by Roger White, June 96
Many East Asian countries were colonized first by the Europeans, then for a while by the Japanese. There are bad feelings about both, but universally there are worse feelings about the Japanese colonial period than about the European period. The Japanese are still distrusted by many East Asians to this day because of how they handled their colonial period from 1900-1940.
Why did the Japanese leave such a distinctively bad memories about being colonial masters?
First, I suspect the bad taste was because the Japanese were unusually brutal and harsh, and because they demanded more change in how things were done than the Europeans did.
Why did they do this? Here are roots of the difference:
Colonizing 101
England began colonizing in 1600s when colonies were established in North America and the Carribean. They had 250 years of experience before the Japanese started their colonial effort. They'd made a lot of mistakes over that period, and learned from them. In 1900 the Japanese were rank beginners at playing the colonial empire game. Unfortunately, their neighbors had to contend with 40 years of Japanese learning how to be a colonial master. It was painful for both sides.
Not spread thin
European colonists were famous for making miracles happen on their own. They had to be because there wasn't any resource to back them up. European colonists were always spread thin. This had a major effect on colonizing style. The British in particular realized that they couldn't piss off major segments of the colonial population, unless they had another major and more powerful segment ready to back them up. The Europeans knew from day one that their hand must lay easy on the population.
The Europeans also started by colonizing sparely populated lands. They evolved into controlling populated lands, but only after they'd made a lot of mistakes in places where the stakes where much lower.
The Japanese, on the other hand, started with Korea and Taiwan--populous regions with well established cultures of their own. They also started with regions close to home, and with a lot of young Japanese people displaced by the industrial revolution and ready to serve the country.
When the Japanese colonial director got into trouble, it was easy to "throw people at the problem." People were rarely easy for a European colonial director to find.
Jumped into colonizing
Europeans didn't start as colonists. They started as world traders. Colonizing was an innovation used to secure markets. It was used only after a market was threatened, because it was a pretty expensive process. Fighting warlords might buy more guns, but they bought a lot less butter, and they increased market riskiness.
Colonizing was rarely proactive. Warlords would often invite, strongly invite, the Europeans to get involved. Look at the Battle of Creecy in India--the battle that determined the French would not play a role in India. There were three armies at the battlefield. The local warlord had an army ten times the size of either the British or the French. It was supposed to be warlord and French against the British, but the British paid a lot of money to the warlord to sit the battle out, and he did. Neither the British or the French could afford to confront him--until a few years later some other local warlord was ready to do so, and called upon the British for help in doing so.
The Europeans played one side against the other because they had to, and because they could come up with a lot of money (but not men) when they were successful.
The Japanese also wanted world markets, but they spent very little time playing a "mouse dancing with elephants." When they did, they were a mouse dancing with powerful European colonists, not powerful local chieftans. They saw European colonists only after they had become big, and they themselves started as big boy colonists. They never saw a reason to learn the art of ruling with a light hand.
Two hundred years of isolation
The Japanese began industrializing in 1850 and colonizing in 1900. For two hundred years before 1850 they killed people coming or going from the islands--the Japanese of 1900 were not worldly. But all of a sudden these people who have seen things done only one way for generations are put in charge of another people who do things differently. It's not surprising they felt threatened simply be the difference.
"We know the way."
The Japanese were very proud of the fact that they were the first non-Europeans to industrialize. They're still proud of that to this day. It's not so surprising then that in the 1900-40 period they could patronize those that they ruled by saying, "Here's the way that works. We know, because we made this way work. Now we want you to do things this way."
This kind of zeal is antagonizing in any endevor.
Summary
There are many reasons why the Japanese colonial period felt much harsher to the East Asians than the European colonial period. The two biggest were Japanese inexperience at running colonies and the large human resouce base they worked with. The former insured that they would make lots of mistakes, and the latter made it an easier style for the Japanese to throw people at the problem and knock heads, rather than finding an artful way to "damage control" the mistake.