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

234 • SOVIET–JAPANESE NEUTRALITY TREATY
required any reminders that the United States provided the principal
stumbling block to the southward advance, they got it when Washington
responded to the advance into northern Indochina by slapping a virtual
embargo on aviation gasoline, high-grade iron, and steel scrap.
Japan undertook no further advance to the south in the first half of
1941. In March the army and navy agreed that Japan should only
progress peacefully, unless the Japanese empire’s self-existence and
self-defense were at stake. When Adolf Hitler launched his assault
against the Soviet Union in late June, however, attentions in Tokyo
again turned to the southward advance. The navy was particularly vociferous.
By late July, Japanese troops had occupied all of Indochina.
Washington again responded, this time by freezing Japanese assets in
the United States, embargoing oil, and cutting off negotiations with
Japan’s ambassador, Kichisaburō Nomura. This placed the Japanese
navy in a desperate situation. Without oil, its battleships could not
move. It subsequently turned its attentions to securing the oil of the
Dutch East Indies, even at risk of war with the United States. For its
part, the army began pressing for a decision of war against the United
States and Britain. The navy was trapped in its own circuitous reasoning:
in order to prepare for war against the United States, it needed
to secure the oil of the Dutch East Indies, which, in turn, made war
against the United States inevitable. See also PEARL HARBOR.
SOVIET–JAPANESE NEUTRALITY TREATY (1941). The Soviet–
Japanese Neutrality Treaty was part of Foreign Minister Yōsuke Matsuoka’s
grand design for strengthening Japan’s hand at the negotiating
table with the United States. Upon his assumption of the foreign minister’s
post, Matsuoka negotiated the terms of the Japan–Germany–
Italy Tripartite Pact in September 1940. At that time, he explained to
his colleagues in Tokyo that the only course open to Japan in its dealings
with the United States was to maintain a “firm stand.” In short, he
sought to draw the Soviet Union into an expanded alliance network
that was aimed ultimately at cowing the United States into its isolationist
shell. This, in turn, he argued, would free Japan in its efforts
to establish its hegemony over the greater part of East Asia. It was
with such a diplomatic vision that Matsuoka departed for Europe in
March 1941.
After a brief stopover in Moscow, during which he bored Joseph
Stalin with his lectures on Japanese–Soviet compatibility, Matsuoka