Published on November 4, 2019.
Continuing Otaka Miki’s essay, this article discusses the Japan-South Korea Basic Treaty, Japan-North Korea negotiations, the Three-Party Joint Declaration, the Japan-DPRK Pyongyang Declaration, the Foreign Ministry’s role in recognizing the Ainu as a minority people, Dowa-related interests, and rumors of Chinese corporate activity behind the Tomakomai casino bid.
It questions whether the Ainu New Law and related projects may involve not only taxpayer-funded interests but also risks connected to Korean Peninsula unification funds and a “Divide Japan” operation, calling for a review of Ainu policy so as not to leave a negative legacy for future generations of Japanese.

November 4, 2019.
Also, along with the effort to attract a casino to Tomakomai, which the current governor of Hokkaido is also promoting, there are rumors of Chinese companies maneuvering behind the scenes, using Hong Kong as a cover.
The following is the continuation of the previous chapter.
Indirect Financial Assistance?
Under the Treaty on Basic Relations between Japan and South Korea, concluded in 1965, Japan had not been at war with South Korea, so Japan contributed a total of 800 million dollars to South Korea not as “postwar compensation,” but as “economic cooperation”: 300 million dollars in grants, 200 million dollars in government loans, and 300 million dollars in private loans.
At that time, the South Korean side renounced its claims, and yet the Moon administration is trying to break an international treaty by playing sophistry, saying that “individual claims have not disappeared.”
In fact, North Korea’s strategy toward Japan has also consistently remained fixated on this point from beginning to end.
Its real intention is probably that postwar compensation, rather than economic cooperation, would allow the amount to be raised higher and would make it possible to challenge Japan in negotiations from a more advantageous position.
Indeed, the Three-Party Joint Declaration signed on September 28, 1990, by the Liberal Democratic Party, the Socialist Party, and the Workers’ Party of Korea stated “apology for the forty-five years after the war and sufficient atonement,” and Kanemaru Shin, former deputy prime minister of the LDP, and Tanabe Makoto, vice chairman of the Socialist Party, who returned to Japan, were exposed to severe criticism from public opinion for having made an easy compromise.
The Sankei Shimbun reported the backstage circumstances of the negotiations at the time as follows.
“The Joint Declaration was discussed by a drafting committee centered on Ishii Hajime, 79, secretary-general of the Kanemaru delegation to North Korea, Takemura Masayoshi, secretary-general of the same delegation’s secretariat, and Kubo Wataru, deputy head of the Socialist Party delegation to North Korea.
The Japanese side, including Takemura, rejected the demand, saying, ‘We cannot accept postwar reparations to a country with which we were not even at war,’ but North Korea would not easily give in.
After sixteen hours of talks, in the end, by one word from Kanemaru, it was decided to include the wording ‘atonement.’
During his stay, Kanemaru held a closed-door meeting alone with Kim Il-sung for nearly five hours.
However, because neither a Japanese-side interpreter nor Foreign Ministry attendants were present, and because no record was left, it became a major problem.
It is said that in this secret meeting, Kanemaru promised several billion dollars in ‘postwar reparations,’ but he denied it, saying, ‘That is a misunderstanding.
I did not approve even “atonement.”’”
Sankei Shimbun, August 2, 2014.
Fortunately, the word “atonement” in the Three-Party Joint Declaration was changed to the expression “economic assistance” in the Japan-DPRK Pyongyang Declaration issued when former Prime Minister Koizumi visited North Korea in 2002, and it was effectively erased.
That said, the Korean Peninsula is not a place that would quietly overlook this.
Even for the Moon administration, whose long-cherished wish is North-South unification, it is obvious, from the economic burden borne by West Germany in the course of German unification, that unification is not an easy matter.
Therefore, with a common awareness between North and South, have they not been waging a history war, thinking that when unification comes, there will be no reason not to raise a clamor over postwar compensation, reignite historical issues, and use Japan as a convenient cash dispenser, or money tree?
Whether it is “economic cooperation” or “postwar compensation,” fierce negotiating maneuvers between the Japanese government and the Korean Peninsula can be expected to continue from now on, but could there not be a possibility that, in the gaps between them, part of the Ainu-related interests will be diverted as funds for the unification of the Korean Peninsula?
Incidentally, it was the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that created the current that led to the Ainu being recognized as an indigenous people.
Although the Foreign Ministry had officially, and also at the United Nations, maintained that “there is no specific ethnic group in Japan,” after the Foreign Ministry’s United Nations Bureau suddenly stated at the United Nations in 1991 that “the Ainu are a minority people,” Japan became a multiethnic state.
Speaking of 1991, the big bang of comfort women reporting came in 1992, and the Kono Statement was issued the following year.
I cannot help thinking that there is some kind of causal relationship.
News came that South Korea’s Justice Minister Cho Kuk had resigned.
It is also said that South Korea is effectively in a state of civil war between pro-North forces and conservatives.
Mr. Cho’s resignation is certainly a blow to the Moon administration, but I do not think that this will allow conservatives to regain momentum and easily recover the South Korea of the past.
Some people point out, “Isn’t the Ainu issue a repeat of Dowa interests?”
The Dowa Measures projects came to an end in 2002 under temporary legislation, but approximately 15 trillion yen in public funds had been poured into them.
Also, along with the effort to attract a casino to Tomakomai, which the current governor of Hokkaido is also promoting, there are rumors of Chinese companies maneuvering behind the scenes, using Hong Kong as a cover.
The hidden scenario behind the Ainu campaign that will now be rolled out nationwide following the passage of the Ainu New Law.
I cannot help hoping that Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga will quickly gather various kinds of information and review Ainu policy so that a negative legacy will not be left to future generations of Japanese.