Mineo Nakajima discusses the Hori Letter he helped draft, Japan’s 1972 normalization with China, the Tanaka-Ohira visit to Beijing, the Taiwan question, and an alternative diplomatic strategy that Japan could have pursued. He argues that China needed relations with Japan and criticizes the hasty normalization process for leaving a lasting burden over Taiwan.

August 13, 2020.
The following is an excerpt from Mineo Nakajima’s essay, “The Normalization of Diplomatic Relations between Japan and China Was a Mistake.”
The preceding article introduced Nakajima’s argument that, in the run-up to normalization in 1972, Japan tilted toward China in an avalanche-like movement while lacking a long-term diplomatic strategy and vision.
In this passage, he develops that argument in far more concrete terms.
Nakajima states that, at the request of Minoru Kusuda, chief secretary to Prime Minister Eisaku Sato, he himself drafted the original version of what became known as the “Hori Letter.”
He discusses the “Three Principles for the Restoration of Japan-China Diplomatic Relations” concerning Taiwan, the international environment shaped by the U.S.-China rapprochement and the Sino-Soviet confrontation, and his view that it was China, rather than Japan, that had the greater need to establish diplomatic relations.
Nakajima further testifies that Japan had an alternative scenario: Tanaka and Ohira could have listened carefully to the Chinese position in September, returned to Japan, fully examined the Taiwan question, and then proceeded toward normalization the following spring.
He sharply criticizes the decision to abandon that option and move directly to the Joint Communiqué in September 1972 as hasty diplomacy.
The following is taken from an essay by Mineo Nakajima, President of Akita International University, entitled “The Normalization of Diplomatic Relations between Japan and China Was a Mistake,” which appeared in the Hanada Selection then on sale. [WiLL, October 2012 issue, edited under the responsibility of Yoshiko Hanada]
This is an essay that should be read not only by the Japanese people but by people throughout the world.
A Summer Insect Flying into the Flame
At the request of Minoru Kusuda, chief secretary to Prime Minister Sato, I drafted the original version of the Hori Letter.
Although Premier Zhou Enlai rejected the Hori Letter at the time, he had nevertheless seen its contents.
The letter did not address the “Three Principles for the Restoration of Japan-China Diplomatic Relations” concerning the Taiwan question: (1) the People’s Republic of China is the sole legitimate government of China; (2) the Taiwan question is an internal affair of China; and (3) the Treaty of Peace between Japan and the Republic of China is illegal and must be abrogated.
For that reason, it may be said that Premier Zhou Enlai could not accept the letter.
Nevertheless, the Sato administration’s determination to restore diplomatic relations with China should have been sufficiently clear from it, and therein lay the great significance of the Hori Letter.
Although the international environment at the time was undergoing the major development of a U.S.-China rapprochement, China and the Soviet Union, on the other hand, were in fierce confrontation.
It was, rather, China that needed diplomatic relations with Japan.
Considering those circumstances, the Japanese side should have dealt with China with somewhat greater composure and room for negotiation.
We had a different scenario from the course that was actually taken—visiting China in September without any scenario at all and, spurred on by the mass media, announcing a Joint Communiqué in one stroke.
Our scenario was that Mr. Tanaka and Mr. Ohira would visit China in September and meet Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai.
They would listen carefully to the Chinese side’s position, return to Japan once, and then move toward normalization of diplomatic relations in the spring of the following year.
In the meantime, the Taiwan question should have been examined thoroughly.
For example, after the U.S.-China rapprochement of 1971, the United States spent nearly eight years establishing its own position before formally establishing diplomatic relations in 1979, and enacted the Taiwan Relations Act as domestic law.
Japan, which historically and culturally had the deepest ties with Taiwan, should likewise have given due consideration to its relationship with Taiwan.
At the time, however, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the mass media, and the Cabinet Secretariat under the Tanaka administration, which succeeded the Sato administration, had almost no willingness to listen and rushed headlong toward establishing diplomatic relations with China in one stroke.
From that point onward, it may be said that China acquired the upper hand to treat Japan like “a summer insect flying into the flame.”
As a result, Japan was manipulated largely at China’s will, accepted the “Three Principles for the Restoration of Japan-China Diplomatic Relations” in the Japan-China Joint Communiqué, and unilaterally abandoned Taiwan—the Republic of China.
The enormous burden created by this hasty diplomacy over the Taiwan question has remained with us to this day, even forty years later.