Japan's Foreign Relations in Asia

James D.J. Brown, Jeff Kingston

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138055445
• eBook ISBN: 9781351678575
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Asian Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Japan's Foreign Relations in Asia has been specifically designed to introduce students to Japan's foreign relations in Asia since 1990, a period in which there have been dramatic developments in Japan, including the reinterpretation of the Constitution and expanded US–Japan defence cooperation. The geopolitical dynamics and implications of these new developments are profound and underscore the need for a new textbook on this subject.

Covering not only the key regional players of China and the Koreas, this textbook also encompasses chapters on Japan's relations with India, Myanmar, Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines and Thailand, along with its multilateral engagement and initiatives. Combined with transnational chapters on critical issues, key themes covered by this book include:

• An historical overview of key post-war developments.
• Japan's evolving security policy.
• Analysis of the region's escalating maritime disputes.
• An evaluation of Japanese soft power in Asia.

Written by leading experts in accessible, jargon-free style, this new textbook will appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students of Japanese politics, international relations and foreign policy and Asian affairs in general.

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Part I

Foundations

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1 Japan’s foreign relations in Cold War Asia, 1945–1990

Jeff Kingston

This overview of Japan’s foreign relations in Cold War Asia spanning the period from 1945 until 1990 aims to establish a common basis for subsequent chapters covering post-1990s developments. Japan’s subordinate relationship with the US that began with defeat and occupation was enshrined in the San Francisco Treaty of 1951, a document that has left a complicated legacy for Japanese foreign policy and regional relations. The resulting security alliance with the US looms over Japan’s presence in Asia, but there is more to the story. Below we examine the Yoshida Doctrine, how it evolved and its influence on bilateral ties with the US. Post-war reconciliation efforts to repair ruptured relations with nations invaded, occupied and colonized by Japan pre-1945 are a major factor in Japan’s subsequent regional relations because the legacies of this shared past resonate divisively in the present. Japan’s regional reintegration during this era featured expanding economic ties with varying consequences in China, South Korea and Southeast Asia. Regional economic relations evolved considerably from the 1950s to 1990, and initiatives such as the Fukuda Doctrine enabled Japan to increasingly play an influential role despite various historical impediments.

The San Francisco System

The US established a Cold War East Asian order at San Francisco that has persisted despite the collapse of the Soviet Union and ostensible end to that conflict. The San Francisco System is based on two treaties signed in 1951 that came into effect in 1952: a peace treaty and a security treaty (Dower 2014). They were negotiated while Japan was under US occupation amid Cold War hysteria owing to the communist victory in China lead by Mao Zedong and the Soviet Union’s first atomic bomb test, both in 1949, and Beijing and Moscow’s subsequent alliance in 1950. Negotiations were conducted against the backdrop of the Korean War (1950–53), which Washington viewed as a proxy war orchestrated by Moscow. This succession of setbacks stoked anxieties about an expanding communist menace in Asia inimical to US interests, reinforced by Chinese entry into the Korean War four months after it began.

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The San Francisco System has guided Japan’s foreign relations in Asia in the post-World War II era and defined the geopolitical landscape of the region (Togo 2010). Under the aegis of the US, Japan was reintegrated into the region on Washington’s terms and in support of its Cold War agenda. This agenda was defined by rivalry with the Soviet Union/China and the US policy of containment aimed at stopping the spread of communism. Japan was the designated showcase of the superiority of the US system and a base for forward projection of US military power in Asia. The 1951 US–Japan Security Treaty established an alliance with the US, with Japan agreeing to host bases for US military forces, while the US encouraged Japanese rearmament. The treaty stipulated the end of the US occupation, restoring Japanese independence with the exception of Okinawa, an island chain that remained under US administrative control until 1972.

The San Francisco System also rested on the Treaty of Peace, an agreement signed by 48 allied nations that formally ended hostilities with Japan. It stripped Japan of its former colonies and possessions considered war booty, allocated compensation to Allied civilians and prisoners of war (POWs), ended the US-led Allied occupation of Japan and made various other dispositions about the post-war order in Asia. But this was an incomplete peace because key allies and foes did not sign the treaty, including the Soviet Union, Communist China and Nationalist China (governed by the Kuomintang (KMT) based in Taiwan), and South and North Korea. The absence of such key belligerents and former colonies, as well as the treaty’s lack of clarity on several territorial questions, sowed seeds of division between Japan and neighboring nations, laying the foundation for a prolonged regional estrangement in Northeast Asia that persists in the 21st century. India also did not participate because it viewed some provisions of the treaty as an infringement on Japanese sovereignty and independence, sensitive issues for a nation that had only just gained independence in 1947.

The exclusion of China from the peace conference deepened a rift that postponed reconciliation with the nation that suffered most from Japan’s wartime depredations. Washington further complicated this situation by pressuring Japan to sign a peace treaty in 1952 with the Republic of China (ROC) in Taiwan, forcing Tokyo to join the US in recognizing the ROC as the legitimate government of China rather than the People’s Republic of China (PRC) that had won the civil war and controlled all of mainland China. There were misgivings in the business community and among some Japanese officials about US insistence on isolating and not recognizing China while pretending that Taiwan was really the legitimate power, but ending the US occupation and regaining sovereignty was the government’s priority (King 2016). This state of affairs persisted until 1972, when Tokyo followed Washington’s lead and normalized relations with the PRC, followed in 1978 by the Treaty of Peace and Friendship.

Given that the Korean War was ongoing, there was some logic to excluding representatives of the Korean people, but this also delayed a reckoning over the oppression and indignities suffered by them under Japanese colonial rule from 1910–45. It was not until 1965 that Japan normalized relations with South Korea and paid compensation of $800 million in grants and soft loans to settle all compensation claims related to the colonial era while relations with North Korea remained in abeyance.

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The Soviet Union attended the peace conference, but did not sign the treaty because it objected to the exclusion of China and Washington’s agenda of enlisting Japan as an ally in the Cold War targeting Moscow. It further complained that it had not been properly consulted in the drafting of the treaty and objected to the denial of China’s rights to Taiwan. It welcomed Japan’s renunciation of all claims to the Kuril Islands, but condemned the treaty’s failure to recognize Soviet sovereignty over South Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands as promised in the Yalta Agreement of February 1945.

The PRC was not invited, denounced the treaty as illegal and did not recognize it. Beijing also objected to the treaty’s failure to recognize Chinese claims to Taiwan, as well as the Paracel, Pratas and Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, issues that have become increasingly controversial in the 21st century. The treaty is ambiguous about Taiwan’s status because it is not ceded to any nation, although it required Japan to renounce its sovereignty. China maintains that Japan accepted the Instrument of Surrender based on the terms of the Potsdam Declaration and thus Taiwan should revert to Beijing. This is because the 1945 Potsdam Declaration incorporates the Cairo Declaration of 1943, in which the Allied powers agreed to retrocession of sovereignty over any territory “taken by violence and greed”.

Disputed territories

At San Francisco, the US sowed the seeds of contemporary territorial disputes between Japan, Russia, China (Taiwan) and South Korea. The settlement left issues of sovereignty over three sets of islands ambiguous, giving disputants a basis for making overlapping claims. These disputes rouse nationalist passions and are a source of bitter recriminations and diplomatic deadlock.

Dokdo/Takeshima

Competing claims to the islets known as Dokdo/Takeshima roil contemporary Japan–Republic of Korea (ROK) relations. Since 1953, South Korea has administered Dokdo, a talismanic ground zero for anti-Japanese colonial memory because Japan seized the territory in 1905, coinciding with Tokyo’s imposition of a protectorate over Korea. Japan has challenged South Korea’s claim to sovereignty, including during the 1965 negotiations that normalized relations. Alexis Dudden (2008) argues that there is no clear basis for resolving the controversy based on historical records, but that objective assessment has not prevented attempts to do so.

Early drafts of the San Francisco Treaty specify the return of Dokdo to Korea, but from 1949 it appeared Dokdo would be recognized as Japanese territory. In the final version in September 1951, however, Dokdo’s status was left unresolved. Given that previous drafts had addressed the sovereignty issue, the failure to so in the final draft has prompted speculation about why the matter was not clarified. Some argue this was a deliberate US strategy aimed at enhancing American leverage (Selden 2014). There were also concerns that if North Korea won the ongoing war, recognizing South Korean sovereignty might harm American interests and it did not want to alienate Japan.

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Tokyo made a series of diplomatic protests about South Korea’s 1953 seizure of Dokdo and erection of a lighthouse there in 1954, but to no avail. US efforts to broker a compromise calling for joint administration made no headway. By ignoring Dokdo, the 1965 Treaty on Basic Relations between Japan and South Korea silently acquiesced to Seoul’s continued control over the islets, a silence that has ended in bitter recriminations.

The importance of the islets (and the other disputed islands) increased with the 1982 United Nations Convention on Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). In establishing the right to claim extension of territorial waters to 12 nautical miles from the coast, and Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) to 200 nautical miles from the baseline of territorial waters, the economic significance of islands increased dramatically. Rich fisheries, and the potential for natural gas and seabed minerals, raised the stakes for both Japan and South Korea.

Senkaku/Diaoyu

The Potsdam Declaration states, “The terms of the Cairo Declaration shall be carried out and Japanese sovereignty shall be limited to the islands of Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu, Shikoku and such minor islands as we determine”. In the Sino-Japanese Joint Communique issued with the normalization of relations in 1972, Japan agreed that, “it firmly maintains its stand under Article 8 of the Potsdam Declaration”. So, Beijing maintains that Japan, in maintaining administrative control over the islands, is not heeding what it has agreed to.

Tokyo asserts that the islets were terra nullius when they were seized in January 1895, before the end of the Sino-Japanese war (1894–95) and the signing of the Treaty of Shimonoseki that ended hostilities. At that time, Japanese fishermen established a presence there and the islands were subsequently administered as part of Japan’s new colony in Taiwan that Japan had claimed as part of the peace settlement.

The Treaty of Shimonoseki, while granting Japan a substantial financial award, Taiwan and other adjacent small islands, does not specifically mention the Senkaku/Diaoyu (hereafter Senkaku) and thus Tokyo asserts that they are not subject to the Cairo Declaration and therefore remain Japanese territory. China counters that the seizure of the islets amid ongoing hostilities renders them war booty.

Beijing also maintains that in 1972, when Japanese Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei and Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai met in Beijing to normalize diplomatic relations, and again in 1978 when Japanese Foreign Minister Sonoda Sunao met with Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping, the question of the Senkaku was discussed. China claims that the leaders agreed to shelve the question of sovereignty for future resolution, while leaving the islands under Japanese administration. The Japanese government maintains that there was no such agreement, although a prominent confidante of Tanaka, retired Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) politician Nonaka Hirofumi, caused a stir in mid-2012 when he announced that Tanaka had told him there was (Japan Times 2013). The British archives also confirm that in 1982 PM Suzuki Zenkō told Margaret Thatcher about the Japanese government’s policy of shelving the sovereignty dispute (Tiezzi 2015).

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In 1972, with the reversion of Okinawa to Japanese sovereignty, the Senkaku were placed under Japanese administration. But the US State Department made it clear that this move did not prejudice underlying claims to sovereignty. China and Taiwan asserted sovereignty over the islands for the first time in 1971. While Japan regained sovereignty over Okinawa in 1972, it remained a quasi-military colony because the massive US military presence was maintained as part of the bargain and the islands, and the Japanese-administered Senkaku, came under the ambit of the US–Japan Security Treaty.

Kurils/Northern Territories

The four disputed islands—Kunashiri, Etorofu, Habomai and Shikotan—that Japan calls “the Northern Territories” and Russia “the Kurils” are located just off the coast of the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido. The Soviet Union invaded and seized these islands at the end of World War II, after Japan announced its surrender on August 15, 1945. From the Japanese perspective, Soviet and now Russian claims are therefore illegal. Moreover, the Soviet attack violated the neutrality pact signed with Tokyo in 1941. Moscow views its establishment of sovereignty as the spoils of war, an inducement to enter the war against Japan offered by President Franklin D. Roosevelt at the Yalta Conference in February 1945. Germany’s defeat was imminent, but Japan seemed far from capitulating and so Roosevelt agreed to territorial concessions to secure Stalin’s assistance. The Cold War between the US and Soviet Union had not yet commenced so such cooperation seemed desirable. As agreed at Yalta, Stalin launched his attack on August 9, 1945, three months after Germany’s surrender, mounting a successful blitzkrieg through Japan’s depleted defenses in Manchuria and Korea. The Soviet forces continued fighting even after Tokyo surrendered, completing the seizure of the disputed islands in early September 1945. Whether taking them as payback or spoils of war seemed less important to Stalin than asserting Soviet interests in the Far East and making a claim for participating in the occupation of Japan. Washington was reluctant to allow this as bilateral relations had deteriorated sharply in the summer of 1945, but equally it had no compelling reason to challenge the Soviet presence in the Kurils and was war weary.

Since 1945, the Soviets (and now Russians) have maintained that the Yalta Agreement with the Allied powers specifically granted them sovereignty over the Kurils in exchange for going to war with Japan. Moreover, in the 1951 Treaty of San Francisco, Japan specifically “renounces all right, title and claim to the Kurile Islands, and to that portion of Sakhalin and the islands adjacent to it over which Japan acquired sovereignty as a consequence of the Treaty of Portsmouth of 5 September 1905”. Moscow never signed the Treaty of San Francisco, but interprets it as US affirmation of the Yalta Agreement. Japan insists that the four islands are not actually part of the Kurils and thus they were not renounced. In 1956, Tokyo and Moscow were on the verge of resolving the impasse by splitting the four islands, but the US pressured Japan not to strike a deal with the common Cold War enemy.

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As a result, bilateral relations remained chilly, although there have been several Japanese overtures. Under General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, during the final years of the Soviet Union at the end of the 1980s, Japanese hopes for a breakthrough rested on Moscow’s need for economic assistance. Gorbachev’s political weakness and the strategically valuable location of the islands allowing naval access to the Sea of Okhotsk, however, precluded any territorial concessions. Since 1981, February 7 has been celebrated in Japan as Northern Territories Day, coinciding with the anniversary of an 1855 treaty with Russia that recognized Japanese claims to the islands.

Yoshida Doctrine

This was the most important pillar of Japanese security policy in the post-war period, one that sparked tensions in the US–Japan alliance because Washington sought a greater military contribution from Tokyo. Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru (1946–47, 1949–54), emphasized economic recovery and invoked the war-renouncing Article 9 in the US-written 1947 Constitution to ward off US demands that Japan reestablish a Japanese military force and participate in the American-led United Nations war effort in the Korean peninsula (1950–53). Article 9 states:

Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.

In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.

(Constitution of Japan, 1947)

The US quickly came to regret this provision that it had insisted on to ensure that unlike Germany in Europe, Japan would not wreak havoc in the Asia-Pacific region again. Yoshida found it convenient.

The Yoshida Doctrine is an expression of Japanese unilateral pacifism based on Article 9 that was made possible by the US security alliance. There seems to be little ambiguity or scope in Article 9 for Japan to rearm as it incrementally did in the post-war era. However, Japanese courts have upheld the constitutionality of Japan’s ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Japan’s Foreign Relations in Asia
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Notes on Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• PART I Foundations
• PART II Regional Themes
• PART III Bilateral Relations
• Index