This issue represents an academic attempt to shed light on the functions of those who work “behind the scenes” in diplomatic negotiations or what is termed here as “informal contact-makers.” Known by various names such as emissaries, secret envoys, secret agents, fixers, intermediaries, diplomatic brokers and back-channel contacts, these informal contac-makers often play significant roles in state-to-state negotiations, particularly when the parties involved are in tense conflict over issues such as war, territory, trade and the like, but are interested in establishing contacts with each other. Informal contact-makers, in such cases, can often play a more effective role than can formal contact-makers who, because of official credentials, find it difficult to compromise in officially-announced conferences.
The functions of contact-makers are viewed in terms of two dimensions: whether their acts of contacting are under “official” sanction or not (“unofficial”) and whether their contacts are pre-announced to the public or not. The combination of the two dimensions will produce four types of contact-makers: (1) those who have official credentials and meet for pre-announced meetings (although the contents of the proceedings may well be kept secret); and (2) those who have official credentials but meet for unannounced, i. e., secret meetings; (3) those who have no official credentials but meet for pre-announced meetings; and (4) those who have no official credentials and meet for secret contacts.
The first type, i. e., official=pre-announced contact-makers are also called “formal contact-makers” such as those attending binational top-level meetings. The second type, i. e., “official=unannounced contact-makers, ” refers to emissaries sent by the authorities and the like. The third type, i. e., “unofficial=unannounced contact-makers” are related to self-appointed emissaries, so to speak. The fourth type may be termed “unofficial=pre-announced contact-makers” such as political and business leaders contacting the other party voluntarily. The last three types are together classified as “informal contact-makers.”
The functions and types of informal contact-makers appear to be affected by various factors including the nature of diplomatic issues, the nature of relations between the governments concerned, the geographical distance between the governments concerned, and the political culture supportive of the role of informal contact-akers. Eight articles, selected here to provide case studies of prewar and postwar Japanese diplomatic negotiations, generally follow this conceptual framework. They suggest that Asian political cultures such as those of China, Korea, the Philippines as well as Japan are more conducive to informal contact-makers than are Western cultures. In Western societies as well, however, a network of personal ties among influentials sometimes plays a significant role.

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General Terauchi Masatake's Cabinet, formed in October 1916, sought to strengthen and exert control over the still feeble Tuan Ch'i-jui government in Peking through large-scale financial loans—the idea which the general's personal confident, Nishihara Kamezo, had envisaged for some time. Nishihara, consultant to the Seoul Chamber of Commerce in Japanese-occupied. Korea, became highly influential in Tokyo's political circles through his friendship established in Seoul with Terauchi and Shoda Kazue, both Governor-Generals of Korea at different times.
Because of the personal confidence of Terauchi, who became the prime minister, and Shoda, the finance minister in Terauchi's Cabinet, he was able to act as an effective emissary to negotiate for the so-called Nishihara Loan by way of establishing a Bank of Transportation in China. Nishihara succeeded through informal channels, different. from the formal ones used by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Tuan government, suffering from financial difficulties, welcomed the funds.
The Terauchi Cabinet further attempted to induce the Tuan government to join the allies and declare war against Germany. This was difficult as such a formal request to Tuan would prompt further loan requests as a condition. Skillful maneuvering was required to avoid such an occurrence. Nishihara, again as Terauchi's emissary, successfully helped accomplish this delicate task. This time he cooperated with the Foreign Ministry in using informal channels earlier established for intelligence-gathering purposes by the Imperial Army's General Staff Office.
In delicate international situations, the Tuan and Terauchi governments wanted to avoid giving the other major powers the impression that they were conducting official negotiations on the issues mentioned above. There lay the role of informal contact-makers, which both sides found useful and desirable. Being in a unique position as Terauchi's trusted confident, Nishihara, who had no official position, played a significant role in promoting Japanese political interests in China in the late 1910s.

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The host of Japanese “peace-feelers” who tried to contact the Chinese side in order to bring about peace between the two warring nations in the period 1937-1941 may be regarded as “informal contact-makers” in the context of state-to-state negotiations. Depending on whether contact-makers have official credentials or not and whether their contacts are pre-announced (namely, announced to the public in advance) or not, informal contact-makers are of three types: those with unofficial capacity seeking pre-announced contacts; those with official capacity seeking secret contacts; and those with unofficial capacity seeking secret contacts.
A detailed analysis of the binational contacts of this period reveals that no peace-feelers belonged to the first type mentioned above, while there were some peace-feelers such as diplomats who, in their official capacity, sought secret contacts. Apart from those diplomats who participated in the peace efforts, however, it is difficult to identify other peace-feelers who could belong to this second type, mainly because of the ambiguity of the definition of “official capacity.”
The third type of informal contact-makers became active after Japan denied the the legitimacy of the Chinese Nationalist government in January 1938, thus prompting a breaking off of relations. Peace-feelers of this kind in this study included (1) a diplomat who contacted the Chinese at his discretion without advance official approval (2) military officers who without official credentials joined the search for peace; and, most significantly, (3) those private individuals who had no official capacity but who voluntarily sought opportunities for peace, utilizing their own personal ties with the Chinese and other influentials. Typically, they were Matsumoto Shigeharu (a journalist working in Shanghai for Domei News Agency and one of the entourage of Konoe Funimaro), Kayano Nagatomo (a “comrade” of the Chinese Revolution and a friend of Sun Yat-sen), and Nishi Yoshiaki (an official of the South Manchurian Railway Co.).
The active presence of peace-feelers may be explained by the close, if not friendly, historical contacts between the two peoples and also by the relatively short distance between the two countries and the existence of neutral zones such as Hong Kong, Macao, and the Settlements in Shanghai, which made it easy for the informal contact-makers to operate. Another contributing factor may be the diffuseness of the Japanese (and perhaps Chinese, too) policy-making structures.

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Japanese-U. S. relations deteriorated after September 1940 when Japan joined the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy, and Tokyo and Washington had few official options to improve their relations. This encouraged two private individuals, Hashimoto Tetsuma and Ikawa Tadao, to act as diplomats in breaking the diplomatic deadlock.
Being head of Shiunso, a right-wing ideological group, Hashimoto had extensive contacts with political and business circles and even U. S. Ambassador Joseph Grew. With Grew's letter of introduction, he secretly went to Washington in December 1940. At the State Department he pronounced his own personal concerns about Japan's pro-German stand and the need for closer Japan-U. S. relations. Neither Maxwell M. Hamilton, Chief of the Division of Far Eastern Affairs, nor Stanley K. Hornbeck, Advisor on Political Relations, with both of whom Hashimoto privately met, accepted his line of reasoning.
Ikawa was a former official of the Ministry of Finance. In November 1940, when, after his retirement, he was on the board of directors of the Central Bank of Cooperative Society, he accidentally got to know two visiting American emissaries, Bishop James Walsh and Father James Drought, whom he introduced to Matsuoka Yosuke, Foreign Minister, and Muto Akira, Chief of the Military Affairs Bureau, the Ministry of the Army. Through this experience he became enthusiastic about his possible mission. He secretly visited the United States in February 1941 and worked closely with Colonel Iwakuro Hideo, who also secretly came to Washington as Ambassador Nomura's assistant. The two succeeded in producing the Draft Understanding on the terms for avoiding imminent conflicts, the work which led to the formal meeting between the Japanese ambassador and Secretary of State Hull.
Unlike Hashimoto, Ikawa was successful as a diplomat, because of his personal ties with American emissaries and Iwakuro and because of the confidence of Frank Walker, the Postmaster General, and Ambassador Nomura. Yet, in August 1941 when he returned to Tokyo, he saw no room for his activities since the binational negotiations were being handled solely by the authorities. Just as Hashimoto was arrested after his return home for his pro-American behavior, so Ikawa too found himself being watched by the authorities.
The two persons were simply utilized by the government and were foresaken when their roles were over. Inherent here is the tragic fate of private citizens trying to act as diplomats.

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Because Japan in the postwar years has maintained friendly relations with the United States, it has been said that formal channels of communications between the two governments have solved major issues, thus limiting the room for informal contact-makers to play a role. Yet a study of major diplomatic disputes reveals the contrary.
For the conclusion of the Mutual Security Treaty of 1951, Finance Minister Ikeda Hayato, who went to Washington as Premier Yoshida Shigeru's special envoy, and another Yoshida confident, Shirasu Jiro, together played an important role, behind the scenes, in arranging for the terms under which the U. S. troops would remain in Japan afer sovereignty was regained. From the late 1960s until the early 1970s there emerged two large political issues, Okinawa and textiles, which contributed to the “Nixon shocks” of 1971. To solve the two issues at one time, Prime Minister Sato Eisaku made a personal confidential commitment to President Nixon to the effect that Tokyo would restrict its textile exports to the United States in exchange for the latter returning Okinawa. This secret commitment was arranged between the President's special assistant, Henry Kissinger, and Sato's personal emissary, Wakaizumi Kei, a college professor.
In the second half of the 1970s the two nations began to face more serious economic conflicts than theretofore. Such conflicts, complicating the interests of different economic groups and sectors in each country, have encouraged informal contact-makers to become active in attempts to ensure the reflection of private interests in their respective governments' foreign policies, as was observed in the binational negotiations on citrus fruits in 1977-80. In the 1980s, a new type of informal contact-maker has emerged. A chief of a section of the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI), for example, secretly tried to manipulate behind the scenes the intense automobile talks of 1980 so that Japan could solve the issue by restricting its automobile exports to the United States. He did not do so due to his own personal ambition but out of his criticism of the unproductive formal diplomatic channels, which produced only inflexible, stiff negotiating attitudes on both sides.

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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.

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Japan and the People's Republic of China did not seriously move to normalize their relations until 1971, but the study of the period of some twenty years prior to that reveals numerous informal contact-makers shuttling between the two countries. As early as June 1952, for example, Kora Tomi, a Ryokufukai member of the Upper House of the Diet, and her colleagues visited Peking on their way back from Moscow and arranged for a commercial trade agreement between Japan and China, the first one of its kind. Again, in 1955, Takasaki Tatsunosuke, an influential Diet member of the conservative Democratic Party, attended the Asia-Africa Conference in Bandung, Indonesia, and had private meetings with Prime Minister Chou En-lai. His contacts later contributed to the conclusion of a significant binational trade agreement called the Liao-Takasaki agreement in 1962.
On the whole, while there were many Socialist and labor union leaders who visited China in the 1950s and 1960s, they did not contribute so much to the actual promotion of binational trade as did leaders of the Liberal Democratic party like Matsumura Kenzo, Furui Yoshimi, Tagawa Seiichi, Fujiyama Aiichiro, and leading industrialists like Okazaki Kaheita.
The ruling party led by Sato Eisaku in early 1971 had a difficult time in deciding upon the timing for shifting its China policy from one of anti-recognition to one of recognition. In an attempt to initiate rapprochement with Peking, Party Secretary Hori Shigeru in late October 1971 confidentially asked Minobe Ryokichi, Tokyo's governor elected on a “progressive” ticket, to pass on to Premier Chou En-lai his. letter suggesting Tokyo's readiness to recognize Peking. Although the Chinese leader refused to accept it, it was a highly interesting way of communicating with the Communist government.
Throughout this whole period it is difficult to determine whether or not those contacting the Chinese leaders did so with official capacity, and if they did, just how official they were. But the study suggests that informal contact-makers proved effective when their activities were more official and more secretive or unannounced. Informal contact-makers were encouraged by Japan's political culture supportive of their role and the importance of the China question seriously complicated by the equally important Taiwan issue.

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Yatsugi Kazuo (1899-1983) was one of the most important “informal contact-makers” in Japanese-Korean relations. Throughout his career he held various titles but no government positions. Both in prewar and postwar years he headed Kokusaku Kenkyukai or the National Policy Research Association. His initial involvement in Japanese-Korean affairs began with his acquaintance in late 1956 with Ryu Tae-Ha, then Counsellor of the Korean Representative Office in Tokyo. When Kishi Nobusuke became prime minister in 1957, he wanted to improve Tokyo-Seoul relations and, using his long-time friendship with Yatsugi, which went back to the 1930s, sent him as his personal envoy to President Rhee Syng-Man in May 1958. His trip was arranged in secrecy through Ryu's help. The binational relations thus showed signs of improvement, when Rhee was outsted by student rebellions.
Yatsugi's role as an intermediary was limited during the Ikeda Cabinet period (1960-1964), but under the premiership of Sato, who was Kishi's younger brother, he became active again. In 1969, when the Japan-Korea Cooperation Committee was formed with Kishi as its chairman, Yatsugi became the de facto leader of the Committee. The two and Korea's influentials often met in secrecy and settled major political disputes.
Yatsugi confidentially managed to reach a political solution to the problem of the continental shelf exploration complicated by territorial disputes between the two governments. In late July 1972 he met with Prime Minister Kim Jong-Pil and privately proposed the idea of developing the continental shelf jointly and putting aside territorial disputes. With Kim's agreement, he brought this back to Tokyo, and his solution formulae were later accepted by both governments in January 1974.
In the summer of 1973, when the Kim Dae-Jung incident occurred, Yatsugi also worked behind the scenes to reach a political solution. In October he visited Seoul at his own discretion and met with Prime Minister Kim and other influentials and then with President Park Chung-Hee. His personal proposal for a solution formula was to recall Kim Dong-Un, First Secretary of the Korean Embassy in Tokyo, who had left his finger prints at the site, and have him punished and then to have Prime Minister Kim visit Tokyo to apologize in order to restore an appropriate climate to convene the Japan-Korea Regular Ministerial Conference. Although the First Secretary's punishment was not carried out, his formula for political settlement was basically adopted by both sides in November 1973.
Yatsugi also twice attempted to operate as an informal contact-maker between Japan and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. His efforts failed, due to either Pyongyang's internal conditions or Seoul's disagreement. This suggests the limitations of an informal contact-maker, who has to be accepted by both parties if he wishes to be effective.

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Japanese-Philippine negotiations on war reparations lasted from 1951 through 1956, often interrupted by disagreements on the terms of payment. Significantly, the diplomatic deadlocks were often broken by informal channels of communications and secret talks. A host of political and business leaders who had varying degrees of interests in each other's country participated.
A most important breakthrough in deadlocked talks was made in New York and Washington in November 1954 by Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru and Senator Jose P. Laurel, whose secret meetings were arranged by the Premier's confidants on Philippine affairs, Nagano Mamoru and Shiohara Tamotsu. Nagano, a leading steel industrialist, had business interests in the Philippine iron mines and other resources, and had his own proposal on a variety of development projects to be financed by reparation funds. Shiohara, Executive Director of the Philippine Society of Japan, had been a personal friend of Senator Laurel since the Japanese occupation period when Laurel was President of the Republic and Shiohara served his government as an advisor on internal affairs.
Nagano played several other roles during the whole process, including one as a member of the Japanese delegation for reparations talks. So did many other leaders such as former Ambassador Murata Shozo, Minister Takasaki Tatsunosuke, Prime Minister Kishi Nobusuke, Foreign Minister Fujiyama Aiichiro, and businessmen like Furukawa Yoshizo who had lived in the Philippines before the war and claimed to be experts about the country.
Another diplomatic breakthrough was achieved in May 1955 by Ferino Neri, chief Philippine reparations negotiator, who ran a series of secret meetings in Tokyo with political and business influentials regarding the terms of payment. He finally obtained Prime Minister Hatoyama's confidential endorsement of his proposed terms. This success was made with the skillful help of Hatoyama's Deputy Cabinet Secretary Matsumoto Takizo, who apparently had many Philippine acquaintances primarily through the Free Masonry whose members pointedly included Hatoyama, Senator Camilo Osias, and most probably Senator Laurel.
The long negotiations demonstrated the significant roles played by informal contact-makers on both sides. Many of them were those with official capacity seeking secret contacts, but some without official capacity also volunteered secretly to help the talks. Both Japanese and Philippine political cultures weigh personal ties, particularly, ties based on clientelism, in political dealings. The interaction of the two cultures over such difficult negotiations multiplied the effectiveness of informal contact-makers.

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The purpose of this review article is to evaluate the nature of the various writings of those Japanese individuals who participated in one way or another in international negotiations in the postwar years. The authors of the writings referred to, which amounted to some 48 items, range from prime ministers and other political leaders, government officials and experts to career diplomats in the traditional sense.
Books by Japanese public figures are not scarce but they do not always provide a penetrating account of the events in which they were involved. Politicians tend to tell more about how they attained power than on how they managed the government. Their memoirs and autobiographies are usually lengthy on the personal career while brief and brusque on the workings of the government which they led. Books by diplomats and experts sometimes give useful accounts but they are more often than not rather limited in perspective. Historians thus find it very hard to know what considerations really influenced the decisions taken by the participants.
Personal accounts of the participants are, however, useful and even essential for the study of decision-making and international negotiations. This is so not only because public records are not yet accessible for the large part of the postwar period but also more fundamentally because official files, even when available, often fail to record such things as the broad perspectives of the decision-makers and those conversations and negotiations which were made through “back channels.” A fairly extensive use of the back channels, reasons for which are manifold, is one of the findings that impressed the writer of this review article.

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