Japanese views of East and West has been one of the most popular research topics relating to the study of diplomatic thinking. Refraining from repeating what I have already written on this topic on various occasions, here I would like to focus my argument on methodological problems.
Reseach on Japanese views of Asia has often confused the macro view with the micro. In a macro sense, Japanese views of Asia did not change greatly from the end of the Tokugawa period to the victory over China in 1895. In spite of the fierce conflict between pro-Westernism and anti-Westernism, almost all Japanese leaders, both within and without the government, maintained a very low estimate of China and Korea. The notion that “Japan should not repeat Chinese mistakes” had long been a commonly held view among the Japanese elites. In this sense, Japan had already “escaped from Asia” more than twenty years before FUKUZAWA Yukichi wrote his famous essay entitled “The Argument for Escaping from Asia” in 1885.
In a micro sense, however, China was a great power which had often hindered Japan's expansion into Taiwan and Korea. Until the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-5, Japan's intention to control the Korean government was frustrated by China two or three times.
As the result of the great gap between the macro and micro views of China, repeated contradictions in the writings of Meiji leaders within and without the government can be found. For example, FUKUZAWA Yukichi, one of the greatest thinkers of Meiji Japan, changed his view of China four times within the ten years between 1875 and 1885. In 1875, FUKUZAWA described China as a declining empire which could not understand the importance of the policy of “enriching the nation, ” Six years later, however, he criticised China for its lack of a policy of “building up military power.” One year later, FUKUZAWA changed this picture of China again, and warned the Japanese that Chinese military power was one of the greatest threats to Japan. In 1885, he changed this view of China for the fourth time, and predicted China's decline within a decade.
These striking inconsistencies disappear when we differentiate FUKUZAWA's macro view of China from his micro one. Like many other thinkers and political leaders in early Meiji Japan, FUKUZAWA was consistent in his macro view of China: China would never succeed in carrying out modernization. China thus became a negative model for Japan's modernization, and therefore FUKUZAWA could describe it without paying any attention to China's real situation. He and other Japanese often made statements such as “if we Japanese do not concentrate our efforts on industrialization, our future will be that of China today” or “if we do not endeavour to strengthen the military, our fate will be that of China today”. Here it is clear that Fukuzawa was arguing from the standpoint of a macro view of China and not a micro view.
When FUKUZAWA began to speak of the real China (or his micro view of China), his contempt disappeared and he gave a high evaluation of its strength and influence. As many historians of politics and foreign relations have pointed out, a micro view of a foreign nation is related deeply to its concrete domestic, political and economic situation, as well as to its actual foreign relations. In the final section of this essay, I have analyzed some of the concrete influences of Japan's foreign and domestic conditions on the Japanese micro views of China and Korea.
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