Chinese and Japanese Struggles to Retain Sovereignty in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

Chinese and Japanese Struggles to Retain Sovereignty in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

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CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE. Chinese and Japanese Struggles to Retain Sovereignty…                  1

Why Japan retained more of its sovereignty than China                              1

How China and Japan Approached Independence

Examination of The Last Samurai and The Last Emperor                                            2

How China and Japan Dealt with Their Noble Classes                                   3

CONCLUSION                                                                          4

References                                                                                  5

I think that Japan retained more of its sovereignty than China did; the social and economic freedoms offered by a capitalistic society afforded the Japanese people the opportunities to retain and evolve their own identities. Inherent in communism is the need to suppress and repress citizens, stripping the identities of the past associated with classism and imperialism. Replacing imperialism with communism first requires overwriting a nation’s imperialist histories with ones that are new and free from association with the monarchical past. Through this stripping of identity, China lost much of its sovereignty, by losing access to that history that both China and Japan fought to maintain during their 19th and 20th Century changes. Communism also sapped China of much of the innovation that afforded Japan a strong global economic reputation. In this way, Japan also was able to retain a greater degree of sovereignty than China; this has given Japan a level of fiscal independence that China does not know today. And, with this economic freedom Japan also has more opportunity to create new ideas; China’s economic dependence, resulting from technological stagnation from a communist past, has caused them to have to keep pace with the rest of the world, sometimes by reusing and circulating non-Chinese-derived products and ideas. China’s economy is centered around the production of inexpensive commercial goods while Japan’s is centered around technological prowess and innovation. (Bary Wm.T. and Lufrano, R, 2000; and Tsunoda, R. et al., 1964).

Chinese and Japanese sovereignty was inextricably linked and unequivocally turbulent. With vastly different histories and cultural identities, Japan and China each had a piecemeal approach to independence in the late 19th and 20th Centuries. And, because of their close geographical relationship, both countries moved toward sovereignty under similar influences. China and Japan hoped to improve their global fiscal ranking while maintaining their rich cultural traditions. This meant incorporating the then ubiquitous Western ideals about government and assessing what it meant to be Japanese and Chinese in modern society. This shift towards republic and communist governments from classist societies was especially messy in Japan and China, because the governmental evolutions in Japan and China was external; that is, the changes in government in China and Japan were attributable to Western influence, not internally derived, as it was in many Western European nations, and in America. (Bary Wm.T. and Lufrano, R, 2000; and Tsunoda, R. et al., 1964).

The Last Samurai and The Last Emperor popularized Japan’s and China’s struggles with achieving sovereignty while restructuring their societies to accommodate a growing Western influence in the world; and, comparing the two movies, we can see that Japan’s adoption of a constitutional government resulted in economic success that China did not enjoy under communism.  The 19th and 20th Centuries were times of reluctant and aggressive westernization of societies rich in their own traditions and cultures, and these movies demonstrate, palatably, just how tumultuous these changes were for Japan and China. And, it was not only western influence that the Chinese and Japanese that received violent acceptances; the Sino-Japanese War represented a bloody power and identity struggle between the Chinese and Japanese, themselves. The 19th Century was a time of rapid geographical expansion, resulting from the inventions of faster modes of transport, and each nation large enough fought to claim as much land and resources as was possible (Bary Wm.T. and Lufrano, R, 2000; and Tsunoda, R. et al., 1964).  While fiscally forced to incorporate western ideas into their own societies, China and Japan took different approaches to restructuring their countries; China abandoned imperialism, but also rejected cultural western values through communism, and in this way maintained some cultural independence that Japan may have lost in a western-influenced capitalism. However, as there economies continue to advance western influences become more apparent in Chinese culture. Their burgeoning consumer market is obsessed with Western luxury goods, fast-food chains, and music.

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