610 texts printed in English-language periodicals and year books of 1930s–40s Japan: 96 treaties, 21 laws, 107 speeches, 243 other documents, 11 programmes and plans, 53 reports, 21 profiles, 5 summaries of laws, 29 lists of laws promulgated, 8 reviews and chronologies, 16 statistics. Each links to the page of the original scan.
The best open access resource online for documents related to the history of Japanese foreign policy is The World and Japan by Professor Tanaka Akihito and the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS). In addition to a wealth of databases and Japanese language documents it also provides access to many English, Chinese, and Korean versions of these documents. Links to many of these documents on that website have been added to the collection of extracted documents below when they are related to East Asia and are available in English.
Important: The scanned documents are taken verbatim from the published source and, in addition to possible extraction errors, may not exactly match the official diplomatic record. If you intend to cite these documents, compare with the original source but also seek out official versions.
This site gathers the verbatim texts of treaties, laws, speeches and other official documents printed in two English-language periodicals published in wartime Japan: the Tokyo Gazette (1937–1942), a monthly digest of government reports issued under the supervision of the Cabinet Information Bureau, and Contemporary Japan: A Review of Far Eastern Affairs (issues of 1941–1945), published by the Foreign Affairs Association of Japan, whose “Documentary Material” section reprinted official texts.
It also includes the “Texts of Treaties, Agreements, Notes and Statutes of the Powers Concerning Manchuria” (1895–1932) printed as Supplement III of the Japan-Manchoukuo Year Book 1934 (the first of a section of texts from year books), and, from the two periodicals, selected government programmes, reports, statistical articles, chronologies and profiles of public figures.
Only texts printed in full in the journals are included; commentary, summaries and articles about them are not. The issues covered are those indexed on the Tokyo Gazette table of contents and Contemporary Japan pages at Frog in a Well, and scanned on the Internet Archive.
These are official translations and statements of the wartime Japanese state and its allies, and should be read as such.
Transcription. The texts were transcribed from the page scans by AI models (Claude Opus 5.5, Claude Sonnet 5.5 and, for the Japan Year Books, Claude Haiku 5.5; the model used is named at the foot of each text) reading the page images, and have not been proofread by a person. Original spelling and romanisation are kept. Page numbers in the margin link to the page of the scan on the Internet Archive: check the scan before quoting.