著者

番定 賢治

出版者

一般財団法人 日本国際政治学会

雑誌

国際政治 (ISSN:04542215)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.2020, no.198, pp.198_111-198_126, 2020-01-25 (Released:2020-04-16)

参考文献数

47

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This article focuses on activities of Japanese officials who worked for the Secretariat of the League of Nations (LN), and their influences in the Secretariat as a whole. Not only two Under Secretary-Generals (Inazo Nitobe, and Yotaro Sugimura) were appointed from Japan, but also many young officers (Ken Harada, Tetsuro Furugaki, and others) worked for the LN Secretariat. However, the number of Japanese officers in the LN Secretariat and the variation of the sections in which Japanese officers in the LN Secretariat engaged was evidently smaller than those of officers from any other permanent council member States. As for Japanese officers in the LN Secretariat, expertise in policy making is not so much important as ability to adapt themselves to Eurocentric environment of the LN Secretariat, and the main missions of Japanese officers in the LN Secretariat were liaison work between the LN Secretariat and Japanese government or Japanese press, and propagation of information about the work of the LN towards Japanese public. However, some Japanese officers were engaged in more various works, such as drafting communiques in some committees of the Assembly, and liaison work between the LN and other Asian nations. Moreover, during their temporary visits of Japan, Japanese officers in the LN secretariat went on lecture trips to promote understanding of the activities of the LN, and Nitobe’s lecture trip from 1924 to 1925 led to the creation of Tokyo branch of the LN Secretariat Information Section, which enhanced propagation of specific information about the work of LN. When the Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR) invited the LN Secretariat to its conference, Nitobe insisted that this institute and Pan-Pacific movement would be helpful to support the activities of the LN, and Sugimura and other Japanese officers in the LN Secretariats repeatedly insisted the significance of IPR for the LN. In 1927, two officers of the LN Secretariat (One of them was Setsuichi Aoki, the head of Tokyo branch of the LN Secretariat) was sent to the second biannual conference of IPR. In 1929, when the third biannual conference of IPR was held at Kyoto, Sugimura himself attended the conference. However, at the time of this conference, Sugimura tried to invite the LN representative in the conference to Manchuria and Korea, which indicates Sugimura’s intention to lead the LN Secretariat to support the political interest of his home country.