Thomas Baty

Thomas Baty (8 February 1869 – 9 February 1954), also known by the name Irene Clyde, was an English writer, lawyer and expert on international law who spent much of her career working for the Imperial Japanese government. Baty was also an activist for feminism, opposing the concept of a gender binary, and has been described as non-binary, transgender, or as a trans woman, by several modern writers. In 1909, she published Beatrice the Sixteenth, a utopian science fiction novel, set in a postgender society. She also co-edited Urania, a privately circulated feminist gender studies journal, alongside Eva Gore-Booth, Esther Roper, Dorothy Cornish, and Jessey Wade.
Biography
Thomas Baty was born 8 February 1869, in Stanwix, Cumberland, England. Her father was a cabinet-maker, who died when Baty was 7. At school, she was a very gifted student and she was given a scholarship to study at The Queen's College, Oxford. She entered that establishment in 1888, and got her bachelor's degree in jurisprudence in 1892. In June 1901 she received the degree of LL.M. from Trinity College, Cambridge. She got her D.C.L. from Oxford in 1901 and his LL.D. from Cambridge in 1903. Her expertise was in the field of international law. She taught law at Nottingham, Oxford, London and Liverpool Universities. At that time, she became a prolific writer on international law.
In 1909, Baty published Beatrice the Sixteenth, under the name Irene Clyde. Set in Armeria, it describes a genderless land of people with feminine characteristics who form life partnerships together. In 1916, along with Esther Roper, Eva Gore-Booth, Dorothy Cornish, and Jessey Wade, Baty, again using the name Irene Clyde, founded Urania, a privately circulated journal which expressed her pioneering views on gender and sexuality, opposing the "insistent differentiation" of people into a binary of two genders. She also wrote under the name Theta.
Following the outbreak of the First World War, Baty took part in the establishment of the Grotius Society, established in London in 1915. As one of the original members of that society, Baty got to know Isaburo Yoshida, Second Secretary of the Japanese Embassy in London and an international law scholar from the graduate school of the Tokyo Imperial University. The Japanese government was at that time searching for a foreign legal adviser following the death of Henry Willard Denison, a US citizen who served in that position until his death in 1914. Baty applied for that position in February 1915. The Japanese government accepted her application, and he came to Tokyo in May 1916 to start work. In 1920, she was awarded the Order of the Sacred Treasure, third class, for service as a legal adviser. She renewed her working contracts with the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs several times, until in 1928 she became a permanent employee of that ministry. During her work for the Japanese government, Baty developed the notion that China was not worthy of recognition as a state under international law, a view that was later used to justify the Japanese invasion of China. In 1936, she was awarded the Order of the Sacred Treasure, second class.
In 1927, she was part of the Japanese delegation to the Geneva Naval Conference on disarmament. This was her only public appearance as legal adviser to the Japanese government, as the rest of her work involved mainly writing legal opinions. In 1932, following the Japanese invasion of North China and the formation of Manchukuo, Baty defended the Japanese position in the League of Nations and called to accept the new state to league membership. She also wrote legal opinions in defense of the Japanese invasion of China in 1937.
In 1934, as Irene Clyde, Baty published Eve's Sour Apples, a series of essays in which she attacked sex-based distinctions and marriage.
In July 1941, the Japanese government froze the assets of foreigners residing in Japan or any of its colonial possessions in retaliation for the same move against Japanese assets in the US, but Baty was exempt from this due to her service for the Japanese government. Baty decided to remain in Japan even following the outbreak of war between that country and the British Empire in December 1941. She rejected the efforts by the British Embassy to repatriate her, and kept working for the Japanese government even during the war. She defended the Japanese policy of conquest as a remedy to western colonialism in Asia. In late 1944, she questioned the legitimacy of the pro-Allied governments established following the end of the German occupation in Belgium and France.
Following the Japanese surrender in 1945, the British Ministry of Foreign Affairs was considering indicting Baty for treason, but the Central Liaison Office (a British government agency operating in Japan) provided an opinion stating that Baty's involvement with the Japanese government during the war was insignificant. In addition, some legal advisers within the British government shielded Baty from possible prosecution on the grounds that she was too old to stand trial. Instead, the British government decided to revoke Baty's British citizenship and leave her in Japan.
Baty died of a cerebral haemorrhage in Ichinomiya, Chiba, Japan, on 9 February 1954. The Emperor of Japan sent floral tributes, as did many of the people who knew Baty. Eulogies were delivered by Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida, Foreign Minister Katsuo Okazaki, Saburo Yamada (President of the Japanese Society of International Law) and Iyemasa Tokugawa (a former colleague). She was buried in Aoyama Cemetery, Tokyo, alongside her sister and mother.
Legal philosophy
Baty's legal philosophy evolved as she worked for the Japanese government and was designed to justify Japanese actions of encroaching upon the sovereignty of China. Her main argument was that the recognition of states must depend on one factor alone—effective control by the military and security forces of the government over the state's territory, and not on preconceived definitions of what the state should be. For that reason she opposed the procedure of according de facto recognition, claiming that only final and irrevocable recognition must be used, and accusing the western international community of hypocrisy in using the de facto recognition as a means to allow some transactions with governments of states unfriendly to them without making the definite commitment to accept them fully into the family of nations.
Personal life
Baty never married. Some evidence suggests that she was disillusioned with Victorian sexual norms and disgusted by the then accepted notions of male domination over women. She described herself as a radical feminist and a pacifist. Baty lived out the principles promoted by Urania which challenged the binary conception of gender, and for this reason is known to be non-binary, transgender, or a trans woman, specifically when discussed in connection with Urania.
An important person in her life was her sister Anne-Mary Baty, who went with her to Japan in 1916, and lived with her until Anne's death of paralysis at Nikko on January 22, 1945.
Baty was a strict vegetarian since the age of 19; she was later vice-president of the British Vegetarian Society. She was also a member of the Humanitarian League.
Works
Books
As Thomas Baty
International Law in South Africa (London: Stevens and Haynes, 1900)
International Law (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co.; London; John Murray, 1909)
Polarized Law (London: Stevens and Haynes, 1914)
(with John H. Morgan) War: Its Conduct and Legal Results (New York: E. P. Dutton and Co., 1915)
Vicarious Liability (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1916)
The Canons of International Law (London: John Murray, 1930)
Academic Colours (Tokyo: Kenkyusha Press, 1934)
International Law in Twilight (Tokyo: Maruzen Publishing Co., 1954)
Alone in Japan (Tokyo: Maruzen Publishing Co., 1959), memoirs
(ed. Julian Franklyn) Vital Heraldry (Edinburgh: The Armorial Register, 1962)
As Irene Clyde
Beatrice the Sixteenth (London: George Bell & Sons, 1909; New York: Macmillan, 1909)
Eve's Sour Apples (London: Eric Partridge at the Scholartis Press, 1934)
Articles
"Can an Anarchy be a State?" American Journal of International Law, Vol. 28, No. 3 (Jul., 1934), pp. 444–455
"Abuse of Terms: 'Recognition': 'War'" American Journal of International Law, Vol. 30, No. 3 (Jul., 1936), pp. 377–399 (advocating the recognition of Manchukuo)
"The 'Private International Law' of Japan" Monumenta Nipponica, Vol. 2, No. 2 (Jul., 1939), pp. 386–408
"The Literary Introduction of Japan to Europe" Monumenta Nipponica, Vol. 7, No. 1/2 (1951), pp. 24–39, Vol. 8, No. 1/2 (1952), pp. 15–46, Vol. 9, No. 1/2 (1953), pp. 62–82 and Vol. 10, No. 1/2 (1954), pp. 65–80
References
Further reading
External links
1869 births
1954 deaths
19th-century English writers
20th-century English writers
Alumni of The Queen's College, Oxford
Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge
British vegetarianism activists
Burials in Japan
Denaturalized citizens of the United Kingdom
English barristers
English expatriates in Japan
English feminist writers
English pacifists
English science fiction writers
International law scholars
English non-binary people
English transgender writers
British non-binary writers
Organization founders
People associated with the Vegetarian Society
People from Cumberland
Pseudonymous writers
Radical feminists
Recipients of the Order of the Sacred Treasure, 2nd class
Recipients of the Order of the Sacred Treasure, 3rd class
Transgender academics
English LGBT lawyers
Transgender non-binary people
Transgender rights activists
Asexual non-binary people
20th-century British lawyers
20th-century English LGBT people