The Yellow Peril and "New" Japan : The Japanese Response to the Yellow Peril

This essay attempts to examine the Japanese response to the Yellow Peril idea. First, the reactions of Hirobumi Ito, a Japanese leader during the Meiji period, will be taken up. His response to the idea showed a combination of national pride as well as a denunciation of the Yellow peril idea. This belief is not peculiar to Ito alone. Ogai Mori expressed a paradoxical view on a Yellow Peril idea in a German historian's book. According to Ogai, as the potential of China was overestimated, so the power of Japan was underestimated in the book. Thererefore, when he denied the Yellow Peril idea of that book, he showed his uneasiness with the apparent denigration of the Japanese and their placement at the same level as other yellow races. Contrary to the Japanese reaction, some Chinese intellectuals used the idea to activate Chinese nationalism. For the Chinese, yellow is a sacred color as it is the color of Yellow Emperor. The denunciation of the Yellow Peril idea tended to stimulate Japanese national pride and promote pan-Asian ideas such as "Asia for the Asian". Japanese oligarchs, the decisionmakers of Meiji Japan, however, deliberately avoided the nationalistic reaction to the Yellow Peril as well as pan-Asianism since they did not want to stir anti-white feelings in Japan