INTRODUCTION

ONE BRITISH HISTORICAL figure whose name will always be associated with Japan is Victor Bulwer-Lytton, the second Earl of Lytton. This is not because of any long association with the country – his first visit to Japan came, after all, in his fifty-fifth year – but because of his involvement in one momentous episode, the League of Nations Commission of Inquiry into the Manchurian crisis and its subsequent report in October 1932. Having been elected by its other members to the chairmanship of the commission, Lytton became its public face and lightning rod. Consequently, its report would forever be associated with his name, and, depending where one stands in regard to the crisis, he is seen either as a symbol of naivety or a wise man who proffered the only feasible solution to an otherwise intractable problem. Lytton's connection with the crisis in East Asia did not, though, end with the commission's conclusion. In its aftermath, he emerged in the Anglo-American world as a reluctant expert on the region’s problems and, exasperated by Japan's rejection of his recommendations, as one of China's more vocal supporters.

BEFORE MANCHURIA

The irony in this story is that in December 1931 Lytton was not the first choice to be Britain's representative on the League inquiry. He was only nominated because the initial candidate, the noted jurist Lord Macmillan, turned the job down. When offered the post himself, Lytton originally refused it on the grounds of the inadequate financial compensation offered. It was only when the Conservative politicians, Leo Amery and Lord Zetland, also refused and the League agreed to increase the honorarium that Lytton finally agreed to what had always seen as an attractive opportunity. What would have transpired if perhaps Amery had accepted is impossible to say, but as a more conservative and less abstract character than Lytton and certainly no fan of the League, it would surely have been a very different outcome. But why was Lytton one of the candidates?

Lytton was born in 1876 in India where his father was then viceroy. This Indian link continued to be important in his working life. In 1920 he was, as a Tory peer, appointed as under-secretary of state at the India Office and then between 1922 and 1927 took on the role of governor of Bengal.