Baron Suematsu in Europe during the Russo-Japanese War (1904-5) His Battle with Yellow Peril

Book excerpt: A companion volume to 'Baron Kaneko and the Russo-Japanese War' (Lulu.com, 2009), this book relates the story of Baron Suematsu's one-man campaign in Europe using the spoken and written word against the dangerous bogey of Yellow Peril which fueled European paranoia about China and Japan and their presumed sinister intentions of world domination. Kaneko and Suematsu had similar missions, though Kaneko who was sent to the United States was also tasked with persuading President Theodore Roosevelt to broker a peace settlement while Suematsu was more directly involved in the fight against Yellow Peril which originated in Europe. Kaneko was a lawyer with a knowledge of economics, while Suematsu was a historian with a literary bent. Both men were also politicians and close to the Meiji oligarch Ito Hirobumi. They were the two prongs of Japan's first ever public diplomacy initiative, and both succeeded to a considerable degree.