THE CONVOLUTED SECURITY DEBATE

Since World War II the Japan-U.S. security arrangements have evolved within a context containing two large gray areas or realms of secrecy. One is the ambiguity inherent in America’s observance of one of Japan’s three nonnuclear principles, that the introduction of nuclear arms not be allowed. The other is Japan’s chameleon-like working interpretation of what the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty implies for Japanese action in an emergency, particularly with respect to collective self-defense.

The first gray area has fortunately ceased to be a problem since 1991. That was when U.S. President George Bush announced U.S. naval vessels other than strategic nuclear missile submarines would not carry nuclear weapons. No longer is it necessary for members of the Japanese government to deliver absurd statements such as the one made by Suzuki Zenkô when he was serving as chief cabinet secretary in the early 1960s; responding to a question in the National Diet, Suzuki declared, “I would imagine that American military vessels unload their nuclear weapons in the waters off Japan before sailing into Japanese ports.”

The other gray area, the question of Japan’s exercise of the right of collective self-defense, is the topic addressed in the article below by Nagashima Akihisa. The commentary on this issue, Nagashima’s piece included, tends to gloss over the question of how this became a gray area in the first place. Its roots reach back not to any secret treaty or agreement but to nothing other than interpellation of the government in the Diet.

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During the years of the “1955 setup,” which lasted from the mid-1950s through the early 1990s, the Liberal Democratic Party was seeking to become the permanent ruling party, and its main rival, the Japan Socialist Party (now renamed the Social Democratic Party), never seriously contemplated moving into power—in fact, never fielded enough candidates in any election to capture a majority of the Diet seats. Since the LDP held a perennial majority in the Diet, in theory it could control the legislative agenda, but the JSP and its allies in the opposition could in practice bring proceedings to a halt by boycotting deliberations. Because the public protested loudly whenever the ruling party steamrolled bills through during such boycotts, the government always did its utmost to avoid giving the opposition any pretext for walking out. One tactic that emerged during this period was the meticulous preparation of statements to be delivered by ministers in response to questions in the Diet. These statements were designed to be bland and inoffensive, and great care was taken to use exactly the same phrases as used in earlier statements. If, despite such precautions, the government stumbled and provoked a boycott, the LDP had to come up with inducements to lure the opposition members back.

In the field of national security, there were unfortunately plenty of things capable of tripping the government up and almost nothing capable of being conceded for the benefit of the opposition. It was in this setting that debate over collective self-defense veered off the track of common sense onto a grotesquely twisted path. If my reading is correct, then in order to clear up the murky areas in the Japan-U.S. security relationship it should not be necessary to conduct a comprehensive national debate or to renegotiate the existing bilateral agreements; all that should be required is for the government to come up with the courage to retract or modify what it has said in the Diet in the past.

Let me introduce an example of how legislative deliberations have distorted the results of bilateral agreements. On the basis of negotiations between Tokyo and Washington, the United States agreed that it would respect Japan’s prohibition on the introduction of nuclear weapons into the country. But the heads of the Defense Agency and of the Treaties Bureau in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs decided that the agreement was too vague to stand up under questioning in the Diet. To curry favor with the opposition, they overstepped their authority with the assertion that the ban included even nuclear weapons on ships making port calls. This interpretation naturally displeased the Americans, but they refrained from objecting openly for fear of provoking a backlash from the Japanese public.

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The twists and turns in the debate over collective self-defense went much the same way. This particular road leads back to October 1955, when Foreign Minister Shigemitsu Mamoru made a trip to the United States. Prime Minister Hatoyama Ichirô had taken office as a critic of how Yoshida Shigeru, Japan’s leader during much of the early postwar period, had toed the U.S. line, and one of his top priorities in foreign affairs was revision of the “unfair” Japan-U.S. Security Treaty then in force. But when Shigemitsu raised this matter with U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, saying that Japan wanted an equal treaty, Dulles parried with a remark that, in that case, Japan would need to be ready to come to the rescue if Guam were attacked.

LDP Secretary General Konô Ichirô, who accompanied Shigemitsu, carelessly mentioned this exchange at a press conference, and the upshot was giant newspaper headlines screaming, “America Demands Overseas Troop Dispatch.” An uproar ensued in the Diet, and calm was restored only with a compromise between the ruling and opposition parties, namely, the passage of a Diet resolution prohibiting the dispatch of troops overseas. From this beginning, the gray area spread to the Cabinet Legislation Bureau’s interpretation of collective self-defense, which is that while Japan possesses the right of collective self-defense, its Constitution prohibits it from exercising this right.

To reiterate, both the gray areas in the debate over national security are fictitious issues arising from words spoken in the Diet under the 1955 setup. The time has come for the ruling parties to retrieve the authority for interpreting the Constitution from the Cabinet Legislation Bureau, with its “government by precedent” inclination, and to replace the strained verbiage of past pronouncements with an official stance based on common sense. (Kawachi Takashi, Mainichi Shimbun)

© 2001 Japan Echo Inc.