Japan, Race and Equality

The alchemy of humanitarianism: the First World War, the Japanese Red Cross and the creation of an international public health order

“…The Japanese proposal was in fact not to extend equal treatment to all races, but to establish the principle of racial equality only among great powers. 47 'Far be it from us to insist on the absolute equality of the different races,' claimed Ninagawa, who joined an intense lobbying campaign for the proposal, but 'what we are asking . .…”

Race, Status, and Japanese Revisionism in the Early 1930s

“…74 By 1895, there had emerged within Japanese public discourse an understanding that Westerners viewed Asians as racially inferior and even threatening. 75 This influenced and was simultaneously reinforced by the Japanese reaction to the Triple Intervention of 1895. Following the conclusion of the Sino-Japanese War and the signing of the Treaty of Shimonoseki, Germany, France, and Russia intervened to demand that Japan return the Liaotung Peninsula to China.…”

Allies as adversaries: China, the Netherlands and clashing nationalisms in the emergence of the post‐war order, 1942–1945

“…A related observation is that both sides perceived the issue increasingly in zero‐sum terms. Like Japan several decades before it, China's pursuit of “equality” was informed primarily not by pragmatic concerns or idealist causes but by a desire to secure and assert great‐power status (Shimazu, 1998: 2–5, 112–5; Tsui, 2018, 228). Again echoing Japan, an underlying sense of insecurity and hurt national pride made Chongqing at once dismissive of and highly sensitive to external opposition, even more so in its dealings with “lesser” powers (cf.…”

“…Again echoing Japan, an underlying sense of insecurity and hurt national pride made Chongqing at once dismissive of and highly sensitive to external opposition, even more so in its dealings with “lesser” powers (cf. Shimazu, 1998: 2, 172, 184, 187) 11 . In its thirst for great‐power status, the Nationalist government appeared indifferent to the demands of smaller states and incapable of considering Dutch concerns on their own terms.…”