The Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) is an organization set up in 1889, made up of members of parliament of sovereign states, which still exists today. From 1908, members of Japan’s House of Representatives took part in the IPU, sending a group of representatives to its yearly general assembly. One of their successes was in 1914, when they formed a working group with representatives from the US to address the California Alien Land Law. However, due to the financial pressures following the Russo-Japanese War, the Japanese House of Peers did not take part in the IPU, and, after the outbreak of the First World War, the relationship between the House of Representatives and the IPU also lapsed. This article looks at the figure of Miyaoka Tsunejirō, an internationalist, who worked to reconnect the IPU and the Imperial Diet, reform the Japanese representative group, as well as push for participation by the House of Peers. Using archival materials from the IPU’s archives in Geneva, and materials held in the House of Representatives’ international office, it studies Miyaoka’s activities as well the international background against which such parliamentary diplomacy took place. Through such work, and through viewing the “internationalization” of the Imperial Diet from the perspective of Miyaoka, this article reveals and delineates heretofore hidden issues.
Firstly, this article traces the “Non-official way” whereby Miyaoka - himself not a parliamentarian - linked the Imperial Diet and the IPU. In doing so, it reveals the nature of the internationalist network in this era. Next, the article delineates the nature of Miyaoka’s actions and his information networks. It analyses Miyaoka’s thinking, in correspondence with the IPU, about structural issues regarding the internationalization of the Imperial Diet. Miyaoka, although he supported parliamentarism, and emphasized the development of the House of Representatives overseas, held opinions that viewed the House of Peers’ involvement in Parliamentary Diplomacy as preferable for a variety of reasons. He acted on the belief that participation in the IPU by the House of Peers was a crucial factor for the stabilization of relations between it and the Imperial Diet. Such views differed from the popular image of the “democratization of diplomacy”, and can be seen as retaining many of the ideas of “classic diplomacy”. Finally, this article outlines the process whereby the Japanese representative group was reformed, and the House of Peers came to participate in the IPU, both via this “Non-official way”, before ending with a look forward to the development of the Imperial Diet's overseas relations in the 1920s and beyond.
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