The Security Council Issue in Japan’s UN Policy, 1956–89

Abstract

After Japan recovered its independence in 1952, the goal of Japan’s leaders was to pursue a foreign policy which would support the recovery of Japan’s economy, and would also help the country to regain an honourable place in international society. The latter would, of course, be helpful to the achievement of the former. Admission to the UN in 1956 was one of the major steps to rejoin the world, crowning as well as facilitating the admission to the whole range of other international organizations with benefit to Japan’s economic and political interests. Japan very quickly regained its self-confidence against the background of its rising economic strength. In the same year of its admission to the UN, Japan became, for example, the world’s biggest shipbuilding nation. Ranking soon well beyond the economic strength of most UN members, notably of the newly independent countries in the Third World streaming into the UN, and remembering its former membership of the Council of the League of Nations, it is perhaps not surprising that permanent membership in the Security Council was soon on the minds of at least some policy makers.¹ Having been spared the ravages of the purge during the occupation period, it was the Ministry of Foreign Affairs where personnel continuity from the prewar days to postwar days was maintained and the institutional memory was strongest.