Jack London, Asian Wars and the “Yellow Peril”

Daniel A. Métraux

Novelist Jack London (1876-1916), by far the most popular American writer a century ago, is these days remembered for his novels and short stories on the Yukon.  The Call of the Wild, White Fang, and To Build a Fire have retained much of their early popularity, but his visits to Japan, Korea and Manchuria, his brilliant coverage of the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05), his short stories based in Japan and China, his essays predicting the rise of the Pacific Rim, and his call for mutual respect and better contact between Americans and Japanese are long forgotten.  London deserves to be remembered, however, as a writer on Asia and the Pacific who directly confronted Western racism against Asians, denounced such concepts as “The Yellow Peril” and showed great sympathy for Japanese and Chinese in his literature.

London in Korea in conversation with Japanese soldiers

Today the term “The Yellow Peril” — but not necessarily the fears and fantasies associated with it — has long since passed out of fashion, but it was a widely used expression in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The supposed nightmare of  Oriental hordes swarming from the East and engulfing the “civilized” societies of the West was a popular theme in the literature and journalism of the time. The term “Yellow Peril” supposedly derives from a remark made by German Kaiser Wilhelm II following Japan’s defeat of China in 1895 in the first Sino-Japanese War. The expression initially referred to Japan’s sudden rise as a military and industrial power in the late nineteenth century. Soon, however, it took on a broader more sinister meaning embracing all Asia. “The Yellow Peril” highlighted diverse fears including the supposed threat of military invasion from Asia, competition to the white labor force from Asian workers, the moral degeneracy of Asian people, and the specter of genetic mixing of Anglo-Saxons with Asians.¹

The Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05 changed the world balance of power and gave rise to powerful images of yellow peril centered on Japan. Visualizing Cultures.

There were many writers and journalists who in the very early 1900s gave very unflattering views of Asians or who touted Anglo-Saxon superiority over the “yellow and brown” people of Asia. The Hearst newspapers stridently warned of the “yellow peril”, as did noted British novelist M. P. Shiel in his short story serial, The Yellow Danger. One also finds similar views in Kipling’s poem “The White Man’s Burden” and in some of his stories and novels.

Jack London has often been associated with the term “yellow peril.” John R. Eperjesi, a London scholar, writes that “More than any other writer, London fixed the idea of a yellow peril in the minds of the turn-of-the-century Americans…”² Many biographers quote London, just after his return from covering the first months of the Russo-Japanese War for the Hearst newspapers in 1904, as telling a coterie of fellow socialists of this profound dislike for the “yellow man.” Biographer Richard O’Connor quotes Robert Dunn, a fellow journalist with London during the Russo-Japanese war, as saying that Jack’s dislike of the Japanese “outdid mine. Though a professed Socialist, he really believed in the Kaiser’s ‘yellow peril.’”³

However, a close examination of London’s writing indicates that he was anything but an advocate of the racist “yellow peril” writing that was so common during the early years of the twentieth century. When one reads his Russo-Japanese dispatches from Korea and Manchuria one finds very balanced and objective reporting, concern for the welfare of both the average Japanese soldier and Russian soldier as well as the Korean peasant, and respect for the ordinary Chinese he met. As perhaps the most widely read and famous of the journalists covering the Russo-Japanese War, London  emerges as one of the few “internationalist” writers of his day who realized that the heyday of white “superiority” and Western expansionism and imperialism was coming to an end, but his positive views of Asians can be traced back a decade earlier in his first published stories.

London saw that Asia was in the process of waking up and that countries like Japan and China would emerge as major economic powers with the capacity to compete effectively with the West as the twentieth century progressed. He urged that Westerners make concerted efforts to meet with Japanese and Chinese so as to understand each other better as equals.⁴

Particularly notable are London’s writings on Asia, especially his coverage of the Russo-Japanese War in 1904,  his essays “The Yellow Peril” and “If Japan Awakens China,” and his short story, “The Unparalleled Invasion.” It is widely known that Americans had racist attitudes towards Japan and China and their citizens.  Reading London shows that there were also alternative points of view.

London had a deeper understanding of the profound changes occurring throughout the industrial world in the early twentieth century than most writers of the period. His fiction and essays explored changing aspects of modern warfare, industrialization, revolution and the beginning of the rise of Asia. London also shrewdly predicted elements of  the coming of total war, genocide, and even terrorism, making much of his writing as relevant today as when it was first composed. As Jonah Raskin observed, “In a short, volatile life of four decades, Jack London (1876-1916) explored and mapped the territory of war and revolution in fiction and non-fiction alike.  More accurately than any other writer of his day, he also predicted the shape of political power – from dictatorship to terrorism – that would emerge in the twentieth century, and his work is as timely today as when it was first written.”⁵

London’s Prediction of the Economic Rise of East Asia

London during and after his time in Korea and Manchuria developed a thesis envisaging the rise first of Japan and then of China as major twentieth century economic and industrial powers. London suggested that Japan would not be satisfied with its seizure of Korea in the Russo-Japanese War, that it would in due course take over Manchuria and would then seize control of China with the goal of using the Chinese with their huge pool of labor and their valuable resources for its own benefit. Chinese workers and farmers, however, when awakened by Japan, he anticipated, would overthrow their conservative leaders, oust the Japanese and rise as a major industrial power. China’s rise would so distress the Western powers that they would eventually attack China to eliminate its economic competitor.

The past few decades have witnessed the rise of East Asia. First Japan and later South Korea and China have experienced  tremendous growth in wealth and power. East Asia’s surge has challenged the status quo of American and European dominance and could pave the way for a subsequent military challenge that would overturn the current balance of power in Asia and the Pacific.

Writing a century ago, London had warned that the West was living in a bubble  — that its incredible power and wealth and its tenacious hold on Asia in due course would burst and the center of power would shift to Asia.  The transition would be peaceful because Asia’s rise would be primarily economic, but in the long run, he held, war between East and West would be inevitable.

But while London, long before Samuel Huntington, predicted a major clash of civilizations, it would be the West, the veritable “White Peril,” that would attack  Asia.  London surmised that Westerners, living in ignorant bliss, had no understanding of Asian cultures and were far too confident of their superiority to realize that their days of world power were severely numbered.  In dispatches from Korea and Manchuria during the Russo-Japanese War and in several postwar essays, London analyzed the potential of the three major cultures he encountered and predicted changes in the pattern of world dominance.  For London and other writers of his time, Japan’s defeat of Russia was a turning point in the representations of Asia because it directly challenged long-held beliefs in the innate superiority of the white race.⁶

London clearly distinguished the Chinese and Japanese, at times referring to the Chinese as the “Yellow Peril” and the Japanese as the “Brown Peril.” Even though it was Japan that was ascendant in 1904-1905 while China appeared moribund, London believed that in the long run Japan lacked both the size and the spirit to lead an Asian renaissance. Japan would rise first as a military and then as an economic power, but each time it would falter because of a lack of “staying power” to persevere in the long run. Japan would launch a crusade crying “Asia for the Asiatics,” but their contribution would serve as a catalyst that would awaken the Chinese.

Japan’s strength at the turn of the twentieth century rested on its ability to use Western technology and to achieve national unity, but London believed there were severe limits as to how far Japan could go in realizing its clarion call. The first factor inhibiting Japan is that “No great race adventure can go far nor endure long which has no deeper foundation than material success, no higher prompting than conquest for conquest’s sake and mere race glorification. To go far and to endure, it must have behind it an ethical impulse, a sincerely conceived righteousness.”⁷

The second inhibiting factor, he held, was Japan’s small population. A century ago there were forty-five million Japanese. That was enough to hurl back Russian forces, but London believed that it was not enough to create a massive Asian empire, still less to militarily or economically threaten the Western world. Seizing “poor, empty Korea for a breeding colony and Manchuria for a granary” would greatly enhance Japan’s population and strength, but even that would not be enough. “The menace to the Western world lies not in the little brown man, but in the four hundred millions of yellow men should the little brown man undertake their management.”⁸

London believed, in short, that the future belonged to China.  But London’s 1904 essay “The Yellow Peril” leaves his readers hanging. Japan has demonstrated its capacity to defeat a major world power, Russia, but is not strong enough to achieve its dream of an “Asia for the Asiatic.” That is, an Asia in Japan’s embrace.  Before Japan lay Manchuria with all of its resources and beyond that was China proper with its four hundred million hard working citizens. China’s vast potential as a world power is restricted by leaders who cling to power by embracing a conservatism that hews tenaciously to the past and refuses to let their country modernize. London does not tell the reader who will prevail as the great power in Asia, but his 1906 short story, “The Unparalleled Invasion,” points to China.

China, with its vast resources and huge, skilled, hardworking population will be the factory workshop that would provide Japan with the wealth and power she desired. The Chinese could then either accept the Japanese as their new master or develop their own industrial and military might. A resurgent China, he noted, would directly challenge the economic might of the West.

“The Unparalleled Invasion” is a futuristic horror story involving a major world war, massive killing, and the annihilation of Chinese civilization. Although critics have read different messages into the story, the irony is that the West is the  paranoid aggressor and China the innocent victim. London’s story is a stern warning of what can happen if racial hatred is allowed to flourish. London was writing at a time when the modern concept of germ warfare was being considered by various nations. Here he sounds an alarm over the hazards of biological warfare.  The story is also an indictment of the behavior of imperialistic powers per se.

The Japanese are expelled from China and are crushed when they try to reassert themselves there. But, “contrary to expectation, China did not prove warlike,” so “after a time of disquietude, the idea was accepted that China was not to be feared in war, but in commerce.” The West would come to understand that the “real danger” from China “lay in the fecundity of her loins.” Nevertheless, as the 20th century advances, Chinese immigrants swarm into French Indochina and later into Southwest Asia and Russia, seizing territory as they expand. Western attempts to slow or stop the Chinese expansionism all fail. By 1975 it appears the world would be overwhelmed by this relentless Chinese expansion. 

With despair mounting, an American scientist, Jacobus Laningdale, visits the White House to propose eradicating the entire Chinese population by dropping deadly plagues from Allied airships flying over China. Six months later in May, 1976, the airships appear over China dropping a torrent of glass tubes.⁹ At first nothing happens, but within weeks China is hit by an inferno of plagues, gradually wiping out the entire population. Allied armies surround China making it impossible for anybody to escape the massive deaths.  Even the seas are closed by 75,000 Allied naval vessels patrolling China’s coast. “Modern war machinery held back the disorganized mass of China, while the plagues did the work.”¹⁰

The reader sees that vast cultural differences divide the West from China and it is these differences that cause hatred and malice on the part of the West. The focus here is not on the dangers that China presents to the West, but, rather, the reverse. As Jean Campbell Reesman points out, “London’s story is a strident warning against race hatred and its paranoia, and an alarm sounded against an international policy that would permit and encourage germ warfare. It is also an indictment of imperialist governments per se.”¹¹

London urges the West to come to terms with the new Asia and to live with non-white peoples in a spirit of brotherhood. He anticipates that the wars of the twentieth century will greatly surpass those of the past in terms of their killing and destruction not only of armies, but of civilian populations as well.  Indeed, his predictions concerning the great wars to come were prescient.

There is a marked refinement of London’s views towards Asians and other non-white people of the Pacific in the last seven years of his life during and after his 1907-1909 trip to the South Pacific aboard his decrepit schooner the Snark. London’s increasingly pan-national view of the world led to his 1915 recommendation for a “Pan-Pacific Club” where people from both East and West could meet in a congenial setting. The “club” would be a forum where East and West could exchange views and ideas on an equal basis. These are hardly the thoughts of a racist; rather, they are the words of a true internationalist.  In particular, he felt it was necessary for Americans and Japanese to come together to better understand their respective cultures and increase mutual understanding.

Conclusion

Jack London traveled extensively during his short life. He encountered people of many cultures and empathized with the suffering of downtrodden people not only in the United States, but also in Europe, East Asia and the South Pacific. London was an internationalist who sought to understand the people and cultures in the lands that he traversed. His “Pan-Pacific Club” essay is his final appeal for the West to overcome its stereotypical view of Asians as inferior peoples who needed Western domination for their own good.

Jack London Reporting From Manchuria

[Editor’s Note: The Hearst newspaper empire hired Jack London to be its chief correspondent covering the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905). When London arrived in Tokyo in late January, 1904, he found that the Japanese government would not allow foreign correspondents near its army as it marched north through Korea to meet Russian forces in Manchuria. Refusing to spend the war attending banquets, London raced across Japan searching for a vessel to take him to Korea.

London astride Belle in Japan

After considerable difficulty he caught up with the Japanese army in late winter 1904 in Korea and was able to accompany the troops as they marched north through Korea and into Manchuria to confront the Russians. London continued his coverage of the war through June of 1904.  The following dispatch followed Japan’s victory over Russian forces in a tense battle for control of the Yalu River between Korea and Manchuria.]

“Beware the Monkey Cage”

ANTUNG, Manchuria. May 10th, 1904. The Japanese, following the German model, make every possible preparation, take every possible precaution, and then proceed to act, confident in the belief that nothing short of a miracle can prevent success. Opposed to their three divisions on the Yalu was a greatly inferior Russian force, but the Japanese had to cross the river under fire and attack an enemy lying in wait for them.

By the manipulation of their three divisions, and what of their ruses, they must have sadly befuddled the Russians. At the mouth of the Yalu the Japanese had two small gunboats, two torpedo boats and four small steamers armed with Hotchkiss-guns. Also they had fifty sampans loaded with bridge materials. These were intended for a permanent bridge at Wiju; but they served another purpose—first, farther down the stream. The presence of the small navy and the loaded sampans led the Russians to believe that right there was where the bridge was to be built. So right there they stationed some three thousand men to prevent the building of the bridge. Thus a handful of Japanese sailors kept 3,000 Russian soldiers occupied in doing nothing and reduced the effectiveness of the Russian strength that much.

Woodblock print depicting Japanese victory over the Russians at Chongju. Kyôko Hasegawa Sonokichi Umezawa horu Illustration of the Russo-Japanese War: Our Armed Forces Occupy Chongju (Nichiro kôsen zuga, wagagun Teishû o senryô su) Ukiyo-e print; Russo-Japanese War 1904 (Meiji 37), March. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Visualizing Cultures.

Another ruse was the building of a bridge in front of Wiju. This was in plain view of the Russians on the conical hill opposite just east of Kieu-Liang-Cheng, and they consumed much time and powder in shelling it. This was precisely what the Japanese intended for the bridge. While it held the Russian attention, a little farther down the stream the Japanese were at work on another bridge screened by small willow trees on the intervening island, and which, when completed, had never had a shot fired at it.

Have you ever stood in front of a cage wherein there was a monkey gazing innocently and peaceably into your eyes—so innocent and peaceable the hands grasping the bars and wholly unbelligerent, the eyes that bent with friendly interest on yours, and all the while and unbeknown a foot sliding out to surprise your fancied security and set you shrieking with sudden fright? Beware the monkey cage! You have need of more than your eyes; and beware the Japanese. When he sits down stupidly to build a bridge with his two hands before your eyes, have a thought to the quiet place behind the willow-screen where another bridge is builded by his two feet. He works with his hands and his feet, he works night and day, and he never does one thing expected of him, and that is the unexpected thing.

The night of April 29th and the day of the 30th was an anxious time for the Japanese. Their army was cut in half, and it was no less than the Yalu that divided it. One-third of its force, the Z division, had crossed the river to the right and was in Manchuria. They had no very accurate knowledge of the Russian strength, and it was not beyond liability that the Russians might make a counter attack on the Z division and destroy it. So the X and Y divisions on the south bank were in momentary readiness to prevent this by delivering an attack upon the Russians straight across the river. But there was no need for this. The Russians were not in sufficient force to attack a single division, advancing as it was across mountainous country. This, in turn, the Japanese did not know, but they prepared for the possibility as they prepare for everything.

The Ai-ho river flows out of Manchuria and enters the Yalu valley a mile or more above Kieu-Liang-Chen. It also flows past that village, close to the Manchurian shore, thus interposing an obstacle to the advance of the whole Japanese army (even the Z division), after it had crossed the Yalu proper. The crossing of the Ai-ho was seriously menaced by the sixteen guns of the Russian right on the conical hill. The day’s work for April 30th was to put these sixteen guns out of business. The Japanese bent themselves to the task. It was an exposed position and a concentration of fire lasting twenty-five minutes and in which time sixty common shells were thrown, did the work. The Russian fire was silenced and the guns were withdrawn that night! Incidentally the Japanese bombed the Russian camp, carelessly situated where it was exposed from the Korean hills, and wrought great havoc.

On the night of April 30th the X and Y divisions crossed the main Yalu and rested on the sands, with the Ai-ho between them and the Russians. The X division forming the Japanese left, faced the Russian right on the conical hill, and the Y division was extended near the mouth of the Ai-ho; and up the Ai-ho, extended for several miles, lay the Z division. Opposing these three divisions was a Russian actual fighting force of about 4,000 men. The Russian line, extending some six or seven miles, was not intact. In fact, because of the lay of the land, the Russians really occupied two positions—one on and about the conical hill at Kieu-Leng-Cheng, the other at the Ai-ho, from its mouth several miles up.

Against these two positions, occupied by about 2,000 men, was hurled an army of three divisions (probably 25,000 men actually on the spot), backed by a powerful artillery of field guns and howitzers. Prevented by shell fire and shrapnel from doing their best to repel the general attack, and being flanked by an immensely superior force, the Russian left on the Ai-ho broke first and fled in the direction of the Hamatan. The Russian right on the conical hill, fought more, tenaciously, the survivors in turn fleeing toward Hamatan.

Banri Narazawa Kenjirô Umezawa horu Scene of Our Second Army Occupying Nanshan in a Fierce Battle at the Fall of Jinzhoucheng (Kinshûjô kanraku waga dainigun no gekisen Nanzan senryô no kôkei) Ukiyo-e print; Russo-Japanese War 1904 (Meiji 37), Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Visualizing Cultures

The Japanese understand the utility of things. Reserves they consider should be used, not only to strengthen the line or protect the repulsed line, but in the moment of victory to clinch victory hard and fast. The reserves, fresh and chafing from inaction wild to take part in a glorious day, received the order for general pursuit. Right, left and center, they took after the Russians. The field guns, delayed by the Ai-ho followed at a gallop.

The retreat became a rout. The Russian reserves, two regiments, had fled without firing a shot—at least the Japanese have no record of these two regiments. Hamatan is at the conjunction of three roads, six miles to the rear of the conical hill. Down these three roads the Russians ran, coming together and passing on to the main road—the Pekin or Mandarin road. And down these three roads, from left, right, and center, came the fresh reserves, and after them the artillery.

In the meantime, however, far from the Japanese right and outstripping the rest of the pursuit, arrived one company of men in time to cut off fifteen Russian guns and eight maxims. The remnants of the three battalions rallied around the guns. A hasty position was taken. The rest of the pursuing Japanese did not arrive. But one company of men stood between the Russians and the Pekin Road. And it stood. Its captain and three lieutenants were killed. One officer only remained alive. The last cartridge was fired. Those that survived fixed their bayonets ready to receive a charge. And in the moment, left, right, and center, their pursuing comrades arrived.

The Russians were assailed from three sides. The tables were turned but they fought with equal courage. The day was lost; they knew it; yet they fought on doggedly. Night was falling. As the Japanese grew closer the Russians turned loose their horses, destroyed or threw away the breechblocks of their guns, smashed the breeches of the maxims and then, as bayonet countered bayonet, drew white handkerchiefs from their pockets in token of surrender.

One other noteworthy thing occurred in the Japanese pursuit. Midway to Hamatan, flying on the heels of a rout, in the very heat and sweep of triumph, they dropped a line of reserves to receive and protect them should they be hurled back broken and crushed by Russian re-enforcements. Hand in hand with terrifying bravery goes this cold-blooded precaution. Verily, nothing short of the miracle can wreck a plan  they have once started to put into execution. The men furnish the unfaltering bravery, confident in their knowledge that their officers have furnished the precaution.

Of course, the officers are as brave as the men. On the night of the 30th, when the army took up its position on the Ai-ho, it was not known whether that stream was fordable. Officers from each of the three divisions stripped and swam or waded the river at many different points, practically under the rifles of the Russians.

“Men determined to die” is the way one Japanese officer characterized the volunteers who answer in large number to every call for dangerous work. Not knowing whether the Ai-ho was fordable, three plans were seriously considered. First, each soldier was to go into action May 1st dressed in cartilage belt and equipped with a rifle and a board, the latter to be used as a means for paddling across the Ai-ho. Second, same garb and equipment with a tub substituted for the board, and third, the strongest swimmers to cross over with ropes, along which, when once fast on the other side bank, the weaker swimmers and non-swimmers could make their way. In any case, had the river not proved fordable, Kipling’s “Taking the Long-Tong-Pen” would have been repeated on a most formidable scale. Surely the Russians would have broken and fled perceptibly before so terrible a charge.

Every division, every battery was connected with headquarters by field telephone. When the divisions moved forward they dragged their wires after them like spiders drag the silk of their webs. Even the tiny navy at the mouth of the Yalu was in constant communication with headquarters. Thus, on a wide-stretching and largely invisible field, the commander-in-chief was in immediate control of everything. Inventions, weapons, systems (the navy modeled after the English, the army after the German) everything utilized by the Japanese has been supplied by the Western world; but the Japanese have shown themselves the only Eastern people capable of utilizing them.

If Japan Awakens China

[London wrote this piece in 1909, five years after his return from Manchuria. He predicts the rise of Japan and its endeavor to transform itself into a major world power by harnessing the labor of four hundred million Chinese. The Chinese, he suggested, would in turn eventually overthrow their conservative leaders, drive out the Japanese and develop a prosperous modern economy. Excerpts.]

The point that I have striven to make is that much of the reasoning of the white race about the Japanese is erroneous, because is it based on fancied knowledge of the stuff and fiber of the Japanese mind. An American lady of my acquaintance, after residing for months in Japan, in response to a query as to how she liked the Japanese, said: “They have no souls.”

In this she was wrong. The Japanese are just as much possessed of a soul as she and the rest of her race. And far be it from me to infer that the Japanese soul is in the smallest way inferior to the Western soul. It may even be superior. You see, we do not know the Japanese soul, and what its value may be in the scheme of things. And yet that American lady’s remark but emphasizes the point. So different was the Japanese soul from hers, so unutterably alien, so absolutely without any kinship or means of communication, that to her there was no slightest sign of its existence.

Japan, in her remarkable evolution, has repeatedly surprised the world. Now the element of surprise can be present only when one is unfamiliar with the data that go to constitute the surprise. Had we really known the Japanese, we should not have been surprised. And as she has surprised us in the past, and only the other day, may she not surprise us in the days that are yet to be? And since she may surprise us in the future, and since ignorance is the meat and wine of surprise, who are we, and with what second sight are we invested, that we may calmly say: “Surprise is all very well, but there is not going to be any Yellow peril or Japanese peril?”

There are forty-five million Japanese in the world. There are over four hundred million Chinese. That is to say, that if we add together the various branches of the white race, the English, the French, and the German, the Austrian, the Scandinavian, and the white Russian, the Latins as well, the Americans, the Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders, the South Africans, the Anglo Indians, and all the scattered remnants of us, we shall find that we are still outnumbered by the combined Japanese and Chinese.

We understand the Chinese mind no more than we do the Japanese. What if these two races, as homogenous as we, should embark on some vast race-adventure? There have been no race adventures in the past. We English-speaking peoples are just now in the midst of our own great adventure. We are dreaming as all race-adventurers have dreamed. And who will dare to say that in the Japanese mind is not burning some colossal Napoleonic dream? And what if the dreams clash?

Japan is the one unique Asiatic race, in that alone among the races of Asia, she has been able to borrow from us and equip herself with all our material achievement. Our machinery of warfare, of commerce, and of industry she has made hers. And so well has she done it that we have been surprised. We did not think she had it in her. Next consider China. We of the West have tried, and tried vainly, to awaken her. We have failed to express our material achievements in terms comprehensible to the Chinese mind. We do not know the Chinese mind. But Japan does. She and China spring from the same primitive stock—their languages are rooted in the same primitive tongue; and their mental processes are the same. The Chinese mind may baffle us, but it cannot baffle the Japanese. And what if Japan wakens China—not to our dream, if you please, but to her dream, to Japan’s dream? Japan, having taken from us all our material achievement, is alone able to transmute that material achievement in terms intelligible to the Chinese mind.

The Chinese and Japanese are thrifty and industrious. China possesses great natural resources of coal and iron—and coal and iron constitute the backbone of machine civilization. When four hundred and fifty million of the best workers in the world go into manufacturing, a new competitor, and a most ominous and formidable one, will enter the arena where the races struggle for the world-market. Here is the race-adventure—the first clashing of the Asiatic dream with ours. It is true, it is only an economic clash, but economic clashes always precede clashes at arms. And what then? Oh, only that will-o’-wisp, the Yellow peril. But to the Russian, Japan was only a will-o’-wisp until one day, with fire and steel, she smashed the great adventure of the Russian and punctured the bubble-dream he was dreaming. Of this be sure: if ever the day comes that our dreams clash with that of the Yellow and the Brown, and our particular bubble-dream is punctured, there will be one country at least unsurprised, and that country will be Russia. She was awakened from her dream. We are still dreaming.

 

Daniel A. Métraux is Professor of Asian Studies at Mary Baldwin College in Staunton, Virginia.  He recently served as president of the Southeast Chapter of the Association for Asian Studies and as editor of the Southeast Review of Asian Studies.  He has written many books and articles on Japanese and Asian affairs including The Soka Gakkai Revolution (1994) and Burma’s Modern Tragedy (2004).  His most recent book, The Asian Writings of Jack London: Essays, Letters, Newspaper Dispatches, and Short Fiction by Jack London was published by Edwin Mellen Press in 2009. He wrote this article for The Asia-Pacific Journal.

Recommended citation: Daniel A. Métraux, "Jack London, Asian Wars and the 'Yellow Peril,'" The Asia-Pacific Journal, 4-3-10, January 25, 2010.  ジャック・ロンドン、アジア戦争、「黄禍」

Notes

¹ See William F. Wu, The Yellow Peril: Chinese-Americans in American Fiction, 1850-1940 (Hamden CT: Archon Books, 1982).

² John R. Eperjesi, The Imperialist Imaginary: Visions of Asia and the Pacific in American Culture (Hanover: Dartmouth University Press, 2005, 108

³ Richard O’Connor, Jack London: A Biography (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1964), 214.

⁴ London most fully developed these ideas while covering the early stages of the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05) in Korea and Manchuria. He was stunned to find Asians using the most up-to-date military  technology, methodology and weapons of mass slaughter with great proficiency. He published these ideas in two articles (“The Yellow Peril” in the San Francisco Examiner, 25 September 1904; and “If Japan Awakens China” in Sunset Magazine, December, 1909) and one short story, “The Unparalleled Invasion” (McClure’s Magazine, May 1910).

⁵ Jonah Raskin, The Radical Jack London: Writing on War and Revolution  (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), 1.

⁶ John R. Eperjesi, The Imperialist Imaginary, 109.

⁷ Jack London Reports, 346.

⁸ Jack London Reports, 346.

⁹ China was the victim of Japanese biological warfare (Unit 731) in bombing late in the China-Japan war of 1931-45.  Moreover, China (and North Korea) would charge that the United States used germ warfare in China and North Korea during the Korean War, touching off a fierce debate that continues to this day.  See Tsuneishi Keiichi, “Unit 731 and the Japanese Imperial Army’s  Biological Warfare Program, http://japanfocus.org-Tsuneishi-Keiichi/2194 .   See also Stephen Endicott, The United States and Biological Warfare: Secrets from the Early Cold War and Korea.  Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998.  Critics have strongly challenged Endicott’s key points concerning the alleged use of germ warfare in the Korean War.

¹⁰ Jack London, “The Unparalleled Invasion“ in Dale L Walker, Ed., Curious Fragments (Port Jefferson NY: Kenkat Press, 1976), 119.

¹¹ Jeanne Campbell Reesman, Jack London: A Study of the Short Fiction (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1999), 91.