For Empire Or Dominion? Prestige Or Adventure? the Men of the Canadian Legation in Tokyo, 1929-1933

For Empire or Dominion? Prestige or Adventure? The Men of the Canadian Legation in Tokyo, 1929-1933 Jason Butters A Thesis in The Department of History Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts (History) at Concordia University Montreal, Quebec, Canada September 2016 ©Jason Butters CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY School of Graduate Studies This is to certify that the thesis prepared By: Jason Butters Entitled: For Empire or Dominion? Prestige or Adventure? The Men of the Canadian Legation at Tokyo, 1929-1933 and submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts (History) complies with the regulations of the University and meets the accepted standards with respect to originality and quality. Signed by the final Examining Committee: Chair Dr. Max Bergholz Examiner Dr. Barbara Lorenzkowski Examiner Dr. Matthew Penney Supervisor Dr. Peter Gossage Approved by Chair of Department or Graduate Program Director 2016 Dean of Faculty Abstract For Empire or Dominion? Prestige or Adventure? The Men of the Canadian Legation in Tokyo, 1929-1933 Jason Butters In May 1929, the Canadian Department of External Affairs (DEA) formalized diplomatic ties with Japan by opening its Tokyo legation. Although the third of its kind, Canada's Tokyo legation initiated and managed bi-lateral relations with a degree of autonomy unparalleled by those in Washington and Paris. Within this newfound autonomous space was room for each of Canada's diplomats to negotiate, internalize, and perform their roles differently. This thesis investigates how and why First Secretary Hugh Keenleyside, Minister Herbert Marler, and Second Secretary Kenneth Kirkwood – the vanguards of Canadian national self-representation in the Pacific – engaged and employed that personal and national autonomy, studying their reactions to and participation in transnational political and cultural exchanges at the imperial Japanese capital. Their dissimilar experiences meanwhile act to demonstrate the complexities of those exchanges and highlight the various motives and opinions prevalent amongst Canada's late-interwar social political, and intellectual elite. By adopting the perspectives of the individual as its primary subject of analysis, this study contributes to an extant literature that has regularly portrayed the DEA and its foreign offices as unitary practitioners of a singular ideology or policy. Furthermore, the individual voices of Canada's first ranking official in the Japanese capital are recovered from the silencing effect of top-down, national-political analyses that have so dominated the field. Finally, it eschews teleological readings of the period preoccupied with Europe, a North Atlantic Triangle, and the 'road to war' narrative, thus providing a new view of an understudied aspect of Canadian international history. iii Acknowledgements I would like first to thank my parents, Cheryl and Gordon Butters, for all the love and support they have provided me from the very beginning of my academic journey and, indeed, since long before that. Together with the various and earlier personal experiences that led me to this field of study, my undertaking of this project would not have been possible without them. Furthermore, I extend my most sincere gratitude to Dr. Peter Gossage of the Department of History at Concordia University for his generous and innumerable offerings of support and confidence. Since my arrival at Concordia, Dr. Gossage has challenged me to think and write about history in new ways. For his advice and guidance, I have benefitted as both a student and as an individual. My deep appreciation for the work of the administrative staff and faculty of the department must also be expressed – thank you for inspiring and assisting the students to do better. More thanks meanwhile go to the archival staff at Library and Archives Canada, as well as those at the various private and public archives consulted for this and for other, earlier projects. Finally, I am grateful to Tereza Tacic for her unending patience over the past year while I worked through the challenges of graduate school. Her care and understanding are invaluable parts of the reason why I was able to get this far. iv Table of Contents: List of Abbreviations vi Introduction 1 Literature Review 7 Canadian-Japanese Diplomatic Relations in Context 22 Chapter 1 – Hugh Llewellyn Keenleyside: The Autonomist Academic 28 Early Life 29 Recording History as a National Representative 33 Early Work at Tokyo 34 Inequalities, Critical Perspectives, and Lasting Relationships 37 Diplomacy and Work under Herbert Marler 40 Conclusion 42 Chapter 2 – Herbert Meredith Marler: The Conflicted Imperialist-Nationalist 45 Early Life 46 Patrician Diplomat 49 Diplomacy in Practice 57 Socializing, Subordinates, and the British 60 A National Image, Reconsidered(?) 63 Self Interest in the National Interest: Conclusion 66 Chapter 3 – Kenneth Porter Kirkwood: The Inquisitive Adventurer 70 Early Life 72 Re-imagining a Modern World 75 Professional Crossroads 77 The Individual and His Society 81 New Projects 86 Curating a Legacy: Conclusion 88 Conclusion 92 Bibliography 96 v List of Abbreviations: DEA – Department of External Affairs HLK – Hugh Llewellyn Keenleyside HMM – Herbert Meredith Marler KPK – Kenneth Porter Kirkwood LAC – Library and Archives Canada MULA – McMaster University Library Archives UMA&SC – University of Manitoba Archives & Special Collections vi Introduction For decades, the conclusion of the First World War, the Paris Peace Conference, and the resultant Treaty of Versailles have been centrepieces in the history of Canadian political autonomy. Indeed, it was only after their contributions of human life and supplies in that great conflict that the British territories were provided equal status within the empire, culminating in the Balfour Declaration of 1926 which established the principle of equality within the Commonwealth. Uncertainty regarding Canadian foreign policy remained into the late-interwar period, however, and it was not until Canada opened its own foreign offices at Washington, D.C. and Paris that the tension between imperial authority and dominion autonomy in international relations was truly tested. 1 Observers in England as well as Canada continued, as English Prime Minister Lloyd George had in 1921, to see "the instrument of the foreign policy of the Empire" as entirely that of "the British Foreign Office." 2 Meanwhile, Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King, together with his new Under Secretary of State for External Affairs Oscar D. Skelton, sought to challenge this system by building for Canada its own, self-interested and self-serviced diplomatic service and foreign policy. Following the opening of Canada's first two foreign legations in 1928, however, tensions between Ottawa's careful autonomists and outright imperialists smothered the effectiveness of the diplomats stationed there, limiting their ability (and, in some cases, desire) to act entirely in the interest of Canada. 3 The establishment of Canada's Washington and Paris legations thus did little to change the established order which, since before Confederation in 1867, saw British foreign offices in charge of all imperial external policy as well as the management of the affairs of Canadians abroad. 1 Historian H. Gordon Skilling points to the words of British Prime Minister Lloyd George who in 1921 declared in the British House: "Since the War the Dominions have been given equal rights with Great Britain in the control of the foreign policy of the Empire […] The machinery is the machinery of the British Government – the Foreign Office, the Ambassadors. The machinery must remain here." Equal rights within empire, he stressed, meant not that each now had the right to reach out and form new and unique bi-lateral arrangements with foreign states. Instead, it meant that while "the sole control of British foreign policy is now vested in the Empire a whole," the actual, working advantage was that "joint control mean[t] joint responsibility" at a time when "the burden of Empire ha[d] become so vast." Great Britain, House of Commons, 14 December, 1921, quoted in H. Gordon Skilling, Canadian Representation Abroad: From Agency to Embassy (Toronto: The Ryerson Press, 1945), xiv. 2 Skilling, Canadian Representation Abroad, xiv. 3 Canadian foreign policy and affairs were conducted abroad until the Second World War by legations which, headed by ministers plenipotentiary, were a rank lower than embassies and ambassadors. 1 In 1929, however, the Canadian Department of External Affairs opened its third legation abroad. Turning away from the Anglo-American dominated Atlantic world, King and Skelton pursued plans for a diplomatic mission to the Japanese imperial capital of Tokyo. While the Tokyo legation shared some features with the young Dominion's two extant foreign offices, Canada's only legation in the Pacific initiated and managed bi-lateral relations there with a degree of autonomy unparalleled by those in Washington and Paris. Nearly ten thousand kilometres from the overlapping and hegemonic Anglo-American influences at the two aforementioned capitals, the Canadians at Tokyo enjoyed freedoms in their professional as well as personal lives. As this thesis will show, this influenced the ways they were able to represent their nation amongst the diverse diplomatic corps of foreign elite, as well as a wider Japanese public largely unaware of Canada's colonial and imperial history. Within these

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