The eventual rapprochement between Italy and Japan, marked first by the Anti-Comintern Pact of 1936 and ultimately by a common war against the Allies between 1941 and 1945, began with the Sugimura Affair in July 1935.

Italo–Japanese tension continues to build

EARLY 1935

In the first half of 1935, the world's newspapers published many excited rumors about Japanese intrigues in Ethiopia. Addis Ababa and Tokyo, by contrast, consistently stressed the limited nature of their relations. For example, Ethiopia's consul in Egypt told the press that several Japanese had negotiated to start businesses in Ethiopia but had failed. He insisted that Ethiopia was not favoring Japan at the expense of any other country. In fact, Japanese economic interests in Ethiopia were ‘nil’, and their colony consisted only of ‘three individuals: one dealer in bric-a-brac, one clerk, and one porter’.

While diplomatic representatives of many nations were insistently reporting to their respective ministries the limited nature of Japanese inroads in Ethiopia, many governments, especially the Italian and Soviet, rejected this. It would be easy to dismiss their bloviating as mere Machiavellian duplicity designed to maneuver others into either an anti-Ethiopian or an anti-Japanese front. Easy, but only half true. Documents, especially Italian foreign ministry documents, also suggest the real – even if paranoid – fear that the rumors represented reality.

In early January 1935, the French government reported that as many as a thousand Japanese families a month were immigrating to Ethiopia to settle land concessions of one million square kilometers.