Dissembling diplomatist : Admiral Toyoda Teijiro and the politics of Japanese security

This chapter hopes to build on existing scholarship in two ways. First, no single work has yet attempted to analyse, as I do in this chapter, Toyoda's policies as both vice navy minister and foreign minister. Perfunctory mention has been made of his incongruous stance towards the Tripartite Pact- embracing it as vice navy minister and then openly suggesting its virtual abrogation as foreign minister - yet the admittedly less obvious consistencies in the admiral's actions remain uncharted waters. The identification of consistencies in his actions points to the second essential way in which this chapter departs from existing scholarship: I offer a more complete understanding of Toyoda's perceptions of both the world situation and the domestic political scene than has previously been attempted. In short, I argue that the admiral's understanding of Tokyo's political dynamics induced him to embrace policies that could not but be construed as a challenge to the international system. At the same time, he drew from that policy strain within the Imperial Japanese Navy that railed against war with the United States and Britain- the two nations whose interests were most closely tied to the existing international system. The result was an uncomfortable compromise in which Toyoda willfully adopted policies that challenged the international system, all the while seeking to delimit that challenge so as not to unduly provoke the Anglo-American powers. As the title says, he was a dissembling diplomatist.