Book Review

Asia

This study of the politics of Japanese foreign policy making during World War I is both a stimulating examination of new material and a provocative reinterpretation of familiar data. Frederick R. Dickinson situates the formulation of Japan's wartime policies toward China and the Great Powers squarely in the context of competing domestic conceptions of Japan's national identity, or national essence. This perspective suggests that Japan's leaders were designers of their own nation, and creators of their own destinies, rather than being able only to react defensively to the external dangers (and humiliations) posed by Western imperialism and great power relationships.

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Dickinson sees a fundamental political cleavage between two competing visions of Japan's identity. One, held by the senior statesman Yamagata Aritomo and his faction of military and civilian bureaucrats, defined Japan in terms of empire, a large army, and oligarchic rule. This national identity was patterned after imperial Germany and required continental expansion, large armed forces, and, almost inevitably, war in order to maintain its legitimacy and the legitimacy of oligarchic rule. But peace eroded the nation's commitment to the maintenance of such large armed forces and nourished yearnings for lower taxes, greater political rights, and access to participation in government. Yamagata's position was shaken severely in 1913 by the Diet's refusal to fund new army divisions, and by a dramatic overturning of his decision to reinstall one of his protégés as premier.

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