Could you plausibly claim that the US provoked Japan before Pearl Harbor

[cjc]

a. It must be understood, that the Japanese and the Koreans were regarded and sort of treated as akin to East Asian pirates by the Americans, as well as other Western Imperialist powers seeking to make inroads in China around the beginning decades of the 19th Century. 1848 is often taught to American schoolchildren as the year when Mathew Perry's squadron "opened Japan". What is not taught well, was that the Japanese, a couple of centuries earlier, been subjected to a campaign of foreign cultural imperialist proselytization that sought to change the nature of Japanese culture as it existed at that time. The ruling Shogunate resisted the attempts to change Japanese sopcial and religious mores by closing the country to such foreign attempts and they had enough power to make the "western barbarians" back off.
.

Am sorry what is this inferring to? Because western missionaries where so far from home that they dint have any power and where much more often handy capted by not being allowed to interfere whith local politics.
And while many Japanese certainly saw it at western imperialism, they greatly overblown the actual power these people had, which was little, ignored to reinforce there own power and many wherent all that worried,Hideyoshi and Oba nobunaga certainly dint see any threat by western missionarys.

 

[Johnrankins]

I'd say so. If you read Operation Snow you can see that things like the oil embargo and more were done with support from Soviet agents with the deliberate intention and the knowledge that Japan would go to war.

Does it count as provocation? I'm not sure, but if you give someone a choice of war or subservience, where choosing subservience results in a governmental overthrow and war then is it really a choice?

And their history goes back a long time, if the USA wanted to claim China for themselves then they should have done so, and perhaps negotiated with Japan who obviously has claim by proximity. Look at the USA racial laws and their treatment of Japan at Washington. The USA could certainly have put more effort into keeping Japan democratic but an independent democratic Japan is worse for the USA than a vassal state.

Japan has problems with the US so naturally the thing to do is to rape all Chinese females from 7-70 in Nanjing, have contests on how many Chinese heads you can chop off, use Chinese civilians as targets for bayonet practice and test chemical weapons on Chinese civilians.

 

[RMcD94]

Japan has problems with the US so naturally the thing to do is to rape all Chinese females from 7-70 in Nanjing, have contests on how many Chinese heads you can chop off, use Chinese civilians as targets for bayonet practice and test chemical weapons on Chinese civilians.

Not sure where I said that raping Chinese citizens was acceptable. If you don't understand the politics of Japan following the world war 1 I recommend you read up on it. Even if you can't go to a library in the current situation Wikipedia has plenty of information

Just as communist revolutions (or democraticly elected slightly leftist) in South America provoked the USA Monroe doctrine

 

[McPherson]

Close to Whataboutism, though

a. Whataboutism: The Fallacy Of Deflection Arguments is a variation of the Apples to Oranges line of argument, where one set of concrete examples is mis-compared to another set of examples and produces a logical fallacy. That is not what I did.

What I did, was to show that Japanese imperialist behavior can be compared to American imperialist behavior, and measured for EXACT atrocity for atrocity, in circumstance and motive to see if it falls into a pattern of apples to apples; i.e. general human behavior.

-Massacres. Nanking vs. Northern Luzon
-Pillages. Looting Shanghai vs. looting Manila
-Rapes. Comfort Women vs. forced Filipina prostitution
-Concentration camps. Burma Railroad vs. "Reconcentration of the Illustrados"
-Rationalizations. Chinese are "inferiors" who must be taught the Japanese way vs. Filipinos are "inferiors" who must be taught the American way.
-Set-up of collaborators and puppet governments. Manchukuo vs. "Reformed Illustrados"
-GENOCIDE. 20,000,000 of 250,000,000 "liberated" Chinese murdered at Japanese hands(1 in 12.5). 700,000 of 9,000,000 Filipinos murdered at American hands (1 in 12,985).
-Incidents and examples reported both inside the national governments involvement and worldwide revulsion and condemnation is present, but neither government; nor the rest of the world does anything effective to correct the outrages until the two nations go to war against each other. CHECK all of the above.

Apples to apples. The point is that the Japanese did what they saw everyone else, especially the Americans, do. This is not to say the Japanese or the Americans are blameless, nor is the cited general human hypocrisy supposed to say that the Americans are somehow "hypocritical" for being human for claiming they are better than the Japanese; because the Japanese did the same when they cried foul on the Americans at the time. The point is to disabuse the notion that evil human behavior is a specific racial or cultural trait, or that rationalization is a restricted racial or cultural trait, as is hypocrisy. It is seen general human behavior. That is why humanity in general is TRYING to develop effective international law to corral this general human CRAP and why I made a special note to show that the evildoer, WOODROW WILSON, that piece of human scum, screwed up when he had a chance to lay a plank down in that international law when he opposed the Japanese proposal for the racial equality clause. The Japanese proposed that clause and the Americans rejected it. APPLES to apples. "Them's the rules?" Tokyo says, "Okay, we'll play by them, if that is the way it is."

Am sorry what is this inferring to? Because western missionaries where so far from home that they dint have any power and where much more often handy capted by not being allowed to interfere whith local politics.

b. Nanban trade.
c. Battle of Fukuda Bay
d. Portugese in Japan

Those missionaries were backed by seapower. It was politically effective.

And while many Japanese certainly saw it at western imperialism, they greatly overblown the actual power these people had, which was little, ignored to reinforce there own power and many wherent all that worried,Hideyoshi and Oba nobunaga certainly dint see any threat by western missionarys.

Same again.

 

[ric350]

I think there was another racial component at the time. In the eyes of the US, and most other western powers, the Japanese were viewed as inferior. So when the US applied the sanctions, there was a school yard bully attitude of “so what are you going to do about it?” Our lack of military preparedness underlined that attitude. So we got punched in the face at PH.

ric350

 

[cjc]

a. Whataboutism: The Fallacy Of Deflection Arguments is a variation of the Apples to Oranges line of argument, where one set of concrete examples is mis-compared to another set of examples and produces a logical fallacy. That is not what I did.

What I did, was to show that Japanese imperialist behavior can be compared to American imperialist behavior, and measured for EXACT atrocity for atrocity, in circumstance and motive to see if it falls into a pattern of apples to apples; i.e. general human behavior.

-Massacres. Nanking vs. Northern Luzon
-Pillages. Looting Shanghai vs. looting Manila
-Rapes. Comfort Women vs. forced Filipina prostitution
-Concentration camps. Burma Railroad vs. "Reconcentration of the Illustrados"
-Rationalizations. Chinese are "inferiors" who must be taught the Japanese way vs. Filipinos are "inferiors" who must be taught the American way.
-Set-up of collaborators and puppet governments. Manchukuo vs. "Reformed Illustrados"
-GENOCIDE. 20,000,000 of 250,000,000 "liberated" Chinese murdered at Japanese hands(1 in 12.5). 700,000 of 9,000,000 Filipinos murdered at American hands (1 in 12,985).
-Incidents and examples reported both inside the national governments involvement and worldwide revulsion and condemnation is present, but neither government; nor the rest of the world does anything effective to correct the outrages until the two nations go to war against each other. CHECK all of the above.

Apples to apples. The point is that the Japanese did what they saw everyone else, especially the Americans, do. This is not to say the Japanese or the Americans are blameless, nor is the cited general human hypocrisy supposed to say that the Americans are somehow "hypocritical" for being human for claiming they are better than the Japanese; because the Japanese did the same when they cried foul on the Americans at the time. The point is to disabuse the notion that evil human behavior is a specific racial or cultural trait, or that rationalization is a restricted racial or cultural trait, as is hypocrisy. It is seen general human behavior. That is why humanity in general is TRYING to develop effective international law to corral this general human CRAP and why I made a special note to show that the evildoer, WOODROW WILSON, that piece of human scum, screwed up when he had a chance to lay a plank down in that international law when he opposed the Japanese proposal for the racial equality clause. The Japanese proposed that clause and the Americans rejected it. APPLES to apples. "Them's the rules?" Tokyo says, "Okay, we'll play by them, if that is the way it is."



b. Nanban trade.
c. Battle of Fukuda Bay
d. Portugese in Japan

Those missionaries were backed by seapower. It was politically effective.


Same again.

Umm... that naban was trade, not much more, that battle was both over trade and involved less then 1,000 men with not real imperialist overtones and as I mentioned missionaries wherent back by there governments and where often hard from being involved in local politics because no government had the ability to project much power to Japan before they closed there borders.
While many Japanese did believe this it sure seems pretty clear to me that it was over blown by the tokogawa inorder to samint there power over Japan not that there was any imperialist aspirations yet on Japan, to far and issues in indea and the east indeas that need to be dealt whith first.

 

[McPherson]

Umm... that naban was trade, not much more, that battle was both over trade and involved less then 1,000 men with not real imperialist overtones and as I mentioned missionaries wherent back by there governments and where often hard from being involved in local politics because no government had the ability to project much power to Japan before they closed there borders.

Seriously?

While many Japanese did believe this it sure seems pretty clear to me that it was over blown by the tokogawa inorder to samint there power over Japan not that there was any imperialist aspirations yet on Japan, to far and issues in indea and the east indeas that need to be dealt whith first.

We will agree to disagree.

 

[Pelranius]

Apples to apples. The point is that the Japanese did what they saw everyone else, especially the Americans, do. This is not to say the Japanese or the Americans are blameless, nor is the cited general human hypocrisy supposed to say that the Americans are somehow "hypocritical" for being human for claiming they are better than the Japanese; because the Japanese did the same when they cried foul on the Americans at the time. The point is to disabuse the notion that evil human behavior is a specific racial or cultural trait, or that rationalization is a restricted racial or cultural trait, as is hypocrisy. It is seen general human behavior. That is why humanity in general is TRYING to develop effective international law to corral this general human CRAP and why I made a special note to show that the evildoer, WOODROW WILSON, that piece of human scum, screwed up when he had a chance to lay a plank down in that international law when he opposed the Japanese proposal for the racial equality clause. The Japanese proposed that clause and the Americans rejected it. APPLES to apples. "Them's the rules?" Tokyo says, "Okay, we'll play by them, if that is the way it is."

The only reason the Japanese asked for the racial equality clause was because even the genro weren't stupid enough to ask that Japanese be declared honorary whites.

The Japanese were already playing by those rules (though viewing themselves as in the first rank of great powers, as opposed to be middling).

 

[CalBear]

a. Whataboutism: The Fallacy Of Deflection Arguments is a variation of the Apples to Oranges line of argument, where one set of concrete examples is mis-compared to another set of examples and produces a logical fallacy. That is not what I did.

What I did, was to show that Japanese imperialist behavior can be compared to American imperialist behavior, and measured for EXACT atrocity for atrocity, in circumstance and motive to see if it falls into a pattern of apples to apples; i.e. general human behavior.

-Massacres. Nanking vs. Northern Luzon
-Pillages. Looting Shanghai vs. looting Manila
-Rapes. Comfort Women vs. forced Filipina prostitution
-Concentration camps. Burma Railroad vs. "Reconcentration of the Illustrados"
-Rationalizations. Chinese are "inferiors" who must be taught the Japanese way vs. Filipinos are "inferiors" who must be taught the American way.
-Set-up of collaborators and puppet governments. Manchukuo vs. "Reformed Illustrados"
-GENOCIDE. 20,000,000 of 250,000,000 "liberated" Chinese murdered at Japanese hands(1 in 12.5). 700,000 of 9,000,000 Filipinos murdered at American hands (1 in 12,985).
-Incidents and examples reported both inside the national governments involvement and worldwide revulsion and condemnation is present, but neither government; nor the rest of the world does anything effective to correct the outrages until the two nations go to war against each other. CHECK all of the above.

Apples to apples. The point is that the Japanese did what they saw everyone else, especially the Americans, do. This is not to say the Japanese or the Americans are blameless, nor is the cited general human hypocrisy supposed to say that the Americans are somehow "hypocritical" for being human for claiming they are better than the Japanese; because the Japanese did the same when they cried foul on the Americans at the time. The point is to disabuse the notion that evil human behavior is a specific racial or cultural trait, or that rationalization is a restricted racial or cultural trait, as is hypocrisy. It is seen general human behavior. That is why humanity in general is TRYING to develop effective international law to corral this general human CRAP and why I made a special note to show that the evildoer, WOODROW WILSON, that piece of human scum, screwed up when he had a chance to lay a plank down in that international law when he opposed the Japanese proposal for the racial equality clause. The Japanese proposed that clause and the Americans rejected it. APPLES to apples. "Them's the rules?" Tokyo says, "Okay, we'll play by them, if that is the way it is."



b. Nanban trade.
c. Battle of Fukuda Bay
d. Portugese in Japan

Those missionaries were backed by seapower. It was politically effective.


Same again.

Somehow I never, in a million years, expected this from you. Had to read this like four times since I was sure I was missing something.

I wasn't.

Whataboutism and war crimes justification. Comparing the Comfort women to just about anything is appalling, same for the Rape of Nanking (something the Reich Ambassador found beyond the Pale).

Honest to God shocked.

To Coventry with you.

 

[Sabre77]

If you effectively embargo a modern nation from oil, they'll either capitulate to your demands or find an excuse to go to war with you. This is especially true if you're taking steps to ensure that OTHER countries don't sell oil to the embargo target either.
I don't think Roosevelt had any illusions that the embargo would result in the 1st outcome. One perversity of most Western populations is that they will often support things like this while opposing an 'honest' declaration of war for the reasons that motivate such embargoes. It's kind of like the old Civilization games when in a democracy or republic---you can't up and declare war but you can take steps to provoke a 'sneak attack' on your country and wave the bloody shirt.

If Japan wanted to keep trading with the US, it shouldn’t have committed numerous atrocities in China(and elsewhere in Asia).

No one was obligated to help fuel the Japanese war machine, which was slaughtering huge numbers of innocent people en masse.

 

[Dan Reilly The Great]

Could it not be argued that the American actions which "provoked" japan were in turn provoked by Japanese actions in China?

 

[KaiserWilhelm]

I think it’s unfair to classify trying to stop mass atrocities as “provocation.” They just had to stop committing war crimes.

 

[Dorknought]

The West's efforts to curtail the conflict were too slow and disjointed.

(again, from The Clash)

In August and September 1937, Japanese planes badly wounded the British ambassador to China and bombed civilians in Nanking. Such killing of civilians still aroused condemnation in the West. The British approached FDR with the idea of jointly imposing economic sanctions, an idea U.S officials quickly mistrusted because of its source (were the British again trying to push the United States into protecting their colonies while they appeased both Japan and Hitler?) The President instead decided to speak out on October 5, in a Chicago speech given in the shadow of the Chicago Tribune Building, where the nation's most powerful 'isolationist' newspaper was published. Condemning the 'international lawlessness' in China, he urged that the '90 percent who want to live in peace under law" use "positive endeavours to preserve peace." He suggested that an attempt be made to 'quarantine the patients' against the 'disease' of aggression. A stunned Hull who had not known about the words, feared that the anti-interventionists' outrage would paralyse US policy. Some loud opposition to the United States joining any such quarantine was indeed heard in the Senate, but the general response was more favourable than Roosevelt had expected. In any event, the President might well have decided he no longer needed the 'isolationists' votes for domestic programs so he could defy them in foreign policy.​

​

If so, Roosevelt's bluff was quickly called. The League of Nations had been waiting since 1932 for the United States to take such a lead. Now the League asked the Americans to meet with other powers in Brussels during November 1937 to explore the President's suggestion of a 'quarantine'. The Soviets arrived ready to accept any help from the West. They had been involved in repeated clashes with Japanese troops along the Manchurian border. Japan, however, refused to attend, And the Western powers, especially the Americans, refused to take China seriously; they even lectured the Chinese delegation to correct the conditions (that is, aggressive nationalism) that had led to the war. The Brussels Conference taught a number of lessons. The other powers and the United States could not cooperate to stop Japan, the Americans did not yet see the Chinese as so important as to be worth a war.​

​

The US-Japan relationship was characterised largely by their respective attitudes to China. For the US to maintain peace at home she had to export her excess output as the domestic market could not consume all her wears. For Japan and China, to maintain peace at home they had to keep foreign goods and influence out. Japan believed that they had only narrowly avoided being colonised in 1800's. When they industrialised like the west, they also had to find markets for their wears. China was the natural target but they couldn't compete with the Americans and Europeans.

Taking a long view. Japan and the US challenged each other over access to China for 2 generations.
The US wanted an open door, Japan wanted a special door and China wanted no door.
The US expended vast treasure & blood fighting Japan over 1941-45 for access to China only to lose that open door 4 years later in 1949. China gets it's 'no door'. Despite spending decades trying to hold Japan down, the US now had to hold Japan up by letting Japan trade with Asia - there was no other way.
The Chinese then teach Americans what the USN had suspected in the 1930's - Don't fight Asian armies in Asia.

 

[Father Maryland]

I don't think any country would expect countries to NOT try to read their mail in similar circumstances, it has been part and parcel of international relations since the dawn of civilisation. Spies have long been regarded as the second profession after all.

If your diplomats think this is not happening all the time, particularly in the course of Treaty negotiations you need to give your diplomats a good solid kick in the pants.

You're right it is a feature of diplomacy that everyone who's actually involved or pays close attention to is completely aware of. Everyone spy's on everyone else (if they can) including if not especially allies. That is true and always has been true and all the actual players (or keen observers) know about it. The problem is that the average citizen doesn't and explaining that no one sane actually trusts their allies implicitly to always help and do exactly what they say or agreed to or similar aforementioned rules is deeply unpopular. So anytime a spying incident becomes public knowledge the politicians/leaders of the spied on nation has to act publicly aggrieved and pretend that this is some deep shock and a betrayal of such and such principles and agreement. The leaders saying that almost always know it's complete and total bullshit and are as like as not either involved in or aware of their own countries similar efforts but obviously don't mention that.

It get's hilarious when the spied on nation's leaders that acted so betrayed by their allies are in turn revealed to have been involved in similar espionage efforts on another friendly nation. Like after Wikileaks revealed the US was spying on Germany/Merkel and so many German politicians publicly acted betrayed and humiliated by the unconscionable efforts of the US. Only for it to later come out that Germany was involved in spying on Canada (another German NATO ally) in pretty much the same way and many of the German leaders who had acted so betrayed were involved in said efforts. .

Everyone knows the way it goes but no one can publicly admit that that's the way it's actually done.

 

[alspug]

When you want war just about anything can be found to justify your decision. Throughout history proof of this has been found in the actions of the leaders who figured they "Had a Right".

Did the Japanese Invasion of China cause WW2 . My opinion is no but it did however start loading the camel beyond what it could handle.
Did the atrocities that occurred in China cause WW2. Again no it did however make the American and indeed world population want action taken to try and reign in Japanese aggression.
Did the Oil embargo contribute to the Japanese decision to attack Pearl Harbour. Again the answer is no.
Did Japan gain anything by attacking Pearl Harbour. The answer is it allowed them to feel confident that interference in the taking of oil from the DEI would not be interfered with.

I personally think the reason for the actions the Japanese took in invading the Philippines, Bombing Pearl Harbour and Invading Malaysia can be seen from the desire to remove the western powers from being able to interfere in any way with the transporting of oil and wealth to the home islands. In 1941 Japan was running low on oil and the war in china was expensive in men. The fact is that food could be taken from SE Asia along with Oil and help the Japanese economy until China was conquered or turned into a land locked nation. Pretty much Japan figured that once they took the islands and oil they could keep it.

A feeling of National Superiority is hardly something new. Again throughout history small minded people have thought their people are superior to their enemies. I call this Hubris and Racism.

 

[LeX]

I don't think the US embargoed Japan because of what it was doing in China, at least not as the primary reason. Had Japan been content to stay in China, probably nothing would have happened on the US side. Instead, the Japanese took over Indochina, which provoked Western interests and probably caused greater alarm among Western politicians in general, including the US, leading to the sanctions.

Would the Japanese have attacked the US anyway, embargo or no? Possibly. Their first-class navy would have seen little use in a TL where the hokushin-ron won out over the southern strategy. Further, the Empire's economy was getting rapidly drained by the China "incident" and would have had few long-term prospects of winning even that conflict in the long run. Tragically, the militarists were already firmly in control by the early 1930s. Handling foreign policy with nuance or realism (principled or otherwise) was not, err, "politically correct" in their circles.

Winding up the war is a death sentence for any Japanese official who makes it happen.
War with the US is possible death in a few years time.

Honestly it is hard to imagine an exit strategy for Japan that doesn't end up in an arse kicking at some point. Even if it is China finally getting its act together and pushing Japan off the mainland.

Did the US provoke a war? No. But they inadvertently limited the Japanese options so that the Japanese felt that they had no choice. And if you put yourself in the position of a Japanese politician, I am not sure that they had a choice.

I wonder what options the US could have left the Japanese that, given the political situation in Tokyo, would have given them opportunity to avoid the war. A more aggressive "mess with us and we'll kick your ass" stance? Greater determination to draw the line in China circa 1937? I have a feeling the latter might work, if only the US had the political will to possibly go to war over China. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, but the US didn't even know it was ill.

 

[Finbarr the Fair]

Relations between the western powers, especially the US, and Japan, went through lots of episodes where each country "dissed" the other side. Deciding who provoked whom first is like sorting out the origins of a playground fight.

FWIW, my view is that the US took reasonable and proportionate measures to persuade ( force if you prefer) Japan to abandon its attempts to make China an economic colony. The Japanese Powers That Be saw these measures as blackmail and a provocation. Their response was Pearl Harbour and the assault on South East Asia.

So the OPs question is fair enough but the answer depends on the POV of the historical actors. Or whether you try to take a dispassionate academic approach or seek to justify your nation's actions. I try to achieve the former but am undoubtedly biased. As are we all.

 

[cjc]

Seriously?



We will agree to disagree.

Well sense ian has decided that what you said wasn't whataboutism we can continue this.
Thos articles (from non academic journals so are at best showing what the historical consensus was a decade and a half ago) dosnt in anyway prove your point, if anything they prove mine.

The first dosnt even clam that the missionarys where doing anything wrong and if anything implies that they where unfairly prosecuted.
"About 30 years after the arrival of Xavier, Alessandro Valignano (1539-1606), the “Visitor,” determined the basic policies of the mission in Japan. Under his supervision, the Jesuit institution for higher education, called the Collegio, was founded in Funai in the province of Bungo (now Ohita) in 1581. Another important figure, the Spanish Pedro Gomez (1533/35-1600) started to teach there in 1583 by elaborating courses and writing textbooks. After 1586, escaping local unrest and civil war, the Collegio moved to places such as Shimabara and Amakusa and eventually settled in the harbor town of Nagasaki. Meanwhile, an embassy composed of four young men (Mancio, Julian, Miguel and Martino) among the students of the Collegio was organized and left Nagasaki for Europe in 1582. The embassy reached Rome in 1585 and met Pope Gregory XIII. Upon its return to Japan on 21 July 1590, the embassy brought back metallic typesets and a printing machine."
Yep that sounds like tipical spanish imperialism to me

The second also dosnt really say that missionarys where in any way imperialist gust that the tokogawa government used it as a threat to help unify the country.
"It was not to be. The nation newly and fragilely unified, a wary regime saw in the sect a vanguard of foreign imperialism. The last straw was the Shimabara Rebellion of 1638, an uprising of starving, tax-squeezed Kyushu peasants marching under a Christian banner. It was a glorious, hideous martyrdom — a blood-soaked end to the “Christian century.” A bare remnant of the butchered faith went underground, and stayed underground until after the Meiji Restoration of 1868."

How you saw any of this as proving your point rather then mine is a little mystifying but it save me from having to find sorses myself so thank you.

 

[Barry Bull]

Still a naive viewpoint. Everyone taking part in the Washington treaty negotiations was looking to game the outcome. Peaking over the other guys shoulder can give you a edge, if you know what he wants you might be able to give him something close enough to get something you need. If Stimson really believed that I suspect he got played a lot by diplomats who played a more pragmatic game.

There is a reason why we now have CBMs.

 

[Swiffness]

Well there was, or at least attempts at it. Then some navy cadets murdered the prime minister and were let them off with what amounted to a slap on the wrist from the supreme court. The Japanese parliament basically gave up trying after that.

Interesting. *googles more information*

Before the end of their trial, a petition arrived at court containing around 110,000 signatures in blood, which had been signed by sympathizers around the country to plead for a lenient sentence. During the proceedings, the accused used the trial as a platform to proclaim their loyalty to the emperor and to arouse popular sympathy by appealing for reforms of the government and economy. In addition to the petition, the court also received from nine youths in Niigata nine severed fingers to the court as a gesture of their sincerity.

The Japanese parliament basically gave up trying after that? YEAH I BET.