Abstract
In the half-century prior to the onset of the Russo-Japanese War and since Commodore Matthew C. Perry had first opened Japan’s doors to the West and its imperialism in 1853, Japan had already emerged from being ‘a weak, feudal, and agrarian country into a modern industrial power, economically and militarily capable of resisting foreign domination’. (Mark R. Peattie, The Japanese Colonial Empire, 1895–1945 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), pp. 6–7.) Its prior isolation from sustained contact with its neighbours (1603–1867) and from the rest of the world had left Japan with a ‘cultural and linguistic distinctiveness [that had] made the Japanese highly self-conscious and acutely aware of their differences from others’. (Reischauer, Japan, p. 8.)
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Notes
- 1.
Mark R. Peattie, The Japanese Colonial Empire, 1895–1945 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), pp. 6–7.
- 2.
Reischauer, Japan, p. 8.
- 3.
Ibid.
- 4.
Kuzutani Takamasa, ‘An Inquiry into the Attitudes of Like or Dislike for Various Races’, Japanese Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol. 3, No. 1 (1955), pp. 39–57.
- 5.
Kenneth B. Pyle, Japan Rising: The Resurgence of Japanese Power and Purpose (New York: Public Affairs, 2007), p. 59.
- 6.
‘Charter Oath’, in Encyclopaedia Britannica, www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/107679/Charter-Oath, accessed 3 January 2015.
- 7.
Pyle, Japan Rising, p. 60.
- 8.
‘Editorial Opinion’, Japan Economic Journal (17 March 1990), p. 9.
- 9.
See Wolfgang Streeck and Kozo Yamamura (eds.), The Origins of Nonliberal Capitalism: Germany and Japan in Comparison (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005); By the same authors, The End of Diversity: Prospects for German and Japanese Capitalism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003). See also Bettina Fincke and Alfred Greiner, ‘Do Large Industrialized Economies Pursue Sustainable Debt Policies? A Comparative Study for Japan, Germany and the United States’, Japan and the World Economy, Vol. 23, No. 3 (2011), pp. 202–213.
- 10.
Cohen, Jacob H. Schiff, p. 33.
- 11.
Pyle, Japan Rising, p. 86.
- 12.
Ibid., p. 100.
- 13.
Ibid., p. 101.
- 14.
Reischauer, Japan, pp. 109–136.
- 15.
Hazel J. Johnson, Banking Alliances (Singapore: World Scientific, 2000), p. 104.
- 16.
Pyle, Japan Rising, p. 102.
- 17.
Marius B. Jansen, Japan and Its World: Two Centuries of Change (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), p. 64.
- 18.
Ibid., pp. 355–364.
- 19.
Tom Peters, ‘West Germany’s Unsung Economy Hums Along Amid Labor Harmony’, Chicago Tribune, 23 July (1990), http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1990-07-23/business/9003010995_1_labor-harmony-firms-workers, accessed 1 August 2016.
- 20.
Ian Nish, The Anglo-Japanese Alliance: The Diplomacy of Two Island Empires 1894–1907 (London: Athlone Press, 1966), p. 13.
- 21.
Reischauer, Japan, p. 148.
- 22.
David Murray, Kentaro Kaneko, and Albert W. Vorse, Japan (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1906), p. 478.
- 23.
Cohen, Jacob H. Schiff, p. 43. Schiff discussed the idea of dictatorship with his close friend Ernest Cassel. Cassel did not see this in itself as inherently a bad thing, with the caveat that it was important that a dictatorship ‘be a good one’.
- 24.
Bauer and Yamey, The Economics of Under-Developed Countries.
- 25.
Thomas, Foreign Intervention, p. 3.
- 26.
Michael R. Auslin, ‘Japanese Strategy, Geopolitics and the Origins of War, 1792–1895’, in John W. Steinberg, Bruce W. Menning, David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, David Wolff, and Shinji Yokote (eds.), The Russo-Japanese War in Global Perspective: World War Zero (Leiden: Brill, 2007), p. 3.
- 27.
Wellington K. K. Chan, Politics and Industrialization in Late Imperial China (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1975), p. 9.
- 28.
Cyril E. Black, The Dynamics of Modernization: A Study in Comparative History (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), p. 121.
- 29.
Thomas, Foreign Intervention, p. 24.
- 30.
‘Further Japanese Borrowing’, Wall Street Journal (27 May 1904), p. 5.
- 31.
‘Japanese and Russian Loans’, Wall Street Journal (23 May 1904), p. 5.
- 32.
Frances V. Moulder, Japan, China and the Modern World Economy: Toward a Reinterpretation of East Asian Development ca. 1600 to ca. 1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), pp. 128–146.
- 33.
Hamilton as quoted in David Walder, The Short Victorious War: The Russo-Japanese Conflict, 1904–05 (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), p. 299.
- 34.
Sherman, ‘German–Jewish Bankers’, p. 60.
- 35.
Shillony, ‘The Jewish Response’, pp. 393–400.
- 36.
Roy H. Akagi, Japan’s Foreign Relations 1542–1936: A Short History (Tokyo: Hokuseido Press, 1936), p. 217.
- 37.
‘Russo-Japanese War: Russo-Japanese History’, in Encyclopaedia Britannica, www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/514017/Russo-Japanese-War, accessed 5 January 2015.
- 38.
Peter Duus, ‘Economic Dimensions of Meiji Imperialism: The Case of Korea 1895–1910’, in Ramon H. Myers and Mark R. Peattie (eds.), The Japanese Colonial Empire, 1895–1945 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), p. 133.
- 39.
Duus, ‘Economic Dimensions of Meiji Imperialism’, p. 133.
- 40.
Ushisaburo Kobayashi, War and Armament Loans of Japan (New York: Oxford University Press, 1922), p. 72.
- 41.
Murray, Kaneko, and Vorse, Japan, p. 3.
- 42.
Giichi Ono, War and Armament Expenditures of Japan (New York: Oxford University Press, 1922), p. 63.
- 43.
Kobayashi, War and Armament Loans, p. 72.
- 44.
Report on the War Finance (Japan: Department of Finance, 1906), p. 1.
- 45.
The government implemented strict procedures to ensure disbursements were accurate and thoroughly examined before monies were actually expended. This involved at the first level the war/naval minister seeking an informal consensus with the minister of finance, then the minister president was to be sought out for approval. He would then send the matter up to the minister of finance for formal approval who would then send it forwards to the emperor for the imperial assent. Only once this process had been employed could funds actually be disbursed. See Report on the War Finance, p. 13.
- 46.
Matsumura, Baron Kaneko, Kindle Edition, 3%.
- 47.
Kanji Ishii, ‘The Role of Banking in Japan, 1882–1973’, in Alice Teichova, Ginette Kurgan-Van Hentenryk and Dieter Ziegler (eds.), Banking, Trade and Industry: Europe, America and Asia from the Thirteenth to the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 405.
- 48.
Metzler, Lever of Empire, p. 45.
- 49.
Smethurst, ‘Korekiyo Takahashi and Japan’s Victory’, p. 2.
- 50.
Janet Hunter, ‘The Limits of Financial Power: Japanese Foreign Borrowing and the Russo-Japanese War’, in A. Hamish Ion and E. J. Errington (eds.), Great Powers and Little Wars: The Limits of Power (Westport: Praeger, 1993), p. 152.
- 51.
Suzuki, Japanese Government Loan Issues, p. 84.
- 52.
Report on the War Finance, p. 28.
- 53.
Adler, Jacob H. Schiff, Vol. 1, p. 213.
- 54.
Kobayashi, War and Armament Loans, p. 69.
- 55.
Adler, Jacob H. Schiff, Vol. 1, p. 213.
- 56.
Ibid., p. 212.
- 57.
As Japan’s tobacco industry was nationalized so as to capture revenues for use during the war, it drew the temporary ire of James Buchanan Duke (1856–1925), president of the American Tobacco Trust Company, who had invested directly in the Japanese tobacco industry and felt he had been betrayed by the IJG. The matter was eventually resolved in the USA, but not until Duke had created something of a stir among political circles and had burdened Schiff directly by personally lobbying against the Japanese finance.
- 58.
Report on the War Finance, p. 13.
- 59.
Gotaro Ogawa, Expenditures of the Russo-Japanese War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1923), pp. 37–38.
- 60.
Smethurst, Takahashi Korekiyo: Japan’s Keynes, pp. 149–151.
- 61.
Report on the War Finance, p. 8.
- 62.
Ibid., p. 9.
- 63.
John W. Dower, Ways of Forgetting, Ways of Remembering: Japan in the Modern World (New York: New Press, 2012), p. 187.
- 64.
Report on the War Finance, p. 10.
- 65.
Ibid.
- 66.
There are some odd anomalies in the Department of Finance data as reported. Firstly, some of the table totals do not add up. Specifically, the table showing the breakdown of the various defrayed naval expenditure items is shown to have a total of ¥228,482,800; however, the actual sum of the items is exactly ¥6,000,000 less. This is not uncommon (as previously mentioned) and so it is believed that the Department of Finance miscalculated while generating the report upon which these numbers are based. More oddly, however, and beyond the scope of the current paper, are anomalies within the numbers themselves. Specifically, one presumes that the same definitions are used to cover each item for each of the army (‘war’) and navy expenditures, such that the items that reference ‘Salaries and Allowances’, ‘Provisions’ and ‘Clothing’ are calculated based upon the same intrinsic assumptions for each of the two branches of the armed forces. However, the ratios between these three lines vary dramatically. For example, in the army, provisions cost approximately four times as much as salaries and allowances, and clothing, presumably uniforms and the like, cost over two times as much as salaries and allowances. However, in the navy, provisions cost only a little over half as much as salaries and allowances, whereas clothing accounts for less than one-third as much as salaries and allowances. Clearly, there are many possible explanations for this discrepancy, including that, perhaps, the cost of delivering supplies to front-line troops was considerably higher than simply depositing it on board a ship; that army personnel were considerably less well paid than their naval counterparts; or other reasons not contemplated here. Either way, the available data do not indicate an explanation for this discrepancy and so, while the numbers are taken as being accurate (despite summation inconsistencies), further research is warranted.
- 67.
Report on the War Finance, pp. 15–16.
- 68.
Ibid., p. 15.
- 69.
Kobayashi, War and Armament Loans, p. 72.
- 70.
This comparison is made between the specie reserve held in May 1904, which totalled approximately ¥68 million (Report on the War Finance, p. 24), and the low point in 1885 of approximately the same amount (Kobayashi, War and Armament Loans, p. 119).
- 71.
See Smethurst, Takahashi Korekiyo: Japan’s Keynes, p. 149; Suzuki, Japanese Government Loan Issue, p. 96; Diary of Korekiyo Takahashi, 3 May 1904, JNDL: 135.R2.1075.
- 72.
Ogawa, Expenditures of the Russo-Japanese War, pp. 251–252.
- 73.
Schiff, ‘Japan After the War’, p. 162.
- 74.
Kobayashi, War and Armament Loans, p. 65.
- 75.
Report on the War Finance, p. 25.
- 76.
Kobayashi, War and Armament Loans, p. 133.
- 77.
Government of Japan prospectus, 30 million 4.5% bond issue, BA: 202251.3.
- 78.
Report on the War Finance, p. 31.
- 79.
Kobayashi, War and Armament Loans, p. 68.
- 80.
Report on the War Finance, p. 31.
- 81.
Ibid., p. 36.
- 82.
Peter Duus, The Abacus and the Sword: The Japanese Penetration of Korea, 1895–1910 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), p. 313.
- 83.
Ogawa, Expenditures of the Russo-Japanese War, pp. 251–252. See also Reischaur, Japan, p. 157.
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Gower, A. (2018). Japan. In: Jacob Schiff and the Art of Risk. Palgrave Studies in the History of Finance. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90266-1_4
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