TOKYO, March 9 (Xinhua) -- Japan's Foreign Ministry on Tuesday revealed the findings of an investigation into secret pacts between Washington and Tokyo during the Cold War that are likely to have implications for the future of politics and ties with other countries.
The investigation, ordered by the governing Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), revealed that despite the denials of former governments led by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), often agreements were made behind closed doors that would likely have caused widespread protest and anger if their contents were made public.
Most controversially, Japan agreed to turn a blind eye to U.S. nuclear weapons brought into Japanese territory. Other pacts detailed the share of the burden of cost between the two nations when the United States handed Okinawa to Japan, and permitted Washington to use bases in Japan without prior consultation in the event of instability on the Korean Peninsula.
OPEN GOVERNMENT
The panel concluded that previous governments had been " dishonest" in not revealing the existence of the secret pacts.
However, the implications of the revelations are far more to do with Japan's system of government, than changing relations with the united States. For many years, the existence of the pacts has been widely known, and basically acknowledged by the United States. In Japan, however, previous prime ministers have consistently denied the existence of the pacts.
"The Hatoyama government is doing more than historical record keeping, but rather it is showing that open government does not stop at water's end," wrote Tobias Harris, writer of the Observing Japan blog. "Not content with revealing the many ways in which bureaucrats -- under the watch of LDP governments -- have wasted taxpayer money, the DPJ wants to show how the LDP conducted foreign relations out of the sight of Japanese voters."
Since forming in the 1990s, the DPJ has consistently held reforming the Japanese political system as a priority. Before the DPJ came to power in a landslide election victory last summer, politics in Japan, dominated by the LDP for more than half a century, was characterized by deals between politicians and unelected bureaucrats and a foreign policy that was often conducted behind closed doors.
The DPJ campaigned under the slogan "seiken koutai" ("political change") last summer, and bringing transparency to past affairs, as well as processes such as he renegotiation of the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) signed with the United States in 2006 and allowing the public to observe the development of budgets are a part of the governments policy to change the was politics works in Japan.
TIMING
The revelations came at a key time for Japan. An Upper House election is approaching in the summer, in which the DPJ will have a chance to gain full control of parliament. The party is, however, struggling in the polls. A Yomiuri Shimbun poll released on Monday showed 57 percent of respondents did not want the DPJ to win the summer election, while approval for the government of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama was down three points to 41 percent.
Negotiations with the United States on the modification of the 2006 SOFA agreement, and in particular are also drawing to their final stage.
The revelations have cast the LDP in a bad light, with local television media broadcasting previous denials of the pacts constantly after the revelations were made public. They come after months of troubles for the DPJ, with "money and politics" scandals having dominated the media, and a number of party members investigated because of illicit donations and undeclared funds.
Amid the domestic uproar, relations with the United States have also soured as Washington and Tokyo have maintained opposing views on the future of the SOFA agreement. Adding to problems for the relationship, many media outlets are now questioning how the government will prevent U.S. nuclear weapons entering Japan again.
"Given the change in U.S. nuclear policy," Foreign minister Katsuya Okada said Tuesday, "the issue is not likely to present concrete problems now." Kyodo News, however, questioned whether future governments would maintain Japan's non-nuclear stance in the event of a future international crisis.
The Daily Yomiuri also questioned whether the DPJ had done enough by simply revealing the past pacts. "If the Hatoyama administration believes it a taboo to review the three non-nuclear principles, the situation will hardly differ from half a century ago when the secret agreements were made and when healthy discussions about security were not held," it said in an editorial.
Despite the debate, however, there is no doubt that the revelations have changed things. It is doubtful that Hatoyama will ever practice such duplicity as previous Prime Minister Eisaku Sato.
"I established three non-nuclear principles as a policy of the Japanese Government after deep reflection on the course Japan should take as a country which will not possess nuclear arms. This policy states that we shall not manufacture nuclear weapons, that we shall not possess them and that we shall not bring them into our country. ... I have no doubt that this policy will be pursued by all future governments," Sato said in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech in 1974.
Five years earlier, according to the investigation, Sato had told the U.S. Ambassador to Japan that the nation's three non- nuclear principals were nonsense. And Okada also said on Tuesday that Japan "cannot rule out the possibility that nuclear weapons had entered Japan during the era."
