Japan ignored tip about alliance before 1904-05 war with Russia

TOKYO, Dec. 7 Kyodo - Before starting the Russo-Japanese War in 1904, the Japanese government ignored a tip that a Russian politician considered a key war advocate was trying to avoid the war by possibly allying with Japan, according to material found by a Japanese historian.

The finding could lead to a review of the widely accepted perception in Japan
that it was cornered by Russia into opening the 1904-1905 war, which stemmed
from the two countries' rival imperial ambitions over Manchuria and Korea,
experts say.
It may hit the limelight in Japan also because public broadcaster NHK began in
November airing a three-year TV drama series based on a saga by the late
popular novelist Ryotaro Shiba depicting the war as a defensive war against
Russia.
A draft plan of such an unrealized alliance was newly found at the Russian
State Historical Archive in St. Petersburg. It bears the signature of Aleksandr
Bezobrazov, who was trusted by the Russian czar Nicholas II and treated as a
minister, according to University of Tokyo professor emeritus Haruki Wada who
found the document.
Dated Jan. 10, 1904, the document says a Russian expansion beyond the Liaodong
Peninsula into the Korean Peninsula and deeper into China is not only
unnecessary but would weaken Russia, and that Russia and Japan should each
develop natural resources in Manchuria and Korea, respectively.
The fact that Bezobrazov was preparing the draft was first notified to the
Japanese Foreign Ministry by telegraph on Jan. 1, 1904, from a Japanese
diplomat in Russia, who then reported it in detail to the ministry on Jan. 12.
Wada has also found a telegraph transferring the message by the ministry to the
Japanese mission to Korea in an archive compiled by South Korea's National
Institute of Korean History.
Despite the tip, the Japanese foreign minister of the time, Jutaro Komura, on
Jan. 8 met with Prime Minister Taro Katsura and the ministers in charge of the
Imperial Japanese Army and Navy, who agreed to start the war.
Tokyo at the time believed that Russia was dominated by war advocates and that
it was on alert, thinking that Moscow was planning to advance into Korea after
encroaching on Manchuria. Japan occupied the Korean Peninsula from 1910 to
1945.
The decision to go to war with Russia was formalized on Jan. 12 at a conference
in the presence of the emperor and Japan declared war against Russia the next
month -- February 1904.
Wada's findings will be published in a two-volume book starting later this month.
''It was unexpected that Bezobrazov, who was considered the central figure in
the 'war party,' was attempting to make a peace overture,'' he said. ''The
history in the run-up to the Russo-Japanese War needs to be reconsidered by
piecing together new-found materials from Russia and South Korea as well as
documents in Japan.''
Shinji Yokote, a professor on Russian history at Keio University, said the war
has so far been described on the basis of memoirs by Sergei Witte who was
opposed to Bezobrazov, and thus may have been one-sided.
Yokote said he would like to reserve judgment about how significant such an
unrealized alliance between Japan and Russia would have been until reading the
whole of Wada's latest study.
An award-winning novelist, Shiba in one of his best-selling books titled ''Saka
no Ue no Kumo'' (The cloud at the top of the hill), on which NHK based its
drama series, claimed that Russia drove Japan into the deadly war and that
Japan had no option but to start the war by citing a saying -- ''a cornered rat
will attack the cat,'' or ''despair makes cowards courageous.''
After producing piles of works centering on historical novels and essays on
Japan and winning the prestigious Naoki Prize for seasoned fictionists and the
government's Order of Cultural Merits, Shiba died in 1996 at age 72.
==Kyodo