Out with the New and in with the Old Uchida Yasuya and the Great War as a Turning Point in Japanese Foreign Affairs

Rustin B. Gates

Introduction

The question of whether the Great War and its aftermath was a turning point in Japanese history is not a new one. Indeed, this question has been the focus of numerous studies by historians of Japanese diplomacy beginning in the 1960s and continuing to the current day.1 One scholar, for example, argues that follow- ing the war the cabinet (1918–21) reoriented Japanese diplomacy toward cooperation with the , which became more important to than Britain.2 Others agree with this thesis on change, but locate the shift in the new East Asian order created by the Washington Conference treaties of 1921–22.3 In contrast, a more recent study contends that the Hara cabinet contin- ued the sphere of influence diplomacy it had inherited from earlier, non-party cabinets.4 Still a third view argues that Japanese foreign policy in the early 1920s was a combination of Old and New diplomacy, a blending of partial adherence to a new emerging order with concrete efforts to retain old imperial interests.5 This essay considers the above question of whether the Great War was a turning point in Japanese foreign affairs by examining the policies of post-wwi

1 Frederick Dickinson, for example, considers the war a “watershed” event for Japanese national identity. Frederick Dickinson, War and National Reinvention (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1999), 4. Also, see Dick Stegewerns, “The End of World War One as a Turning Point in Modern Japanese History,” in Turning Points in Japanese History, ed. B. Edstrom (: Japan Library, 2002), 138–162. 2 Mitani Taichirō, “‘Tenkanki’ (1918–21) no gaikō shidō,” in Kindai Nihon no seiji shidō eds., Shinohara Hajime and Mitani Taichirō (: Tokyo UP, 1965), 295–297. 3 Akira Iriye, After Imperialism: The Search for a New Order in the Far East, 1921–1931 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1965), 19–20; Hosoya Chihiro, Ryō taisenkan no Nihon gaikō, 1914–1945 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1988), 75. 4 Hattori Ryūji, Higashi Ajia kokusai kankyō no hendō to Nihon gaikō, 1918–1931 (Tokyo: Yūhikaku, 2001), 3–9. 5 Sadao Asada, “Between the Old Diplomacy and the New, 1918–1922: The Washington System and the Origins of Japanese-American Rapprochement,” Diplomatic History 30, no. 2 (April 2006): 211; and Thomas W. Burkman, Japan and the : Empire and World Order, 1914–1938 (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2008), 212.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2014 | doi 10.1163/9789004274273_005

Out With The New And In With The Old 65

Foreign Minister Uchida Yasuya (1865–1936) in relation to his work as minister earlier in the decade. Uchida had a long career in the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, serving as minister three times (1911–12; 1918–23; and 1932–33). While Uchida was active during the Great War as Ambassador to Russia, he only came to help guide Japanese policy in the war’s immediate aftermath. As foreign minister in the Hara Takashi cabinet, Uchida continued to base his policies on the imperatives of cooperation with the Western powers, non- intervention in China, and the maintenance of Japanese interests in . To avoid Japanese isolation and continue his policy of cooperation with the powers, Uchida replaced his previous reliance on bilateral alliances and agree- ments with multilateral ones in the postwar era. He was less open to modifying his Manchuria policy, however. In the immediate postwar period and through- out the decade, Japan succeeded in preserving its sphere of interest in Manchuria by excluding it from international agreements and resisting Chinese attempts to recover its territory. With only slight modification, Uchida was able to continue policies in the 1920s that he had enacted as foreign minis- ter in the early 1910s. In doing so, Uchida effectively ended Japan’s expansion on the mainland that his immediate predecessors had pursued during the war. Following its declaration of war against , Japan displaced the Germans from their colonial possession of Jiaozhou in Shandong province, China, taking the col- ony for itself in the process. Later, in 1918, Japan occupied northern Manchuria and dispatched troops to as part of a joint allied expedition. In addition to military action, Japan utilized diplomatic measures as well to expand its position and influence on the mainland. The infamous Twenty-One Demands (1915) and the Nishihara Loans (1917–18) are the two prime examples of Japanese aggrandizement through non-lethal means during the war. By presid- ing over the return of Shandong to China and the withdrawal of Japanese troops in Siberia as well as by re-instituting his non-intervention policy for China, Uchida replaced the “new” diplomacy of the and Okuma Shigenobu cabinets, with the “old” diplomacy he had practiced in the late era. Uchida’s case, then, does not point to the Great War as turning point in Japanese foreign affairs but rather it offers a striking example of for- eign policy continuity in prewar Japan.

Uchida’s First Term as Foreign Minister, 1911–12

While making his way across the Pacific, Uchida, the former ambassador to the US and the newly appointed foreign minister in the second