The Australia-Japan Political Alignment: 1952 to the Present (Routledge Studies in the Modern History of Asia, 4)

202 Pages·1999·0.88 MB·English

by  Alan Rix

The Australia–Japan
Political Alignment
Routledge Studies in Modern History of Asia
1 THE POLICE IN OCCUPATION JAPAN
Control, corruption and resistance to reform
Christopher Aldous
2 CHINESE WORKERS
A new history
Jackie Sheehan
3 THE AFTERMATH OF PARTITION IN SOUTH ASIA
Tan Tai Yong and Gyanesh Kudaisya
4 THE AUSTRALIA-JAPAN POLITICAL ALIGNMENT
1952 to the present
Alan Rix
The Australia–Japan Political
Alignment
1952 to the Present
Alan Rix
London and New York
First published 1999 by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2002.
© 1999 Australia-Japan Research Centre
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any
form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book has been requested
ISBN 0-415-19781-3 (Print Edition)
ISBN 0-203-00377-2 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-20111-6 (Glassbook Format)
Contents
Preface vi
Introduction 1
1 The First Political Links: Resolving Wartime Issues 9
2 Issues and Styles: Prime Ministers and Diplomacy 28
3 Resolving Disputes: Some Key Australia–Japan Negotiations 43
4 The Machinery of Diplomacy: Managing the Relationship 70
5 The Pressure of Public Opinion: The Japanese Presence and
the Public Debate 96
6 Australia, Japan and International Cooperation 117
7 Keeping the Region Safe: Defence and Security in the
Australia–Japan Relationship 147
Conclusion: Perfect Partners? 176
Bibliography 180
Abbreviations 186
Index 187
Preface
This book had its origins in personal experience of the workings of the Australia-
Japan political relationship and a realisation that no comprehensive work on this
important subject was available.
A research grant from the Australian Research Council enabled most of the
research to be conducted, while the Department of Asian Languages and Studies at
the University of Queensland provided the base for that work. I am indebted to many
people for their assistance, notably Tony Anderton, Carol Chardon, Sue Collier, Peter
Drysdale, Trevor Holloway, Purnendra Jain, Pam Rayner, Maureen Todhunter and
Donna Weeks. Several colleagues gave valuable comments on an early manuscript,
including Glen Barclay, Warren Reed and Bill Tow, as did two anonymous reviewers.
My warm thanks also to Judy, Chris and Mike for their patience and support.
Alan Rix
Brisbane
May 1998
Introduction
The newspaper headlines of December 1992 were insistent: ‘Japan’s perfect partner’,
‘our new best friend’, ‘Australia as sole natural ally’ —a senior Japanese diplomat, in
an official Foreign Ministry publication, had singled out Australia as the only hope
for a real partner for Japan.1 In Australia, Prime Minister Keating committed the
country to future integration with the Asia Pacific region, further strengthening this
message when he visited in September 1993. In May 1995 he signed the Joint
Declaration on the Australia-Japan Partnership, in which both countries pledged to
build ‘an enduring and steadfast partnership which is a strong positive force for
cooperation in the Asian Pacific region’.
Whether Australia is a natural ally of Japan is a controversial issue. What cannot
be denied, however, is that the relationship between Australia and Japan is close, of
long standing and very active. Most attention is focussed on the economic aspects
of the relationship: commodity trade (notably coal), tourism and investment. The
political aspects of the relationship are given little attention, even taken for granted.
The fact that Australia and Japan have had strong, collaborative political links and
a close interweaving of political interests since the Peace Treaty of 1952, has been
largely ignored in debates about ties between the two countries.
This book fills that gap. It is about the growth of the political alignment between
Australia and Japan in the postwar period. Dominated by the economic and trade
ties, and overshadowed by public attention on the rapid expansion of commercial
interests and the minerals trade, Australia’s political relationship with Japan goes back
well before the Second World War. There is a striking photograph in The Official
History of Australia in the War of 1914–18 of the Japanese cruiser Ibuki escorting the
first Anzacs from Australia to Egypt in 1914, from whence they crossed to Gallipoli.
The Anglo-Japanese alliance, under which the Ibuki protected Australia’s troops, failed
in the 1920s under a growing Japanese desire for independence in the Pacific, but
it did introduce Australia and Japan to the idea that they had common interests in
the Pacific region.2 These interests naturally diverged as Japan’s imperial ambitions
grew, but trading links expanded until the mid–1930s, when Britain’s jealous textile
exporters, through their government, forced Australia to restrict Japanese imports.3
2 The Australia–Japan political alignment
The political relationship between Australia and Japan today is of a different order.
Founded on robust trade and shared security interests, it pervades all aspects of the bilateral
connection between the two countries. It goes beyond the basic formalities and
arrangements of diplomatic contact, and is a necessary and formative element of the
relationship. The development of extensive political exchange and cooperation between
Australia and Japan began early in the postwar period. Political dialogue with Japan runs
throughout the postwar relationship. To a degree it reflects the fact that the two nations
are part of a greater strategic arrangement, just as they had been in 1914. Since the end
of the Second World War, Australia and Japan have cooperated under the American-
dominated Pacific security system, and their bilateral relations have been moulded by
this overwhelming reality. At the same time, Japan’s international position changed quickly
in the 1950s and 1960s with its greater economic strength, its burgeoning defence profile,
its part in US-Japan security cooperation, and the emergence of new influences on post-
Cold War regional security.
Much has been written about the postwar trade and economic relationship between
Australia and Japan, but little about the political structures and processes that guided its
growth, or about the people who oversaw the gradual intermingling of interests and
political cooperation. There is little doubt that the impetus came from both sides, or
that both were basically willing partners in the political rapprochement and forging of
today’s strong political alignment between the two countries.
THE AUSTRALIA-JAPAN POLITICAL RELATIONSHIP
Although the Australia-Japan relationship has been seen by many as a purely economic
one, where the central feature has been the growth of trade in the postwar period, trade
has not occurred in a vacuum.4 This book details the complementary and indispensable
set of government-to-government dealings that underpinned the commercial relationships,
the panoply of political and bureaucratic consultations, government policies, public and
political perceptions and attitudes, official negotiations and bilateral agreements,
arrangements and understandings—all of which constitute the ‘political relationship’.
We are not talking about a random set of bilateral ties, dominated by trade and
highlighted by the occasional exchange of ministerial visits. The Australia-Japan political
connection is a deeply-rooted political commitment in Australia, gaining greater depth
more recently as the cooperative regional arrangements under APEC (Asia Pacific
Economic Cooperation) have gained acceptance. It is also an unavoidable responsibility
for the Japanese, given their traditional dependence on Australian resources and raw
materials, and their recognition since the Occupation period of the commonality of
political and strategic interests between the two countries. A long history of political and
diplomatic dealings, a complex legal and administrative structure, regional commitments,
overlapping security interests, and a public awareness (articulated at least in Australia)
have all given form and substance to the Australia-Japan relationship.
There are several key themes in this story. The dominant one is that of a strong
political alignment arising from shared security interests, and its effect initially in
the resolution of wartime issues and later in the development of security and defence
Introduction 3
cooperation. This alignment is linked to concerns about regional security and the
development of regional and international cooperation between Australia and Japan.
A third theme has to do with the accretion of political, legal and bureaucratic
commitments arising from closer consultation, diplomatic dealings and extensive
negotiations. A fourth theme concerns the personal linkages between Australian and
Japanese leaders, their reflection in a growing ease of communication and, at the
wider societal level in Australia, the easing of public opinion and discrimination
against the Japanese, despite periods of intense public debate.
Let us unravel some of the skeins of this story. It begins in the period after 1945,
when a new Japan sprang from defeat. A new and independent Australian attitude
about its role in the Pacific region emerged from the wartime realisation that being
part of the Empire did not confer automatic benefits of protection; rather, it brought
heavy duties and painful costs. The Chifley government, through the insistent and
aggressive Minister for External Affairs, H.V.Evatt, sought some of the responsibilities
and rights in postwar international relations which its contribution to the war effort
demanded. In relation to the Pacific settlement these demands were tolerated by the
British, and Australia took part in the armistice with Japan, the Occupation of Japan,
the Tokyo war crimes trials and the governance of Japan via the Allied Council for
Japan, advisory body to General Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme Allied
Commander in Japan.5
A dominating feature of the postwar Australia-Japan link, tenuous, impersonal
and suspicious as it was initially, was the antagonism between the Americans and
the Russians. This was obvious to Australia’s representative in Tokyo, W.Macmahon
Ball, as early as April 1946.6 It was a powerful motivating force for cooperation by
both countries with the United States, despite Australia’s lingering fears of a revival
of Japanese militarism. The formal military alliances between the United States and
both Australia and Japan are thus an important part of our story, as they gave impetus
to a congruent and persistent (but not identical) set of Pacific security perceptions
held by Australia and Japan.
A central focus of the Australia-Japan political relationship is therefore the strategic
environment, notably the American hegemonic system, the security connections
which held this together, the Cold War and its persistent effects, and the Australian
and Japanese perceptions that brought them to recognise their overlapping interests
in the Western Pacific region. These attitudes were first apparent in the earliest years
of the post–1952 relationship, and came to the fore during the first exchange of prime
ministerial visits in 1957. Similarly they were evident in the 1980s and 1990s, during
the prime ministerial visits at that time, and remain an important feature of bilateral
political discussions.
The bilateral context is also a central part of our story. We examine the changes
to Australian policy as a part of resolving wartime issues—establishment of relations,
diplomatic dealings, sorting out compensation and war criminal cases. By the middle
of the 1950s Australia had more or less cleared away such matters and could get on
with more constructive dealings with Japan. As a part of this rapprochement, prime
ministerial diplomacy in the 1950s is compared with that of more recent times—