Sailor Diplomat: Nomura Kichisaburo and the Japanese-American War,by Peter Mauch. (Harvard 2011)
Reviewed by Norman Hu.
Seven decades after the attack on Pearl Harbor, interest in the events leading up
to the outbreak of war between Japan and the United States remains high, as
does fascination with the negotiations which failed to bring about a lasting peace.
While the roles of those in the United States—from the president and thesecretary of state to lower-ranked officials in the State Department—have been
extensively examined, the same cannot be said for the other side, with fewer
works in English devoted to examining the part played by Japanese in those prewar talks. Peter Mauch has produced the first biography in English highlighting
the role of Nomura Kichisaburo, Japan’s ambassador to Washington in 1941.
Mauch draws together various strands of Nomura’s life: his decorated naval
career; his practical training in key postings throughout Europe, Asia, and North
America; and his apprenticeship of sorts under prominent Japaneseinternationalists who advocated cooperation with other nations. The author
develops the central argument that these factors, in particular his navalbackground, come together to inform his role as ambassador, and the book is awelcome addition to the literature.
In the first three of ten chapters, Mauch traces Nomura’s beginnings from that ofa young cadet at the Etajima naval academy, where he graduated second in hisclass. These outstanding results marked him out for recognition, taking him
during his early career regularly to the United States. He first went as amidshipman in 1899, visiting ports of call on the West Coast and Alaska. In 1908
he was assigned to the Japanese embassy in Austria, and his tour of duty inEurope took him to the Lowlands, Britain, France, the Balkans, and Germany. He
then further rounded out his credentials as a gunboat diplomat in China (1911),and a naval bureaucrat in Tokyo (1912), but eventually returned to the U.S. witha promotion to attaché at the Japanese embassy in Washington (1914). There,
he produced intelligence reports throughout the war years, and returned home as
one of Japan’s leading experts on the U.S.
Politically, Nomura gravitated towards the cause of naval arms limitation throughinternational consent, serving under men such as Kato Tomosaburo for whom heworked as an adjutant at the Paris Peace Conference (1919) and the Washington
Conference (1921-1922). As Mauch argues in chapter four, Nomura came tobelieve that naval limitation by international treaty was in the best interests ofJapan’s national security, not a restraint on Japan as critics maintained, butrather a curb on the U.S. with whom it was recognized Japan could not compete
economically. The Washington Conference established a 5:5:3 ratio limiting
capital ship building for the U.S., Britain, and Japan, respectively. Nomura
returned to the United States in 1929, commanding a training squadron tour ofthat country; he was warmly welcomed at major naval installations across theU.S., and was even invited to dine at the White House with the president.
In chapter five, Mauch examines the years shortly following Nomura’s retirement.
Those in the so-called fleet faction who championed a greater naval ratio forJapan—at first calling for 70 percent that of the United States, but later
demanding parity—came to sideline people like Nomura who supported fleet
limitation. In 1937, Nomura was retired from the active duty list to become
headmaster of the Peers School where the crown prince was to study. He thenaccepted the post of foreign minister in 1939, ostensibly to sort out U.S.-Japan
relations at a time when Washington announced its wish to terminate theirbilateral commercial treaty in protest against Japan’s “new order in East Asia.”
Nomura was tipped for the post in view of his cordial ties with prominent leadersin Washington over the years; indeed, U.S. Ambassador Joseph Grew filed
glowing reports. However, Nomura’s tenure at the ministry was marred by bitterdisagreements and internal opposition, including an uproar over an Army attempt
to wrest the trade portfolio from career diplomats. Failure to reconcile Japan’sNew East Asian Order with American insistence on the open door policy being
applied to all parts of China, culminated in the expiration of the commercial treaty
and signaled the collapse of Nomura’s ministry. The cabinet fell in January 1940
after a mere five months.
The remaining five chapters of Mauch’s book deal largely with Nomura’s role asambassador to the United States in 1941: the events leading up to hisappointment; the thorny negotiations in Washington; and the subsequent failureof his mission. Mauch loosely follows the outline of Nomura’s career found in
Kiba Kosuke’s biography of Nomura, published in Japan in 1961. Kiba’s epic
study (almost 900 pages) benefited from personal interviews with Nomura, andextensive access to his private materials. This essential reference also provided
the structural framework for two other Nomura biographies, published in Japan in
the 1990s, neither of which has been referenced by Mauch. These are Oshio
Hisashi’s “Regrets of Ambassador Nomura” [Chu-Bei taishi Nomura Kichisaburo
no munen] published in 1994; and Toyoda Jo’s “Ill-fated Ambassador” [Hi-un notaishi] published in 1995. These two books rely more heavily on first handaccounts of the talks by those on the Japanese negotiating side. These include
people such as Sanematsu Yuzuru, one of Nomura’s naval attachés, andFrederick Moore, special advisor to the Japanese embassy. Unlike Mauch bothOshio and Toyoda, as the titles of their books suggest, tend to emphasize thebleak outcome of Nomura’s mission.
Foreign Minister Matsuoka Yosuke is usually credited with persuading a reluctant
Nomura to take up the crucial posting to Washington. In contrast, Mauch stresses
the central role played by Nomura’s naval background; he relates instead how
Nomura felt he had the backing of important naval elements for his conciliatory
position towards the U.S., which in turn led him to believe he could all but ignore
Matsuoka, and be more than a mere “messenger boy.” In hindsight though,p2/6

Nomura later conceded in Kiba’s 1961 biography that his navy colleagues may
have set him up for a fall; he had been warned, even before leaving for
Washington, to be wary lest those words of support amounted to nothing, andthat “the ladder could be yanked away” by those same naval elements. This
reviewer believes Nomura’s awareness that support from the navy wasn’t
unconditional diminishes, or at least somewhat tempers, Mauch’s maincontention that Nomura was acting as a “sailor diplomat” with the tacit approval of
the Japanese navy.
With the political stakes in 1941 so high, it is hard to know whether anyone could
have successfully carried out the mission Nomura was given to resolve
outstanding trade issues and obtain a peaceful settlement with the Americans.
Mauch claims that Nomura was a “hard-nosed realist” who was straitjacketed by
the harsh and conflicting circumstances of his diplomatic position. This portrayal
is in stark contrast to the typical figure cut by Nomura in the established literature
as a practitioner of “amateurish diplomacy” (shiroto no gaiko). One of the mostenduring images of the prewar talks is that of an irate American secretary of stateberating Nomura and fellow ambassador Kurusu Saburo on the day of the Pearl
Harbor attack after hostilities had commenced. Secretary Cordell Hull accusedthem of “infamous falsehoods and distortions,” and later deplored the “ineptitude”
with which Nomura had handled their talks (Hull, 1948). This “enduring image”
may partially account for why many historians remember Nomura as incompetentor duplicitous, and disregard or disparage his genuine efforts to normalize
relations.
There are other factors which contribute to poor perceptions of Nomura, not leastof which are textual problems with the paper record of the talks. Confidential
cable intercepts, known as MAGIC, provided the Allies with a covert view of
diplomatic mail between Ambassador Nomura and his bosses in Tokyo, often
before the intended recipients had a chance to read them. Ever since theseintercepts came to light at congressional hearings into the Pearl Harbor attack,they have been used frequently in scholarly treatments of the negotiations
between Hull and Nomura. Technically though, they are littered with transcription
errors and glaring mistranslations. There are frequent omissions and garbled
phrases, poorly worded or misleading expressions, and even occasional
gibberish. The intercepts are generally translated with a tone of suspicion,making any statement prepared in the context of a confidential report from anambassador to his home government sound somehow nefarious.
As an antidote to this distortion, Mauch makes judicious use of original Japanesetranscripts of the diplomatic cables in question, which were gathered together
from intact documents retained by ministry and military sources in Tokyo, andpublished by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1991 [Nihon Gaiko Bunsho: NichiBei Kosho, 1941]. However, this set of documents is not without its own problems,and sometimes does not take into account confusing and independent steps
taken by Nomura and his staff in the field. On occasion, Nomura took matters intop3/6

his own hands by rewriting or rearranging passages, and omitting whole phrases
or documents, without the knowledge of Tokyo. The official record, as released in
1991, sometimes does not match the documents Nomura published himself in
1946, to accompany his memoirs of the talks. A less than meticulous reading of
Nichi-Bei Kosho, 1941 would fail to uncover these discrepancies, and may skew
the interpretation of events that unfolded in Nomura’s name.
Mauch, however, is not swayed by accusations of Nomura’s incompetence, andinstead emphasizes his role in warning Tokyo “against their complacent and illfounded assumptions concerning the issue of war and peace with the UnitedStates.” How much credence was given in Tokyo to Nomura’s reasoned counseland careful analysis? Not much at all, if the unfolding advance through SoutheastAsia despite Nomura’s consistent warnings is any indication. Nomura warned
frequently that any military moves there would be construed as a threat to British
interests, which in turn were inextricably linked to American interests. Was
Nomura merely sending his “hard-nosed” messages into the void? It is definitely
a curse to have the gift of prophecy when, like Cassandra from Greek mythology,
your predictions and warnings in the face of disaster are ignored.
Conflicting views of Nomura’s performance are to be expected, given the delicate
nature of this mission and his “failure” to produce a satisfactory agreement. The
battle to characterize Nomura’s role or legacy has been fought periodically. Somehistorians like Hosoya Chihiro contend that he was a “poor communicator” whoignored instructions from the Foreign Ministry in Tokyo, failed to deliver importantmessages, and willfully distorted others. Nomura presented personal proposals
to Hull “without any instructions from Tokyo,” and made (qualified) promises tothe Americans for the withdrawal of Japanese troops from China, assurancesthat exceeded his authority and which no seasoned diplomat would have made(Hosoya, 1973). On the other hand, others like Hillary Conroy suggest that
Nomura’s optimism and ambiguity, rather than signs of ineptitude or stupidity,
may have been “purposefully used to expand opportunities for averting
hostilities.” Did he deliberately withhold contentious documents from theAmericans because, if presented as ordered, they might have scuttled the“conversations”? Did he see himself as more than a mere “transmitter ofdocuments,” with tacit approval to pursue alternative courses of action (Conroy,1974)?
Others have taken a more critical view of Nomura’s efforts than even that ofHosoya Chihiro, outlined above. While the American public remained largely
unified against any involvement in “foreign wars,” some historians such as
Seishiro Sugihara believe Roosevelt and Hull were poised to manipulate potential
confrontations with Japan as a back door to American participation in the war inEurope. Sugihara questions the Roosevelt administration’s sincerity in trying toavoid conflict with Japan, and believes Nomura was merely their cat’s-paw in anoverall push to ensure the U.S. had a “clean record” in the event of any war. By
failing to anticipate these and other strategies on the American side, as well as

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being completely unaware that MAGIC was eavesdropping on their every move,
the Japanese Foreign Ministry and its ambassador in Washington demonstrated
an exceptional level of incompetence and inanity [gumai], and were surely, as
much as their American counterparts, directly culpable for the failure of
diplomatic efforts in the period preceding Pearl Harbor (Sugihara, 1995, 1997).
Mauch makes no mention of these strategic errors by Nomura, or indeed errorsof any significance, and glosses over Nomura’s numerous mistakes.
It would be instructive to compare Nomura’s experience with those of otherJapanese diplomats who felt similarly conflicted. Did they too take matters into
their own hands, and ignore direct orders, twist official policy for greater
humanitarian goals, and finesse instructions to bring about a kinder, morerational result? Sugihara Chiune, Japan’s vice consul in Lithuania, springs tomind for the thousands of visas he issued, counter to official Japanese policy, toJews fleeing Nazi persecution. It would also be useful to look at diplomats on theAllied side who, like Nomura, feared the headlong rush to war between the U.S.
and Japan, but whose counsel to their home governments was similarly ignored.
It could be said that people like Joseph Grew were also powerless to dissuade
their government(s) from taking a hard line against a potential adversary.
It is clear the author agrees more with Conroy’s characterization of Nomura as apragmatist. Mauch begrudgingly acknowledges in his epilogue Nomura’s “litanyof errors,” but it seems to this reviewer that his distaste for spending more time
carefully considering or even debunking the “litany” does Nomura no favors. IfNomura was a lone voice in the wilderness, why not state this directly as an actof bravery in a time of conformism and the lunge towards oblivion? Why not
spend more than a few scant paragraphs in the epilogue to list, and then set
aside, these errors? More might have been made of the tragic nature of a figure
who saw all too clearly the bankrupt path his country was headed down, but whowas powerless to influence successive cabinets in Tokyo which tookprogressively more expansionist measures. Did Nomura allow his view of theworld as a naval man, or his niche role as the “friendly Japanese” in an insider’s
Washington, or even his genuine desire for Japanese cooperation with othercountries, to interfere with his responsibilities towards his own country andgovernment? Mauch could have done more to examine these failings, which inessence defined Nomura’s tenure as ambassador.
------------------------------------------1946, Nomura, Kichisaburo, Beikoku ni Tsukaishite. (Iwanami Shoten.)
1948, Hull, Cordell, Memoirs. (Macmillan.)1961, Kiba, Kosuke, Nomura Kichisaburo. (Nomura Kichisaburo DenkiKankokai.)1973, Hosoya, Chihiro, in Borg & Okamoto, Pearl Harbor as History. (Columbia.)
1974, Conroy, Hillary, in Burns & Bennet, Diplomats in Crisis. (Oxford.)
1991, Japan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Nihon Gaiko Bunsho: Nichi-Bei Kosho
1941.

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1994, Oshio, Hisashi, Chu-Bei taishi Nomura Kichisaburo no munen.
(Kodansha.)
1995, Toyoda, Jo, Hi-un no taishi. (Nihon Keizai Shimbunsha.)
1995, Sugihara, Seishiro, Japanese Perspectives on Pearl Harbor (AsianResearch Service)
1997, Sugihara, Seishiro, Between Incompetence and Culpability (UniversityPress of America)------------------------------------------Norman Hu is a freelance translator who received his M.A. from The George
Washington University, specializing in East Asian politics and history. He hastranslated works by Seishiro Sugihara including Between Incompetence andCulpability: Assessing the Diplomacy of Japan’s Foreign Ministry from PearlHarbor to Potsdam (UPA, 1997) and Chiune Sugihara and Japan’s Foreign
Ministry: Between Incompetence and Culpability Part 2 (UPA 2001).

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