3 CONFERENCES AT PRAGUE AND BERGEN AND THE LOOMING WAR 317of publications.^268 He also recalled that his old friend Takagi Yasaka of
the Imperial University in Tokyo, had informed him that the Japanese
National Council was ‘bitterly opposed to the aims and methods of the
Inquiry and to the role of the I.P.R. Secretariat in it’ and it was on behalf
of that council that Takagi lodged a protest against the Inquiry while
at Princeton.^269 Although the meeting was characterised by a ‘strained
pseudo-diplomatic atmosphere’ certain compromises were reached in
regard to the Inquiry project.^270 However, in July 1939, the Japanese
National Council decided that it ‘could not participate in the Inquiry’
and therefore ‘dissociated itself from any responsibility for the results or
organization of the project’.^271 At the same time, the Japanese National
Council affirmed that it would continue to participate in the IPR, declar-
ing also that ‘on its own responsibility and quite separate from the
Inquiry’ it would prepare ‘a series of reports on the Far Eastern situation
for independent publication under the Council’s auspices.’^272
The tense relations with the Japanese National Council over the matter
of the Inquiry and the consequent uncertainty as to whether Japan would
send a delegation to the IPR’s seventh conference which, based on the
pattern of conferencing over recent years, would fall due in the autumn
of 1939, suggested to figures such as Holland that holding a regular IPR
conference would prove difficult. However, according to Holland
the matter was decided not by the Japanese but by Hitler. When Germany
attacked Poland in September 1939 and launched Europe into war, it
became much more difficult for the Japanese to maintain contact as their
country was Germany’s ally under the terms of the Axis Treaty. In the
wake of all this, the 1939 conference...was cancelled, and a more modest(^268) ‘Appendix 3: John B. Condliffe’s Reminiscences,’ in Hooper, ed., Remembering the
Institute of Pacific Relations, 469. See also ‘Memoirs of William L. Holland,’ in Hooper,
ed., Remembering the Institute of Pacific Relations, 22, and ‘Appendix 5: Organization of
the Study Meeting, the Inquiry and the Research Program,’ in Mitchell and Holland, eds.,
Problems of the Pacific, 1939, 289.
(^269) Ibid. For the protest of Takagi Yasaka, see ‘Appendix Two: Holland-Hooper
Interviews,’ in Hooper, ed., Remembering the Institute of Pacific Relations, 254.
(^270) ‘Appendix Three: John B. Condliffe’s Reminiscences,’ in Hooper, ed., Remembering
the Institute of Pacific Relations, 469.
(^271) Mitchell and Holland, eds., Problems of the Pacific, 1939, v–vi
(^272) Ibid., vi. See also Akami, Internationalizing the Pacific, 219.