Little Japanism

The "Kleinjapanismus" ( Jap. 小日本主義 , shō-Nihon-shugi ) was a liberal foreign policy mindset in the Empire of Japan in the 1910s and 1920s.

In contrast to " Greater Japanism " ( dai-Nihon-shugi ), it rejected the entire colonial expansion of Japan in order to devote itself instead to economic development and free trade. The main platform of their views was the Tōyō Keizai Shimpō ("Far Eastern Business Newspaper ") by Miura Tetsutarō and Ishibashi Tanzan , a magazine that initially advocated economic liberalism and party rule, especially after the victorious Russo-Japanese War, then against the rising military spending burdened the state budget, opposed and campaigned for the expansion of constitutionalism, more democratic institutions and universal suffrage. The territorial demands of Japan in the First World War rejected the "small Japaneseism" and then stood against militaristic demands for further expansion. Petty Japaneseists remained the minority, including among the bourgeois parties of the interwar period; these were dominated by "Great Japanese" liberals like Shidehara Kijūrō , who tried to preserve the existing colonies in Korea and Taiwan , claimed a supremacy of Japan in Asia, but wanted to achieve this in contrast to militarists and Asianists in the negotiated compromise with the great Western powers, and were less averse to state interventionism in terms of economic policy than the “petty Japaneseists”.

Miura Tetsutarō coined the term "Little Japanism" in 1913 based on "Little Englandism" John Stuart Mills - in its original anti-colonialist meaning - in which he developed the idea of ​​the Commonwealth of Nations , in which the other nations of the Empire at that time voluntarily merged with England (or the United Kingdom) merged.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Richard J. Samuels: Securing Japan. Tokyo's Grand Strategy and the Future of East Asia. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 2008, ISBN 978-0-8014-7490-3 , chap. 1: Japan's Grand Strategies. Connecting the Ideological Dots. P. 21 ff .: The Antimainstream.
2. ↑ Roger Mottini: Switzerland and its neutrality in Japan's political debate . In: Deutsche Gesellschaft für Natur- und Völkerkunde Ostasiens (Hrsg.): OAG Notes . No. 12/2010 . Tokyo 2010, p. 31 ( PDF ).

Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . Thus, Miura is the family name, Tetsutarō the first name.