First Sino-Japanese War

The First Sino-Japanese War was fought between the Qing dynasty of China and the Empire of Japan from the summer of 1894 to the spring of 1895. The central question was who would control Korea, then ruled by the Joseon dynasty. Much of the war was fought in Korea and in the waters around it, so Korea, which had not chosen to go to war, suffered heavily.

Each country remembers the war by a different name. Koreans call it the Cheong-il jeonjaeng (Qing–Japan War). In Chinese it is the Jiawu War, after the name of the year 1894 in the traditional sixty-year cycle. In Japanese it is the Nisshin sensō (Japan–Qing War). The names alone show that the same events look different depending on where one stands.

Japan won quickly and decisively. Its modern army and navy defeated the larger but poorly coordinated Qing forces on land and at sea. The Treaty of Shimonoseki in April 1895 forced China to give up its special relationship with Korea, hand over Taiwan, and pay an enormous indemnity.

The war is seen as a turning point in East Asian history. It ended a centuries-old order in which China stood at the centre, made Japan an imperial power, pushed China toward reform and revolution, and set Korea on the path to losing its independence.

For centuries, Joseon Korea took part in the tributary system centred on China. Korean kings received investiture from the Chinese emperor and sent regular embassies, while managing their own internal affairs. In the nineteenth century this arrangement collided with Western ideas of sovereignty, in which a state was either independent or not.

Japan, after the Meiji Restoration of 1868, rapidly built a modern state and military. In 1876 it forced Korea to sign the Treaty of Ganghwa, which declared Korea an “independent state” in Western terms, a phrase meant to separate Korea from China. The Qing, in turn, tried to tighten its hold. After a soldiers’ revolt in Seoul in 1882 (the Imo Incident), Qing troops were stationed in Korea, and Yuan Shikai later became the powerful Qing representative in Seoul.

In December 1884 a group of young Korean reformers led by Kim Ok-gyun, with Japanese support, attempted a coup (the Gapsin Coup). Qing troops crushed it within days. In 1885 Li Hongzhang and Itō Hirobumi signed the Convention of Tianjin, by which both countries withdrew troops from Korea and promised to notify each other before sending them again. This agreement would provide the legal pretext for war in 1894.

By the early 1890s Japanese leaders regarded Korea as vital to Japan’s security; Prime Minister Yamagata Aritomo spoke in 1890 of Korea as lying within Japan’s “line of advantage”. The Qing, meanwhile, had built the Beiyang Fleet, one of the largest navies in Asia, but its spending was uneven and its command divided. In March 1894 Kim Ok-gyun was assassinated in Shanghai by a Korean agent, and his body was mutilated in Korea, which inflamed Japanese public opinion.

Donghak, “Eastern Learning”, was a religion founded in 1860 by Choe Je-u. It taught that heaven dwells within each person and offered hope to ordinary people; its name set it against “Western Learning”, meaning Catholicism. The government executed Choe in 1864, but the movement spread among farmers, especially in the southwest.

In early 1894 farmers in Gobu county, Jeolla Province, rose against a corrupt magistrate. The Donghak leader Jeon Bong-jun turned this local revolt into a wider movement. His peasant army defeated government troops at Hwangtohyeon and entered the provincial capital, Jeonju, at the end of May 1894. The peasants demanded an end to corruption, unfair taxes and abuses by officials and landlords, and opposed foreign economic intrusion.

Alarmed, the Joseon government asked the Qing for troops, and about 2,800 Chinese soldiers landed at Asan in June. Japan, citing the Convention of Tianjin, sent a larger force to Incheon and Seoul. Meanwhile the peasant army and the government made a truce at Jeonju, and the peasants set up local offices called jipgangso to carry out reforms. The reason for foreign troops had largely disappeared, but neither Japan nor China withdrew.

Japan proposed that the two countries jointly “reform” Korea’s government. When the Qing refused, Japan decided to act alone. The peasants’ uprising, which had begun as a protest against injustice at home, had become the occasion for a war between two foreign powers on Korean soil.

Seizing the palace (23 July 1894). Before any declaration of war, Japanese troops attacked and occupied Gyeongbokgung, the royal palace in Seoul, and took King Gojong under their control. They installed the king’s father, the Heungseon Daewongun, as nominal head of government and soon backed a new cabinet under Kim Hong-jip, which launched the Gabo Reforms. The new government then “asked” Japan to expel Qing forces from Korea.

Opening battles (July–September 1894). On 25 July the Japanese navy attacked Qing ships near Pungdo island; the British-owned transport Kowshing, carrying Qing troops, was sunk and many hundreds of soldiers drowned. On land, Japanese forces defeated the Qing at Seonghwan near Asan on 29 July. Both countries formally declared war on 1 August. On 15–16 September the Japanese captured Pyongyang, and on 17 September they defeated the Beiyang Fleet in the Battle of the Yalu River (called the Battle of the Yellow Sea in China), sinking several ships. The Chinese captain Deng Shichang, who went down with his cruiser Zhiyuan, became a national hero in China.

Into China (October 1894–February 1895). Japanese armies crossed the Yalu into Manchuria and landed on the Liaodong Peninsula. On 21 November they took Port Arthur (Lüshun), the Qing’s great naval base. Over the following days Japanese troops killed large numbers of Chinese soldiers and civilians in the city; foreign journalists reported the massacre to the world. In early 1895 Japanese forces attacked Weihaiwei in Shandong from land and sea. The remaining Beiyang Fleet surrendered on 12 February, and its commander Ding Ruchang took his own life.

Peace (March–April 1895). Li Hongzhang went to Shimonoseki to negotiate. On 24 March he was shot and wounded by a Japanese assailant, an incident that embarrassed Japan and helped bring an armistice. The Treaty of Shimonoseki was signed on 17 April 1895 by Itō Hirobumi and Mutsu Munemitsu for Japan and Li Hongzhang for China.

For Koreans the war was not a distant conflict between two neighbours. Japanese and Chinese armies marched through Korean towns, requisitioned food, animals and porters, and fought major battles at Seonghwan and Pyongyang. Pyongyang was badly damaged. Japan controlled the telegraph lines and the government in Seoul, and pressed the Korean state to sign agreements favouring Japanese military and economic interests.

The Gabo Reforms (1894–1896), carried out by the Kim Hong-jip cabinet under Japanese pressure, were among the most sweeping changes in Korean history: they abolished the legal distinction between yangban aristocrats and commoners, ended slavery and the old civil-service examination, allowed widows to remarry, and reorganized government and finance. Historians debate how far these reforms reflected Korean reformers’ own goals and how far they served Japanese control; both elements were present.

In the autumn of 1894, angered by the occupation of the palace and Japanese interference, Jeon Bong-jun and other Donghak leaders rose again, this time explicitly against Japan. Northern and southern Donghak groups joined forces and marched toward Seoul. In November–December 1894, at Ugeumchi pass near Gongju, they attacked positions held by Japanese troops and Korean government forces. Armed mostly with old muskets, spears and farm tools, the peasants were cut down by modern rifles and artillery in repeated charges.

Japanese and Korean government forces then pursued the survivors across the southwest, killing many peasants and suspected supporters. Research using Japanese army records has shown that Japanese units were ordered to annihilate the Donghak forces. Jeon Bong-jun was captured at the end of 1894 and executed in 1895. Estimates of the number of peasants killed range from tens of thousands to several hundred thousand; the true figure cannot be established, but it was far larger than Japan’s combat losses against China.

Under the Treaty of Shimonoseki, China recognized the “full and complete independence and autonomy” of Korea and ended its tributary ceremonies. It ceded Taiwan, the Penghu (Pescadores) Islands and the Liaodong Peninsula to Japan, agreed to pay an indemnity of 200 million Kuping taels of silver, and opened new ports to Japanese trade, also allowing Japanese to set up factories in the treaty ports.

Six days later Russia, France and Germany, in the Triple Intervention, “advised” Japan to give up the Liaodong Peninsula. Japan, unable to face three great powers, agreed in exchange for another 30 million taels. Many Japanese felt humiliated, and resentment of Russia grew; three years later Russia itself leased Port Arthur and Dalian.

In Taiwan, local officials and gentry declared a Republic of Formosa in May 1895 to resist the handover. Japanese forces fought a hard campaign against Taiwanese resistance and occupied the island by October 1895. Taiwan remained a Japanese colony until 1945, and the conquest cost thousands of Taiwanese and Japanese lives, many Japanese soldiers dying of disease.

In terms of casualties, Japan lost about 1,100 men killed in action but more than 11,000 to disease, especially during the Taiwan campaign. Chinese losses are much less certain; commonly cited estimates speak of at least 35,000 killed or wounded. To these must be added civilians killed at Port Arthur, whose number is disputed (estimates range from about 2,000 to far higher), Korean peasants, and those who died from requisitions, epidemics and displacement.

Korea. The end of Qing influence did not bring real independence. When Queen Min (Empress Myeongseong) and her faction turned toward Russia to balance Japan, Japanese agents and soldiers, organized under the Japanese minister Miura Gorō, broke into Gyeongbokgung on 8 October 1895 and murdered her (the Eulmi Incident). This, together with a decree ordering men to cut their topknots, provoked the first “righteous army” (uibyeong) uprisings. In February 1896 King Gojong fled to the Russian legation. In 1897 he proclaimed the Korean Empire, and the Independence Gate was built on the site where Chinese envoys had once been welcomed, a symbol of freedom from China. Yet Korea remained caught between Japan and Russia, whose rivalry led to the next war in 1904.

China. Defeat by Japan, a country Chinese elites had long regarded as a lesser neighbour, was a profound shock. It exposed the limits of the Self-Strengthening Movement and triggered a “scramble for concessions” in which Germany, Russia, Britain and France seized leased territories in 1897–98. Reformers such as Kang Youwei petitioned the throne, leading to the Hundred Days’ Reform of 1898, which was crushed by the Empress Dowager Cixi. Many young Chinese went to study in Japan, and the humiliation fed the revolutionary movement that overthrew the Qing in 1911–12.

Japan. Victory made Japan a colonial empire with the acquisition of Taiwan. The indemnity, worth several times Japan’s annual government budget, helped finance military expansion, the state-run Yawata steelworks and Japan’s adoption of the gold standard in 1897. The war also strengthened nationalism and the prestige of the military, and the Triple Intervention convinced many leaders that Japan needed more power, and a Western ally, to face Russia.

The regional order. The war ended the tributary system as the organizing principle of East Asian relations and replaced it with competition among imperial powers. Historians often see it as the first of a chain of conflicts, followed by the Russo-Japanese War, the annexation of Korea in 1910 and Japan’s later wars in China.

Japan. At the time, the war was widely celebrated in Japan. Newspapers, colourful woodblock prints and songs portrayed brave Japanese soldiers and a backward China; the educator Fukuzawa Yukichi described it as a war between civilization and barbarism. A few voices had second thoughts: the Christian thinker Uchimura Kanzō first defended the war as righteous, then later regretted it and became a pacifist. Postwar Japanese historians have been more critical, and some, such as Nakatsuka Akira, have shown that the official war history concealed the planned nature of the attack on Gyeongbokgung. Popular memory in Japan, however, has often treated the Meiji wars more positively than the wars of the 1930s–40s.

China. In China the Jiawu War is remembered as a national humiliation and a lesson about the dangers of weakness and corruption. Figures such as Deng Shichang are honoured as patriotic martyrs, and the Port Arthur massacre is commemorated at the Wanzhongmu (“Tomb of Ten Thousand”) memorial in Lüshun. The war appears in films, such as the 1962 film known in English as The Naval Battle of 1894, and features in patriotic education. Li Hongzhang, who signed the treaty, has been judged harshly as a symbol of capitulation, though some historians now take a more nuanced view of his position.

Korea. Korean narratives emphasize that the war was fought on Korean soil without Korean consent, and that Japan used the language of “Korean independence” and “reform” to cover its own ambitions. The occupation of the palace and the massacre of Donghak peasants are central. The Donghak movement itself has been renamed over time: once officially called a “rebellion” (Donghak-ran), it is now generally called the Donghak Peasant Movement or Donghak Peasant Revolution in South Korea. A 2004 law provided for restoring the honour of its participants, and since 2019 11 May has been a national day of commemoration. In North Korea it is known as the Gabo Peasant War.

Taiwan. For Taiwan, 1895 marks the beginning of fifty years of Japanese rule. The armed resistance of 1895 is remembered in different ways depending on how Taiwanese people view both Chinese and Japanese rule, making the war part of ongoing debates about Taiwanese identity.

Japanese sources. The memoir Kenkenroku by Foreign Minister Mutsu Munemitsu, written in 1895, is a frank account of Japanese diplomacy and shows how carefully Japan managed the outbreak of war and Western opinion. The Army General Staff’s multi-volume official history of the war is detailed but was edited to present Japanese actions favourably; comparison with surviving drafts has revealed omissions, notably concerning the attack on the Korean palace. Diplomatic records of the Japanese legation in Seoul are a key source for Japanese policy in Korea.

Chinese and Korean sources. Qing court documents, the memorials and correspondence of Li Hongzhang, and naval records describe the Chinese side. Korean sources include the Veritable Records and government documents of the Gojong reign, the record of Jeon Bong-jun’s interrogation after his capture, Donghak accounts such as Oh Ji-yeong’s later history of the movement, and the private chronicle Maecheon yarok by the scholar Hwang Hyeon, which records rumours and events with a critical eye.

Western sources. Foreign military observers, diplomats and journalists reported on the war. The reports of the Port Arthur massacre by journalists such as James Creelman of the New York World caused an international scandal. Western accounts often praised Japan as a modernizing, “civilized” nation, which itself tells us about how Western observers ranked Asian societies.

Historiography. S. C. M. Paine’s The Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895 (2003) places the war in the context of changing perceptions of power and the collapse of the Sinocentric order. Korean historians have emphasized the war’s connection with the Donghak movement and Japanese imperialism, and Japanese scholars such as Nakatsuka Akira and Inoue Katsuo have used Japanese military archives to document the suppression of the Donghak peasants. Debates continue about how inevitable the war was, how far Japanese leaders planned it in advance, why the Qing performed so poorly, and how to assess the Gabo Reforms.