Tokyo-Washington Relations: Proof of Secret Diplomacy

Lying in politics is certainly not unique to Japan, but its leaders have taken it further than many of their foreign counterparts. This isn’t an opportunistic lie — like the one that George Bush used to justify the war in Iraq — but one that has developed over time. Five decades, to be precise. By recognizing that during this period of time Japan’s leaders had lied to the population, denying the existence of secret pacts between Tokyo and Washington regarding bringing nuclear weapons to Japan, Yukio Hatoyama’s government has opened Pandora’s box.

It’s not because these deals were unknown — for years, the testimonials of old Japanese diplomats and American documents had confirmed their existence — but because this “confession” has emerged in a period of tension with the United States over the moving of one of their military bases in Okinawa (in the south of Japan). It raises questions about a form of diplomacy that ignores democratic principles and that involves a sovereign state subjugated by the U.S. global strategy.

Immediately after coming to power in September 2009, Mr. Hatoyama’s center-left cabinet had set up a commission of experts instructed to shed light on these secret agreements. On March 9, it concluded that the lie was deliberately orchestrated by both the leaders and the top administration.

The last of the four secret agreements was completed shortly before Okinawa was returned to Japanese administration (1972), ending 27 years of American occupation. Signed in 1969 by Richard Nixon and Prime Minister Eisaku Sato, it authorized the introduction of nuclear weapons to Okinawa following its return. The year before, Japan had adopted the “Three Non-Nuclear Principles” — forbidding the manufacture, possession, or introduction of nuclear weapons on Japanese territory — which even led to Sato being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1974.

These agreements date back to the Cold War era. Not only do they raise questions about the secret diplomacy carried out by Tokyo under American leadership, but therefore also about how Japan is governed. Just to what extent can the government of a democratic country ignore the desires of its population in the name of the “state’s best interests”?

The majority of Japanese were (and are) opposed to the presence of nuclear weapons in their country. The government didn’t take notice. Today, will Mr. Hatoyama prevail over public opinion regarding the moving of the military base in Okinawa? Most of the archipelago’s inhabitants are demanding the withdrawal of U.S. military bases from their region. In 2006, Tokyo signed an agreement with Washington about the transfer of one of the bases, Futenma, to another locality in Okinawa, despite local opposition having been expressed through referendum. The new mayor of Nago, the locality in question, who was elected in December 2009, campaigned against this initiative. In February, Okinawa’s regional assembly voted unanimously for a resolution demanding the base be transferred out of the region entirely.

For politicians in Tokyo, Okinawa is a faraway place: Even in the ranks of Mr. Hatoyama’s Democratic Party, the “realists” are in favor of implementing the 2006 agreement. The prime minister faces a dilemma: Should foreign policy be conducted in accordance with the will of those that it’s meant to serve, or despite it? In this case, consider the population of Okinawa, which pays the heaviest price for national security. Tokyo hopes to establish a new partnership with the U.S., but Okinawa’s inhabitants, supporting the presence of two-thirds of American bases in Japan (47,000 people), want to be treated fairly compared to the rest of the country.

Secret agreements and the transfer of the Futenma base do not challenge the U.S.-Japan alliance, but they do call into question the strange relationship of subjugation that Tokyo has with Washington. The military alliance, formed in 1951 alongside the Treaty of San Francisco, which returned to Japan its sovereignty and was later revised in 1960, has gradually placed the archipelago in a submissive situation uncommon for a sovereign state. A result of “intellectual laziness,” the alliance seems to be a premise that isn’t to be questioned, stresses international relations expert Jitsuro Terashima, who is close to Prime Minister Hatoyama.

Since the end of the Cold War, Japan has been more and more closely integrated into America’s strategy, while incidentally paying 70 percent of the cost of having the forces stationed on its territory. It even found itself participating in the war in Iraq — albeit in the form of a peacekeeping mission. In a recent editorial, the newspaper Asahi called for an inquiry into the political responsibilities of Japan’s full support of a war “without legal basis according to international opinion.” Rather than “anti-Americanism,” this is merely a desire to break away from George Bush’s simplistic trap: “You’re either with us or against us.” The revelation of Tokyo’s secret diplomacy during the Cold War is nothing but history.