Japan reveals German peace feelers

The British chronology of the war records under 14 April 1915 that the government of Japan informed the British government of German proposals for a separate peace. We have not been able to find the text of this Japanese communication or to establish which specific German initiative it concerned. It is known, however, that from the beginning of 1915 Germany tried by various channels to detach Japan from the Entente, and that Tokyo consistently informed its allies of this.

An accidental enemy

Japan declared war on Germany on 23 August 1914, invoking its alliance with Britain. Within a few months it had achieved everything it wanted. In November it took Tsingtao, the main German base in China, and its fleet occupied the German islands in the Pacific north of the equator, which London agreed to leave in its keeping. The Japanese had no intention of committing themselves any further. They refused to send troops to Europe, and from then on their part in the war was limited mainly to patrolling the seas and selling arms to Russia.

For Germany the war with Japan no longer made any sense. Germany could not threaten Japan, while Japan could harm Germany even more, for example by stepping up arms deliveries to the Russians. In Berlin it was therefore hoped that Japan could be persuaded to leave the war, or perhaps even to change sides. Formally nothing stood in Japan’s way. Unlike Britain, France and Russia, it had not signed the Pact of London of September 1914, which forbade the conclusion of a separate peace. It was bound only by its alliance with Britain.

The German minister in Peking

The main agent of these efforts was the German minister in Peking, Paul von Hintze. This former naval officer, previously minister in Mexico, had taken up the post in China in 1914 and organised German naval intelligence in the Far East there. According to the American historian Frank Iklé, author of a study of the German-Japanese peace talks, Hintze was already trying to win the Japanese over to the German cause in January 1915. Germany offered Japan a free hand in East Asia, and even a readiness to support its expansion in China financially.

The moment seemed favourable. On 18 January 1915 Japan presented the Chinese government with the Twenty-One Demands, which, had they been accepted in full, would have made China a Japanese protectorate. Negotiations in Peking went on throughout the spring, and Britain watched with growing distrust, especially the most far-reaching fifth group of demands, which the Japanese had at first concealed from it. Germany hoped that the rift between the allies would allow it to win Japan over to its side. Newspapers published in China with German connections stirred up anti-Japanese feeling, and it was even said that Hintze had bought the goodwill of more than twenty Chinese dailies.

Loyalty to the alliance

The government of Prime Minister Ōkuma Shigenobu, in which foreign affairs were directed by Katō Takaaki, a determined supporter of the alliance with Britain, had no intention of changing sides. Japan had already taken the German possessions in China and the Pacific, and it could keep them only at the side of a victorious Entente. By informing London of the German proposals, Tokyo showed that it remained a loyal ally, even though it pursued its own policy in Chinese affairs. At the same time it let it be understood that Germany was courting it, which raised its value in the eyes of its allies.

The German attempts did not cease. At the beginning of 1916 the German minister in Stockholm, Hellmuth von Lucius, held secret talks with the Japanese minister in Sweden, Uchida Sadatsuchi. In the spring the industrialist Hugo Stinnes joined them, tempting the Japanese with the prospect of an alliance of Germany, Russia and Japan. This time too Tokyo informed its allies of everything, and in the end replied that peace proposals should be addressed to all four Entente powers. In August 1916 Germany broke off the talks. By then Japan was formally bound by the ban on a separate peace, because in October 1915 it had acceded to the Pact of London.