Les traités inégaux japonais, de leur signature à leur renégociation

Abstract

The "Unequal Treaties" refer to treaties imposed by the Western powers in the Far East, treaties which had a major influence on the affected nations but which have in modern times largely been forgotten. The research project "Unequal Treaties", conducted in Lyon, has been launched with the goal of developing a database on these treaties. In Japan, the treaties were instru­mental in introducing the Western conception of law and thus played an in­strumental role in Japanese legal history. Yet Japan is in a unique position in that it signed the largest number of treaties and was also the first country to have them renegotiated. The first phase associated with these treaties ran from 1854 to 1857 and corresponded to the opening up of international relations; the second phase, from 1858 to 1869, saw the establishment of trade; and the third phase, from 1894 to 1899, was that of the renegotiation of treaties in favour of Japanese interests. In the second phase the British treaty was used as a model, while the Austro-Hungarian treaty was actually the one of most practical importance because of its most-favoured-nation clause which benefited the other nations in their relations with Japan. Throughout the period, Japan conducted negotiations that had three main objectives: to continue to determine for itself the country’s openness to international trade, to regain tariff autonomy in order to obtain favourable trading conditions, and to achieve the repeal of the extraterritoriality clauses that were considered a breach of national sovereignty. In the third phase, Great Britain was the first to renounce its privileges, and this led to all other Western countries taking a similar step. The new treaties came into force in 1899.