After lunch, Yoshida tried to bring it home to me that the newly appointed government headed by Hayashi

Senjuro Hayashi, Japanese minister of war, 1934–35; prime minister of Japan, February–June 1937.

would pursue a more conciliatory foreign policy, particularly with respect to the USSR and China, that the present government would be defeated at the forthcoming parliamentary election, that long-established parties would gain the majority of votes, and that Hayashi would have to form his new national party after the election by trying to split Minseitō and Seiyukai. It remains to be seen, however, whether he will bring this off. Then Yoshida began complaining about the ‘aggressiveness’ of the USSR, which keeps large military forces in the Far East. But were we to agree to transfer part of those forces to the country’s interior, a peaceful atmosphere would immediately be restored in Japanese–Soviet relations. I turned his complaint into a joke, saying: ‘Mr Ambassador, don’t you know that all our military forces in the Far East have as their only task the protection of Soviet frontiers against “the bandits”, who, according to your own Japanese sources, still teem in Manchuria?’

See also DVP, 1937, XX, fn. 7.

Rendell spoke at length and with great enthusiasm about Comrade Litvinov, whom he met at last year’s conference about the Straits in Montreux.