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 6 The Japanese Face at Geneva Nitobe Inazō and Ishii Kikujirō There is some one myth for every man, which, if we but knew it, would make us understand all that he did and thought. —William Butler Yeats Everyone who worked in the League of Nations Secretariat knew well what was meant by the “Geneva spirit.” The full poignancy of this ethos was apprehended by those who lived by the shores of Lac Léman. Sir Eric Drummond, Sugimura Yōtarō, Harada Ken, and William Rappard understood the ease with which nationals of diverse countries interfaced in their routine professional and social activities. Hand in hand they worked hard, with near-religious devotion, to make international organization efficacious and to nudge the nations of the world into harmony with League ideals. Those who, like Ambassador Ishii Kikujirō, journeyed frequently to Geneva for League meetings could not but be captivated by the unique atmosphere: As a result of daily contact with one another the various delegates had lost much of their fierce patriotism and replaced it with moderation and a willingness to enter into conciliatory discussion. War they now considered a crime, while peace they wanted from the bottom of their hearts. At Geneva one might have been in another planet for all its resemblance to the old order.1 In Geneva, the spirit of the peace enterprise was inseparable from the serenity of the natural setting: the mountain-framed lake, the greenness of the grass, the flowers , the quaint antiquity of the city. In the world viewed even today from the Palais des Nations, the state of nature and humanity seems totally incompatible with the state of war. Aggression and terrorism are remote. To the Japanese in the Hotel National in the 1920s, Mukden, Shanghai, and Vladivostok were very far away. Such a creature of goodwill as Undersecretary-General Nitobe Inazō inter- The Japanese Face at Geneva  nalized the Geneva spirit quickly; such an expressive communicator made it infectious to others. He was frequently asked by Secretary-General Drummond to address European audiences on behalf of the organization in its early years, a time when the peoples of Europe eagerly longed for a permanent respite from the ravages of war they had recently endured. To a university gathering in Brussels, the undersecretary reported in September 1920 how the eight meetings of the Council so far had enabled representatives to sit around a common table and discuss freely and in private the questions before them. From this, Nitobe drew inspiration: Few things afford a more encouraging prospect for harmonious co-operation, a more hopeful earnest of universal peace, than the sight of the leading statesmen of the foremost countries of the world coming together in close personal relations , holding different views and expressing them with utmost freedom, yet in the spirit of mutual understanding and concord. In the Secretariat, reported the undersecretary, there was an esprit de corps in which “the members are actuated by a spirit of idealism, and spurred on by a strong sense of responsibility in this new venture of world reconstruction.” He did not find in the Secretariat the cynicism and personal jealousy he had observed in government bureaucracies at home and abroad. The Covenant had dealt imperialism a fatal blow through the mandate system and had uplifted the status of women by assuring them equal access to the offices of the League.2 When he addressed assembled delegates of the Institute of Pacific Relations in 1929 on the advance of world order in his day, the retired League official made reference to the enchanting physical setting of Geneva. Nitobe asked, “Do we not find the spirit of the hills and the lakes . . . conducive to fellowship and interdependence ? The Locarno spirit is such, and it is admitted that this was nurtured on the shores of Lac Léman, surrounded by its hills, the Jura and the Salève.” Nitobe devoted much of his League career to spreading the ideas of the organization in Europe, but there were two special mission fields where he longed to transplant the Geneva spirit. The first was his homeland, Japan. He genuinely believed that the terrain of Japan was as hospitable to the spirit of international understanding as that of Switzerland. Hence he lifted the eyes of his IPR audience to the Kyoto around them: “Here we meet in this ancient city, called in olden times Heian, the City of Peace and Ease, at the foot of the Hiei range and with...

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