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| Publications [#340634] of Simon Partner
Papers Published
- Partner, S, Japan’s global peace moment,
Japan Forum, vol. 30 no. 4
(October, 2018),
pp. 543-563, Informa UK Limited [doi]
(last updated on 2024/04/23)
Abstract:
This article examines the organization and activities of the Dai Nippon Heiwa Kyōkai (Japan Peace Society, founded in 1906), a group that was loosely affiliated with peace societies in Britain, the US, and other countries, as well as with the International Peace Bureau in Berne. The paper examines Japanese initiatives in the context of the global campaign to identify and implement strategies for the peaceful resolution of international disputes, in the global ‘peace moment’ of the early 1900s. The paper describes the activities of the Dai Nippon Heiwa Kyōkai and reviews its successes, but also analyzes some of the complexities and contradictions inherent in the movement. Foremost among these was the propensity of Japanese peace activists to focus on dispute resolution with the European and American powers, while ignoring or condoning Japanese militarist imperialism on the Asian mainland. While some were motivated by pacifist ideals, the senior members of the society–many of whom were members of Japan’s political elite–tended to see peace activism as an extension of Japan’s cooperative diplomacy, seeking practical solutions (including military aggression) that ensured Japan’s continued status as one of the world’s great powers. Their vision of cooperative governance within a global imperial system was, however, severely undermined by Euro-American racist discourses. The strength of anti-Japanese sentiment–as reflected in American exclusion laws and global discourses of a ‘yellow peril’–ultimately swung many peace activists into the camp of outright imperialist militarism. However, from the threads of Japanese peace activism in the 1910s emerged a vision of global governance that helped establish the framework for Japan’s participation in the League of Nations, and in the multilateral peace-keeping institutions of the post-Second World War era.
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