Gentleman Samurai and Internationalist

Greg Gubler is retired as professor and university archivist at Brigham Young University at Hawaii.

• Chapter 1: Samurai Heritage, Changing Families and Direction Chapter 2: Diplomatic Apprenticeship in Tsarist Russia Chapter 3: Challenges as Consul General in Harbin; Revolution Spreads East Chapter 4: Diplomacy and Conferences in Europe after the Great War Chapter 5: An Advocate of the League of Nations and Internationalism Chapter 6: The Estrangement of Japan from the League Chapter 7: Ambassador to Belgium and then France Chapter 8: The Moderate Foreign Minister and His Policies Chapter 9: From the China Incident to Pearl Harbor Chapter 10: Defender of the Northern Flank Chapter 11: Ironing Out Difficulties with the Soviets Chapter 12: A Year of Reverses Chapter 13: Bearing the Hopes of the Empire: The Final Months Chapter 14: From Internment to Senior Statesman

Greg Gubler’s biography of Sato Naotake, one of the prominent Japanese diplomats of the past century, is a thoroughly researched and engagingly written volume that presents a sympathetic portrait of its main subject. Sato was a Japanese diplomat who spent over three decades working in Japan’s embassies abroad, served as foreign minister for three months in 1937, and spent three unrewarding years as Japan’s ambassador to the USSR in the latter half of World War II. This hefty volume is remarkable because few of Sato’s contemporaries even those in arguably more consequential positions have received full biographical treatment in English. This state of knowledge is, thankfully, changing, helped in part by recent translations of prominent and highly readable biographical surveys of the leading lights of Japanese interwar diplomacy. [This] biography deserves to be read by both students and practitioners of history, as well as the general reading public curious about the behind-the-scenes workings of Japanese imperial diplomacy.