The Hull Note was not a result of negotiations but a calculated provocation designed to lure Japan into war.
By rejecting Konoe’s proposal for a leaders’ summit, the Roosevelt administration secured multiple strategic gains at once—against Germany, the Soviet Union, Britain, and Japan.
This article exposes how Japan’s political immaturity was exploited at a decisive historical moment.

He thus secured five or six gains at once, deftly parrying Konoe’s unexpected counterattack in the form of a proposed leaders’ summit.
2016-12-16
What follows is a continuation of an essay by Hasegawa Hiroshi.
This is a genuine scholarly work that every Japanese citizen and people throughout the world should read.
Emphasis in the text is mine.

To repeat, the Hull Note listed demands that had nothing to do with the course of previous U.S.–Japan negotiations, demands that can only be described as provocations designed solely to provoke.
Perhaps because he was an honest man, Foreign Minister Tōgō Shigenori lost his composure.
If the foreign minister, who had been striving to avoid war under the Tōjō Hideki cabinet inaugurated on October 18 following the Third Konoe Cabinet, were to lose his sense of balance, then all was lost.
Japan took the bait of America’s ferocious provocation.
The skill with which the U.S. administration rejected the Konoe–Roosevelt meeting and instead thrust the Hull Note upon Japan was extraordinary.

Yet did no one in the Tōjō Cabinet, no one in the Foreign Ministry, no one in the Army or Navy Ministries, no one in the Army General Staff or the Navy General Staff—that is, none of the key figures who came to know its contents—sense that something was strange, that something was wrong.
Could they not see through it as a monstrous provocation devised with a clear intention.
Could they not have immediately made its contents public and appealed to the world about the abnormality of the United States.

Hull, who handed the Hull Note to the Japanese side and predicted that war would soon begin, must be seen as having already keenly perceived the immaturity of the Japanese people and the Japanese government through the course of the U.S.–Japan negotiations.
In this way, the Roosevelt administration succeeded in drawing Japan into war.
And did so in a manner that branded Japan with the stigma of being the aggressor.

At a critical juncture, Roosevelt was able to strike Nazi Germany himself, assist the Soviet Union—where his own administration had no shortage of sympathizers—and also aid Britain, a brother nation.
He thus shone as the leader of the anti-Axis powers, while at the same time inducing Japan to advance southward against the United States, Britain, and the Netherlands, thereby preventing a northern advance against the Soviet Union.
In this manner, he secured five or six gains at once, deftly parrying Konoe’s unexpected counterattack in the form of a proposed leaders’ summit.

To be continued.