Shigemitsu and Togo and their time

Originally published in the Japanese language as "Shigemitsu Togo to sono jidai" by "PHP Institute" in "2003".

Table of contents

Ch. 1. Recognition of Manchukuo - Speedy Seizure of Manchuria
ch. 2. Withdrawal from the League of Nations and Establishment of Manchukuo - State Socialism and Harmony of Five Races in Manchuria
ch. 3. Last Days of Peace - After the Manchurian Incident, an Opportunity to Improve Sino-Japanese Relations
ch. 4. The February 26 Incident - Drastic Change of Current in Japan in 1935-36
ch. 5. The Looming Shadow of War - Drastic Changes in Asia and Europe, 1935 and 1936
ch. 6. Marco Polo Bridge Incident - China Getting Ready to Fight Back Against Japan
ch. 7. Siege of Nanjing - Diplomatic Efforts to Settle the Issue Continue in Earnest
ch. 8. Into the Quagmire - Strong Support for Government's Hardliner Policy
ch. 9. The Tripartite Pact Signed - Some Reject It to the End
ch. 10. Self-Destructive Matsuoka Diplomacy - Shin Taisei Undo Is Widely Supported
ch. 11. Prologue to Attack on Pearl Harbor – Hull Note Precludes Opposition to War
ch. 12. Six Months of Phenomenal Glory – Reminiscent of the Glorious Russo-Japanese War in Asia
ch. 13. The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere – Conference Convened to Realize an Independent Aisa
ch. 14. Lessons from the Defeat – What Could Have Saved Japan from Catastrophe
ch. 15. The Epic of the Fall of an Empire – Japanese Warriors Proved Their Worth on Iwo Jiam
ch. 16. This War Must End – Fifty Years of Glory Perish Like a Bubble.

The Kwangtung Army's invasion of Manchuria in 1931 was a clear demonstration of the military's independence and the Japanese foreign policy establishment's impotence and irrelevance. For the next 14 years, diplomats and others who sought to avert war on the Asian mainland and with the Western powers saw their efforts sidelined and undercut. Such is not, however, to imply such toilers-in-the-dark did not exist. They did, and this ambitious history chronicles that difficult time focusing on the lives of Shigemitsu Mamoru and Tōgō Shigenori. A career diplomat who brokered a ceasefire between the Imperial Japanese Army and the Chinese Kuomintang Army in 1932 and then a settlement of the Russo-Japanese border at Changkufeng Hill in 1938, Shigemitsu was aghast at the 1940 tripartite Pact (among Japan, Germany, and Italy) and its implications for Japan's relations with the UK and the US. Despite - or perhaps because of - his opposition to the militarists' policies, he was appointed Foreign Minister midway through the Pacific War, and it was in that capacity that he was caught up in the charade of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. Much of Shigemitsu's work was complemented by Tōgō's, including efforts to better relations with the Soviet Union. Marginalized though he was, Tōgō had the distinction of being Foreign Minister both at the outbreak and at the end of the Pacific War, albeit with a long hiatus in the middle, and it was this distinction that brought him to the International Tribunal's attention. Belying the standard image of a hundred million hearts beating as one, Japan had many distinguished figures who remained true to their principles even as they served the state during the long war years. This is thus both a history of personal turmoil and an insightful window on the Japan of that era.