Abstract
Satō Eisaku was a visionary statesman and leader. However, he has generally been regarded, both during and after his tenure, as an obstinate, drab technocrat.1 His background as a Railway Ministry bureaucrat, together with his manner, which could appear aloof and unfeeling, accounts for this image. He was also noted for his taciturnity and his often confusingly indirect mode of speaking.2 However, he successfully led his country through a particularly testing time. While the Vietnam War and the Chinese Cultural Revolution convulsed Asia, Japan was a beacon of peace, stability and prosperity. His signal achievements were the reversion of Okinawa and, after almost a decade of both personal and national soul-searching, the rejection of an independent Japanese nuclear deterrent. Satō can also be credited with laying the groundwork for the swift normalisation of relations with China following his departure from office in 1972.
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Notes
Nakashima Takuma, ‘Satō Eisaku: Okinawa henkan mondai he no torikomi’ [Satō Eisaku: Grappling with the Problem of Okinawa Reversion], in Jinbutsu de Yomu Gendai Nihon Gaikō Shi: Konoe Fumimaro kara Koizumi Junichirō made, edited by Komiya Kazuo, Sadō Akihiro and Hattori Ryūji (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 2008).
Takashi Oka, ‘As the Japanese Say: Premier Satō Would Tap His Way across a Stone Bridge to Be Sure It Was Safe,’ New York Times, 16 Nov. 1969; Kusuda Minoru Oral History Interview, 16 Nov. 1996, NSA, ‘U.S.-Japan Project: Diplomatic, Security and Economic Relations since 1960,’ accessed 7 Oct. 2011, http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/japan/kusudaohinterview.htm.
Etō Shinkichi, Satō Eisaku, Etō Shinkichi Chosakushū [Collected Works of Etō Shinkichi], vol. 10 (Tokyo: Tōhō Shoten, 2003), 9, 28.
Michael Schaller, Altered States: The United States and Japan since the Occupation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 76, 124–125. See also Michael Schaller, ‘America’s Favorite War Criminal: Kishi Nobusuke and the Transformation of U.S.-Japan Relations,’ Japan Policy Research Institute Working Paper 11 (July 1995), accessed 25 Nov. 2014, http://www.jpri.org/publications/workingpapers/wp11.html.
On the role of the individual and individual experience on international affairs, see Robert J. Young, ‘Formation and Foreign Policy: Biography and Ego-Histoire,’ French History 24, no. 2 (April 2010): 144–163.
Kenneth Pyle, ‘The Yoshida Doctrine as Grand Strategy,’ Japan Rising: The Resurgence of Japanese Power and Purpose (New York: Public Affairs, 2007), 241–277.
Yasuhiro Nakasone, Jiseiroku: Rekishi hōtei no hikoku toshite [Reflections: Defendant in the court of history] (Tokyo: Shinchōsha, 2004), 86.
Robert S. Norris, William M. Arkin, and William Burr, ‘Where They Were,’ Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 55, no. 6 (1999): 26–35.
Robert S. Norris, William M. Arkin and William Burr, ‘Where They Were: How Much Did Japan Know?,’ Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 56, no. 1 (January/February 2000): 11–13, 78–79.
See, e.g., Michael J. Green, Arming Japan: Defense Production, Alliance Politics and the Postwar Search for Autonomy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995); Nakashima Takuma, ‘Nakasone Yasuhiro Bōeichō Chōkan No Anzen Hoshō Kōsō: Jishu Bōei to Nichibei Anzen Hoshō Taisei No Kankei Wo Chūchin Ni’ [Nakasone Yasuhiro’s National Security Plan as Director General of the Defense Agency: 1970–1971], Kyūdai Hōgaku 84 (2002): 107–160. For an alternative perspective, see Ayako Kusunoki, ‘The Satō Cabinet and the Making of Japan’s Non-nuclear Policy,’ Journal of American-East Asian Relations 15 (2008): 25–50.
Ōta Masakatsu, Meiyaku No Yami: ‘Kaku No Kasa’ to Nichibei Dōmei [Dark Side of the Alliance: The ‘Nuclear Umbrella’ and the US-Japanese Alliance] (Tokyo: Nihon Hyōronsha, 2004).
John Welfield, An Empire in Eclipse — Japan in the Postwar American Alliance System: A Study in the Interaction of Domestic Politics and Foreign Policy (London: Athlone Press, 1988); Schaller, Altered States.
Satō Eisaku, Satō Eisaku Nikki [Diary of Satō Eisaku], edited by Itō Takeshi (Tokyo: Asahi Shinbunsha, 1997–1998).
Kusuda Minoru, Kusuda Minoru Nikki: Satō Eisaku Sōri Shuseki Hishokan No 2000 Nichi [Diary of Kusuda Minoru: 2000 Days as Prime Minister Satō Eisaku’s Private Secretary], edited by Makoto Iokibe and Wada Jun (Tokyo: Chūō Kōron Shinsha, 2001).
John Dower, ‘The Superdomino in Postwar Asia: Japan in and out of the Pentagon Papers,’ in The Pentagon Papers: The Senator Gravel Edition, vol. 5: Critical Essays, edited by Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn (Boston: Beacon Press, 1972).
John Dower, ‘Peace and Democracy in Two Systems: External Policy and Internal Conflict,’ in Postwar Japan as History, edited by Andrew Gordon (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 3–33.
Lee Jong Won, Ajia Reisō To Kan Bei Nichi Kankei [The Asian Cold War and Korean-US-Japanese Relations] (Tokyo: Daigaku Shuppankai, 1996).
Nakajima Shingo, ‘“Domei Nihon” shū no tenkan’ [’Ally Japan’: Image of a Conversion], in Jkeda-Satō Seikenki No Nihon Gaikō [Japanese Diplomacy in the Ikeda and Satō Administrations], edited by Hatano Sumio (Tokyo: Mineruva Shobō, 2004), 53–92.
Masaya Shiraishi, Japan’s Relations with Vietnam, 1951–1987 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990).
Warren I. Cohen, ‘China in Japanese-American Relations,’ in The United States and Japan in the Postwar World, edited by Akira Iriye and Walter I. Cohen (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1989), 36–60.
Akira Iriye, Japan and the Wider World (London: Longman, 1997).
Hiroshi Fujimoto, ‘Japan and the War in Southeast Asia, 1965–1967,’ in International Perspectives on Vietnam, edited by Lloyd C. Gardner and Ted Gittinger (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2000), 176–188.
Roger Buckley, U.S.-Japan Alliance Diplomacy, 1945–1990 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).
Thomas Havens, Fire across the Sea: The Vietnam War and Japan, 1965–1975 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987).
William R. Nestor, Power across the Pacific: A Diplomatic History of American Relations with Japan (London: New York University Press, 1996); Walter LaFeber, The Clash: A History of U.S.-Japan Relations (London: Norton, 1997); Walter LaFeber, ‘Decline of Relations during the Vietnam War,’ in The United States and Japan in the Postwar World, edited by Akira Iriye and Walter I. Cohen (Lexington KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1989), 96–118.
Richard Ned Lebow, A Cultural Theory of International Relations (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008).
see also Paul J. Burton, ‘Culture and Constructivism in International Relations,’ International History Review 32, no. 1 (2010): 89–97.
Takashi Oka, ‘As the Japanese Say: Premier Sato Would Tap His Way across a Stone Bridge to Be Sure It Was Safe,’ New York Times, 16 Nov. 1969.
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© 2015 Fintan Hoey
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Hoey, F. (2015). Introduction. In: Satō, America and the Cold War. Security, Conflict and Cooperation in the Contemporary World. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137457639_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137457639_1
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