This article investigates the role of the League of Nations for Japan after latter’s withdrawal from the League, focusing on Japanese attempt to continue enjoying equal opportunities for trade and commerce in mandated territories. It argues that Japan rediscovered usefulness of the former, which had advocated for the principle of equal opportunities for trade and commerce in mandated territories in the Covenant, and therefore the Japanese decision-makers demanded the League members to abide by it.
The League Covenant and the terms of the mandate required the League members that were in charge of mandated territories categories “A” and “B” to provide equal opportunities for trade and commerce to all other League members. Therefore, the Japanese faced the possibility of losing the right because of her withdrawal from the League. Japanese decision-makers initially negotiated bilaterally with the mandatory nations to avoid this fate from around 1934, asking the League members not to withdraw the rights that they had hitherto granted to Japan. However, the mandatory nations started discussing the issue of ceasing the privilege that the Japan enjoyed at the mandated territories from June 1935 in the Twenty-Seventh Session of the Permanent Mandates Commission before making any particular reply to the Japanese overtures. Such action by the mandatory nations alarmed the Japanese decision-makers, and thus started to make their case at the League, arguing that the members should abide by the spirit of the equal opportunities for trade and commerce even if they were dealing with the non-members.
The decision-makers of Britain, who also played a major part in the League, concluded that it would not be prudent to continuously marginalize the Japanese and therefore supported the idea of continuing to grant equal opportunities for trade and commerce to Japan in territories that they mandated. However, they refused to acknowledge the Japanese interpretation of the League Covenant, and insisted that they would grant Japan equal opportunities for trade and commerce based on the spirit of the Anglo-Japanese Treaty of Commerce and Navigation. Despite the fact that the Japanese decision-makers understood the usefulness of the League in retaining and advancing their interests, such a gesture by the British decision-makers had a result of severely restricting the Japanese maneuverability at the League. The only thing that the Japanese could do was to continue appealing the principle of free trade to the deaf ears of the members of the League.

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At the beginning of 1945 American forces landed in the Philippines and Manila fell. As the war situation grew still more desperate, Konoe Fumimaro attended the court on February 14 for the first time in over three years and presented a long memorial to the Throne. In this memorial Konoe adomitted that defeat was inevitable but reasoned that defeat itself did not necessarily mean the end of the national polity, as the real threat was a communist revolution which could occur as a result of defeat. Therefore Konoe concluded that Japan should seek to terminate the war as immediately as possible.
Until now studies about this memorial have focused mainly on his fear against the danger of a communist revolution. The aim of this paper, therefore, is to reexamine his aim in this memorial.
Not only Konoe but also the Jushin, Hiranuma, Kido, and Wakatsuki, had strongly expressed the same view. It is natural that the ruling class has such feeling, and Konoe, who was a prince, has been frightened by the fear of a communist revolution from his youth.
Konoe also stressed that the Manchurian Incident and Sino-Japanese War and their expansion into the Pacific War were skillfully plotted by one group within the army which have long time aimed at a communist revolution. But Konoe was strongly influenced by Ueda Shunkichi, Yosida Shigeru, and other some adherents of Kodoha, who had helped draft this memorial to begin to hold this conspiracy. Moreover this idea has been developed and intensified by his strong anger toward the army, which regarded his detachment as negativism and watched him with deep suspicion, the Sorge Incident, and his political motive to attempt a Kodoha revival.
More noteworthy is Konoe's grasp of the international scene. On the one hand he pointed out that the Soviet Union was pushing revolution not only in Europe but also in East Asia. On the other hand he observed that America and Britain had not yet decided over forcing Japan to abolish the national polity. Through obtaining much accurate information from the Department of Foreign Affairs and other channels, he was somewhat optimistic about American opinion. Amongst his contacts, Ogata Shoji, chief of the second section of the Investigation Division of the Department of Foreign Affairs, played a most important role by talking and submitting the memorandum to Konoe about the international situation.
In particular Konoe was very sensitive to the trend about Japan in America and knew well that there were some influential persons like Joseph Grew and Hugh Byas, who understood the position of Konoe and Japan. He concluded that Japan must terminate the war immediately by negotiating with America in order to avoid a communist revolution and to preseve the national polity.
Four months later Konoe agreed to go to the Soviet Union as special envoy by the Emperor's entreaty. Though he personally distrusted the Soviet Union, he had one secret plan to negotiate directly with America using this chance. But his plan was not realized, as the Soviet Union did not accept the Konoe mission.

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The 1990s witnessed a dramatic decrease in the political power of the Thai military, which had been the most powerful force in Thai politics since the 1932 revolution. This essay considers the reasons for this shrinking of political power, and argues that the military owed its earlier political power to its potential to stage a successful coup. The long history of political intervention by the military shows that a successful coup needed the strong leadership of the army chief and the solidarity of army top brass to defeat or at least neutralize the various forces opposing the coup, and that such leadership and solidarity could be attained only through an annual reshuffle of army officers. Examination of the annual reshuffle in the last twenty years reveals that the May 1992 incident damaged the military more seriously than any other factors (the end of the Cold War, global and domestic democratization tides, and so on). Since 1992 special attention has been paid to avoid concentration of important posts into the hands of any particular class of the military academy. Through this policy, it became difficult for an army chief to consolidate his power sufficiently to stage a coup. This has resulted in the decrease in military power in politics, because the government can now reject demands from the armed forces.

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This essay examines the relations between the Western Powers and Japan in the summer of 1939. Japanese diplomacy in this period was strongly characterized by the intervention of the military. To review the situation of those days, it is necessary to look back into the situation of 1938.
It is often insisted that one of the first motives on the Japanese side that spurred Japan into negotiations with Germany for the purpose of “strengthening the Anti-Comintern Pact (November 25, 1936)” lay in the Japanese army's desire to check the Soviet Union and Britain from aiding Chiang Kai-shek's China in the Sino-Japanese Conflict. For example, the document “The Army's Hopes Regarding Current Foreign Policies” (Deterrent Diplomacy. Japan, Germany, and the USSR, 1935-1940, edited by James William Morley, New York, 1976, pp. 268-272), which was proposed by the War Minister Itagaki to the Konoe Cabinet on July 3, 1938, shows the army's fear for both the Soviet Union and Britain. On July 19, the Five Ministers Conference adopted a “Draft Policy for Strengthening Political Ties with Germany and Italy” (Ibid., p. 55). It is an interesting fact that both the “Hopes” and “Draft” aimed at concluding a pact with Germany to check the Soviet Union and making a secret agreement with Italy to check Britain respectively. Since the acceptance of Ribbentrop's proposal on August 5, 1938, which was brought to Tokyo by General Yukio Kasahara, the Japanese army changed its view immediately and eagerly followed Ribbentrop's idea to combine these two agreements. The move to the Tripartite Pact thus began in the summer of 1938.
It was very much embarassing for the Japanese army that Germany started in the spring of 1939 to make contact with the Soviet Union which had been thought by the Japanese army to be the common enemy of both Germany and Japan. The Japanese Ambassador to Berlin, General Hiroshi Oshima, cabled the Foreign Minister Arita on April 21, 1939, indicating Ribbentrop's intention to bring about better relations between Moscow and Berlin. On July 19, Uzuhiko Usami, councilor of the Japanese Embassy in Berlin, raised objection against the German access to the Soviet Union which was becoming more and more evident at that time (Akten zur Deutschen Auswärtigen Politik 1918-1945, Serie D, Band VI, Nr. 688).
The Japanese army started a local war with the Soviet Union in Nomonhan in May, 1939. This war turned out to be a total defeat of Japan at the end of August. It is a noteworthy fact that the staff of the Kwantung Army which waged this war were fully conscious of the interrelationship between the outcome of this war and the so-called Arita-Craigie talks which were to begin in Tokyo on July 15. Colonel Masao Terada, Chief of the Operation Section of the Kwantung Army, was hesitant to widen the war because he feared that this war would deter the talks. Major Masanobu Tsuji argued that Japan's coup in the battlefield of Nomonhan would strengthen Japan's position toward Britain in the talks and Tsuji persuaded the whole section in this regard. This operation conference on June 19, 1939, was recorded in the secret diary of the Nomonhan Incident (Gendaishi shiryo or the Source Materials of Contemporary History of Japan, vol. 10, Tokyo: Misuzu-shobo, 1963, pp. 74-75).
Recent studies by Klaus Hildebrand and Wolfgang Michalka show that the foreign policy of the Third Reich possessed a stratified structure consisting of the core, i. e. Hitler's pro-British and anti-Russian policy, and the overstructure represented by Ribbentrop's anti-British and pro-Russian policy which was supported by the German Foreign Ministry, Navy and Big Business. The Japanese army and Japan as a whole was perplexed by this structure of German foreign policy which was regarded as enigmatic.

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In 1992, the Thai government approved in principle the first Community Forest (CF) bill, as submitted by the forest administration. However, as of April 2009, the bill had still not been enacted into law, although it has come close to passage many times. This study seeks to clarify why the Thai CF Act has not come into effect and the political/social context surrounding it, especially before the military coup in 2006. An earlier study has pointed to persistent antagonism and a lack of discussion between two sections of society: social activists supporting local villagers and forest conservationist NGOs. This study examines both the struggles within civil society and the interests of stakeholders inside the Thai state, including the cabinet, parliament members, and royalist organizations. The problems with the Thai CF Act ensue from the combination of an increase in the value of forests and the three types of democracy that have operated in Thailand, participatory democracy, parliamentary democracy, and Thai special democracy, in addition to the conflicting interests of civil society. The increase in the value of forests includes increases arising from the multiple functions of forests and from decentralized resource management. The Thai state organizations sought to serve their own political/social interests, which included interests not directly related to the enactment of the Thai CF Act, by linking the increase in the value of forests to the type democracy that they supported.

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