20세기초 동아시아 국제정세와 일본의 대륙정책

International situation in east Asia in the early 20th century and Japan’s continental policy

The key premise in Japan’s continental policy between the Sino-Japanese War and the Russo-Japanese War was the rule of the Korean peninsular. Although the colonization of Taiwan produced ‘the policy of maintaining the North and proceeding into the South’ as the general direction of Japan’s foreign policy, Japan never gave up the goal of ruling Korea. Thus, after ‘the policy of maintaining the North and proceeding into the South’ failed to produce concrete outcomes in the Boxer Incident, Japan’s focus on the continental policy moved once more to the Korean issue. In particular, Japan came to realize the difficulties in expanding its own interest in China due to the interferences by the Western powers. Japan was very aggressive in the Korean issue, in contrast to its easy abandonment of South China. In short, Korea was much more important to Japan. There were various opinions over the Korean issues, such as dividing Korea and exchanging Korea with Manchuria, most of them resulted in nothing. Still, it is important to notice that Japan began to discuss the Korean issue in relation to Manchuria, narrowing the major parties in the matter into Japan and Russia. On the other hand, Japan’s continental policy after the Sino-Japanese War failed to get out of the goal of ruling Korea, resulting in limiting its diplomatic choices. Japan’s continental policy was losing flexibility due not only to the inflexibility of its diplomatic goal but also to the way its sought to achieve that goal. In short, the sense of resistance to the diplomacy using military powers was weakening in Japanese society.