Yanaihara Tadao and the Irish question: a comparative analysis of the Irish and Korean questions, 1919–36

Irish nationalism and the success of Sinn Féin in acquiring dominion status for the Irish Free State in 1921–2 had a profound influence upon many nationalist movements in Asia in the 1920s and 1930s. Although the Irish example was of greatest significance for the shaping of political organisations and guerrilla warfare, it was also valuable in inspiring broader academic analyses of the consequences of colonial rule. In 1927 and again in 1936 Professor Yanaihara Tadao of Tokyo Imperial University published an essay on the Airurando mondai or Irish question entitled ‘Airurando mondai no enkaku’ (‘The history of the Irish question’). The main purpose of the essay was to compare Britain’s Irish question with Japan’s Chôsen mondai or Korean question, and it not only provides us with a unique Japanese perspective on Irish history but reminds us of the importance of the Irish example in Asia. Yanaihara Tadao (1893–1961) is even today much respected in Japan for his resistance to militarism and his sympathy for colonial peoples in the 1930s. In 1910, shortly before his eighteenth birthday, he was touched by the plight of the Korean people under Japanese rule as a result of reading Frederick Arthur McKenzie’s The tragedy of Corea. McKenzie’s tirade against Japanese atrocities in Korea both during and after the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–5 caused Yanaihara ‘to consider the truth of colonial policy’. At this time Yanaihara had just been admitted to the First Higher School, a preparatory college for entry to Tokyo Imperial University, and the years spent at the school proved to be his most formative.