Although the earliest contacts between Japan and France occurred in the late sixteenth century, prompted by the activities of Catholic missionaries, a formal bilateral relationship was not established until the signing of the treaty of friendship and trade in 1858. In the following year, the first French consul general arrived in Japan, while the first Japanese diplomatic mission reached France in 1862. In the last years of the Tokugawa regime, France sided with the shogunate and helped to lay the groundwork for Japan's modernization, notably in military matters. The Meiji Restoration of 1868, combined with the French defeat by Prussia in 1871, diminished the centrality of France as a model for Japan; nevertheless, French influence continued to be felt, for instance in legal reforms. The Tripartite Intervention that followed Japan's victory over China in 1895 soured Japanese popular sentiments toward France, but these events also indicated that Japan was becoming an imperial power on a par with France. Japan's next victory over Russia in 1905 led to the Franco-Japanese Agreement, and Japan joined the Triple Entente against Germany in World War I. From the 1920s, Indochina increasinglybecame a bone of contention between the two countries as Japan sought to build up its naval forces lured by the rich natural resources of the region. Japanese troops finally entered and occupied Indochina in 1940, although the Vichyite French authority there was formally left intact until early 1945.
Ai Sugiyama of Japan and Julie Halard-Decugis of France hold the women's doubles trophy which they won at the 2000 U.S. Open in New York City. (REUTERS NEWMEDIA INC./CORBIS)
The San Francisco Peace Treaty revived the relations between Japan and France in 1952. In 1953, a bilateral Cultural Agreement followed. Shigeru Yoshida (1878–1967) became the first postwar Japanese prime minister to pay an official visit to France in 1954. In 1971, the Japanese emperor visited France, although the first official imperial visit did not take place until 1994. On the French side, Georges Pompidou was the first prime minister to visit Japan, in 1964, and Valéry Giscard d'Estaing was the first president to do so, in 1979. Although it was never seriously threatened, the bilateral relationship went through occasional difficulties, for example when France conducted nuclear tests in the Pacific in the 1970s, and again briefly in 1995. Lacking in focus, the postwar political relationship between the two countries verged on an indifferent friendship. The economic relations between the two countries continued to be marked by small bilateral trade volumes, and mutual cultural interest was the strongest underpinning of the postwar ties. French president Jacques Chirac furthered cultural exchanges in the early 2000s.
Further Reading
Le Centre d'études japonaises de l'Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales. (1974) Le Japon et laFrance: images d'une découverte. Paris: Publications orientalistes de France.
Comité des Sages. (1984) Les relations franco-japonaises: bilan et perspectives du Comité des Sages. Paris: Documentation française.
Medzini, Meron. (1971) French Policy in Japan during theClosing Years of the Tokugawa Regime. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Sims, Richard. (1998) French Policy towards the Bakufu andMeiji Japan, 1854–94: A Case of Misjudgment and Missed Opportunities. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press.
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