Under these conditions, the United States was able to summon the
Washington Conference, at which important agreements on naval
limitation and Pacific questions were reached early in 1922. By
accepting a battleship ratio of 3 tons as against 5 each for Britain
and the United States, Japan was relieved of the costs of the naval
race. Her security in Far Eastern waters was further increased by the
provision restricting fortification of island bases in the Pacific. The
Four-Power Pact, signed by Britain, France, the U. S. and Japan, and
pledging respect for insular possessions in the Pacific, replaced the
Anglo-Japanese Alliance.
In return for these contributions to her security in Far Eastern
waters, Japan made a number of important concessions. By an agreement
with China, she restored Shantung province to Chinese control. Japan
also signed the Nine-Power Treaty, which pledged all its signatories to
respect China’s territorial and administrative integrity and the “open
door”--or equal commercial opportunity for all nations--in China.
In later days, some of the provisions of these Washington Conference
agreements came to be bitterly attacked in Japan, especially by
military and naval extremists. It is an open question as to how far
these criticisms were justified. It was chiefly the effectiveness of
the Chinese boycott that forced the restoration of Shantung province.
Japan’s major concession was in the Nine-Power Treaty, by which she
agreed to lay down the sword and accept the results of peaceful
commercial competition in China. But there was no machinery provided to
enforce this treaty. The naval limitation treaty relieved Japan of the
heavy costs of the 1921 naval race and at the same time, even under the
5-5-3 ratio, left her able to dominate the China coast. She was thus in
a strategic position to renew her expansionist program--which she did
in 1931.