From Mineo Nakajima’s essay “The Normalization of Japan-China Relations Was a Mistake.” Nakajima examines the 1972 Japan-China Joint Communiqué, Japan’s severing of diplomatic relations with the Republic of China on Taiwan, the symbolic meaning he attributed to Mao Zedong’s gift of the Chuci Jizhu to Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka, the Shenyang consulate incident, and the Senkaku Islands dispute, describing them as part of the continuing price of what he called Japan’s hasty diplomacy.

August 12, 2020
The following is from an essay by Mineo Nakajima, president of Akita International University, published in a Hanada magazine selection under the title “The Normalization of Japan-China Relations Was a Mistake.”
【Originally published in the October 2012 issue of WiLL, edited by Kazuyoshi Hanada】
This is an essay that should be read not only by the Japanese people but by people throughout the world.
【The Heavy Price of Hasty Diplomacy】
Exactly forty years ago, on September 29, 1972, Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka, who had rapidly achieved the establishment of diplomatic relations between Japan and China, returned triumphantly to Japan together with Foreign Minister Masayoshi Ohira.
On the afternoon of September 30, Shinsaku Hogen, then Administrative Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs, greeted Foreign Minister Ohira at Haneda Airport and later came into the room where we, the members of the Council on International Relations, a private advisory body to the Chief Cabinet Secretary, were waiting.
His first words were a self-congratulatory declaration:
“The negotiations with China this time deserve not merely a perfect score of 100, but 120 points.”
Listening to Vice-Minister Hogen, I was stunned by the enormous difference between his assessment and my own view and impression.
I remember it as if it had happened only yesterday.
On the Chinese side, Chairman Mao Zedong summoned the Japanese leader to his private quarters and presented him with a reproduction of the Chuci Jizhu, or Collected Commentaries on the Songs of Chu, as a commemorative gift.
Prime Minister Tanaka respectfully accepted it.
As the late Masahiro Yasuoka, an incomparable scholar of the Chinese classics, lamented, the gift of the Chuci Jizhu, associated with the story of Qu Yuan, who threw himself into the Miluo River, carried, in his interpretation, an implication comparable to imposing a drama of national ruin upon the recipient.
Yet Prime Minister Tanaka, who had rushed eagerly to China, and the senior officials of the Foreign Ministry at the time did not, in Nakajima’s view, possess the knowledge required to discern such an implication.
They were manipulated according to China’s wishes, accepted the so-called “Three Principles for the Restoration of Japan-China Relations” in the Japan-China Joint Communiqué, and unilaterally cast aside Taiwan, the Republic of China.
Japan continues even today to pay a high price for this hasty diplomacy.
Moreover, despite having paid such a price, Nakajima argues that China showed neither respect nor genuine friendship toward Japan during the forty years that followed.
Was the establishment of diplomatic relations between Japan and China truly the correct choice?
As is well known, the Senkaku Islands had recently become a major issue in Japan-China relations.
Yet ten years earlier, in May 2002, the so-called Shenyang incident had occurred.
North Korean refugees fled into the Japanese Consulate-General in Shenyang, only to be forcibly taken away by Chinese security personnel.
The truth of the Shenyang incident became known only because television footage recorded what happened.
Without those images, Nakajima argues, the incident might have remained concealed and eventually been buried beneath the rhetoric of “Japan-China friendship.”
The unmistakable images from Shenyang showed many Japanese citizens what Nakajima regarded as both the reality of Communist Party-ruled China and the reality of Japan’s “friendship diplomacy” toward China.
He argued that “Japan-China friendship diplomacy” had become diplomacy overawed by China, while “atonement diplomacy” had become diplomacy of excessive entanglement with China.
Yet despite forty years of pursuing “Japan-China friendship,” none of the outstanding disputes between the two countries—the Yasukuni issue, textbook controversies, historical-perception disputes, or the Senkaku Islands issue—had been resolved.
Nor, in his view, had the issue of the violation of Japanese sovereignty at the Consulate-General in Shenyang been settled.
Thus, even though a delegation of some 13,000 people visited China to celebrate “Japan-China friendship” on the thirtieth anniversary of diplomatic normalization, Japanese public sentiment toward China had already grown cold.
Nakajima also cited concerns over Chinese food and traditional medicines following incidents such as the poisoned dumpling case, as well as an increase in crimes involving Chinese nationals residing in Japan, as factors contributing to that change in public sentiment.
Even with regard to the Senkaku Islands alone, he argued that China’s claims had no foundation whatsoever.
This was supposed to be the fortieth anniversary of Japan-China diplomatic relations.
Yet in what manner, he asked, could the anniversary truly be celebrated?
Here too, he concluded, the price of hasty diplomacy remained.
To be continued.