The Selling of Japan. Japanese Manipulation of Western Opinion, 1900-1905

T -HE POSITION Japan attained in world affairs in 1905 was not one that had been accorded her gratuitously by the West. On the contrary, not only had she had to defeat a major Western power, but she had also had to contend with the more insidious question of race. Japan accomplished the first task readily to the suprise of everyone. The second she also dealt with forthrightly. The government in Tokyo undertook a calculated press campaign to persuade the West that Japan was its equal and deserved a place among the more enlightened nations of the world. As with other such campaigns the results are difficult to measure, but this one seems to have succeeded, at least in part. Japan did have and did retain the sympathy of the majority of the Western nations. Nevertheless, the campaign itself shows that the Japanese government was not content to sit back and await Western acceptance. Government leaders did their best to explain Japan's cause and create the necessary preconditions for that acceptance. Groundwork for the campaign was begun in 1898 when Uchida Yasuya,1 head of the Political Affairs Bureau of the Foreign Ministry, and a small group of officials began to systematically survey opinion expressed in foreign journals and magazines.2 However, the first attempt at enlightening Western opinion came with the Boxer Rebellion in the summer of 1900. By June 1900 the Boxer Rebellion was reaching its climax. The movement had begun in 1899 as anti-dynastic and anti-foreign, but had soon changed to pro-dynastic, anti-Christian, and anti-foreign. On 20 June the zealots besieged Peking, and the siege was not lifted until 14 August. Japan had been reluctant at first to provide troops to aid in suppressing the Boxers, and it was only after a great deal of persuasion by Great Britain that she had agreed to dispatch a force of 8,000 men. However, theJapanese government soon discovered two disagreeable facts: even though Japan had provided the largest contingent of men, their actions