The history of postwar Japanese diplomacy had been a fruitless field of study due to the delay in releasing Japanese diplomatic documents to the public. However, this situation has been almost entirely resolved with the Freedom of Information Act (2001), the renewal of the diplomatic records disclosure system after the so-called “secret nuclear agreements” investigation (2010), and the Public Records and Archives Management Act Public Records Management Act (2011). The quality and quantity of diplomatic documents released to the public have improved dramatically. Many studies on the history of postwar Japanese diplomacy have been published in recent years, using such available documents to reconstruct the diplomatic negotiations and policy-making process in detail.

This special issue aims to reassess postwar Japanese diplomacy from the perspective of the interaction of bilateral and multilateral diplomacy and clarify the characteristics of postwar Japanese diplomacy. Based on the accumulation of such research, this special issue aims to reexamine postwar Japanese diplomacy from the perspective of bilateral and multilateral diplomacy interaction. Generally, bilateral diplomacy and multilateral diplomacy have been understood as independent and described as such in diplomatic history studies. However, bilateral and multilateral diplomacy are closely interrelated in actual diplomatic negotiations. This special issue attempts to sculpt a picture of Japan’s postwar diplomacy that has not been portrayed in the past through a multilayered examination of such cases.

The articles in this special issue cover the following topics: negotiations on the withdrawal of trade discrimination against Japan under the GATT article XXXV, the intersection of Southeast Asia-Pacific diplomacy and Japan-U.S. relations in 1967, international talks on nuclear materials over the realization of the International Plutonium Storage (IPS), the 1979 Tokyo Summit, the Japan-U.S. relations over the commercial whaling issue, negotiations with China at the end of the Cold War including the Tiananmen Square Incident and the Official Development Assistance to China, UN diplomacy over the peace in Cambodia, and the Indo-Pacific regional order of Japan and Australia.

Though combining bilateral and multilateral diplomacy, postwar Japanese diplomacy has pursued national interests such as gaining status in the international community, securing national economic benefits, and seeking a stable regional order overlapping these interests with the international public interest.

This article examines Japan’s efforts to revoke Article XXXV of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) after it was invoked, in the context of multilateral diplomacy and bilateral diplomacy with Western European countries.

Japan officially joined the GATT in 1955, but Western European countries, such as Britain, France, the Benelux countries, and several other countries, invoked the GATT’s Article XXXV against Japan and refused to engage Japan in GATT relations. This meant that Japan faced economic discrimination, and the revocation of Article XXXV became one of Japan’s key diplomatic agendas. Britain and France invoked Article XXXV against Japan to protect their domestic industries and maintain their empires. The United States needed to tie Japan to the West, so it supported Japan in its Cold War strategy. The issue of invoking GATT Article XXXV against Japan was one in which multiple interests and logic intersected: trade liberalization, the preservation of empires, the Cold War, and nationalism.

In the GATT, a multilateral diplomatic arena, Japan sought to withdraw discriminatory treatment in line with its free trade philosophy, creating an atmosphere of support for Japan. Japan also promoted trade liberalization, using it as leverage to keep countries invoking Article XXXV against Japan in check. What Japan was using in the GATT was the ‘logic of trade liberalization’. In bilateral diplomacy with Britain and France, in addition to the ‘logic of trade liberalization’, Japan tried to persuade them through the ‘logic of nationalism’, which held that economic discrimination affected Japan’s prestige, and the ‘logic of the Cold War’, which held that the withdrawal of discriminatory treatment towards Japan was needed for strengthening the free world.

It can be said that Japan confronted Western countries invoking Article XXXV using three points of logic: trade liberalization, nationalism, and the Cold War. Regarding the British withdrawal process, the most effective argument was the ‘logic of trade liberalization’. Britain sought access to the Japanese market as it shifted the centre of its foreign trade policy from empire or commonwealth to Europe during the ‘decline of empire’.

Eventually, from 1963 to 1964, Japan concluded trade treaties with Western European countries, such as Britain, France, and the Benelux countries, which were the main recipients of Article XXXV and succeeded in repealing it. However, substantial discrimination remained in the trade treaties, and Japan placed more importance on nominal ‘equality’ through the revocation of Article XXXV than on completely reversing economic discrimination. For Japan, GATT Article XXXV was an economic issue related to trade expansion but also largely an issue related to nationalism.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate why Japan succeeded in reaching an agreement on the Anglo-Japanese Commercial Treaty in 1962. By winning the Commercial Treaty, Japan obtained most favored nation treatment and eliminated trade discrimination from European countries within a few years. Previous research suggests that the UK government’s Board of Trade (BOT) consistently maintained a positive attitude towards improving relations with Japan, believing that Japan would become an attractive export market in the near future. However, this assertion is not entirely accurate. This research is based on an analysis of official documents from each foreign office.

Japan became a member of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in 1955, but the UK invoked GATT Article XXXV against Japan, refusing to establish a GATT relationship. Consequently, the UK continued to impose import restrictions on most Japanese industrial goods.

In 1960, the BOT recognized the growing political risk associated with maintaining import discrimination against Japan, particularly in light of Kishi’s safeguard proposal. As a result, the BOT became more proactive in improving commercial relations with Japan. They proposed a bilateral safeguard agreement to Japan, which would govern the trade relationship between the two countries. If the safeguard proved effective, the UK would withdraw the invocation of GATT Article XXXV against Japan in the subsequent treaty. However, due to the prevailing negative stance among most UK ministers, industries, and the BOT regarding reducing import restrictions on Japanese goods, Japan could not accept the BOT’s proposal.

At that time, Japan had only just begun its trade liberalization efforts, allowing increased imports of UK goods based on the principle of pound for pound value equalization. In July 1960, both sides reached an agreement. In June 1961, trade results between the UK and Japan revealed that the value of Japan’s newly imported goods was several times larger than that of the UK. This difference further widened in October as Japan’s trade liberalization progressed at an unprecedented pace, making it difficult for the UK to keep up. It was only in December 1961 that UK ministers and the BOT became determined to adopt a more aggressive approach to improve trade discrimination against Japan. They began persuading most UK industries not to prohibit the import of goods from Japan. After a year of negotiations, in order to meet Japan’s fundamental requirements, the UK minimized the sensitive list of items temporarily or permanently protected against Japanese exports, leading to the signing of the commercial treaty between the UK and Japan.

This article examines how the Sato cabinet office defined its foreign policy linkages to Southeast Asia and the United States during Prime Minister Sato’s visit to Southeast Asia, Oceania, and the U. S. in 1967 by analyzing the policy planning of Sato’s brain trust group which is the so-called “Sato-operation” (or “S. Op.”). Previous studies have argued that Sato showed that pro-American stance in his foreign policy for Southeast Asia, supporting the U.S. Vietnam policy and, in return, making progress in negotiation about the reversion of Okinawa. On the other hand, this study demonstrates that S. Op. pursued its foreign policy for Southeast Asia which was different from Sato’s policy.

In May 1967, S. Op. recommended Sato the purpose of his visit to Southeast Asia and Oceania: gaining internal support for the Sato administration for overcoming the problem of extension of the Japan-U.S. security treaty in 1970. In this process, S. Op. showed their diplomatic vision, linking foreign policy to the political situation in Japan. S. Op. planned to manage the media campaign which contained Sato’s speech on the TV show and the briefing for the media about Sato’s trip.

However, S. Op. needed to reconsider their diplomatic concept due to Sato’s decision to visit South Vietnam which aimed at making progress in the negotiation of the reversion of Okinawa. Sato’s decision caused criticism of his trip by the opposition parties and the media. Fearing the failure of their diplomatic concept on this issue, S. Op. dealt with criticism for Sato’s trip with his speech on the TV show and planned Japan’s special envoy for North Vietnam. But, the official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan opposed the plan of the special envoy, and S. Op. abandoned the project. Thus, the issue of Sato’s visit to South Vietnam clarified the policy differences between Sato and S. Op.

After Sato’s trip, S. Op. drafted Sato’s speech in the Diet, showing the connection between foreign policy for Southeast Asia and the U.S. Sato’s speech noted that ‘the international community’ looked forward to Japan’s role in global peace and prosperity. This speech showed that policy differences between Sato and S. Op. no longer exist. Therefore, S. Op. recognized that the diplomatic objectives of Sato and them could be compatible.

In conclusion, this paper shows that S. Op. pursued “double-linkage” between foreign and internal policy, Japan’s diplomacy for Southeast Asia and the U.S. Therefore, S. Op. was responsible for thinking about the Sato’s diplomacy in the cabinet office.

Nuclear materials, especially plutonium, have been a major concern of the international community since 1945, as they could be used both as fuel for electricity generation and as material for nuclear warheads. One way of dealing with this threat was international control under the auspices of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which has been discussed repeatedly since the 1940s. Of these proposals, including the Baruch Plan in 1946 and a proposal for IAEA custody of Japanese plutonium stocks after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident, the most detailed and closest to realization was the International Plutonium Storage (IPS). It was planned to place the plutonium of participating states in the custody of the IAEA, and its design was discussed internationally from 1978 to 1982. However, it ultimately failed and has not received much scholarly attention.

To fill this gap, this article examines the rise and fall of the concept from a Japanese perspective, drawing on Japanese, US and UK archives. Japan, a resource-poor economic giant, took the initiative to find a compromise because of its dependence on nuclear energy, including plutonium as nuclear fuel, while the United States insisted on abandoning peaceful uses of the material. Working with Western European allies, Japan sought to persuade the United States to allow non-nuclear weapon states to use plutonium under the IPS regime.

Although the developed countries gradually reached consensus, it took too long. In 1981, developing countries such as India began to attend meetings on IPS, insisting on the right to peaceful use with little regard for previous negotiations on the details of the regime. In addition, by this time Japan and Western European countries were losing enthusiasm for the project as Washington changed its policy to allow peaceful use of plutonium on the basis of bilateral agreements rather than through the international framework. The report on IPS was submitted to the IAEA Board of Governors in February 1983 and was left as it was.

The above process showed an achievement and a limitation of Japanese nuclear diplomacy. On the one hand, through bilateral negotiations, it was successful in obtaining US approval for its plutonium utilization program. On the other hand, at the multilateral level, it failed to address developing countries’ criticism of restrictions on the peaceful use of plutonium and let the concept die. This choice came back to haunt Japan when its plutonium program was halted after the 1990s. Although the United States has expressed concern about Japan’s plutonium stocks, the country has no such option to transfer its plutonium stocks under international auspices.

The 1970s was a decade in which a cooperative framework was emerged among the Western industrialized countries to restructure the international economic order. Japan played a key role in this process. The first Economic Summit Meetings was held in November 1975, and the annual meeting became a regular event, providing a stage for summit diplomacy that demonstrated the unity of the West. While there are several multilateral summits today, the G7 was Japan’s only stage during the Cold War. While diplomatic history research on the early G7 is ongoing, there are few studies that have examined in detail, including the preparatory process, based on Japanese diplomatic documents.

This article examines Japanese diplomacy at the 5^th G7 Summit, which Japan chaired for the first time, as a series of processes from the preparatory sherpa meetings to the summit meetings. This summit was held in the midst of the second oil crisis, and the energy issues were a major topic of discussion. The G7 successfully demonstrated solidarity by agreeing on fixed oil consumption and import targets for each country not only for 1979 and 1980, but also for 1985.

It is possible to evaluate the contribution of Japan, as the G7 chair, to the agreement on issues that directly affect the economic management of each country. Japan’s agreement to the oil import target was a political decision by Prime Minister Ohira Masayoshi. However, the process leading to the agreement was dismal. Ohira did not expect that the summit discussions to focus on energy issues, and he was unable to control the meetings. This was because Japan had two problems. First, the conflict between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, which had been evident since the preparatory stage, had a negative impact on the negotiation process. Second, the Japanese Prime Minister’s unfamiliarity with multilateral negotiations at the summit-level negotiations and his weak domestic political position were also significant. Ohira himself had served twice as foreign minister and had a good understanding of energy issues. Nevertheless, this was his first time at a G7 summit, and in the difficult position of chairperson. His insights were rarely shared at the summit meetings or in domestic coordination.

As the chair of the 5^th G7 Summit, Japan faced the difficult task of balancing its international responsibilities with domestic understanding. The G7 Summit is a complex mix of bilateral and multilateral diplomacy, and is a stage on which the diplomatic skills of prime ministers are reflected.

In the early 1970s, Japan began to receive rapidly-mounting criticism from the US over whaling. The 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, held in Stockholm, recommended a 10-year moratorium on commercial whaling. Despite Japan’s struggle to turn the anti-whaling tide, the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in 1982 decided to implement a pause in the commercial whaling of all whale species and populations. The 1982 moratorium encouraged Tokyo to negotiate with Washington, leading to a compromise in the mid-1980s.

This article aims to reveal how US–Japan relations evolved over the lifespan of this debate, with a special emphasis on the way the multilateral diplomacy at IWC intersected with the Japanese diplomacy vis-à-vis the United States. Analyzing primary sources from the Japanese government along with other materials such as newspapers, this paper examines the process in which the Japanese government grew increasingly disillusioned with the IWC’s viability and turned to the series of negotiations with the American government to secure the right of whaling in some fashion.

This article, moreover, provides a broader perspective by examining a seminal change in international relations. The 1970s saw the diversification of the entities involved in international exchanges, as the influence that the media, citizens, NGOs, and lawmakers had on cross-border discussion became greater. Consequently, intangible concepts, such as images and emotions that one country’s public holds vis-à-vis the other, became as important as official foreign policies. In other words, both governmental and societal relations among nations came to define international relationships.

Early literature mainly focuses on Japan’s whaling policy as well as domestic structures—political, cultural, and societal—surrounding whaling. When it comes to US–Japan disputes over whaling in the early 1970s, there are some existing studies, but none utilizes primary sources to deal with the timespan from the early 1970s to the mid-1980s, during which the Japanese and Americans engaged in heated debate over whaling. Regarding primary sources, this paper mainly utilizes the materials of Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which are the most advanced in terms of declassification and openness to the public among Japanese ministries.

With regard to US–Japan relations, the period that this paper explores witnessed the friction between the two countries bearing cultural and social contours. The US public began problematizing a “closed, parochial, and inhumane” character of the Japanese society. This kind of blame marked an ominous sign for “Japan bashing” that characterized the US–Japan relationship from 1980s to the early 1990s.

In this paper, I would like to examine how Japan tried to build relations with China and the Soviet Union while maintaining cooperative relations with the United States and Western countries in the process of the end of the Cold War in 1989~91, utilizing internal documents disclosed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and testimonies of diplomatic officials at the time. More specifically, the analysis examines the connection between discussions at the Arches - Houston Summits on China and Soviet policies and ones at the Japan-U.S., Japan-China and Japan-China summit meetings.

Through examining the trajectory of Japan diplomacy from 1989~91, I am strongly impressed by the fact that Japan’s China policy adhered to the policy of supporting China’s reform and opening-up policy based on the premise of the Soviet threat. In addition, at the multilateral diplomatic forum of the Summit, Japan will urge the G7 not to tilt itself in a hard-line direction toward China, and at the level of bilateral diplomacy with the United States and Western countries, Tokyo will carefully work toward the resumption of yen loans. There was a recognition that Western values such as democracy and human rights should not be unilaterally imposed on China. This recognition was shared by ASEAN countries, with which Japan had built partnerships in the international community. At that time, Japan diplomacy linked multilateral diplomacy with bilateral diplomacy and sought to balance the positions of “a member of the West” and “a member of Asia.”

On the other hand, the Japan government could not get out of the thinking of the US-Soviet Cold War confrontation, and stubbornly repeated the assertion that “Gorbachev’s new-thinking diplomacy did not extend to Asia,” and fell behind in diplomacy with the Soviet Union, including the resolution of the territorial issue. Politicians and diplomats in Japan were so focused on territorial issues that they had little idea of how to integrate the Soviet Union into the regional order. Compared to adhering to a policy of engagement with China, the callousness of the Japan toward the Soviet Union is striking. For Japan, it may have been more comfortable to develop diplomacy toward Asia based on the premise of the “US, China, Japan, versus the Soviet Union” structure that had existed since the late 1970s.

However, while Japan firmly maintained and promoted its policy of engagement with China, it began to project Western values such as democracy and human rights and global issues such as arms export restrictions on bilateral relations between Japan and China more than during the Cold War. The catalyst for this was political change in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, as well as the Gulf crisis. As the 1990s progressed, the sense of redemption of the past and the solidarity of “members of Asia” diminished in Japan’s diplomacy toward China, and universal values and realist security perceptions gradually became more important. PM Kaifu visit to China in 1991 marked the beginning of such a change in Japan-China relations.

During the time since its accession to the United Nations in 1957, Japan has served 12 two-year terms as a nonpermanent member of the Security Council. This is the largest number of any nonpermanent member states. This paper focuses on Japan’s diplomacy with Cambodia during its seventh term on the Security Council (1992–1993), based on its diplomatic achievements as a nonpermanent member of the Security Council for more than 20 years. This case was a turning point when Japan dispatched its Self-defense Forces to the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) for the first time. At the same time, Japan’s active nonpermanent diplomacy was also recognized, such as its attempts to persuade the Khmer Rouge to follow UNTAC with Thailand.

This paper shows that Japan developed a multitrack approach to diplomacy that combined multilateral consultation, such as with the Security Council, and the expanded P5 with bilateral consultation, such as the Japan–Thailand mediation. Japan’s strategy was to pressure the Khmer Rouge to make concessions under pressure from the Security Council and the expanded P5, but if that failed, China could abandon its faction and go along with a tougher Security Council resolution. Because of Japan’s deep involvement in all aspects of the peace negotiations with such a multilayered approach, Japan’s knowledge of the content of the peace negotiations was appreciated by France, and Japan was able to participate in the drafting of Resolution 792. This was a crucial resolution that showed the Security Council’s firm determination to ensure elections were held in May 1993 without the Khmer Rouge, and it corrected the course of UNTAC’s mandate in that direction.

Second, the paper also finds that France used the expanded P5 as a preconsultation body for the Security Council and drew up a multilateral agreement in stages through creating a scenario that led to the resolution of sanctions. It was only because of France as screenwriter that Japan–Thailand mediation could help build an international consensus. However, this scenario would not have been complete without the Japan–Thailand diplomatic effort. These achievements of Japan’s nonpermanent membership diplomacy gave confidence to Japan’s diplomats who aim for Japan to become a permanent member of the Security Council immediately after the end of the Cold War.

This paper examines what factors drive a state’s behaviour when it faces a threat by comparing Japan’s bilateral and multilateral diplomacy during the second Abe administration with that of Australia. Australia and Japan have much in common. They are allies of the United States, they share a common view of the regional order and liberal values, and they perceive China as a threat. Unsurprisingly, in the face of rising China, both countries are strengthening their security and diplomatic ties with a view to maintaining the current regional order. Given these commonalities, both countries might be expected to exhibit similar patterns of behaviour. Yet this is not the case.

Japan, which has a territorial dispute with China over the Senkaku Islands, should be more concerned about the security threat posed by China. However, it is Australia that has taken a hard-line stance toward China. How can this seeming paradox be explained? Are the differences between Australia and Japan the result of differing domestic factors? Why are there differences in the two countries’ approach toward China?

In examining Japan’s and Australia’s approaches to China at bilateral and multilateral levels, this article focuses on the nature of threat perceptions and proximity as factors influencing a state’s behaviour. It categorises threats into three types—external, internal, and international—and examines proximity as an intervening variable. Unlike the traditional view, which argues that external threats trigger a balancing behaviour, the article argues that a state with strong external threat perceptions does not necessarily engage in balancing and instead may adopt an engagement policy. Conversely, states with low external threat perceptions may engage in balancing behaviour when they perceive international and domestic threats even if the external threat level is low. In other words, the nature of the threat and geographic proximity both influence a state’s behaviour.

This paper reviews the arguments of Yoshikazu Sakamoto, a postwar Japanese scholar of international politics, and in particular will examine and reevaluate the central argument of Sakamoto’s work, the theory of political responsibility. According to Sakamoto, a political leader’s sense of responsibility to their people is essential to achieve international peace, and this responsibility is not assured without the adequate functioning of democratic control over political leaders.

The first section provides an overview of realist arguments against democratic control of diplomacy in order to compare with those of Sakamoto. Diplomats and realists in international politics have been critical of such control, emphasizing the importance of elite diplomacy that is not hampered by mass ignorance and emotionalism.

Conversely, Sakamoto argued that a leader’s foreign policy could not secure the lives of their people without democratic control. His view of international politics was influenced by two thinkers in particular: Edmund Burke and Hans J. Morgenthau. The second section explores Sakamoto’s work on Burke and the similarities and differences in his logic and Morgenthau’s. Sakamoto argues that Burke’s idea of democracy emphasizes leaders’ political responsibility to their own people, and that this responsibility cannot emerge without the trust (control) of the people themselves. He accepted Burke’s concept of responsibility with Morgenthau’s realism, which emphasizes the importance of consequences and power in politics, to form his own unique theory of international politics, which defends democracy from a realist standpoint.

The third section reconsiders Sakamoto’s Cold War arguments. Analyzing the Cold War along the lines of his theory of political responsibility, he argued that the peaceful coexistence between the U.S. and the Soviet Union that developed from the 1950s to the 1960s was possible because the political leaders of the two superpowers shared the basic responsibility of securing their people’s lives. In addition, in Sakamoto’s view, nuclear deterrence between the U.S. and the Soviet Union could not have been realized without the leaders’ sense of responsibility to their own people. If political leaders are willing to accept great risks for their people, there will be no need to fear retaliation, and thus deterrence cannot work.

This paper reconsiders the position of Yoshikazu Sakamoto, who has been viewed as an idealist in Japanese international politics due to his stance on the Japan-US Security Treaty, and reexamines him as a realist. At the same time, his arguments afford us the opportunity to reexamine the conventional debate on the relationship between foreign policy and democracy.