The US-Japan Security Treaty Regime and the Asia-Pacific Nations

1998 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary

• Project/Area Number: 09620070
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Politics
• Research Institution: HIROSHIMA UNIVERSITY
• Principal Investigator: YOSHIDA Osamu Hiroshima University, Faculty of Law, Asso. Professor, 法学部, 助教授 (60231693)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): KOIKE Seiichi Hiroshima University, Faculty of Integrated Arts and Sciences, Asso. Professor, 総合科学部, 助教授 (70274024) ; OGASHIWA Yoko Hiroshima University, Faculty of Integrated Arts and Sciences, Asso. Professor, 総合科学部, 助教授 (30224091) ; MORIBE Seiichi Hiroshima University, Faculty of Law, Professor, 法学部, 教授 (50210183)
• Project Period (FY): 1997 – 1998
• Keywords: US-Japan Security Treaty Regime / Asia-Pacific / US-Japan Security Treaty / Japanese Diplomacy / Intenational Relations

Research Abstract

This research, white keeping the issue in mind that what kind of meanings the US-Japan Security Treaty Regime had for the stability in the Asia-Pacific region in a broader term including peace and economic development, aimed at making the historical significance of the US-Japan Security Treaty regime clear from the view point of those nations in Asia and Oceania who saw Japan pose a threat to them.
During the term of the project, we held five seminars with the Institute for Peace Science of Hiroshima University as a co-sponsor and each of these seminars had a guest speaker who was a specialist of the Philippine Politics, the Australian Foreign Relations, the birth history of the US-Japan Security Treaty, the US-Japan Relations, or the Indonesian Politics. In due course of these seminars, the investigators of this project formed a shared view that the relations between the Asia-Pacific nations and Japan had become stable not just because of the US-Japan Security Treaty but, rather, becau se of closer security, political and economic relations within the whole region with the US at its center. Thus the US-Japan Security Treaty Regime should be seen, in the argument of the international relations, in such a broader context beyond the bilateral US-Japan relations.
On this shared understanding, the investigators of the project conducted their individual researches. They approached the central topic of the project, the meaning of the Security Regime in Asia centered around the US-Japan Security Treaty from different angles : After the conclusion of the US-Japan Security Treaty, what was a moment which made Asia commit to military alliance building (Yoshida) ; what roles Japan attempted to play (Moribe) ; and how the changes of the international environment transform their views toward Japan (Ogashiwa). Unpublished documents of Foreign Minister SHIINA Etsusaburo in the 1960's are also put for public use (Koike).
Our research results are to be published as one of the Research Report Series of the Institute for the Peace Science, Hiroshima University, at the earliest possible time. As to building a data-base of the collected materials, we are confronting a lot of difficulties but investigating a possibility of opening a homepage for it.