SOURCE: http://www.fnotw.org/Article/Full/6993 Russia and Japan Expand to their Pacific Frontiers, 1697-1898 The lessons of history are always uncertain, but they are not always vague. The long-term experience of Russians and Japanese in the Northwestern Pacific basin suggests that the two nations relate best with one another when they concentrate on trade and economic relations rather than geo-political dominance and when they abandon isolationist and narrowly protective policies in favor of open commercial exchange. Commerce and exchange, not control of territory, is the heart of the matter. Several times significant wars have raged between them in regions where neither was strictly at home and where commercial cooperation would have suited them better and might have changed the course of world history. Both have badly needed peace and close economic ties in order to pursue more fundamental national objectives and to benefit from the advantages offered by the other. But no such commerce has ever been established over any long duration of time. The lessons of history further suggest that when third parties intervene in this bilateral relationship, or even when they seek to influence it, they do so with little regard for the best interests of either the Russians or the Japanese. Here I want to account the earliest phases of Russian-Japanese relations before imperialist hostility between the two began the sorrowful countdown to the Russo-Japanese War in 1904 and to World War One. This is a period of two centuries, 1697-1898, from the first recorded contacts between the two peoples up to the curious diplomatic double-dealing in which Russia helped expel Japan from the Chinese-Manchurian Liaotung Peninsula and then took imperial possession herself. This period represents over two-thirds of the chronology of Russian-Japanese relations up to our day. {_{ I wish to pay tribute to the splendid pioneer work of a group of Saint-Petersburg University specialists on Japan in the early 20th century, almost all destroyed in one way or another by the Russian Revolution: Nikolai Iosifovich Konrad, Nikolai Aleksandrovich Nevskii, Evgenyi Dmitrievich Polivanov, and Dmitrii Matveevich Pozdneev. See Sofiia Davidovna Miliband, Biobibliograficheskii slovar' sovetskikh vostokovedov (MVA: 1975). Also I must give credit to the following, whose general accounts provide the backbone of this essay:Glynn Barratt, Russia in Pacific Waters, 1715-1825: A Survey of the Origins of Russia's Naval Presence in the North and South Pacific; and Russian Shadows on the British Northwest Coast of North America, 1810-1890: A Study of Rejection of Defence Responsibilities. John Paton Davies, Dragon by the Tail: American, British, Japanese, and Russian Encounters with China and One Another. Robert Joseph Kerner, Northeastern Asia: A Selected Bibliography...in Oriental and European Languages. Kuno Yoshi Saburo, Japanese Expansion on the Asiatic Continent: A Study in the History of Japan with Special Reference to Her International Relations with China, Korea, and Russia. Leonid Nikolaevich Kutakov, Rossiia i Yaponiia. George Lensen, "Japan and Tsarist Russia: Changing Relationships, 1875-1917", JGO 10 (1962): 337-48; and The Russian Push Toward Japan: Russo-Japanese Relations, 1697-1875. I would like also to pay tribute to a most well informed and close colleague, Professor Togawa Tsuguo, and the faculty and staff of the Japanese Slavic Research Institute in Hokkaido, whose hospitality during my research sojourn there in 1986-1987 inspired my first serious interest in the topic of this essay.}_} These 200 years can be divided into three phases. First, from long before the initial recorded contact in 1697, both nations experienced a remarkable history of "internal" frontier expansion, the Russians across Siberia to the islands and peninsulas of the Okhotsk Sea, and the Japanese into northern Honshu and across to the great northern island that is today called Hokkaido (until 1869 called Ezo), and beyond to the Kuril Islands, Kamchatka Peninsula, Sakhalin Island, even up the Amur River. The two frontier peoples overran one another, established outposts in the same regions, and related to one another and to indigenous peoples in ways not fully recorded in the primary documentary record, ways not in keeping with the domestic political cultures of either state. This first phase is one of inter-personal relations among Russian and Japanese “freebooters", acting in at least semi-illegal ways against the control mechanisms of Russian mercantilism and the Japanese laws of national seclusion. This phase came to an end in the last years of the seventeenth century. This phase represents one third and more of the full chronology of Russian-Japanese relations. The second phase (1792-1854) was characterized by official bilateral governmental skirmishing and search for definitions of boundary in these "new world" territories where, at the beginning, neither Russian nor Japan had any solid administrative control. This phase witnessed first efforts at mutual diplomatic recognition and commercial interchange. The two nations sought mutual ties without significant third-party intervention. The first and the second phases center on the island Hokkaido, currently an unquestioned northern-most part of Japan. {_{ In the 17th century the Japanese thought of Ezo (Hokkaido) as having several parts: Matsumae (S.tip with secure Japanese settlement and administration; modern-day Oshima), Higashi Ezo (East, or Pacific littoral), Nishi Ezo (Okhotsk Sea coast), Kita Ezo (N.) or Oku Ezo (Upper; both indicated Sakhalin [Karafuto]), and Ezo ga Chishima (Ezo's 1000 islands, i.e., the Kurils) [KEJ, 2: 238]. The degree to which these parts were considered "Japanese" is extremely problematical. In 1793, the visionary Japanese scholar Hayashi Shihei published Sangoku tsuran zusetsu (Illustrated Survey of 3 Countries) which shows the territory of Ezo ashuge to include Hokkaido and the Kurils, and to extend from the lower regions of Amur River in the West to Kamchatka Peninsula in the East, encompassing Sakhalin Island and the whole Okhotsk Sea littoral. But this was also the era in which shareholders around the emerging Russian-America Company were extending their dreams across the Pacific to Alaska and South, well into imperial Spanish California. Hayashi's expansionist dreams were reeled in by Tokugawa national seclusion policy (in force from the early 17th century to the 1850s), and Russian dreams were smothered by tsarist mercantilism.}_} The final phase of the period here under review is the half-century that runs from the 1850s to 1898 and has been described as the far Eastern front of the "Great Game", i.e., modern European Imperialism. Russia played a key role in breaking the national seclusion policy, which from the early 17th century sought to isolate Japan from foreign influence, and bringing on the Meiji Restoration. At the same time Russia discovered insufficiencies in its own mercantilist structures and policy, and entered into the "Era of Great Reforms". Pressure from imperialist competitors simultaneously opened new eras in Japan and in Russia. In this phase the relations between Russia and Japan were shaped in close connection with third-party complications, and the center of attention shifted from the mutual Pacific frontier zones in the North, over to the Asian continent, where England, Germany, and now the USA were scrambling for advantage. Russia sold Alaska and turned attention again to China, neglected since Nerchinsk. Japan was forced open to world markets and burst forth itself onto the Asian continent. The center of gravity of Russian-Japanese relations shifted to Korea and Manchuria, and the nature of the relationship shifted from commerce to geo-political, imperialist competition and war. As the "Great Game" drew to its end and the "Great War" approached, our account comes to an end.{_{ See Peter Hopkirk, The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia (NYC: Kodansha America, 1992), see especially chapter 36, "The Beginning of the End", and note publisher
The confrontation between Russia and Japan culminated in the Russo-Japanese War and Tsar Nicholas II lost his face after losing the war, which had led to the Russian Revolution. The war was fought over Manchuria and Korea and Japan won the rights to control those territories which were under Russian control and the Japanese victory checked the Russian advance towards East Asia. The Anglo-Japanese Alliance was signed for this very purpose as Britain was alarmed by Russia's gradual encroachment into Asia and British and Japanese intelligence closely co-operated against Russia, which contributed greatly to Russia's defeat.
