摘要
The leaders of the Meiji Restoration believed in their master, Yoshida Shoin （吉田松陰）, who claimed that in order for the islands of Japan not to be a colony of the powerful Western states, Japan had to conquer nearby countries. This led to Japan’s invasion of the Ryukyu Islands, Taiwan, Korea, and Manchuria, which ultimately led to the Manchurian Incident of 1931, the Sino-Japanese War, and the Pacific War. Surprisingly, the subject and the timing of each and every one of these acts of war were in the same order of Yoshida Shoin’s proposal on preoccupancy. The Sino-Japanese war of 1894 was romanticized as clearing the barbaric culture by civilization, and the Russo-Japanese war of 1904 was romanticized as the realization of Eastern Peace. However, Japanese policies of aggressions were first deemed illegal by international law during the 1931 Manchurian Incident by the investigations of the League of Nations. The Japanese Empire received the recommendation by the League of Nations to restore to original state, but declined and exited from the League of Nations. Following their exit, they started the Sino-Japanese War and the Pacific War and eventually lost in 1945. The goal of the San Francisco Peace Treaty of 1951 was to punish Japan’s aggressions. However, as the Cold War between the East and the West started to arise in 1948, the punishment was eased, and their punishment for the aggressions on the Ryukyu Islands, Taiwan, and Korea was nearly unasked for. This paper examines the issues of the San Francisco Peace Treaty in the views of the international law of the League of Nations, established by Manley O. Hudson of Harvard University and others in U.S. academia and judiciary.
