抄録
What is Japan’s grand strategy in the 21st Century and where is Japan’s diplomacy heading now? These are the questions we are often asked by international affairs specialists both inside and outside of Japan. To answer these questions, I am suggesting that the strategic and diplomatic debates conducted in the 1960s, when Japan was looking for appropriate policies, be re-examined. Japanese were looking for the answers to the following diplomatic questions: Should Japan go nuclear in the light of the fact that China succeeded in obtaining nuclear weapons? Should Japan request the government of the United States to withdraw the nuclear weapons the United States was deploying in Okinawa after the Okinawa reversion? Should Japan remain in the U.S.-Japan alliance, or should Japan take more independent course of diplomacy? What kind of diplomatic relations does Japan hope to build with a growing China?
To review the diplomatic decisions the Japanese government made as well as the diplomatic arguments conducted at that time, this article focuses on the international studies and strategic arguments made by three leading international affairs specialists who had a strong influence on Japanese international studies and on Japan’s diplomacy. These specialists are Yonosuke Nagai, Masataka Kosaka, and Kei Wakaizumi; the latter was also known as an emissary between Tokyo and Washington who served under Prime Minister Eisaku Sato from 1967–1971. Although each of these specialists had different approaches to international affairs, I call them realists because they were all searching for a policy “solvent”—a word Walter Lippmann used in his U.S. Foreign Policy (1943)—for Japan, rather than looking for diplomatic goals designed by ideas or philosophy. They also share the understanding that reading the situation governments are facing and predicting the next move of their opponents are most difficult.
These specialists had basically the same answers to the questions mentioned above, even though they had some differences regarding how to realize policy goals. They said, for example, that Japan should not go nuclear; the U.S.-Japan alliance is a fundamental base for Japanese diplomacy and security; and Okinawa should be returned to Japan without the U.S. deploying nuclear weapons in Okinawa.
Compared to the diplomatic problems Japan is facing today, the diplomatic and security problems of the 1960s were more complexly related to each other. By re-examining the theoretical analyses and practical applications made by the three specialists mentioned above, this article suggests that we may be able to learn lessons from their analyses of Japanese diplomacy.
