Japanese peace diplomacy on Cambodia and the Okinawa reversion issue, 1970

Abstract

Why, in May 1970, did Japan participate – for the first time in the post-World War II era – in an international conference for the resolution of a conflict? Cold War-era Japan has often been described as shying away from involvement in international political affairs, especially in Asia, where memories of Japanese wartime aggression were still rankling. Yet, in 1970, when conflict erupted in Cambodia, Tokyo made its debut at a multilateral peacemaking endeavour: a conference bringing Asian and Pacific countries together in Jakarta to tackle the Cambodian problem. It is also puzzling that despite domestic opposition to the dispatch of a Japanese delegation to Jakarta, Prime Minister Eisaku Satō’s government went ahead with Japanese attendance there. This article draws on declassified diplomatic documents in its investigation of the circumstances behind that unprecedented development in Japanese diplomacy. The findings reveal that amid the changes in Asia triggered by Washington’s new policy of reduced engagement in the region, a more confident Japan was acting for peace in Cambodia, seeking not only to assume a larger regional role, but also to ensure the smooth realisation of two priority agendas of the Satō administration: the Okinawa reversion and the automatic extension of the Japan-U.S. security treaty.

Keywords:

• Japanese diplomacy
• Southeast Asia
• Cambodia
• Okinawa reversion
• Japan-U.S. relations

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Akihiko Tanaka (2017, 64) holds that Japan became involved in international dispute resolution only in the late 1980s, when it engaged in efforts to resolve the Cambodian conflict.

2 In the 1960s, Japan had already been involved in diplomacy to solve a dispute between Indonesia and Malaysia, although not as part of a multilateral effort. In the latter half of the 1960s, Japan attempted to mediate in the Vietnam War, again in the form of unilateral efforts.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by JSPS (Japan Society for the Promotion of Science) KAKENHI [Grant Number 19K13625].

Notes on contributors

Andrea Pressello

Andrea Pressello is an Associate Professor at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS), Tokyo. His publications include Japan and the Shaping of Post-Vietnam War Southeast Asia: Japanese Diplomacy and the Cambodian Conflict, 1978–1993 (Routledge, 2018). He may be contacted at [email protected]