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Retention of national polity and retention of Japan-U.S. Security Treaty: 60 years since the Potsdam Declaration
Akahata editorial

World War II ended following the surrender of the imperial Japanese government accepting the Potsdam Declaration.

What did the Potsdam Declaration, announced on July 26, 1945, demand from Japan? How was it put into practice? How is it connected with the present Japan? These are important points we must bear in mind when we think of Japan's 60 postwar years and of its future.

Elimination of militarism and strengthening of democratization

The Potsdam Declaration by which the United States, Britain and China jointly demanded that the Japanese government surrender, set down the following conditions: "There must be eliminated for all time the authority and influence of those who have deceived and misled the people of Japan into embarking on world conquest." It called on Japan to give up the foreign territories it invaded, to disarm the Japanese military and punish war criminals, remove all obstacles to the revival and strengthening of democracy among the Japanese people, establish freedom of speech, of religion, and of thought, and establish the fundamental human rights, as well as restrict those industries which would enable Japan to rearm for war. The declaration clearly set out that "the occupying forces of the Allies shall be withdrawn from Japan as soon as these objectives have been accomplished and there has been established in accordance with the freely expressed will of the Japanese people a peacefully inclined and responsible government."

At first, the Japanese government disregarded the declaration on the grounds that it did not ensure the "retention of the national polity" (with the emperor holding the absolute power). In the end, however, Japan accepted the Potsdam Declaration in the wake of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Soviet Union's entry into the war against Japan. The emperor-led government of Japan had been asking the Soviet Union to mediate a peace between Japan and the Allied Powers.

It was an international obligation that Japan carry out the demands of the Potsdam Declaration which fundamentally calls for militarism to be eliminated and for democracy to be established. What the Potsdam Declaration called for was in accord with what the Japanese Communist Party since before the war had been advocating: end the despotic rule and establish democracy and freedom.

Positive aspects of the Potsdam Declaration were translated into the Japanese Constitution's principles of peace and democracy. The principles of people's sovereignty, renunciation of war, non-possession of war potential, rejection of a right of belligerency, the defense of basic human rights, parliamentary democracy, and local self-government paved the way for Japan to take a path based on peaceful and democratic principles.

The Constitution's preamble stipulates that "We, the Japanese people, ...resolved that never again shall we be visited with the horrors of war through the action of government, do proclaim that sovereign power resides with the people and do firmly establish this Constitution." This position is in accord with the Potsdam Declaration which states, "There must be eliminated for all time the authority and influence of those who have deceived and misled the people of Japan into embarking on world conquest."

The end of the war didn't mean the ending of those "retention of national polity" forces who remained in power however. Some postwar cabinets and some political parties that later merged into the Liberal Democratic Party had called for maintaining the absolute imperial system. Their campaign had to disappear in the face of the establishment of the Constitution declaring that Japan will adhere to peace and democratic principles. They slander the Constitution as being imposed by the United States without substantiating the argument. This comes from their tenacious hatred of the postwar defeat.

Security Treaty, not the Constitution, was imposed on Japan

If postwar Japan did comprehensively implement the Potsdam Declaration, the Occupation Forces could have been swiftly removed from Japan. The reality is that today, sixty years after the war's end, the U.S. forces are still stationed in Japan.

The U.S. forces as the core of the allied occupation forces pushed ahead with the democratization of Japan in the period shortly after their victory. Later, in a sudden change of policy, Japan was incorporated into the U.S. global strategy, thus becoming a U.S. subordinate under the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty. Isn't this treaty system a typical example of how the U.S. "imposed" its will on Japan?

Now is the time to put an end to a call for "the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty to be maintained perpetually" and end the postwar call for the "retention of national polity." The need is now for Japan to replace the Japan-U.S. security system with an independent Japan enjoying peace and democracy. -- Akahata, July 26, 2005