Mark J. Ravina, University of Texas at Austin
From the US perspective, Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 started the war in the Pacific. For Japan, the war had begun in mid-1937. And Pearl Harbor was an attempt to turn the tide. It was a huge risky bet by a gambler deep in the hole. But from Shidehara Kijūrō’s perspective—that of an experienced diplomat and the former foreign minister—things began to go wrong in 1929 with the global stock market crash.
Arms Control Treaty
Shidehara Kijūrō had no interest in a war with the Soviet Union, or anyone else. His great accomplishment before the war had been a 1922 arms control treaty between Japan, the United States, and the United Kingdom, ending an expensive arms race in the Pacific.
Shidehara was an outspoken advocate of the post-World War I League of Nations. And he infuriated the military by negotiating the return of some Japanese territories to China.
Shidehara’s Vision of Cooperation
We’ve all probably heard the phrase, ‘What’s good for General Motors is good for America’. Well, Shidehara thought ‘What’s good for Mitsubishi is good for Japan’.
It helped that Shidehara was married to a daughter of a founder of the Japanese business conglomerate Mitsubishi. But in the 1920s, Mitsubishi and Japanese business broadly embraced Shidehara’s vision of cooperation with the United States.
The logic for cooperating with the US was simple: arms control agreements meant less government spending, meaning lower taxes. For that matter, the US wanted China to be a free trade zone. The exact term was ‘open door’.
Japanese businesses loved the US goal of free trade in China because they were confident they could compete in the China market. And looking backward from 1941, it’s easy to overlook how optimistic people were about US-Japanese cooperation during the 1920s.
This article comes directly from content in the video series The Rise of Modern Japan. Watch it now, on Wondrium.
Arms Control Agreement
But one sees evidence for it in unexpected places. The March 26, 1927, edition of the Los Angeles Times features a front-page cartoon about an upcoming conference in London intended to extend the naval arms control agreement of 1922.
In the cartoon, Japan is sharing a huge life preserver with both the United States and Britain. And they are calmly floating in the ocean. All three men have both arms wrapped around the shared life preserver, which is labelled ‘naval disarmaments conference’.
So, it’s a pretty explicit metaphor—arms control agreements are a life saver.
Meanwhile, in the foreground, two other countries—Italy and France—are struggling to stay afloat, treading water while foolishly holding heavy cannon. They are weighed down by their weapons.
And while there’s room for two more at the big life preserver, Italy and France would rather keep their weapons and drown than join the US, UK, and Japan.
Again, a pretty explicit metaphor. But what’s striking is how Japan is wisely choosing arms control together with the US and the UK, while Italy and France are the self-destructive militarists.
Nanking
That same edition of the Los Angeles Times describes Nanking as a ‘Chinese Horror city’, with rampaging troops looting homes and businesses, terrorizing and even murdering civilians.
The assumption would be that this would remind people of the Nanjing Massacre, or the ‘Rape of Nanking’, a decade later. But no, this was 1927, and the troops were a joint force of Chinese Nationalists and communists who were forcing out a local warlord.
The scale of death and destruction in the 1937 assault would be something like 10,000 times larger.
Calm Non-intervention
The US and Britain were so angry at Chinese attacks on their civilians that they shelled Nanking in retaliation. Remarkably, it was Japan in 1927 that followed a policy of calm non-intervention. Shidehara declared that he trusted the Chinese Nationalist government to punish its own troops.
Unlike the US and the UK, Japan would use its navy to retaliate. The Japanese military was quietly furious. It wanted to fight in China, and the military command never forgave Shidehara for forcing it to stand down.
The military deferred to the orders of an elected civilian government. But that deference was fragile.
The Great Depression
The Great Depression broke the optimistic business environment that was the backbone of Shidehara’s world view. Unfortunately, it was also the beginning of the end for him. Soon, the Great Depression emboldened the Japanese military and right-wing politicians into thinking they could act with impunity.
In September 1931, it seized control of Manchuria.
And when the post–World War I League of Nations refused to recognize Japanese control of Chinese territory, Japan quit the league and created the puppet-state of Manchukuo.
So—to Shidehara—Japan had totally gone off the rails by 1933.
Japan’s Master Plan for World Domination
Clearly this account clashes with the standard US history, in which Japan had a master plan for world domination and surrendered only because of two atomic bombs. In many ways, that American vision of the war makes sense if one is focused solely on American politics, and US military action.
Nonetheless, it’s a bad account of Japanese history. Japan didn’t have a single master plan for world conquest. It had two conflicting plans. One was to fight the US. The other was to fight the USSR. And Japan was late to choose between the two—to the great advantage of the US.
Common Questions about the War in the Pacific and Shidehara Kijūrō’s Perspective
Shidehara Kijūrō’s great accomplishment before the war had been a 1922 arms control treaty between Japan, the United States, and the United Kingdom, ending an expensive arms race in the Pacific.
The logic for cooperating with the US was simple: arms control agreements meant less government spending, meaning lower taxes. For that matter, the US wanted China to be a free trade zone. The exact term was ‘open door’.
The US and Britain were so angry at Chinese attacks on their civilians that they shelled Nanking in retaliation. Remarkably, it was Japan in 1927 that followed a policy of calm non-intervention. Shidehara Kijūrō declared that he trusted the Chinese Nationalist government to punish its own troops.
