moves in the Pacific and may therefore “attract the lightning” of a Communist H-bomb attack. Kishi’s diehard opponents protest that the treaty revision commits Japan to support all U.S. In Tokyo 27,000 demonstrators battled police, and thousands of fanatical left-wing students made plain their feelings about the treaty by using the great doorway of the Japanese Diet for their own kind of public protest-a mass urination… Prime Minister Kishi, 63, flew into Washington this week convinced that the logic of the world situation and the profit of Japan require his signature on the revision of the 1951 U.S.-Japanese Treaty. But the forces behind the scenes - especially the economic forces - were stronger than any individual’s protests: and Japan signed the revised treaty (and which makes use of some national stereotypes from that era), focused on how Japanese Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi had played an important role in reconciling “Japan’s militarist, aggressive past and its democratic present.” (He was born to do it, TIME argued, reporting that the name Kishi, meaning “riverbank,” is used in a Japanese phrase that refers to “one who tries to keep a foot on both banks of the river.”) As the cover story detailed, not everyone was happy about the two nations’ growing closeness. 25, 1960, cover story, which came out around the week that the U.S. If you don't get the confirmation within 10 minutes, please check your spam folder. Click the link to confirm your subscription and begin receiving our newsletters. can stay and provide security,” explains Green.įor your security, we've sent a confirmation email to the address you entered. and Japan signed a peace treaty that says Japan is a sovereign country but agrees that the U.S. had to rethink how it would deal with Asia, so in order to contain communism, the U.S. would come to Japan’s defense in an attack. maintain military bases there, and a revision in 1960 said the U.S. and Japan signed a security treaty for a “peace of reconciliation” in San Francisco in 1951. The American occupation of Japan ended in 1952, after the U.S. and Japan to get back on the same side: the Cold War and the global threat of communism. But the shift was just one part of a larger motivation for the U.S. Many Japanese people were uncomfortable, or worse, with this obvious violation of the constitution and what was seen as a movement away from peacefulness, which had quickly become part of the post-war national identity. was looking for ways around the terms it had been so instrumental in establishing, as it pressed Japan to build up its own military (called “self-defense forces” to get around the constitutional prohibition) as a backstop against the North Korean side. The constitution also made a key determination about Japan’s military future: Article 9 included a two-part clause stating that “Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes” and, to accomplish that goal, that “land, sea and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained.”Īnd within a few years, as the Korean War broke out, the U.S. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. “Japan experts said if you dismantle the emperor system, there will be chaos,” explains Michael Green, senior vice president for Asia and Japan Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and director of Asian Studies at the Edmund A. For example, while the new constitution democratized the political structure of Japan, it also kept Emperor Hirohito as the nation’s symbolic leader, per MacArthur’s wishes. When Japan got a new constitution, which took effect on May 3, 1947, its terms came largely courtesy of American influence, specifically that of U.S. The first phase was the United States’ roughly seven-year occupation of Japan, which began following the surrender.
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