CAMBRIDGE AS HISTORY: JAPAN AT 1918. Presentation contains: extending privileges in China, exports quadrupled, the rice riots, the increase in rice price, the actual riots, alongside big four, Japan as a great power.

1. HISTORY CAMBRIDGE AS - PAPER 2
MODULE 1871-1918
PRESENTATION 13

2. PRESENTATION BASED ON
Frederick R. Dickinson, War and National Reinvention: Japan in the Great
War, 1913-1919
Albert A. Altman and Harold Z. Schiffrin, "Sun Yat-Sen and the Japanese,
1914-16," Modern Asian Studies
J.C. Schencking, "Bureaucratic Politics, Military Budgets and Japan's
Southern Advance: The Imperial Navy’s Seizure of German Micronesia in the
First World War," War in History
O'Neill, Robert (1993). "Churchill, Japan, and British Security in the Pacific
1904-1942“
Mizokami, Kyle, "Japan’s baptism of fire: World War I put country on a
collision course with West", The Japan Times, 27 July 2014
Price, Ernest Batson. "The Russo-Japanese Treaties of 1907-1916 concerning
Manchuria and Mongolia"
Paul E. Dunscomb (2012). Japan's Siberian Intervention, 1918-1922: 'A Great
Disobedience Against the People'.

3. EXTENDING PRIVILEGES IN CHINA
In 1918, Japan continued to extend its influence and privileges in China
via the Nishihara Loans.
Following the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, Japan and the United
States sent forces to Siberia in 1918 to bolster the armies of the White
movement leader Admiral Alexander Kolchak against the Bolshevik Red
Army.
In this Siberian Intervention, the Imperial Japanese Army initially
planned to send more than 70,000 troops to occupy Siberia as far west
as Lake Baikal.
The plan was scaled back considerably due to opposition from the
United States.

4. EXPORTS QUADRUPLED
Toward the end of the war, Japan increasingly filled orders for needed war
material for its European allies.
The wartime boom helped to diversify the country's industry, increase its
exports, and transform Japan from a debtor to a creditor nation for the
first time.
Exports quadrupled from 1913 to 1918.
The massive capital influx into Japan and the subsequent industrial boom
led to rapid inflation.
In August 1918, rice riots caused by this inflation erupted in towns and
cities throughout Japan.

5. Japanese lithograph depicting
the capture of Blagoveshchensk

6. THE RICE RIOTS
Rice Riots were a series of popular disturbances that erupted throughout
Japan from July to September 1918, which brought about the collapse of
the Terauchi Masatake administration.
A fast rise in the price of rice caused extreme economic hardship,
particularly in rural areas where rice was the main staple of life.
Farmers, when comparing the low prices they were receiving due to
government regulation with the high market prices had tremendous
hostility against rice merchants and government officials who had allowed
the consumer price to spiral out of control.

7. THE RICE PRICE INCREASE
The rice price increase came at the peak of a post-war (World War I)
inflationary spiral that also affected most consumer goods and rents, and
urban dwellers also had considerable scope for grievances.
The Siberian Intervention further inflamed the situation, with the
government buying up existing rice stocks to support the troops overseas,
which further drove rice prices higher.
The government intervention in economic affairs (low, regulated rice price)
caused rural protests spread to the towns and cities.

8. THE ACTUAL RIOTS
The rice riots were unparalleled in modern Japanese history in terms of
scope, size and violence.
The initial protest occurred in the small fishing town of Uozu, Toyama
Prefecture, on 23 July 1918.
Starting with peaceful petitioning, the disturbance quickly escalated to
riots, strikes, looting, incendiary bombings of police stations and
government offices and armed clashes.
In 1918, there were 417 separate disputes involving more than 66,000
workers. Some 25,000 people were arrested, of whom 8200 were
convicted of various crimes, with punishments ranging from minor fines to
the death penalty.

9. Suzuki Shoten in Kobe, burned during the rice riots of August 11, 1918

10. RESIGNATION
Taking responsibility for the collapse of public order, Prime Minister
Terauchi and his cabinet resigned on 29 September 1918.
A link to Japanese imperialism is debated.
Scholars argue that to alleviate the demand for rice, which exceeded the
production capabilities of Japan at the time, colonial rice production in
Taiwan and Korea was intensified.

11. ALONGSIDE BIG FOUR
The year 1919 saw Japan's representative Saionji Kinmochi sitting
alongside the "Big Four" (Lloyd George, Orlando, Wilson, Clemenceau)
powers at the Versailles Peace Conference.
Tokyo gained a permanent seat on the Council of the League of Nations,
and the Paris Peace Conference confirmed the transfer to Japan of
Germany's rights in Shandong.
Similarly, Germany's more northerly Pacific islands came under a Japanese
mandate, called the South Pacific Mandate.

12. JAPAN AS A GREAT POWER
Despite Japan’s prowess on a global scale coupled with her fairly sizable
contribution to the allied war effort sent in response to British pleas for
assistance in the Mediterranean and East Asia, the Western powers'
present at the Treaty of Versailles rejected Japan's bid for a (racial equality
clause in subsequent Treaty of Versailles), Japan nevertheless was not
doubted to have had emerged as a great power in international politics by
the close of the war.