The Imperial diplomat.

• Author: Van Sant, John E.
• Position: Agony of Choice: Matsuoka Yosuke and the Rise and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1880-1946 - Book review

Review of the book: Agony of Choice: Matsuoka Yosuke and the Rise and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1880-1946. By David J. Lu. (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2002. Pp. xviii, 309. $79 cloth.)

Agony of Choice is a revision and English translation of Matsuoka Yosuke to Sono Jidai [Matsuoka Yosuke and His Times] originally published in Tokyo in 1981. (1) David J. Lu, Professor Emeritus at Bucknell University, is particularly well-suited to research and write this biography. Born and raised in Taiwan under Japanese rule, Lu completed high school when education and language were part of Japan's "assimilation" policies in Taiwan. After earning undergraduate and graduate degrees in the United States, he has spent significant parts of his career living, studying, and teaching in Japan. He has written, edited, and translated several books on Japanese history, focusing on Japan's relations with China and the United States. (2) While never obtrusive, Lu's personal and academic perspectives, as well as his deep knowledge of Japan's history, is evident throughout Agony of Choice.

Lu wrote this masterful biography partly to document Matsuoka's unique and influential life, and partly to use Matsuoka as a vehicle through which to explore Japan's diplomatic, military, and economic quest for empire in the early 20th century. It would be hard to find a better figure for this dual purpose than Yosuke Matsuoka who, Lu tells us, "was the best known Japanese around the world" between 1933 and 1941 (p. xi). Matsuoka met with Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Benito Mussolini, Pope Pius XII, Chiang Kai-Shek, and he worked closely with Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe and Army Minister Hideki Tojo. Matsuoka also had several audiences with Emperor Hirohito. Matsuoka was also director, vice-president, and president of the mammoth South Manchurian Railway Company. He was a career diplomat in the Foreign Ministry, serving as Japan's delegate to the League of Nations in 1933 and rising to the top post of Foreign Minister in 1940. He was a member of the Seiyukai political party. He was formally charged with Class A War Crimes by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East following the Pacific War (his death, from tuberculosis in 1946, probably "saved" him from a death sentence imposed by the Allied tribunal). A study of Matsuoka's professional life, therefore, provides a fascinating window into imperial Japan.

Born and raised in Yamaguchi Prefecture, the former territory of warrior-dominated Choshu domain, Matsuoka traveled to the United States at the age of thirteen to study and work. Lu tells us that Matsuoka went to the United States for economic reasons and for religious reasons; as a nominal adherent of True Land Buddhism, he believed young Japanese abroad could make the world more conducive to Buddhism. Matsuoka spent nine years in Washington, Oregon, and California where he...