The Maple Leaf and the Chrysanthemum
| Published date | 01 December 2009 |
| Date | 01 December 2009 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070200906400414 |
| Author | Charles McMillan |
| Subject Matter | Over the Transom |
Charles McMillan
The maple leaf and
the chrysanthemum
Canada and Japan, 80 years and counting
| International Journal | Autumn 2009 | 1075 |
This year marks the 80th anniversary of Canada-Japan diplomatic relations,
although the first Japanese immigrants cam e to Canada at least 50 years
earlier. Eight y years ag o, Canada was a small country eme rging from its
status as a British colony, the first in the British empire to achieve
independence through the statute of Westminster in 1931. Slowly but steadily,
Canada built a bureaucratic and foreign s ervice machinery t o start a v ery
successful diplomatic corps, well beyond its embassies in London,
Washington, and Paris. The initiative to have close diplomatic ties with Japan
was the start of a long friendship with this vital Pacific country.1
Charles J. McMillan is profess or of strategic management in the school of international
business at York University. He is the author of nine books and monographs related to
international business and global management, including The Japanese Industrial System,
and, most recently, The Strategic Challenge: From Surfdom to Surfing in the Global
Village. He is a former board member of the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada.
1 For background, see Joseph F. Kess and Helen Lansdowne, eds.,
Why Japan Matters
(Victoria: Centre for Asia-Pacific Initiatives, University of Victoria, 2005).
| Charles McMillan |
| 1076 | Autumn 2009 | International Journal |
In that early period, the tasks were anything but easy. Like its American
neighbour to the south, Canada was isolated from the mo mentous events
taking place in Europe, largely preoccupied with the troublesome legacy of
the great depression, and struggling with the need to build an industrial base
to compete against the economic colossus in the great republic. Trade with
the US was resource-based and US branch plants, in the era before free trade,
dominated the manufacturing sectors in central Canada. It would take the
Second World War to accelerate Canada’s manufacturing base, and advanced
sectors like shipbuilding, aerospace, telecommunications, steel, and energy
took their modern form during this period.
At the same time, Japan, faced with its own economic downturn, was
caught in a whirlwind of complicated forces within its own complex political
system. One group preferred an isolationist stance, ready to confine Japan to
its traditional agricultural base, alienated from the r ise of giant indust rial
groups and industrialism in general. A small but significantly influential
group, soon to be led by the Japanese army, understood that industrialism,
with its natural expansionist needs for raw materials and markets, required
Japan to play a significant international role, if the big players like Britain,
Holland, and the US would allow it. China became the target. And a third
group, playing off the deep resentment of past injustices and the high
unemployment, sought an aggressive international role in Asia. Indeed, if
Britain, the European powers, and the United States could be members of
the colonial expansion club near Japan, why couldn’t Japan itself play this
role? The Washington naval treaty of 1922, with its 5:5:3 ratio of naval
strength, forced a subordinate role on Japan, led to bitter resentment of
Anglo-American condescension in government circles, and started the
march to militarism and ultimately war with the United States.2
In the postwar period, Japan’s industrial growth was the fastest wealth-
creation economy in world history, shifting a second-world industrial
structure to one of the world’s richest economies. Many will recall the
plaudits of writers like Herman Kahn’s
The Emerging Japanese Superstate
or Ezra’s Vogel’s polemic,
Japan as No. One
. It was all great reading and the
2 There is a huge literature on this. See, for example, James Crowley,
Japan’s Quest For
Autonomy
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966); Tsunada Jun,
History of Three
Generations of the Japanese Navy
(Tokyo: Hara Shoba, 1948); and Arthur Herman,
To
Rule the Waves
(New York: Harper 2004).
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