Fleets in European seas

Japan played a minor, albeit advantageous role, in the First World War, over-running the German colonies in the Pacific Islands and the Concession on China's Shantung Peninsula. The navy patrolled the Pacific and Indian Oceans and, after much persuasion from the allies, extended its sway into the Mediterranean. Ironically, given Australian attitudes towards Japan, it was the Japanese fleet that protected the troopships conveying the Australian and New Zealand armies to the Middle East. The demands of war greatly stimulated Japanese industry and available markets expanded with the temporary eclipse of British and German competitors.

When the world's nations gathered to formalise the peace treaty and create a League of Nations, Japan was accorded the status of one of the great powers alongside the United States, Great Britain, France and Italy, each with two representatives on the Committee. Still virtually invisible to Charles Pearson in 1893, Japan had yet, in a quarter of a century, seemed to fulfil his prophesy about the challenge to the West posed by the rise of the ‘yellow races’. The Japanese Empire had been invited into alliances with European powers, was ‘represented by fleets in European seas’, ‘circumscribing the industry of Europeans’ and invited to participate as an equal in international conferences.

Japanese race discourse

The long crusade to achieve equality with the Western powers appeared to have been finally successful.