Lansing–Ishii Agreement

On 2 November 1917, on a Friday morning, at the State Department in Washington, the Secretary of State, Robert Lansing, and Viscount Kikujirō Ishii, Japanese ambassador extraordinary on a special mission, exchanged notes on the policy of the two countries towards China. In them the governments of the United States and Japan stated that “territorial propinquity creates special relations between countries”, and for that reason Washington recognised that Japan had special interests in China, “particularly in the part to which her possessions are contiguous”. The same text gave an assurance that China’s territorial sovereignty remained unimpaired. Both governments denied any purpose to infringe the independence or territorial integrity of China, reaffirmed the principle of the “Open Door”, that is equal opportunity for the commerce and industry of all nations, and declared that they were opposed to the acquisition by any government of privileges that would conflict with these principles.

Ishii’s mission

Ishii, who in the autumn of 1915, as foreign minister, had brought Japan into the Pact of London, landed at San Francisco on 13 August 1917 at the head of a special mission of the kind that, after the United States entered the war, had been sent to Washington earlier by Britain, France, Italy and Russia. On 22 August Lansing welcomed him at the station in Washington. Officially the mission was to agree on wartime cooperation, but both sides also wanted to defuse a growing mistrust. The Americans looked with concern on Japanese expansion in China, from the Twenty-One Demands of 1915 to loans to the government in Peking, and the Japanese on American investment in China and the discrimination against Japanese immigrants in California. Since February Tokyo had held secret promises from Britain, France and Russia that they would support its claims to the German rights in Shantung. In August China itself entered the war.

The talks on China began on 6 September. Lansing proposed a fresh declaration of the Open Door principle. Ishii replied that the government in Tokyo would have to explain to public opinion what Japan was gaining in return, and demanded recognition of its “special interests”. Lansing agreed to this only on condition that these were interests arising from geographical position and not “paramount interests”. Ishii also talked with President Woodrow Wilson, who noted that the Japanese agreed with him “in principle”. Lansing prepared the draft of the notes at the end of September. Ishii, however, had limited room for manoeuvre in Tokyo. According to Japanese historians, the advisory council on foreign policy there had already rejected in mid-September his idea that Japan should give up its spheres of influence in China, and the foreign minister, Ichirō Motono, instructed him to seek only recognition of “special interests”. At the beginning of October the government of Masatake Terauchi judged the American draft insufficient and demanded changes.

The secret protocol

The greatest disputes arose over a sentence in which the two countries undertook not to take advantage of present conditions to seek in China rights or privileges that would abridge the rights of the citizens of other friendly states. The Japanese, fearing criticism at home, did not want it in the public text. In the end it was removed from the notes, and on 2 November Lansing and Ishii signed a confidential protocol in two copies. It stated that the clause had been omitted as “superfluous” and liable to create a false impression, but that the principle contained in it remained fully in accordance with the policy of both governments. The protocol was not published.

The same day it was agreed that the notes would be published in the United States on the afternoon of 6 November and in Japan on the morning of 7 November, that is at almost the same moment. In a statement Lansing praised Ishii’s frankness and attributed the earlier tensions to German propaganda. He added that representatives of the two navies had reached agreement on cooperation in the Pacific against Germany.

Ambiguity

The success was illusory, because each side understood “special interests” in its own way. Lansing maintained that only economic interests, arising from proximity, were meant. Ishii and the government in Tokyo saw in them political interests as well, and above all recognition of Japan’s position in Manchuria. Nobody asked China for its opinion. Lansing deliberately kept it uninformed of the talks, so that no one could later claim it had tacitly agreed to them. On 12 November the Chinese minister in Washington, Wellington Koo, handed him a memorandum in which the Chinese government declared that it did not consider itself bound by agreements concluded by other states concerning it. What troubled it most was the recognition of Japanese “special interests”.

The agreement lasted little more than five years. After the Washington Conference, at which in 1922 nine powers undertook to respect the sovereignty and integrity of China, the two governments declared the Lansing–Ishii Agreement cancelled by an exchange of notes of 14 April 1923.