Title: Defending the empire
Description: This dissertation traces the development of Japan's relations with the world by examining the experience of Foreign Minister Uchida Yasuya. The history of prewar Japanese foreign affairs is commonly thought to span four periods, each of which is characterized by dramatically different goals and policy. After "opening up" in the mid-19 th century, Japan first sought to revise the unequal treaties imposed by the Western powers in the period between 1858-1894. Once accomplished, Japan then spent the next decade transforming itself into an imperial power. Following World War I, Japan ostensibly shifted away from imperialism and, like many nations worldwide, pursued policies guided by Wilsonian Internationalism. Finally, militarism came to dominate Japanese diplomacy in the 1930s which ultimately brought the nation to ruin in the Pacific War. Uchida played an important role in each of the major trends listed above. Unlike most scholarly works, which focus on diplomacy in short intervals, my research encompasses Japanese international relations from the 1880s until the 1930s. Since earlier studies are limited by their focus on actors or policies that are not present across decades, scholars often attribute policy shifts to the appearance or emergence of new actors on the policy-making scene.

In a novel approach to explaining the shift to militarism, my research suggests that Japan's foreign policies during the prewar era are strikingly continuous, where the militarism of the early Showa era (1926-1989) was directly tied to the imperialism of the Meiji era (1868-1912). I argue that Uchida's policies did not blaze the trail for military aggression, as most scholars claim, but rather were devised to secure the Japanese empire. Uchida's case suggests that the early 1930s represented the fulfillment of the long-term goals of Japan's traditional diplomacy outlined 25 years earlier: secure interests in Manchuria and cooperative relations with the powers. The irony is that these policies were later co-opted by expansionist elements within Japan to justify a war that ultimately ended in the destruction of the very empire Uchida was attempting to defend.