戦後日ソ交渉と非正式接触者

日本外交の非正式チャンネル

抄録

Postwar Japanese diplomatic negotiations with the Soviet Union have involved informal contact-makers in certain significant ways. Their roles and functions, however, have changed over time. Two major diplomatic negotiations involving the restoration of diplomatic relations between the two countries in the mid-1950s and the continuing territorial dispute in the 1960s and the early 1970s are examined to illustrate the case in point.
The initial contacts to start negotiations on normalizing bilateral relations were made through informal channels. Fujita Kazuo, a journalist, and Majima Kan, the chief administrator of the National Conference to Restore Diplomatic Relations with China and the Soviet Union, became instrumental in the successful Soviet bid to open a direct communication link with Prime Minister Hatoyama Ichiro (1954-1956) at quite the displeasure of the Japanese Foreign Ministry. Once the formal negotiations set off, informal channels were, nonetheless, still utilized, but this time at the highest negotiating levels and mostly by Japan.
Hatoyama's visit to Moscow in October 1956 culminated in the Joint Declaration to establish diplomatic relations but the territorial issue was left unresolved. Subsequently. Japan made repeated efforts in vain to break through the deadlock, including the informal diplomatic maneuvers in the 1960s and Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei's tête-à-tête negotiations with the Soviet leadership in Moscow in 1973. The Soviet Union used non-diplomatic channels to probe Japanese thinking and in turn to convey to Japan some of its own thinking on outstanding issues. The maneuverability of informal contact-makers, however, narrowed in the 1970s as both the Japanese and the Soviet negotiating positions on the territorial dispute hardened.
Several other factors restricted the use of informal contact-makers as back channels of negotiations in the 1970s. The Foreign Ministry took the view that the ultimate resolution of the territorial issue squarely rested with the political judgment of the highest Soviet leadership. The hierarchical and closed structure of Soviet foreign policy-making also limited the maneuverability of Japanese informal contact-makers. The Foreign Ministry did not favor using politicians and other prominent individuals with political clout as emissaries, nor did it favor seeing individuals without official credentials approaching Moscow. This stemmed in part from the Ministry's belief in conducting a unified foreign policy, and in part from the Ministry's elitism in handling foreign relations. It was distrustful of Japanese who with unofficial capacity would volunteer to seek contacts with the Communist power.