23 Japan and Racial Equality
I
n 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.”705 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.706 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