Paris 1919 - Margaret Macmillan [200]
Sonnino, whose stubbornness had threatened to destroy the Paris Peace Conference, never replied to his critics and never spoke publicly again in Italy. He died at the end of 1922; his only request to the state he had served for so long was to be buried in a sarcophagus cemented into a cliff below his beloved house on the coast of Tuscany.71 Orlando outlived almost everyone and went on to play a part in the overthrow of the fascists in 1944. He died, a revered senator, in the democratic Italy of 1952.
23
Japan and Racial Equality
IN THE SPRING OF 1919, the French press was temporarily distracted from the Italian crisis by an intriguing question. Was Prince Kimmochi Saionji, the distinguished statesman at the head of the Japanese delegation, in Paris at all? He had scarcely been seen and it was rumored that he was seriously ill or had even gone back to Japan. Stephen Bonsal, House’s ubiquitous eyes and ears, argued that this was typical Oriental behavior, that the prince preferred to stay in seclusion and “pull the wires that made the manikins dance.”1
Westerners dealing with Japan tended to fall back on stereotypes about the mysterious East. So much about Japan was curious, including its status in the world. Was it a major power or not? And was it entitled to have the same number of delegates as the other Great Powers? There were arguments both ways. Japan was very new on the world scene and until 1914 had confined its attentions to nearby East Asia. Even though it had declared war on Germany, it had not made a major effort on the Allied side. On the other hand, it did have one of the world’s three or four biggest navies (depending on whether the German one was counted), an impressive army and a very favorable balance of trade. In the view of Borden, the Canadian prime minister, there were “only three major powers left in the world: the United States, Britain and Japan.” When the League of Nations finally came into existence, Japan had the dubious honor of being ranked fifth in terms of contributions expected.2
The Great Powers simply could not be consistent. At the insistence of Britain, Japan’s ally, they gave Japan five delegates to the Peace Conference, just like themselves, but in the Supreme Council the Japanese were generally ignored or treated as something of a joke. “To think,” said Clemenceau in an audible aside to his foreign minister during one meeting, “that there are blonde women in the world; and we stay closed up here with these Japanese, who are so ugly.”3 When it was decided to expedite business by setting up the Council of Four, Japan was not included. The excuse given, and it was just that, was that the Japanese delegation, unlike those of the other Great Powers, was not headed by a prime minister or president.
The Japanese delegation was like Prince Saionji—distinguished but retiring. Although the fashionable Hôtel Bristol was filled with experts covering everything from naval to labor questions, the Japanese representatives on the various bodies of the conference played, as one British commentator put it, “mainly a watching part.” It did not help that many spoke only rudimentary English or French. When, on one committee, the chairman asked the Japanese member whether he voted aye or nay, “Yes” came the reply. In any case, Japan was like Italy; it had certain goals in Paris, but not much interest in anything else. “They were the one-price traders of the Conference,” wrote Wilson’s press officer, Baker; “they possess the genius—perhaps the oriental genius—of knowing how to wait.”4
The most public figures in the Japanese delegation were two experienced diplomats, Baron Nobuaki Makino, who had been foreign minister, and Viscount Sutemi Chinda, who was ambassador