◆Mangyong Road
On the morning of August 27, 663 (the third year of Tang Gaozong's reign), the first war in the history of Sino-Japanese relations, the Battle of the Baicun River, broke out.
At that time, a new group of Japanese forces, led by the reform-advocating Nakadai Brother, the prince and the Nakatosho Kamazu, who was born in a hereditary priest family, took advantage of the Korean Peninsula's envoys from Silla, Baekje, and Goryeo to present gifts to the Yamato court, assassinated Soga Irikang, who was leaning towards the government and the opposition, and recaptured and established the regime centered on the Nakadai brother prince and the "returnees" who had returned from studying in the Sui and Tang dynasties, that is, the Tenji Emperor regime, and for the first time in Japanese history, the era name "Taika" was used to mean "great changes". After that, Emperor Tenchi made use of the valuable experience of the "returnees" to formulate a series of new systems, including "abolishing the hereditary family name system", "establishing a centralized authority", "implementing the Bantian Collection Law", "establishing a rent-yong regulation", and reorganizing the transportation and military systems. The "Taika Reform" was the beginning of Japan's establishment of a unified centralized state, and it was also a great turning point in Japan's history, and it was through the "Taika Reform" that Japan began to turn from weak to strong and capable of coveting the Korean Peninsula.
At that time, Silla was in the war phase of unifying the Korean Peninsula with the support of the Tang Dynasty. It was in this domestic and international environment that Japan, which considered itself fledgling, could not wait to send an army of 27,000 men, united with 5,000 soldiers and horses of the Baekje regime on the peninsula, and set up a position with the allied forces of the Tang Dynasty and Silla at the Baekchon River. At that time, the military strength of the Tang Dynasty was about 7,000 people and 170 warships, but the Japanese sailors were more than 10,000 and had more than 1,000 warships. The Japanese sailors had many ships but backward weapons, while the Tang Navy had fewer soldiers and fewer ships, but it was a strong ship, and the result was that the Japanese army lost the first battle. According to the "Old Tang Dynasty Book: The Biography of Liu Renliang", it is recorded that Renliang encountered Japanese soldiers at the mouth of the Baijiang River, won four battles, burned 400 boats, the smoke rose to the sky, the sea was red, and the thieves were defeated; the 27th volume of the "Japanese Shoki" also detailed this: the Tang Dynasty army led more than 170 warships to line up in Baijiang Village. On the 27th, the Japanese naval division had just arrived, and the Tang Dynasty naval division fought against the Japanese naval division, and the Japanese retreated unfavorably; on the 28th, the Japanese generals and the king of Baekje ignored the celestial phenomena and said to each other, "We are competing for the first, and they should retreat by themselves." "He also led the soldiers of the Japanese army in the chaos to fight the army of the Tang Dynasty, and the Tang Army fought around the battle from the left and right...... At that time, the king of Baekje, Fengzhang, fled to Goryeo with several people by boat.
The Battle of the Baicun River gave Japan an extremely profound lesson, making the Japanese realize the real gap between the powerful Tang Dynasty, therefore, the Japanese did not make enemies with the Tang Dynasty for this, but sent an envoy to participate in the Taishan Sealing Zen Activity of the Tang Dynasty in 665 after the war, and in 669 sent Hanoi Whale as the "Pinggoryeo Celebration Envoy" to Chang'an to congratulate the Tang Dynasty on its complete victory on the Korean Peninsula. At the same time, a direct effect of this war was that Japan stopped its expansion into the Korean Peninsula, and did not use troops on the Korean Peninsula for more than 1,000 years, bringing peace to the Korean Peninsula for a thousand years. And all this shows that the Japanese have had realism since ancient times, and in the face of the Tang civilization, which is more powerful and advanced than itself, Japan bows its humble head convincingly.
If the "Dahua Reform" is based on Sinicization as the highest ideal, then the "Meiji Restoration" is a model of Westernization as the highest ideal. More than 1,000 years later, Emperor Meiji, who reigned for 45 years, established an autocratic regime of the Imperial Guardian System, announced the return of the imperial titles, abolished the feudal domains and prefectures, reformed the local tax, formulated the imperial constitution, recruited Western experts, and sent students to the West to study abroad in the same way that he sent Sui envoys to the Tang Dynasty, vigorously developed education, cultivated domestic talents, and then threw away the Chinese culture that he had religiously studied and imitated like a broken boot.
With the continuous introduction of advanced technology and cultural ideas from the West to Japan, Japan has entered a stage of rapid development. Emperor Meiji then proceeded to reorganize the Ministry of War, establishing the Ministry of War and the Ministry of the Navy, and building military academies. The result of all these "wise" decisions of Emperor Meiji was that Japan completed the path that the West had taken hundreds of years to complete in just a few decades, and Japan's comprehensive national strength gradually surpassed that of China.
The idea of neorealism was not the preserve of Emperor Meiji alone, and powerful Japanese politicians and military officials at that time spared no effort to build momentum for Japan's theory of military power and the aggressive acts it was about to launch. In his 1875 book "Introduction to the Theory of Civilization", he declared that from the perspective of civilization evolution, Europe and the United States were the most developed civilizations, while China, Japan, and Turkey were in the semi-civilized stage, and Korea was a barbarian country. In 1881, he threatened in his "Tabloids" that Japan had basically reached the level of civilization and that it was necessary to turn its attention overseas and revitalize its national power. The ambition to guide and instill an expansive consciousness in the Japanese is gradually revealed. In 1885, Yukichi Fukuzawa published "On Leaving Asia" in the Shiji Shimbun, putting forward important expositions that led to the eventual change of Japan's national policy, such as "breaking away from Asia and joining Europe" and "advancing and retreating together with Western civilization". In his "Theory of Leaving Asia," he frankly said: The mainland should not hesitate, and instead of waiting for its neighbors to become enlightened and jointly rejuvenate Asia, it is better to break away from their ranks and advance and retreat together with Western civilizations. It is not necessary to be particularly sympathetic to China and Korea because they are neighbors, but only to imitate the attitude of Westerners towards them.
By 1890, Japan's then Minister of War Aritomo Yamayama had begun to openly clamoring in his "Treatise on Foreign Policy" and "Speech on the Policy of the First Imperial Diet": In order to maintain the independence of a country, it is absolutely not enough to defend the line of sovereignty, but it is necessary to defend the line of interest, and to defend the line of interest is to infringe on the sovereignty of neighboring countries.
Based on the above-mentioned momentum and specific operations, we can see the 20 years from 1874 to 1894, such as the "Treaty of Beijing" signed by Japan's Okubo Tsuri and Li Hongzhang in 1874, which caused China to lose both money and face, the "Japan-Korea Treaty of Reconciliation" in 1875 that forced Korea to sign a humiliating treaty with Korea through the Ganghwa Island incident provoked by Japan, and the "Treaty of Tianjin" signed with the Qing government in 1885, which fatally caused China to lose its suzerainty status in Korea Especially in 1894, after the First Sino-Japanese Naval Battle defeated the Beiyang Naval Division of the Qing Dynasty in one fell swoop and broke the tributary order in East Asia dominated by China for thousands of years, Japan, which tasted the sweetness of several small tests, thought that it was invincible in the world. In the short 50 years from 1895 to 1945, Japan launched 14 wars in one go, not to mention China, even the Tsars who were as powerful as Britain, France, and Russia at that time were all beaten by the Japanese and abandoned their armor, and even the upstart United States also tasted the suffering of the Japanese in the early days of the Pacific War.
At that time, Japan's realism was one of aggression, expansion, and frenzied plunder...... However, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor with a sword technique that won in an instant, and at the same time attacked Laos, Burma, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia and other Southeast Asian countries. When the United States, Britain, France, China, Russia, Australia and other 24 countries successively declared war on Japan, especially the two atomic bombs of the United States completely stopped Japan's war machine, Japan, which advocates realism, quickly performed a similar scene with the humble head that could not beat the Tang Dynasty more than 1,000 years ago, facing Uncle Sam, Japan bowed his arrogant head, and now, for no other reason, Uncle Sam is still the world's boss!
To sum up, with the strong recovery of the Japanese economy and with the continuous staging and completion of Japan's constitutional amendments, overseas troop dispatches, arms sales, and continued large-scale increases in military spending, will Japan, which will become strong again in both the economic and military spheres in the future, be willing to be subordinate to Uncle Sam? What kind of realism will Japan be like at that time? Let us wait and see! (The author is vice president of the Japanese Chinese Writers Association)