tation of our naturalization laws, Japanese aliens are ineligible to American citizenship. But down to the summer of 1908 there was no restriction on Japanese immigration. In that year, however, the much-discussed 'Gentlemen's Agreement,' whereby Japanese laborers are excluded from the United States, went into effect. That agreement is not in the shape of a formal treaty or undertaking. The term applies simply to the substance of a number of informal notes exchanged between the then Secretary of State, Elihu Root, and the Japanese Ambassador in Washington. Under the terms of this agreement we announced that no Japanese could enter our ports from Japan or Hawaii without a proper passport from their own government, and Japan promised in turn to give no passports to laborers. There has been no charge that Japan has failed to keep both letter and spirit of this agreement with absolute integrity. In fact, the Japanese Foreign Office has at times leaned backward in its endeavor to keep faith. But the labor elements in California, unable to meet Japanese industrial competition and jealous of Japanese success, continued their anti-Japanese agitation, being aided by politicians seeking the labor vote; and in 1913 a law prohibiting the purchase of land by Japanese in that state was placed on the statute-books of California.

But there were certain loopholes left by this law which made it possible for agricultural land to be leased for three years by Japanese; for land to be purchased by corporations in which Jap anese were interested: and for land to be purchased by American-born children of Japanese parents. To block up these loopholes the Oriental Exclusion League circulated a petition to place an initiative act — known as the Alien Land Act-on the ballot, in 1920. To bolster up its arguments in

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