Chronicles of Toria: Setting the Stage (Vol. 0)

(Act 1) Prologue - The Era of Crises

(A/N Notes: We're so back!)

On November 11, 1918, the guns had finally fallen silent on the Western front. After four years of brutal trench warfare, millions of deaths, and suffering, the Great War had come to an end. The Central Powers had lost, and the Entente had prevailed at a great cost—generations of young men lost, and their economies on the brink of collapse. But as the participants began to demobilize their forces, they also started preparing themselves for another battlefield.

That battlefield was not fought with guns and soldiers; instead, the pen and paper were its weapons. It was a battlefield of politics and diplomacy, the one that would truly shape the post-war world.

The Paris Peace Conference would begin on January 13, 1919. There, the fate of Germany was discussed, argued, and ultimately decided. But that was not all. During that very conference, a proposal would be put forward for an international organization with the goal of preventing future conflicts—the League of Nations.

During the talks for the Covenant of the League of Nations, on February 13, the Japanese delegation participating in the conference would present the so-called Racial Equality Proposal, amending Article 21 of the Covenant.

The concept of the proposal was that every nation would be considered equal, and every member of the league would provide equal and just treatment to any nation in every respect, without distinction based on race or nationality. Although the writing of the Racial Equality Proposal was universalist, its true values were only for the equality of people from member states. In other words, it was an indirect way for the representatives from the Empire of Japan to compel the Western Great Powers to recognize them as equals.

The proposal was controversial to many Western leaders, and in particular to Woodrow Wilson, the President of the United States and the chairman of the conference, who wanted to discard it. Talks and discussions regarding the proposal took place, deals were agreed upon, and changes were made, until April 11, 1919, when the last session regarding the Racial Equality Proposal was held.

On that day, the representatives of each nation cast their vote regarding the proposal, and the result was... 11 votes for yes out of a total of 17, without a single vote for no. It was clearly a landslide victory. But there was still one obstacle: the chairman's approval. There was no way President Woodrow Wilson would ever accept such a proposal. However, either by chance or fate, he was not present at the conference that day due to poor health. So a substitute had to replace him as chairman.

With the given results, the American chairman got up from his seat and announced that the Racial Equality Proposal would be added to the Covenant of the League of Nations, as decided by the members. Much to the chagrin of President Wilson and those who opposed it, while in Japan, the proposal had the desired effect of appeasing part of the population that was against the League and cooperation with the West, partly thanks to the close following and wide coverage of the Japanese media gave to the proposal.

The Paris Peace Conference continued until January 21, 1920, when it ended alongside the inauguration of the General Assembly of the League of Nations. Having achieved their desired goals in the conference, Prime Minister Hara Takashi would be able to move forward with his plans to steer Japan back to the West.

The early 1920s

The first half of the 1920s for Japan would be controversial for Prime Minister Hara Takashi, mainly due to their intervention in Siberia during the Russian Civil War. The increasingly failed intervention shredded wartime unity in the nation, and conflicts between the Army and the government began in earnest.

The situation deteriorated to the point that on November 4, 1921, an ultranationalist named Nakaoka Kon'ichi attempted to assassinate the Prime Minister at the time, Hara Takashi. There were many reasons behind the attempt, but one, in particular, was related to the handling of the Nikolayevsk Incident. However, Nakaoka ultimately failed as he mistakenly stabbed a bystander whom he had confused for the Prime Minister, turning him into nothing more than a footnote in the annals of history.