A proposal by Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu (see below) to revise the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty, which he made at a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State John Dulles in August 1955, may have been rejected because he lacked English skills, recently released diplomatic documents show.
This view was held by a senior U.S. State Department official at the time, according to diplomatic documents the Foreign Ministry made public on Wednesday.
The meeting was held without interpreters, according to the documents. Shigemitsu called for the treaty to be converted into a mutual defense pact, but Dulles rejected the idea. He cited as reasons Japan's lack of defense capability and its Constitution, which he said prevented Tokyo from dispatching troops overseas.
Following the meeting, the senior State Department official told an official at the Japanese Embassy in the United States that the senior official believed Shigemitsu's lack of English proficiency was responsible for giving Dulles a different impression than what he actually intended to convey. The senior official added that Shigemitsu's manner of speaking made Dulles feel as if he was being harshly criticized, prompting the U.S. top diplomat to counter Shigemitsu's arguments, according to the documents.
Nobusuke Kishi also attended the meeting as secretary general of the Japan Democratic Party. It was Kishi who realized revision of the security treaty while serving as prime minister in 1960, five years after the meeting.
-- Mamoru Shigemitsu
Born in 1887, Shigemitsu graduated from Tokyo Imperial University before starting his career at the Foreign Ministry. He served as foreign minister in the Cabinet of Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, as well as foreign minister and minister in charge of the Greater East Asia region in the Cabinet of Tojo's successor, Kuniaki Koiso. He was sentenced to seven years in prison as a Class-A war criminal. During the post-World War II period, Shigemitsu worked to restore diplomatic relations between Japan and the Soviet Union while serving as deputy prime minister and foreign minister in Prime Minister Ichiro Hatoyama's Cabinet. Shigemitsu died in 1957 at the age of 69.
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