国際法学者の“戦後構想”-「大東亜国際法」から“国連信仰”へ-

終戦外交と戦後構想

抄録

When did the Japanese begin to regard the United Nations as the ideal organization? Most of Japanese intellectuals must have advocated the construction of the “Greater East Asia Mutual Prosperity Sphere.” When and why did the switch from the regionalism to internationalism occur? This article's purpose is to answer these questions, focusing on the Japanese intellectuals' perception of the postwar international organization in the Pacific War.
In 1942, the Association of International Law in Japan established four committees in order to serve their country by pursuing and constructing the Greater East Asian International Law. It made a plan to issue the Greater East Asian International Law Series.
The first volume of this series was written by YASUI Kaoru, who was an associate professor of international law at Tokyo University. He introduced the idea of the national socialist international law initiated by Carl Schmitt to Japan. He expressly wrote in this book that he could select neither liberal international law, nor Marxist international law, nor national socialist international law as his own position. But he was purged from Tokyo University in 1948. Why? Because he never denied establishing the Greater East Asian International Law. After the Pacific War he became a Marxist student of international law, and he played an active part in the movement to prohibit the atomic and hydrogen bombs.
One of the faculty members to oppose Yasui's promotion to a professor in 1943 was YOKOTA Kisaburo, who was the head professor of international law at Tokyo University. Both Yokota and Yasui were followers of TACHI Sakutaro, but Yokota considered that Yasui was unprincipled and went with the current of the times. Yokota studied the non-belligerency phenomena in World War II, dissimilar to belligerency or neutrality on the international law. He never converted from liberalism to militarism, though he criticized the United Nations for attacking Japanese hospital ships and merchant ships. And he paid attention to the international organization plan discussed among the United Nations at the Dumberton Oaks Conference before the surrender.
He foresaw that the United Nations would be the name of the new international organization, and he temporarily translated the word of the United Nations with “Kokusai Rengo, ” which meant not Allied Powers but the international union of states, as if it were an ideal organization. This free translation might only be in imitation of the precedent that the League of Nations had been translated into the term “Kokusai Renmei” which implicated the international league in Japanese, but it was fixed as the formal translation in postwar Japan. It has given the United Nations the image of the ideal international organization for the Japanese.