形成期明治国家の軍備拡張政策 : 壬午事変後の軍拡決定をめぐって

抄録

After the Jingo Incident, the Japanese Government adopted a military expansion policy which regarded the Quing dynasty as a potential enemy. The first theme of this paper is to analyze the decision-making process of this policy. It was made clear that inside the government there existed two distinct lines as to this issue. One was held by the military authorities, who took war with the Quing as inevitable and argued for large-scale military expansion. The other was held by proponents of a retrenchment policy (Inoue Kaoru 井上馨 and Matsukata Masayoshi 松方正義), who contended that every effort should be made to avoid conflict with the Quing and would allow military expansion, as long as, it would not interfere with the ongoing paper currency curtailment policy. At first, the latter line was taken, but soon afterward the militarists recouped and succeeded in making a revision of it. In the end, the size of the project was significantly enlarged and financial difficulties became inevitable. The Japanese Government decided on this policy on the premise that the Quing dynasty was posing a real military threat to Japan. The second theme of this paper is to examine whether this premise was objectively correct or not. For this purpose, the author compares the naval strengths of the two countries and investigates the Quing's diplomatic attitude toward Japan. In conclusion, he states that the premise the Japanese Government acted on was ill-founded.