German-Japanese relations
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| Germany | Japan |
Both the modern German and Japanese states were founded in the same year of 1871 – through the foundation of the German Empire under the leadership of Prussia and the “abolition of domains and foundation of prefectures” ordinance in Japan.
This historical coincidence is seen by many historians as the starting point for “unique paths” in the development of both countries that, in similar ways, eventually led to totalitarianism.[citation needed]
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[edit] History
[edit] Edo Period
Relations between Japan and Germany not taken in the strict sense of the modern nation state go back to the Edo period (1600-1868), when Germans in Dutch service came to Japan to work for the Dutch East India Company (VOC). The first well-documented cases are those of the physicians Engelbert Kaempfer (1651-1716) and Philipp Franz von Siebold (1796-1866) in the 1690s and the 1820s respectively. Siebold was allowed to travel throughout Japan, in spite of the restrictive seclusion policy the Tokugawa shogunate had implemented since the 1630s. Siebold became the author of Nippon, Archiv zur Beschreibung von Japan, one of the most valuable sources of information on Japan well into the 20th century.
[edit] Bakumatsu
Shortly after the end of Japan’s seclusion in 1855, the first German traders arrived in Japan. In 1860 Count Friedrich Albrecht zu Eulenburg led the Eulenburg Expedition which came to Japan as ambassador from Prussia, the most powerful of the numerous regional states in Germany. After four months of negotiations, a treaty of amity and commerce was signed in January 1861 between Prussia and Japan – one of the infamous ‘unequal treaties’ Japan was forced into by most of Europe’s colonial powers as well as the United States.
During the Boshin war (1868-1869), the German weapon trader Henry Schnell was active in supplying weapons to the force favourable to the Shogunate.
[edit] Meiji Era
During the Meiji era (1868-1912) many Germans came to work in Japan as advisors to the new government (O-yatoi gaikokujin) and contributed to the modernization of Japan, especially in the fields of medicine (Leopold Mueller, 1824-94; Julius Scriba, 1848-1905; Erwin Baelz, 1849-1913), law (K. F. Hermann Roesler, 1834-94; Albert Mosse, 1846-1925) and military affairs (K. W. Jacob Meckel, 1842-1906). The ‘Constitution of the Empire of Japan’, promulgated in 1889, was greatly influenced by the German legal scholars Rudolf von Gneist and Lorenz von Stein, whom the Meiji oligarch Ito Hirobumi (1841-1909) visited in Berlin and Vienna in 1882. Also, the Imperial Japanese Army intensively oriented its organization along Prusso-German lines when building a modern fighting force. The French model that had been followed by the late shogunate and the early Meiji government was gradually replaced by the Prussian model until the 1880s under the leadership of officers such as Katsura Taro, Nogi Maresuke, and others. Dozens of students and military officers went to Germany in the late 19th century in order to study the German military system and receive military training at German army educational facilities and within the ranks of the German, mostly the Prussian army, for example later famous writer Mori Rintarô (Mori Ōgai) who originally was an army doctor.
However, Japanese-German relations cooled at the end of the 19th century due to Germany’s imperialist aspirations in East Asia. The frictions culminated in 1895, when the Wilhelminian Empire, together with Russia and France, prevented Japan from acquiring possessions on the Asian mainland (Triple Intervention). In the following, Wilhelm II’s nebulous fears of a “Yellow Peril” (Knackfuss painting) – a united Asia under Japanese leadership, led to further frictions between Germany and Japan and Japanese-German estrangement. Wilhelm II also introduced a regulation to limit the number of members of the Japanese army to come to Germany to study the military system. After the Russo-Japanese War, Germany insisted on reciprocity in the exchange of military officers and students, and in the following, several German military officers were sent to Japan to study the Japanese military after its victory over the tsarist army in the Russo-Japanese War 1904/05 — a promising organization to study.
[edit] World War I
In World War I Japan entered the conflict as an ally of Great Britain, France and the Russian Empire to seize the German colonial territories of Tsingtao and the Mariana Islands, Caroline Islands and Marshall Islands.
[edit] Inter-war years
After World War I, under the initiative of German ambassador Solf, cultural exchange was strengthened, but it was not until the rise of Nazism in Germany and militarism in Japan in the 1930s that political ties between Japan and Germany became closer again. The two countries signed the Anti-Comintern Pact in 1936 and the Tripartite Pact including Italy in 1940 with the three major Axis leaders including Hideki Tojo, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. In both cases, again, the military played a major role. On the Japanese side, particularly army officer Oshima Hiroshi advocated a closer relationship to Germany and worked for an alliance when he was military attaché (1934-36) and ambassador (1936-38).
[edit] World War II
- See also: Unterseeboot 234
In 1938, Japan persuaded Germany to recognise its puppet state Manchukuo, and at the same time stop its military and industrial cooperation with China. However, during the following years, this alliance never brought any real cooperation, even after the outbreak of the war. However, there was a military treaty signed in January 1942. Japan and Germany did conduct very limited trade through the Nippon German Technical Exchange Agreement using mainly U-Boats and I boats to swap technology between 1942 and 1945 (see also Japanese-German pre-WWII industrial co-operation).
Japan gained access to:
- Specialist Metals(Mercury etc)
- Tiger Tank Plans
- Twelve V-2 rockets
- 3 rotor Enigma Desipher
- Plans for Messerschmitt Me 163 Rocket Plane (which became the Mitsubishi J8M)
- Plans for Messerschmitt Me 262 Jet Plane
Germany gained access to:
- Copper
- Molybdenum
- India Rubber
At one point, with its similar political view, Hitler bestowed upon the Japanese populace the title "Honorary Aryans." Also, the close relationship between Germany and Japan during the World War II can be also confirmed in the articles, Tripartite Pact and Axis Power. (The military alliance opposed to the Allies during the Second World War.)
[edit] Post World War II
After their defeat in World War II, both Japan and Germany were occupied. While Japan could regain its sovereignty with the Treaty of San Francisco in 1952, Germany was split into two states. The Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) restored diplomatic ties with Japan in 1955, the German Democratic Republic as late as 1973. Post-war relations between Japan and both halves of Germany, as well as with unified Germany after 1990, have focused on economic questions. Germany, dedicated to free trade, continues to be Japan’s largest trading partner within Europe until today. Also, academic and scientific exchange was strengthened, in 1973 the "Framework Agreement concerning Scientific Cooperation" (WTZ) was signed. Institutions were founded to contribute to the academic and scientific exchange such as the German Institute for Japanese Studies (DIJ) in Tokyo and the Japanese-German Center (JDZB) in Berlin. Bilateral cultural exchange culminated in the "Japan in Germany" year 2000 and the "Germany in Japan" year 2008.
[edit] See also
- Anglo-Japanese relations
- Franco-Japanese relations
- German Ministers, Envoys and Ambassadors to Japan
- Japanese Ministers, Envoys and Ambassadors to Germany
[edit] Bibliography
- Peter Pantzer und Sven Saaler: Japanische Impressionen eines Kaiserlichen Gesandten. Karl von Eisendecher im Japan der Meiji-Zeit/明治初期の日本 － ドイツ外交官アイゼンデッヒャー公使の写真帖より (A German Diplomat in Meiji Japan: Karl von Eisendecher. German/Japanese). München: Iudicium, 2007.
- Ishii, Shiro et al. (ed.): Fast wie mein eigen Vaterland: Briefe aus Japan 1886-1889. [Almost as my own Motherland: Letters from Japan]. München: Iudicium 1995.
- Kreiner, Josef (ed.). (1984) Deutschland – Japan. Historische Kontakte [Germany – Japan. Historical Contacts]. Bonn: Bouvier.
- Kreiner, Josef (ed.). (1986) Japan und die Mittelmächte im Ersten Weltkrieg und in den zwanziger Jahren [Japan and the Central Powers in World War I and the 1920s]. Bonn: Bouvier.
- Kreiner, Josef and Regine Mathias (ed.). (1990) Deutschland-Japan in der Zwischenkriegszeit [Germany – Japan in the inter-war period]. Bonn: Bouvier.
- Presseisen, Ernst L. (1958) Germany and Japan – A Study in Totalitarian Diplomacy 1933-1941. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
- Martin, Bernd and Gerhard Krebs (eds.). (1994) Formierung und Fall der Achse Berlin-Tôkyô [Construction and Fall of the Berlin-Tôkyô Axis]. Munich: iudicium.
- Spang, Christian W. and Rolf-Harald Wippich (eds.). (2006) Japanese-German Relations, 1895-1945. War, Diplomacy and Public Opinion (ISBN 0-415-34248-1), London: Routledge.
- Martin Brice' 'Axis Blockade Runners
[edit] External links
- OAG (German East Asiatic Society)
- German Institute for Japanese Studies, Tōkyō
- Japanese-German Center Berlin
- The Kaiser's 'Hun' Speech
- The Knackfuss Painting
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