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

in China were being threatened by their ally, repeatedly urged Japan to
drop the more onerous of its demands. Japan did so, and eventually gained
China’s begrudging acceptance. The damage to U.S.–Japanese relations,
however, was palpable. Japan’s renewed commitment to the Open Door
principle in 1917 by means of the Lansing–Ishii Agreement did little to assuage
American distrust of Japanese motives. Nor did joint U.S.–Japanese
participation in the Siberian Intervention bring a halt to the two nations’increasingly
acrimonious relations.
The antagonism was brought into full relief at the Paris Peace Conference
of 1919. Here, Wilson launched a concerted assault on the imperialist
practices that had led inexorably to a world war, and championed instead
a new diplomacy whose defining characteristics were the spread of
democracy and the encouragement of free trade throughout the world; the
destruction of German militarism; and great power cooperation within a
League of Nations. The Japanese delegation remained entirely out of step
with Wilson’s “new diplomacy.” It saw its most important task at the peace
conference as the retention of all German rights and concessions on
China’s Shantung peninsula, and threatened to walk out if these demands
were not met. Wilson capitulated. He did refuse, however, to insert a racial
equality clause in the League of Nations charter. Furthermore, despite the
hopes for disarmament that statesmen—including Wilson—expressed
both during the war and in its aftermath, Japan, the United States, and
Great Britain found themselves embroiled in the immediate postwar era in
a costly and dangerous naval arms race.
JAPAN, THE UNITED STATES, AND
THE WASHINGTON SYSTEM, 1921–1930
INTRODUCTION • 15
The Washington Conference of November 1921–February 1922 marked
a significant turning point in U.S.–Japanese relations. Delegates to the
conference were inspired by a spirit of compromise and goodwill. Various
treaties and agreements were concluded, the most important of
which were the Five Power Treaty and the Nine Power Treaty. The former
halted the naval arms race in the Pacific by setting a ratio of 5:5:3
in capital ship strength for the United States, Great Britain, and Japan
(and a lesser ratio for France and Italy), while the latter gave solemn
treaty form to the traditional American policy of the Open Door.