3 Internationalism

Those who speak of Japan’s future must speak of the future of the
world. Murofuse Kōshin, July 19181

Japan is no longer the Japan of the East. She is the Japan of the world. She
is one of five great world powers. She is, in fact, becoming one of three
great powers. Izumi Akira, November 19232

As described by the Tōkyō asahi shinbun, the “radiance” (kagayakashisa)

on the faces of guests arriving at the Tokyo Imperial Hotel on July 1,
1919 was reflected, as well, in their cars and the multicolored flags and
banners – “peace decorations” (heiwa no kazari) – brightly trimming the
hotel’s façade. Numbering almost 2,000, the distinguished guests –
including Prime Minister Hara and cabinet, allied ambassadors and
consuls, Naval Chief of Staff Shimamura, Army Chief of Staff Uehara,
General Akiyama and vice president of the Privy Council Kiyoura
Keigo – had gathered for a joyous occasion: commemorating the formal
conclusion of peace at Versailles. As the visitors entered the cryptomeria
and bamboo adorned ballroom, laughter resonated and the “peace
dance” (heiwa odori) began – Japanese Foreign Ministry officials system-
atically exchanged greetings with members of the diplomatic corps.
Repairing to the resplendent banquet hall, national flags adorning the
ceiling in all directions, some were overheard describing the impres-
sively large menus as “World War diplomas” or “stock certificates of a
victorious war.” “This, indeed,” declared the Asahi, “is the pride, honor
and joy of victory.”3

1
Murofuse, “Gunkokuka yori minponka e,” Chūō kōron, 33, no. 7 (July 1918), 69.
2
Izumi Akira, “Daishinsai no kokusaiteki kansatsu,” Kokusai chishiki, 3, no. 11 (Nov.
1923), 8.
3
“Hareyaka na butai: senshō no hokori to yorokobi o atsumete teikoku hoteru de shukuga-
kai,” Tōkyō asahi shinbun, July 2, 1919; reprinted in Nakajima, comp., Shinbun shūroku
Taishōshi, vol. 7, 217.

60

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 Multilateralism and the New Japan 61

Multilateralism and the New Japan

The buoyancy of this occasion, and the decade that would follow, derived
from more than simply military victory. World War I gave Japan the oppor-
tunity to become an integral player in a remarkable transformation of world
politics. Like their predecessors in the nineteenth century, the architects of a
New Japan eagerly embraced the monumental enterprise of national recon-
struction through a clamorous condemnation of the past and boisterous
anticipation of a “civilized” future. Just as the founders of Imperial Japan
had urged Japanese subjects, through the authoritative voice of the emperor,
to follow the trends of the world, the Hara administration in January 1920
enjoined Japanese subjects, in the name of Emperor Taishō, to show “flex-
ibility” in response to the dramatic “transformation” of world politics.4
As in 1868, a central component of the reform agenda in 1920 was a
dramatic new vision of Japan’s place in the world. The Charter Oath had
offered a striking departure from the tight control of national borders
under the Tokugawa regime by proclaiming that “knowledge shall be
sought throughout the world.”5 Likewise, the Imperial Rescript on the
Establishment of Peace of January 1920 outlined a clear break from the
imperialist diplomacy of the Meiji years:

As a result of the negotiations that We dispatched our plenipotentiaries to partic-

ipate in [at Paris], a new agreement on perpetual peace was made, establishing the
framework for a League of Nations. We truly rejoice at this from our heart and
cannot help but feel that our state carries a heavy responsibility for the future.6

Reflecting upon the Rescript, a young crown prince, who would become
head of state in less than two years as regent for his debilitated father,
expressed joy at the conclusion of hostilities and enthusiastically endorsed
the tenor of the Taishō emperor’s proclamation:

Witnessing the tragic aftermath of war, the people of all nations long for peace and
international conciliation. They have established a League of Nations and have
already convened a Labor Conference. The world has transformed in this way. As
the Imperial Rescript states, our people should, at this time, follow a path of great
effort and flexibility . . . I, too, applaud the establishment of the League of Nations.
I have a weighty obligation to obey the League Covenant, promote the spirit of the
League and establish perpetual world peace.7

4
See Chapter 1 herein.
5
Translation in de Bary, ed., Sources of Japanese Tradition, vol. 2, 137.
6
“Heiwa kokufuku no taishō happu,” Ōsaka asahi shinbun, Jan. 14, 1920; reprinted in
Nakajima, comp., Shinbun shūroku Taishōshi, vol. 8, 24.
7
In an essay written for tutor Sugiura Shigetake in January 1920. Kōtaishi denka, “Heiwa seiritsu
no shōchoku o haidoku shite, shokan o nobu,” in Itō Takashi and Hirose Yoshihiro, eds.,
Makino Nobuaki nikki (Tokyo: Chūō kōronsha, 1990), 22 (diary entry of Aug. 17, 1921).

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 62 Internationalism

Herbert Bix dismisses the crown prince’s reflections as nothing more than
“youthful idealism and optimism” that would soon be displaced by his
essentially Confucian moral and military training.8 But one may gauge the
degree to which leaders in interwar Japan succeeded in constructing a
New Japan by noting the extent to which the language of a new world
order permeated the Japanese polity in the 1920s.
Students of Japanese diplomacy know Prince Konoe Fumimaro as an
early critic of the new order. On the eve of his departure for Paris as a
member of the Japanese peace delegation, Konoe argued in an article for
the bi-weekly Nihon oyobi Nihonjin that the conference and the proposed
League of Nations would only preserve the international status quo in the
interest of the world’s greatest economies, Britain and the United States.9
But Konoe’s pre-conference ruminations tell only part of the story. After
attending six months of deliberations in Paris, the prince published a
volume of his observations that was as complimentary of the new trends
as it was guarded. The conference, Konoe noted, had indeed confirmed
his initial sense that, despite all of Woodrow Wilson’s talk of justice, power
would continue to prevail in international relations. But it was too early to
declare the end of idealism. Wilson’s notion of self-determination had
become the central spirit of the conference, and the idea of a League of
Nations alone would ensure that the American President’s name would
“shine brightly in the history of mankind for eternity.” The Paris
Conference, Konoe concluded, truly represented a “watershed” in the
development of international politics.10
Coming from a man who would eventually lead Japan to war with China
in the name of battling Anglo-American imperialism in Asia, this celebra-
tion of the New Diplomacy in 1919 is surprising. But this spirit lay at the
foundation of an unmistakable new trajectory for Japanese foreign affairs
through the decade. As described by Wilson, it was the transformation from
secret, bilateral, balance-of-power diplomacy to open, multilateral discus-
sion aimed at curbing wayward military might. Just as the Anglo-Japanese
alliance had symbolized Japan’s international posture in the age of imperi-
alism, after 1919 it was membership in the League of Nations and partic-
ipation in a remarkable series of international conventions that comprised

8
Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, 92.
9
Oka Yoshitake, Konoe Fumimaro: A Political Biography (University of Tokyo Press, 1983),
10–13.
10
Konoe, Sengo Ōbei kenbunroku, 36–7. This passage is dated June 1919 in a volume that
was originally published in 1920. Shōji Junichirō similarly notes Konoe’s positive
appraisal of Wilson, but he describes it as a reflection not of the age but of the flexibility
inherent in Konoe’s attitude toward the USA. See Shōji Junichirō, “Konoe Fumimaro no
tai-Beikan,” in Hasegawa, ed., Taishōki Nihon no Amerika ninshiki, 16–21.

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 Multilateralism and the New Japan 63

the core of Japan’s international posture: the Versailles Treaty, League of

Nations Covenant, Five Power Treaty, Nine Power Treaty, Four Power
Treaty, Kellogg–Briand Pact and London Naval Treaties, to name the most
prominent. As Konoe noted, “it appears that secret, professional diplomacy
has finally become a relic and the age of open, people’s diplomacy is clearly
on its way.”11 In the same month as the Imperial Rescript on the
Establishment of Peace, Prime Minister Hara Takashi declared that “the
global situation will no longer countenance unilateral action . . . All coun-
tries must preserve a conciliatory policy toward the powers at all times, and
the empire [ Japan], too, must reflect deeply upon this.”12 As if to confirm
the remarkable new focus on international cooperation, the journal of the
Japanese League of Nations Association remarked in November 1922 that

Figure 3.1 “Emperor Taishō and three heads of state.” Although

depicting an entirely fabricated event (the supposed wartime meeting
of the Taishō Emperor with the heads of Britain, France and Russia), this
poster accentuates the multilateral “conference diplomacy” that would
typify Japanese foreign affairs after the war.
Wada Eisaku poster (1916).

11
Konoe, Sengo Ōbei kenbunroku, 37.
12
Hara Takashi, “Hara shushō no tsūchō,” Jan. 13, 1920; cited in Kawada Minoru, Hara
Takashi: Tenkanki no kōsō (Tokyo: Miraisha, 1995), 150.

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 64 Internationalism

“those who will compile the history [of this age] will probably title the
diplomacy following the European War as the ‘Age of Conference
Diplomacy.’”13 Looking back from the vantage point of 1927, former
Ministry of Railways bureaucrat and popular pundit Tsurumi Yūsuke
remarked that among the “most clearly constructive movements” emerging
from the destruction of the Great War was “the effort of our academic elders
around the world to refashion international relations (kokusai kankei o
tsukurikaeyō).”14

Benefits of “conference diplomacy”

Given the ultimate fate of Japanese multilateralism by the 1930s, historians
(and contemporaries) tend to discount rhetoric like this as so much hot air.
According to Japanese diplomat Tōgo Shigenori, in view of the sheer scale
of destruction, few contemporaries believed in the practicality of Anglo-
American proclamations that this was a “war to end all wars.”15 Indeed,
coverage of each of Japan’s interwar trials in multilateralism stresses not the
notable departure but the vigorous current of opposition in Japan.
There is no denying the significant undercurrent of opposition to multi-
lateralism in interwar Japan. Prior to the Manchurian Incident, however,
such opposition did not reach the status of mainstream opinion. Tōgo’s
reflections, it will be noted, were made in 1952. It is obvious why, in the
shadow of another devastating war, he would disparage the foundations of
interwar peace. Viewed within their own comparative historical context,
however, Japan’s interwar initiatives are nothing but noteworthy. The
Anglo-Japanese Alliance was the only major military alliance remaining
from the Age of Imperialism that had not naturally dissolved with the
First World War.16 When Japan and Britain converted the alliance into a
four-power association at the Washington Conference (the Four Power
Treaty), both powers took a formal step toward the new multilateralism in
a way that no other power had done. Above all, Japan’s willingness to buy
into all of the major international agreements of the decade is remarkable.
By contrast, the United States failed to join the League of Nations. France

13
“Kaigi gaikō no ryūkō,” Kokusai chishiki, 2, no. 11 (Nov. 1922), 112.
14
Tsurumi Yūsuke, “Taiheiyō kaigi chōkakan,” in Inoue Junnosuke, ed., Taiheiyō mondai
(Tokyo: Taiheiyō mondai chōsakai, 1927), 39. Tsurumi made these remarks at the
second conference of the Institute of Pacific Relations in Honolulu. See below.
15
Tōgo Shigenori, Jidai no ichimen, 38. Cited in Murai, Seitō naikakusei no seiritsu, 19.
16
The Triple Alliance (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy, 1882) had dissolved with Italy’s
declaration of war on Austria-Hungary in May 1915. The Franco-Russian Alliance
(1892), Anglo-Russian Entente (1907) and Triple Entente (UK, France, Russia, 1907)
disintegrated with the downfall of Imperial Russia in 1917 and the Entente Cordiale (UK
and France, 1904) was obsolete by 1918.

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 Benefits of “conference diplomacy” 65

delayed an agreement on Chinese tariffs proposed at Washington, refused

to participate in naval arms talks in Geneva in 1927, and failed to abide by
naval ratios hammered out at the London Conference. Italy, like France,
refused to participate in Geneva or to abide by naval ratios at London.
Why did successive Japanese administrations participate in each of these
interwar efforts in multilateralism? It was not a passing whim beholden
simply to prevailing fashion. Nor did anyone seriously think that a peaceful
new world order lay just beyond the horizon. As historian Miyake Setsurei
noted in March 1919, “although the world war has brought dramatic
changes, the future remains remote. We will not easily see a heaven on
earth. But we have hope that we will approach this, step by step.”17
Although the ideal future remained distant, a majority of Japanese
policy-makers recognized the bankruptcy of the old order. And they
understood that each of the new interwar initiatives in international
cooperation carried tangible benefits for Japan. As we have seen,
Wilsonian internationalism was considered the standard of “civilization”
in Tokyo after 1919.18 Just as the founders of Imperial Japan constructed
an industrialized nation-state/empire to most quickly discard the stigma of
“barbarism,” Japanese policy-makers in the 1920s turned to multilateral-
ism as the shortest route to international respectability. The League of
Nations and the series of multilateral agreements in the interwar era were
Japan’s ticket to membership in 1920s “civilization.” The First World
War, after all, had decisively proven the “barbarism” of prewar diplomacy.
As Yoshino put it, international affairs before the war were characterized
by “brutal diplomatic relations” (satsubatsu naru gaikō kankei). It was
natural that European and American statesmen looked to transform
matters following the five-year conflagration.19
Like all main belligerents, prewar Japan was closely implicated in the now
bankrupt imperialist diplomacy. In fact, given her intimate political and
military association with Imperial Germany, Imperial Japan seemed to be a
particularly noteworthy symbol of nineteenth-century militarism. By 1919,
American news organizations and members of congress had begun
referring to Japan as an “absolutist” state and a “second Germany.”20 As

17
Miyake Setsurei, “Kōwa kaigi ni arawaruru sekai kaizō no risō to jissai to no mujun to
chōwa,” Chūō kōron, 34, no. 3 (Mch. 1919), 74.
18
See Chapter 1 herein.
19
Yoshino, “Teikokushugi yori kokusai minshushugi e,” Rokugō zasshi, June/July 1919;
reprinted in Ōta, ed., Shiryō Taishō demokurashii ronsōshū, vol. 1, 183.
20
The Publisher of the Sacremento Bee, Valentine S. McClatchy, wrote a series of articles
on Japan after a visit to Asia in 1919, which were later collected into a pamphlet titled
“The Germany of Asia.” See Richard O’Connor, Pacific Destiny: An Informal History of
the U.S. in the Far East (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1969), 430–1. The September
17, 1919 Tōkyō asahi shinbun identified Republicans in the US Senate as the source of

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 66 Internationalism

long as “imperialist” diplomacy was “barbarism” and Imperial Japan was

intimately associated with such “barbarism,” in other words, there was
ample justification for a major transformation in Tokyo, as well as in Paris
and Berlin. Before Japan could push for her special right to exist and
develop as a citizen of the world (sekai no ikkoku), noted Yoshino, “we
must first become a country of democracy (minponshugi) built upon a
foundation of just international intercourse.”21
To the extent that abiding by the new regime of multilateralism meant
becoming accepted as a “citizen of the world,” the change in Japanese
international posture in the interwar period directly mirrored the mid
nineteenth-century transformation from “closed” to “open” country.
But in light of Japan’s vastly changed geopolitical circumstances following
the Great War, there was an enormous difference. The founders of
Imperial Japan had scrambled to acquire a modicum of respect from the
“civilized” world. The architects of a New Japan, by contrast, operated
upon a much loftier plane. Multilateralism was not simply a ticket to
membership in “civilization.” It was the avenue to Japanese leadership in
civilization. Japanese participation in the series of multilateral treaties in
the 1920s was the most powerful symbol of Japan’s rise, for the first time
in history, to the status of a world power.22 As economist Fukuda Tokuzō
noted in 1919, Japan now had a “grand mission (dai shimei) to place world
civilization upon a healthy foundation.”23

reports of Japan as a “second Germany.” Cited in Ritsumeikan daigaku

Saionji Kinmochi den hensan iinkai, ed., Saionji Kinmochi den, 6 vols. (Tokyo:
Iwanami shoten, 1993), 3, 324.
21
Yoshino Sakuzō, “Sekai no Dai shuchō to sono junnō saku, taiō saku,” Chūō kōron, 34,
no. 1 ( Jan. 1919), 143–4.
22
Note that the transition from regional to world power is sometimes mistakenly traced to
the Russo-Japanese War, rather than to the First World War. See Arima, “Kokusaika” no
naka no teikoku Nihon, 11. The post-1919 rise in Japan’s international status is apparent
not simply in the series of multilateral treaties covered in this chapter but in an array of
Japanese activities on the interwar international stage. As noted in a 1930 study of the
Japanese media, for example, the participation of Japanese delegates in an international
conference of newspapers in the United States, appointment of a Japanese reporter to the
top rank in the Foreign Correspondents Club in New York, foreign consulates’ reliance
on Japanese news stories and Japanese participation at the international conference of
newspaper journalists in Geneva in 1927 all “secured the international status of Japanese
newspapers.” Midoro, Meiji Taishō shi, vol. 1, Genronhen, 323.
23
Interestingly, Fukuda singled out Japan and France as sharing this special mission after the
war, noting that neither of these countries had a history of “capitalist aggression” (shihonteki
shinryakushugi) like Britain or Germany. Fukuda Tokuzō, “Shihonteki shinryakushugi ni
taikō shinsei no demokurashii o hatsuyō,” Chūō kōron, 34, no. 1 ( Jan. 1919), 153.

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 Paris Peace and the New Japan 67

Paris Peace and the New Japan

Historians of modern Japan usually describe the Paris Peace Conference,
like other pivotal diplomatic events of the prewar era, as part of a history of
diplomatic distress that ultimately led to disaster in 1931. Like the forced
retrocession of the Liaodong Peninsula after the Sino-Japanese War or
failure to obtain an indemnity after the war with Russia, accounts of the
Paris Peace highlight a tale of hardship. In particular, they stress great
power rejection of Japan’s proposed racial nondiscrimination clause in the
Covenant of the League of Nations.24 The pessimistic portrayal reflects,
in part, the reminiscences of contemporaries. The Shōwa emperor,
among others, located the principal legacy of the conference squarely
within the rejected clause. Combined with anti-Japanese immigration
sentiment in California, it was “enough to anger the Japanese people”
and to justify his own 1946 declaration that “the cause [of the Greater East
Asia War] lies concealed far off in the substance of the peace treaty
following World War I.”25
In the wake of the tragic Second World War, a tale of diplomatic failure
leading to ultimate tragedy had obvious persuasive powers. But within its
contemporary historical context, the racial nondiscrimination clause, like
the Liaodong retrocession of 1895, is a story less of diplomatic failure than
of foreign policy daring. In 1895, despite every indication of probable
great power objection, Japanese plenipotentiary Itō Hirobumi demanded
from Beijing something that would have transformed the basis of great
power relations in China: the cession of territory in southern Manchuria.
Likewise, in 1919, Japanese delegates to Paris demanded inclusion of a
clause in a multinational treaty that would have transformed the basis of
great power relations across the globe.
Japanese plenipotentiaries were, in other words, no more surprised in
1919 than their predecessors in 1895 that their bold initiative ultimately
failed. And they did not, at all, take the failure as symbolic of an intractable
racial divide with the powers. As plenipotentiary Makino Nobuaki later
observed, most Western delegates, including Woodrow Wilson, displayed
great sympathy for the Japanese proposal.26 Discerning contemporaries
understood great power rejection of the racial nondiscrimination clause as

24
In fact, there is an entire body of literature that focuses upon the pivotal place of race at
Versailles and in early twentieth-century USA–Japan relations. For the latest of these
studies in English, see Naoko Shimazu, Japan, Race and Equality: The Racial Equality
Proposal of 1919 (London: Routledge, 1998) and Hirobe, Japanese Pride, American
Prejudice, respectively.
25
Terasaki Hidenari, Shōwa tennō dokuhakuroku: Terasaki Hidenari goyōgakari nikki (Tokyo:
Bungei shunjū, 1991), 20.
26
Asahi shinbun, ed., Nihon gaikō hiroku (Tokyo: Asahi shinbunsha, 1934), 150–1.

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 68 Internationalism

a reflection less of global injustice than of Japanese diplomatic incompe-

tence. The official Kenseikai position on the racial nondiscrimination
clause, for example, condemned not the injustices of a new Anglo-
American world order but the Hara cabinet’s failure to sound out
Britain and the United States in advance.27
Most importantly, the racial nondiscrimination clause belongs within a
broader context of other developments at Paris. For Japan, the most
critical object at the peace conference had little to do with race. It was,
rather, to obtain great power recognition of Japan’s wartime gains in
China and the South Pacific. We know that Japanese delegates received
official sanction for all of these, marking a great material coup for the
empire. Even more critical in terms of the legacy of Paris, however, was
the effect of such official sanction upon Japan’s international status. The
most important story of the Paris Peace Conference for the history of
modern Japan lies neither in the issue of race nor in the material benefits
accrued by the Japanese empire. Rather, reflecting the dramatic geopol-
itical changes of the war years, Paris marks the most conspicuous first
demonstration of Japan’s rise as a world power.
Diplomatic historians frequently stress the relatively low level of
Japanese activity at Paris. Vigorous about defending their own wartime
gains, Japanese delegates remained relatively silent on matters not imme-
diately affecting their interests.28 Others have underscored the immense
dissatisfaction with Japanese diplomacy that Japanese journalists and
junior members of the Japanese delegation carried home from Paris.29
There is, however, a broader context to such objections. Paris marked the
first time in history that Japanese subjects participated in an international
conference as representatives of one of five great world powers.

27
See a July 6, 1919 speech by party head Katō Takaaki: Katō Takaaki, “Katō sōsai no
enzetsu,” Kensei, 2, no. 6 (July 26, 1919), 6. Also, note Kenseikai MP Kataoka Naoharu’s
interpolations in the Forty-Second Diet (December 1919–February 1920), specifically,
on January 22, 1920. Ōtsu Junichirō, Dai Nihon kensei-shi, 10 vols. (Tokyo: Hara shobō,
1970), vol. 8, 433. There is, indeed, evidence of Japanese diplomatic bungling on this
issue. Japan’s representatives, for example, did not quite understand the full global
implications of their proposal. Both ambassador to the USA Shidehara Kijūrō and
plenipotentiary in Paris Makino Nobuaki greeted with amusement expressions of thanks
from African American groups, delegates from Liberia and Irish citizens to Japan for
having promoted “racial equality.” As Makino informed the Liberian delegate, since
Japan could not represent his interests, he was better off taking up the matter directly
with Clemenceau. Asahi shinbun, ed., Nihon gaikō hiroku, 145.
28
See Thomas W. Burkman, “‘Sairento pâtonâ’ hatsugen su,” Kokusai seiji, 56 (1976),
102–16.
29
See, in particular, Itō Takashi’s coverage of the Kaizō dōmei. Itō, Taishōki “kakushin” ha
no seiritsu, ch. 6. More recently, see Tobe Ryōichi, Gaimusho kakushinha (Tokyo: Chūō
kōron shinsha, 2010).

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 League of Nations and the New Japan 69

Expectations for the performance of Japanese delegates were higher than

ever before. As Yoshino Sakuzō noted, to remain on the receiving end of
initiatives at Paris would be “shameful for our reputation as a great power
(taikoku).” “We would like to present at least one problem that would
impress European and American politicians.”30
With such high hopes, and given the facility of European statesmen with
a wealth of experience in the global spotlight, Japanese delegates at Paris
naturally appeared wanting. Despite such inadequacies, however, con-
temporaries overwhelmingly celebrated the remarkable new plane upon
which Japanese diplomacy now operated. As plenipotentiary to Paris
Saionji Kinmochi noted, “at the Peace Conference, our country did not
simply preserve good relations with the powers. The conference was an
opportunity to noticeably raise the international status of the Empire.
Namely, our country at the conference stood among the group of five
great world powers and had a say in the problems of Europe.”31 Similarly,
Prime Minister Hara proudly proclaimed that, at Paris, “as one of five
great powers, the empire [Japan] contributed to the recovery of world
peace. With this, the empire’s status has gained all the more authority and
her responsibility to the world has become increasingly weighty.”32 Junior
members of the Japanese delegation to Paris found tangible proof of their
country’s exalted new status just outside their delegation command cen-
ter. From the window of the Hotel Le Bristol at the Place Vendôme in
Paris, Sawada Renzō observed “nearly thirty cars proudly bearing the
insignia of the Rising Sun. Indeed, it was a sight to catch the eye of the
Parisians.”33

League of Nations and the New Japan

Like the Paris Peace Conference, Japanese membership in the League of
Nations typically appears in the literature as another misstep in a long
trajectory of diplomatic ruin. As noted with the Paris Conference in general,
the first association with the League made by most Japan specialists is
Konoe Fumimaro and his 1918 warnings about the probable inequities of

30
Yoshino Sakuzō, “Kōwa kaigi ni teigen subeki wagakuni no nanyō shotō shobunan,” Chūō
kōron, vol. 34, no. 1 ( Jan. 1919), 143.
31
In a speech to mark the Japanese delegation’s homecoming to Japan, September 8, 1919.
Quoted in Ritsumeikan daigaku Saionji Kinmochi den hensan iinkai, ed., Saionji
Kinmochi den, vol. 3, 321.
32
Hara, “Hara shushō no tsūchō” ( Jan. 1920); cited in Kawada, Hara Takashi, 150.
33
Sawada Renzō, Gaisenmon hiroba (Tokyo: Kadokawa shoten, 1950). Quoted in Burkman,
Japan, the League of Nations, and World Order, 1914–1938, 61.

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 70 Internationalism

the new international system.34 But a catalogue of Japanese doubts no more

represents the place of the League in Japanese history than a narrative of
Japanese failure with “racial equality” characterizes Japan’s experience at
the Paris Peace Conference. Japan readily accepted membership in the
League when its founder, the United States, did not. And, while Japanese
statesmen today struggle for a secure leadership position in the United
Nations (in continuing demands for a permanent seat on the Security
Council), Japan enjoyed a distinguished position within the League from
its founding – as one of four permanent members of the principal governing
body, the League Council.35 Japanese delegates faithfully participated in
deliberations of the Council and in the League’s many sister organizations –
the International Labor Organization, International Court of Justice,
Advisory Committee on Traffic in Opium and Other Dangerous Drugs,
etc. – and Japan was signatory to a host of international conventions ema-
nating from the League, such as the International Convention for the
Suppression of the Traffic in Women and Children (1921). From 1920 to
1926, one of Japan’s most prominent liberal educators, Nitobe Inazō,
became not only the most well-known Japanese international personality.
His urbanity, oratorical skill and energetic promotion of the organization
made him one of the most recognized personalities of the League itself.36
Within Japan, the Japanese League of Nations Association (Nihon kokusai
renmei kyōkai) was founded in November 1920 and boasted among its
membership some of the most influential statesmen of interwar Japan.37
Through its periodic assemblies, sponsorship of special programs and lec-
tures, publication of special pamphlets and an in-house journal,
International Understanding (Kokusai chishiki), the association became a
powerful proponent of multilateralism in interwar Japan.
Why did Japanese statesmen thus commit to this unprecedented inter-
national experiment? Despite numerous complaints about the organiza-
tion’s inadequacies, there was one point upon which all in Tokyo could
agree: like Japanese participation at Paris, membership in the new

34
Indeed, Marius Jansen cites Konoe to stress that “many Japanese were full of doubts
about the benefits of the new international system.” Jansen, The Making of Modern Japan,
519. The notable exception to this negative coverage is Burkman, Japan, the League of
Nations, and World Order, 1914–1938.
35
Japan shared this distinction with Great Britain, France and Italy.
36
For more on Nitobe and the League, see Burkman, Japan, the League of Nations, and
World Order, 1914–1938.
37
Including Prince Tokugawa Iesato (president), financier and member of the House of
Peers Viscount Shibusawa Eiichi (chair), former finance minister and Peers member
Baron Sakatani Yoshirō (vice chair), member of the court nobility Prince Konoe
Fumimaro, and Nitobe Inazō. For a brief description of this organization, see Itō,
Shōwa shoki seijishi kenkyū, 121–23n15.

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 League of Nations and the New Japan 71

international body confirmed Japan’s exalted new status as one of five

great powers on earth.38 As Konoe put it after the Peace Conference, “as a
pivotal member (chūjiku) of the League of Nations and, consequently,
major world player (sekai no shujinkō), Japan has attained a status whereby
we must even look out for countries without any shared interests [with
ourselves].”39 According to Japanese plenipotentiary Saionji Kinmochi,
“with the establishment of the League of Nations, [ Japan] obtained an
important position as member, gaining the right to participate in the
planning of various matters, East and West. This is truly unprecedented
in Japanese history and marks a defining moment (isshinki).”40
On the eve of the Paris Conference, Kenseikai Party president Katō
Takaaki urged his rival, Prime Minister Hara Takashi, to take the League
seriously. As one of five great world powers (godaikoku no ichinin), he
argued, Japan would have to deal with a number of intractable problems
“for the sake of world change and the welfare and tranquility of human-
ity.” Among the most complex was the question of the League. But while
the dramatic contrast with previous thinking in international affairs may
have made the actual operation of such an international body appear
impractical, given the energy that Woodrow Wilson and British and
French politicians were investing in the organization, the plan “does not
at all seem like part of the idle fancy of researchers or philosophers that will
completely disappear . . . At this time, as one of five great world powers,
the Empire should become involved in all [major] world problems and
seize the opportunity to contribute to the future welfare and tranquility of
humanity.”41
Even more directly, the Kenseikai’s Ozaki Yukio argued in November
1920 that only through the League would Japan attain its most cherished
national ambitions:

If the Japanese people earnestly recognize these problems and work for the real-
ization of the League; if we act, in classical terms, like the wise man of Asia (Tōyō no
kunshikoku) or, to borrow today’s terminology, as the embodiment of justice and
humanity (seigi jindō no gonge); and we exhibit justice and humanity equally toward
Asia and the West, then we will be able, for the first time, to fulfill our responsibility

38
In addition to the three other members of the League of Nations Council (Britain, France
and Italy), this number “five,” of course, included Japan and the non-League member but
principal champion of the new world order, the United States.
39
Konoe, Sengo Ōbei kenbunroku, 48.
40
In a speech to mark the Japanese delegation’s homecoming to Japan, September 8, 1919.
Quoted in Ritsumeikan daigaku Saionji Kinmochi den hensan iinkai, ed., Saionji
Kinmochi den, vol. 3, 321.
41
Katō Takaaki, “Dai yonjū ikkai teikoku gikai ni nozomu ni saishite,” Kensei, 2, no. 2 (Feb.
10, 1919), 6. From a speech of January 20, 1919.

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 72 Internationalism

as one of the five great world powers and to demonstrate the glory of our nation to
all quarters.42

While ultimately condemning the ruling party for all manner of failures at
Paris, the degree to which the Kenseikai continued to champion the
League of Nations is remarkable. As Katō told the Kantō party assembly
in July 1919, the institution that finally took form at Paris was, as a first
effort, “quite an accomplishment” (sōtō no seika).43 Both the Kantō con-
vention and the Kansai assembly of the same month adopted resolutions
calling for Japan “to raise the status of the Empire by contributing to world
peace following the tenor of the League of Nations.”44 Even skeptics like
Lieutenant General Ugaki Kazushige acknowledged that “since the trend
is for everything to internationalize, we should not be bound by a narrow-
minded island/closed country thought (shimaguniteki, sakokuteki no kyōai
naru shichō).” The Japanese government should make a policy of partic-
ipating in the League and, to a certain extent, “following world trends
(taisei junnō).”45 With the League in place, “it is clear that the number of
wars will decrease somewhat in the future.”46
Enthusiasm for the League and its possibilities was not restricted to the
heady days surrounding the institution’s establishment. In the mid 1920s,
Seiyūkai MP Mizuno Rentarō published an account of a recent tour of
League headquarters and that of its sister organization, the International
Labor Organization. After frank discussions with the leadership of both
institutions, Mizuno concluded that the League had a very “promising
future” ( yūbō no hatten). While those in 1919 had anticipated the salutary
effect of the institution on Japan’s international status, Mizuno saw first-
hand evidence of this. “I was truly overcome with joy ( jitsu ni yukai ni
taenakatta),” he declared, “to see that our Empire does, indeed, stand
with the world’s great powers.” He urged Japanese subjects to continue to
advance this national status, not through simple concern for Japanese or
even East Asian affairs, but by aspiring for and being prepared “to con-
tribute to world peace and human happiness.”47
The ultimate ability of the League to prevent world conflict was, of
course, modest. But contemporaries observed many tangible ways in

42
Ozaki, “Kokka no sonbō to kokusai renmei,” 32.
43
“Katō sōsai no enzetsu,” Kensei, 2, no. 6 ( July 26, 1919), 5. From a speech of July 6,
1919.
44
“Zappō,” Kensei, 2, no. 7 (Aug. 10, 1919), 33. For the resolution of the Kantō assembly,
see “Zappō,” Kensei, 2, no. 6 ( July 26, 1919), 15–16.
45
Tsunoda, comp., Ugaki Kazushige nikki, vol. 1, 204 (diary entry of mid-June, 1919).
46
Ibid., 234 (diary entry of Dec. 1919).
47
Mizuno Rentarō, Ōbei sekai no shin chōryū; cited in “Warera no bunbu daijin,” Sekai to
warera, 2, no. 7 ( July 1927), 1.

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 Washington Conference and the New Japan 73

which the organization transformed international relations for the better.

As the sister journal of Kokusai chishiki, the World and Us (Sekai to warera),
noted in 1929, there was nothing like the annual League general assembly
in terms of bringing together the world’s political elite. At the 1928
general meeting, six prime ministers, sixteen foreign ministers and sev-
enty plenipotentiaries had gathered to deliberate such weighty issues as
arms control, economy, humanity and all matters relating to the promo-
tion of human happiness. It was, declared the editors, “an unparalleled
grand sight” (tenka muhi no ikan).48

Washington Conference and the New Japan

Among the most important concrete products of the new “age of confer-
ence diplomacy” was the international assembly that convened in
Washington between November 1921 and February 1922. As diplomat
Sawada Setsuzō noted in May 1922, although numerous international
problems remained two years after the Versailles treaties, the Washington
Conference was “none other than the love child (aiji)” produced by the
sincere desire for world peace embodied in the League of Nations.49 If the
principal benefit of Japanese participation at Paris and membership in a
League of Nations was confirmation of Japan’s status as one of five great
world powers, the series of multilateral pacts signed at Washington
offered even greater advantage. Like coverage of Paris and the League of
Nations, analyses of the Washington Conference often stress failure over
success. According to Kenneth Pyle, “the Washington System was a
house built on sand.”50 Nishida Toshihiro notes that even the embodi-
ment of internationalism in interwar Japan, Foreign Minister Shidehara
Kijūrō, had “difficulties accepting the inclination to secure international
stability in East Asia with universal principles.”51
But, as with contemporary Japanese debates over the Paris Peace
Conference and the League of Nations, objections to the various compo-
nents of the Washington Conference are best understood within their
appropriate historical context. Few Japanese in the interwar era believed
that the new multilateralism would eradicate international conflict. But

48
“Kokusai renmei sōkai to yoron,” Sekai to warera, 4, no. 9 (Sept. 1929), 1.
49
Sawada Setsuzō, “Washinton kaigi to sono go,” Kokusai renmei, 2, no. 5 (May 1922), 3–4.
50
Kenneth B. Pyle, “Profound Forces in the Making of Modern Japan,” Journal of Japanese
Studies, 32, no.2 (2006), 410.
51
Nishida Toshihiro, “Washinton taisei to Shidehara gaikō,” in Itō Yukio and
Kawada Minoru, eds., Nijū seiki Nichi-Bei kankei to Higashi Ajia (Tokyo: Fūbōsha, 2002),
90. A powerful exception to this tale of woe is Roger Dingman, Power in the Pacific: The
Origins of Naval Arms Limitation, 1914–19 (University of Chicago Press, 1976).

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 74 Internationalism

just as Katō Takaaki had stressed on the eve of the Paris Peace
Conference, the energy expended in Western capitals to introduce a
tangible new infrastructure of international affairs offered ample proof
that multilateralism was no pipe dream.
The Washington Conference produced three tangible pillars to the new
multilateral system, each unprecedented in the annals of international
affairs. The most substantive of these, the Five Power Treaty, not only
limited the global scale of naval arms, it substantially reduced the size of
the three largest navies – scrapping a total of sixty-six ships from the
British, American and Japanese arsenals. The Nine Power Treaty marked
the first time in history that an assembly of nations jointly pledged to
“respect the sovereignty, the independence and the territorial and admin-
istrative integrity of China.” And the Four Power Treaty replaced the
Anglo-Japanese alliance as the central pillar of international security in
East Asia. As noted above, this marked the first time that two powers
(Japan and Britain) had taken a formal step toward the new multilateral-
ism by voluntarily dissolving a bilateral alliance. In fact, as Antony Best
has observed, while this is typically described as a “dissolution” of the
Anglo-Japanese Alliance, contemporary British policy-makers viewed the
Four Power Treaty as an extension of their association with Japan in a
form more appropriate for a multilateral world.52
History tells us that each of these innovations would unravel in the
1930s. But the enormity of contemporary expectations belies the standard
narrative of diplomatic failure. As legal scholar Hayashi Mutsutake noted
in April 1922, “the same principle that produced the League of Nations
spurred the convening of the Washington Conference.” America’s failure
to join the League had threatened to destroy its spirit. But it ultimately did
nothing of the kind. The assembly at Washington accomplished what the
League had been incapable of: namely, general disarmament and peaceful
international cooperation in Asia and the Pacific. As a result of the confer-
ence, “we must advertise the arrival of a new age of peace. We must not
forget that the new trend toward international cooperation is now all the
more striking.”53
While the Washington Conference offered powerful reaffirmation of
the inexorable interwar trend toward internationalism, it accentuated the
tangible benefits of the new world order for Japan. As we shall see in
Chapter 5, there was by 1921 widespread recognition in Japan of the real
benefits of arms control. But, as with the Paris Peace Conference and the

52
Antony Best, Two Island Empires (London: Routledge, forthcoming).
53
Hayashi Mutsutake, “Washinton kaigi shokan,” Kokusai renmei, (Apr. 1922), 21, 24.
Hayashi was a trustee of the Japanese League of Nations Association.

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 Kellogg–Briand Pact and the New Japan 75

League of Nations, there was a greater general benefit to Japanese partic-

ipation in the interwar multilateral regime: confirmation of Japan’s status
as a world power. Paris and the League had placed Japan decisively in the
ranks of leaders of civilization. The Washington Conference, in turn,
advanced Japan’s position within the leadership circle.
While Paris had confirmed Japan’s place among the five great global
powers, Washington raised its status to fourth, even third. Under the
terms of the Four Power Treaty, Japan was bestowed the responsibility of
security in the Pacific with only three other powers – Britain, France and the
United States. With the Five Power Treaty, Japan stood at number three –
just behind Britain and the United States with the third largest navy, or,
more importantly, the officially recognized right to maintain the third
largest navy on earth. On the eve of the Washington Conference, the journal
of the Japanese League of Nations Association declared that, “if we truly
want to build the foundations of freedom, equality and charity, today’s great
powers, at the very least the United States, Britain, France and Japan, must
make sacrifices on many points.”54 Following the conference, Hayashi
Mutsutake noted with pride that, “in reality, at the Washington
Conference, Japan stood among the three great powers. And with the
Four Power Treaty, she was bestowed the heavy responsibility for world
peace.”55 Studies of the Anglo-Japanese alliance typically highlight the
distress caused in Japan by the substitution of the nebulous Four Power
Treaty for Tokyo’s concrete ties with London. But as the bi-weekly journal
Nihon oyobi Nihonjin declared on the occasion of the visit of the British
crown prince to Japan in April 1923, “Do not fret! We have surpassed the
small alliance (sasa taru dōmei) and have now become heirs apparent of the
world.”56 “Japan is no longer the Japan of the East,” echoed Meiji
University professor Izumi Akira in November 1923. “She is the Japan of
the world. She is one of five great world powers. She is, in fact, becoming
one of three great powers.”57

Kellogg–Briand Pact and the New Japan

Of all interwar exercises in internationalism, the Kellogg–Briand Pact
receives the fewest accolades. Concluded in August 1928, the agreement
pledged its ten signatories to “condemn recourse to war for the solution of
international controversies.” Given the flagrant violation of the treaty by

54
“Washinton kaigi sokumenkan,” Kokusai renmei, 1, no. 6 (Sept. 1921), 58.
55
Hayashi, “Washinton kaigi shokan,” 24.
56
“Renshi hekichō,” Nihon oyobi Nihonjin, 834 (Apr. 15, 1923), 130.
57
Izumi, “Daishinsai no kokusaiteki kansatsu,” 8.

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 76 Internationalism

Japan, Germany and Italy in the 1930s, the most generous coverage usually
echoes Kitaoka Shin’ichi’s contention that the pact “did not accomplish
anything of note.”58 For Japan specialists, the most familiar episode of the
“anti-war treaty” is the objection raised in the Privy Council that wording in
Article One infringed upon imperial sovereignty.59
But to define the Kellogg–Briand Pact by objections raised against it is,
again, to overlook the essential contemporary significance of the initiative.
The history of the “anti-war” treaty is not a story of the Japanese “strug-
gle” with internationalism that ultimately fails.60 It highlights, rather,
Japan’s increasingly tight integration into the new interwar regime of
internationalism. Like the League of Nations and Washington
Conference treaties, the Kellogg–Briand Pact was another concrete pillar
in the new internationalism to which Japan committed at the Paris Peace
Conference. And although the treaty could not prevent a descent into war
in the 1930s, unlike the League, it remains an active reference in interna-
tional affairs today. To Japanese contemporaries, the anti-war contract
sponsored by the United States and France was the equivalent of bringing
the USA solidly into the new multilateral regime. In so doing, argued the
journal of the Japanese League of Nations Association, “it will strengthen
the foundations of the League of Nations.”61
The agreement was also, more broadly, further affirmation of a clear
global trajectory. “The trends of thought and course of the world are set,”
declared man of letters Kiyosawa Kiyoshi in March 1928. “They point in
the direction of arms reductions and the abolishment of war.”62 Founder
of the monthly Diplomatic Review (Gaikō jihō) and former diplomat
Hanihara Masao conceded that the proposed new pact lacked any
enforcement mechanism. But he argued that it was intended to serve as
a proclamation. Its principal effect would be to stimulate the international
consciousness of the world’s citizens and “cultivate anti-war spirit and
thought (hisen seishin hisen shisō).”63 Tokyo University professor of law
Minobe Tatsukichi highlighted the dire consequences had Japan decided

58
Kitaoka Shin’ichi, Seitō kara gunbu e, 1924–1941 (Tokyo: Chūō kōron shinsha,
1999), 82.
59
Article One stated, “in the name of the respective peoples.” Kitaoka rightly points out that
this episode had little relation to the principal significance of the pact. Ibid., 83.
60
This is, of course, how Ian Nish has characterized internationalism in Japan slightly later, at
the point of the Manchurian Incident. Ian Hill Nish, Japan’s Struggle with Internationalism:
Japan, China, and the League of Nations, 1931–3 (London: K. Paul International, 1993).
61
“Fusen jōyaku o kangei su,” Kokusai chishiki, 8, no. 2 (Feb. 1928), 6.
62
Kiyosawa Kiyoshi, “Heiwaron no shinshutsu,” Kokusai chishiki, 8, no. 4 (Apr. 1928), 42
(Article dated March 13, 1928).
63
Hanihara was the Japanese ambassador to the United States whose words of caution
during the American debate over what became the 1924 Immigration Act were,

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 Gold standard and the New Japan 77

not to participate in the accord. The pact’s pledge “in the names of their
respective peoples,” Minobe argued, demonstrated that “people’s diplo-
macy” had become the foundation of global thought. If Japan alone had
rejected this, “it would be no different than advertising to the world that
Japan is a country of despotism and an enemy of people’s diplomacy
(senseishugi, hikokumin gaikōshugi no kuni).”64
Although there was some question of the tangible consequences of the
new multilateral agreement before its signing, it soon became clear how
the “anti-war spirit” that it embodied might, in fact, change the world.
Sekai to warera described the inauguration of the pact on July 24, 1929 as
“epic-making” (kakkiteki). At the same time, after all, the United States
and Britain had announced a postponement of their naval expansion
programs. “The two countries across the Atlantic,” declared the journal,
“have doubled their guarantee of peace.”65

Gold standard and the New Japan

Not all of Japan’s critical interwar exercises in internationalism related
directly to diplomacy. Two vital components of Wilson’s new world
order were freedom of the seas and open international economic inter-
course. But the First World War had disrupted a key facilitator of
international trade: the gold standard. Like coverage of the Paris Peace
and Washington conferences and the Kellogg–Briand Pact, references
to the gold standard in modern Japanese history invariably tell a tale of
hardship. Suspended in 1917 after the outbreak of world war, gold parity
was reintroduced in Japan, we know, at the worst possible moment – just
as the world plunged into depression. Mark Metzler has recently
described the 1930 reestablishment of gold parity in Japan as the prod-
uct of an obsessive concern by one man – Minseitō finance minister
Inoue Junnosuke – with antiquated Anglo-American ideas of interna-
tional economy.66

inopportunely, interpreted as “threats.” Hanihara Masao, “Fusen jōyaku to kongo no

gaikō” (undated pamphlet), 1. Saitō Makoto monjo 195–24, Kensei shiryōshitsu,
National Diet Library, Tokyo.
64
Minobe Tatsukichi, “Fusen jōyaku chū ‘jinmin no na ni oite’ no mondai” (pamphlet
published by Nihon hyōronsha, March 1929), 65 Saitō Makoto kankei monjo, 195–21.
Kensei shiryōshitsu, National Diet Library, Tokyo.
65
“Henshū goki,” Sekai to warera, 4, no. 8 (Aug. 1929), 386.
66
Metzler, Lever of Empire, 262. Like similarly dark portrayals of interwar Japanese diplo-
matic initiatives, this prescription seems overly deterministic. Metzler, in fact, begins his
story by tying the “crisis of 1931” directly with developments in the 1890s: “The road that
led to the crisis of 1931 began in the late 1890s, when Japan’s Asian empire, gold standard,
and foreign borrowing got underway simultaneously.” Ibid., 3.

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 78 Internationalism

As Metzler himself notes, however, it is difficult to explain the centrality of

gold parity in the progressive platform of the Minseitō Party if we under-
stand it as the product of antiquated thinking.67 The gold standard did, of
course, constitute the bedrock of international trade from the latter nine-
teenth century to the First World War. And it facilitated dramatic Japanese
economic growth through 1917. But the reintroduction of gold parity in the
1920s was not just an Anglo-American obsession. Following the global
suspension of gold exports during the war, it reemerged as international
standard after the end of hostilities. As Prime Minister Hamaguchi Osachi
noted in August 1929, “aside from our country, there are only two or three
small states that have not lifted the gold embargo.”68
Nor was the international rush after 1919 to reestablish gold parity
based upon outmoded ideas of the workings of the global economy. For
the interwar gold standard was distinct from its predecessor in one
important respect: it was fashioned in Washington, not London. As
such, it was, in both global perception and reality, an integral component
of the new post-1919 multilateral system led by the United States. It
makes no more sense to chide financiers like Inoue for their worship of
America than it does to do so for Japanese promoters of the League
of Nations. Inoue and the Minseitō Party looked to the reestablishment
of parity not as an avenue toward Americanization but to follow the
trajectory of “civilized” nations. As one of the principal champions of
the new postwar gold standard, Thomas Lamont, later noted, his cam-
paign was part of the “general effort to restore the civilized world.”69
Prime Minister Hamaguchi spoke in 1929 of lifting the gold embargo to
“return to the universal practice of international commerce (kokusai keizai
no jōdō).”70 Not to do so meant Japan’s economic isolation from the world
community.71 Japanese business circles greeted signs of Hamaguchi’s
early resolve on gold with widespread enthusiasm. The Japanese
Chamber of Commerce adopted a memorial praising “with both hands
raised” the new cabinet’s priority on gold and fiscal restraint.72

67
Ibid., 262.
68
“Shushō chōmei iri no kinshuku yobikake bira haibu,” Tōkyō nichinichi, Aug. 29, 1929,
evening edition; reprinted in Uchikawa, comp., Shōwa nyūsu jiten, vol. 2, 543.
69
These comments were made in 1938. Quoted in Metzler, Lever of Empire, 260.
70
“Shushō chōmei iri no kinshuku yobikake bira haibu”; reprinted in Uchikawa, comp.,
Shōwa nyūsu jiten, vol. 2, 543.
71
“Gikai no kyōsanken to kin kaikin – yoyatō no ronsō,” Tōkyō asahi shinbun, evening
edition; reprinted in ibid., 545.
72
“Kinshuku seisaku ni san’i o arawasu: Nihon shōgi no kengian,” Ōsaka mainichi shinbun,
July 10, 1929; reprinted in Meiji Taishō Shōwa shinbun kenkyūkai, ed., Shinbun shūsei
Shōwa hennenshi, 4-nen, vol. 3 (Tokyo: Shinbun shiryō shuppan, 1989), 102.

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 Institute of Pacific Relations and the New Japan 79

Institute of Pacific Relations and the New Japan

Not all of Japan’s critical interwar exercises in internationalism were a
matter of official policy. Indeed, Akira Iriye has highlighted the post-
World War I years as an era of rapid growth in international non-
governmental organizations globally.73 Among the most influential of
these in interwar Japan was the Japanese Council of the Institute of Pacific
Relations (JCIPR). American initiative established the Institute of Pacific
Relations in Honolulu in 1925 to bring together educators, entrepreneurs
and opinion leaders from around the Pacific to highlight the new global
importance of the region and foster a “Pacific community” of equals. As
Tomoko Akami observes, Japan’s political party cabinets had a strong
interest in the JCIPR and were instrumental from the get-go in nurturing
and supporting the group.74 The original April 1926 assembly of ninety-five
members in Tokyo included the former Governor of the Bank of Japan,
Inoue Junnosuke (chair), two members of the Lower House, and twelve
members of the House of Peers, including Viscount Shibusawa Eiichi,
Baron Sakatani Yoshirō and Soeda Juichi. But the majority of JCIPR
members were professionals of stature, including educators Anesaki
Masaharu, Rōyama Masamichi and Sawayanagi Masatarō; popular pundits
Kiyosawa Kiyoshi and Tsurumi Yūsuke; and labor activist Suzuki Bunji.
And IPR conferences were touted as an ideal forum, in an age of interna-
tional deliberation, for free and open exchange unencumbered by political
pressures. As even the former under secretary general of the League of
Nations, Nitobe Inazō, declared, the League “is a governmental body, this
[the IPR] voluntary. That is political and jural; this is scientific and enlight-
ening. If that is an arena for the ventilation of state policies, this is a clearing
house for educated ideas and considered opinions . . . If the League calls for
action, the Institute appeals to reason.”75

73
The 1929 League of Nations’ Handbook of International Organizations counted 478
international organizations, 90 percent of them private. Akira Iriye, Global Community:
The Role of International Organizations in the Making of the Contemporary World (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2004), 28.
74
Foreign Minister Shidehara Kijūrō, for example, took the first step in forming the
Japanese group by asking financier and House of Peers member Viscount Shibusawa
Eichi to organize the Japanese delegation for the first IPR conference in 1925. The first
Katō Takaaki cabinet (1924–5) hosted farewell and welcome parties for the Japanese
delegates and supported their travel to Honolulu. The Foreign Ministry paid 20,000 of
the 30,000 yen Japanese budget for the first conference. Tomoko Akami,
Internationalizing the Pacific: The United States, Japan and the Institute of Pacific Relations
in War and Peace, 1919–1945 (London: Routledge, 2002), 79.
75
Nitobe Inazo, “Opening Address at Kyoto,” Pacific Affairs, 2, no. 11 (Nov. 1929), 687.
For an alternate version of this quotation, see Tomoko, Internationalizing the Pacific, 145.

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 80 Internationalism

Japanese representatives took an active role in the first two IPR confer-
ences, hosted in Honolulu in 1925 and 1927.76 But by far the most
momentous IPR event for Japan was the third international conference,
held in Kyoto between October 28 and November 9, 1929. As forecast by
the Tōkyō asahi shinbun, Kyoto was to host a large assembly of “first-class”
(ichiryū) academics, politicians and entrepreneurs from twelve countries,
all prepared to discuss matters of importance to the Pacific from the
vantage point of private citizens. Included in the list of private notables
were Columbia University professor and promoter of the International
Labor Organization James T. Shotwell, American banker and IPR treas-
urer Jerome Davis Greene, former British lord high chancellor Viscount
Hailsham, British MP (and son of Prime Minister Ramsey MacDonald)
Malcolm MacDonald, British historian Arnold J. Toynbee, and former
president of the Canadian Bank of Commerce Sir John Aird.77
Kyoto on the opening day of the conference was festooned for a trium-
phal event. As described by the editor of the IPR journal Pacific Affairs,
“trams and taxis were flaunting the red and white flags of Japan, public
buildings had run up banners, and from the roof of the Miyako Hotel a
great I.P.R. pennon fluttered.” The opening ceremony took place in the
Hinode Auditorium in downtown Kyoto, before an audience “of several
hundred local notables,” in addition to the regular conference partici-
pants.78 Concerning the latter, this third conference became the largest
IPR gathering ever. Whereas total IPR membership had numbered only
eighty-seven through the second conference in 1927,79 214 members plus
accompanying family members totaled 335 IPR affiliates in Kyoto in
1929.80
Orthodox coverage of the third IPR conference in Kyoto focuses upon
contentious deliberations over Manchuria and efforts by members of the

76
In the wake of the 1924 Immigration Act, discussions between American and Japanese
delegates over immigration dominated the first IPR conference. See Katagiri Nobuo,
Taiheiyō mondai chōsakai no kenkyū (Tokyo: Keiō gijuku daigaku shuppankai, 2003),
ch. 2. Eighteen representatives from Japan attended the second IPR conference, a number
second only to the thirty-member US group. China sent fifteen representatives, Canada
had ten, Australia, New Zealand and the Philippines each contributed between five and
six, and Britain dispatched four. “Taiheiyō kaigi e okuraruru nijūmei,” Tōkyō asahi
shinbun, June 15, 1927, 3.
77
“Sekaiteki meishi tsugitsugi raichōshi,” Tōkyō asahi shinbun, Oct. 12, 1929, 2.
78
Elizabeth Green, “Nara and Kyoto: Their Opening Significance,” Pacific Affairs, 2, no. 12
(Dec. 1929), 749.
79
Nitobe Inazō, ed., Taiheiyō mondai (Tokyo: Taiheiyō mondai chōsakai, 1930), 2.
80
Green, “Nara and Kyoto,” 749. As Tomoko Akami notes, the size of the Kyoto confer-
ence invited some criticism, resulting in a decline to the original size of 150 or fewer
conference goers in the next few assemblies. Akami, Internationalizing the Pacific, 140.

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 Institute of Pacific Relations and the New Japan 81

Japanese delegation, particularly Tokyo University professor Rōyama

Masamichi and former vice president of the South Manchuria Railway
Company Matsuoka Yōsuke, to justify Japanese claims to the territory.81
But most remarkable from the perspective of contemporaries was the
extraordinary sign of the new internationalism represented by the event.
Pacific Affairs editor Elizabeth Green captured the unprecedented level of
excitement in Kyoto when she declared that, “If the young Institute has a
separate sentient entity it must, in its modesty, be a bit aghast at the
attention here centered upon it.”82 And she hinted at the profound sig-
nificance of the assembly in Japan when she noted that “There is a certain
fitness – the fitness of the bizarre, perhaps – in the fact that here, where one
of the most remote and long-secluded civilizations of the world had its
origin, the council of a new Pacific internationalism should be laying its
future plans.”83
While Western observers like Ms. Green may have considered the shift-
ing global center of gravity to Asia slightly “bizarre,” this movement east was
of utmost significance to her Japanese counterparts. The critical importance
of the Kyoto IPR for Japan lay in its synergy, and contrast, with the major
governmental international conferences of the day. Like the Paris Peace
Conference, League of Nations, Washington and London conferences, and
Kellogg–Briand Pact, the Kyoto IPR convened in the spirit of the new, post-
World War I “conference diplomacy.” Most exhilarating from the perspec-
tive of Japan’s conference-goers, however, was the fact that, this time, it was
Japan that played host to the important attempt at international under-
standing. Indeed, the 1929 Kyoto assembly offered the most powerful
confirmation to date that a new Pacific age had arrived and that Japan was
to play a critical leadership role in that age. As conference chair Nitobe
Inazō declared at the opening assembly, “The thalassic civilization which
blossomed on the borders of the Mediterranean, long ago gave place to the
oceanic civilization of the Atlantic coasts. Now the Pacific lands are to be the
stage where shall meet all the races and cultures of the world.”84 Prime
Minister Hamaguchi Osachi’s message of welcome stressed the particular
suitability of Japan as host for a major meeting of cultures. “Given that it is

81
See Akami, Internationalizing the Pacific, 139–52 and Katagiri, Taiheiyō mondai chōsakai no
kenkyū, ch. 5. Similarly, Michael Auslin concludes overall that “the IPR was as ineffective
in damping down geopolitical tensions as other internationalist groups.” Michael
R. Auslin, Pacific Cosmopolitans: A Cultural History of U.S.–Japan Relations (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), 143.
82
Green, “Nara and Kyoto,” 749. 83 Ibid., 747.
84
Nitobe Inazō, “Opening Address at Kyoto,” 685. Similar expressions circulated at the
second IPR conference in Honolulu, but the Kyoto assembly clearly gave critical new
meaning to the phrase. See Chapter 6 herein.

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 82 Internationalism

where the main currents of modern world culture have merged, in generally
peaceful fashion rarely producing opposition,” affirmed Hamaguchi, “there
is no venue more suitable than Japan.”85

Synopsis
Orthodox coverage of Japanese foreign affairs after World War I highlights
the rocky commencement of “conference diplomacy” for Japan. Despite
the enormous challenges of foreign affairs after Versailles, however, the
dramatic reorientation of Japanese aims is clear. Japanese diplomacy in
the 1920s is one component of a larger story of the creation of a New
Japan. Like the mid nineteenth-century construction of a modern nation-
state, the post-Versailles program of reform was marked by a monumental
effort in national reconstruction that transformed all aspects of Japanese
state and society. As in 1868, central to that change was a dramatic
reorientation of foreign affairs.
The founders of Imperial Japan reoriented Japanese diplomacy from a
defensive protection of the realm to an active search for “knowledge
throughout the world.” The architects of the New Japan, likewise, redir-
ected Japan’s diplomatic sights from that of leader of Asia to one of five
great powers of the world. More than that of any other wartime belliger-
ent, Japanese diplomacy in the interwar era symbolized the dramatic
transformation from the nineteenth to the twentieth century. Early
twentieth-century Japanese diplomatic efforts had revolved around the
Anglo-Japanese alliance and had carried all the hallmarks of the age of
imperialism – bilateral negotiations, secret pacts and unbridled territorial
expansion sustained by ever increasing devotion to arms. By contrast,
Japanese diplomats, even private citizens, invested most of their diplo-
matic energy through the 1920s in the new regime of internationalism
spearheaded by the United States, Britain and France. This new regime
was marked by a series of multilateral treaties – the Versailles Treaty, Five
Power Treaty, Nine Power Treaty, Four Power Treaty, Kellogg–Briand
Pact and London Treaty – and nurtured by a global reintroduction of the
gold standard and emergence of a variety of NGOs like the Institute of
Pacific Relations. Japanese statesmen and citizens eagerly participated in
these treaties and NGOs not out of loyalty to abstract moral principles.
Rather, the destruction of the Great War had forcefully demonstrated
the bankruptcy of the old order. Participation in the new conference

85
“Hamaguchi shushō aisatsu,” Tōkyō asahi shinbun, Oct. 29, 1929, evening edition, 1.

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 Synopsis 83

diplomacy, moreover, offered a golden opportunity to underscore Japan’s

newfound status as a leader of world civilization.
The diplomatic pillars of the new world order could not withstand the
formidable challenges of the 1930s. But the experience of Japan suggests
not the frailty of interwar conference diplomacy. Rather, it hints at the
formidable power of multilateralism and the unexpectedly robust strength
of the New Japan, both of which would constitute the critical foundation
of a new era of peace after 1945.

https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139794794.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press