From Mineo Nakajima’s essay “The Normalization of Japan-China Relations Was a Mistake.” Nakajima argues that Japan committed a historic error in 1972 when, as the price of establishing diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China, it severed formal relations with the Republic of China on Taiwan. Through the Treaty of Peace between Japan and the Republic of China, the 1978 Japan-China Treaty of Peace and Friendship, the Northern Territories dispute, and the Yalta Agreement, he examines what he regarded as a lack of diplomatic strategy and consistency in applying the principles of “law and justice.”

August 13, 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.
【Severing Diplomatic Relations with Taiwan Was a Historic Mistake】
September 29, 2012 marked the fortieth anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Japan and the People’s Republic of China.
As the price of that normalization, however, the Japanese government severed its diplomatic relationship with Taiwan, the Republic of China, on September 29, 1972.
Specifically, at the same time that Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka and Foreign Minister Masayoshi Ohira issued the Japan-China Joint Communiqué in Beijing, Foreign Minister Ohira declared the termination of the Treaty of Peace between Japan and the Republic of China.
That treaty, signed in Taipei on April 28, 1952, stated in its preamble that the parties were mindful of their “historical and cultural ties and geographical proximity.”
It not only confirmed the end of the state of war between Japan and the Republic of China but also expressed the intention to promote friendly relations between the two.
Nakajima therefore regarded it as one of Japan’s most important bilateral commitments.
Japan had maintained formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan under this treaty, reflecting the deep historical and cultural ties and geographical proximity between the two sides.
Yet Japan unilaterally severed those relations.
Chiang Ching-kuo wrote an essay expressing profound anguish over the rupture between Japan and the Republic of China in the October 1972 issue of Bungeishunju.
Nakajima regarded such anguish as entirely understandable.
Despite that history, Taiwan’s then President Ma Ying-jeou held a ceremony in Taipei on August 5 marking the sixtieth anniversary of the treaty’s entry into force.
Nakajima argues that Ma’s proposal of an “East China Sea Peace Initiative” reflected not only Taiwan’s attempt to pursue its claim regarding the Senkaku Islands alongside China but also a desire to distinguish his position from that of former President Lee Teng-hui, who had explicitly stated that the Senkaku Islands were inherently Japanese territory.
In any event, Nakajima argues, the Treaty of Peace between Japan and the Republic of China was a major pillar of postwar East Asian politics for Taiwan.
Nakajima had previously studied the Sino-Soviet split and had criticized the 1978 Japan-China Treaty of Peace and Friendship, particularly its so-called anti-hegemony clause.
From that standpoint, he had also repeatedly discussed the Northern Territories dispute.
Although the dispute remained unresolved more than thirty years later, Nakajima’s view at the time was that the severe Sino-Soviet confrontation offered Japan an opportunity to seek a settlement.
Japan, he argued, should continue asserting sovereignty over all four islands while first securing the return of Habomai and Shikotan and then seeking joint use of all four Northern Territories, including Etorofu and Kunashiri.
The Japanese government and Foreign Ministry, however, followed what Nakajima characterized as the postwar tendency to be “soft on China and hard on the Soviet Union.”
Japan accepted China’s position and concluded the Treaty of Peace and Friendship with China, angering the Soviet side while achieving no corresponding result in its diplomacy toward Moscow.
Prime Minister Takeo Fukuda himself was relatively cautious, Nakajima writes.
Yet Foreign Minister Sunao Sonoda, who was entrusted with Japan-China diplomacy without what Nakajima considered a clear strategic scenario, pursued negotiations too hastily, and Japan concluded the Treaty of Peace and Friendship with China on terms Nakajima regarded as virtually unconditional.
【In Light of “Law and Justice”】
The Soviet Union consequently offered Japan nothing in return.
Nakajima believed that, had Japan developed a coherent strategy toward both China and the Soviet Union and pressed Moscow strongly at that time, even the return of all four Northern Territories might have been possible.
In mid-June 2012, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda held his first brief summit meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Mexico.
If the question is considered according to the “law and justice” invoked by Prime Minister Noda, Nakajima argues that the most important historical event in Japan-Soviet and Japan-Russia relations was the Soviet Union’s entry into the war against Japan.
After victory over Germany, the Soviet Union violated the Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Pact and declared war on Japan immediately before Japan’s defeat.
On August 9, the day the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, Soviet forces crossed the Soviet-Manchurian frontier and launched their attack.
Shortly afterward, the Soviet Union occupied the Northern Territories, an action Nakajima describes as unlawful.
The basis for this, he argues, was provided by the secret Yalta agreement reached by the leaders of the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union in February 1945.
Nakajima writes that he continued to show his students the full English text of the Yalta agreement, including the provision stating that “the Kurile Islands shall be handed over to the Soviet Union,” in order to teach what he regarded as its illegality and injustice.
He also notes that then U.S. President George W. Bush, speaking in Latvia in May 2005 at events marking the sixtieth anniversary of victory over Nazi Germany, criticized the Yalta settlement in exceptionally severe terms and associated it with one of history’s great wrongs.
Nakajima argues that Japan’s Foreign Ministry and specialists on Russia should address the Northern Territories dispute by going back to the Yalta agreement itself and challenging Stalin’s wartime strategy toward Japan.
At the same time, because Japan had lost the war, Nakajima’s own practical proposal was to maintain the claim of sovereignty over all four islands while first achieving the return of two and then pursuing joint use of all four.
Japan therefore possesses, in Nakajima’s view, strong historical grounds for criticizing Stalin’s Soviet Union for violating an international treaty and entering the war against Japan.
Yet that same Japan unilaterally terminated its treaty relationship with Taiwan and severed diplomatic relations with it.
Whatever the diplomatic price of establishing relations with Beijing, Nakajima concludes, this was something Japan should not have done when judged by the same standard of “law and justice.”
To be continued.