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xi Introduction The peace settlement following World War I gave birth to the League of Nations. Japanese diplomats labored with those of other victorious powers to fashion the constitution of the League, and the Empire of Japan joined the organization in 1920 as one of forty-two charter members and one of four permanent members of the League of Nations Council. Japan was active in League political, humanitarian, and judicial affairs until it announced its withdrawal in 1933. When its resignation took effect two years later, Japan retained affiliation with the organization’s subsidiary bodies until it severed all ties in 1938. Before conflict arose between Japan and the world body over the Manchurian Incident, the League was a centerpiece of Japan’s sincere policy to maintain accommodation with the powers and to function cooperatively in institutions for international order. League involvement inspired many Japanese—officials, diplomats, and citizenry alike—to believe that Japan could achieve its national aspiration to be a regional power without confrontation with other leading states, and that a global mechanism for the peaceful settlement of international disputes could succeed. The picture of Japan as a positive contributor to international order and comity is not the conventional view of Japan in the early and mid-twentieth century. Rather, this period is usually depicted in Japan and abroad alike as a history of incremental imperialism and intensifying militarism, culminating in war in China and the Pacific.1 The account continues after 1945 as a reaction to and recovery from that war. In other words, World War II in Asia is center stage, deeply coloring all that precedes and follows it. Even Japan’s interface with the League of Nations is typically addressed only at the nodes of confrontation: the 1919 debates over racial equality and Shandong as the League Covenant was drafted, and the 1931–1933 League challenge to the Japanese seizure of Manchuria. What this book assays to accomplish is to fill in the space before, between, and after those nodes, and to accord a full picture of the League relationship its legitimate place in Japanese international history in the 1920s and 1930s. It also argues that the League connection has long-term implications that were not obviated by the interlude of war. Japanese cooperative international behavior in the decades after the Pacific War bears marked continuity with the mainstream international accommodationism of the League years. It is true that most Japanese had serious misgivings about the League of Nations during the months of its gestation and the fifteen years of membership. Japan’s awkward adjustments to such now-conventional systems as multilateral diplomacy, mandated territories, arbitration, sanctions, disarmament, a world court, and the International Labor Organization involved a great deal of internal debate, which this study elucidates. League standards regarding labor confronted social policies at home. The status quo underpinnings of the League represented a fundamental challenge to Japanese aspirations to achieve major powerhood through expanding its economic and political influence on the mainland. Nonetheless, Japanese leaders believed that the League was a viable place where the Empire could negotiate expanded power and international standing with the leading nations of Europe. These Japanese were schooled in realpolitik. They had few delusions that the European colonial powers would subordinate their imperialistic prerogatives to the decisions of a global body. During the 1920s, Japan observed ample cases where the powers reached major accommodations among themselves away from Geneva. Japan rightly saw itself as a normal power—albeit a latecomer—an adherent of the “respectable imperialism” that avoided challenging the special interests of other powers. Even those Japanese—whose lives the reader will enter in the following chapters—most dedicated to the ideals of the “Geneva spirit” sincerely believed that Japan could have the League and regional predominance. For them, Japan’s separation from Geneva brought deep grief. For the nation, the opportunities presented by post-Mukden autonomy were accompanied by a painful crisis of diplomatic isolation. Japan was a relative latecomer to the League of Nations project. As the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 approached, Japanese planners for the postwar settlement had to scurry to apprehend the proposal and formulate Japanese approaches. Japanese popular support did not at all compare to the feverish enthusiasm that characterized League movements in the West. Of the three nations most crucial, then and now, to Japan’s external affairs—China, Russia, and the United States—only China shared League membership with Japan. Japan’s testy departure from Geneva in the wake...

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