ETHIOPIA’S NON-WESTERN MODEL FOR WESTERNIZATION:

FOREIGN MINISTER HERUY’S MISSION TO JAPAN, 1931

 

Paper presented to ISA South

J. Calvitt Clarke III

Jacksonville University

Jacksonville, FL 32211

jclarke@ju.edu

(904) 221-3571

(904) 256-7211 (fax)

 

ABSTRACT

 

            To the exaggerated horror of many western powers, in the 1920s, a series of Japanese visitors sought to expand trade between Japan and Ethiopia.  Japanese representatives attended Hayle Sellase’s Coronation in 1930, and soon afterward signed a Treaty of Friendship and Commerce with Ethiopia.  The next year, the Ethiopians promulgated a constitution closely modeled on Japan’s Meiji Constitution of 1889.  Capping this rapprochement, Foreign Minister Heruy Welde Sellase, one of Ethiopia’s most influential “Japanizers,” visited Japan in late 1931.  Heruy sought commercial and political ties as well as military aid.  Widely fêted, Heruy and his party examined many of Japan’s most important industrial and military facilities.  Many of Japan’s most influential nationalist leaders eagerly greeted him hoping to find in Ethiopia an important ally in the struggle of “colored peoples” against white colonialism and imperialism.  Heruy’s visit, however, signaled the high-water mark of cooperation.  Japan’s government proved less willing to risk the wrath of the world’s great powers than were Japan’s nationalists.  Based on English, French, Italian, and Japanese primary and secondary sources, this paper describes the motives and consequences of the well-publicized visit.  It also places this example of globalization and westernization through a non-western agent in its larger diplomatic context.

HERUY AND ETHIOPIA’S JAPANIZERS

To the exaggerated horror of many western powers, in the 1920s, a series of Japanese visitors sought to expand trade between Japan and Ethiopia.  Japanese representatives attended Hayle Sellase’s Coronation in 1930, and soon afterward signed a Treaty of Friendship and Commerce with Ethiopia.  The next year, the Ethiopians promulgated a constitution closely modeled on Japan’s Meiji Constitution of 1889.  This rapprochement encouraged Ethiopia’s “Japanizers,” a group of young educated Ethiopians who sought modernization for their country by modeling Japanese successes.  Seemingly fulfilling their dreams, Foreign Minister Heruy Welde Sellase, one of Ethiopia’s most influential Japanizers, visited Japan in late 1931.[1]

An accomplished and progressive thinker, Heruy wrote in Amharic some twenty-eight works, including stories, histories, and social philosophy.  A linguist and, after 1930, foreign minister, he also had served in diplomatic missions to Paris, Geneva, Japan, and the United States.  Additionally, Heruy had edited Ethiopia’s civil and ecclesiastical codes.  Both he and Emperor Hayle Sellase sought the Japanese developmental model, and both understood that Europeans acting as Japan’s educators had prodded Japan’s rapid evolution.  Speaking with the French chargé d’affaires in Ethiopia, Heruy praised Japan’s transformation and asserted, “You will see even more extraordinary things here than in Japan.”[2]

Approaches to Japan held practical diplomatic advantages.  By the early 1930s, Ethiopia’s policy was to confide important business concessions to those countries not having immediate interests in Ethiopia, for example, the United States, Germany, a few small European countries, and Japan.  In the international political game, Heruy understood that Japan’s geographical position meant the Japanese could not threaten Ethiopia’s sovereignty.  Further, Japan’s economic interests in Ethiopia might induce Tokyo to back Ethiopia if a European power should threaten.  Finally, a Japanese presence, including immigration, in Ethiopia could weaken the rights of England, France, and Italy, which held neighboring colonies.[3]

French diplomats had thought well of Heruy, at least early in his career.  In 1919, when he went to Europe, they saw him as leading Ethiopia’s intellectual party.  At the request of the Quai d’Orsay, he received an insignia as an officer of public instruction.  When named in 1922 as president of the Special Court in Addis Ababa, a special court designed to deal with non-natives, foreign diplomats expressed satisfaction.  The French minister in Ethiopia from 1917 to 1923, reported that Heruy was honest, intelligent, educated, and that all Europeans in Ethiopia were counting on him to guarantee the smooth functioning of the Special Court.  In 1924, Heruy joined Teferi Mekonnen—the future emperor Hayla Sellase—on another trip to Europe.  On that occasion, another French minister declared him to be:

a man of great worth, completely devoted to Ras Teferi for whom he will probably become one of the principal ministers if the prince arrives to the throne.  Full of common sense and open-minded.  Understands well modern ideas and understands the necessity that his country come to know them.  One of the government’s best heads. . . . .[4]

Little-by-little, however, this positive opinion changed.  In a letter of July 25, 1931 to his foreign minister, the French chargé d’affaires wrote that Heruy lacked intelligence and took only superficial care of his job.  The government in Addis Ababa, nonetheless, took no decision without consulting him.  His influence on the sovereign remained so important that one French representative called him the “Rasputin” of Ethiopia, and another editorialized, “Heruy was consecrated emperor under the name of Hayle Sellase.”  One wag called him “the wizard.”[5]

Why had Heruy’s reputation among French diplomats slipped so badly?  Not a Francophile, he did not trust Europeans in general, although he did want to draw closer to the English and the Swedes.  The French also criticized Heruy’s aggressive policies that had isolated Ethiopia.  Specifically, many Europeans—including the French—blamed Heruy for Japan’s advances in Ethiopia.[6]

 

HERUY’S VISIT

The idea for Heruy’s visit had begun the year before when Tokyo sent as an ambassador extraordinary its ambassador in Turkey to attend Hayla Sellase’s coronation in November 1930.  While there, Ambassador Yoshida Isaburo also negotiated and signed a new Treaty of Friendship and Commerce, which the two states ratified two years later.  Eager to see if Ethiopia could model its modernization along Japanese lines, on November 19, Heruy asked Yoshida about sending an Ethiopian mission to Japan to improve relations.  Receiving a favorable reply, Ethiopia’s emperor then officially requested that Japan accept an ambassador extraordinary to Japan, and the Gaimusho [foreign ministry] directed Yoshida to discuss details.[7]  Heruy had originally intended to go in May.  After Tokyo, he planned to go to the United States and thence to France to meet Ethiopia’s Crown Prince.  But by this time, the Ethiopians had indefinitely postponed the Crown Prince’s visit to Europe, and Heruy decided to return directly from Japan to Ethiopia.  There remained only a slight chance that the emperor might order him to go to the United States from Japan.  In either case, Heruy intended to return to Ethiopia after three months because of his duties in Addis Ababa.[8]

Having told Rome of his plans, Heruy, special envoy of the Ethiopian emperor, left Addis Ababa on September 30.  Traveling with him were Teferi Gebre Mariam (Ethiopia’s consul in Djibouti), Araya Abeba, and Daba Birrou.  They all sailed on October 5, 1931 from Djibouti in French Somaliland, bound for Japan.  As portents for the future, one of the party, Araya-Ababa, would become engaged with Kuroda Masako, a Japanese; another, Daba Birrou, in 1935 would again visit Japan, this time during the Italo-Ethiopian conflict.[9]

On the same day that Heruy left Djibouti America’s representative in Addis Ababa, Addison Southard, sent a long message to Washington.  He reported that Heruy had said he was going to Japan mainly to return the recent official Japanese visits about opening a legation, negotiating a treaty of commerce and friendship, and attending the coronation.  Southard believed the Japanese had proposed an arrangement that would give them nearly a monopoly of the local cotton piece goods market, which they already competitively dominated.  One Japanese firm, which he understood to have “dickered” for this concession, was the “Nisshin Boseki Kabuskiki Kaisha, Société Anonyme de Filature de Coton, Tokyo, Japan”  [xxx].  The emperor also wanted to manufacture in Ethiopia the coarser kinds of cotton piece goods, and Southard thought that Heruy would propose that the Japanese set up such an enterprise in Ethiopia.[10]

From his conversations over many years, Southard added, he knew that the emperor admired Japan and believed the Japanese had achieved their influential world position by using foreign advisers.  Hayle Sellase further thought that Ethiopia might reasonably expect to accomplish similarly marvelous results through his own foreign advisers.  Southard skeptically added that the emperor was “unaware, of course, of the vast differences between the two countries and peoples, and their qualifications and resources which place Japan far ahead of what Ethiopia is or ever could hope to be.”  Southard had spent many years in the Far East before entering the Foreign Service, and he knew Japan well.  But Southard never thought it “discreet to try the probably impossible, and genuinely delicate, task of convincing His Imperial Majesty of the great difference between the two countries and their peoples.”  Southard did “informally and tactfully” suggest to Heruy how he could make practical comparisons during his visit to Japan.[11]

At 9:00 a.m. on November 5, Heruy’s delegation arrived at Kobe in western Japan aboard the liner Andre Lebon.  High Japanese government officials, a prefectural governor, the mayor, and two to three thousand citizens, including members of a young men’s association, boy scouts, and school children welcomed him.  The envoy told the throng of his hopes for mutual prosperity, closer friendship, and commercial intercourse.

I am pleased at the recent conclusion of the Japan-Abyssinian commercial treaty.  Founded 3,000 years ago, the Kingdom of Abyssinia has much in common with the Japanese Empire.

By the power of Queen Sheba, the son of Solomon founded the kingdom and the present King is the 127th descendant.  During the past history of 3,000 years, there occurred in the country conflicts between the followers of Christianity and Mohammedanism to the great detriment of the development of the country’s culture.  Abyssinia has shown rapid development of late in its culture and other national activities.  For instance Addis Ababa, the capital, has now railways.[12]

 Heruy later recounted, “On our arrival in Japan, I heard people’s joyful cries.  Many Japanese citizens awaited us at the port waving Ethiopian and Japanese flags.  People acclaiming us flooded the route to the hotel.  Everywhere we went, it was the same.”[13]  Given their recent withdrawal from the League of Nations, the Japanese were especially happy to welcome Heruy’s mission of friendship from Africa.  After lunch, the party drove to Mount Rokko and Takarazuka, and attended a tea party held at the Zuihoji temple.[14]

At 9:00 p.m. that night, Heruy’s group boarded a special train bound for Tokyo.  Arriving the next morning, the Minister of the Imperial Household, Ichiki Kitokuro, Foreign Minister Shidehara Kijuro, and other high officials and journalists welcomed them.  While the Toyama Military Band played, the Ethiopian envoy and his party entered the Distinguished Guests’ Room at the station for a short rest.[15]

Escorted by Imperial Honor Guards and attended by Master of Ceremony Watanabe, the envoy and his suite then went to the Imperial Hotel.  Again escorted by Imperial bodyguards and motorcycles, they left the hotel at 10:20 a.m. for the Imperial Palace in the carriage sent by the court.  Received in audience at the Phoenix Hall, Heruy saluted Emperor Hirohito in Amharic and gave him a royal letter and the Grand Cordon of Solomon with Paulownia Flowers, the highest order of the Ethiopian Empire.  In turn, he received the First Order of Merit and the Grand Cordon of the Rising Sun from the Japanese emperor.  Heruy confirmed Ethiopia’s choice of Japan as the model for modernization.  “Our Ethiopian Emperor is deeply impressed with Japanese Empire’s remarkable and great progress of the last sixty years.  He is astonished that the Japanese Empire performed such a great deed in such a short time, and he is determined to push the Great Japanese Empire as the best model for Ethiopia.”  Heruy then thanked the emperor for the imperial representation at Hayle Sellase’s coronation the previous spring and for the honor given him as a guest of state.[16]

The emperor, in turn, expressed gratitude for the decoration and for the visit from such a far-off land.  Received in audience by the empress, Heruy presented her with a Grand Cordon.  Leaving the Imperial Palace shortly after 11:00 a.m., the envoy and his party returned to the Imperial Hotel.  With the members of his suite, Heruy presented himself at the Imperial Palace again at 12:30 p.m. and attended the imperial luncheon given in the visitors’ honor at the Homeiden Hall.  The emperor and empress and the prince and princess attended.  The visitors left the palace shortly before 2:00 p.m.  The emperor then sent Grand Master of Ceremonies Hayashi to return the call.[17]

Heruy visited the Gaimusho on November 7 at 10:00 a.m. to offer formal greetings to Shidehara, who offered a toast in English:

The Ethiopian emperor invited Japanese representatives for the coronation last year.  We enthusiastically sent Minister Yoshida for this honorable mission.  Now it is our great pleasure to meet Your Excellency who has been sent to the Japanese emperor by your head of state.  I wish to toast the prosperity of the Ethiopian Empire.  Forever for the friendship of both countries!  Ethiopian emperor, Banzai![18]

                Heruy kept an active schedule.  After his meeting with Shidehara, he paid homage at the Meiji Shrine.  In the afternoon, the envoy visited the Ueno Zoo and the “Teiten” Art Exhibition at the Tokyo Prefectural Art Museum.  In the evening, Japanese entertained him at the Kabukiza theater.  Heruy arrived at Nikko on the morning of November 9 and stayed overnight at the Kanaya Hotel.  He left on the 10th, after paying a visit to the Toshogu Shrine.  The Imperial Household Office held a wild duck hunting party for Heruy at the Hama Detached Palace on November 11, beginning at 10:00 a.m.[19]

At Heruy’s request, the War Office arranged for him on November 15 to observe a mock battle between the Imperial Bodyguard Division and the Utsunomiya 14th Division held in Tochigi Prefecture.  This was part of the three-day, interdivisional maneuvers.  Bound for the war games, Heruy’s party left Tokyo on Saturday morning, November 14, and visited a railway plant at Omlya and the Katakuru Reeling Company during the morning.  The mock battle began at 2:00 p.m. took place across the Omoi River.  The group stayed that night at Sano.  On November 15, Heruy and his party watched the battle that started at 5:00 a.m. around Tochigi.[20]
 

Heruy and his party, who had been staying in Nagoya, left the Nagoya hotel at 8:30 a.m. on November 18 to visit the Hattori Poultry Farm, the Japan Rolling Stock Manufacturing Company, and the Mitsubishi Aircraft Manufacturing Plant.  At 12:30 p.m., the Ethiopians attended the luncheon given by Mayor Oiwa at the Buntenkaku Restaurant in Tsurumai Park, and later the guests saw the main tower of the Nagoya Castle.  In the evening, they were the guests of honor at the dinner party given jointly by Aichi Prefecture, Nagoya city, and the Nagoya Chamber of Commerce and Industry.[21]  Seen off by the governor of Aichi Prefecture, the mayor of Nagoya, and others, Heruy and his party left Nagoya Station at 9:52 a.m. on the 19th for Kyoto.[22]

With his suite, Heruy arrived in Osaka from Nara on the afternoon of November 24.  By this time, Kuroki Tokijiro, the former Vice-Consul at Port Said and now Consul at Saigon had joined Heruy’s party.  Kuroki had been central to Japan’s early approaches to Ethiopia.  Alighting, Heruy said, “By the present tour in Japan I realized more and more that Japan is a nation of the most hospitality.  Everywhere I went I was given a hearty welcome and cordial reception, which I shall never forget.  I was particularly surprised to find Japan so much developed.”[23]  Many prefectural and local official as well as business and commercial figures welcomed Heruy.  As the envoy left the station, hundreds of school children and students of girls’ high schools who lined the open space in front of the station raised cheers of banzai and waved small paper flags.

Then the suite drove to the Osaka Asahi, after which the party toured the Osaka Mainichi, where they met the paper’s president and editors.  Heruy found the paper’s Braille edition especially interesting.  The party then registered at the Osaka Hotel.[24]

Leaving the Hotel at 9:00 a.m., Wednesday morning, they visited the Osaka Castle, Osaka Prefectural Office, Osaka Municipal Office, and the Osaka Chamber of Commerce and Industry.  From noon to 2:00 p.m., the Japanese held a reception on honor of Heruy and his group at the Osaka Club under the joint auspices of Osaka Prefecture, Osaka City, and the Osaka Chamber of Commerce and Industry.  After this, he visited the Osaka Arsenal.  In the later afternoon, Heruy saw the puppet show at Bunrakuza Theater.[25]  The Cotton Cloth Exporters’ Association in Osaka hosted Heruy at a dinner.

On November 26, the visitors went to the Kanegafuchi Spinning Company in Kanebo and the Toyo Spinning Company, where they lunched.  Afterward, they toured the Sumitomo Copper Works and the Azumi Insect Powder Factory.  That night the Association of Exporters of Goods to Africa hosted them at a dinner and then entertained them at a geisha house.[26]

Kobe extended a hearty welcome to the Ethiopian envoys, who arrived by motorcar from Osaka at 3:00 p.m. on November 27.  The local governor called their visit an epoch-making event in developing trade between the two countries.  The governor’s secretary accompanied the party to the Naigai Rubber Factory in Hyogo, which Heruy spent more than an hour inspecting.  Later, they attended a reception at the Chamber of Commerce and Industry building with more than fifty leading business and town officials.  In the evening, they were guests of honor at a dinner held at the Nishitokiwa, jointly hosted by the governor, the mayor, and president of the chamber.[27]

Admiring Japan’s well-disciplined soldiers, Heruy decided to “Japanize” Ethiopia’s troops by adopting Japanese-style military uniforms.  After studying samples from the Osaka branch of the Army Clothing Depot and elsewhere, he informally contracted the Toyo and Kanegafuchi spinning companies for supplying cloth for uniforms.  To make the uniforms in Ethiopia, Heruy wanted to bring home some experienced Japanese tailors.  Heruy approached Kuroki, but as a government official he could not help in selecting tailors.  Heruy then began talking with the president of the Osaka Chamber of Commerce and Industry.  The president of the Toyo Spinning Company thought the Ethiopians would place orders after Heruy returned home.  Kuroki was also optimistic.[28]

With Heruy’s arrival, Japanese merchants, especially those in Osaka, saw Ethiopia as a bright prospect for developing markets.  The National Cotton Cloth Exporters’ Association with its office in Osaka was encouraging exports of cotton cloths to Ethiopia to drive away foreign goods, although already more than 80 percent of cotton cloth consumed there was Japanese.  The Japanese also foresaw an increase in the export of celluloid goods, mosquito sticks and insect powder, rubber boots, enameled ware, knitted goods, aluminum manufactures, and caps and hats.  Soap, towels, woolen blankets, glass manufactures, and other piece goods, not previously exported to Ethiopia, they hoped, would find new markets in Ethiopia.  During his three days in Osaka, Heruy inspected various manufacturers including the Shimada Glassware Manufacturing Plant.  Pleased with price and quality, he bought ¥1500 worth of cut glass, soap, and other goods as samples.  An official of the Osaka Association of Exporters of Goods to Africa complained that Ethiopians did not appreciate the quality of Japanese goods and had been relying on costly foreign manufactures.  He optimistically added, “The visiting Envoy seems to have understood the quality of Japanese goods and the negotiations for commercial transactions in various lines have become brisk between the Japanese manufacturers and the representative from Ethiopia.”[29]

While Heruy was in Japan, Hayle Sellase sent two lions to the Japanese emperor.  They arrived on the morning of December 2 at Yokohama aboard the Lloyd Triestino steamer Venezia I.  Taken first to the Imperial Palace for inspection, the lions later went to the Ueno Zoo into a cage next to the tiger.[30]

Heruy, who had been sojourning in Takahama, arrived at Kobe on December 3 by the O.S.K. (full) ferry Murasaki Maru.  He and his group immediately boarded motorcars and drove to Osaka.[31]

When Inukai Tsuyoshi became the new Prime Minister on December 12, 1931, Heruy asked to meet with him, which he did three days later.  His last important meeting, Heruy’s mission left Japan on December 28, 1931.  He had spent about forty days in Japan.[32]  What happened between December 15 and 28?

 

CONSEQUENCES OF HERUY’S VISIT

The trip clearly affected Heruy and those traveling with him.  The month-long sea voyage to Japan included stops in India, Singapore, Indo-China, and Shanghai.  Everywhere along the way, they saw Asians under white, colonial rule.  In contrast, Japan was friendly, modern, vibrant, strong—and independent.  Especially impressive to the Ethiopians had been the opportunity to be “wined and dined” with Japan’s emperor—at a time when he lived in god-like seclusion with few having the opportunity to meet with him.  Every day he had dictated his impressions to Araya, and using these notes in 1932 he published a book in Amharic with the title Mahdara berhan hagara Japan [The Source of Light: The Country of Japan].  The Gobi Sebah press sold the volume illustrated with 58 photographs for 3.50 thalers and for the one not illustrated for 2.50 thalers.  This was likely the first book by an African to try seriously to introduce Japan to Africans.  Former foreign minister Shidehara Kijuro wrote the foreword to the Japanese translation, Dai Nippon [Great Japan], published in Tokyo in 1934.  Japanese readers eagerly read the account.  The trip and subsequent book played into western fears that Ethiopia would take Japan for its model for modernization.[33]

Heruy’s mission to Ethiopia returned to Ethiopia with two Japanese.  The first, one Tada (full), stayed only three months with Heruy as a tailor.  The second, Dr. Yamauchi Masao, proved more important.  He went as a representative of the Ministry of Emigration and later became a special correspondent of the Osaka Mainichi.  Losing no time in picking up some knowledge of Amharic, in both positions, he actively promoted closer ties between Japan and Ethiopia.  He spearheaded Japan’s commercial thrust into Ethiopia that provoked so much alarm among Europeans.  Yamauchi’s drive impressed the British minister who conceded his admiration for his “skill and thoroughness.”  The minister lamented that European merchants, “who complain so bitterly of Japanese competition” were not nearly as energetic or effective. [34]

Japan’s approaches especially exercised the Italians.  Rome claimed that the Anglo-French-Italian agreement 1906 and the Italo-Ethiopian treaty of 1928 sanctified Italy’s position in Ethiopia.  Yet, inroads by anyone, especially the Americans and Japanese, petrified Rome. [35]  Naturally, then, Italy’s representatives in Tokyo closely followed Heruy’s progress through Japan, though more calmly than those in Rome who read the reports.[36]  Similarly more sanguine than their superiors in Rome, Italy’s representatives in Ethiopia often downplayed Japanese successes.  In the face of fears that Heruy’s visit provided the key to opening the door to massive Japanese immigration, the local representatives noted in early 1932 that the Ethiopian court had employed only two Japanese.  A husband and wife, one was a cook and the other a maid.[37]

For Japan, Heruy’s visit visibly raised Japanese-Ethiopian relations to their zenith and encouraged widespread public support for Ethiopia during the Ethiopian Crisis a few years later.  Heruy’s journey to Japan also marked his future career, and his admiration for the Japanese developmental model alarmed the Western powers, which had no wish for a second Japan—this one in Africa.[38]

A couple of years after Heruy’s trip, the peripatetic journalist, Ladislas Farago, asked Heruy about his visit and its implications: “Your Excellency was speaking of your journey to Japan.  It roused a great commotion at the time, and started many rumours.  Why did you go to Japan?”  Heruy replied:

I was waiting for that question for it is always asked; and it is not difficult for me to be quite undiplomatic and tell you the simple truth.  We had no ulterior motive, and what we wanted was no mystery.  Japan has been growing into one of the most influential great powers, and while all the other important nations had their representatives in Addis Ababa, Japan was not represented at His Majesty’s court by so much as an Honorary Consul.  It meant a great deal to us to open up diplomatic connections with Japan, and that was the primary reason for my journey.

The second reason was purely economic.  Our people are poor, and our export trade has shrunk during the last few years owing to the depression.  We had to find a source for cheap everyday goods, and Japan is famous the world over as the country that sells the cheapest goods, specially cotton, which our country now imports in great quantities.  We used to get most of the cotton that we required from the United States, but as Japan can supply the same thing eighty per cent cheaper, we naturally buy our requirements from her.  The hackneyed term “Japanese invasion” has a real meaning in this country, for half of our imports is comprised of cotton.[39]

Heruy was more “diplomatic” than he allowed.  He had also requested arms and munitions from the Japanese government.  Tokyo, however, was then dealing with the Manchurian Incident and had worries other than those of supplying arms and munitions to Ethiopia.[40]

Over the next several years as Italy prepared to attack Ethiopia, Foreign Minister Heruy was unable to muster either allies or arms sufficient to protect Ethiopia’s independence.  After defeat and always Hayle Sellase’s trusted adviser, he went into exile with the emperor in 1936 and died in England.

 

 

TWO POSTSCRIPTS: A MARRIAGE PROPOSAL AND DABA BIRROU’S DESPERATE SEARCH FOR ARMS

Two interesting diplomatic maneuvers grew out of Heruy’s trip to Japan.  The first concerned the Araya Abeba.  The second involved Daba Birrou, who had translated for Heruy.

Araya, a member of Hayle Sellase’s extended family, was a figure of underestimated importance in the Japanizer movement.  A handsome young man, he played an important part in Ethiopia’s relations with Japan, and he gives every appearance of being groomed for greater things until the Italo-Ethiopian War intervened.  Araya saw the Japanizers as “visionaries,” and he admired Japanese courtesy, development, and modernization.  If remembered at all today, it is for his proposed marriage with a Japanese, Kuroda Masako, a subject of great mirth and greater fear among many European observers.  Even before his trip to Japan in 1931 with Heruy, his friend and patron, Araya had already expressed his wish to marry a Japanese woman.  Partly this reflected the Japanizer in him as well as his desire for a traditionally submissive woman.  Heruy was aware of Araya’s interest, but initially restrained him for fear that the marriage would adversely affect Ethiopia’s foreign relations and might interfere with his mission to Japan.[41]

To statesmen in London, Paris, Moscow, and elsewhere, the threat of Japanese political, commercial, and military intrusions into Ethiopia seemed sufficient to justify Italy’s military preparations against Ethiopia from 1934 on.  In 1933 and 1934, Araya’s proposed marriage vexingly personified these intrusions.  One hyperventilated account argued that,

[P]lans have been made for effecting mixed marriages between the eligible Japanese settlers (estimated at about 2000 in number) and native Abyssinian women.  This declared policy which is intended to produce a new race of leaders in the united revolt of the coloured peoples against the white races, was to have been inaugurated by the marriage of Princess Masako, a daughter of the Japanese prince Kurado [Kuroda], to the Ethiopian prince Lij Ayalé [Araya].[42]

 

Mistakenly believing that this was to be a royal wedding, Europeans saw the genesis of the proposed marriage as lying in Ethiopia’s wish to model its modernization after Japan and in Japan’s romantic vision of Ethiopia.

While this explains the motives of Araya and Kuroda for joining in an arranged marriage, other individuals were also involved.  Most important were several Pan-Asian, nationalist Japanese who were promoting the marriage to leverage a prominent role for themselves in commercial exchanges between Japan and Ethiopia.  One was Yamauchi.  Interestingly, neither government in Tokyo or Addis Ababa promoted the marriage idea; neither lamented when the proposal died sometime in 1934; and both suffered international complications because of it.[43]

The proposed union continued to rankle Italians long after the quasi-betrothal had been broken off.[44]  Enemies of Ethiopia or Japan continued to write about it long after they had every cause to know that it had never carried the policy implications feared and had not come to pass anyway.  One Communist book published in 1936, for example, echoed the thoughts and fears of many, when it thundered against Japanese imperialism: “Through the marriage of an Abyssinian prince to the daughter of a Japanese noble, the Japanese were enabled to equip airdromes in Ethiopian and to receive a cotton concession there.”[45]  Clearly, for Moscow as for many others, the falseness of such statements was less important than was the need to draw on any potential anti-Japanese and anti-Ethiopian arguments.

The second diplomatic postscript involved Heruy’s translator, Daba Birrou. 

In the first half of the 1930s as Italy geared up for war in East Africa, Ethiopia sought outside political, military, and economic support to balance Italy’s greater power.  No one—to the great upset of the Italians and many in Japan’s government—responded more favorably than did Japan’s pan-Asian nationalists.  As war approached in the summer of 1935, Ethiopia’s lack of supplies was becoming ever more obvious as outlying troops were daily pouring into Addis Ababa to get equipment only to find none available.  Desperate for arms and munitions, Emperor Hayle Sellase decided to take advantage of popular Japanese sentiments to send Daba to Japan.  Ostensibly, he was to be the first secretary to Ethiopia’s honorary consul in Osaka.  Shoji Yunosuke, a Pan-Asian nationalist and correspondent for the Osaka Mainichi accompanied him.  His newspaper sponsored the trip.  Shoji had actively promoted Araya’s proposed marriage to Kuroda.[46]

Daba and Shoji arrived in Japan on September 13, and Italy attacked Ethiopia three weeks later.  Despite the enthusiastic welcome for Daba from many nationalist Japanese, the government in Tokyo proved unwilling to oppose Italy either directly or indirectly.  Its interests in Ethiopia were too few to risk a confrontation in a theater so far away.  In short, Japan put international relations first and had few resources anyway to offer East Africa.  Japan’s foreign ministry and army agreed that public passions would not affect policy.  The government announced that it would strictly observe neutrality, calmly watch the East African crisis, and completely ignore League of Nations policy.[47]  The Japanese told the Italians but not Daba that they would not send loans, arms, munitions, volunteers, or a military mission to an Ethiopia unable to pay anyway.  Tokyo rejected Daba’s requests only through its instructions of December 4 preparing for appointing a minister ad interim, who would open Japan’s new legation in Addis Ababa in January 1936.[48]  On January 23, 1936, Heruy visited the newly opened Japanese legation at Addis Ababa to order small quantities of light arms from Japan, but did no better than was Daba.[49]

One of the Japanese nationalists actively involved in Heruy’s visit in 1931, Araya’s marriage proposal, and now Daba’s visit was Sumioka Tomoyoshi.  At the end of March, in a letter to Ethiopia’s emperor, he predicted that Ethiopia’s brave army commanded by “its courageous King of Kings” would defeat his enemies.  The letter went on to commend Daba’s activities:

During his six months’ sojourn in Japan . . . Daba has at all times conducted himself with credit, and at no time has the prestige of Abyssinia suffered at his hands. . . . [Foreign Minister] Hirota . . . has received him twice in private conference and has seen him to the door in person when  . . . [he] took leave. . . .

Despite the difficulties . . . Daba has been able to push negotiations with the Japanese authorities to a point where agreement on principles has been reached, although on particulars there still seems room for further discussion.

The goodwill of the Japanese people toward Abyssinia has been evinced in the warm welcome which . . . Daba received when he landed at Kobe and when he arrived at Tokyo station and in the intense activities of . . . organizations and individuals in sending medical supplies, money and other articles for the aid of the Abyssinian people.^[50]

Sumioka’s statement clearly—even if inadvertently—emphasized the quasi-official nature of Daba’s visit.  And Sumioka’s list of accomplishments—Daba had seen Hirota twice and been escorted to the door; he had negotiated “agreement in principles” even if without particulars; he had been enthusiastically welcomed by many Japanese; some few groups had sent some few medical supplies; and Daba had not embarrassed himself—merely highlights how little his visit had achieved or even could have achieved.

Italy’s ambassador in Tokyo agreed.  He had only casually followed Daba’s exploits.  In his report to Rome describing Daba’s departure from Tokyo at the end of March, he mentioned the couple of hundred members of “reactionary nationalistic associations,” who had seen him off at the station.  He received assurances from the war ministry that the supplies given Daba had been but a few samples of poor quality, and did not include “even one of the rifles that he had been insistently requesting.”^[51]

After seven months in Japan, Daba sailed for his homeland on April 2.  Although he had declined to attend a farewell party held by right-wing organizations, Daba did put on a brave face in interviews with the Osaka Mainichi just before his departure.^[52]  At a press conference on April 17, a Japanese foreign ministry spokesman stated that if Italy subjugated Ethiopia, Japan would act independently to protect its rights and interests in that region.  He pointed out that Japan had a friendship and commercial agreement with Ethiopia and that commerce between the two countries had been increasing.^[53]

Meanwhile, Ethiopia’s army was neither sufficiently armed, trained, nor led to effectively resist for long Italy’s invasion.  Italian troops entered Addis Ababa in May 1936.

By mid-October, Daba had settled himself in Cairo, and on December 12, he subjected himself to Italian authority and received a passport.^[54]

Tokyo also adjusted itself to Italy’s conquest of the Ethiopian Empire.  The exchange of recognitions on December 2, 1936—Japan’s conquest of Manchukuo for Italy’s conquest of Ethiopia—paved the way for the reconciliation between Tokyo and Rome and their eventual alliance during World War II.^[55]

Surely, Rome and Tokyo could not have this volte-face so quickly if the Italians had not come to believe Tokyo’s many declarations of innocence about the arms transfers and training that Ethiopia had so desperately sought through Daba’s mission.  Perhaps they never had.  But whether they had or not, throughout 1935 and much of 1936, they had effectively used rumors of significant Japanese inroads into Ethiopia to successfully disarm potential international opposition to Italy’s coming adventure, especially in London, Paris, and Moscow.  In truth, Daba’s visit never had any real chance to succeed other than as a publicity stunt orchestrated by Shoji and the Osaka Mainichi.

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Italy, Ministero degli Affari Esteri, Commissione per la Pubblicazione dei Documenti Diplomatici [Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Commission for the Publication of Diplomatic Documents, I documenti diplomatici italiani [Italian Diplomatic Documents], 7^th Series: 1922-1935. Rome: La Libreria dello Stato, 1952.

Italy. Ministero degli Affari Esteri, Direzione Generale degli Affari Politici, Etiopia [Ministry of Foreign Affairs, General Office of Political Affairs, Ethiopia, 1930-45] (Rome). Cited as AP Etiopia.

Italy. Ministero degli Affari Esteri, Direzione Generale degli Affari Politici, Etiopia—Fondo di Guerra (1935-40) (Rome) [Ministry of Foreign Affairs, General Office of Political Affairs, Ethiopia, 1930-45]. Cited as AP Etiopia—Guerra.

Japan, Gaimusho Gaiko Shiryo Kan (Tokyo) [Record Office, Ministry of Foreign Affairs]. Cited as GSK.

United States, National Archives (College Park, MD), Record Group 59, General Records of the Department of State, Decimal Files.  Cited as NARA.

Interview with Amde Araya (son of Araya Abeba) and Araya Abeba, Fairfax Lakes Park, VA, and apartment of Araya Abeba, Alexandria, VA, July 7, 2001, 1:45-6:30 p.m.

 

Newspapers

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