Japan-U.S. relations fall short of Lincoln’s determination

Japan Press Weekly

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Japan-U.S. relations fall short of Lincoln’s determination - Akahata ‘Current’ column

“The Government of the United States strives to do equal and exact justice to all states and to all men and it relies upon the beneficial results of that effort for support at home and for respect and good will throughout the world.”

This is a quote from Abraham Lincoln that Japanese Communist Party Chair Shii Kazuo cited in his report to the 25th JCP Congress on behalf of the JCP Central Committee. Lincoln was reelected as the U.S. President in 1864.

In solidarity with Lincoln’s struggle against slavery, the International Working Men’s Association sent a congratulatory address, written by Karl Marx, to Lincoln. Encouraged by this address, Lincoln sent a reply which includes the quote above. Two months after his reply, Lincoln was shot to death by an assassin.

What Lincoln wanted to say may be that both men and states are equal, or that because all men are equal, their states should also be equal. But, even in the 21st century, the relations between Japan and the U.S. fall short of what Lincoln had expressed in his reply.

The JCP in its Central Committee Report demanded that if present U.S. president Barack Obama considers the Japan-U.S. relations “equal,” the U.S. should immediately change its policy towards Japan, including dangerous U.S. military exercises in Japan which are prohibited in the U.S., U.S. extraterritorial rights in Japan which are the hotbed of crimes and accidents committed by U.S. soldiers, and interfering in the affairs of a sovereign nation by calling for revision of Article 9 of the Constitution of Japan.

It has been fifty years since the Japan-U.S. security treaty was revised in 1960. If the U.S government decides to take the position of calling on Japan to be subservient to the U.S. and not the position of striving to achieve “respect throughout the world” as Lincoln aspired to, such an attitude must be questioned. “Does the U.S. government truly acknowledge equality between the U.S. and Japanese people?”

- Akahata, January 21, 2010