This paper discusses the Đông Á Đông Minh Hội, or the “League of East Asia,” an organization which, in his memoirs, Phan Bội Châu claims to have joined in the fall of 1908. Information from Japanese and Chinese sources, however, indicates that the League could not have been established in the second half of 1908, because at that time four of the most important participants listed by P.B. Châu in his memoirs had either left Japan or were in prison. Various Japanese, Chinese and Vietnamese sources further indicate that this League was identical with the Ashū Washinkai, the “Asian Friendship Association.” According to Japanese sources, the Association was established in the fall of 1907, a year carlier than P.B. Châu claims.
Students of Vietnamese nationalism, relying exclusively on P. B. Châu's memoirs, have concluded that the League was set up when the Japanese authorities, under pressure through French diplomatic channels, started suppressing the Vietnamese movement in Japan, causing P.B. Châu to become disillusioned with Japan. Since the League was established well before Japanese policy turned against the Vietnamese, however, other reasons should be sought for P.B. Châu's decision to join the League. The year 1907 saw a crucial change in official Japanese policy toward her Asian neighbours and the Western colonial powers, which drew criticism from
emigrés of the other Asian nations who resided in Japan. Through a series of treaties with the Western powers, the Japanese government publicly demonstrated its willingness to cooperate with the colonialists at the expense of the Asian peoples. A few years earlier, after the Russo-Japanese War, many Asian nationalists tended to regard Japan as the champion of the yellow race against the white colonialists. Yet in 1907 the Chinese revolutionaries and Indian activists in Japan, as well as the Japanese socialists. increasingly expressed the idea that Japan was not a friend of Asia but a “common enemy” who belonged to the white imperialists' camp. By the summer of 1907,the Chinese, Indian and Japanese activists were in close contact with each other and with Korean, Phillipino and Vietnamese
emigrés.
P.B. Châu was shocked by Japan's signing of a treaty with the French in June 1907 and abandoned his idea of “relying on Japan.” Instead he joined the revolutionaries from other Asian nations and the Japanese socialists in placing their hopes on cooperation between peoples with the “same sickness.” By 1907 the term “same sickness” (
động bệnh in Vietnamese,
t'ung ping in Chinese) had become a key word in Chinese arguments for the need for solidarity among the oppressed Asian peoples. Furthermore, in his memoirs and in his letter to Foreign Minister Komura in 1909, P.B. Châu used the opposing terms “universal principle” (
công lý in Vietnamese,
kung li in Chinese) and “strong force” (
cuòng quyên in Vietnamese,
ch'iang ch'üang in Chinese) that the Chinese revolutionaries, especially the anarchists, also used: “universal principle” stood for the righteousness of oppressed peoples, and “strong force” for their suppression by imperialists.
It is logical to argue that a few years after P.B. Châu came to Japan to seek Japanese assistance, he finally abandoned his reliance on Japan and turned to the building of cooperation among the nationalists of suffering Asia. In seeking Japanese assistance, he had stressed common cultural background, ethnicity, and geographical proximity between Vietnam and Japan, expressed in the phrase “the same culture, the same race, and the same continent.” His shift in emphasis to the “same sickness” demonstrates a shift
(View PDF for the rest of the abstract.)
抄録全体を表示