Japan and the League of Nations: Empire and World Order, 1914-1938 (review)

Studies of Japan's international relations from 1914 to 1938 tend to concentrate on the beginning of Japan's participation in the League of Nations, on the racial equality issue at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, or on the Manchurian Crisis of 1931–1933.¹ With Japan and the League of Nations, Thomas Burkman builds on this foundation by providing a fuller picture of the Japanese relationship with the League in the 1920s and 1930s. Burkman, whose work in this field is already well-known to specialists, notably through his insightful studies of the internationalists Nitobe Inazō and Ishii Kikujirō, challenges representations of the Japanese delegates as "silent partners of the peace" and highlights their positive contribution to the League of Nations Assembly and Council. He also evaluates Japan's participation over the longer term, suggesting in the introduction that continuity can be traced between Japan's desire to cooperate with the international order in the 1920s and 1930s and her status as a peaceful ally of the United States after 1945.

While World War I provided an opportunity to assert international equality and leadership in the region, Japanese conceptions of nationalism, colonialism, and self-determination altered markedly during this period. Indeed, the meaning of internationalism itself changed: the power of Britain, Japan's most important ally before the war, was in decline as the Europe-centered power system gave way to U.S. hegemony. This provided new opportunities, such as the chance for Japan to acquire coveted German possessions in the Shandong peninsula. As Burkman points out, "realism" sat alongside opportunism in Japan's international outlook (p. 24).

The earliest effort to involve Japan in the idea of a multinational institution came from the U.S. chairman of the Committee on Foreign Organization of the League to Enforce Peace, Theodore Marburg, who sympathized with Japan over criticism of the Twenty-One Demands presented to China in 1915. Throughout 1916–1917, however, the Japanese Foreign Ministry responded coolly to Marburg's overtures. Japanese attitudes were tied up with the popularity of Woodrow Wilson, who became more influential in Japan from 1917, when Tsurumi Yūsuke, a former student of Nitobe, organized a "Wilson Club" to disseminate the U.S. president's ideas. When Wilson led the United States into the war in April 1917, however, cynicism replaced favor.

Wilson's Fourteen Points speech of January 1918 received little attention from the Japanese government, which was occupied by events closer to home. Six months later Viscount Edward Grey's pamphlet supporting Wilson's proposal for an organization that would uphold the rights of weaker nations and promote a peaceful means for settling disputes was met with scepticism in the Japanese press. H. G. Wells, a member of the League of Free Nations Association, shared Marburg's conviction that Japanese participation was absolutely essential and addressed an open letter to the people of Japan in leading newspapers on 28 October. While the tone in the newspapers changed to one of support, not until just after the signing of the armistice on 11 November did Foreign Minister Uchida Yasuya begin to assess relevant aspects of the Fourteen Points speech. By now it had become apparent that the government's narrow focus on exerting Japan's territorial rights had left the nation unprepared to deal with the new postwar spirit of internationalism, and a great debate, led by Makino Nobuaki and Itō Miyoshi, erupted over formulating Japanese policy on the Fourteen Points.

The Japanese delegation, therefore, arrived at the Paris Peace Conference in January 1919 with only the vaguest notion of an official policy. In contrast, the other four of the five "Big Power" delegations (Britain, France, Italy, and the United States) came with their own draft versions of a covenant. Moreover, since Japan was not a party to the armistice discussions, the Japanese contingent was bypassed in the creation of the Council of Four (Wilson...