The Manawatu Daily Times Japan and Ethiopia

Manawatu Times, Volume 60, Issue 228, 27 September 1935, Page 6

The Manawatu Daily Times Japan and Ethiopia

"Where will Japan be if war breaks out in East Africa, is a question frequently asked. Her neutrality lias been insisted upon on numerous occasions by official spokesmen of the great Oriental Power, but a somewhat indiscreet statement by the Japanese Ambassador in Rome has shown that the keen eyes of the East are watching every move in the dangerous game Mussolini is playing.

It seems that when Ambassador Sugimura Jett Japan for Italy last October he received instructions to allay Italian suspicion about Japanese political ambitions in Ethiopia. It is generally felt in Japanese official circles that he carried out his instructions, but at the wrong time, when the acuteness of the Italo-Abyssinian crisis had created a new situation that required a new approach. Japan certainly has no intention of interveningJn the Italo-Ethiopian dispute. But it is believed that there was no reason to give Premier Mussolini a specific assurance on this point. Moreover, Japan’s actual and possible future trade interests in Ethiopia cannot be passed over with indifference.

Several recent developments in Japan itself reflect Japanese sympathy with Ethiopia. The Emperor of Japan dispatched a message of congratulation to the Emperor of Ethiopia on the occasion of the latter’s forty-fourth birthday. The veteran Japanese Nationalist, Mitsuro Toyama, telegraphed to the Ethiopian Minister of Foreign Affairs, urging him to resist steadfastly any arrangement that would compromise Ethiopia’s independence. The large Mitsui firm is alleged to have rejected an order for,,slices for the Italian army.

An extremely violent anti-Japanese campaign was recently launched in the Italian Press without exciting a similar campaign in.the Japanese Press, a high Japanese diplomatic official merely remarking that the utterances of the controlled Press of a dictatorship are not to be taken too seriously.

There are both material and sentimental reasons for Japan’s sympathy with Ethiopia. Japanese exports to Ethiopia, as to almost all African countries, have been growing and are said to hav.c reached a figure of almost 10,000,000 yen a year. (Japanese trade with Ethiopia is not listed separately; and official figures indicate tiiat Japan’s exports constitute an unspecified part of a figure of 17,000,000 yen.) Japan has been looking- all. around the world for new sources of cotton; and tho Ethiopian uplands arc believed to offer possibilities in this respect, although there is no evidence that large-scale cotton plantations have actually been started. An Italian conquest of Ethiopia would probably obstruct the way to Japanese goods; and Japan is strongly in favour of the open door —at least in all parts of the world where there is no paramount Japanese military influence.

On the sentimental side, it should not be forgotten that American and European publicists who talk of “the yellow peril” and “the rising tide of colour” have their counterparts in Japanese writers, who stress the “white menace” and the solidarity of coloured races. Italy’s claim to stand for “white civilisation” provokes an instinctive reaction in those Japanese circles which dream, not very realistically, of a Pan-Asian united front against European imperialism, with Japan playing the leading role. True, Ethiopia is not in Asia; but a little barrier like the Red Sea is easily jumped over in the imagination of Pan-Asian propagandists.

So the Japanese popular impulse is to sympathise with Ethiopia in the event that the long-threatened Hostilities with Italy break out. But there seems no probability that the Japanese Government will depart from a prudent attitude of neutrality. Japan’s vital political interests arc restricted to the neighbouring mainland of Asia. Economy and concentration are two guiding principles of the Island Empire in using its military and naval force to back up, and sometimes to run ahead qf its diplomacy and trade. Ethiopia is too far afield to invite any positive Japanese action.