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The ‘standard of civilization’ in international law: Intellectual perspectives from pre-war Japan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 2019

Mohammad Shahabuddin
Mohammad Shahabuddin*
Affiliation:
Reader in International Law & Human Rights, Birmingham Law School, University of Birmingham
*
Email: m.shahabuddin@bham.ac.uk
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Abstract

This article establishes the normative connection between Japan’s responses to regional hegemonic order prior to the nineteenth century and its subsequent engagement with the European standard of civilization. I argue that the Japanese understanding of the ‘standard of civilization’ in the nineteenth century was informed by the historical pattern of its responses to hegemony and the discourse on cultural superiority in the Far East that shifted from Sinocentrism to the unbroken Imperial lineage to the national-spirit. Although Japanese scholars accepted and engaged with the European standard of civilization after the forced opening up of Japan to the Western world in the mid-nineteenth century, they did so for instrumental purposes and soon translated ‘civilization’ into a language of imperialism to reassert supremacy in the region. Through intellectual historiography, this narrative contextualizes Japan’s engagement with the European standard of civilization, and offers an analytical framework not only to go beyond Eurocentrism but also to identify various other loci of hegemony, which are connected through the same language of power.

Keywords

EurocentrismFar Easthistory and theory of international lawimperialismstandard of civilization
Type
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Information
Leiden Journal of International Law , Volume 32 , Issue 1 , March 2019 , pp. 13 - 32
Copyright
© Foundation of the Leiden Journal of International Law 2018 

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Footnotes

Earlier versions of this article have been presented before the European Society of International Law, International Law Association, Harvard Law School’s Institute for Global Law and Policy (IGLP), Colombian Association of International Law, and in numerous Japanese institutions. I am thankful to the participants of these events for their valuable comments and insights. I am in particular indebted to colleagues in Japan who not only raised challenging questions but also offered very useful guidance. I must especially mention some of them for their extraordinary support: Professor Hajime Yamamoto, Professor Ichiro Araki, Professor Hyuck-Soo Yoo, Professor Satoshi Kodera, and Dr Tomoko Kakee. I am also thankful to Professor Antony Anghie, Professor Matthew Craven, Professor Fiona de Londras, Professor Tsachi Karen-Paz, and editors and anonymous reviewers of LJIL for their important thoughts and comments. All errors are of course mine. Necessary research visits to Japan for this project were supported by the Japan Foundation Fellowship in 2016 and visiting professorship at Keio Law School in 2016 and at Yokohama National University during 2013–2014. I am thankful to these institutions. However, views expressed in this article do not necessarily represent the views of these institutions.

The scope of research for this article is limited to the extent that I have extensively relied on various secondary sources or translations of Japanese language primary texts. However, due care has been taken to ensure the authenticity and accuracy of all translations used in this article.

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21 See Onuma, ‘When Was the Law of International Society Born?’, supra note 5, at 13. See also Yanagihara, supra note 11, at 475.

22 Yanagihara, supra note 11, at 475.

23 Onuma, supra note 16, at 24–6.

24 Ibid., at 24.

25 Ibid., at 26.

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27 Ibid.

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29 Ibid., at 25.

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31 Kanae, T., ‘Japan’s Early Practice of International Law in Fixing Its Territorial Limits’, (1978) 22 The Japanese Annual of International Law 1, at 13. See also, Akashi, supra note 26, at 727–8Google Scholar.

32 Ibid.

33 R.I. Hellyer, Defining Engagement: Japan and Global Contexts, 1640–1868 (2009), 1.

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35 Ibid. However, Yanagihara notes that the status of Ryukyu in relation to Tokugawa Japan remains an unresolved issue among Japanese historians. See Yanagihara, supra note 11, at 482–3.

36 Watanabe, supra note 10, at 86–8. See also, Zhang, supra note 15, at 27.

37 E. Kaibara, Bukun (Military Lessons) (1716), quoted in Watanabe, supra note 10, at 89. Kaibara died in 1714 and Bukun was published posthumously by his disciple Takeda Shunan (1661–1745).

38 For example, the military scholar Tsugaru Koodoo (1682–1729) openly advocated ‘military rule’ as opposed to the ‘moral rule’ of the Confucians, arguing that foreign lands are ruled by ‘cultural virtues’, while Japan, because of its topography and the character of its soil and water, is ruled by ‘military virtues’. See T. Koodoo, Buji teiyoo, cited in Watanabe, supra note 10, at 96. Others rejected the relevance and utility of archaic, foreign teachings to Japanese governance. Matsudaira Nobutsuna (1596–1662), for example, suggested ignoring classic Confucian texts in favour of the stratagems of Tokugawa Leyasu (Gongen-sama) and of men who know the laws handed down by the Tokugawa regime. See O. Toyonaga, Nobutsuna ki, cited in Watanabe, supra note 10, at 79.

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53 Maruyama, supra note 43, at 154.

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57 M. Norinaga, Kuzubana, quoted in Watanabe, supra note 10, at 245.

58 Norinaga, supra note 48, at 45.

59 See Watanabe, supra note 10, at 280.

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61 Norinaga, supra note 48, at 48.

62 Watanabe, supra note 10, at 240.

63 B.T. Wakabayashi, Anti-Foreignism and Western Learning in Early-Modern Japan (1986), 138.

64 Ibid., at 138.

65 However, some foreigners were exempt: ‘four gates’ were held open for international trade. See Lam, supra note 5, at 34–6.

66 Note that wholesale seclusion has never been the case; Japan remained diplomatically and commercially engaged, especially with neighbouring countries. See Hellyer, supra note 33, at 6. For a more recent take on this subject see Yanagihara, supra note 11, at 477–81.

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68 Wakabayashi, supra note 63, at 54.

69 S. Aizawa, New Theses (translated by B.T. Wakabayashi) (1825), in B.T. Wakabayashi, Anti-Foreignism and Western Learning in Early-Modern Japan (1986), 55.

70 Ibid., at 200.

71 See Maruyama, supra note 43, at 355–6.

72 Wakabayashi, supra note 63 at 13.

73 Aizawa, supra note 69, at 152.

74 Ibid.

75 Ibid. See also Shahabuddin, M., ‘Nationalism, Imperialism, and Bandung: Nineteenth-Century Japan as a Prelude’, in Eslava, L., Fakhri, M. and Nesiah, V. (eds.), Bandung, Global History, and International Law: Critical Pasts and Pending Futures (2017), 95, at 97–9Google Scholar.

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77 Onuma, supra note 16, at 26.

78 Wakabayashi notes that the 1890 Imperial Rescript on Education borrows this sentence from the section entitled ‘What is Essential to a Nation (kokutai)’ in Aizawa’s New Theses: ‘All the people of the realm be of one heart and mind.’ See also Aizawa, supra note 69, at 262.

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91 Ibid., at 17–18.

92 Ibid., at 20.

93 Ibid.

94 Y. Fukuzawa, cited in Takenori, supra note 83, at xix.

95 Fukuzawa, supra note 85, at 35–6.

96 Ibid., at 36–7.

97 Ibid., at 225.

98 Ibid., at 234.

99 Ibid., at 235.

100 Ibid., at 251.

101 H. Parkes, quoted in O. Checkland, Britain’s Encounter with Meiji Japan, 1868–1912 (1989), 17.

102 Hopper, supra note 81, at 120.

103 Ibid.

104 Ibid.

105 Y. Fukuzawa, quoted in Zhang, supra note 15, at 152.

106 Zhang, supra note 15, at 152.

107 Y. Fukuzawa, Jiji Shogen (Current Affairs Briefly Discussed, 1881), quoted in Zhang, supra note 15, at 155.

108 Hopper, supra note 81, at 110–11.

109 Ibid., at 121.

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111 Ibid., at 4.

112 Ibid.

113 Checkland, supra note 101, at 14–16.

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124 See R.P. Anand, Studies in International Law and History: An Asian Perspective (2004), 24–102.

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130 Benner, supra note 116, at 32.

131 The Charter Oath of 1868 reads: ‘All absurd usages of the past shall be broken through, and everything shall be based upon just and equitable principles of Nature. Wisdom and knowledge shall be sought throughout the world and thus the foundations of the Empire shall be strengthened.’

132 Hirakawa, supra note 114, at 122–4.

133 Beasley, supra note 79, at 43–4.

134 S. Giffard, Japan Among the Powers 1890–1990 (1994), 14.

135 Hopper, supra note 81, at 125.

136 Y. Fukuzawa, “Attack Peking Immediately” (Tadatini Pekin wo Tukubesi), quoted in Yamauchi, supra note 126, at 8.

137 Hopper, supra note 81, at 127.

138 S. Tokutomi, quoted in J.D. Pierson, Tokutomi Sohoo, 1863–1957: A Journalist for Modern Japan (1980), 229.

139 Ibid., at 235–6.

140 Beasley, supra note 79, at 32.

141 See Pierson, supra note 138, at 318.

142 Benner, supra note 116, at 28.

143 See H. Saito, Japan’s Policies and Purposes: Selections from Recent Addresses and Writings (1935), 136.

144 W.E. Griffis, The Mikado’s Empire: A History of Japan from the Mythological Age to the Meiji Era (2000), 433.

145 For full text of the document see I. Nish, Anglo-Japanese Alliance, 1894–1907 (1966), 216–17.

146 Giffard, supra note 134, at 26.

147 For a detailed account of diplomacy leading up to the Russo-Japanese War, see Beasley, supra note 79, at 80–2.

148 Saaler argues that Kakuzo’s target audience were Indians. See Saaler, supra note 45, at 5.

149 O. Kakuzo, The Awakening of Japan (1905), 179–81.

150 Ibid., at 182.

151 O. Kakuzo, The Book of Tea (1906), 2–3.

152 T. Yosaburoo, Japanese Rule in Formosa (translated by G. Braithwaite) (1907), vii.

153 Kanae, supra note 31, at 15. See also Lam, supra note 5, at 33.

154 Kanae, ibid., at 14–15.

155 Dai Nihon Gaiko Bunsho (Documents relating to the Foreign Relations of the Japanese Empire), vol. VIII, 327–8, quoted in Kanae, supra note 31, at 15–16.

156 Kuriyama, supra note 2, at 3.

157 Takahashi joined Cambridge University and published Cases on International Law during the Sino-Japanese War (1899) and International Law applied to the Russo-Japanese War with the Decisions of the Japanese Prize Court (1908). Westlake wrote the introduction to his book on Sino-Japanese War and Holland contributed a preface. Ariga produced similar books in French: Law guerre sino-japonaise au point de vue du droit international (1896) and La guerre russo-japonaise au point de vue du droit international (1908). See Kuriyama, supra note 2. For other scholarly works concerning the Russo-Japanese War, see Ito, F., ‘One Hundred Years of International Law Studies in Japan’, (1969) 13 The Japanese Annual of International Law 19, at 23Google Scholar.

158 See Yamauchi, supra note 126, at 13.

159 Ibid.

160 U. Kanzo, Justification of the Corean War, Kokumin no Tomo (A friend of the nation), quoted in Yamauchi, supra note 126, at 8.

161 See, e.g., Westlake, J., ‘Introduction’, in Takahashi, S., Cases on International Law during the Chino-Japanese War (1899), xv–xviGoogle Scholar. See also T.E. Holland, Studies in International Law (1898), 114–15.

162 See, e.g., A.B. Lorca, Mestizo International Law: A Global Intellectual History 1841–1933 (2014).