EDITORIAL: 50th year of treaty

On Jan. 19 exactly 50 years ago, Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi and U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower attended a White House ceremony for the signing of the current Japan-U.S. Security Treaty.

This triggered the historic 1960 student revolt against the bilateral security pact. In June of that year, members of the All-Japan Federation of Student Self-Government Associations (Zengakuren) stormed the Diet building. Michiko Kanba, a student activist, was killed in a clash with riot police.

At the time, it was still only 15 years after the end of World War II, and the United States and the Soviet Union were locked in the Cold War. In Asia, a truce had been declared for the Korean War in 1953, but hostilities flared in Vietnam later. For the Japanese public, war was not just a general concept.

According to an Asahi Shimbun opinion poll at that time, 38 percent of the respondents said the revised Japan-U.S. Security Treaty put the nation at a greater risk of becoming involved in war. Those who believed Japan should declare itself a neutral nation to protect its security accounted for 35 percent.

There was also considerable public antipathy toward Prime Minister Kishi--a Class-A war criminal--for his reactionist persona and high-handed political style. Some political analysts of the time suggested there was an eruption of nationalism that had remained repressed since the Allied occupation.

The last half-century has seen the Japanese people coming to accept the Japan-U.S. alliance. In all recent Asahi Shimbun polls, respondents who support maintaining the treaty constantly account for more than 70 percent.

Since the end of the Cold War, the role of the Japan-U.S. alliance has become firmly established in its redefined form as a "safety device" for the Asia-Pacific region.

With North Korea continuing its nuclear and missile development programs and remaining a threat, coupled with China's growing presence, we can say that the Security Treaty as a source of collective peace of mind was widely recognized in the Asia-Pacific region.

Japan provides bases to the U.S. military, and the Self-Defense Forces and the U.S. military share their roles for Japan's defense. Under war-renouncing Article 9 of the Constitution, Japan's armed capabilities are meant strictly for defense only, and under no circumstance will Japan ever use armed force abroad.

The U.S. forces stationed in Japan are there not only to defend Japan, but also to contribute to Asia-Pacific security with their power of deterrence.

All the above form the unchangeable framework of the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty. We believe the Japanese people support the alliance for the peace of mind it brings precisely because the alliance goes together with Article 9.

There are obvious limits to Japan's cooperation on U.S. military activities. Japan dispatched SDF troops to Iraq even though the Japanese public was split on the issue. Had there been no Article 9, the troops might have engaged in some nonhumanitarian mission that had nothing to do with Iraq's reconstruction.

Our Asian neighbors have come to accept the Japan-U.S. alliance as a safety device for the region precisely because of Article 9.

Asia will continue to change. In the discussions begun by Tokyo and Washington to "deepen the alliance," Tokyo must take the initiative in indicating the possibilities of new forms of cooperation and role-sharing. And Tokyo cannot avoid discussing how to ease the burden shouldered by Okinawa Prefecture, where U.S. military bases concentrate, nor skirt around the matter of Tokyo's past secret pacts with Washington.

Still, the fundamental framework of "Article 9 and the Security Treaty" will always remain viable in the international community.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Jan. 19