The Racial Equality Issue and Konoe Fumimaro

The Racial Equality Issue and Konoe Fumimaro*
Jun’ichiro Shoji**

Abstract

Konoe Fumimaro served three times as Japanʼs prime minister in the crucial years
before World War II. At the end of World War I, as Japan was preparing to take partin the Paris Peace Conference at Versailles of 1919, Konoe Fumimaro published his
famous article titled “Eibei honʼi no heiwashugi o haisu [A Rejection of the AngloAmerican-Centered Peace Ideology].” In this article and his observations on postWWI Europe and the United States, he often praises U.S. President Woodrow
Wilson. Konoe clearly was fascinated by and attracted to the American President,
and felt a closeness and sympathy with his views. It seems that in some ways thetwo men had some things in common. The arguments and world views of both men
were extremely idealistic. But even Wilsonʼs ideals, in the world of 1919, where thelingering influence of the old regime remained strong, ultimately did not becomea reality at that time. Wilson died before he could complete his dream. Similarly,
Konoeʼs ideals stood no chance of being realized, given the changes of the times
and the development of Japanʼs militaristic foreign policy. For both Konoe andWilson, racial equality in 1919 was a distant ideal. Focusing on Konoe Fumimaro,
this article discusses the issues surrounding Japanʼs racial equality proposal of
1919.

T

oday I want to discuss some of my own views of the issues surrounding Japanʼs racialequality proposal of 1919 by focusing on one individual, Konoe Fumimaro.
As you are doubtlessly aware, Konoe served three times as Japanʼs prime minister inthe crucial years before World War II. He had a very close connection with Kyoto, thecity where we meet today. At Omuro in the north of this city is housed the Yōmei Bunko archive.
The site was originally one of the residences of the Konoe family and the present collection
dates to 1938, when Konoe Fumimaro built an archive there to store documents and other items
relating to the Fujiwara clan and Konoe family from throughout history to modern times. Today
the archive is an important resource for researchers.
I will draw on a number of quotations in my presentation. Most of these are drawn from thebook Saigo no gozen kaigi: Sengo Ōbei kenbunroku [The Last Imperial Conference: Memoirs of
Postwar Europe and America]. This was published four years ago in paperback by ChūōkōronShinsha, and is listed at the head of my list of sources at the end of this paper. The book is still*

This article is based on a presentation made by the author at the symposium “Commemorating theCentennial Anniversary of Japanʼs Racial Equality Proposal―Remaking the International Order after
the WWI―” held by JIIA on November 2, 2019.

** Junʼichiro Shoji serves as the Vice President of Academic Affairs at the National Institute for Defense
Studies in Tokyo where he has worked since 1986 and was the former Director of the Center for
Military History.

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Jun’ichiro Shojiavailable and I recommend it highly to anyone interested in learning more about the subject.

Introduction
At the end of World War I, as Japan was preparing to take part in the Paris Peace Conference at
Versailles of 1919, Konoe Fumimaro published his famous article titled “Eibei honʼi no heiwashugio haisu [A Rejection of the Anglo-American-Centered Peace Ideology].”
There has been a tendency to emphasize the radical aspects of this article and underline theways in which it marked a break from the status quo. This view is based on a focus on what came
next, on Japanʼs rush to war between Japan and China and the Tripartite Pact, both of which
Konoe worked on. Of course, this is indeed one aspect of the article. But I have always felt thatthe article is much more multi-faceted than this view allows.

1. Three Aspects

Letʼs begin, for example, by looking at the article in the context of the racial equality issue. The
essay contains the following passage: “Therefore, at the coming peace conference, if we are tojoin the League of Nations, issues that Japan must raise as priorities include, at the very least, theeradication of economic imperialism and nondiscriminatory treatment for the yellow and whiteraces.” Why did Konoe mention the scrapping of discrimination between the yellow and whiteraces as his second point? My analysis of the background to Konoeʼs writings at the time makesme think that three factors played a part.

1) The Universalist Aspect: Possibilities and Limitations
Probably the biggest factor was the universalist aspect. It goes without saying that Konoe was
influenced and inspired during his days as a university student by the humanitarian socialismof thinkers like Kawakami Hajime. This was an important influence on him from an early youngage, and meant that he saw the issue of racial discrimination from this humanitarian angle. For
example, he wrote: “This is a serious humanitarian issue that no person with a sense of justice
should overlook, whether he be Asiatic himself or not.” He also wrote: “Surely democracy andhumanitarianism essentially stem from a feeling that all human beings are equal. Within the
countr y, this means popular rights and freedom; internationally, it means appealing to equal
rights to life of all races and all peoples.”I use the term “universal” here because there is no suggestion here that Konoe is making
these claims to protect Japanʼs interests in particular. The target of his article is the arroganceand high-handedness of Great Britain and the other European powers. But he also has criticisms
for Japanʼs own continental policy, which has followed the example of the Western powers. He
writes critically of the policy, and describes it as one of aggressive invasion and militarism. The
creation of a new League of Nations, he says, will sweep away this old system and replace it withsomething new. But he warns that although the idea of a League of Nations is a good thing in
itself, it might easily be used as a tool to protect the selfish interests of Great Britain. To ensurethat this does not happen, Konoe sets his hopes on the emerging power of the United States, andparticularly its President, Woodrow Wilson.
At the risk of seeming to focus on a small detail of usage, I think it is interesting to notice theexact expression Konoe uses: he talks of an Ei-Bei (Anglo-American)-centered peace: not Bei-Ei(U.S.-British) or Ei-Futsu (Anglo-French). I think it is fair to assume that this was no accident andthat there was an intentional nuance behind this choice of phrasing.
The historical moment seemed to offer the possibility for spreading universal values in the
future. But at the same time, limitations remained due to circumstances of the times. What werethese limitations? In his speech outlining the Fourteen Points, President Wilson mentioned
national movements and the liberation of the colonialized around the world. Konoe felt that the21
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Presidentʼs speech had been touched by concern for these groups. Nevertheless, he writes: “Evenso, with the exception of the movement in Ireland, these independence movements are hardly
worth speaking of. In March last year, Koreans took opportunity of the riots, and joined in callswith the provisional government in Shanghai, talking passionately of independence inspired by
the image of the Freedom Bell in Philadelphia. But these passions soon waned and nothing more
was heard of them,” he writes.
In other words, essentially he is saying that the independence movement in Japanʼs colony of
Korea is hardly worthy of being taken seriously. Of course, this attitude could not be concealed
from the other side. In China, Chen Duxiu criticized not Konoeʼs article in particular but Japanʼs
proposals for racial equality by saying, “If we as Asiatics cannot break through the special
positions enjoyed by certain races in China, or the subordination in Korea, how can we hope
to demand equal treatment?” He argues, in other words, that without bringing down Japanesecontrol, the proposal amounts to little more than empty rhetoric. I think it is fair to say that
although there were universalist elements in Konoeʼs thinking on these matters, there werecertainly also limitations.

2) The Economic Aspect: Immigration
The second element is the economic aspect of immigration. However, as Professor Nakanishi
Hiroshi has shown in the paper cited in the reference materials, in 1919 the population issue was
not yet an especially critical issue for Japan. Even if this economic aspect was not particularly
strong, nevertheless I think we can consider it as one factor.

3) The Ethnic/National Aspect: Opposition to Racial and State Discrimination(State Prestige or “Face”)

The third is the question of the dignity or “face” of the state or nation. In particular, as Hashikawa
Bunzō wrote, Konoe “had a fierce pride in the nobility of Japan as the highest example within
the yellow peoples of Asia.” It is likely, as this remark suggests, that Konoe felt a keener sense ofanger at discrimination at the hands of whites than most other Japanese.
Eventually, Konoe became the only Japanese prime minister to take his own life. No doubt
there were several factors that led him to decide to kill himself, but I think certainly this musthave been one of them. He found himself arrested, imprisoned, and tried by the GHQ, by theUnited States, by white people, and he was quite simply unable to tolerate the disgrace of it―that is more or less what he wrote himself, and I think we should not ignore the racial or ethnonationalist aspects of this. Nevertheless, I believe that the universalist aspect was the mostimportant.
One thing that is perhaps surprising is the absence of any real evidence of Pan-Asianist
thought in his writing at this stage, given the importance this would have for Konoe at a laterstage. How to define Pan-Asianism is another matter. But if we define it as the idea of Japaneseand Chinese uniting as Asians to resist and oppose the West, then any arguments along theselines are almost totally missing from the article, and I think this is another of the characteristics
of his thinking at this stage.

2. Different Responses in Different Countries
1) Foreign Responses
Next, I would like to look at the various responses to the article in foreign countries, starting with
Millard’s Review, the English-language newspaper in Shanghai. The paper took a very criticalview, saying that Konoe had not only criticized Great Britain but also shown hints of sympathy
with Germanyʼs position, and that his skeptical attitude to the peace created by the allied powers
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Jun’ichiro Shoji

posed a problem for the conference.
Guy Morrison Walker, the well-known American legalist, read Konoeʼ s article and wasastonished by it, saying that it illustrated “Japanʼs duplicity.” What did he mean by this? Walker
criticized Japan calling for racial equality while approving of colonial rule and continuing to holdits own colonies. Both of these sources were extremely critical of Konoeʼs article.

2) Reunion with Sun Yat-sen in Shanghai
After writing the article Konoe met Sun Yat-sen again in Shanghai on his way to the Paris Peace
Conference at Versailles. He later remembered his conversation with Sun Yat-sen in the following
terms: “I spoke with Sun Yat-sen and our conversation touched on the national awakening ofpeoples in East and West, speaking with great passion and fervor, our conversation never waning
until late into the night.” This reference to national awakenings certainly gives the impressionthat the two men spoke of racial equality and Pan-Asianism. But other historical materials wehave suggest that in fact the two men mostly discussed their shared opposition to Great Britain.
They agreed that Great Britain represented imperialism, while the United States offered hope asa country of freedom and equality.
And this is an interesting point. Sun Yat-sen told Konoe that the global situation after theGreat War was one in which the weaker countries should exploit the gaps between Great Britain
and the United States and build a new world together with the United States. But, as Konoe
himself wrote later, this prediction of Sun Yat-senʼs did not come true. The reason was that the
Washington Naval Conference and the system that came into being after it brought the UnitedStates and Great Britain together. Konoe wrote that in fact no opportunity presented itself fortaking advantage of any gap between the two powers. In any case, racial equality was part of his
hope in the United States at the time and I think this was an area in which he and Sun Yat-sen
would have been in sympathy.
Later, the political scientist Matsumoto Sannosuke pointed out that Konoeʼs article wascharacterized by contrasting elements, partly driven by the idea of expanding the Japanese race
but at the same time motivation by anti-imperialism. For this reason, he writes that perhaps one
reason why Sun Yat-sen showed interest in Konoe was that he was drawn into Konoeʼs arguments,
which could not be dismissed as mere camouflage for the idea of Japanese racial expansion. They
also perhaps contained other possibilities. And this, I think, perhaps suggests something close
to what I have argued, namely that Konoeʼs arguments contained a universalist aspect, and that
there were two sides to this: possibilities and limitations.

3. The Paris Peace Conference and Konoe’s Memoirs of Postwar Europe andAmerica
1) Disappointment and Hopes for Wilsonian Idealism

Next, I would like to look at the Paris Peace Conference and Konoeʼs memoirs of postwar Europe
and America. Konoe took part in the conference himself. The pamphlet for this symposium had
the picture from the time on its cover. Konoe Fumimaro is shown in this picture to the left anddiagonallly above Saionji Kinmochi, in the center of the photograph. The racial equality proposal
failed to be approved, of course―something that Konoe described as “the most naked expressionof the principle of the rule by power.”
But that was not all. He also argued that it should be viewed positively, in some respects:“At least the principle of self-determination of nations espoused by President Wilson has been
the central animating spirit of the peace conference to some degree, and to the many weakercolonized nations who have suffered for many years under oppressive regimes, this has given
new hope and light.” He also wrote: “It would be premature to claim that the results of the
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The Racial Equality Issue and Konoe Fumimaro

Paris Peace Conference mark the destruction of idealism. We must not forget that we today arestill at a transitional stage in the development of international politics.” Even though the racialequality proposal had been defeated, he said, people should not give up, because this was just atransitional stage, and that the issue would be progress farther in the future in the next phase ofdevelopments.

2) Criticisms of Japan: Konoe’s October 1921 Speech titled “Kokusairen’mei noseishin ni tsuite [On the Spirit of the League of Nations]”

Earlier I referred to criticisms of Japan. Already at this time, Konoe was arguing that Japanʼs
policy of invasion and militarism since the Russo-Japanese War had led to its isolation on theworld stage. He said: “Those who looked with disapproval at the hit and grab conduct of ourmilitary clique in China and Siberia could not but feel grievous sadness and regret in the face of
these attacks.” In other words, at the same time as calling for racial equality, Konoe at this time
was ready to direct his criticism at Japan itself for its aggressions on the Asian mainland.

3) Strong Interest in Race Issues
Another aspect that is often remarked on with regard to Konoe in these years is the frequency of
his remarks about race issues. Here again I will quote from what he wrote: “There are perhaps
various reasons for this (U.S. exclusionary policies against Japan) but racial prejudice is surely
one of them.” He also raises the problem of the discriminatory treatment of black people in the
United States. In particular, after the Paris Peace Conference he stopped by the United States on
his way back to Japan, and writes that he sensed keenly how race prejudice became stronger as
he traveled from Paris to London and from London to New York. He specifically mentions theconcrete problem of discrimination against black people.
It is interesting that he writes here “the reasons for the exclusionary policies against Japan.”
What does it mean? At the time, public opinion in the United States was set tough against Japanfor its behavior over Shandong. Konoe gives several reasons for this, and one factor that hementions alongside racial prejudice is that of Chinese propaganda. There is a sense that his
understanding of China and Korea, and his awareness of the issues of racial prejudice, havesomehow become tangled and contradictory.
When the movement to exclude Japan from the United States was at its height, Konoe
suggested several reasons for it. One of them concerned the poor quality of Japanese students
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studying in the United States. This too was in 1919. He says that American society is shaped by
the educated classes, and that it is students who have the biggest impact on the intellectuals of acountry. If we consider this, he says, the current situation with Japanese students in the UnitedStates is really not satisfactory. What about the situation today? I think Japan is around eighth or
ninth in terms of the number of students it has studying in the United States. We are quite weak
both in terms of quality and quantity. Perhaps Konoeʼs observations still have pearls of wisdom tooffer us today.

4. Prelude to the Greater East Asia War: Changes from the 1930s
1) Emphasis on the Economy: From the Universalist Logic of the “Have-Not”
Countries to the Defense of Japan’s Continental Policy
Next, I want to look at what we might call the prelude to the Greater East Asia War: a period
in which the world shifted from a period of international cooperation in the 1920s, through theGreat Depression, into a period of economic nationalism leading up to the war. The world went ina direction other than the one Konoe had imagined, and his thinking and tone also changed overthis time.
What we described as the universalist aspect of his earlier discourse disappears in theseyears, and he begins to plead more strongly on behalf of Japanʼs position. He starts unashamedly
to argue that it is justified for Japan, as one of the have-nots, to encroach onto the continent. For
example, he says: “The annual addition of nearly a million people to our population means thatthe economic livelihoods of the people are placed under extreme pressure . . . since there is no
possibility that these two great principles can be made a reality in the near future, we have been
forced to chose expansion into Manchuria and Mongolia as our only path to surviving today.”
The two principles he refers to here are economic and trade freedom and freedom of
immigration. And this is something extremely interesting, I think. In his article “Eibei honʼi no
heiwashugi o haisu” which we looked at earlier, Konoe cited two principles: abolishing economic
imperialism and equal treatment with no discrimination between the yellow and white races.
The idea of abolishing economic imperialism is more or less the same as the idea of economic
and trade freedom. But the earlier idea of racial equality has changed, to become “freedom of
immigration.” And I think this is one place where we can see that the focus of Konoeʼs interest
has shifted. This demand for freedom of immigration is really being driven by Japanʼs economy,and from the sole perspective of finding a solution to Japanʼs population problem. I think probably
it is fair to say that by this stage the universalist aspects we saw earlier have disappeared.
As an extension of this, in 1937 he formed the first Konoe cabinet. At the time, the main
policies of the cabinet were to achieve “true peace based on international justice” and “truepeace that goes beyond simply maintaining the status quo.” What did this mean in concreteterms? It meant that the current world situation was extremely unfair in terms of the distributionof territory, and that it was necessary to correct this injustice. Specifically, it was necessary to
redistribute the colonies. But that was simply a fantasy. And so, as a second-best solution, Japan
would have to work to secure resources, to open up markets for Japanese manufactured goods,
and to make freedom of immigration and free movement of labor a reality. These policies were
central to the direction of the cabinet, and were basically essentially an extension of the two great
principles we have just seen.
The critic Kiyosawa Kiyoshi critiqued this policy direction, saying that although Konoe ʼsarguments made a certain amount of sense, it was questionable whether Japan had any right toforce other nations to suffer sacrifices simply so that Japan itself could prosper. Japan was a havenot country by comparison with world powers like Great Britain and the United States. But othercountries had even less than Japan. Kiyosawa argued that Japan apparently felt no compunction
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about exerting control over these weaker countries and taking from them what it could get. I
think it is fair to say that this critique sees through to the problems of Konoeʼs arguments, at leastfrom one angle.

2) The Rise of Pan-Asianism
Then, roughly a month later, war broke out between Japan and China. And just from around thistime Konoeʼs arguments in favor of Pan-Asianism start to become much stronger. Why? Because
ultimately the antagonisms between Japan and China will develop through war with China into
conflict with the West. And this will give rise to a conflict between the white race and the yellow
race of Japan. This means that a resolution has to be found somehow to the war with China. And
the appeal to Pan-Asian sentiment was used as a logical explanation toward that end.
In terms of the Pan-Asianism that emerged in the second half of the 1930s, therefore, I think itcannot be denied that at least in part it was something that emerged from the war with China, inthe context of Japan as one of the have-not countries. The culmination of this was the declarationof a “New Order in East Asia” in November 1938. It is no exaggeration to say that this declaration
lacked almost entirely any of the limitations previously seen with relation to Japan.

Conclusion: Significance and Limitations (Japan and the International Society)
Professor Nakanishi, who gave the keynote address today, pointed out in the conclusion to his
paper analyzing Konoeʼs arguments on racial equality that at the same time as aiming to deepen
Wilsonian universalism from the perspective of civilization, they also treated Japan as a special
case and was designed to suit Japanʼs own interests. Even if his arguments did have some justice,there was no way they could ever have become the foundations for a universal international order.
At least until the 1920s in particular, Konoeʼs arguments did have a certain level of universality
and reasonableness, but from the 1930s on, with the revolutionary changes and shifts of thetimes, his arguments lost that aspect of universality. And, as Professor Nakanishi indicated, hisarguments from this time on could only really be thought of in Japan-centric terms.
Professor Ōnuma Yasuaki, who passed away recently, wrote about the objective conditions
that prevailed when the treaty was signed at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. He says that
although Japan had become one of the “Big Five” member countries, among the colored racesof the world Japan was still the only one with any say or influence, and most regions of the world
were still controlled by racially prejudiced whites. And since Japan could not hope to pursue
universal values, it was ultimately forced back on its own national interest. Problems existed bothwith the state of international society and with Japanʼs own thinking, and as a result, the idea of
racial equality had only a slim chance of ever becoming a reality. It was a “distant ideal,” as he put
it.
Throughout Konoe ʼ s ar ticles on rejecting the Anglo-American-centered peace and his
obser vations on post-WWI Europe and the United States, he often praises U.S. President
Woodrow Wilson. Konoe clearly was fascinated by and attracted to the American President, andfelt a closeness and sympathy with his views, and it seems to me that in some ways in one aspect
the two men had some things in common. The arguments and world views of both men were
extremely idealistic. But even Wilsonʼs ideals, in the world of 1919, where the lingering influenceof the old regime remained strong, ultimately did not become a reality at that time.
Wilson died before he could complete his dream. Similarly, Konoeʼs ideals stood no chanceof being realized, given the changes of the times and the development of Japanʼs militaristic
foreign policy. For both Konoe and Wilson, racial equality in 1919 was a distant ideal. But with thepassage of time, I believe, the ideals that these two men espoused were eventually realized in theyears after World War II.

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References
・Konoe Fumimaro, Saigo no gozen kaigi: Sengo Ōbei kenbunroku. Konoe Fumimaro shuki
shūsei [The Last Imperial Conference: Memoirs of Postwar Europe and America] (Tokyo:
Chūōkōron-Shinsha, 2015).
・Nakanishi Hiroshi, “Konoe Fumimaro, ʻEibei honʼi no heiwashugi o haisuʼ ronbun no haikei[Background of Konoye Fumimaroʼs Article on Anti-Anglo-American Pacifism],” Hōgaku
Ronsō, Vol. 132, Nos. 4, 5, 6 (March 1993).
・Shōji Junʼichirō, “Konoe Fumimaro no tai-Beikan [Konoe Fumimaroʼs view on the UnitedStates],” in Hasegawa Yūichi, ed., Taishō-ki Nihon no Amerika-ninshiki [Perception toward theUnited States during the Taishō period] (Tokyo: Keiō Gijuku Daigaku Shuppankai, 2001).

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