The third conference of the Institute of Pacific Relations met at Kyoto, Japan, from October 28 to November 9, 1929. Previous conferences had been held in 1925 and 1927 at Honolulu. It has been decided to hold the fourth conference in 1931 in China.

The Kyoto conference was the largest thus far held by the Institute. In all, 218 persons participated. Most of these were representatives selected by the seven national councils. The Japanese, with 48, had the largest group. The United States, with 45, came second, followed by China with 31, Canada with 29, Great Britain with 15, Australia with 11, and New Zealand with 6. In addition, there were subgroups of eight Filipinos and seven Koreans. Eight members of the Institute's Honolulu secretariat attended, as did observers from Soviet Russia, France, Netherlands, Mexico, the League of Nations, and the International Labor Office. The members were not in any case official delegates of governments. The national councils are voluntary, self-constituted, and self-perpetuating bodies, and in most cases they selected individuals to attend the conference with a view to the representation of numerous interests. The result was that frequently the closest affiliations of members cross-sectioned the national groups. For example, labor leaders from Great Britain (Malcolm MacDonald), Japan (Bunji Suzuki), Canada (Tom Moore), and the United States (Paul Scharrenburg) were often seen together. Each of the groups had women members, of whom there were 33 in all. The 72 university men constituted the largest professional interest, followed by bankers and business men (44), journalists (18), religious workers (17), and smaller numbers of members of parliaments, ex-government officials, social workers, lawyers, labor leaders, and physicians.