Japanese imperialism and the South Manchuria Railway Company, 1904-1914

This study explores the empire-building strategies employed by the Japanese in the early stages of their expansionist venture in Northeast China between 1904 and 1914. In order to compensate for Japan's relative weakness as an aspiring imperialist power, policy makers devised a number innovative military and economic schemes that would make optimum use of the nation's limited resources. Central to these plans was the three-fold use of the railroad as a covert military installation, as an instrument of territorial control, and as a source of revenue to finance the venture as a whole. A quasi-official corporation known as the South Manchuria Railway Company was established in 1906 to manage this program. Also crucial were a series of fundamental reforms in military policy which redefined the principal mission of the nation's ground forces as the defense of Japan's position in Northeast China against Russia. The Imperial Defense Plan of 1907 codified this mission, in effect transforming the Japanese army into an instrument of Manchuria policy.;These strategies proved to be highly effective during the first few years of the venture. Overcoming its initial disabilities, Japan emerged as the most successful among the imperialist powers in carving out a coherent sphere of influence in China. In time, however, what had started out as creative adaptations to the conditions prevailing in the aftermath of the Russo-Japanese War devolved into fixed policy prescriptions increasingly irrelevant to the actual opportunities and needs confronting Japanese imperialism. Strategies in Manchuria remained unchanged despite the fact that military and geopolitical developments unfolding between 1910 and 1914 had rendered them largely obsolete.;The study explains this pattern of policy evolution as the result of a gradual displacement of the original goals of expansion by the organizational interests of the agencies charged with implementation. The defense of Manchuria justified the institutional claims of the army to power, prestige and a major share of the nation's resources. The use of the railroad as an instrument of empire likewise provided the South Manchuria Railway Company with its reason for being. Both agencies vigorously resisted any adjustments in imperial policy that threatened these claims and sought to enforce the government's continued commitment to the program formulated in 1905.