Departments
Intermediate Japanese - Free Online Course
FUKOKU-KYOOHEI
富国強兵
"rich country, strong military"
During the Meiji Era (1868-1912), Japan actively embraced Western technology, and adopted certain useful aspects of Western culture. (For example, the Japanese military was reorganized along Western lines.) It was during this era that modern Japan was born, and the Japanese began to define its relationships with others—especially the great powers of the West.
During the Edo Period (1603-1867), Japan’s relationships with the rest of the world had been mostly irrelevant. Foreign influences were also of minimal concern. Early in the 1600s, Japan’s ruling Tokugawa shoguns had closed the country to outsiders, and Japan remained isolated for more than two hundred years. Therefore, the Japanese largely missed the technological trends that had transformed the countries of Europe and America into burgeoning industrial powers.
Japan’s long period of isolation ended in 1853, when the American Navy more or less forced the Japanese government to open the country. Foreign ships began to dock at Japanese ports, and the Japanese became acutely aware of the technological superiority of the Western nations. They realized that they had some serious catching up to do. Erasing the technological gap between Japan and the West became a national priority.
There was a sense of urgency about this work. By the late nineteenth century, many of the Western powers had taken Asian lands as colonies. The French dominated Indochina. After defeating China in two opium wars, Great Britain had seized Hong Kong, and occupied parts of the Chinese mainland. Russia was eyeing Manchuria.
The policy of fukoku-kyōhei was seen as an insurance policy of sorts. If Japan could catch up to the West in terms of wealth and military power, then it would never suffer the fate of the Chinese or the people of Indochina. In addition, Japan would be able to project its own might in world affairs. (This notion was consistent with the “balance-of-powers” mindset of the nineteenth century.) It would not be long before Japan changed its priorities from self-defense against imperialism, to becoming an imperial power in its own right.
The first real test of Japan’s success at implementing fukoku-kyōhei arrived in 1904-5, with the Russo-Japanese War. In this conflict, Japan put the world on notice by defeating Czarist Russia. The Japanese victory was greeted with a moderate degree of enthusiasm in Great Britain and America. A little more than a generation later, both countries would find themselves at war with Japan.