Japan had good intelligence about China’s losing fight in Opium War

Unlike Korea, a tributory state of the Qing Dynasty, Japan was able to obtain a balanced view based on Chinese and Dutch sources.

By SHINICHI KUMAMOTO and KOICHI FURUYA
The Asahi Shimbun

A bronze statue of Lin Zexu greets visitors to the Opium War Museum, a major tourist attraction in Dongguan, Guangdong province. The habit of smoking opium spread from Fujian province where Lin was born. Since Lin’s younger brother is said to have died young because of the habit, he must have keenly felt the horror of opium.

NATIONAL DIET LIBRARY Shinsaku Takasugi (1839-1867) was born in the Choshu domain, present-day Yamaguchi Prefecture. He was a central figure in the movement to overthrow the Tokugawa Shogunate. He also organized the Kiheitai, a volunteer militia comprising low-ranking samurai, farmers and town folk. He died from illness just one year before the Meiji &.

Legacies of the Opium Wars with Britain are still keenly felt in China.

In fact, this period of the mid-19th century history may well determine the fate of three Japanese who are trying to avoid being put to death in China for attempting to smuggle drugs to Japan.

They are currently being detained in Shenyang and Dalian, appealing their death sentences.

If they were Chinese, they would have no hope of escaping execution, sources say. However, Chinese judicial authorities are treating the matter with caution because the suspects are foreigners.

"China is sensitive to drug crimes because of its history of the Opium Wars," a source says. "This (ruling on the appeals) is not something we can decide easily."

The First Opium War, also known as the First Anglo-Chinese War, raged from 1840 to 42. Britain, which had overwhelming naval supremacy, dispatched a fleet to China, then ruled by the Qing Dynasty, with the aim of forcing it to import opium.

Hostilities initially flared in Guangdong province, which to this day has three museums dedicated to the Opium Wars in the city of Dongguan alone. They are the Lin Zexu Memorial Museum, the Opium War Museum and the Naval Battle Museum.

On display are remains of the artillery used in the battle and a reconstructed artificial lake that Lin Zexu, as minister extraordinary and plenipotentiary, used to dispose of opium that was confiscated from British merchants.

Just prior to June 26, designated by the United Nations as International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking, Sun Guangping, curator of the three museums, was busy making preparations for related events.

"We are organizing a ceremony to burn drugs," he said. "We will also tour housing complexes to give lectures on eradicating drugs."

Wang Xiaoqiu, professor of history at Peking University, said China did not feel particularly threatened even though it lost the Opium War, Hong Kong was seized and the country was effectively colonized by the British.

"Emperor Daoguang of the Qing Dynasty thought that even though he had lost territory, his status remained intact and he continued to throw parties and live in luxury," Wang said. "Even 20 years after the Opium War, the emperor did not reflect on the past and lived an idle life."

Since fighting took place some 2,000 kilometers south of Beijing, then called Peking, Emperor Daoguang apparently felt no sense of threat.

In fact, it wasn’t until British forces attacked Tianjin and approached Beijing that he hastily sacked Lin.

The emperor’s lack of awareness about impending crisis is also apparent in the way he referred to the 1842 Treaty of Nanking, which marked the end of hostilities, as a "peace treaty of 10,000 years."

But that doesn’t mean all Chinese sat back and did nothing.

In particular, Lin went to great pains to gather information about the West.

He had books on world geography and history translated into Chinese. When he was ousted, he gave the materials to Wei Yuan, who published them as the "Illustrated Treatise on the Maritime Kingdoms."

The first edition came out immediately after the end of the First Opium War. By 1852, it had grown into a 100- volume tome.

In addition to explaining how foreign nations were governed, it served as an illustrated guide to ships and cannons used in the West. It advocated the strategy of "learning from the strengths of Western nations to prevent their aggression."

When Wang of Peking University visited Japan, he expressed surprise at discovering so many translated versions of the Chinese book.

In 1853, Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry and his fleet of "Black Ships" arrived in Uraga, present-day Yokosuka, demanding Japan end its more than two centuries of self-imposed isolation.

In the three years that followed, 21 Japanese translations of the Chinese book appeared. Eight of them focused on the United States, the world’s newly emerging power.

Ironically, Lin’s legacy bore fruit in Japan, not in his native land.

Shozan Sakuma, Shoin Yoshida, Takamori Saigo and other prominent activists and scholars who played key roles in the dying days of the Edo Period (1603-1867) leading to the Meiji & in 1868 were avid readers of "Illustrated Treatise on the Maritime Kingdoms."

Chinese books widely translated

Katsuo Inoue, a Hokkaido University professor who specializes in modern Japanese political history, says China provided "channels of intelligence and information" for Japan.

"Thanks to translations of Chinese books, Japan was able to learn about the world after the Opium War," Inoue said. "Later, (officials of) the new government established with the Meiji & also made use of the knowledge acquired by reading ‘Bankoku Koho’ (international law) and other books on foreign affairs."

News of the Opium War also reached the Edo-period Japan courtesy of Dutch trading vessels that called on Nagasaki.

Immediately after the war broke out, the Dutch reported how Emperor Daoguang was putting up a poor fight against British forces.

Later, Chinese vessels also brought word about the British occupation and the high death toll among imperial soldiers.

Thus, Japan received information about the war from China as well as through Dutch sources.

While some of the information might have been inaccurate, the Japanese government was able to glean a fairly good picture of what was going on because it was getting information from separate sources.

Shocked by the developments, Tadakuni Mizuno (1794-1851)-roju (equivalent to present-day prime minister) of the Tokugawa Shogunate-expedited changes to economic and military systems, known as the Tenpo reforms.

Until that time, when foreign ships approached Japanese shores, residents of those areas were under orders to drive them out.

Mizuno decided that instead of expelling them, coastal communities should supply them with whatever they needed, such as fuel and water. He also arranged for the Japanese military to hold Western-style gunnery exercises.

Eventually, Mizuno fell from grace over his failure to place the areas around Edo (present-day Tokyo) and Osaka under direct government control. Even so, the Tokugawa Shogunate remained determined to gather any intelligence about Western moves to secure a foothold in Asia.

For example, it was tipped off by the Netherlands about Perry’s visit to Japan.

Based on that knowledge, the Tokugawa Shogunate chose to avoid war, having learned the lesson of the Qing Dynasty’s defeat in the Opium War.

The established theory that Japan was forced by the United States to accept unequal treaties-the 1854 Japan-U.S.Treaty of Peace and Amity and the 1858 Japan-U.S. Treaty of Amity and Commerce -is being re-evaluated by historians.

"The shogunate was by no means idle," says Inoue of Hokkaido University."It was making careful preparations commensurate with Japan’s national strength."

One man in particular caught the attention of both Wang and Inoue.

He is Luo Sen, a Chinese who accompanied Perry to Japan and served as an interpreter. He communicated with the Japanese side by writing in Chinese.

Luo became friends with bureaucrats of the Tokugawa Shogunate and briefed them on what was happening in China.

In a letter, Kenjiro Hirayama, a representative of the shogunate, wrote, "We must love our neighbors and live in harmony with everybody."

In response, Luo gave the following reply based on his personal experience of having fought in the Opium War: "Government bureaucrats who were only intent on lining their pockets paid no attention to my contributions and efforts.

That is why I directed my interest to traveling overseas, and this is how I got here on this steamboat."

In a few years, the number of Japanese traveling to China started rising.

With China’s defeat in the Opium War, Shanghai opened to the outside world and started on its path to becoming an international city and a window to the world.

In 1862, Shinsaku Takasugi (1839-1867), a samurai of the Choshu domain, present- day Yamaguchi Prefecture, visited Shanghai as part of an official shogunate delegation and witnessed the Taiping Rebellion in which farmers revolted against the Qing Dynasty administration.

He observed that British and French nationals acted as if they owned China and that local Chinese acted subserviently.

Japan learned from Qing’s loss

Takasugi felt strongly that Japan should not wind up like that.

Upon his return to Japan, Takasugi organized low-ranking samurai and farmers into a volunteer militia force called Kiheitai. It was different from traditional regular military units, which were exclusively made up of the samurai class.

The socially mixed militia formed by Takasugi played a leading role in the movement to overthrow the Tokugawa Shogunate.

The Satsuma domain, present-day Kagoshima Prefecture, which teamed up with Choshu in the anti-shogunate movement, had an ingenious way of gathering intelligence by using the Ryukyu Kingdom, present-day Okinawa Prefecture.

At the time, the kingdom paid tribute and sent envoys to both Japan and China.

A museum dedicated to the history of exchanges between the Ryukyu Kingdom and China is in Fuzhou, the capital of Fujian province in southern China.

The museum building used to serve as a lodging house for Ryukyu missions and merchants.

Lin’s birthplace, Fuzhou, is dotted with the graves of Ryukyuans. Some headstones are inscribed with dates that go back to the Opium War.

Clearly, the Ryukyu Kingdom provided a precious source of information for the Satsuma clan.

Moreover, once the Opium War ended, French and British warships visited Naha one after another to urge the kingdom to open trade.

Up until then, Satsuma seemed content to maintain the status quo.

But upon learning of the superior military and naval capabilities of the Western powers, it was quick to change sides and advocate that Japan end its policy of isolation. It worked with Choshu to eventually bring down the Tokugawa government.

Unlike Japan, Korea was a tributary state of the Qing Dynasty and was part of the Sinocentric system.

It sent a mission to the Qing Dynasty court at least once a year, allowing it to glean first-hand information about China through its envoys.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean it had more accurate information than Japan about the Opium War, according to Ha Jung Shik, professor of history at Soongsil University in Seoul.

For starters, the information tended to be partial to the Qing Dynasty, Ha said. This is because Korea was concerned about the fate of the Qing regime, which had suzerain power over it.

Furthermore, China is vast. During the Opium War, Beijing was far removed from the actual fighting and the information it received was often inaccurate.

"The misunderstanding that the Qing Dynasty did not lose territory had a major impact," Ha said. "There is no evidence, for example, that suggests the (Korean) government discussed naval defense. Back then, a small group of people who held power ruled the nation.It was not the kind of administration that positively solved problems."

The Korean dynasty appeared flustered, however, when news reached it that Beijing had fallen in the Second Opium War (1856-1860). Still, it did not take immediate action.

"The Korean leadership was optimistic that since Korea was poor and had nothing that appealed to Western nations, it would not be a target of attack," Ha said. "It shows that putting information to good use is more a problem of the will and attitude of the users than the value of information itself."

As the Opium Wars show, the advancement of Western powers such as Britain, France and the United States into East Asia prompted Japan to open up and paved the way for the Meiji Restoration.

Fact File:Opium War

The First Opium War between China’s Qing Dynasty and Britain raged from 1840 to 1842.

Although opium smoking was common in China, the Qing Dynasty repeatedly tried to ban it. This was because the drug is addictive and Chinese authorities were concerned about the harmful effect it had on public morals.

In Britain, by then an industrialized nation, the habit of tea drinking spread among ordinary people during the second half of the 18th century.

Britain had accumulated a large trade deficit with China as a result of soaring demand for tea, which was imported from China.

In an attempt to eliminate the trade deficit, Britain grew opium in India, then under British rule, and smuggled it into China.

The influx of opium threw the Chinese economy into confusion.

In 1839, Emperor Daoguang appointed Lin Zexu as minister extraordinary and plenipotentiary and dispatched him to Guangzhou, the center of the opium trade.

Lin confiscated and destroyed large quantities of opium and expelled British merchants.

Angered at China’s actions, the British government decided to go to war.

The Parliament approved the budget to dispatch troops by a narrow margin, although some lawmakers, including William Gladstone, who later became prime minister, objected to THE war.

British warships started attacking coastal areas such as Guangzhou in 1840.

In 1842, when British troops attacked Tianjin near Beijing, the imperial court led by Emperor Daoguang surrendered.

It signed the Treaty of Nanking and agreed to pay reparations, cede Hong Kong and open a number of trade ports, including Shanghai and Guangzhou.

Fact File:Sinocentric order

The term refers to hierarchical international relations with the Chinese emperor at the apex.

It was based on the notion that China, with its centuries-old culture, had been at the center of the world and that all surrounding cultures were those of uncivilized barbarians.

Specifically, the China-centered order took the form of surrounding countries such as Korea offering tribute to the Chinese emperor to receive its blessings and, in exchange, the emperor recognizing the heads of surrounding states as kings.

At the time of the Opium War, Korea, the Ryukyu Kingdom and Vietnam had tributary relationships with China, which they acknowledged as the suzerain political power.

In ancient times and during the Muromachi Period (1338-1573), Japan also entered a tributary relationship, but it was not part of the Sinocentric order at the time of the Opium War.

Fact File:Drug crimes in China

The Chinese government takes a severe stand against drug crimes, a reflection of China’s bitter experiences of the Opium Wars.

"We are taught since childhood that opium flowed into China with the Opium War and that it had a harmful effect on society," says Fan Xiaoyang, associate professor of law at Shenyang University in northeastern China. "We understand that is why the government is so intent on eradicating drug use."

Under Chinese criminal law, anybody who smuggles, sells, transports or manufactures 50 grams of heroin can be sentenced to death.

1997 statistics on court rulings show that more than 70 percent of the defendants who were indicted for drug crimes were sentenced to death, life imprisonment or prison terms of 15 years or longer, according to a Chinese judicial magazine.

The statistics covered drug offenses involving either 50 grams or more of heroin or 1 kilogram or more of opium.

Three Japanese men in their 40s to 60s are currently being detained in Shenyang and Dalian awaiting the outcome of their appeals against the death sentence for drug smuggling.

China is close to Myanmar (Burma) and Thailand, both major production centers of illegal drugs.

According to Chinese authorities, the drugs the three tried to smuggle to Japan were brought into China from third countries.

Behind the Chinese government’s hard-line attitude toward drug offenses is the fact that illegal drugs continue to flow into China.

In 2006, the number of drug offenses that resulted in criminal charges stood at 46,000 with a total of 56,000 suspects arrested.

(IHT/Asahi: July 20,2007)