Renegotiating Japan’s Unequal Treaties

This book brings a fresh perspective to a classic and still important historical issue: the character of the unequal treaties imposed on Japan by the West, and the character of the Japanese response to those treaties. The government’s efforts to revise the treaties—and popular responses to those efforts—were a crucible for Japan’s modern nationalism, just as recent efforts to revise the treaty relations between Japan and the United States have produced renewed articulations of nationalism across the political spectrum. By also bringing into view the efforts to revise the Sino-Japanese treaty of 1871, Iokibe offers a more dynamic understanding of a Meiji era history too often divided into separate histories of ‘Japan and the West’ and ‘Japan and Asia.’ He takes full account of recent works which challenge a simplistic view of the treaties as patently and obviously ‘unequal’ from the start. He then goes on to carefully specify the ways in which, and the moments at which, these treaties both functioned as unequal agreements and were understood to be unequal. Andrew Gordon, Harvard University

This pathbreaking work of diplomatic history sheds new light on the long and winding process of Japan’s negotiations for treaty equality with western nations in the Meiji era. Moving beyond standard accounts, Iokibe skillfully weaves together different threads—the government that vacillated between different diplomatic strategies, the media that grappled with secret negotiations, and the public that often harbored unrealistic expectations—to produce a compelling historical account of one of the most important policy issues of Meiji Japan. The fascinating narrative reveals what it meant for Japan to become a full-fledged nation and locates the roots of Japan’s double-standard diplomacy that sees the West as the model and China and Asia as junior partners or worse. A landmark achievement in diplomatic history, this book is a must read for those interested in modern Japanese history and for anyone seeking insight into the complex two-level game of domestic politics and international relations. Kiyoteru Tsutsui, University of Michigan