Together, these shifts depict a more assertive Tokyo that is at least beginning to consider the future of US-Japan relations and Japan’s place in Asia. More worryingly though, Tokyo’s assertive stance has led to the emergence of a ‘losing Japan’ narrative—a narrative which suggests the US risks losing Japan to China—in Washington and Western media more generally. At a time when US-Japan relations are experiencing difficulty, any slight upturn in the Japan-China relationship tends to be read in zero-sum terms.

Yet these developments are not new. In the late 1950s, as Tokyo and Washington began renegotiating the 1951 US-Japan Security Treaty, many of these issues—Japan’s desire for a more equal US alliance, Japan’s relationship with China, and Japan’s place in East Asia—were debated at the highest levels in Washington, Tokyo and Beijing. A similar ‘losing Japan’ narrative emerged in Washington during the first decade of the Cold War. Washington feared that Japan’s desire for closer ties with Communist China, and its frustration with the unequal US-Japan relationship, could encourage Japan to follow some of its Asian neighbours down a path of neutrality in the Cold War.

Washington’s concerns were well-founded. At the height of US-Japan negotiations to revise the US-Japan Security Treaty in 1959-1960, a group of pro-China representatives from Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party travelled to Beijing. These LDP politicians were attempting to forge a closer political and economic relationship with Communist China across Cold War lines. Chinese Foreign Ministry records tell us that during these talks, Premier Zhou Enlai and other Chinese officials worked hard to draw Japan away from its alliance with the United States, advocated that Japan adopt a position of ‘peaceful neutrality’ (heping zhongli 和平中立) in the global Cold War, and encouraged Japan to develop its own weapons of self-defence (ziwei de wuzhuang 自卫的武装) outside its alliance with the US. Most strikingly, Beijing downplayed the legacy of Japan’s brutal invasion and occupation of China during the 1930s and 1940s, and made it clear that an independent, neutral Japan posed a far smaller threat to China than a Japan allied with the United States.

Caution should always be taken when making historical comparisons, or using history as a predictor for the future. But looking at the present US-Japan-China relationship through an historical lens has advantages. History—albeit only 50 years—allows us to see that some of the difficulties facing the US-Japan relationship are not new.

Tokyo has attempted to maintain close ties with Beijing since the advent of the Cold War, and China has traditionally played an important role in our thinking about the US-Japan relationship. Fears about the threat posed by Communist China in the 1950s and 1960s, and debates about China’s ‘rise’ today are central to our discussions about the US -Japan alliance. Yet looking to the past helps us to see that a zero-sum ‘losing Japan’ narrative is flawed. Beijing failed in its attempts to draw Japan away from the US-Japan alliance. While the US feared—and China encouraged— Japan’s neutrality, even Japan’s pro-China representatives recognised the necessity of the US alliance to Japan’s security in the early years of the Cold War. In negotiations with Beijing, Japan’s LDP representatives— Matsumura Kenzo, Ishibashi Tanzan and Takasaki Tatsunosuke—agreed that Japan should promote Sino-Japanese friendship (cujin youhao guanxi 促进友好关系) and resume diplomatic relations with China (tong zhongguo huifu bangjiao 同中国恢 复邦交), but only within the context of the US-Japan alliance. Although a million Japanese protested against the ratification of the US-Japan Mutual Security Treaty in June 1960, the contentious issue for most Japanese was the way Prime Minister Kishi Nobusuke sidelined Japan’s opposition parties and forced the alliance through the Diet that year. There have been periodic revisions to the treaty’s scope and responsibilities over the last 50 years, but it has remained the backbone of Japan’s security since 1960.

Yet, more importantly, the historical context clearly shows how the international situation has shifted since 1960. Today, there are well-known strategic and economic reasons why a Japan-China relationship will not supplant the US-Japan relationship for the time being. China’s economic and military capabilities in 2010 bear little resemblance to the economically vulnerable and strategically isolated China of the 1960s. The US alliance provides a vital security guarantee that allows Japan—and other regional states—to engage with China while hedging against the possibility that China will become a strategic threat. The summary of Japan’s most recent Diplomatic Bluebook maintains this policy, stating that the US- Japan alliance will continue to be the basis of Japan’s security, while China’s rise is to be managed within the context of regional security architecture. Economically, Japan’s dependence on the US alliance comes at a relatively low cost, even including the US$4 billion that Japan pays as host nation. Japan’s dire economic situation provides further basis to the argument that Japan will not go it alone.

In addition, while the Japan-China relationship has improved since the Koizumi years, the bilateral relationship is still plagued by territorial disputes, tensions over the wartime legacy, and a paucity of close political ties between Chinese and Japanese elites. Finally, the US-Japan alliance is far more popular in Japan today than it was in the 1950s and 1960s. Recent polling shows the majority of Japanese citizens have been concerned about the direction the Democratic Party government is taking the US-Japan relationship. Each of these factors suggest that the US-Japan alliance is more important to Japan today. The ‘losing Japan’ narrative is a problematic one.

It is tempting to suggest that the last six months in US-Japan relations represent a fundamental shift in Japanese policy towards the US alliance. Yet Japan and the US have been here before. Chinese archival records tell us that Tokyo did not conceive of the US- Japan and China-Japan relationships in zero-sum terms in 1960. That message continues to be true today.

 

Amy King is a PhD candidate in international relations at Trinity College, Oxford, and an Australian Rhodes Scholar. She has an MPhil in Chinese from the University of Oxford, and has undertaken periods of study at Peking University and Okayama University.

This is an article from the most recent edition of the East Asia Forum Quarterly: ‘Next generation on Asia’.