== French overtures to Japan, 1883-5 == 
 Hi , 

 Thanks for that interesting stuff you have dug out on French attempts to cosy up to Japan against China before and during the Sino-French War.  I'm going to search Albert Billot's L'affaire du Tonkin, the standard French diplomatic history of the Sino-French War, to see if he can add anything to your research. 

 What I would like to do eventually is merge your new section into the existing section 'China's fear of Japan', and probably cut it down a bit.  At the end of the day, France and Japan did not become allies, and I think it unbalances the main article to devote so much space to something that never happened.  On the other hand, I've long been wanting to create a new article, Diplomacy of the Sino-French War, and that would be the natural home for a discussion of French overtures to Japan.  I'll try to get round to it before long. 

 I'll get back to you after I've seen what Billot has to say on the subject. 

    

 P.S.  Nice photo you uploaded of French soldiers in Tonkin in 1888. 

 P.P.S Can you spare a couple of minutes to do me another 'dioceses' template, 'Dioceses of the Syrian Orthodox Church'?  Just change the title from the present 'Dioceses of the Church of the East template and scrap the illustrations, and I'll do the rest.  I know how to edit existing templates but I haven't yet worked out how to create new ones.