RACIAL EQUALITY AT THE 1919 PARIS PEACE
CONFERENCE: HUMANITARIAN RHETORIC AND
JAPANESE IMPERIAL EXPANSION
RORY FLYNN

When the League of Nations, the precursor to the United Nations, was founded at
the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 in the wake of the First World War, a charter
was established to govern the relationships between member states. During the
drafting process of the charter, the Japanese delegation at the conference proposed
a racial equality clause to be added. Japan was the only state at the time to do so.
However, the clause itself was not motivated by true racial equality of nations and
was instead designed to safeguard the Empire of Japan’s strategic interests from
Western encroachment. This paper will examine the context in which the Japanese
delegation put forth the racial equality clause, as well as the reasons why it was
necessary for the Japanese to do so in an early-twentieth century context.

In January 1919 leaders from all over the world met in Paris to settle on what the
terms of peace would be after the First World War. For six months, delegations
from the world over would debate over the fates of nations, the expansion of
empires, and what face international order would take in the years to come. The
intention of the agreements made at the conference, on the surface, was to usher in
a new era of international peace and cooperation, all to prevent the possibility of
another crisis that could lead to another war as horrific as the First World War.
Wrapped up in the discourse were humanitarian sentiments, greatly influenced by
the United States’ president Woodrow Wilson. Wilson articulated Fourteen Points
of lasting international peace in a widely publicized speech that he made before the
American congress the previous year. Progressive ideas of democracy, equality of
trade, transparent diplomacy, armament reduction, and self-determination of
nations were some of the principles that were hoped to guide international
relationships from 1919 onward. Wilson’s fourteenth point was the creation of a
“general association of nations” established under “special covenants” that would
guarantee the “political independence and territorial integrity to great and small

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states alike.” 1 This would lead to the formation of the League of Nations at the Paris
Peace Conference in 1919. The Empire of Japan, a relatively new great power
enjoying the status of a major player at the conference, was concerned that its
national wishes would not be as respected as those of the West in the new League
because of Japan’s status as a non-white and “alien” country. During the debate
surrounding the creation of the League of Nations’ charter, the Empire of Japan
submitted a racial equality clause to be included. Outwardly, the inclusion of a
racial equality stipulation would seem progressive. However, the Japanese
delegation’s use of the phrase “racial equality” was in reality an appeal to be treated
as an equal imperial power among other imperial powers. The proposed racial
equality clause by the Empire of Japan to the League of Nation’s Covenant had
very little to do with any ostensible humanitarian ideals, and was but one of many
instances of humanitarian principles being used to conceal imperial ambitions by
imperial powers, notable others being Britain and France, at the Paris Peace
Conference in 1919. To understand why Japan’s racial equality clause was
disingenuous, we must first examine imperialism, with a focus on Japanese
imperialism, in an early-twentieth-century context and its link to racism.
Japan by 1919 was undoubtedly an expansionist imperial state, acquiring its
colonial holdings from the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries through
aggressive wars. Japanese imperialism was rooted in the Meiji Restoration, which
began in 1868 when the Tokugawa Shogunate was overthrown in a coup led by
Japanese elites, who believed that the Shogunate was not implementing radical
enough modernization reforms to meet the challenge of encroaching Western
powers in Asia. 2 The Japanese had looked to China, on which Western
governments had been actively interloping since 1839, as a case to be avoided. 3
Unlike the Chinese, the Japanese believed that the key to modernization was
through westernization. 4 Colonial empires were the hallmark of a modern, Western
power in the late nineteenth-century, and Meiji Japan sought to establish colonies
of its own through wars of conquest. As early as 1873, 5 years into the Meiji reform
era, the Japanese Empire had designs for a takeover of their neighbour, Korea. 5 The
Meiji reforms modelled the Japanese education system (1872), financial and legal
institutions (1882), government (1885), and its Constitution (1889) on the West. 6
The Japanese military based its army on the Prussian (German) Army, and
modelled its fleet on the British Navy. 7 Both Prussia and Britain were leading
Margaret MacMillan, Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World. (New York: The
Random House Publishing Group, 2003): 496.
2
S. C. M. Paine, “The Japanese Empire: Grand Strategy from the Meiji Restoration to the
Pacific War.” (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017): 4.
3
Ibid, 3.
4
Ibid, 7.
5
Ibid, 8.
6
Ibid.
7
Paine, 8-9.
1

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colonial states of the age. With Westernizing reforms in place, the Japanese
embarked on imperial conquest.
In July 1894, the Imperial Japanese Navy launched a surprise attack on Chinese
warships near Feng Island, beginning the First Sino-Japanese War. 8 The Japanese
objectives of the war were to displace China as the dominant Asian power and to
gain dominion over Korea. 9 Japan defeated the disorganized Chinese naval forces
with relative ease, and China and Japan signed the Treaty of Shimonoseki in April
1895, putting an end to hostilities. 10 Russia, Germany, and France interceded in
what’s remembered as the “Triple Intervention,” preventing Japan from keeping
the territorial concessions of the treaty. 11 Japan was allowed to keep Formosa
(Taiwan) as a colony, however. A decade later, in January 1904, Japan launched
yet another surprise attack, this time on the Russian Navy at Lushun, which
triggered the Russo-Japanese War. 12 The Japanese devastated the Russian fleet in
the Tsushima Strait in 1905, shocking the world. 13 Russia was defeated, and Japan
would gain uncontested dominance over Korea, annexing it formally as a colony in
1910. The Empire of Japan, in the space of a decade, had aggressively waged wars
that won them large colonial holdings in Asia. By 1919, the Empire of Japan was a
premier colonial power, and imperialism of the era was fundamentally linked to
racism.
The Empire of Japan operated under racist policies to maintain control over its
territorial gains from the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, as was
characteristic of all empires of the period. Social-Darwinism, a pseudo-scientific
theory applying Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection to human societies, entered
Japan from the West during the late-nineteenth century during the era of Japan’s
modernization reforms. 14 Under this theory, Japanese propaganda defined their
national identity with a racial identity, as Western countries had previously done. 15
The existence of a Japanese empire came to be viewed as evidence in and of itself
that the Japanese were a superior race, and because Korea and Taiwan were under
colonial rule and lacked industrial development, they were populated by inferior
races. 16 As suggested in Japanese school textbooks after 1910, the Japanese race
had a responsibility to modernize Asia because of their supposed superior racial

Ibid, 21.
Ibid, 23.
10
Ibid, 37.
11
Ibid, 40.
12
Ibid, 52.
13
Ibid, 69.
14
Michael Weiner, “Discourses of Race, Nation and Empire in Pre-1945 Japan.” Ethnic &
Racial Studies 18 (1995): 443.
15
Ibid, 449.
16
Ibid, 450.
8
9

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qualities. 17 In Japanese colonies, discourse on racial superiority and inferiority
informed policy creation and administrative methods. 18 Japanese colonial discourse
in Korea, using racial ‘science’ to justify Japanese occupation, presented an image
of Koreans as “backward, immature, inferior and uncivilized.” 19 The same racist
discourse was used to promote cultural assimilation. 20 Assimilationist policies,
which were far more widespread, were used in Japanese colonies as a method of
disintegrating the indigenous cultures of colonized peoples and replacing them with
Japanese cultural norms and behaviours.
The Japanese colonial government in Korea even used the American example of
racial oppression to justify and maintain the unequal relationship between colonizer
and colonized. 21 On March 1st, 1919, anti-colonial protests erupted in Korea, led by
Korean nationalists who were inspired by Woodrow Wilson’s point of “selfdetermination.” The Japanese-published press in Korea appropriated racial
violence from earlier race riots in the United States by suggesting that Koreans were
at least better treated than the “unfortunate blacks” dying in the United States, a
“country whose words and actions were in contradiction.” 22 Japanese colonial
authorities wanted to discourage Korean nationalist appeals to the United States,
which had indeed occurred at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. Yun Ch’i-ho, a
Korean nationalist leader, compared the Korean struggle to African Americans in
the United States. An August 1919 diary entry stated: “[the] Negro must attain
economic equality before he can claim social equality[,] so the Koreans must reach
economic equality before we may claim political equality.” 23 When examining the
Social Darwinist theories and how they affected Japanese colonial policy
formulation, as well as the clear racial oppression of colonial subjects in the Empire
of Japan, it is clear that Japanese imperialism included strong racial elements. Any
notions of “racial equality” seem very out of place when this is how colonial
subjects of the state who put forth such an ideal were treated. When understanding
Japan’s true objectives of the First World War and the Paris Peace Conference, the
reasons behind Japan’s proposed racial equality clause to the League of Nations
becomes more transparent.
The Empire of Japan’s agenda at the Paris Peace Conference and goal in the First
World War were to opportunistically gain imperial concessions in Asia and the
Weiner, 450.
Ibid, 452.
19
Joel Matthews, “Historicizing “Korean Criminality”: Colonial Criminality in Twentieth
Century Japan.” International Journal of Korean History 22, no. 1 (2017): 17.
20
Weiner, 452.
21
Chris Suh, “What Yun Ch’i-ho Knew: U.S.-Japan Relations and the Imperial Race
Making in Korea and the American South, 1904-1919.” Journal of American History 104, no. 1
(June 2017): 92.
22
Ibid.
23
Ibid, 91.
17
18

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Pacific. At the time of the conference in 1919, the Anglo-Japanese naval alliance,
signed in 1902, was still in effect. 24 At the outbreak of the First World War in early
August 1914, the Japanese assembly was in debate over which powers to back,
despite their alliance with Britain. Many army officers had been trained and
educated in Germany, and had a profound respect for their military. 25 The navy, for
similar reasons, mostly wanted to join on the side of Britain. 26 Debate in the
Japanese cabinet was practical, and centered on which side would be most
beneficial to Japan if supported. 27 Ultimately, Japan decided for entering the war
on the side of the allies, and on August 23rd, declared war on Germany. 28 Japan had
failed to immediately honour its alliance with Britain, and focused instead on what
would best achieve Japan’s strategic aims. This makes it quite clear that the Empire
of Japan would make foreign policy decisions, up to the point of debating whether
or not to back an enemy of their ally, based on what would best advance their
strategic interests. While other nations were probably just as guilty of this, Japanese
imperial ambitions were made apparent through this action.
The Imperial Japanese Navy desired possession of the German Pacific island
colonies in Micronesia, to the south of Japan, in order to create a strong defensive
perimeter for the home islands. 29 They feared the growing American power in the
Pacific, which had begun in 1898 with the American seizure of the Philippines from
Spain in the Spanish-American War. In 1908, the United States began construction
on their Pacific naval base in Pearl Harbour, Hawaii; by 1916, the American
government had fully and openly committed to a “two-ocean” navy. 30 By the fall
of 1914, the Imperial Japanese Navy had captured all of German Micronesia with
relative ease, subsequently establishing a military occupation. 31 The Japanese
government then entered into secret agreements with Great Britain, who promised
to support Japanese claims in Micronesia in exchange for naval support in the
Mediterranean. 32 However, these claims would not be settled until 1919. The
United States’ naval attaché to Tokyo, Lyman A. Cotton, said of Japan’s occupation
of Micronesia: “Occupation of the German islands leads to America as the future
enemy …and its exponents advocate a larger Japanese Navy.” 33 Both Japan and the
MacMillan, 310.
Ibid, 312.
26
Ibid.
27
Ibid.
28
Ibid.
29
J.C. Schencking, “Bureaucratic Politics, Military Budgets and Japan’s Southern
Advance: The Imperial Navy’s Seizure of German Micronesia in the First World
War.” War in History 5, no. 3 (July 1998): 323-324.
30
MacMillan, 314.
31
Tze M. Loo, “Islands for an Anxious Empire: Japan’s Pacific Island Mandate.” American
Historical Review 124, no. 5 (December 2019): 1700.
32
Ibid.
33
Schencking, 324.
24
25

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United States drafted war plans with the other as a precaution. 34 The Empire of
Japan needed to maintain its control over the German colonies it had captured, and
indeed the seizure of these possessions was the primary reason the Empire of Japan
had entered the war on the side of the Allies. In order to keep these territorial claims,
the Japanese delegation in Paris pushed for the racial equality clause to be included
in the League of Nations Charter after the First World War. Japan needed to ensure
that its new acquisitions would be honoured by the League of Nations, as the
Japanese held growing resentments after being treated unfairly by Western powers
in past multilateral agreements.
The Treaty of Shimonoseki, which was signed to end the First Sino-Japanese War
in April 1895, granted the Empire of Japan sweeping territorial concessions in
China, including the ceding of Formosa (Taiwan) and the Liaodong peninsula to
Japan, as well as giving Japan uncontested influence over the Korean peninsula.
The treaty resulted in the Triple Intervention of Russia, France, and Germany. The
three Western nations pressured Japan into relinquishing its claim to the Liaodong
Peninsula, as outlined in article 3 of the treaty, on the grounds that Japan’s
possession of it would “henceforth be a perpetual obstacle to the peace in the Far
East.” 35 Japan gave in, and Russia seized the peninsula for itself three years later.36
This was an international embarrassment for the Empire of Japan, and was viewed
by the Japanese as unfair treatment simply because they were a non-white power.
A decade later, the Treaty of Portsmouth was brokered by United States’ president
Theodore Roosevelt between Russia and Japan, bringing an end to the RussoJapanese War. 37 Russia was not required to pay Japan an indemnity, which was a
standard condition for a defeated nation suing for peace at the time. This again, lead
to a perception in Japan of unfair treatment by the Western powers who were
believed to be working together to undermine Japanese legitimacy on the basis of
their race. Japanese statesmen had these instances of Western intervention in mind
when they proposed the racial equality clause in 1919. The clause itself was using
the same progressive language that was used by other imperial states and in an
equally disingenuous way.
The Japanese delegation at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 were following the
same language of the humanitarian precedent, set by Woodrow Wilson in his
Fourteen Points, that other colonial empires were using to justify their own
expansions when they submitted their racial equality clause. Woodrow Wilson’s
Fourteen Points inspired peoples and nationalities around the world; the recent
destruction of the Great War had left people wanting to believe that there was still
hope for human society to improve, for nations to live in harmony with one another,
MacMillan, 314.
Paine, 40.
36
Ibid.
37
Ibid, 70.
34
35

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and in 1919, the world was listening to him. 38 In his reception in Paris, one
American observed that the crowds greeted him with “ …enthusiasm and affection
on the part of Parisians that I have [n]ever heard of, let alone seen.” 39 Because of
the humanitarian rhetoric of the moment, colonial states needed to express their
ambitions in supposedly altruistic ways. The most glaring example of this is the
establishment of “mandates.” Mandates were countries that were given to imperial
powers to govern with the hope that one day their inhabitants would be ‘civilized’
enough to govern themselves. Empires ran their mandates the same way they had
governed colonies, except with a public, and ostensibly moral, face. 40 Britain and
France were the greatest beneficiaries of the mandate system, gaining territories
across the former Ottoman Empire’s Arab regions, as well as Germany’s African
colonies. In these colonies, Britain and France would repress discontent with
cutting edge military technology. 41 Japan was also given mandates in the Pacific,
mostly from former German colonies in Micronesia, as per their secret agreement
with Britain. 42 It was in this climate of feigned idealism that the Japanese delegation
in Paris put forward the racial equality clause. The Japanese delegation argued that
in the First World War, different races fought together: “A common bond of
sympathy and gratitude has been established to an extent never before
experienced.” 43 A noble sentiment, but one that was masking goals that had nothing
to do with racial equality of nations. Colonial and strategic ambitions, which were
supported by social Darwinist ideas, were the true goals of the proposal.
The Empire of Japan was compelled to submit a racial equality clause to the League
of Nations Covenant in 1919 for reasons which had little to do with actual equality
of racial groups across different nations. The Imperial Japanese government was
motivated more by their strategic interests, as is made evident through a close
examination of the international order that existed prior to 1919. Racism was alive
and well in the Empire of Japan, as it was in virtually every nation present at the
conference. The Japanese government had been treated unfairly and hypocritically
by Western imperial powers at a time when Japan was one of the most
industrialized nations in the world. Because of progressive ideas being embraced
after the First World War, states who were interested in expanding their colonies
and empires had to seem progressive as well. The islands surrounding Japan were
designated to be a protective perimeter from the United States’ expanding influence
in Asia while simultaneously being touted by the League of Nations as mandates
that Japan was responsible for civilizing. Mandates were granted to the empires of
MacMillan, 15.
Ibid, 16.
40
Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper, “Empires After 1919: Old, New, Transformed.”
International Affairs 95, no. 1 (January 2019): 87.
41
Ibid, 87.
42
Thomas W. Burkman,. “Japan and the League of Nations: An Asian Power Encounters the
‘European Club.’” World Affairs 158 (Summer 1995): 51.
43
MacMillan, 318.
38
39

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1919 by the League of Nations to be governed as little more than colonies. The
Empire of Japan was seeking to be treated as an equal imperial power among other
imperial states. Ultimately, the racial equality clause would be rejected by the
League of Nations. This had the effect of further alienating Japan from the West
while also paving the way for militarism to take hold of the nation throughout the
1920s and 1930s and was a factor for the outbreak of the Second-Sino Japanese
War and the Second World War in Asia.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Equality at the Paris Peace Conference.” Diplomatic History 2, no. 3
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Advance: The Imperial Navy’s Seizure of German Micronesia in the First
World War.” War in History 5, no. 3 (July 1998): 308-326.
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Race Making in Korea and the American South, 1904-1919.” Journal of
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Ethnic & Racial Studies 18 (1995): 433-456.

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