Following Yoshida’s exit fTom power, American officials became alarmed by signs of Japan’s drift toward neutralism. Part of the problem came from the difficulty in drawing lines between diplomatic impartiality, an amorphous anti-Americanism fermenting in Japan at the time, and popular discontent with the government closely associated with the overpowering presence of the United States in Japan’s postwar life. But it was hard for Washington to deny the link between anti-Americanism and Japan’s resilient pacifism, rooted in the nation’s firsthand experience with nuclear weaponry. The Lucky Dragon
Incident in March 1954 dramatically illustrated this connection. While operating in the high seas off the Bikini atoll, the Japanese tuna trawler was exposed to a US hydrogen bomb test, and a member of its irradiated crew later died.
Japan’s second direct encounter with a nuclear blast exposed a deep chasm between American and Japanese perceptions of thermonuclear warfare and the meaning of the US-Japan alliance. For American officials and strategists, the hydrogen bomb was an integral part of the strategy of nuclear deterrence and, as such, contributed vitally to the defense of the free world. Barely a decade after the nightmare of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese did not see such redemptive qualities in the bomb. The incident inaugurated the organized antinuclear movement in Japan, culminating in the formation of the Japan Council against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs (Gensuikyo) and the Japan Confederation of A-bomb and H-bomb Sufferers’ Organizations (Hidankyo). In this nationwide grassroots mobilization, revulsion toward nuclear weaponry also fused with disparate agendas of nonpartisan oppositional politics, such as the quality of life around American military bases, feminist opposition to prostitution in base towns, and the sincerity of the Sino-Soviet peace offensive. US policymakers realized that the spike in anti-Americanism, often couched in the language of universal humanitaria-nism, could not be simply attributed to socialist and Communist agitation. Washington also worried about the symbolic weight ofits key ally hoisting the banner of international antinuclear citizen activism and drawing on its credentials as the sole victim of the nuclear destruction and suffering.374
In the mid-1950s, Japan’s grassroots anti-Americanism was paralleled by government policy. Yoshida’s successors, drawn from within conservative ranks, wanted to reverse his legacy of perceived obsequiousness to American wishes. Hatoyama, who replaced Yoshida in December 1954, trumpeted "autonomous diplomacy" as the hallmark of his Cabinet. In the context of Japanese politics, this meant reaching out to the "other side," particularly China. Hatoyama appeared to condone the Japanese business community’s flirtation with PRC trade officials, which resulted in the third Sino-Japanese private-sector trade agreement in May 1955. The trade accord included
Provisions for transactions between national banks and the establishment of a trade representative’s office from each country in the other’s capital. From the perspective of Washington, these proposals came close to quasi-diplomatic relations. Ishibashi, whose illness ended his premiership after only two months in early 1957, vocally supported trade with the PRC. In fact, when he was the minister of international trade and industry in the Hatoyama Cabinet, he appeared willing to undermine the Western embargo system by permitting Japanese shipments of strategic materials to mainland China in exchange for commodity imports.375
These independent-minded leaders also sought closer relations with the rest of Asia. In the early postwar years, a sense of alienation fTom the Western industrial world still created a psychological need to find a comfortable niche in the nonwhite world. Japan’s claims of brotherhood with Asians sometimes dangerously resembled the prewar "Asia for Asia" rhetoric. Hatoyama’s "independent diplomacy" identified with the anticolonial fervor in Asia and the Non-Aligned Movement emerging in many parts of Asia and Africa. Since Japan, a military ally of the United States, was obviously a misfit in this movement, Japanese officials were both mystified and delighted to receive an invitation from the conveners of the Bandung Conference, the Non-Aligned Movement’s inaugural meeting. The occasion was all the sweeter because Taiwan and South Korea were not invited. It was not that Japan was suddenly trusted by the Asians: the invitation came only because Pakistan, wanting to neutralize India’s influence in the movement, decided to use Japan as a counterweight.376
Japan sent a massive 31-member delegation to Bandung, but the delegates’ experience in the Indonesian city revealed that Japan, despite its aspirations for autonomous diplomacy and partnership with Asia, could go only so far as long as it remained a US ally. Initially, the United States was ambivalent about the Bandung Conference and its principal organizer, Jawaharlal Nehru. Dulles, in particular, suspected that the Indian prime minister was attempting to erode US influence in Asia. The US secretary of state also feared that the participation of the PRC in the conference would enhance its international prestige. Once Japan received an invitation, Washington encouraged Tokyo to attend and act as spokesperson for the industrial West. The Japanese Foreign Ministry promised to restrain extremist elements at the conference, counter
Anti-American diatribes, and frustrate any Communist peace offensive that might unfold in this international forum.377
The Foreign Ministry’s promise notwithstanding, chief Japanese delegate Tatsunosuke Takasaki, director of the Economic Deliberation Agency and a known advocate of Sino-Japanese trade, tried to use the Bandung Conference as a venue to contact Zhou Enlai, the Chinese foreign minister. At a prearranged meeting, Zhou offered to arrange future talks on economic matters and on the repatriation of Japanese nationals from the Chinese mainland. When the sensitive issue of Taiwan came up, however, worried Foreign Ministry officials in Takasaki’s entourage tipped Washington off. Dulles promptly issued a stern warning to Tokyo, and the Japanese delegation in Bandung quickly fell back into the American fold. In the end, Japan even refrained from speaking up for a ban on nuclear weapons out of deference to Washington.378
Dulles’s warning also proved decisive at a critical juncture inJapan’s efforts to resolve postwar problems with the Soviet Union. As part of his "autonomous diplomacy," Hatoyama placed normalization of relations with Moscow at the forefront ofhis diplomatic agenda. Rapprochement with the Soviets also held the key to Japan’s membership in the UN. In December 1955, the Soviet Union vetoed Japan’s accession to the world forum, in retaliation for the Republic of China’s veto of the admission of Mongolia.379 Japanese sensibilities were badly bruised by Japan’s placement in the same category as Mongolia, and Dulles exhorted Tokyo not to accept this slight and to stand up to the Soviets in the ongoing negotiations for a peace treaty.380 By then, US officials had begun to regret having made Japan renounce, in the San Francisco Peace Treaty, its claims to the Kurile Islands. A recent US military survey mission to Hokkaido had revealed that the Soviets had built substantial military installations in the Kuriles, deploying fifty MiGs to the islands closest to Hokkaido.381
In the final stage of the Soviet-Japanese talks in the summer of 1956, Japanese foreign minister Mamoru Shigemitsu initially demanded the return of all four northern islands off Hokkaido seized by the Soviet Union at the end of World War II. The Soviets offered to return only two islands, Habomai and Shikotan. When Shigemitsu appeared ready to accept this deal, shock waves pulsated through Japanese governing circles. Meeting with Dulles in London, Shigemitsu explained that the Soviets would never relinquish the southern Kuriles (the islands of Kunashiri and Etorofu) and that Japan had to settle for what it could get. Dulles warned that, should Japan recognize Soviet sovereignty over the southern Kuriles, the United States would claim full sovereignty over Okinawa on the basis of Article 26 of the peace treaty.382
Historians have puzzled over why Dulles suddenly intervened in the Japanese-Soviet negotiations and linked the Kuriles and Okinawa. Some have argued that he was not trying to sabotage the negotiations but wanted only to dissuade Japan from unnecessary concessions over the northern territory. Others have claimed that Dulles’s outburst reflected his frustration with the increasingly recalcitrant Japanese.383 Whatever the reason, after Dulles’s warning, the Japanese-Soviet negotiations over the islands stalled. Hatoyama decided to shelve the territorial issue and signed a joint declaration with Moscow on October 19, 1956, ending the state of war between the two nations. The signatories also agreed to exchange ambassadors, repatriate Japanese detainees from the Soviet Union, and complete a long-overdue fisheries treaty. Japan’s admission to the UN became a reality two months later.
World History
