Members of the Resilient Humanitarianism team based at Flinders University have been participating in the Flinders University History Seminar Series. The weekly seminars are open to members of the public and to staff across the University.

Last year, our Project CI Professor Melanie Oppenheimer kicked off the 2020 series on March 6 with her presentation titled ‘Serving Humanity: The role of the Japanese Red Cross, League of Red Cross Societies and the Red Cross Movement, 1907-1926’.

The paper focused on the Japanese Red Cross and its relationship with the League of Red Cross Societies in the first decades of the twentieth century. It took three distinct moments or episodes to explore how the Japanese Red Cross, one of the largest national societies at the time, tried to influence the direction of the broader Red Cross Movement.

The first moment concerned the production of five issues of The Red Cross in the Far East, a journal that was published in English between 1907 and 1915. The second moment was the establishment of the Empress Shôken Fund, initiated in 1912 but not executed until 1921. This is the oldest and largest continuous Fund of the Red Cross Movement that still exists today with grant allocations announced each year on 11 April, the anniversary of the Empress’ death.

Empress Shôken and the Red Cross Exhibition, program, 2012.

The last moment concerns the Second Conference of the Oriental Red Cross Societies, which was held in Tokyo in November 1926 under the auspices of the League of Red Cross Societies and organised by the Japanese Red Cross.

The paper concludes that these initiatives reflect Japan’s attempts at humanitarian diplomacy with the Red Cross Movement; where attempts were made for the East to lead or influence the West. It was all-too-brief but did have an impact on the diversity and in developing peacetime programmes and Melanie argued that it makes us reassess the complexity of the interwar period through the lens of one international voluntary organisation.

Keep your eyes on our News page for seminar papers by Dr Romain Fathi and Professor Susanne Schech.