http://www.asiasentinel.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3168&Itemid=206
Japan-Revolution
Written by Our Correspondent
Tuesday, 03 May 2011
History remembers Japanese martyrs of China's revolution
On May 22, 1907, a revolutionary uprising near the port of Chaozhou in
Guangdong had its final days. Surrounded by Qing troops, the ringleaders were
hiding in a cave, eating red berries.
One dressed his comrades in the suits of Japanese businessmen and bluffed
their way through the Qing lines to reach a Japanese cargo ship in the port,
which took them to the safety of Hong Kong.
The man who saved the life of his conspirators was Nagatomo Kayano, one
of the many Japanese who were inspired by Dr Sun Yat-sen and devoted themselves
to his revolution. They gave him their careers and their assets -- and some
their lives.
In this year, the 100th anniversary of the Xinhai revolution and the
Republic of China, the story of these Japanese supporters shows another face of
their country. If their advice had been followed, the history of the 20th
century would have been different.
"The Japanese who fought for China's revolution were inspired by the
fervor of Dr Sun," wrote Kayano in his memoirs. "When I talked with him, I
realized he would fight until the end. So I decided to join his struggle, to
live and die with him."
Kayano and his compatriots were inspired by Sun's vision of a democratic
and republican China that would end the country's decline and ally with Japan
in opposing the western powers. They wanted China to follow the example of
their own country -- to modernize, industrialize and earn its independence.
After the Qing government forced the Macau government to expel Sun from
the city in 1894, he spent the next 17 years in exile, in Europe, the United
States, Vietnam, Singapore, Thailand and mainly Japan, which he visited 10
times and where he spent nearly 10 years. He built up a support base of 300
Japanese.
One of them, Toten Miyazaki, believed that Sun could change China and
introduced him to senior politicians who gave their approval for him to remain
in Japan and set up his operational base there.
It was in Tokyo on August 20, 1905 that Sun formed the Tongmenhui, the
Chinese Revolutionary Alliance (CRA), which seven years later became the
Kuomintang. It was the foundation of the Xinhai revolution. Eight Japanese were
members, including Kayano and Shokichi Umeya, who had met Sun earlier that year
in Hong Kong, where he ran a photographic shop.
Umeya was also inspired by Sun's vision of a prosperous East Asia and
freedom and equality for its citizens and threw himself wholeheartedly into the
struggle.
Umeya rented an office for the CRA in the Yurakucho district of central
Tokyo and borrowed money to finance its newspaper, the Voice of the People.
Over the next 20 years, Umeya raised billions of yen to pay for Sun's travel
and living expenses, weapons and ammunition for the uprisings and, in 1915, a
flying school in Japan to train Chinese pilots.
After Sun's death, Umeya commissioned four large bronze statues, up to
2.5 meters high and each weighing a ton, and sent them to China. They remain
today where he donated them - Sun's mausoleum in Nanjing, the Huangpu Military
Academy and Zhongshan University in Guangzhou and the Sun Memorial Home in
Macao.
Umeya also commissioned dozens of small busts but ran out of money. So he
used funds set aside for his daughter's wedding. When she protested, he
replied: "many Japanese respect Mr Zhong-shan. These busts will ensure that his
thinking lives on for ever."
He even planned a temple in Sun's memory. After the Japanese occupation
of Manchuria in 1931, he publicly criticized the government and was
interrogated by the military police; the newspapers called him a 'traitor'.
A sick man, he went to Tokyo to petition the Prime Minister in person but
collapsed at the city's railway station and died on November 23, 1934, aged 66.
The Umeya family still runs the Matsumoto Hotel overlooking Hibiya Park
in central Tokyo, close to where the CRA held its inaugural meeting. In a room
in the hotel is a small exhibition devoted to Sun, including a piano played by
his wife.
This year the Modern History Research Centre of the China Academy of
Social Science has commissioned a copper statue of Umeya, which it will donate
to his native place in Nagasaki, in memory of his friendship with Sun.
Of Sun's Japanese supporters, Kayano was the closest to the front line.
Born in Kochi in 1873, he moved to Osaka in 1890 and became a reporter for the
Jiji Press, one of Japan's two biggest news agencies. He became interested in
the city's democratic movements and was under surveillance by the police.
In 1892, he moved as a reporter to Shanghai, where he quickly became
fluent in Mandarin. He wore Chinese clothes and a pigtail, which he did not cut
off until October 1910. He became indistinguishable from a Chinese.
As a journalist, he saw at first hand the weakness and inefficiency of
the Qing government and the contempt with which the Caucasians held the
Chinese. During a visit to Hong Kong in 1895, he met Sun and pledged his
support.
He joined the CRA in Tokyo and set up 'Revolutionary Review', a
Japanese-language magazine to promote Sun's ideas. His office attracted
revolutionaries from China as well as Vietnam, Poland and Russia.
In 1907, under pressure from the Qing, the government expelled Sun;
Kayano accompanied him to Hong Kong, where they planned the Huanggang uprising.
After its failure, Kayano returned to Japan and raised enough money to purchase
from the Osaka arms market 2,000 rifles, 3,000 pistols and 20 military swords,
which he put on a Japanese cargo ship for Shantou.
In October 1910, he was in Wuchang to take part in the uprising that
finally overthrew the Qing. Sun invited him to attend the proclamation ceremony
for the Republic of China in Nanjing and he followed Sun for the next 15 years
of struggle until his death in 1925.
Kayano also played a major role in negotiations that could have averted a
war between Japan and China. In December 1931, the Japanese Prime Minister, a
personal friend, sent him to Shanghai to negotiate secretly with the government
over Manchuria, occupied by Japan's Kwantong army two months before.
Through personal contacts with the government, Kayano reached an
agreement to negotiate the withdrawal of the Kwantong army, with senior figures
from China and Japan to meet in Manchuria on January 10. But the Japanese
military and Foreign Ministry found out about the negotiations and torpedoed
them.
Prime Minister Tsuyoshi Inukai, 76, wrote a despairing letter to the
chief Chinese negotiator. "I am deeply worried by the troubled situation of
which you speak. I wish to take this occasion to work out an extensive plan for
the prosperity of all Asia. This was the foremost wish of Dr Sun Yat-sen and it
is my wish as well. It is my hope that you may do something great for the
yellow races."
The Mainichi Shimbun newspaper commented that, had Kayano's peace mission
been successful, war with China could have been averted and Japan's history
would have been different.
But the forces of hatred and militarism triumphed. Kayano died on April
14, 1947 aged 74, a deeply disappointed man, having seen the ideals that had
guided his life destroyed in the most terrifying war in history
The first Japanese martyr of the revolution was Yoshimasa Yamada, who was
killed by Qing troops in a failed uprising in Huizhou in 1900, at the age of 32.
Born in 1868, he went to Shanghai to work in the office of a Japanese
trading company in 1890 and improved his already excellent Mandarin. There and
in Beijing, he saw the pitiful conditions of ordinary Chinese and met Kang
Youwei (???)?who advocated peaceful reform.
In July 1898, he met Sun in Tokyo and swore allegiance to him. In the
spring of 1900, he went to work as a teacher at a Japanese-funded college in
Nanjing. In October, he joined the uprising which cost him his life.
His work was continued by his cousin Juntaro, who became Sun's secretary
in 1906 and helped him to negotiate a loan of 120 million Chinese dollars from
the Mitsui Company. His home in the French concession of Shanghai became a
centre for Sun's revolutionary activities.
In 1916, a political rival shot dead an ally of Sun who was staying in
the house. Terrified by the sound, the maid holding Yamada's baby daughter
dropped her to the ground, causing an injury to her chest, which left her
crippled for life.
Juntaro lived in Shanghai until 1948, working as a teacher and publisher
of newspapers and magazines. After returning to Japan, he set up a museum of
materials on the Chinese revolution and promoted ties between the two
countries. He died in Tokyo in 1960, at the age of 85.
Another martyr was Shintaro Kaneko, a Japanese infantry officer who
joined the Chinese revolutionary army in Wuhan in October 1911 and was killed
in battle, at the age of 47.
The wife Sun left behind
One of the least known episodes of Sun's life in Japan is his
marriage to a 15-year-old schoolgirl named Kaoru Otsuki in 1903. They had a
daughter, Fumiko, born on May 12, 1905. She did not learn until the 1950s that
her father was the founder of the Republic of China.
This liaison remained secret for decades because neither Taipei nor
Beijing wanted the world to know that a national figure they held in such
reverence had had a second marriage with a teenage foreigner and abandoned her
when she was expecting.
The two first met in 1898, when they were living in the same
building in the Chinatown district of Yokohama. At that time, Sun already had a
wife, Lu Muzhen, from his native village in an arranged marriage in 1886, who
had borne him a son and two daughters.
In 1902, Sun asked Kaoru's father for her hand but he refused,
citing the 22 years difference in age and the fact that she was so young. He
later relented and the two married the next year.
Before Fumiko's birth, Sun had to leave Japan. Unable to contact
him and with little money, Kaoru had their daughter adopted by a brewing family
in Yokohama named Miyagawa when she was five and gave them the engagement ring
which she had received from Sun. She never saw her husband again.
Kaoru later married the brother of a wealthy banker; but, when he
found a letter from Sun in the house, he divorced her. Then she moved far away
to Tochigi prefecture, married the manager of a temple and had a son by him.
Fumiko's grandfather told her only in 1951 who were her birth
parents. She had a son named Toichi. Earlier this year, he spoke to
Chinese-language Asiaweek, his first interview to a Chinese media. He said
that, in 1956, mother and son went to the temple to see Kaoru for the first
time. "She was a beautiful old woman, short in stature and with a light smile.
She said that they had chosen Fumi, because its pronunciation was very close to
the Chinese 'Fumei', to show that she was the daughter of Sun Yat-sen." Kaoru
died in 1970, at the age of 83.
He told the magazine that, in June 1977, he had accompanied his
mother on a visit to Taipei where they visited the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall.
Fumiko closely examined the statue of her father and said that her narrow face
and deep eyes were a legacy from him.
In November 1980, the two were invited to the mainland, where they
visited Beijing and Shanghai. They saw Sun's mausoleum in Nanjing where they
were moved to tears. "During my life I never saw my father," said Fumiko. "I
was never so happy as I am today and have no regrets. My mother had no
alternative but to give me to be raised by another family." She died in May
1990; associations in Japan connected to Sun sent wreaths to her funeral.
Chen Fu-po, president of the Japan Sun Yat-sen Memorial
Association, said that, according to long-term research they had conducted with
elderly Chinese inhabitants of Yokohama, it was a historical fact that Sun had
married Kaoru Otsuki. "In the past, both Taiwan and China wanted to hide or
avoid this piece of history but there is no need to now. The strength of great
men in history lies in the truth. Sun Yat-sen was a man, not a god."
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
------------------------------------
Post message: [email protected]
Subscribe : [email protected]
Unsubscribe : [email protected]
List owner : [email protected]
Homepage : http://proletar.8m.com/Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/proletar/
<*> Your email settings:
Individual Email | Traditional
<*> To change settings online go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/proletar/join
(Yahoo! ID required)
<*> To change settings via email:
[email protected]
[email protected]
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
[email protected]
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
