Japan–Poland relations

Japan–Poland relations refers to the bilateral foreign relations between Japan and Poland. Both nations enjoy historically friendly relations, embracing close cooperation and mutual assistance in times of need. Both are members of the OECD, World Trade Organization and United Nations.

The first non-clergymen Poles to arrive in Japan were the famous adventurer Maurycy Beniowski and his close companion Antoni Straszewski, who arrived in 1771 after a daring escape from Russian exile in Kamchatka.^[1] It was also the first Polish ship to arrive in Japan, as they sailed under the Polish flag aboard a seized Russian galiot.^[1] Beniowski's expedition was warmly received by the Japanese, an exchange of gifts took place, and sailing southward, Beniowski stopped at several Japanese islands.^[1]

Japanese novelist Tokai Sanshi wrote about the Partitions of Poland and the Polish independence movement.^[2] The Japanese poem Porando kaiko by Ochiai Naobumi about Fukushima Yasumasa travelling in 1890s mentions the Polish struggle for freedom.^[3][4][5] Fukushima established contacts with members of the Polish resistance movement and exiles to Siberia in order to obtain detailed information about the common enemy of the Poles and the Japanese—Russia.^[2]

Polish travelers Karol Lanckoroński and Paweł Sapieha, as well as ethnographers Bronisław Piłsudski and Wacław Sieroszewski, among others, wrote about Japan.^[2] Translations of Japanese literature, works on Japanese history and culture were published in partitioned Poland.^[2] Japanese culture and art were popularized among Poles by Feliks Jasieński, an enthusiast and collector of Japanese art.^[2]

Until World War I, Japanese Taiwan imported many Polish goods, i.e. metal products, leather products, haberdashery and soap from Warsaw, cotton products from Łódź, etc.^[6]

During World War I, the Japanese government declared war on Germany and at the same time the Japanese elite secretly sent funds to the Polish Socialist Party to support the Polish independence movement and the internal destabilization of Tsarist Russia. General Akashi Motojiro finansed Poles and other revolutionary movements in Europe to the weakening of Russia. Roman Dmowski, a Polish nationalist politician, opposed these actions, arguing that previous experience had shown that financing another Polish uprising by a foreign country would not bring any benefits to Poland.^[7] During the war, Poles from the Russian Partition of Poland conscripted to the Russian Army and Japanese were among Allied prisoners of war held by the Germans in a POW camp in Stargard in modern northwestern Poland.^[8]

Japan and Poland established diplomatic relations on March 22, 1919, months after Poland regained its independence in November 1918.^[9] In the 1920s, a trade treaty was signed and .^[2] Japanese-Polish societies were formed in both countries, and literature was translated and publications were issued on topics related to the cultures of both countries.^[2] On the orders of Marshal Józef Piłsudski, over 50 Japanese officers were awarded the Virtuti Militari, Poland's highest military decoration, for their achievements during the Russo-Japanese War.^[2]

During Bolshevik rule in Russia, the Japanese Red Cross undertook a rescue operation to help Polish children deported to Siberia. Japanese ships transported Polish children to Tokyo, where the Japanese Red Cross gave them protection and then helped them return to Poland. The Japanese government moved swiftly in response to the call for help, asking the Japanese Red Cross Society to undertake coordination of the project. Japanese Army soldiers had been deployed in Siberia after the Russian Revolution and were there to help. In the end, a total of 765 Polish orphans scattered throughout many Siberian regions were rescued during the period from 1920 to 1922. The orphans were transported by military ships from Vladivostok to the port of the city of Tsuruga in Japan's Fukui Prefecture. They were then cared for in childcare institutions in Tokyo and Osaka.

The most sizeable Polish community of early 20th-century Japan (including the interbellum) lived in the Karafuto Prefecture, which further grew since 1925, as many Poles fled Soviet Russian persecution in northern Sakhalin.^[10][11][12] Following the Siberian intervention, Japan supported and subsidized Polish institutions in northern Sakhalin in the early 1920s.^[10] Poles in Karafuto engaged in unrestricted social, cultural and economic activities, and a Polish library was established in Toyohara.^[13] In 1924, Karafuto was visited by Polish ambassador to Japan Stanisław Patek, and many local Poles were granted Polish citizenship and passports.^[11] In 1930, two Catholic churches were built in Toyohara and Odomari, co-funded by Poles from Poland and Karafuto.^[14] Only a handful of Poles lived in other parts of Japan.^[15] Also, very few Japanese lived in Poland in the interbellum, including ten in Warsaw and three in Lwów, according to the 1921 Polish census.^[16][17]

Poland agreed to share information about the Soviet Union. In the interwar period, Japanese cryptologists visited Poland, where Polish specialists wrote the methods of Soviet phrases. The Pole who taught the Japanese how to break Russian codes was Jan Kowalewski. After gaining trust and building a good reputation in Japan, he was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun, 5th Class.^[18][19]

On October 20, 1931, Poland, following the example of other countries, sent a note to the Japanese government regarding its position on the actions taken in China and the Kellogg-Briand Pact. In delivering the note, Antoni Jażdżewski noted: “We hope that the Government of Japan will understand that Poland must behave like other countries.”. In November 1932, Japan's delegate to the League of Nations met with Minister Beck, asking for Poland's support for Japan's actions. Beck replied that "for the time being, there is no established opinion and Poland would not wish to interfere in such a complicated matter as the Manchurian affair." Ultimately, on February 24, 1933, Poland, along with other League of Nations member states, condemned Japan's actions in Manchuria, confirming that the region should be under Chinese sovereignty. Poland, not wanting to spoil relations with China and the League of Nations, didn't officially recognize Manchukuo, but maintained the existing consulate in Harbin to protect the interests of the large Polish diaspora. ^[20][21]

The most important issue affecting Polish-Japanese relations in the second half of the 1930s were attempts to bring Poland into the Anti-Comintern Pact. The first proposals were made by Hermann Göring in February 1937, during his stay in Poland.27 On August 13, 1937, a Japanese-German conference was held in Berlin, where the issue of bringing Poland into the pact was discussed. Among those present was Sawada Shigeru, the then-Japanese attaché in Warsaw. The Polish side, in accordance with Minister Beck's instructions, refused to enter into any major agreements. True to these resolutions, Ambassador Tadeusz Romer made it clear to the Japanese Foreign Minister that Poland would not join any pact, expressing this in the following words: "I have distanced myself quite categorically and unequivocally from any speculation about Poland's participation in any ideological bloc." Shortly thereafter, Minister Beck, at a meeting with Ambassador Sako, reiterated the same view and refused to enter into the pact.^{[22][23][24][25]}

A statue of Polish anthropologist Bronisław Piłsudski stands in Japan, who was a researcher of the local culture in Japan and married an Ainu woman who was a citizen of Imperial Japan.

In 1930, Polish monks Maksymilian Kolbe and Zeno Żebrowski began their mission in Japan, and the latter remained in Japan until his death in 1982, bringing aid to orphans, the elderly, the poor and the disabled.

During World War II, political relations between Japan and Poland deteriorated significantly. In 1941, President Władysław Raczkiewicz and the Council of Ministers, representing the Polish government-in-exile, signed a declaration of war against the Japanese Empire and expressed their official stance on the war in Asia.^[26] As a member of the coalition against the Axis powers, Poland wanted to signal which side of the global conflict it stood on. Although the state of war provided for military action, officially Polish forces were not sent to fight the Japanese forces for various reasons. This does not mean that Poles did not participate in the fight against the Japanese. Polish volunteers in the American forces and members of the Polish diaspora in China also resisted Japanese aggression.^[27][28][29] Some Poles expressed skepticism regarding the Polish declaration of war. The critical stance of these people, however, was not based on Polish sympathy for the Japanese Empire and its actions, but on Poles' dissatisfaction with British inaction during the invasion of Poland, so they stated that they should respond with the same inaction in the matter of British interests in Asia. Among them was Minister Józef Beck, who stated: "Poland declared war on Japan, which—as can be seen with hindsight—had neither much justification nor, above all, political sense. What good could a declaration of war on Japan do for Poland?"

The Polish sailor, Wincenty Cygan, sailing on the ORP Dragon spoke in a similar tone about the situation. He recalls: "By declaring war, our government also declared it on Japan. But that should have been the end of it. It would have been enough to follow British policy, which had not yet taken any action against Russia, which was flooding our country with Bolshevism. Because Russia did not pose a direct threat to Great Britain, the British did not consider it an enemy." ^[30][31][32]

Chiune Sugihara was a Japanese diplomat, famous mainly for the help he provided to Poles and several thousand Jews who wanted to escape from the territory of Lithuania after the occupation by the Red Army began on June 15, 1940, and before the formal annexation of Lithuania by the USSR (August 3, 1940) and the liquidation of the consulate of the Empire of Japan in Kaunas, where he served as consul. As early as 1939, counterintelligence informed Göring that Sugihara was so diligent in his intelligence activities that his stay in Königsberg threatened the friendly relations between Germany and Japan. Tadeusz Romer, ambassador of Poland in Japan, helped the Polish-Jewish refugees after they arrived to Japan.^[33]

In 1957, it signed an agreement on the normalization of relations, which ended state of war — and this had legal force in international relations. A double tax avoidance agreement was signed between the two countries in Tokyo in 1980.^[34]

Since 1990, the number of official visits by top government officials to both countries has increased.^[2] In 1994, the Polish-Japanese Academy of Information Technology in Warsaw was established. In 2011, the Polish Institute in Tokyo was founded.^[35]

In 1995, there came a time when Poland had the chance to give back to Japan for the rescue of Polish orphans from Siberia in the early 1920s. Poland was kind enough to invite Japanese children stricken with great loss from the 1995 Great Hanshin earthquake. The children, many from Kobe and nearby areas of western Japan, went to Poland and stayed from 1995 to 1996, while the chaos and loss caused by the earthquake was sorted out. Poland repeated this kindness after the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011. On November 20, 2018, a school in the suburbs of Warsaw was named after the Japanese Army operations that rescued Polish orphans: “Siberia Orphans Commemoration Elementary School.”

The two states celebrated 90 years of relationship in 2009 and the 100th anniversary in 2019.^[36][9] Trade, business, and tourism between both countries continues to thrive. LOT Polish Airlines provides daily non-stop flights between Tokyo and Warsaw. Both countries are full members of the OECD, but modern relations are limited to mostly trade and cultural activities, although both countries see each other as vital partners in global commerce. In 2017, Japan became the second largest foreign investor in Poland in terms of total investment value, only behind the United States.^[37]

For short stays, Japanese nationals do not require visas to enter Poland, and Polish nationals do not require visas to enter Japan.^[38][39]

In Poland, there is a museum devoted to Japanese art and technology – the Manggha in Kraków. Several other museums also possess collections of Japanese art and artifacts, including the National Museum in Warsaw,^[40] District Museum in Toruń and National Museum in Szczecin.^[41] In Tokyo, there is a Polish Institute.

Japanese cultural exports to Poland including anime, video games, music and food have made a significant impact on young Poles. Additionally, Japanese is taught in many Polish schools.

• Poland has an embassy in Tokyo, and honorary consulates in Kobe and Hiroshima.^[42]
• Japan has an embassy in Warsaw, and an honorary consulate in Kraków.^[43]

• Embassy of Japan in Warsaw
• Embassy of Poland in Tokyo

• Foreign relations of Japan
• Foreign relations of Poland
• Poles in Japan

• Embassy of Poland in Tokyo
• Embassy of Japan in Warsaw (in Polish and Japanese)