ABSTRACT
Champagne toasts were drunk on the evening of December 26, 1937 to celebrate the opening of the three-day conference in Harbin that founded the National Council of Far Eastern Jewish Communities. The Council gathered the hitherto autonomous Jewish communities of Manchukuo, North China, and Japan under its umbrella. The opening session in the Harbin Commercial Club was devoted to formal statements that are usual on such ceremonial occasions, but it was also not without patriotic symbols. The Harbin conference took place against a backdrop woven from strands of Japanese foreign policy, of Japanese efforts to refashion the Manchukuoan economy to serve the needs of the Guandong Army and of conceptions of the Jewish role in Japanese and world history. The Guandong Army's invasion of China's Northeast in 1931 and the establishment of Manchukuo the year after had enveloped Japan in a chilly international climate.
