[Between History and Fiction] Chapter 1: 'The Ghost of Disarmament'

October 1929, Geneva.

This is the scene where the protagonist, Seiichiro Kurose, first appears.
As a 31-year-old secretary at the European and Asian Affairs Bureau of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he is attending the League of Nations Disarmament Committee.

There, he meets a woman.
Miriam Katz.
She is the Geneva representative of the Zionist Federation.

Could I have a cigarette?
With those words, the story begins to move.

■ Historical Fact 1: 1929, the 'Illusion' of Disarmament

Eleven years after the end of World War I, the world believed in disarmament.

In 1928, the 'Kellogg-Briand Pact' was signed by 63 countries,
declaring war to be 'illegal'.

The League of Nations Disarmament Committee continued to hold intermittent meetings in Geneva.
The following year, in 1930, the London Naval Conference was held, where Japan, the United States, and Britain renegotiated the ratios of capital ship holdings.

However, the foundation of this 'ghost of disarmament' was already crumbling.

October 24, 1929—'Black Thursday'.
Wall Street collapsed.

The Great Depression had begun.

People who lost their jobs flooded the streets, and nationalism and right-wing movements began to rise in Europe.
The ideal of disarmament only shone during the era when the economy was functioning.

■ Historical Fact 2: The Hebron Massacre and the Impatience of Zionism

In the novel, just before coming to Geneva, Kurose reads a telegram.

'Riots by Arabs have occurred in Hebron, and sixty-seven Jews have died.'

This is a historical fact.

In August 1929, a massacre of Jews by Arabs occurred in Hebron, Palestine.
67 people were killed, and many of the survivors were saved by being hidden by their neighbors.
The slow response of the British Mandate authorities was criticized.

This incident greatly shook the Zionist movement.

Is Palestine truly safe?

Where should a homeland for the Jewish people be established? The debate continued.
Within the Zionist Organization, proposals for "alternative lands" other than Palestine appeared and vanished time and again.
Argentina, Uganda, Madagascar... none of them came to fruition.

■ The "What If" of the Novel: The Idea of Karafuto

Meeting Miriam in the hallway, Kurose lets out a single word without thinking.

Karafuto.

It is written that he did not even know why that word had come out.

Karafuto (Sakhalin).
Southern Karafuto had become Japanese territory under the 1905 Treaty of Portsmouth.
As of 1929, hundreds of thousands of Japanese immigrants were already living in Southern Karafuto.
Railways had been laid, paper mills and coal mines were in operation, and there was even a department store in Toyohara (present-day Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk).

It was not an "empty lot."
It was a land where people had already taken root and industries were active.

How could a Jewish state be created there?
Who would be convinced, and who would resist?
The geopolitical challenge remained that the border with Russia (the Soviet Union) was still drawn at the 50th parallel north.

Kurose's single word, "Karafuto," was not a romantic fantasy, but rather
an intuition as a diplomat that took all of those complex realities into account.

"It is vast. It is sparsely populated. It is an island left in limbo between Russia and Japan."

It is not unnatural that Kurose felt this way, even when viewed from the geopolitical context of historical fact.
In fact, during the interwar period, there was a case of the Soviet Union considering "Jewish settlement in Siberia" (the Birobidzhan project).

This single word becomes the core of the entire story.

■ Japan and the League of Nations in 1929

At that time, Japan was a permanent member of the League of Nations.
Diplomatically, it maintained a cooperative line with the West, and it was also an era when young diplomats like Kurose
were active in Geneva.

However, two years later, the Manchurian Incident would occur.
Four years after that, Japan would withdraw from the League.

The "heaviness of words settling" that Kurose felt in the disarmament committee meeting room
may have been the silence before the coming storm.

■ What is depicted in this chapter

The first chapter is a chapter of "encounters".

Kurose and Miriam meet, and the word 'Karafuto' is born.
In Geneva, where the illusion of disarmament drifted, the two were grappling with entirely different problems.

A diplomat and a representative of the Jewish refugee movement.
The language of politics and the urgency of survival.

That encounter begins to set in motion the question, 'What if Japan had made a different choice?'

The complete version of Part 1, 'Seeds of Karafuto,' is now available to read on Amazon Kindle.

It remains available for free on note, Kakuyomu, Shousetsuka ni Narou, NOVEL DAYS, and AlphaPolis.

The sequel, Part 2,
'Dream of the Pacific II: Declaration of a Maritime Nation,' has been released on Amazon Kindle.
It is included in Kindle Unlimited (the all-you-can-read plan).