SNA (Tokyo) — From 1957-1960 Japan was led by the rightwing Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi, a barely reconstructed figure of the Pacific War. Kishi had gained the trust of US Cold Warriors, however, and they were rewarded when he forcefully pushed Japan into a new treaty alliance with the United States.

Transcript

On February 25, 1957, Nobusuke Kishi became prime minister of Japan.

His emergence represented a radical shift from his predecessor. While Tanzan Ishibashi had struggled all of his life on behalf of greater liberalism, individual rights, and international cooperation, Kishi had been one of the leading hardliners of the militarist regime.

As the economic manager of the Imperial Army’s puppet state in Manchuria, Kishi had employed slave labor in an effort to build up industrial production, with little concern about the lives of the laborers. He served in the Cabinet of Hideki Tojo as Minister of Commerce and Industry, and had signed the declaration of war against the United States and the Western Powers.

After the war, Kishi spent several years as a suspected Class A War Criminal in Sugamo Prison, but was never charged. He refused to accept the widespread notion that Japan had behaved differently from other powers, or that any of its officials should ever have been regarded as being war criminals.

The reason why such a man could become a postwar prime minister was entirely due to the fact that he had successfully convinced conservative US officials such as Ambassador Douglas MacArthur II that he had become the most pro-American politician in Tokyo; he was the leader who could best transform Japan into a steadfast Cold War ally of the United States.

But for Kishi, his pro-Americanism was only a means to achieve his ultimate goal, which was to revise the pacifist Constitution and to rearm the nation. He sought the restoration of national sovereignty, and eventually wanted to see Japan return to ranks of the world’s leading powers. Working closely with the Americans for at least several decades would advance Japan toward these goals, and Kishi genuinely shared Washington’s fear and hatred of communism.

In June 1957, Kishi visited the United States, where he was very warmly welcomed. He was given the honor of addressing a joint session of the US Congress, and he successfully convinced most people in Washington that he was a committed American ally.

Kishi needed US assistance to resolve certain problems even within Japan. This included frictions between US bases and neighboring Japanese communities, such as witnessed in the Sunagawa Struggle, as well as public outrage over crimes committed by US soldiers, such as the Girard Incident.

As his first major step, Kishi aimed to convince the US government that it should renegotiate the US-Japan Security Treaty of 1951. Japan’s economy had made important strides in the dozen years since the defeat in war, and it was becoming a more respected nation in international affairs. Kishi believed that it was in both nations’ interests to acknowledge Japan’s rising status by creating a more equal alliance treaty. By the end of 1957, negotiations had begun.

While Kishi did not wish to antagonize US opinion by following through with Ishibashi’s plans to normalize relations with the People’s Republic of China, he did make proactive efforts to rebuild Japanese relations with other nations in Asia.

Kishi personally toured South and Southeast Asia, aiming to strengthen both economic and political ties throughout the region. On each stop, Kishi proposed a plan to create an “Asian Development Fund” in which Japan would invest in the local economies. His slogan was “economic development for Asia by Asia.”

While regional trade relations did move forward, Kishi found few takers for his Asian Development Fund framework. In some nations, Kishi’s initiative sounded too much like a revival of the wartime Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.

In other nations, such as India, which was at this time committed to a posture of Non-Alignment in the Cold War, the Asian Development Fund was viewed as an attempt to draw them into the US sphere of influence.

Kishi called a general election for May 1958. It was the first general election since the conservatives had united into the LDP and the Socialists had reunited into the Japan Socialist Party. In this straight contest between right and left, Kishi led the conservatives to a solid victory, although well short of the 2/3 supermajority that would be needed to revise the pacifist Constitution.

While the LDP’s electoral success was built partially upon legislation which had undermined the power of labor unions, the growth of Japanese economy also played a key role. As one of the symbols of Japan’s rise, Tokyo Tower, was completed in October 1958.

At the beginning of his administration, Kishi had moved forward with the tax cut policy approved during the short-lived Ishibashi government. LDP conservatives found that they could also undercut the positive appeal of the Socialists by adopting many of their policies aimed at creating a strong social safety net.

In December 1958, a universal health insurance system was created. This was followed in April 1959 by the creation of a national pension system. That very same month, the LDP passed Japan’s first minimum wage law. This commitment to social welfare helped lock in underlying public support for the LDP for decades to come, and together with the successful postwar land reforms, hobbled the prospects of the political left. This was confirmed the next June when the LDP gained over 40% of the popular vote in House of Councillors elections.

But with Kishi there was always a darker side. He maintained a ruthless willingness to commit acts of repression. This had been clear in his treatment of Chinese laborers when he was the economic manager of Manchuria, and it was also apparent in his iron-fisted behavior in the late 1950s when he was prime minister.

An early confrontation came in the autumn of 1958 when Kishi attempted to push through revisions of the Police Duties Act which would have legalized police searches without a warrant and the detention of citizens merely on the basis that it was suspected that they might commit a crime.

Public outrage about the terms of this legislation, which sounded to many Japanese much too similar to the Peace Preservation Law, as well as a labor strike in which several million workers participated, forced the Kishi administration to retreat.

The Kishi government proposed other initiatives such as establishing an official secrecy act, reestablishing a version of the hated prewar Home Ministry, promoting the Defense Agency to the status of a full ministry, and even hinting that the Self-Defense Forces might be sent abroad on peacekeeping missions.

But repressive measures were not confined to policy proposals or simply theoretical in the Kishi era, they were also a matter of practice.

One major instance was the government’s response to the Miike Coal Mine strike. The strike was triggered by Mitsui Mining’s announcement that more than a thousand miners would be laid off. This escalated to become the largest labor versus management dispute in Japanese history.

In an effort to break the strike, yakuza thugs were employed to beat, harass, and in a few cases kill members of the labor union. Kishi lined up in support of this violence, and ultimately sent about 10,000 police to back Mitsui’s management and its army of rightwing gangsters.

Indeed, although this part of Kishi’s record is less well known for obvious reasons, it is clear that he long maintained strong links with Japan’s yakuza underground, and that his own financial dealings were rife with corruption.

These elements were also revealed in the great confrontation of 1960 which forever defined Kishi’s political legacy—the Anpo Struggle. It began on January 19, 1960, when Prime Minister Kishi travelled to Washington to sign the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan.

Kishi had some reasons to be satisfied with the document, which was a distinct improvement over the 1951 treaty which had been forced upon Japan as a condition to regain its formal independence. The new treaty committed the United States to defend Japan in the event of an attack, it required prior consultation before US forces based in Japan could be sent overseas, and it removed authorization for the US military to use force in the case of domestic disturbances within Japan.

There was, however, also a secret agreement attached which allowed the US military to bring nuclear weapons into Japan and Japanese waters.

But the Japanese left, as well as much of the general public, did not regard the new treaty as an improvement. For one thing, the 1951 treaty had forced upon Japan, while this new treaty represented a more independent Japanese decision to enter into a military alliance with the United States. It would also mark willing acceptance of hosting large numbers of US troops on Japanese soil.

Most ordinary Japanese at this time were not interested in taking sides in the Cold War. They gravitated toward pacifism, neutralism, and the basic principles of the Non-Aligned Movement.

Many Japanese feared that Kishi wanted to drag the nation back into war, taking the side of the United States in a global conflict that was really none of Japan’s business. Labor unions, university students, and the political left more generally began to mobilize to protect what they saw as the nation’s hope to live in peace after the horrors of the defeat and the atomic bombings. In other words, they wanted to bring the basic principles of their pacifist Constitution to life.

The confrontation culminated on May 19, 1960, when Kishi determined to have the House of Representatives ratify the alliance treaty. When socialist lawmakers attempted to block the ratification by engaging in a sit-in, the prime minister took the unprecedented action of calling in 500 policemen and dragging all the opposition lawmakers out of the legislative chamber by force. With only LDP lawmakers remaining, the military alliance with the United States was ratified.

The nation was shocked and horrified. In the coming days, more than five million Japanese went on strike, and protests surrounding the National Diet Building reached into the hundreds of thousands.

Kishi became even more hardline. He called in an army of police, and arranged for thousands of rightwing thugs to provide extra security and carry out assaults on protestors. He later had to be talked out of the idea of ordering the Self-Defense Forces to employ full-scale military force to regain control of the streets of Tokyo.

Kishi’s urgent desire to restore order was driven by plans for Dwight Eisenhower to visit Japan to celebrate the establishment of the US-Japan Alliance.

But when Eisenhower’s Press Secretary James Hagerty arrived at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport on June 10 to make advance preparations, the car in which he and US Ambassador MacArthur were riding was surrounded by crowds of incensed protestors who smashed its tail lights, stood on its roof, and rocked the car back and forth while singing songs of protest.

Hagerty and MacArthur had to be rescued by a US Marines helicopter, and the Eisenhower visit—which would have been the very first by a sitting US president—was soon cancelled.

By mid-June, the battles between the protestors, on the one side, and the police and rightwing gangsters, on the other, had become increasingly violent and intense. The nation was shocked anew when a 22-year-old student of the elite Tokyo University, Michiko Kanba, was killed by police in battles at the south gate of the Diet Building.

By this time, even most LDP conservatives had turned against Kishi and his iron-fisted policies which had brought the nation to the edge of chaos. In an effort to deescalate the conflict, Kishi announced on June 16 that he would be resigning as prime minister after a transitional period of about a month.

Still, the largest protest in Japanese history took place on June 18. But the protestors were powerless to stop the US alliance treaty from automatically going into legal effect at midnight, since it had already been passed by the House of Representatives a month earlier.

Increasingly isolated and under a cloud of disgrace, Kishi suffered one last indignity. On July 14, as he left the Prime Minister’s official residence, he was attacked by a rightwing activist who stabbed him half a dozen times in the thigh. The man’s motive was never convincingly clarified.

Nobusuke Kishi stepped down as prime minister on July 19, 1960. He had served for 3 years and 146 days.

Kishi recovered from his wounds and lived for decades longer. He remained politically influential, though he was embittered about the fact that succeeding LDP prime ministers dropped his main goal of revising the pacifist Constitution.

He retired from politics in 1979 and died in August 1987 at the age of 90.

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