The Military-Adventurous Complex: Officers, adventurers, and Japanese expansion in East Asia, 1884–1937

2018 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 339-376
Author(s):  
DANNY ORBACH
Keyword(s):  
East Asia ◽  
Driving Forces ◽  
Extended Period ◽  
Special Operations ◽  
Japanese Imperialism ◽  
History Of ◽  
Part Time ◽  
Grassroots Level ◽  
Ambivalent Relationship ◽  
The Military

AbstractJapanese imperialism was one of the most important driving forces in the history of modern East Asia. One influential group of actors at the grassroots level were the so-called ‘continental adventurers’ (tairiku rōnin)—Japanese nationals who travelled in Korea and China on the lookout for adventures and employment opportunities. Some of them worked part time for the army as spies, translators, and agents for special operations. These adventurers have been studied before as agents of Japanese imperialism, but existing accounts fail to present a convincing model of the mechanism that made their activities effective. The goal of this article is to fill this gap.This mechanism, which I shall hereafter call ‘the military-adventurous complex’, was a lobby of officers, continental adventurers, businessmen, politicians, criminal elements as well as Chinese, Manchurian, and Mongolian revolutionaries. The interests of these contingents were unique but nevertheless intertwining. Despite its decentralized character, the military-adventurous complex had a significant impact on Japanese foreign policy over an extended period. In this article, we shall explore the contours, structure, and modus operandi of that complex, its ambivalent relationship with the Japanese state, as well as several examples of its operations in the early twentieth century. Finally, we shall dwell on the ramifications of the complex on the development of Japanese imperialism.

In the Ruins of the Japanese Empire

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
East Asia ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Second World War ◽  
New Order ◽  
Japanese Empire ◽  
World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Military ◽  
Second World

The destruction of Japan’s empire in August 1945 under the military onslaught of the Allied Powers produced a powerful rupture in the histories of modern East Asia. Everywhere imperial ruins from Manchuria to Taiwan bore memoires of a great run of upheavals and wars which in turn produced revolutionary uprisings and civil wars from China to Korea. The end of global Second World War did not bring peace and stability to East Asia. Power did not simply change hands swiftly and smoothly. Rather the disintegration of Japan’s imperium inaugurated a era of unprecedented bloodletting, state destruction, state creation, and reinvention of international order. In the ruins of Japan’s New Order, legal anarchy, personal revenge, ethnic displacement, and nationalist resentments were the crucible for decades of violence. As the circuits of empire went into meltdown in 1945, questions over the continuity of state and law, ideologies and the troubled inheritance of the Japanese empire could no longer be suppressed. In the Ruins of the Japanese Empire takes a transnational lens to this period, concluding that we need to write the violence of empire’s end – and empire itself - back into the global history of East Asia’s Cold War.

The China-Russia-Japan Military Balance in Manchuria, 1906–1918

2010 ◽  
Vol 44 (6) ◽  
pp. 1283-1311
Author(s):  
ASADA MASAFUMI
Keyword(s):  
East Asia ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Russian Revolution ◽  
Regional Security ◽  
Military Power ◽  
Alliance Partner ◽  
History Of ◽  
Triangular Relationship ◽  
The Military ◽  
Military Balance

AbstractEven after the Russo-Japanese War, Manchuria remained the powder keg of East Asia. In the war's aftermath, three empires, the Qing, the Russian and the Japanese, stationed their troops in Manchuria, in a struggle for military supremacy there. There has already been a considerable amount of research on these military activities. However, previous works have not discussed them from a triangular relationship. This paper contends that the history of modern East Asia cannot be understood until one examines the shift in the military balance in Manchuria from a triangular comparative point of view. The results of such examination show that, in Manchuria, each empire was unable to establish military domination alone, and therefore needed an alliance partner. During the Xinhai Revolution, the Russia-Japan ‘alliance’ wielded overwhelming military power against China. However, after the Russian Revolution in 1917, Japan renounced cooperation with a weakened Russia and built a new partnership with China to advance the Siberian intervention. The military triangle of Russia, China and Japan was unable to create a comprehensive regional security system in Manchuria because what was established was based on mutual distrust and fear.

Russia and Europe: historical lessons

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vladimir I. Vinokurov
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Driving Forces ◽  
The United States ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Bilateral Relations ◽  
Current State ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Will ◽  
Otto Von Bismarck ◽  
The Military

Тhe article deals with the results of the Patriotic War of 1812 and the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945. The analysis of these largest wars in the history of Russian-European relations is carried out, their comparison is made, their nature, character and driving forces are revealed. On the basis of this, it is concluded that both sides have not made the proper conclusions: Europe — in terms of the expediency and consequences of an attack on Russia, thereby violating the will of the iron Chancellor Otto von Bismarck: "Make alliances with anyone, start any wars, but never touch the Russians." Russia — timely opening and preparation for the upcoming tests in relations with Europe. Against the background of more than 200 years of history, the current state of relations between Russia and Europe, which has reached a low level, is considered. Although the leading European states, Germany and France, have not stopped political contacts with Russia, but the content of these contacts has become significantly poorer, the format has narrowed, and the tone has sharpened. In the military sphere, Europe in the Russian direction follows in principle the same course as the United States. Within the framework of NATO, European countries, led by the United States, have taken a number of steps that have restored, so far at a symbolic level, the military confrontation with Russia in eastern Europe. Moscow, for its part, has stepped up its own military activities near its western borders. As a result, Europe has ceased to be the island of security that it remained for the previous quarter of a century. This does not mean, of course, that relations between Russia and European countries are ending. In fact, Russia's practical needs require easing tensions with Europe as its largest trade and economic partner. With this in mind, Moscow has achieved some success in replacing the almost non-existentties with Brussels with meaningful bilateral relations with some EU countries. Despite the fact that the European Union's foreign policy apparatus is unable to form a unified geopolitical, economic and cultural front against Moscow, there is every reason to believe that the Kremlin intends to be guided by this strategy of bilateral relations in the coming years.

Exogenous Colonialism: Java Sugar between Nippon and Taikoo before and during the Interwar Depression, c. 1920–1940

2009 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 477-515 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. ROGER KNIGHT
Keyword(s):  
East Asia ◽  
Sugar Industry ◽  
Indian Subcontinent ◽  
Cane Sugar ◽  
Key Factors ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
China Market ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ambivalent Relationship ◽  
Asian Mainland

AbstractThis paper discusses the commercial history of the Java sugar industry in the interwar decades of the 1920s and 1930s. Java's late colonial industry had a uniquely exogenous character, in that, amongst the world's major producers of cane sugar in the late colonial era, it was singularly devoid of metropolitan or quasi-metropolitan markets. Instead, it sought its markets pre-eminently on the Asian ‘mainland’ to its north and northwest. The Indian subcontinent formed one such market, but East Asia formed the second, and it is the Java industry's fortunes in China and Japan that provide the focus of the present paper. This focus highlights the extent to which the partial collapse of the industry in the mid-1930s related to factors altogether more complex than a simple fall in consumption and drop in prices associated with the interwar Depression. Fundamentally, it was evolving economic autarchy throughout east Asia, encouraged by Depression conditions, which lay at the heart of the Java sugar industry's problems in this sector of its market. Key factors were Java's ambivalent relationship with an expanding but crisis-ridden Japanese sugar ‘empire,’ and the effect on its long-standing links with British sugar refineries in Hong Kong because of the latter's increasing difficulties in the China market. In tandem, they underscored the commercial hazards inherent in Java sugar's exogenous situation.

Military Technology and Organization in Imperial China

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Lorge
Keyword(s):  
Central Government ◽  
Military History ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
Military Technology ◽  
Imperial Period ◽  
History Of ◽  
Part Time ◽  
Imperial China ◽  
Effective Use ◽  
The Military

Warfare and the military were at the center of the imperial Chinese state, though their significance was downplayed by government officials and the literati. Chinese dynasties fielded armies organized and supported by the central government that combined infantry and cavalry forces, and mixed part-time (militia) and professional soldiers. Cavalry and infantry forces were strongly, though not exclusively, connected to ethnic background. The best and most numerous cavalry came from steppe groups, and the best and most numerous infantry were Chinese. The stirrup and guns were invented in China, changing the course of both Chinese and world military history. China also had a highly developed tradition of military thought that drew upon a classical tradition and was vastly elaborated and expanded upon during the imperial period. What most distinguished imperial China from its earlier period was the effective use of war to create and support a unified state. Overall, the history of warfare and the military in imperial China was one of technological and intellectual sophistication in support of state power.

Competing Visions of Japan’s Relations with Southeast Asia, 1938-1960

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heiko Lang
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
East Asia ◽  
Comprehensive Analysis ◽  
The Political ◽  
South East Asia ◽  
Regional Strategy ◽  
Doctoral Studies ◽  
Continuity And Change ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Military

This book offers the first systematic and comprehensive analysis of the Japanese debate on the nation’s South East Asia policy from 1938–1941 and 1952–1960. In a detailed discourse analysis, it compares competing arguments offered by business circles, the military, the political and diplomatic elites, and intellectuals on Japan’s regional strategy. This book advances the field of the history of Japan’s diplomatic thinking, not only by addressing the issue of continuity and change in the discourse on Japan’s relations with South East Asia, but also by demonstrating how this debate served to explore more fundamental questions about Japan’s identity, its relations with Western nations and its stance on Asian solidarity. Heiko Lang (PhD) completed his doctoral studies at the Universities of Tokyo and Munich and is currently teaching international relations at Hosei University, Tokyo.

Maintaining Male Exclusivity: Porcelain Privilege in the Military

2021 ◽  
pp. 0095327X2199236
Author(s):  
Shannon Portillo ◽  
Alesha Doan ◽  
Ashley Mog
Keyword(s):  
Gender Equity ◽  
Department Of Defense ◽  
Special Forces ◽  
Special Operations ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Gender ◽  
A Site ◽  
The Military ◽  
Masculine Culture ◽  
The U.S

Current debates about bathrooms and bathroom policy contribute to a long history of how space shapes norms and expectations about privacy and gender equity in the workplace. The military serves as a significant site of discussion, particularly as the Department of Defense moves forward with efforts to integrate women into combat positions. Relying on an analysis of 27 focus groups with a total of 198 participants we collected from Special Operations in the U.S. Army, we examine bathrooms as a site where male soldiers contest and resist female integration. Using Sasson-Levy and Katz’s concept of institutional de-gendering and re-gendering, we argue that men’s resistance to gender-neutral toilets is an effort to re-gender Special Forces and maintain the hegemonic masculine culture that acutely defines it.

Building a Global Feminist Alliance for Peace in East Asia

2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 481-495
Author(s):  
Sit Tsui ◽  
Lau Kin Chi
Keyword(s):  
East Asia ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Industrial Complex ◽  
War And Peace ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
Cultural Workers ◽  
Demilitarized Zone ◽  
Grassroots Level ◽  
The Military

In an era of vacillations between threats of a nuclear war and promises of peace breakthroughs in East Asia, this article takes examples from public campaigns of women’s peace groups—such as Women’s Peace Walk, Women Cross DMZ (the Demilitarized Zone), Women’s Active Museum on War and Peace, and PeaceWomen Across the Globe—and argues for feminist scholarship to take an interdisciplinary approach and, in particular, to fuse peace studies with cultural studies, political economy, and global geopolitics. Doing so requires an examination of the history and the scope of the military-industrial complex, its relationship with finance capital, its bonds with governments and political parties, and its business patterns in relation to wars and conflicts all over the world. It also is crucial to sow the seeds of reconciliation and peace into the daily life of ordinary people. Thus, historians, cultural workers, educationists, writers, and scholar activists of different areas must undertake long-term sustained work for reconciliation and peace at the grassroots level as well as networking at the regional and global levels.

A History of East Asia

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Holcombe
Keyword(s):  
East Asia ◽  
History Of

From the history of the military past of composer and conductor Boris Galaev

2020 ◽  
pp. 39-44
Author(s):  
Felix S. Kireev
Keyword(s):  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Documentary Sources ◽  
Musical Activity ◽  
Russian State ◽  
The First World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Military ◽  
First Time ◽  
First World

Boris Alexandrovich Galaev is known as an outstanding composer, folklorist, conductor, educator, musical and public figure. He has a great merit in the development of musical culture in South Ossetia. All the musical activity of B.A. Galaev is studied and analyzed in detail. In most of the biographies of B.A. Galaev about his participation in the First World War, there is only one proposal that he served in the army and was a bandmaster. For the first time in historiography the participation of B.A. Galaev is analyzed, and it is found out what positions he held, what awards he received, in which battles he participated. Based on the identified documentary sources, for the first time in historiography, it occured that B.A. Galaev was an active participant in the First World War on the Caucasian Front. He went on attacks, both on foot and horse formation, was in reconnaissance, maintained communication between units, received military awards. During this period, he did not have time to study his favorite music, since, according to the documents, he was constantly at the front, in the battle formations of the advanced units. He had to forget all this heroic past and tried not to mention it ever after. Therefore, this period of his life was not studied by the researchers of his biography. For writing this work, the author uses the Highest Orders on the Ranks of the Military and the materials of the Russian State Military Historical Archive (RSMHA).

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