Historical Dictionary of United States-Japan ... - Bakumatsu Films

160 • KUMAMOTO BAND
The proposal came against an inauspicious backdrop. Japan remained
embroiled in its war with China. By means of the Japan–
Germany–Italy Tripartite Pact, it had allied itself to Washington’s
quasi-enemy. It had moreover undertaken an advance into the colonial
regions of Southeast Asia. For its part, Washington had adopted
increasingly stringent countermeasures, culminating in its freezing of
Japanese assets and embargoing oil in late July–early August 1941.
Japanese army and navy policymakers began eyeing the oil-rich
Dutch East Indies to make up for this loss, all the while threatening
that a forceful occupation of the colony meant war with the United
States.
Konoe and Foreign Minister Teijiro Toyoda hoped by means of the
summit meeting to halt the slide toward war. In short, they wanted to
have both the embargo on oil lifted and Japanese assets in the United
States unfrozen. It stood to reason, however, that if the United States
were to do so, it would first require Japan to undo the action that had
prompted these economic sanctions in the first place. In other words,
Washington required a firm guarantee that Japanese troops would
withdraw from the Indochinese peninsula. Although there is room for
speculation as to whether Konoe would have offered Indochinese
withdrawal had the summit meeting taken place—where he would
have been free of the overbearing arguments of the army and navy—
the fact remains that neither he nor Toyoda were able to meet this basic
requirement prior to the proposed conference. In light of this failure,
it is hardly surprising that the U.S. government reacted for the
most part negatively to this proposal.
KUMAMOTO BAND. See LEROY LANSING JANES.
KUME, KUNITAKE (1838–1931). A samurai from Saga province,
Kume became a writer and scholar of the Meiji and Taisho eras. Appointed
as the official secretary of the Iwakura Mission, Kume
wrote and published the official, five-volume report of the Iwakura
Mission in 1878. He spent most of the rest of his career as a history
professor and writer at Kyoto University and Waseda University.
KURIYAMA, TAKAKAZU (1931– ). Takakazu Kuriyama joined the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1954. He was promoted to director of the