Sun Yat-sen

Relationship with Japan

Meiji Restoration and Sun Yat-sen's Revolutionary Views

According to Hosaka Masayasu, one of the reasons why figures like Miyazaki Toten, Yamada Yoshimasa, and Yamada Junzaburo supported Sun Yat-sen's revolutionary movement was because the ideals of the Meiji Restoration or the Freedom and People's Rights Movement could not be realized in Japan, and they sought to compensate for that failure.

However, Sun Yat-sen himself stated the following in 1919:

The Chinese Nationalist Party is, after all, the revolutionaries of Japan from 50 years ago. Japan, a weak country in the East, was fortunate to have revolutionaries from the Meiji Restoration, who, for the first time, rallied and transformed Japan from a weak country to a strong one. Our revolutionaries also followed the path of Japan's revolutionaries, seeking to transform China.

In 1923, he also said:

Japan's Meiji Restoration was the cause of the Chinese revolution, and the Chinese revolution was the result of Japan's Meiji Restoration. Both are originally connected and work together to achieve the revival of East Asia.

Based on his empathy for the Meiji Restoration, Sun Yat-sen sought collaboration between Japan and China. For him, Japan's Twenty-One Demands on China represented a betrayal of the "revolutionary aspirations" of the Meiji patriots and advanced Japan's policy of aggression against China.

Relationship with the Japanese

During his lifetime, Sun Yat-sen had a wide range of relationships with Japanese people. His second wife, Kaoru Otsuki, was Japanese. Through the mediation of Inukai Tsuyoshi, he became acquainted with Miyazaki Toten, Tōyama Mitsuru, and Uchida Ryōhei, with whom he also had ideological exchanges and received financial support. In addition, he received financial aid from businessmen such as Matsukata Kōjirō, Yasukawa Keiichirō, stock trader Suzuki Kugorou, and Umeya Shōkichi. One of his supporters during his stay in Japan was also the great-grandfather of manga artist Shibata Ami.

Additionally, Sasaki Tōichi of the Imperial Japanese Army served as a military advisor to Sun. He also became friends with Minakata Kumagusu, and their friendship deepened after they met while Sun was in exile in London.

Great Asianism Lecture

The Great Asianism Lecture refers to the speech given by Sun Yat-sen on 29 November 1924, the day after his meeting with Tōyama Mitsuru in Kobe. It was delivered at the auditorium of the Kobe Prefectural Girls' High School, located where the current Hyogo Prefectural Government Office is, to five organizations, including the Kobe Chamber of Commerce. This speech distinguished between the "kingly way" of the East and the "hegemonic way" of the West, praising the kingly way of the East, and condemning Japan's tilt towards hegemonic ways due to excess, while also praising Japan's modernization as a leader in this regard.

You Japanese people have adopted the hegemonic cultural ways of the West, while also possessing the essence of the kingly way of Asian culture. However, as you look toward the future of world culture, the question remains: will you ultimately become the tools of the Western hegemonic ways, or will you stand as a barrier to the Eastern kingly way? This depends on your careful consideration and deliberate choices.

This speech criticized Western colonialism while praising Japan's modernization and civilization. It also criticized Japan for becoming a follower of Western colonialism and advocated for cooperation among Asians.

Family

Sun Yat-sen was born to Sun Dacheng (孫達成) and his wife, Lady Yang (楊氏) on 12 November 1866. At the time, his father was 53, and his mother was 38 years old. He had an older brother, Sun Dezhang (孫德彰), and an older sister, Sun Jinxing (孫金星), who died at the early age of 4. Another older brother, Sun Deyou (孫德祐), died at the age of 6. He also had an older sister, Sun Miaoqian (孫妙茜), and a younger sister, Sun Qiuqi (孫秋綺).

At age 20, Sun had an arranged marriage with the fellow villager Lu Muzhen. She bore a son, Sun Fo, and two daughters, Sun Jinyuan (孫金媛) and Sun Jinwan (孫金婉). Sun Fo was the grandfather of Leland Sun, who spent 37 years working in Hollywood as an actor and stuntman. Sun Yat-sen was also the godfather of Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger, an American author and poet who wrote under the name Cordwainer Smith.

Sun's first concubine, the Hong Kong–born Chen Cuifen, lived in Taiping, Perak (now in Malaysia) for 17 years. The couple adopted a local girl as their daughter. Cuifen subsequently relocated to China, where she died.

During Sun's exile in Japan, he had relationships with two Japanese women: the 15-year-old Haru Asada, whom he took as a concubine up to her death in 1902, and another 15-year-old schoolgirl, Kaoru Otsuki, whom Sun married in 1905 and abandoned the next year while she was pregnant. Otsuki later had their daughter, Fumiko, adopted by the Miyagawa family in Yokohama, who did not discover her parentage until 1951, 26 years after Sun's death.

On 25 October 1915 in Japan, Sun married Soong Ching-ling, one of the Soong sisters. Soong Ching-ling's father was the American-educated Methodist minister Charles Soong, who made a fortune in banking and in printing of Bibles. Although Charles had been a personal friend of Sun, he was enraged by Sun announcing his intention to marry Ching-ling because while Sun was a Christian, he kept two wives: Lu Muzhen and Kaoru Otsuki. Soong viewed Sun's actions as running directly against their shared religion.

Soong Ching-Ling's sister, Soong Mei-ling, later married Chiang Kai-shek.