2
[This Document is the Property of His Britannic Majesty's Government.]
JAPAN.
CONFIDENTIAL.
[7243]
No. 1.
January 12.]
SECTION 2.
120
Sir C. Greene to Sir Edward Grey.—(Received January 12, 1916.)
(No. 392. Confidential.) Sir,
Tokyo, December 8, 1915. WITH reference to my immediately preceding despatch, I have the honour to transmit to you herewith a note by Mr. Hobart-Hampden on the impressions which he has derived from a constant study of the vernacular press in recent times. These impressions are interesting as showing how the trend of Japanese thought has gained in arrogance of late, and adopted a tone of "overlordship" in everything which concerns the Far East. Mr. Hampden draws attention to the inconsistency which marks Japan's iron rule over her own colonial subjects with the protection which she claims a right to exercise over her neighbours in China, if not, indeed, as far afield as India. He deals, further, with the selfish attitude of the press in regard to British interests in China, and with the spiteful comments of the papers on the conduct of the great war in which Great Britain is engaged, and adds that references to the Anglo- Japanese Alliance have now quite lost the enthusiastic ring of a decade ago. word," Mr. Hampden remarks, "the touchstone of Japanese feeling, as exhibited in the daily papers, is self-interest combined with over-developed national ambition."
I have, &c.
CONYNGHAM GREENE.
"In a
Enclosure in No. L
Memorandum respecting the Tone of the Japanese Press.
44
THE Japanese press, never cosmopolitan in its views, has of late adopted an increasingly parochial outlook. Japan's "parish," however, is an expanding domain, and now includes the whole Extreme Orient. Her so-called special" interests in Manchuria have by a stroke of the journalistic pen been broadened into special interests in China; and since Count Okuma last September described his country as mistress of the Far East, or "Lord of the Orient,' as Japanese prefer to render it, that phrase has already been talked into an article of faith with journalists and politicians, and has become nearly as much a commonplace of the daily press as the Japanese assumption of responsibility for the permanent peace of the Far East," which has been the apology for so many wars, and is now an excuse for suffering German intrigues in China.
C
Japan has now constituted herself not only protector of the Chinese (to their dismay), but, judging by recent paragraphs, of the Indians also. In her own Empire revolutionary ideas, or "dangerous thoughts," as they are termed, are suppressed with an iron hand, as was seen when the mere embryo of anarchy was crushed in 1910. Her colonial subjects-Ainus, Formosans, and Koreans are ruled with German discipline. Her own practice does not explain her championship of oppressed Asiatics. The explanation of the discrepancy is that her sympathy hypocritically covers a political aim, and the present war has opened a freer field for the development of the Japanese hegemony, which the press by reiteration is trying to preach into a fait accompli while European activities are still diverted by the war from this
quarter of the globe.
The habit of looking at everything through Japanese spectacles has always, but particularly of late, betrayed the press into shortsighted and egotistical judgments. A British interest found in competition, however legitimate, with a Japanese interest is apt to be condemned as criminally antagonistic. In Chinese affairs, therefore, the press is fiercely critical towards Great Britain. Too often it brings to the consideration of a proposal the query what does Japan get out of it, and she expects to get all and give nothing. This was seen during the treaty negotiations in 1911, and reappeared
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