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$Title{Japan
Chapter 6A.   Foreign Relations}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Toshio George Tsukahira}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{foreign
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japan
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economic
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world
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$Date{1981}
$Log{}
Title:       Japan
Book:        Japan, A Country Study
Author:      Toshio George Tsukahira
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1981

Chapter 6A.   Foreign Relations

     Japan's foreign policy in late 1981 was undergoing a thorough
reexamination as the country's leaders and policymakers reviewed and debated
the country's course as a member of the world community. The policy Japan had
followed throughout the post-World War II period was characterized by
concentration on economic growth; flexible accommodation to the regional and
global policies of the United States while avoiding major initiatives of its
own; adherence to pacifist principles embodied in the 1947 Constitution,
referred to as the "peace constitution"; and generally passive and low-profile
behavior in world affairs. Relations with other countries were until recently
governed by what the leadership called "omni-directional diplomacy," which was
essentially a policy of political neutrality in foreign affairs while
expanding economic relations wherever possible. This policy was highly
successful and allowed Japan to prosper and grow as an economic power, but it
was feasible only while the country enjoyed the security and economic
stability provided by its ally, the United States.

     The need for a revamping of Japan's foreign policy posture had become
apparent during the 1970s and particularly since the middle of the decade, as
major changes in the international situation and the nation's own development
into an economic world power made the old diplomacy obsolete. Japan's
burgeoning economic growth and expansion into overseas markets had given rise
to foreign criticism-charges of "economic aggression" and demands that it
adopt more balanced trade policies. Changes in the power relationships in the
Asian quadrilateral-made up of the United States, the Soviet Union, Japan, and
China-also called for reexamination of policies. The deepening Sino-Soviet
split and confrontation, the dramatic rapprochement between the United States
and China, the rapid reduction of the United States military presence in Asia
following the Vietnam debacle, and the sudden expansion of Soviet military
power in the western Pacific-all required a reevaluation of Japan's security
position and overall role in Asia. Finally the oil crises of the 1970s
sharpened Japanese awareness of the country's critical vulnerability to the
cutoff of raw material and energy supplies and underscored the need for a more
positive, less passive, and more independent foreign policy.

     In addition to the situational changes outlined above, Japanese thinking
on foreign policy was influenced by the gradual rise of a new postwar
generation to leadership and policymaking positions. The differences in
outlook between the older leaders still in positions of power and influence
and the younger generation that was replacing them complicated the ongoing
debate.

     The key issues under study and discussion related to four broad
questions: What is Japan's relationship to the rest of Asia? How can Japan
play a more positive and constructive role in world affairs, perhaps as a
bridge between East and West and between North and South? How should Japan
adjust to the changing economic situation and strategic stance of its
principal partner and ally, the United States, and to the latter's insistent
pressures for more sharing of the security burden in Asia? How can Japan
modify its cautious and reactive diplomatic style and pursue a more positive
and assertive diplomacy without aggravating its strategic vulnerabilities,
abandoning its pacifist principles, or arousing latent antagonisms and fears
among former enemies and victims of past militaristic and imperialist
policies?

     As of late 1981 the debate had not abated, and final conclusions had by
no means been reached, but there was little doubt among most observers that a
new consensus was being forged and that the country's foreign policy was at a
turning point. Barring a catastrophic collapse of the existing world order,
the new diplomacy was not likely to be a drastic reversal of the old, but
rather an evolutionary outgrowth of the existing pattern. Some indication of
the direction in which foreign policy was heading was to be found in the
government's 712-page foreign policy report, referred to as the "blue book,"
published by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in September 1981. The report
characterized 1980 as the year of instability in East-West relations and said
that Japan would consolidate its ties with other industrial democracies to
counter the Soviet Union whose actions, it charged, had threatened world peace
and stability. The report stated that Japan would pursue a "comprehensive
security" policy that would involve coordinating basic strategies with other
advanced industrial democracies of the West, expanding Japan's defense forces,
and playing a political as well as an economic role by giving aid to friendly
nations located close to areas of international dispute or conflict, such as
Turkey and Pakistan, in order to strengthen them and help them maintain
stability.

Major Foreign Policy Goals and Strategies

     Japan's geography-particularly its insular character, its limited
endowment of natural resources, and its exposed location near potentially
hostile giant neighbors-has played an important role in the development of
its foreign policy. In pre-modern times, Japan's semi-isolated position on the
periphery of the Asian mainland was an asset. It permitted the Japanese to
exist as a self-sufficient society in a secure environment. It also allowed
them to borrow selectively from the rich culture of China while maintaining
their own cultural identity and sense of uniqueness. Insularity promoted a
strong cultural and ethnic unity, which underlay the early development of a
national consciousness that influenced Japan's relations with outside peoples
and cultures throughout its history.

Evolution

     In the early sixteenth century, a feudally divided Japan came into
contact with Western missionaries and traders for the first time. The
Westerners introduced important cultural innovations into Japanese society
during more than a century of relations with various feudal rulers; but when
the country was unified at the beginning of the seventeenth century, the
Tokugawa shogunate decided to expel the foreign missionaries and strictly
limit all intercourse with the outside world. Essentially national seclusion
was Japan's foreign policy for over two centuries.

     When the Tokugawa seclusion policy was forcibly breached in 1854 by
Commodore Matthew C. Perry of the United States Navy, Japan found that
geography no longer provided security-the country was defenseless against
military pressures and economic exploitation by the industrialized Western
powers. After Perry's "black ships" had compelled Japan to enter into
relations with the nations of the Western world, the first foreign policy
debate was over the question of whether Japan should embark on an extensive
program of modernization to cope with the perceived threat of the "eastward
advance of Western power" that had already violated the independence of China
or whether Japan should expel the "barbarians" and revert to a seclusion
policy. The latter alternative-though it appealed to many-was never realistic.
Starting at the time of the Meiji Restoration of 1868, which ushered in a new
centralized regime, Japan set out to "gather wisdom from all over the world"
and embarked on an ambitious program of military, social, political, and
economic reforms that transformed it within a generation into a modern
nation-state and major world power.

     The foreign policy of modern Japan was shaped at the outset by its need
to reconcile its Asian identity with its desire for status and security in an
international order dominated by the West (see The Meiji Period [1868-1912],
ch. 1). The principal foreign policy goals of the Meiji regime (1868-1912)
were to protect the integrity and independence of the nation against Western
domination and to win equality of status with the leading nations of the West;
the main energies of Japan during the Meiji era were singlemindedly directed
at the achievement of these objectives. Since fear of Western military power
was the chief concern of the Meiji leaders, they directed their priority
effort, under the slogan "Rich nation, strong arms" (fukoku kyohei), at
building up the basic requirements for national defense. They saw that a
modern military establishment required a national conscription system, drawing
manpower from an adequately educated population. They also saw that it needed,
in addition to a trained officer corps, a sophisticated chain of command and
strategy and tactics adapted to contemporary conditions-modern arms together
with the factories to make them, sufficient wealth to purchase them, and a
transportation system to deliver them.

     An important objective of the military buildup was to gain the respect of
the Western powers and promote the achievement of equal status for Japan in
the international community. Inequality of status was symbolized by the
treaties imposed on Japan when the country was first opened to foreign
intercourse. The treaties were objectionable to the Japanese not only because
they imposed low fixed tariffs on foreign imports and thus handicapped
domestic industries, but also because their provisions giving a virtual
monopoly of external trade to foreigners and granting extraterritorial status
to foreign nationals in Japan, thus exempting them from Japanese jurisdiction,
placed Japan in the inferior category of uncivilized nations. A good part of
the social and institutional reforms of the Meiji period were designed to
remove the stigma of backwardness and inferiority represented by the "unequal
treaties," and a major task of Meiji diplomacy was to press for early treaty
revision (see International Relations, ch. 1).

     Once created, the Meiji military machine was used to extend Japanese
power overseas, for many leaders believed that national security depended on
expansion and not merely a strong defense. Within thirty years the country's
military forces had fought and defeated Imperial China in the Sino-Japanese
War of 1894-95, winning possession of Taiwan and Chinese recognition of the
independence of Korea. Ten years later in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905,
Japan defeated Tsarist Russia and won possession of southern Sakhalin as well
as a position of paramount influence in Korea and southern Manchuria. By this
time Japan had been able to negotiate revisions of the unequal treaties with
the Western powers and had in 1902 formed an alliance with the world's leading
power, Britain. After World War I, in which it participated as one of the
Western allies, Japan sat with the victors at Versailles and enjoyed the
status of a great power in its own right.

     Between World War I and World War II, the nation embarked on a course of
imperialist expansion, using both diplomatic and military means to extend its
control over more and more of the Asian mainland. It began to see itself as
the protector and champion of Asian interests against the West, a point of
view that brought it increasingly into conflict with the Western powers. When
its aggressive policies met firm resistance from the United States and that
country's allies, Japan made common cause with the Axis powers of Germany and
Italy and launched into war with the United States and the Western alliance.

     After Japan's devastating defeat in World War II, the nation came under
an Allied occupation in which the United States, as the principal occupying
power, was charged with the demilitarization and democratization of the state.
Major changes were made in the political, social, and economic fabric. During
this seven-year period, the country had no control over its foreign affairs
and became in effect the ward of the United States on the international scene.
It adopted a new constitution renouncing war as a sovereign right of the
nation and the threat or use of force as an instrument of national policy (see
The 1947 Constitution and Government Structure, ch. 6).

     When Japan regained its sovereignty in 1952 and reentered the
international community as an independent nation, it found itself in a world
dominated by the cold war between East and West, in which the Soviet Union and
the United States headed opposing camps. By virtue of the Peace Treaty signed
in San Francisco on September 8, 1951, ending the state of war between Japan
and most of the Allied powers except the Soviet Union and China, and the
Security Treaty between the United States and Japan also signed in San
Francisco the same day, Japan was now essentially a dependent ally of the
United States, which continued to maintain bases and troops on Japanese soil.

     Japan's foreign policy goals during most of the early postwar period were
essentially to regain economic viability and to establish its credibility as a
peaceful member of the world community. National security was entrusted to the
protective shield and nuclear umbrella of the United States, which was
permitted under the security treaty which came into effect in April 1952 to
dispose its forces in and about Japan and to use them against any military
threat-internal or external-in the region. A special diplomatic task was to
assuage the suspicions and alleviate the resentments among Asian neighbors who
had suffered from Japanese colonial rule and imperialist aggression in the
past. Japan's diplomacy toward its Asian neighbors, therefore, tended to be
extremely low key, conciliatory, and nonassertive. With respect to the world
at large, the nation maintained a low-profile approach, avoiding political
issues and concentrating on economic goals. Under its omni-directional
diplomacy, it sought to cultivate friendly ties with all nations and,
proclaiming a policy of "separation of politics and economics," adhered, to
the extent possible, to a neutralist position on East-West issues.

     During the 1950s and 1960s foreign policy actions were guided by three
basic principles: close cooperation with the United States for both security
and economic reasons; the promotion of a free trade system congenial to
Japan's own economic needs; and international cooperation through the United
Nations (UN)-to which it was admitted in 1956-and other multilateral bodies.
Adherence to these principles worked well and contributed to phenomenal
economic recovery and growth during the first two decades after the end of the
occupation period.

Recent Formulation

     In the 1970s the basic postwar principles remained unchanged but were
approached from a new perspective owing to the pressure of practical politics
at home and abroad. In Japan there was growing domestic pressure on the
government to exercise more foreign policy initiatives independent of the
United States, without, however, compromising vital security and economic ties
with the latter. The nation's phenomenal economic growth had made it a ranking
world economic power by the early 1970s and had generated a sense of pride and
self-esteem especially among the younger generation. The demand for a more
independent foreign policy posture reflected this enhanced national
self-image.

     Additionally changes in world economic relations during the 1970s
encouraged a more independent stance. Japan had become relatively less
dependent on the Western powers for its resource needs. Oil, for example, was
being obtained directly from the producing countries and not from the
Western-controlled multinational companies. Other important materials also
came increasingly from sources other than the United States and its allies,
while trade with the United States as a share of total trade dropped
significantly during the decade of the 1970s. Thus political leaders began to
argue that in the interests of economic self-preservation, more attention
should be paid to the financial and developmental needs of other countries,
especially those that provided Japan with vital energy and raw material
supplies.

     The move toward a more autonomous foreign policy was accelerated in the
1970s by the United States decision to withdraw troops from Indochina. The
collapse of the Vietnam War effort was seen as the end of an era of United
States military and economic dominance in Asia and brought to the fore a
marked shift in Japanese perceptions and attitudes concerning the United
States. This shift, which had been developing since the early 1970s, took the
form of questioning the credibility of the United States nuclear umbrella, as
well as whether Japan could continue to depend on the United States to
underwrite a stable international currency system, guarantee Japanese access
to energy and raw materials, or secure Japanese interests in a stable
political order. The shift, therefore, required a reassessment of
omni-directional diplomacy.

     As Professor Gerald Curtis of Columbia University has pointed out, the
growing perception of United States weakness and decline has underlain
Japanese concern for what in the late 1970s came to be called "comprehensive
security"-a concept that calls for the development of new, more active
political, economic, and diplomatic strategies; the strengthening of national
defense forces; and closer political and strategic cooperation with the United
States and the other advanced industrial democracies of the West. The new
approach was reflected to some extent in Japan's efforts to cultivate closer
ties with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN); in its pro-Arab
tilt since the 1973 oil boycott; in the new interest in military defense; and
in the departure from a diplomacy focused exclusively on protecting Japan's
access to vital resources to one which would include politically motivated aid
to strategically located Third World countries.

     Despite these and other manifestations of a changing posture, it was
clear in mid-1981 that no revolutionary change in foreign policy was about to
take place. Constrained by the terms of the 1947 Constitution and by strong
political opposition to rearmament, the nation was not ready to consider the
development of independent military capabilities or the assumption of a major
role in regional security (see Missions, ch. 8). Efforts would be made to
improve the nation's defensive capabilities under the 1960 Treaty of Mutual
Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan, but a firm
military alliance and economic cooperation with the United States was
repeatedly reaffirmed as the "basic law" and keystone of foreign policy.

Foreign Policy Formulation

Institutional Framework

     Under the 1947 Constitution, the cabinet exercised the primary
responsibility for the conduct of foreign affairs, subject to the overall
supervision of the National Diet. The prime minister was required to make
periodic reports on foreign relations to the Diet, whose upper and lower
houses each included a foreign affairs committee. Each committee reported its
deliberations to plenary sessions of the chamber to which it belonged. Ad hoc
committees were also formed occasionally to consider special questions. Diet
members had the right to raise pertinent questions-officially termed
interpellations-to the foreign minister and prime minister on policy. Foreign
treaties required ratification by the Diet. As head of state, the emperor
performed the ceremonial function of receiving foreign envoys and attesting to
foreign treaties ratified by the Diet.

     As the chief executive and constitutionally the dominant figure in the
political system, the prime minister had the final word in major foreign
policy decisions. The minister of foreign affairs, usually a senior member of
the cabinet, acted as the prime minister's chief adviser in matters of
planning and implementation. The minister was assisted by two vice-ministers:
the permanent vice-minister was in charge of administering the ministry and
was picked for this position from among senior career officials of the
ministry; the parliamentary vice-minister was responsible for political
liaison with the Diet. The latter position was customarily held by a political
appointee, who was a member of the Diet and belonged to the prime minister's
own party.

     The Ministry of Foreign Affairs was organized on functional and
geographical lines and as of mid-1981 had a staff of about 3,500 (see fig.
14). The staff included an elite career foreign service corps, recruited on
the basis of performance in a competitive examination, and thereafter trained
by the ministry's Foreign Service Training Institute. The handling of specific
foreign policy issues was usually divided within the ministry between its
geographic and functional bureaus so that a minimum of overlapping and
competitive involvement occurred. Bilateral issues were assigned to the
geographic bureaus whereas multilateral problems went to the functional
bureaus. Only the Treaties Bureau, with its wide-ranging responsibilities,
tended to get involved in the whole spectrum of issues dealt with by the
ministry. The Research and Analysis Department in the ministry's secretariat
engaged in comprehensive and coordinated policy investigation and planning,
but its role in practice was circumscribed by the reluctance of the regular
bureaus to accept outside involvement.

     Long a profession of high social prestige, diplomatic service was
traditionally a preserve of the upper social strata and-aside from formal
qualifications-proper social origin, family connections, and graduation from
Tokyo Imperial University were important as requirements for admission into
the service. After World War II these requirements were changed as part of
reform measures to democratize the political and governmental processes. In
mid-1981 the overwhelming majority of career foreign service officers had won
the coveted certificate indicating they had successfully passed the postwar
Higher Foreign Service Examination before entry into the service. A greater
proportion of the certificate holders still were graduates of the prestigious
law faculty of Tokyo University. In 1980 and early 1981 virtually all the
ambassadorial appointments were made, as they had been in recent decades, from
among veteran diplomats, and politically appointed ambassadors were distinct
exceptions to the rule.

     Diplomacy was not a monopoly of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Given
the overriding importance of economic factors in foreign relations, the
ministry worked closely with the Ministry of Finance (MOF) in matters of
customs, tariff, international finance, and foreign aid; with the Ministry of
International Trade and Industry (MITI) concerning exports and imports; and
with the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries (MAFF) in connection
with questions of foreign agricultural imports and fishing rights. The foreign
ministry also consulted other agencies, such as the Fair Trade Commission, the
Export-Import Bank, the Japan External Trade Organization, the Overseas
Economic Cooperation Fund, and the Overseas Technical Cooperation Agency. On
many issues affecting the country's foreign economic activities-and thus
its diplomatic relations as well-the ministries of foreign affairs and of
finance were known to have generally favored measures liberalizing import
restrictions. On the other hand MITI and MAFF had adhered to a more
protectionist stand, evidently because of pressures from special interest
groups (see Institutions for Trade, ch. 5).

     The vital importance of foreign affairs expanded to affect virtually
every aspect of national life as Japan entered the 1980s, and the multiplicity
of agencies involved in external affairs continued to be a source of confusion
and inefficiency in the formulation of foreign policy. On the other hand as
the postwar generation of leaders and policymakers began to assume a greater
role in government decisionmaking and as public attitudes on foreign policy
issues matured, there were indications that foreign affairs were being
conducted on the basis of a stabler consensus than had existed in previous
postwar history.

Foreign Affairs in Domestic Politics

     During the decade of the 1970s, most Japanese remained preoccupied mainly
with domestic problems, as they had been in earlier years, but there was also
a marked increase in popular interest in foreign affairs. This was the result
not only of the country's rising international prestige and a corresponding
growth of national pride, but also because of the uncertainty stemming from
unsettling developments on the world scene and from major changes in relations
among the leading world powers. There was an acute awareness, revealed in
public opinion polls and in commentary literature, that in a world of
increasing economic interdependence, Japan's own political stability and
economic health could be adversely affected by events taking place in distant
foreign areas. The oil crises of the 1970s, for example, underscored the
nation's vulnerability to the repercussions of conflict in the Middle East.
Additionally the aggressive moves of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and
particularly its military buildup in the southern Kurils and other islands
close to Japan did much to raise the level of public concern about the conduct
of foreign affairs.

     The government, more firmly than ever under the control of the
conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) after the party's sharp gains in
the 1980 elections, continued its major efforts to popularize its basic policy
of close economic and security ties with the United States; of responding to
international expectations of greater political as well as economic
contributions on the part of Japan; and of international cooperation through
the UN in the cause of world peace, disarmament, aid to developing countries,
and educational and technical cooperation. Foreign policy speeches by the
prime minister and the minister of foreign affairs were widely disseminated,
and a number of pamphlets and booklets on major foreign policy questions were
frequently issued.

     Political elements opposing the government's foreign policy stands were
able to present their views and alternatives freely through political parties
they supported or through the mass communications media, which often took
vocal and independent positions on wide-ranging external issues (see The Press
and Politics, ch. 6). Some of the opposing elements were leftists who sought
to exert their influence through their representatives in the Diet, the mass
organizations to which they belonged or which they supported, and-although
less frequently than in the 1960s-by participating in mass rallies and street
demonstrations. In contrast, groups supporting the government-notably the
business community and agricultural interests-brought pressure to bear on the
prime minister, appropriate cabinet members, and members of the Diet, usually
through behind-the-scenes negotiations and compromises.

     Partisan political activities of all ideological tendencies were
undertaken freely and openly, but the difference in foreign policy
perspectives appeared to derive less from doctrinaire than from issue-oriented
considerations. Broadly stated, the partisan disagreement among the various
groups competing for power centered on the question of Japan's safety from
external threat or attack. The dominant view in 1981, as in the preceding
three decades, was that although the Japanese people should be responsible for
the defense of their homeland, they should also continue their security ties
with the United States-at least until they could gain sufficient confidence in
their own self-defense power. Proponents of this view agreed that this self
defense capability should be based on conventional arms and that any nuclear
shield should be provided by the United States under the 1960 security treaty.

     Since the United States rapprochement with China and China's endorsement
of the United States-Japan security tie, the demand for the termination of the
security treaty, which had previously united all opposition political groups,
became less insistent. The Democratic Socialist Party (DSP) and the Clean
Government Party (Komeito) have indicated their readiness to support the
treaty, while the Japan Socialist Party (JSP) dropped its demand for immediate
abrogation, suggesting instead that the security treaty should be replaced in
time, through agreement with the United States, by a peace friendship pact.
Only the Japan Communist Party (JCP) remained adamant.

     Despite partisan differences, however, all political parties and groups
were nearly unanimous in their view that Japan should exercise more
independence and initiative in the conduct of its foreign affairs and not
appear to be so ready to follow the United States lead on matters affecting
Japan's interests. They also adhered to the view that Japan should retain its
non-nuclear weapons policy, which does not permit the introduction of such
weapons into Japan. These shared views stemmed from the resurgence of
nationalism during the postwar era and from the Japanese people's pride in
their own heritage and in the economic recovery and achievements of the
post-World War II decades. Although there were indications that the "nuclear
allergy" produced by Japan's traumatic experience with the atomic bombings of
August 1945 was beginning to moderate with the passage of time, it still
remained in 1981 a sensitive political issue.

     Except for security-related matters, most foreign affairs issues involved
economic interests and primarily attracted the attention only of the specific
group or groups affected. The role of interest groups in the formulation of
foreign policy varied with the issue at hand. Because trade and capital
investment issues were involved in the negotiations for normalizing relations
with China and with the Republic of Korea (South Korea) and in the
negotiations with the Soviet Union on Siberian resources development, the
business community played a significant role as an interested party.
Similarly, when fishery rights or agricultural imports were being negotiated,
representatives of the industries affected worked with political leaders and
the foreign affairs bureaucracies concerned in shaping policy.

     Because of the continuous control of the government enjoyed by the
conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) since its formation in 1955, the
policymaking bodies of the LDP had become the major loci of government policy
formulation. Since the unified will of the majority party almost invariably
prevailed in the Diet, that body had been virtually reduced to a mere sounding
board for government policy pronouncements and a rubber-stamp ratifier of
decisions made by the prime minister and his cabinet. This meant that
significant debate and deliberations on foreign policy matters generally took
place not in the Diet but inside the closed doors of the governing LDP in
meetings, for example, between representatives of the Foreign Affairs Section
of the LDP'S Policy Research Council and officials of the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs, MITI, or leaders of major LDP support groups, such as the Federation
of Economic Organizations (Keizai Dantai Rengokai-better known as Keidanren).

     The role of public opinion and public attitudes in the formulation of
foreign policy remained as difficult to determine in late 1981 as it had been
throughout the three decades since the end of the Allied occupation. Japan
continued, however, to be extremely public opinion minded, and opinion polling
became a conspicuous feature of national life. The large number of polls on
public policy issues, including foreign policy matters, conducted by the prime
minister's office, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and other government
organizations led to the presumption by analysts that the collective opinions
of voters do exert significant influence on policymakers. The public attitudes
toward foreign policy that had pertained throughout much of the post-World War
II period appeared at the beginning of the 1980s to have shifted. Opinion
polls reflected a marked increase in national pride and self-esteem. Moreover
public discussion of security matters by government officials, political party
leaders, press commentators, and academics had become markedly less volatile
and doctrinaire, more open and pragmatic, suggesting indirectly that public
attitudes on this subject had matured as well.

     The mass media, and particularly the press, continued to play their role
as major molders of public attitudes. The press sought to fulfill its
traditional mission as the champion of the public interest and unrelenting
critic of the government. It was the chief source of demands that the
government exercise a more independent and less "weak-kneed" diplomacy in view
of the changing world situation and Japan's increased stature in the world.