Canada's relations with Japan, 1931-1941
Date
1986
Authors
Harwood, Bruce John
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Abstract
Between 1931 and 1941 Canada's response to Japan's activities in East Asia was largely a passive one. With one exception, the traditional bilateral questions of trade and immigration were no longer serious issues. The principle in forming Canada's policies towards Japan was now her desire to maintain good relations with her two most important allies, Great Britain and the United States, but even that could be ignored when Far Eastern issues threatened to draw Canada into collective security programmes and hence challenge national unity. Canada's self-interest demanded that Great Britain and the United States maintain parallel policies in the Pacific, a point illustrated by Canadian objections to the renewal of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance in 1921. However , when Anglo-American policies in the Far East diverged during the 1930s, Canada failed to pursue an active reconciliation of their respective policies. Instead, the Canadian government pursued its policy of noncommitment, a characteristic of Canadian external policy commonly associated with her opposition to Article X, the collective security provision, of the League of Nations Covenant. The governments of both R. B. Bennett and William Lyon Mackenzie King were unalterably opposed to international obligations. While the former couched its opposition in terms reflecting the aversion to collective security , the latter implied that international obligations would undermine Canada's internal unity.
If the propensity for noncommitment in political relations helped Canada avoid confrontation with Japan, it also prevented the development of a distinctive policy promoting Canada's interests in Anglo-American cooperation. Canada might have acted as an effective broker between the British and American policies in the Far East but consistently declined to do so and insisted that initiatives remained with the two great powers with direct interests in the area. Ironically, Canada's political relations with Great Britain and the United States drew her inexorably closer to the tensions in the Far East and ultimately prompted her to implement export restrictions against Japan.
Although Canada avoided political confrontation with Japan, her commitment to economic protectionism provoked a bitter trade dispute in the summer of 1935 which revealed Canada's folly in appointing politicians to diplomatic posts and, more importantly, demonstrated the depth of Japan's commitment to the conquest of export markets. No other aspect of the Canadian-Japanese relationship in the decade caused such bitterness, even in the waning days of peace.
Certainly the Canadian preference for noncommitment contributed to the maintenance of generally amicable Canadian-Japanese relations throughout the 1930s. However, that factor, in combination. with the long shadow cast over Canadian-Japanese relations by the immense influence of Great Britain and the United States, produced an essentially negative policy towards Japan. Buffetted by a variety of elements, Canadian policy lacked coherence and remained satisfied to react to events as they occurred rather than to act in a manner which would positively promote Canadian interests.
This thesis is primarily based on files in the William Lyon Mackenzie King Papers and the Records of the Department of External Affairs which together provide a complete record of the dispatches exchanged between the Canadian government and its legation in Tokyo. Given the general absence of secondary material on Canadian-Japanese relations, these papers provided a revealing account of the Canadian side of the relationship particularly during the Manchurian Crisis and the 1935 trade dispute, and the application of an export restriction policy against Japan.
In sum, Japan was important for the Canadian diplomats directly concerned with its affair~ but for Canadian foreign policymakers generally, Japan was much less important than the maintenance of good relations with Great Britain and the United States and, above all, preserving the Canadian policy of avoiding international responsibilities.