Japan’s neutralist tendency seemed to abate after Hatoyama’s retirement and Ishibashi’s sudden illness and resignation. In February 1957, the United States gained a reliable junior partner in the person of Kishi. After years of fractious politics and party realignment in Japan, Kishi had helped engineer the merger of conservative parties into the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in October
1955. In American eyes, the new prime minister appeared capable of achieving a long-awaited stability in Japan’s electoral politics. Better yet, this conservative leader did not challenge United States Asian policy. After being "de-purged" and returning to politics, Kishi consciously used Soviet-American enmity as a way to advance his career and cultivated Washington’s good graces.384 The appointment in the same month of Douglas MacArthur II (the general’s nephew) as the new US ambassador to Japan created a binational team that for the next three years worked closely together on a number of issues, not least of which was the revision of the US-Japan Security Treaty.
One ofKishi’s prime attractions for the United States was his staunchly pro-Taiwan position. After the normalization of relations with the Soviet Union, rapprochement with the PRC emerged as the next piece of unfinished business in Japan’s public-policy discourse. Although public sentiment favored opening diplomatic relations with Beijing, Kishi visited Taiwan in June - the first Japanese prime minister to do so - and applauded Jiang’s unconcealed intent to reconquer the mainland. This diplomatic grandstanding earned him a severe rebuke from Beijing, but Jiang reciprocated Kishi’s support by endorsing the Japanese prime minister’s Southeast Asian economic development scheme, even when the Southeast Asians themselves were skeptical about the Japanese initiative. By the time Kishi visited the United States in July, top administration officials considered him not simply the "best bet, but the only bet," in Japan for the foreseeable future.385
This American trust carried a big payoff for Kishi. Washington heeded his call for renegotiating the 1951 US-Japan Security Treaty, which had been condemned by the Japanese as one-sided. The treaty’s unilateral features - the US right to intervene inside Japan to suppress internal disorder, the US freedom to deploy American forces inside and outside Japan without consulting Tokyo, and the absence of a specified end date to the treaty - showcased the inequality of the alliance and undercut Japan’s sovereignty. But perhaps the most unpopular feature of the treaty was that obligations were not mutual: while Japan was required to provide bases to the United States, there was no explicit guarantee by the United States to defend Japan. Leftist critics of the treaty argued that the arrangement only turned Japan into
A launching pad for American military operations, including nuclear attacks, against its Cold War enemies and made the nation vulnerable to reprisals.
Foreign Minister Shigemitsu first broached the modification of the treaty into a more mutual arrangement when he visited the United States in 1955. He was rebuffed by Dulles, who asked sarcastically whether Japan, shackled by Article IX of its constitution, could send troops overseas to defend the United States. But several years later, when Kishi asked for an adjustment of the treaty, the US government was much more receptive. Washington valued his staunch allegiance to US Cold War policies in Asia. Moreover, Japan’s diplomatic leverage was mounting now that relations with the Soviet Union had been reopened and Japan was a full-fledged member of the UN and GATT. Finally, the Joint Chiefs of Staff feared that the antibase sentiment cresting in Japan and leftist Diet members’ move to sponsor restrictive legislation would endanger the use of bases in the Japanese main islands and Okinawa.
The impediment to making the treaty more mutual was the Vandenberg Resolution, which authorized the United States to enter into mutual defense agreements only with countries capable of providing self-defense and contributing to the security of the United States. But Eisenhower decided to accept Ambassador MacArthur’s recommendation that the United States not wait for Japan to revise its pacifist constitution, and he concurred that Japan’s provision of bases to the United States to maintain peace and security in the Far East should be considered an acceptable equivalent. In order to retain the guaranteed use of bases in Japan, the United States made a calculated choice: not to demand the elimination of the war-renouncing provision of the Japanese constitution as a precondition of treaty revision.386
Signed in January 1960, the new security treaty included many of the changes desired by Japan as a sign of more equal partnership. It barred US military intervention inside Japan and eliminated prohibitions against providing bases to third countries without US approval. It also mandated consultation before American forces were deployed into or out ofJapan. Additionally, the treaty contained provisions for economic cooperation similar to those in the North Atlantic Treaty. It had a time limit of ten years and explicitly stated that the United States had an obligation to defend Japan. In a supplementary aide-memoire, specific restrictions were placed on how the bases could be used, and it was agreed that nuclear deployments to Japan also came under
The requirement for prior consultation. Okinawa, however, remained outside these updated security arrangements, allowing the garrisoned island to be fully mobilized in the service of the new American Cold War agenda in the vaguely defined "Far East" - Vietnam.
World History
