142 J.-A. PEMBERTON
emigration,’ adding that within twenty years it was expected that ten per
cent of the Japanese population would have been transplanted there.^190
Reflecting Italy’s now fast-waning interest in the LON, the Italian
institutions that were affiliated with the ISC did not take an active part in
the preparations for the conference except during the initial stages.^191 In
regard to the conference itself, for the first time at a session of the ISC,
Italy was represented not by members but by observers. One of those
observers was Claudio Baldoni of the International Institute for the
Unification of Private Law in Rome. This institute had been offered to
the LON by the Italian government in September 1924, an offer which
was accepted by the LON’s Fifth Assembly. On May 30, 1928, at a cer-
emony at the Villa Aldobrandini attended by King Vittorio Emanuel III,
members of the Italian government, League officials and representatives
of states which were members of the LON, the International Institute
for the Unification of Private Law was officially inaugurated.^192 In open-
ing the institute, Mussolini had stated that the Italian ‘government had
been keen to make an effective contribution to the intellectual collab-
oration which has made such promising progress under the auspices
of the League of Nations’.^193 The other Italian observer at the confer-
ence was Vito Catastini, the director of the Mandates Section. When
Italy announced its withdrawal from the LON at the end of 1937, he
would have to relinquish this position. The same announcement would
(^190) International Studies Conference, Peaceful Change: Procedures, Population, Raw
Materials, Colonies, 373–76. Henry Forbes Angus noted that generally at IPR meetings,
Japan did not make ‘sweeping demands for territory to which her people may migrate
or for access to sources of raw materials or to markets’. Angus, Peaceful Change in the
Pacific, 190. See also Imre Ferenczi, The Synthetic Optimum of Population: An Outline
of an International Demographic Policy (Paris: International Institute of Intellectual
Co-operation, 1938), 35. In light of Angus’s observation it may be noteworthy that, as
pointed out by Imre Ferenczi, Naotako Satō, who would be appointed Japan’s minister of
foreign affairs in March 1937, gave a lecture at the Centre d’étude de politique étrangère
on January 27, 1936 entitled ‘The Problem of the Population and Industrialisation of
Japan,’ in which he referred to Japan’s increase in population and its need for raw materials
and access to foreign markets.
(^191) Chalmers Wright, Population and Peace, 23n.
(^192) Pierre Widmer, ‘The International Institute for the Unification of Private Law:
Shipyard for World-Wide Unification of Private Law,’ European Journal of Law Reform 1,
no. 3 (1999): 181–92, 181.
(^193) Benito Mussolini, 1928, quoted in Pierre Widmer, ‘The International Institute for the
Unification of Private Law,’ 181.