European-East Asian Borders in Translation by Joyce C. H. Liu & Nick Vaughan-Williams

Author:Joyce C. H. Liu & Nick Vaughan-Williams [Liu, Joyce C. H. & Vaughan-Williams, Nick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General, History & Theory, International Relations, World, Asian, Geopolitics
ISBN: 9780415831314
Google: kl3zlwEACAAJ
Goodreads: 20307164
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2014-01-15T09:04:49+00:00

The development of the imagination of a maritime nation

Honda Toshiaki (本多利明, 1743–1821), similar to Hayashi Shihei, was a Japanese political economist who had studied Dutch learning in the late Tokugawa period and also noticed the maritime nation issue. It was Honda’s identity as a mathematician that made him distinct from Hayashi Shihei. Honda established his overseas trade economic theory on mathematics, but besides economic theory he was also concerned about social issues such as rural famine and increasing homelessness (Maeda 2009: 217). Honda regarded these social problems as results of inadequate domestic production: increasing population inadequately consumed living resources and hindered domestic productivity. Overseas trade was seen to be the best solution to Japan’s dilemma.

Concerning his idea of overseas trade, Honda took China as a negative example, claiming China to be a “Hill Nation” (山國), different from modern maritime Japan (Honda 1970a: 32). In contrast to the hill nation China, the maritime nations of Europe became a new model for Japan to follow. In Honda’s view, China was a country with bad geographical conditions because of being surrounded by land rather than by sea. He referred to the European nations as “Seiyou” (西洋, the Western ocean), idealizing them as a commonwealth ruled by morals, among which Portugal and Britain were nations using marine trade and colonization to enrich their own countries and to educate the natives of the colonized countries (Honda 1970b: 89–115). He specifically took Britain as a model for Tokugawa Japan, urging Japan to develop the Kamchatka Peninsula, which was on the same latitude as Britain (Honda 1970b: 141). Honda Toshiaki also suggested that the Tokugawa government should develop the islands surrounding Japan to build an interdependent economic trading sphere (Nishioka 2000: 121–24).

Although Honda Toshiaki advocated overseas trade, his idea was based on a state-led economic model. Military power was indispensable in the context of state-directed overseas trade. It was notable that Honda’s notion of trade-oriented external expansion related to his thought about the limitations of the land resources and the needs of domestic economic development concerning farmers starving in famine. As discussed below, some Meiji Japanese intellectuals shared the same awareness.

Satō Nobuhiro (佐藤信淵, 1769–1850), a Japanese political economist in the late Tokugawa period, also promoted overseas expansion. Satō was inspired by Dutch learning and “Kokugaku” (國學, nativist learning). In his Udaikondō hisaku (A Secret Strategy for Expansion, 宇内混同秘策), he provoked Japan into dominating the world by justifying a Japan-centered bio-cosmology deriving from the “mushuhi” (産靈) theory of ancient Japanese mythology through so-called “Kukugaku” theory (Koyasu 1977). To some extent, Satō foresaw the course of history by suggesting that Japan take Manchuria as a first foothold on the continent: the end of this strategy was to conquer the China continent.

He asserted that imperial rulers were responsible for saving the world’s common people. Japan, as the root of the world’s nations, would certainly conquer the barbarians (Westerners) and unify nations all over the world (Satō 1977: 426). To conquer the world was to save the common people of the world; this was the ultimate goal of Satō’s economic philosophy.

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