Jewish Settlement in Imperial Japan - Japan's Support of Zionism

Japan's Support of Zionism

Japanese approval came as early as December 1918, when the Shanghai Zionist Association received a message endorsing the government's "pleasure of having learned of the advent desire of the Zionists to establish in Palestine a National Jewish Homeland". It indicated that, "Japan will accord its sympathy to the realization of your aspirations."

This was further explicit endorsement in January 1919 when Chinda Sutemi wrote to Chaim Weizmann in the name of the Japanese Emperor stating that, "the Japanese government gladly takes note of the Zionist aspiration to extend in Palestine a national home for the Jewish people and they look forward with a sympathetic interest to the realization of such desire upon the basis proposed." Japan recognized British policies in Palestine in return for British approval of Japanese control over the Shandong Peninsula in China.

Influential Japanese intellectuals including Uchimura Kanzo (1861–1930), Nitobe Inazo (1862–1933), Kenjirō Tokutomi (1868–1927) and professor in colonial policy at Tokyo University Tadao Yanaihara (1893–1961) were also in support. "The Zionist movement," claimed Yanaihara, "is nothing more than an attempt to secure the right for Jews to migrate and colonize in order to establish a center for Jewish national culture", defending the special protection given to the Jews in their quest for a national home based on his conviction that, "the Zionist case constituted a national problem deserving of a nation-state". The Zionist project, including the cooperative modes of agricultural settlements, he saw as a model Japan might emulate.

A high-level Japanese government reports on plans for mass emigration to Manchuria in 1936 included references to ethnic conflict between Jews and Arabs as scenarios to avoid. These influential Japanese policy makers and institutions referred to Zionist forms of cooperative agricultural settlement as a model that Japanese should emulate. A colonial enterprise having parallels with Japan's own expansion into Asia. By 1940, Japanese occupied Manchuria was host to 17,000 Jewish refugees, most coming from Eastern Europe.

Yasue, Inuzuka and other sympathetic diplomats wished to utilize those Jewish refugees in Manchuria and Shanghai in return for the favorable treatments accorded to them. Japanese official quarters expected American Jewry influence American Far Eastern policy and make it neutral or pro-Japanese and attract badly needed Jewish capital for the industrial development of Manchuria.

Post-war, the 1952 recognition of full diplomatic relations with Israel by the Japanese government was a breakthrough amongst Asian nations.