Consul in Japan, 1903-1941

Oswald White’s Memoir ‘All Ambition Spent’

Hugo Read

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN:
  9781040786079
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

A rare account by a foreigner working in Japan in the 20th century; a unique insight into this important period of Japan's history; complements existing material. First a student interpreter, then an assistant in Korea, Vice-Consul in Yokohama and Osaka, Consul in Nagasaki and Dairen, then Consul-General in Seoul, Osaka, Mukden and Tientsin. Not a contemporary diary as such, but a write-up of notes made towards the end of White's career spanning thirty-eight years. Importantly, it includes reflective passages on the momentous developments of the later 1930s, as Japan moved onto a war-footing in China - and as Consul-General in the Chinese treaty port of Tianjin under Japanese occupation, White was in the middle of the growing tensions between Britain and Japan. His post-war recollections are also valuable. Like others who had lived and worked in Japan, he sought to come to terms with what had happened to the country in which he had spent so much of his adult life. Along the way he provides fascinating vignettes of his colleagues, some well known, others less so, while his service in Seoul, Mukden (now Shenyang) and Tianjin provides fresh material on the Japanese colonial empire.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• Introduction
• List of Figures and Plates
• Preface to ‘All Ambition Spent’
• Chapter 1 The Japanese View
• Chapter 2 Student Interpreter in Tokyo, 1903–1905
• Chapter 3 Tokyo in 1904 and 1905
• Chapter 4 Assistant at Yokohama, 1905–1908
• Chapter 5 Stray Notes on Language
• Chapter 6 Assistant in Corea, 1908–1910
• Chapter 7 Corea in 1909 and 1910
• Chapter 8 Vice-Consul at Yokohama, 1911–1913
• Chapter 9 Vice-Consul at Osaka, 1913–1919
• Chapter 10 Consul at Nagasaki, 1920–1925
• Chapter 11 Consul at Dairen, 1925–1927
• Chapter 12 Consul-General at Seoul, 1928–1931
• Chapter 13 Consul-General at Osaka, 1931–1937
• Chapter 14 Consul-General at Mukden, 1938–1939
• Chapter 15 Consul-General at Tientsin, 1939–1941
• Chapter 16 Anglo-Japanese Relations
• Index