Historical Dictionary of United States-Japan ... - Bakumatsu Films

WILSON, WOODROW • 261
Born in 1856 in Staunton, Virginia, Wilson earned a law degree at
Princeton and practiced briefly in Atlanta before earning a doctorate
from Johns Hopkins University in 1886 (his dissertation on Congressional
Government has been viewed as a landmark study in political
history). He taught at Princeton before becoming the university’s
president, when the phrase “Princeton in the nation’s service” was
frequently on his lips. Elected as Democratic governor of New Jersey
in 1910, he won the presidential election in 1912.
Wilson’s foreign policy goals as president were colored by his belief
that the United States ought to use its power to serve the interests
of people everywhere. An advocate of democratic values, he eventually
sent American forces into World War I to make the world “safe
for democracy.” In the Far East, however, Wilson’s foreign policy
seemed driven less by democratic ideals than it was by the perceived
necessity of the preservation of the Open Door. Mindful of this fact,
the Japanese government upon its entry into World War I offered repeated
assurances that it did not intend to violate the integrity of
China. Wilson, however, remained cautiously watchful. Then, in January
1915, Tokyo laid the infamous Twenty-One Demands before
Chinese President Yuan Shih-kai, Wilson’s secretary of state,
William Jennings Bryan, refused to recognize their legitimacy.
After the crisis surrounding the Twenty-One Demands had been
defused—not altogether satisfactorily—Wilson had to engage in a serious
rethink of his policy toward Japan. Wilson’s growing realization
by 1916 that the United States would enter the war in Europe
carried with it the implication that American military intervention in
the Far East was less a possibility than it had ever been. The following
question thus arose: how best to contain Japanese ambitions? At
the same time, it was in the interests of the anti-German alliance to
smooth relations with the Japanese (who, after all, were fighting on
the side of their alliance partners, the British). Wilson’s energies visà-vis
Japan subsequently revolved around an effort to construct
friendly relations with Japan, while acting to prevent Japanese hegemony
in the Far East. It was in such a climate that the Lansing–Ishii
Agreement emerged. Furthermore, reversing his administration’s
earlier rejection of American participation in an international banking
consortium in China, Wilson reasoned that the United States could
outspend the Japanese. As he stated in 1916, Americans were now the