Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No. 8, 2021

Exchanges between Chinese and Japanese Intellectuals during the May Fourth Period

(Abstract)

Sun Jiang

The May Fourth Incident of May 4, 1919, and its aftermath caused an uproar in Japan. Unlike others, Yoshino Sakuzo, then professor at Tokyo Imperial University and a famous representative of Taisho Democracy, said that he understood the Chinese students’ protest against “Japanese aggression,” and put forward an appeal for “mutual support” between “peaceful Japan” and Chinese citizens. He wrote to his former student Li Dazhao to invite Peking University students and faculty to visit Japan. Li responded positively to Yoshino’s proposal, but the realization of this goal encountered successive problems. In order to dispel Li Dazhao’s doubts about the Dawn Society created by Yoshino, the latter not only had a talk published in a newspaper through the good offices of the journalist Yuanquan (Chen Puxian), but also sent students to visit the Shanghai Student Union and Li Dazhao and made a secret visit to Peking University himself. A year after the May Fourth Incident, Peking University students did visit Japan, but the accomplishment of this visit was far from Yoshino’s original intention—“mutual support” between China and Japan. By “mutual support,” he meant overthrowing the warlords and bureaucratic governments of both countries and preventing the spread of “radical ideas.” He failed to achieve his goal because the students of both countries—the Newcomers’ Association of Tokyo Imperial University, which hosted the delegation, and the Peking University delegation—were more interested in the Soviet Revolution than in his plan.