There are three stages in the relationship between diplomacy and economy during the Showa era. The first is the pre-Manchurian Incident period, during which the principle of international cooperation of the 1920s was still dominant. Japan's lifting of the gold embargo and its participation in the international limitation of naval armaments in 1930, were the final examples of international cooperation in the 1920s.
After the Manchurian Incident of 1931, the spirit of international cooperation diminished considerably, and Japanese foreign policy makers tried to replace the former policy of multilateral cooperation with that of bilateral cooperation in diplomacy and economy. The new prescription was a revised version of the principle of international cooperation of the 1920s.
With the outbreak of the undeclared war against China in 1937, even the policy of bilaterlism increasingly lost validity. Both diplomacy and economy were geared for war, ultimately leading to the Pacific War.
The third stage is the post-war period in which both diplomacy and economy regained their autonomy from military affairs. Reconstruction of the economy was given priority over all other national goals. Diplomacy served the Japanese economy as a means to its internationalization.
As an introduction to the special feature articles of this issue on the diplomacy and economy of the Showa era, this article tries to illustrate the disintegration of the international regime based upon treaties concluded at the Washington conference in 1922, which brought drastic changes in the former relationship between diplomacy and economy. It sheds light upon the four power financial consortium to China as the economic framework of the Washington international regime, which was organized by Japanese, Amirican, British, and French banking groups in 1920, with the “complete support” of their respective governments.
The special concern is how international relations among the four powers changed, as their respective policies, especially British policy toward the China consortium, changed from the beginning of the 1920s to the eve of the undeclared war between Japan and China in 1937. This introductory article shows how the original positive British policy toward the China consortium gradually changed to a negative one, parallel with the decline of the Washington international regime.

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