The 20th Asia Pacific Research Prize (Iue Prize) winner: Dr. Miho Okada

- Summary -

  This paper re-examines, from a Soviet perspective, the process of normalization talks between Japan and the USSR that took place from June 1955 to October 1956. This paper is significant in that although previous studies have tended to take “the Soviet government’s static and rigid stance” as given, this study goes further into the issue and sheds light on the Soviet leadership’s double-bind before and during the normalization talks with Japan. One factor was the fact that Soviet negotiations policy was formed amid dramatically changing international relations in post-war East Asia, and the other was that there were serious differences of opinion over the negotiation policy within the Soviet political leadership.
  For negotiations with Japan, two ideas were proposed in the policy process of the Soviet government: the idea of preserving the post-war territorial status quo proposed by Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov (the Molotov Proposal), and the idea centering on the handover of the two islands of Habomai and Shikotan proposed by First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev (the Soviet Proposal). The Molotov Proposal claimed that since the territorial issue concerning southern Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands had been resolved as promised by then Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin at the Yalta Conference, the Soviet government should restore diplomatic relations with the Japanese government with no territorial concessions to Japan.
  On the other hand, Khrushchev and other Soviet leaders argued that Stalin’s decision not to sign the San Francisco Peace Treaty was wrong, and that through the negotiations with Japan, international recognition should be secured regarding Soviet sovereignty over southern Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands. Which of the Kuril Islands maintained by the Soviet Union should be determined from the functional consideration of security. They argued that if Soviet sovereignty were secured over the two islands of Kunashiri and Etorofu, both of which served as the first line of defense against the United States, the Soviet government would not contest the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty and would hand over the two miner islands to Japan under certain conditions. The Soviet Proposal insisted on the simultaneous achievement of Soviet security and “peaceful coexistence”.
  However, the Soviet Proposal accelerated the political division in Japan on the one hand and, on the other hand, brought differences in interests between Japan and the U.S. to the surface. The decision of Japanese Foreign Minister Aoi Shigemitsu to accept the Soviet Proposal was met with a brick wall in Japan and interference from U.S. Secretary of State John Dulles, who considered it correspond to Japan’s acceptance of the Yalta Agreement. In the Soviet leadership, a political tug-of-war over the two different negotiation policies continued to the last stage of the talks.
  The handover of the two islands was unexpectedly included in the Joint Declaration due to backlash from Khrushchev. No compromise was reached among the Soviet political leadership, and Japan saw the different interpretations of the continuing deliberations remained. With these problems left unresolved, the two countries stood at the threshold of restoring post-war bilateral relations.