Japan: Disturbed Ally

Report Outline
American Treaty Relations with Japan
Conflicts in Japan's Postwar Politics
Trend of Japanese Foreign Relations

American Treaty Relations with Japan

Tokyo Demonstrations and Eisenhower's Visit

Massive demonstrations in Tokyo in the last week of May—against ratification of a revised Japanese-American security treaty and against the conservative pro-American government of Premier Nobusuke Kishi —brought into view a new though probably remote threat to the position of the United States in the Far East. The demonstrating mobs in Japan were made up largely of students. Student demonstrations recently precipitated the overthrow of the South Korean and Turkish governments. The Japanese students, like their counterparts in South Korea and Turkey, were demonstrating against government conduct that had been in flagrant disregard of democratic practices.

In Japan, however, the students did not seem animated by the passionate conviction that inspired the Korean and Turkish demonstrators, nor did they appear to attract adult support of national proportions. The troubles in Tokyo were plainly of left-wing Socialist and Communist origin. The leftists managed to put on mammoth and noisy demonstrations, but they have not yet managed to threaten the large majorities held in the Diet by the conservative Liberal-Democratic Party. Press dispatches from Tokyo indicate that opposition to the new treaty with the United States has been distinctly a minority manifestation.

President Eisenhower's Coming Trip to Tokyo

This view of the disturbances is held also in official quarters, for no change has been made in President Eisenhower's scheduled plan to visit Japan from June 19 to 22. The state visit marks the 100th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries. The day the President arrives in Tokyo also is the day the May 20 ratification of the new security treaty by the lower house of Japan's Diet will automatically take effect unless the upper house of the Diet has completed the ratification in the meantime.