The ‘1955 system' and the revision of the Security Treaty

In 1952 a number of views existed about Japan's future. On the Left all shades of opinion were opposed to the security ties with America, but while the communists favoured alignment with the Soviet Union, moderate socialists felt that Japan should occupy a more neutralist and pacifist position that would remain true to the spirit of the constitution.

Among the conservative parties there was also division. On one side, Yoshida and his supporters felt that Japan should adhere to the status quo, thus concentrating on economic growth while maintaining a low security posture. On the other, recently de-purged right-wing politicians, such as Yukio Hatoyama and Nobusuke Kishi, believed that Yoshida had given too much away in the Security Treaty and that Japan should seek to rearm and establish a more equal relationship with the United States. Yoshida's government was thus under attack from both the Right and the Left. Furthermore, the United States itself was by no means reconciled to Japan’s low security posture. In 1953 the Eisenhower administration pressed Japan to transform its existing paramilitary force, which had been established in 1950 to maintain internal order, into a proper army. It was difficult for Yoshida to refuse this request, for Japan still relied on American economic aid. During the Korean War the Japanese economy had begun to recover, due largely to the American need for trucks, clothing, bedding and other goods for its armed forces. Indeed, the Japanese motor company Toyota was saved from imminent bankruptcy by American military procurements. However, once the conflict in Korea ended in 1953 there was widespread concern that if American military procurements were curtailed, the economy would tip back into recession. Therefore, under pressure from the Right, and fearing that refusal would jeopardize American procurements, Yoshida agreed in May 1954 to set up the Self-Defence Force (SDF), an army, navy and air force in all but name, with a ceiling of 150,000 men.

This, however, was to be Yoshida’s last major act, for in December of that year he was forced out of office and replaced by a new government led by his rival, Hatoyama.

Yoshida’s fall from power seemed to presage a resolution to the question of where Japan was heading, for it suggested that those who favoured remilitarization had won the debate on the Right. This assumption appeared to be confirmed when, in the wake of Yoshida’s dismissal, a radical realignment of political forces took place that was to set the structural framework for Japanese politics over the next forty years. In November 1955 the socialists, who had split into moderates and radicals earlier in the decade, managed to put their differences behind them and merged to re-establish the Japanese Socialist Party (JSP). The vision of a newly united democratic left wing in Japanese politics was deeply alarming to the politicians on the Right and to the business community and resulted in the conservative parties merging into one organization, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). This was a dramatic shift, for at a stroke it internalized the Cold War within Japanese politics by formalizing a strict Right-Left polarization. Moreover, by bringing the various conservative groupings under one umbrella, this new ‘1955 system’ overcame the instability of the previous years and set the road for LDP dominance over Japanese politics.

To many observers the modern era in Japan can be traced back to this rearranging of the political jigsaw, for the LDP was to rule from this point uninterruptedly until 1993, with the JSP as the main opposition party. However, while the structure of Japanese politics was established in 1955, the policy agenda remained in a state of flux, with Hatoyama and Kishi pushing for a rearmed and politically assertive Japan while Yoshida and his followers continued to argue for a low security profile and concentration on economic development.

When the LDP formed, its first task was to support Hatoyama’s government.

Hatoyama was a veteran party politician and former cabinet member from the pre-war era, who felt aggrieved at Japan’s new lowly status in world affairs. He was determined to follow a more independent line in foreign policy than Yoshida, and this was manifested in his desire to negotiate a peace treaty with the Soviet Union and to expand Japanese trade at an unofficial level with the PRC. His

Federal Republic of Germany (FRG)

The German state created in 1949 out of the former American, British and French occupation zones. Also known as West Germany. In 1990 the GDR merged into the FDR, thus ending the post-war partition of Germany.

see Chapter 9

United Nations (UN)

An international organization established after the Second World War to replace the League of Nations. Since its establishment in 1945, its membership has grown to 192 countries.

North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Established by the North Atlantic Treaty (4 April 1949) signed by Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Great Britain, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal and the United States. Greece and Turkey entered the alliance in 1952 and the Federal Republic of Germany in 1955. Spain became a full member in 1982. In 1999 the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland joined in the first postCold War expansion, increasing the membership to nineteen countries.

U-2 spy plane

An American high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft used to fly over Soviet and other hostile territories.

diplomatic efforts were not, however, wholly successful. Talks with Moscow in 1955—56 foundered over the issue of the future of the southernmost four islands in the Kurile island chain in the north-west Pacific. Hatoyama demanded that these islands, which were under Soviet occupation, should be returned to Japanese control, but for strategic and prestige reasons Russia was only willing to agree to pass back two of the four. Unwilling to make an agreement on these terms and, moreover, under considerable American pressure not to do so, Hatoyama decided to follow the formula that Adenauer had adopted for FRG—Soviet relations, that is, to agree to mutual diplomatic recognition without a formal peace treaty. This had the limited advantage that the Soviet Union was willing to waive its veto over Japanese entry into the United Nations (UN), which finally took place in 1956.

Meanwhile, there was some expansion of trade with the PRC, but there were strict limits owing to the American-led sanctions regime against China.

Hatoyama resigned at the end of1956 and after a short interregnum Nobusuke Kishi emerged as the new LDP leader and prime minister. Kishi was an even more controversial figure than Hatoyama, for he had acted as the minister of munitions in General Tojo’s wartime cabinet and in 1946 had been arraigned as a Class A war criminal, although the case against him never came to trial. Like Hatoyama before him, Kishi yearned to strengthen Japan, but in contrast to his predecessor he intended to do this by first putting the alliance with the United States on a more equal basis before turning to regional matters and the issue of further rearmament. He therefore made his priority the revision of the Security Treaty. Talks about this began in 1958 and a revised treaty was finally signed in Washington in January 1960. Under its terms the United States had to consult the Japanese government before using its forces to counter a threat to Japan or to the region, and the administrative agreement was brought into line with those that regulated the conduct of American troops in NATO countries.

Once the treaty was signed, it had to be ratified by the legislatures in both countries. This process led to the biggest political crisis in post-war Japanese history. In order to understand why this issue became so controversial it is necessary to look at it from a number of angles. One important factor was that since 1954 the pacifist movement in Japan had made great strides as the country slowly came to terms with the scale of devastation at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. During the occupation the Americans had suppressed the evidence that the atomic bombs had long-term implications for public health, but from 1952 this material entered the public domain. Moreover, Japan’s sense of being a victim of the atomic age was exacerbated further by the Lucky Dragon incident in 1954, when the crew of a Japanese trawler was irradiated during an American nuclear test.

Pacifism was also stimulated by the Cold War and particularly the bitter Sino-American hostility, which in 1958 threatened to escalate into war in the second offshore islands crisis. If this were not enough, in the spring of 1960, just before the Diet began to deliberate on the Security Treaty, East-West relations were disturbed by the shooting down of an American U-2 spy plane above the Soviet Union, which led to the cancellation of a four-power summit in Paris. Security issues were thus increasingly controversial.

Pacifism, however, was not the only stimulus to dissent. Equally significant was that the Left increasingly perceived Kishi to be a dangerous throwback to Japan’s militaristic past because of the reactionary nature of his domestic programme. In particular, his government’s abortive attempt in 1958 to widen police powers of arrest suggested that it had authoritarian tendencies similar to those that had existed in the 1930s. Added to this was Kishi’s arrogant hostility towards the need for political consensus, which was viewed by left-wing intellectuals as showing a basic lack of sympathy for democracy. This image of Kishi made it easy to believe that he had a more sinister agenda than just gaining equality with the United States, and that he intended to use revision of the Security Treaty as a stepping stone to abrogating Article 9 and perhaps committing Japan to a multilateral defence pact in Asia. Moreover, adding extra tension to an already combustible situation was the fact that the Security Treaty debate coincided with a deep crisis in labour relations, the fractious Miike coal-mine dispute, which further polarized Japanese politics.

With a large measure of support for its stance, the JSP therefore tried to obstruct the ratification of the treaty when it arrived in the Lower House in May I960. Kishi reacted in typically intolerant style by forcing through a quick vote in a manner that did nothing to enhance his democratic credentials. The JSP and its allies then took the battle on to the streets, and a series of large-scale demonstrations took place in which one female participant was killed.

These protests did not deter the Upper House from ratification on 20 June which finally made the treaty law, but they did lead to the cancellation of the first American presidential visit to Japan as it was deemed that Eisenhower’s security could not be ensured. Taking the blame for this humiliation, and having lost the support of his party and the business community, who were aghast at the social instability unleashed by treaty revision, Kishi announced on 24 June his decision to stand down as prime minister.

Kishi was quickly replaced by a new LDP prime minister, Hayato Ikeda. Ikeda was a protege of Yoshida, and his government saw Japan take a new very different political course. Recognizing that Kishi had brought Japan to the brink of a political abyss through his obsession with the security issue and his undemocratic tendencies, Ikeda played down national defence, created a new atmosphere of consensus by rebuilding dialogue with the JSP, and introduced a policy agenda whose central theme was that by the end of the 1960s Japan should have doubled its national income. Ikeda’s ‘income-doubling’ concept was a vital turning point in Japanese history, for in accepting the country’s discomfort with its expansionist past, and therefore eschewing defence and instead emphasizing economic growth, he set the policy parameters for Japanese politics for the next three decades. It can thus be argued that while 1955 was significant, in that the developments of that year established the structure of Japanese politics, 1960 was in the end more important because the policy decisions of that year created modern Japan.

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Source: Best Antony. International History of the Twentieth Century and Beyond. Routledge,2008. — 638 p.. 2008

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