[Book Review] Japan and the league of nations: Empire and the world order, 1914-38

Abstract

Burkman, well-known scholar in Japanese inter-war diplomatic history, rightly points out that Japan's relationship with the League of Nations had long been remembered for its confrontations with that body, primarily ‘the 1919 debates over racial equality and Shandong’ and ‘the 1931–33 League challenge to the Japanese seizure of Manchuria’ (xi). The Japanese government formally communicated its withdrawal from the League on 27 March 1933, which came into effect two years later. Against this reading, his Japan and the League of Nations first aims to present ‘a full picture’ of Japan's relationship with the League, one that has a ‘legitimate place in Japanese international history in the 1920s and the 1930s’ (xi). It secondly questions the long unchallenged presumption that ‘the League of Nations was a subordinate factor in Japanese foreign policy’ (xii–xiii), and thirdly highlights a stream of Japanese inter-war internationalism which came to be revived in the post-war years (xi–xii). Show more