World's First Anti-Racism Bill - Proposed by Japan, a Permanent Member of the League of Nations.

Photo by unknown photographer (licensed under CC0 1.0)

The Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese wars pushed Japan to the center of the international community

I wonder if Japan appears in world history around the time of the Sino-Japanese War. The world took note of the great accomplishments of the eastern island nation, and the West, which had considered China a great power, came to call China the ``sleeping lion.''

The next great achievement was the Russo-Japanese War. Heihachiro Togo, who won the Battle of the Sea of Japan, was featured on the front page of newspapers around the world, and is said to be the first Japanese person to be featured on the front page of a newspaper around the world. After that, Japan rose to the forefront of the world and became a permanent member of the League of Nations in １９１９.

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In １９１９, Japan became the first country in the world to propose a bill to eliminate racial discrimination at the United Nations. Already during this period, Japan objected to the West's domination of Asia. Former Foreign Minister Nobuaki Makino criticized the racial discrimination caused by Western countries' colonies in various parts of Asia. (Nobuaki Makino: second from the left in the front row of the photo)

This is the world's first international organization to introduce a bill on the elimination of racial discrimination, with two representatives from France and two from Italy in favor, １１ from Greece, the Republic of China, Portugal, Czechoslovakia, the Kingdom of Serbs, the Kingdom of Croatia, Slovenes and Japan, and the United Kingdom against it. ・There were ５ people from the United States, Poland, Brazil, and Romania, so there was a majority in favor.

At the time, Britain was abducting black people from Africa and trading them as slaves to the Americas. America used black slaves to grow cheap agricultural products and export them to countries around the world. The American representative argued that this was a no-go because it was not unanimous. Is there such a thing as a principle of unanimity among the １６ members?

Makino once objected, saying that the bill could be passed by majority vote, but the bill was rejected in accordance with the principle of unanimity in the United States, which was already a superpower at the time. This was nine years after the annexation of Japan and Korea and ２２ years before the start of the Greater East Asia War.

South Korea continues to say that it was discriminated against and deprived of by Japan, but Japan was fighting in international organizations on a completely different scale. The annexation of Japan and South Korea and the annexation of Taiwan are assimilation policies that are completely different from Western-style colonies. Assimilation policy means that the Japanese, Koreans, and Taiwanese living there have equal rights and are subject to the rule of law.

The Greater East Asia War was a war between Japan and the white countries that ruled Asia, based on the idea that all Asian countries should maintain their independence and co-prosperity. The Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere concept was not something that suddenly appeared on a whim.