Nitobe Inazo: Japan's Bridge Across the Pacific by John F Howes

Author:John F Howes [Howes, John F]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Political Science, World, Asian, Regional Studies
ISBN: 9780429723681
Google: f55EEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2021-11-28T11:39:16+00:00

Attitudes Toward Natives

The policy of benevolence toward the natives on the frontiers and their eventual assimilation into the Japanese nation reflects Japanese experience. It may be said that the Japanese people themselves developed from a core tribe in Yamato which conquered and assimilated surrounding tribes. In this respect, what happened in Hokkaido was merely a final phase of this historical process, though it occurred while Western nations were building empires.

In its initial efforts to build a modern nation, the Meiji government first had to mark its national borders. After the Treaties of Shimoda (1855) and of St. Petersburg (1875) with Russia finally determined the northern boundaries, the Japanese intended to treat the Ainu in the northern territories with benevolence. This "benevolence" consisted in theory of distributing farmland and imparting civilization through Japanese schools. Whatever the stated policy, the Ainu increasingly lost control of their lands as immigrants from the south squeezed them out. At the other end of Japan, the Meiji government gradually integrated the inhabitants of the Ryûkyû archipelago and Tsushima into the mainland. The next step was to deal either directly with Korea as a full-fledged modern nation state independent of China or to handle it in the same manner as the Ryäkyus, reducing it to an appendage of, or even a component of, the emerging modern Japanese state and empire.

When Nitobe studied in Sapporo, Hokkaido had until very recently been the exclusive preserve of the Ainu who lived by hunting and fishing. It is recorded that when he entered the college in 1878, there were about 17,000 Ainu. This figure remained stable while the Japanese in Hokkaido grew from less than 200,000 to almost 2,500,000 in 1924. When Nitobe studied in Sapporo he must have seen many Ainu, but one looks in vain in his letters or those of other students at that time for mention of them. The newly arrived Japanese neglected the Ainus' presence in their enthusiasm to build a new nation along Western lines. They must have thought much like William Smith Clark, the man whom they admired as the founding president of their College and who shared American attitudes toward the natural environment, including its inhabitants. American developers felt they must exploit natural resources and bring civilization to the less fortunate races who inhabited a territory. Uchimura Kanzo's valedictory with Nitobe in the audience brought this representative attitude into a sharper focus. It promised hard work and even death if need be for the development of Hokkaido.5 Replete with this sort of determination and devotion, his words totally neglected the pitiful state into which these innocent natives had already fallen as a consequence of Japanese ambition.

Such was the attitude of Nitobe and his classmates and of contemporary Japanese in general. This does not mean that no one considered the fate of the Ainu. On the contrary, distinguished people, both Japanese and foreign, wept as "civilization," whether benevolent or malevolent, disrupted Ainu culture. Nitobe himself later compared the Ainu to American Indians, and he systematically discussed their place under colonial rule at Tokyo University.

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