The uncertainties of isolation: Japan between the wars

Ian Nish (1992)

Introduction

Antony Best

Ian Nish is renowned as one of the leading experts in the world on the history of Japanese foreign relations in the modern era. In a long and distinguished career he has written about many different aspects of Japan’s interaction with the world, but he is probably best known for his magisterial two-volume history of the Anglo-Japanese alliance – The Anglo-Japanese Alliance: the Diplomacy of Two Island Empires 1894–1907 (1966) and Alliance in Decline: a Study in Anglo-Japanese Relations 1908–23 (1972). Nish’s Creighton Lecture of October 1992 builds on this work by providing a penetrating overview of the effect that international isolation had on Japan in the years following the end of the alliance in 1922 until the eventual ill-fated signing of the Anti-Comintern Pact with Germany in 1936. The lecture also draws on the splendid book that he had published the previous year, Japan’s Struggle with Internationalism: Japan, China and the League of Nations, 1931–3 (1991) which analysed why Japan chose to break with the Western-dominated League of Nations in 1933.

In this lecture Nish clearly demonstrates why he has such a high reputation in the discipline of international history. Focusing in particular on why it was not possible in the early nineteen-thirties to breathe new life into Anglo-Japanese relations, he uses a wide variety of both Japanese- and English-language primary and secondary sources to weave together a fascinating, witty and perceptive study that brings great clarity to an immensely complicated series of events. He also shows that he is fully aware of recent trends in the historical debate about his subject and incorporates these new historiographical insights into his overview.

The main argument that Nish puts forward in the lecture is that Japan’s isolation in the world was as much a reflection of its domestic politics as of international events. This is an important observation for it reminds us that, for all of the talk of Imperial Japan in the nineteen-thirties being dominated by the army, the country cannot be treated as simply monolithic. Instead it was divided into a number of different factions and this frequently had the effect of pitting its key institutions, such as the army, the navy, the court and the diet, against each other. Thus, he argues that in late 1931 the Japanese foreign ministry agreed to a League of Nations enquiry into the events that had led to the outbreak of the Manchurian crisis earlier that year in the hope that this might help to curb the army’s interest in imperial expansion. He also notes that in 1934, when the Japanese government and the army appeared to show some interest in coming to a modus vivendi with the British, it was the navy, which typically has been seen as a pro-Western apolitical force, that emerged as the irreconcilable obstacle to any such overture. Finally, he demonstrates that even Japan’s eventual exit from isolation – its signing of the Anti-Comintern Pact in 1936 – was a matter of contention, for it was an army initiative which garnered little enthusiasm from the other pillars of power in the country.

Another aspect of the times that stands out from this lecture is the difficulty that the Japanese elite had in understanding the outside world. Nish observes that in 1933 Japan left the League of Nations in the belief that the organization did not understand the regional politics of East Asia, but instead judged events from a global perspective. But how could a body based on the universal principle of collective security be expected to react in any other way? Moreover, he outlines that by 1932 a number of Japanese figures felt that Japan’s future lay in rebuilding relations with Britain on the basis that the latter would be keen to associate itself with any anti-Soviet grouping. Here too was naïve and wishful thinking. For Britain, the Soviet Union represented at this time an ideological threat for the long term, whereas the rise of Japanese expansionism, in particular when seen in the context of growing instability in Europe, posed a real military menace to the British colonies and interests in Asia that it was ill-equipped to defend.

Nish thus presents us with an image not of an all-conquering militarist country in the Nazi mould, but rather with a confused and intensely divided nation with a weak government, which, both admiring and resentful of the West, followed a meandering path that would eventually lead it to stumble into a catastrophic series of wars. The key word in the title of the lecture therefore turns out to be ‘uncertainty’, for here was a state deeply uncertain about how to advance its interests in the world and whether it needed a partner to help it do so. In drawing our attention to the significance of this factor, Nish makes a very important point, for he emphasizes the complexity of Japan’s position and underlines the danger of interpreting Japan’s road to war as an exercise in determinism.

I should note finally that I am very touched that towards the end of the lecture Ian, who was my doctoral supervisor, mentions my own research findings and refers to me as Dr. Best, for it was on that very day that I had passed my viva and thus earned that title. The generosity of the gesture is typical of one of the historical profession’s great figures.

The uncertainties of isolation: Japan between the wars*

Ian Nish (1992)

Principal, Professor Beasley, Ladies and Gentlemen, I am very conscious of the honour which the University has done me by inviting me to deliver the Creighton Trust Lecture and to join the distinguished company of those who have given the lectures in memory, and to the honour, of Bishop Mandell Creighton, cleric, historian and educationist.

Bishop Creighton became bishop of London in 1897 and through his friendship with Beatrice Webb became the first president of the court of governors of the London School of Economics.¹ In that capacity he laid the foundation stone of the building in Houghton Street and Clare Market on 2 July 1900. He also made a formidable contribution to the University, having served as chairman of one of the commissions on the University of London and later as a member of the royal (Gresham) commission on the subject.

Bishop Creighton died in the same month as Queen Victoria, in January 1901. He did not live to see the conclusion of the Anglo-Japanese alliance in January 1902. I am not sure that it would have occurred to him to listen to an academic lecture on Japanese history. But I am fortified in offering such a thing today by your presence in the chair as your many writings on the subject from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries were the pioneer studies in this country.

This lecture deals with Japan between the wars, that is, between the First World War in which she was a minor participant and the skirmishes of July 1937 which led on to a full-scale war with China. For most of this period Japan was politically isolated, in the sense that she had no formal partner or ally, although she was an active enough member of the international community. This led to a sense of uncertainty and insecurity, which was felt in varying degrees by statesmen of the period. The question was how far Japan’s vulnerability mattered in view of the fact that she was geographically remote from the rest of the world.

One of the arguments which was often heard in the nineteen-thirties was that Japan had no reason to fear isolation because she had been for over two centuries between the sixteen-thirties and 1853 a sealed country (sakoku) and had despite her isolation made abundant progress during that period. But recent scholarship suggests that it is a historical misconception to speak of this period as one of ‘isolation’. While the shogun rulers of the day did not want the intrusion of missionaries and political subversives from the West and issued their exclusion edicts, they were at the same time permitting a thriving trade with China and through the Chinese (and to a lesser extent the Dutch) with south-east Asia. This China trade which was concentrated on the port of Nagasaki in western Japan also had a deep influence on Japan’s political and cultural life.²

So the ‘isolation’ of which we shall be speaking is not Japan’s isolation from China and her continental neighbours which has hardly been feasible for most periods of her history. We shall be speaking of Japan’s isolation in the world. This distinction is familiar enough to an island-kingdom like Britain. The third marquess of Salisbury reminds us:

There is all the difference in the world between good-natured, good-humoured effort to keep well in with your neighbours and that spirit of haughty and sullen isolation which has been dignified by the name of ‘non-intervention’. We are part of the Community of Europe and we must do our duty as such. (1888)³

I do not wish to dwell on the latter part of that explosive message from the past so much as the former. The Japanese did not think of relations with China as being a matter of isolation. But from the coming of Commodore Perry in 1853 onwards, Japan, as Professor Beasley has written in more than one of his books, had her noisy group of ‘Eurosceptics’, that is, those who wanted Europeans to keep their distance. Compared to the more modern phenomenon of that name, the Japanese sceptics were probably more skilful at assassination.

As the Meiji government settled down after 1868 Japan was much preoccupied with her dealings with Korea, China, the Ryukyu islands and Taiwan. But east Asia was until the eighteen-nineties isolated from the rest of the world. The problem for the Meiji leaders was whether their country needed a closer relationship with one of the countries of Europe. In private memoranda of the period there were many possible partners mentioned: Germany, France and Britain. After some decades of speculation Japan decided to enter into an alliance with Britain in 1902 which was to last for two decades. While the Japanese insisted that the terms of the alliance treaty should specify that it was limited to ‘the Extreme East’, it was in practice global.

The Anglo-Japanese alliance came to an end at the Washington Conference in 1921 and was replaced by a four-power treaty taking in the United States and France as well as the original allies. Most modern scholars regard the new treaty as a feeble substitute for the alliance, even though it was itself in decline. In a speech in Washington on the announcement of the change, Arthur Balfour summed up Britain’s feelings thus: ‘When two nations have been united in that fiery ordeal, they cannot at the end of it take off their hats one to the other and politely part as two strangers part who travel together for a few hours in a railway train’.⁴ The experience of working together in the First World War had left its mark on both countries and the parting was a matter of regret for Britain. Hence this fastidious metaphor of Edwardian respectability – the raising of hats.

But how did Japan really react to the dropping of the alliance? General Itami Matsuo, the Japanese military attaché in London, compared the alliance to a ‘whiskey and soda’ and the four-power treaty to a ‘lemon squash’, adding that he had been around officers’ messes in Britain long enough to prefer the former concoction.⁵ Not all Japanese could treat the matter so jocularly. Now that the Japanese have published their documents on their reaction to the Washington settlement, we can form some judgement on how their leaders viewed it. One who drew up a memorandum of his reactions as soon as the conference ended was General Tanaka Kunishige, head of the military delegation and also a former military attaché in London:

I felt acutely throughout the conference that each country’s attitude was being decided by calculations about its own position purely on the basis of its national self-interest. If there are those who think that permanent peace in the Far East or the Pacific has in practice been brought about as a result of this conference, one must say that they are making a big mistake [mōdan]. In one section of the American people, some have expressed the view that the attitude taken by Japan at this conference has been unexpectedly conciliatory and understanding and that its success has been due to this change on the part of Japan. While the black clouds which used to exist between the United States and Japan have certainly been dispelled and relations between the two should improve in future, America’s satisfaction over the success of the conference is no more than a short-lived phenomenon. In the course of time she will return to her former posture and assume the mantle of the hegemonic power [in the Pacific region]. There will probably come a time when Japan may regret that she is being restricted [sokubaku] by the various treaties concluded at this conference and will lose her freedom of action. I believe it to be important that our people should with great determination [kakugo] use this time to explore the ways of self-sufficiency and prepare for new international competition.⁶

This assessment by one of Japan’s thinking soldiers may not be representative of Japanese political thinking as a whole but it was intended for circulation among his military colleagues and was probably typical of military thinking. In Japan, as in other countries, the historian has to be wary about taking a single opinion for that of a whole nation: one Japanese swallow does not make a Japanese summer. One hesitates to describe Tanaka’s views as broadly supported. But they were probably more representative than many of the public speeches which other leaders made when they returned from Washington. These tended to be worded more soothingly for the purpose of international consumption.⁷

The diplomats too faced the changes which had crept into the post-war world without enthusiasm. The Japanese did not like the New Diplomacy which had led to the rejection of the British alliance. The veteran diplomat, Viscount Ishii Kikujirō, bemoaned the passing of the Old Diplomacy. He wrote in his autobiography in 1930 that diplomacy had since 1919 come to involve too large a measure of propaganda (senden). In the Old Japan, he claimed, there had been no such thing as propaganda; and politics were conducted in secrecy. But, because of the new-style diplomacy introduced under President Wilson, it had become necessary to set up a press and information department (Jōhōbu) in the foreign ministry. Ishii conceded that it had become necessary to inform one’s own people and explain things to the press, both domestic and foreign. This was uncongenial to most Japanese bureaucrats, who preferred secrecy to openness. So far as dealings with the international media were concerned, the Japanese were exposed to them on a large scale at the Paris Peace Conference and the Washington Conference. Ishii frankly admitted that they were hampered there because ‘languages are the great shortcoming of our people’.⁸ And social conventions were also changing. There is the story of Japan’s chief delegate at the Washington Conference, Admiral Katō Tomosaburō, being groomed on what was expected of an international statesman and being told that he had to wear civilian dress and wave nonchalantly to the crowds and the cameramen. We may imagine that he felt that it was out of character for an admiral of the fleet to smile to cameras.⁹ How many politicians must have said this since then (under their breath, of course)?

While the alliance had ended, it cast a long shadow over the nineteen-twenties. As Professor Hosoya has argued, there was an afterglow to the alliance for a decade.¹⁰ ‘Afterglow’ is an imprecise concept; and the ending of the alliance closed some doors but left others unaffected. Thus, Japanese officers could no longer come to British naval colleges and instead looked to Germany for technological help with the navy and the naval air arm, while British military attachés could not so readily attend Japanese army manoeuvres.¹¹ On the other hand, the men who ruled Japan had grown up in the alliance period and were used to this nexus. And as Professor Wakamura shows, bankers and businessmen seem to have clung to the existing British channels because of an assumed hostility on the part of Wall Street. The Gold Standard was upheld despite the turbulent scene of banking collapses.¹² Had Japan been able to form some alternative arrangement, it might have been different; but relations with the United States were increasingly accorded a greater degree of importance than those with Britain. But for most of the nineteen-twenties Japan was preoccupied with the domestic scene after the Great Kantō earthquake of 1923. Britain, like the United States, contributed generously to the cause of earthquake relief.

Mr. Smith of the University of Ulster in a recent study has argued that Sir Charles Eliot, the British ambassador in Tokyo from 1921 to 1926, who was particularly distressed by the abrogation of the alliance, set out to project an image of a Britain which had not entirely abandoned its old ally. He concludes, however, that these views did not tally with those of the London government which tended to consider that Japanese interests and British interests in east Asia were at odds and that Britain’s came closer to those of the United States.¹³

Be that as it may, the wind of change blew rather coldly against Japan when Uchida visited London in 1928 after signing the Kellogg-Briand pact. His mission from Prime Minister Tanaka was to seek co-operation from Britain in China, if need be by offering some sort of return to the alliance. But Britain, while she welcomed joint consultation, had no interest in open partnership in China.¹⁴

In compensation for the isolation brought about by the loss of the alliance, Japan became a founder member of the League of Nations and a permanent member of council, which offered her a global role. The first occasion on which Japan was seriously at odds with the League was in 1927 when the far eastern question livened up and the Chinese Nationalist government referred the Tsinan incident for determination by the League. On 19 April the Seiyūkai cabinet of General Tanaka Giichi decided to send an expeditionary force to Shantung. These troops became involved in fighting with the Kuomintang forces of China in the inland city of Tsinan in May. Among other actions, the Nanking government complained to the League and called for the council to be convened. Sir Eric Drummond, the secretary-general, and the senior Japanese official on the secretariat, Sugimura Yotarō, tried to overcome the problem by exchange of correspondence. Kuomintang China was in any case not recognized by many of the powers and was not paying her subscriptions to the League regularly so was not in a strong position to press her demands. It did not, therefore, become a major issue at Geneva at this time.

Japan remained an enthusiastic member of the League so long as its rulings did not conflict with her national interests. She was, however, taken aback when China referred the Manchurian crisis to the League on 19 September 1931. To her surprise the League took it up when the Japanese Kwantung army had foreseen that Europe was looking the other way because of the devastating European economic depression and would not allow itself to get involved. The weak Japanese cabinet initially defended the army’s position in debates at Geneva but soon found that the army was seriously out of control. After considering various options to secure discipline over the army, it decided to play (what might be called) the League card. In the tug of war which was Japanese politics in the nineteen-thirties, the civilians had to mobilize whatever ally was available, often the navy against the army. On this occasion, it sought to bring in the League as counterpoise to the Kwantung army by sponsoring the notion that the League should send a commission of enquiry (which ultimately came to be known as ‘the Lytton Commission’) to enquire into, and report on, the happenings in Manchuria.¹⁵ This risky strategy of ‘bringing in the Old World to redress the balance of the New’ (if I may twist the words of George Canning) was later to be regretted.

The more the League criticized Japan, the more the League’s Japanese critics called for Japan to leave the League and go it alone. By the time Manchukuo had been created in the spring of 1932, the army and its civilian allies had become extremely vociferous. The army predicted that none of the League powers would lift a finger against Japan and she had nothing to lose by isolation. The civilian politicians who supported the military in their actions claimed in the parliamentary debate in August that Japan had in practice already adopted an independent policy and jettisoned the ‘imitative diplomacy’ which she had employed in the nineteen-twenties; Japan was now able to stand on her own feet.¹⁶ She might be ‘isolated’ but she had proved that there was nothing to fear from being isolated. The League, they argued, needed Japan more than Japan needed the League.

By the time the Lytton report had been published and the debates on it were taking place in Geneva, the feeling was gaining ground in Japan that the League was the symbol of an international order that was unjust to her. Prince Konoe, later to be prime minister but then on the fringes of politics, argued in an essay in February 1933, that ‘there was inherent injustice in international affairs: the world war had been a struggle between advanced countries that were satisfied by the status quo and less advanced countries that were not. It was fallacious for Western countries to oppose Japanese actions in Manchuria in the name of peace’.¹⁷ Sentiments, I suspect, very similar to those which could be heard in Germany. On 24 February 1933 the League assembly adopted the Lytton commission’s report. By this time it was apparent that, while the League would endorse the findings of its Lytton commission, it was not going to expel Japan from its membership. Should Japan herself take the initiative and leave the League? This led to an agonizing debate during March. Against were the arguments about the consequences for Japan of isolation. In favour were the tub-thumping rhetoric of the past year, the desire for an overdue autonomy and the pride of the military which had been hurt by the League’s findings. In the event, the decision was more emotional than rational, a foretaste perhaps of the decision in 1941 about Pearl Harbor and Malaya. In a divided house, the Japanese decided irretrievably on leaving the League and notice was given on 27 March.

In her letter giving notice of withdrawal, Japan stated that she had ‘been led to realise the existence of an irreconcilable divergence of views, dividing Japan and the League on policies of peace, and especially as regards the fundamental principles to be followed in the establishment of a durable peace in the Far East’.¹⁸ The League had demonstrated that it did not understand the affairs of east Asia. Japan felt she had genuine grievances against China and had little sense of guilt over happenings in Manchuria. Nor did she have much remorse at leaving the League which was after all a voluntary body. It had, in Japan’s view, made a decision based on global considerations over a regional incident in which it had not much expertise. Resignation was the natural course for a country which felt that it was fully justified in its actions.

Even those of moderate opinion did not dispute Japan’s withdrawal. Let me illustrate this by quoting one of Japan’s League enthusiasts, Nitobe Inazō, who had been Japan’s nominee as assistant secretary of the League in the nineteen-twenties:

The time is not yet ripe for international cooperation ... Strong nationalistic tendencies [are] recently rampant in every country of the world. A dozen years ago, when the Great War ended, the nations stood aghast at the horrors of war, and they made a holy decision to abolish it. Now that these horrors are fast fading out of man’s memory, the sordid interests of each nation are once more the dominant motives of statesmen. If, under these conditions, the League does not act with the wisdom of a serpent, taking due account of nationalism, it may foster international disruption by its meddlesome policy.¹⁹

In other words, Japan was within her rights in doing what she did in Manchuria and the League had made matters worse by interfering. Obviously those less attached to the League were less broad-minded. But the official line was expressed by the new foreign minister in his diet speech on 22 January 1934: ‘Although Japan has left the League, it is not her purpose to isolate herself from that body or to stand alone in the Far East. On the contrary she wished to make clear to the world that her cause was a just one’.²⁰

Japan was much less self-confident than the public rhetoric of the early nineteen-thirties would suggest. There was real uncertainty about the possible effects of the course of isolation which she had chosen for herself. We may separate the economic from the political and strategic aspects of isolation. Many Japanese recognized the fragility of Japan’s economic position in a hostile international financial world. The Japanese ambassador in London was to complain to the foreign office that his country’s financial credit in Britain was unhappily low. He:

considered it undeservedly so, for Japan had never defaulted on her obligations, whereas China who had defaulted, had now better credit in London than Japan. It seemed as though it would therefore pay Japan to default. She might then get better terms ... The heavy financial charges which Japan had to bear, not only in paying interest on her foreign loans, but also owing to the high cost to her of trade bills, in its turn due to the low value of the yen, resulted in Japan having to export more in order to meet her obligations.²¹

Resentful as Japan was at these instances of apparent discrimination, she had to bear with them as she could hardly afford the greatly increased budgets for the development of Manchuria and might need to have recourse to world money markets. It was the government’s hope to encourage investment especially from Britain and the United States. But it was awkward that both of these powers had declined to recognize Manchukuo.

Turning from finance to trading, there was real uncertainty about the possible effects of ‘commercial encirclement’ over raw materials and energy sources as factors of economic isolation. Was the world likely to gang up against a country like Japan which was so short of natural resources? It already seemed that certain powers were shutting off their dependent territories against Japanese competition. And could Japan cope with her great population explosion without the co-operation of the colonial powers? However inconsistent it was with her policy of withdrawal from the League, Japan did not dare to stand aloof from the World Economic Conference held in London in June 1933.²²

There were signs that some also feared political isolation. There were abortive approaches for a treaty to the Soviet Union during 1932 and to France in September of that year. In the aftermath of the Manchurian crisis Japan seems to have set about repairing her fences in a business-like manner, turning to the United States and Britain in particular. I shall not touch in detail here on the so-called Anglo-Japanese rapprochement of 1934. It was first brought to public notice by Professor D. Cameron Watt in 1965 and has since been explored by several authors.²³ It is a tantalizing story because, like so many cases in the Anglo-Japanese relationship, the archives of the two countries do not tally and the story that emerges from British libraries and private papers cannot be readily confirmed in Japan.

The mystery is increased by a third factor, Japan’s fear of military isolation. After the euphoria of 1932 had passed, Japanese generals began to look for partners. Their purpose was to identify friendly powers which would join them in deterring Soviet Russia. The army minister from late 1931 to the end of 1933 was General Araki Sadao who might be described as the intellectual soldier. He was popular among the younger officers and was one of the leaders of the kōdōha wing in the Japanese army, notable for its suspicion of Soviet Russia. By a strange paradox, he was unusually accessible to foreigners. He had held discussions through an interpreter with Lord Lytton and his colleagues and scored rather a success with them in 1932.²⁴ Because of his anti-communism, he clung to the idea which had developed under the Seiyūkai ministry of General Tanaka Giichi (1927–9) that co-operation with Britain would be beneficial for Japan.

Strangely enough this idea was upheld under totally different circumstances by the later Seiyūkai ministry of Inukai Tsuyoshi (Ki) in 1931–2 and the cross-party ministry of Admiral Saitō Makoto (1932–4). A ministry of war pamphlet drawn up in July 1932 analysed the attitudes of the Great Powers towards the Manchurian crisis. It took the view that Britain was the most favourable to Japan and predicted that her friendly posture would continue.²⁵ Even more surprisingly, the Kwantung army in its appreciation of the situation in the autumn of 1932 favoured the pursuit of a pro-British policy. It even speculated about the desirability of giving Britain a guarantee for the security of her Indian territories – a strange echo of the Indian clause in the 1905 Anglo-Japanese alliance.²⁶ Nothing came of these expressions of opinion; but they are important for the historian as indicating the optimism of the Japanese military about the state of British opinion (which was scarcely justified).

The appointment of Arthur Edwardes, a British national who had formerly been the inspector-general of the Chinese maritime customs, as adviser to the Manchukuo government may be relevant in this context. It took place in the autumn of 1932 and just as the Manchurian issue was about to come before the League of Nations. It may have been thought that Edwardes would be useful as a lobbyist to win over some elements of British opinion which were not thought to be fundamentally ill-disposed to the Japanese case.²⁷

The same theme recurs at the time of the Five-minister Conference in October 1933. Araki and the army generally still held the view that collaboration with Britain was the best way to save Japan from isolation and improve security vis-à-vis the Comintern. It does not seem to have struck him that Britain’s standpoint had been radically transformed because of the Manchurian crisis and Japan’s departure from the League. On 1 November 1933 he passed a message through intermediaries – a conventional practice in Japan – that he would like to meet the British chargé d’affaires to have a frank discussion on Anglo-Japanese relations.²⁸ After authorization from London the chargé held an informal meeting with Araki; but it was only after Ambassador Lindley’s return from leave that any serious talks took place. This meeting took place far from the prying eyes of the press at a country inn at Atami on 20 February 1934. Araki, who had become ill in January, was by this time out of office though he still had enough support within the kōdō wing of the army to carry weight in the government. He put his view that Anglo-Japanese relations should be improved as a defence against Bolshevism by an alliance of these two monarchic states.²⁹ This accorded with Araki’s faith in the imperial system in Japan. But the views he advocated of improved Anglo-Japanese relations were broadly in line with the ideas circulating in the foreign ministry. It was odd, therefore, that the spokesman for the Japanese should on this occasion come from the ranks of the military – and from one who had something of the reputation of being a bogeyman abroad. Nonetheless the British were fairly responsive: Ambassador Lindley left Tokyo on retirement at the end of April but his successor, Sir Robert Clive, continued to meet Araki and speak nostalgically on the Anglo-Japanese alliance. This was clearly an authorized act. Something of London’s thinking at the time comes out in a remark of the influential undersecretary, Sir Victor Wellesley, on 3 April: ‘The key note of Japan’s policy is always the fear of political isolation and, however much we may quarrel with her, in the end she will always come back to her first love, not because she really likes us but because on the whole we are the best of the bunch’.³⁰ Wellesley overestimated Britain’s bargaining position. But he evidently recognized Japan as being another opportunistic power like herself.

The absence of the navy from these overtures was conspicuous. Despite the goodwill promoted by the visit of Admiral Sir Frederic Dreyer and Britain’s far eastern squadron to Japanese ports in December 1933, the old Anglophile groups in Japanese naval circles no longer carried the same weight as before. The remaining members of the treaty faction (jōyakuha) had been removed in the Osumi purge in 1934.³¹ The problem for Japan was that the Washington and London naval treaties were due to lapse unless renewed in 1936. The consensus in the navy was that Japan could no longer accept quantitative restriction of the size of her fleet. If the treaties were to be denounced, Japan would have to give notice during 1934. Unlike the army, the navy favoured going it alone and cutting adrift from the entanglements imposed by international disarmament.

Britain wanted to keep the naval treaties going but there was a yawning gap about the tactics to be applied to keep Japan within the treaty structure. When the report of the defence requirements committee came before the cabinet on 13 March 1934, it carried with it a strong call from Neville Chamberlain as chancellor of the exchequer for an improvement in Anglo-Japanese relations. Because of a loss of confidence in the United States, the admiralty was inclined to support this on the ground that ‘Japan wanted equality in armaments, but she might not press this demand if she had a pact of mutual non-aggression’.³² Even the foreign office, which was the ministry most distrustful of Japan, agreed that, if some sort of pact could be worked out before the preliminary naval talks which were due to begin in the autumn, it would be worth exploring.

For some months no forward move was made. But on 3 July, just three days before a new Japanese government came to office under Admiral Okada, the foreign minister himself proposed to the British ambassador, Sir Robert Clive, that ‘Japan would be ready to conclude a non-aggression pact’ with Britain. London did not immediately respond. It was August before Britain burst into activity. The ministers, having retreated to the country, became hyperactive, while the bureaucrats left resentfully in Whitehall became hyper-inactive, interposing all manner of objections. It was therefore not until 25 September that Ambassador Clive was authorized to open ‘strictly unofficial’ parleys with Hirota in order to uncover what was behind his statement of 3 July.³³

Even if Britain’s expression of interest had not been so long delayed, it is doubtful whether it would have succeeded. It was basically an attempt to offer political assurances in China in order to preserve the status quo over naval building. But Japan’s naval specialists had since the start of 1934 decided on their approach to any preliminary naval discussions: they insisted on a treaty which would be based on the principle of a common maximum armament and, if this was not agreed, were prepared to pull out of the Washington naval treaty and, by extension, the London treaty. Admiral Okada’s cabinet had at its meeting on 7 September ‘adopted the [naval] conditions it would insist on’.³⁴ Hence Britain’s response of 25 September came two weeks too late. It was met with an embarrassed silence in Tokyo. Britain’s hope of assuaging the Japanese navalists by offering some political assurances against isolation in advance of the London meetings petered out. At its meeting on 25 October the London cabinet postponed the approach until Japan showed itself willing to make material concessions. It was not that the Japanese isolationists had won the day; but the navy’s insistence on ending the ‘unequal naval treaties’ as they called them prevented an acceptable deal being made.

The naval negotiations took their inexorable course. On 17 September Japan had informed Washington of her intentions to pull out of the naval limitation treaties before the end of the year. Despite the talks in London, no compromise could be reached. On 27 November the Japanese foreign minister proposed to France and Italy that the three of them should jointly withdraw from the Washington treaty; but both refused. Evidently Japan did not want to denounce the treaty in isolation and sought to create a sort of dissenting bloc. When this failed, the Tokyo cabinet decided to announce its withdrawal from the treaty unilaterally. In consequence the sadly misnamed ‘preparatory naval talks’ were formally adjourned in 19 December.³⁵ The Japanese government had as a deliberate act of policy pulled out of an important set of international agreements where her interests were at odds with other governments. Britain for her part had at least tried by mediation to prevent Japan’s estrangement from the global naval community.

The Anglo-Japanese approaches were scarcely over when the army ministry began to make approaches to Germany. It was the work of General Ōshima Hiroshi who had served as assistant military attaché in Berlin in 1921 and military attaché in Austria and Hungary in 1923. He was appointed full attaché in Berlin in March 1934. He was specially instructed to co-operate with the Germans in gathering intelligence abut Soviet Russia. Because his powers of conversation in German were unrivalled, he had access to influential government circles. It was in July 1935 that he unofficially broached the subject of an anti-Soviet agreement to Joachim von Ribbentrop. His instructions were to enquire what kind of ‘co-operative treaty’ Ribbentrop had in mind. It was the underlying assumption (whether right or wrong) that the initiative had come from the German side. Negotiations were carried on initially between the Japanese general staff and war ministry and the Nazi party through Ōshima and the special emissary from Tokyo, Lieutenant-Colonel Wakamatsu Tadaichi. They were then transferred to the ambassador, who supposedly came to learn of them for the first time in March 1936. The agreement was carried to completion on 11 November, though it was not announced until the end of the month. The anodyne pact was less significant than the unpublished note which laid down that ‘should one of the parties be unprovokedly attacked or threatened by the Soviet Union, the other party agrees not to carry out any measures which would relieve the position of the Soviet Union’.³⁶ It would have to be concluded that Japan’s isolation was ended when this was signed.

And yet the Anti-Comintern pact was the result of a split decision. Many in Japan – and especially the foreign ministry – opposed the idea of a pact with Germany particularly after Hitler’s move into the Rhineland in March. When after nine months’ leave the ambassador was sent back to Berlin to undertake the formal last stage of the negotiations he was explicitly told to aim at a noncommittal agreement ‘written in watery ink’.³⁷ After it had been completed, many did not like it. Some tried to reduce its effectiveness by widening it to take in other powers. It may be that the faltering steps which Ambassador Yoshida took in London in late 1936 and early 1937 may have been motivated by this idea. But Anthony Eden firmly scotched any idea of identifying Britain with the Anti-Comintern pact, because Britain had by this time broken the Japanese diplomatic code and knew what lay behind its terms, as Dr. Best has convincingly shown.³⁸

Prime Minister Hirota took an interesting line to justify the conclusion of the German pact with those likely to be ill-disposed to it. He admitted to Harada Kumao, the middleman with the Elder Statesman, that, when the Anglo-Japanese alliance was signed, the navy had been given its head to bring about what it wanted; now that the Anti-Comintern pact had come into being, the army had been given its head and most of its wishes had been conceded.³⁹

With that remark this lecture has come full circle. Japan escaped from isolation in 1902 by entering into a naval alliance which was eventually discarded at the behest of the international community at the Washington Conference. That left her in varying degrees of isolation for fifteen years. It had of course become more difficult for Japan to find a firm ally in these years. But the problem over isolation, was, in fact, as much domestic as international. There was inevitably a trial of strength between the army and the navy: the army first isolated Japan from world opinion by its actions in Manchuria, then the navy cut Japan off through denouncing the Washington Naval Treaty and the army, fearing its neighbours and distrusting isolation, sought the co-operation of Germany. In 1936 the civilian leaders gave in to army pressure and, against the dictates of their more cautious judgement, entered into an agreement with Germany, albeit a series of diplomatic instruments not signed by the German foreign minister but by Joachim von Ribbentrop as plenipotentiary.⁴⁰

It suggests the weakness of Japan’s style of government. Many authors like Professor Ann Trotter have written of the phenomenon of Dual Diplomacy in the field of foreign policy which was common at this time.⁴¹ In the case of Japan in the nineteen-thirties, government was like a three-legged race. In that race the civilians and the military (army and navy) were moving in the same general direction but were often staggering awkwardly. Each had independent limbs and was able to do things on its own. But ultimately it was the legs that were bound together that set the course. More often than not the army and navy dictated the direction of march, though sometimes, as in the case of the Anti-Comintern pact, the civilians managed to outflank the military by weak devices like thinning the printer’s ink.⁴²

From 1918 to 1937 Japan was being pulled in opposite directions over the question of isolation, one party saying that Japan was strong enough to go it alone, the other saying that Japan could not afford to be isolated. Japan was not unique in this. Many nations in modern times have had doubts about where they stood in the league table of world powers. In the nineteen-thirties this was so for Japan which opted, after exploring other possibilities, such as Britain, France and Italy, for a relationship with Germany and the axis. The compromise was struck between the contending forces within Japan by asking that parts of the pact should be regarded by Japan as grey rather than black, as being less binding than the army imagined.

There is a point of historical interest here – and I trust that Bishop Creighton will grant me absolution for introducing contemporary politics into this lecture. We belong to the Maastricht generation of historians. We know that, when statesmen stand up after signing an international treaty and smilingly give each other a hearty handshake, they often take out of the treaty quite different notions of what it contains. These differences emerge from the process of tough negotiation and the uncomfortable compromises which often have to be made. Further differences arise when the statesman returns from the conference table to find that the terms may not be acceptable to his own public. From a distance the pigmentation of a treaty often looks different. So the concept of ‘watery ink’ invented by Japan in the nineteen-thirties may still be a serviceable concept of wider than oriental application.

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* This article was first published by the University of London, 1993. The editors would like to thank Professor Nish for his kind permission to reproduce it here, and for his helpful comments during the publication process.

¹ ‘[Creighton was] one of our best friends’ (N. and J. MacKenzie, Diary of Beatrice Webb, ii: 1892–1905 (1983), p. 197, entry for 15 Jan. 1901).

² R. Toby, ‘Rekishiteki ni mita kindai Nihon no hyōsō to shinsō’, in Sekai no naka no Nohinjin (Osaka, 1990), pp. 209–32; M. B. Jansen, China in the Tokugawa World (Cambridge, Mass., 1992), chs. 1, 3.

³ Quoted in The FCO: Policy, People and Places, 1782–1991 (F.O. Historical Branch, 1991), p. 12.

⁴ B. E. C. Dugdale, Arthur James Balfour, ii: 1906-30 (1936), p. 330.

⁵ F. S. G. Piggot, Broken Thread (Aldershot, 1950), pp. 148–9.

⁶ Tanaka to Yamanashi, 8 Feb. 1922 (Nihon gaikō bunsho (Washington Conference ser., ii, Tokyo, 1978), pp. 637–9).

⁷ Nihon gaikō bunsho, pp. 656–65.

⁸ Ishii Kikujirō, Gaikō Yoroku (Tokyo, 1930), pp. 436–7. This section summarizes the arguments of Ishii in chs. 6–7 (pp. 403–41).

⁹ Bamba Nobuya, Japanese Diplomacy in a Dilemma (Kyoto, 1972), p. 158, quoting Shidehara Kijurō, Gaikō 50-nen.

¹⁰ Hosoya Chihiro, Nichi-Ei kankeishi, 1917–49 (Tokyo, 1982), pp. 8–13.

¹¹ Nihon gaikō bunsho, p. 666.

¹² Nakamura Takafusa in The Cambridge History of Japan, vi: 20th Century (Cambridge, 1988), p. 454; Fukai Eigō, Kaiko 70-nen (Tokyo, 1941), chs. 19–20.

¹³ D. Smith, ‘Sir Charles Eliot (1862–1931) and Japan’, in Britain and Japan, 1859–1991: Themes and Personalities, ed. Sir H. Cortazzi and G. Daniels (1991), pp. 196–7.

¹⁴ Uchida Yasuya, ed. Ikei Masaru (Tokyo, 1969), pp. 283–4.

¹⁵ I. Nish, Japan’s Struggle with Internationalism: Japan, China and the League of Nations, 1931–3 (1992), ch. 2 passim.

¹⁶ Nish, Japan’s Struggle, p. 159.

¹⁷ Usui Katsumi in Hosoya, Nichi-Ei kankeishi, pp. 134–5.

¹⁸ Uchida to secretary-general, League of Nations, 27 March 1933 (quoted in I. Nish, Japanese Foreign Policy, 1869–1942: Kasumigaseki to Miyakezaka (1977), pp. 299–300).

¹⁹ ‘Stress on nationalism’, 18 July 1933, in The Works of Inazo Nitobe (Tokyo, 1972), pp. 493–4.

²⁰ Cf. Documents on British Foreign Policy, 1919–39, ed. W. N. Medlicott (2nd ser., xx, 1984), no. 79.

²¹ Documents on British Foreign Policy, 1919–39, ed. W. N. Medlicott (2nd ser., xxi, 1984), no. 1, Eden to Clive, 6 Nov. 1936.

²² Fukai, Kaiko 70-nen, p. 280.

²³ D. C. Watt, Personalities and Policies (1965), pp. 83–99. The most recent study of this topic is G. Bennett, ‘British policy in the Far East, 1933–6: treasury and foreign office’, Modern Asian Stud., xxvi (1992), 545–68.

²⁴ Nish, Japan’s Struggle with Internationalism, p. 108.

²⁵ Hosoya in Hosoya, Nichi-Ei kankeishi, p. 17.

²⁶ Hosoya in Hosoya, Nichi-Ei kankeishi, p. 17.

²⁷ Nish, Japan’s Struggle with Internationalism, p. 189.

²⁸ Diary of Capt. Malcolm Kennedy, 1 Nov. 1933, in Kennedy Papers (University of Sheffield Library). Kennedy’s own version of these events is given in M. D. Kennedy, The Estrangement of Great Britain and Japan, 1917-35 (Manchester, 1969), pp. 269–72. Unfortunately these events are not confirmed from Japanese sources though Kennedy’s account is generally supported by official British sources.

²⁹ Documents on British Foreign Policy (2nd ser., xx), nos. 50, 88.

³⁰ Documents on British Foreign Policy (2nd ser., xx), nos. 88, n. 4 (my italics).

³¹ Ikeda Kiyoshi, Nihon no kaigun, ii. 125, describes the purge conducted by Admiral of the Fleet Osumi Mineo, when he became navy minister in 1934.

³² Documents on British Foreign Policy (2nd ser., xx), no. 97, p. 188.

³³ Documents on British Foreign Policy (2nd ser., xx), no. 149; Documents on British Foreign Policy, 1919–1939, ed. W. N. Medlicott (2nd ser., xiii, 1973), no. 26.

³⁴ Ikeda, Nihon no kaigun, ii. 138; Nihon gaikō nempyō narabini shuyō bunsho, ii.

³⁵ Nihon gaikō bunsho, ‘1935-nen Rondon kaigun kaigi’, pp. 288–96, 234–5; Documents on British Foreign Policy (2nd ser., xiii), nos. 83, 87.

³⁶ Nihon gaikō nempyō narabini shuyō bunsho, ii. 352–4.

³⁷ Deterrent Diplomacy: Japan, Germany and USSR, 1935–40, ed. J. W. Morley (New York, 1976), p. 28; G. Kubota, ‘Arita Hachirō-Nichi-Doku bōkyo kyōtei ni okeru usuzumiiro gaikō no tenkai’, in Kokusai Seiji, lvi (1976), 52–3.

³⁸ A. M. Best, ‘Avoiding war: the diplomacy of Sir Robert Craigie and Shigemitsu Mamoru, 1937–41’ (unpublished University of London Ph.D. thesis, 1992); I have dealt with this theme in greater detail in I. Nish, ‘Ambassador at large: Yoshida and his mission to Britain, 1932–7’, in Themes and Theories in Modern Japanese History, ed. S. Henny and J.-P. Lehmann (1988), pp. 194–212.

³⁹ Morley, p. 35.

⁴⁰ Nihon gaikō nempyō narabini shuyō bunsho, ii. 352–4. The Japanese signatory was Ambassador Mushakoji.

⁴¹ A. Trotter, Britain and East Asia, 1933–7 (Cambridge, 1975), ch. 12.

⁴² I. Nish, ‘Finance Minister Takahashi and the aftermath of the Manchurian crisis’ (unpublished).