Rt. Hon. Austen Chamberlain (1863– 1937), Rt. Hon. Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940) and Japan, 1924–40

ANTONY BEST

Austen Chamberlain

INTRODUCTION In his post-war memoirs, Gaiko¯ Kaiso¯ roku, the Japanese diplomat Shigemitsu Mamoru, who had, among his many other appointments, served as ambassador in London from 1938 to 1941, included a long passage on his impressions of the Chamberlain family.1 The fact that such a ﬁ gure should have included detailed observations about Austen and Neville Chamberlain stands as a perhaps unexpected testament to the important place that these men played in British public life, and particularly in the formation of foreign policy. Here is evidence that their inﬂ uence was not just felt in Europe but in Asia as well. As Shigemitsu notes in his memoirs, the Chamberlains at one time or another had an important say in the construction of British foreign policy towards East Asia. Austen Chamberlain’s moment of prominence came between 1924 and 1929 when, as foreign secretary in the second Baldwin government, he had to deal with the profound

69 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VII ramifi cations for British interests of the rise of Chinese nationalism, which naturally also had important implications for Britain’s relations with Japan. For his part, Neville Chamberlain became a key player in British policy towards the region from 1933 until his death in 1940, and is typically seen as the leading fi gure within the National Government who sought a rapprochement with Tokyo. Thus in the early-twentieth century transition from alliance to enmity the Ch amberlains played a vital role. Studying the Cha mberlains and their role in British policy towards Japan does not, however, just reveal the extent of their infl uence, for it also provides an inter- esting perspective on their political reputations precisely because Ja panese interpretations of their policy often contrast with how they are viewed in Britain.

AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN (1863–1937) The originality of Japanese thinking about Austen Chamberlain is particularly evident in Shigemitsu’s writings. In both the memoirs he published during his lifetime and in other essays he makes the controversial and perhaps surprising claim that in Austen’s period as foreign secretary the latter oversaw a very signifi cant shift in British policy away from Japan, thus paving the way for the eventual con- frontation in 1941.2 At fi rst glance such a view seems perplexing, for when hi storians, such as Brian McKercher, have dealt with this subject, they have usually characterized Austen’s policy towards Japan between 1924 and 1929 as cautious and correct.3 Shigemitsu’s charge, however, is not based on how Austen directly treated Japan, but rather on his belief that the foreign offi ce’s Christmas memorandum of December 1926, in which it offered to take a more li beral approach to treaty revision with China, represented not just a change in British policy towards the Chinese problem but a fundamental reappraisal of Britain’s attitude towards the region as a whole. As Shigemitsu put it, the choice facing Britain in the mid-1920s was that it could either:

. . . manage the China problem in co-operation with Japan as it had done in the Anglo-Japanese Alliance period or by establishing a new China policy it could defend itself from the new power of Kuomintang China and in East Asia change horses from Japan to China . . .4

The decision to adopt the Christmas memorandum was there- fore, as far as Shigemitsu was concerned, a conscious decision to favour China over Japan. Indeed, as the Japanese foreign minister, Shidehara Kijuro¯ , was at this point pursuing his own conciliatory line towards China, Shigemitsu argues that Austen’s policy brought Britain into direct competition with Japan. He does not, however, see Austen