Hibiya incendiary incident

The Empire of Japan and the Russian Empire fought the Russo-Japanese War from February 1904 to September 1905 following decades of growing tensions over competing imperialist interests in Northeast Asia. Although the Imperial Japanese Navy had decisively defeated the Imperial Russian Navy at the Battle of Tsushima, and the Imperial Japanese Army had taken Port Arthur and had won a major victory over the Imperial Russian Army at the Battle of Mukden, Japanese forces were overextended in Manchuria and the Japanese economy could no longer sustain a prolonged war effort.

On 5 September 1905, the Treaty of Portsmouth was signed after a month of negotiations between Japan and Russia, officially ended the Russo-Japanese War in a Japanese victory. A diverse assortment of Japanese activist groups called for a rally at Hibiya Park in central Tokyo to protest what they saw as the humiliating terms of the treaty, announced earlier that day. The activists and protesters were largely ignorant of the actual war situation, with many viewing the terms of the treaty accepted by the Japanese government as excessively lenient towards Russia despite their decisive defeat. The protesters were especially incensed that Japanese territorial gains in the Liaodong Peninsula and the northern half of Sakhalin were to be returned to Russia, and that the Russian government would not pay any war reparations to Japan.

Aftermath of the Hibiya Incendiary Incident.

A crowd of protestors against the government began to gather at Hibiya Park early in the evening of 5 September only to find that the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department had banned the rally and barricaded the park gates. The crowd swelled to about 30,000 people, but the police still refused to open the gates. The angered crowd then turned riotous, marched towards the Imperial Palace grounds, and rampaged across the city for the next two days. Rioters especially targeted buildings and organizations associated with the government, the police, Russia, and the United States who had mediated the terms in the Treaty of Portsmouth. Facilities of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs were damaged, numerous police stations and police boxes were set on fire and destroyed, and a five-person group attacked the house of the Home Minister. Protestors had attempted to set fire to the Holy Resurrection Cathedral of the Japanese Orthodox Church, heavily associated with Russia, but were prevented by people guarding the building. Several assets of the American diplomatic mission in Tokyo and American missionary churches were vandalized by protestors.

On 6 September, the government declared martial law to restore order.

Before order was finally restored on 7 September, angry mobs had destroyed or damaged more than 350 buildings, including 70 percent of the police boxes in the city. Casualties included 17 people killed, while over 450 policemen, 48 firemen and civilians injured. Over 2000 were arrested for participation in the riots, with 104 reaching trial and 87 were found guilty of crimes. News of the violence in Tokyo touched off similar disturbances in Kobe and Yokohama, and further stimulated hundreds of nonviolent rallies, speeches, and meetings throughout Japan for the next several months. Martial law was eventually abolished on 29 November.

The Hibiya riots and subsequent unrest directly contributed to the collapse of Prime Minister Katsura Tarō and his cabinet on 7 January 1906. Katsura was replaced as Prime Minister by his political archrival, Saionji Kinmochi, who tried to diminish the influence of the Imperial Japanese Army in political issues.

The Hibiya Incendiary Incident marks the beginning of a period in Japanese history that historians call the Era of Popular Violence (民衆騒擾期, minshū sōjō ki). Over the next 13 years Japan would be rocked by a series of violent protests (nine different riots in Tokyo alone), culminating in the Rice riots of 1918.

• Shumpei Okamoto: The Emperor and the Crowd: the Historical Significance of the Hibiya Riot; In: Tetsuo Najita, J. Victor Koschmann (Hrsg.): Conflict in Modern Japanese History: The Neglected Tradition (engl.), Princeton University Press, 1982, ISBN 0-691-10137-X