JAPAN AND THE "IRREPRESSIBLE EXPANSION" DOCTRINE
would become de facto internationally, which would make it legal.
Population and "Irrepressible Expansion" in the Far East
When Japanese statesmen talk about the urgent necessity for Japan to "have room" for her rising population, they mean that Japan wants more territory. When Japanese statesmen speak of "room" they do not mean room in Mars, or on the oceans, or the blue sky. They mean land. And to give more land to Japan under existing conditions means to take the land away from another nation or nations.
Just what land is to be taken from other nations to make "room" for Japanese is distinctly indicated by the facts of geography, and by the utterances of Japanese statesmen and propaganda. Japan probably would take land wherever she could get it. At times during the Great War when the outcome was uncertain and the inability of Europe to protect its outlying possessions was dubious, there was much discussion in Japan of the opportunity to acquire the Dutch East Indies, and French Indo-China. Those acquisitive conceptions have been relegated for the time; and in so far as the Washington Conference is concerned, the direction which Japan's expansiveness takes is distinctly intimated. Japan wants Manchuria, Eastern Inner Mongolia, and possibly Eastern Siberia.
Manchuria has belonged to China for many centuries, and is almost entirely populated by Chinese. Mongolia is chiefly desert.
Eastern Siberia has been a part of Russia for more than a century, and it is populated almost entirely by white people.
Japan has expanded her territory a good deal in recent, times. She has annexed Korea, Formosa and Southern
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