Japanese Parliamentary Diplomacy on the Eve of the Cold War: Focusing on the Taiwan Channel

Abstract

This study explores the diplomacy of the conservative ruling party lawmakers in Japan toward Asia on the eve of the Cold War. It shows— based on interviews and latest archival material released in Japan and Taiwan—that a structure for ending the Cold War existed in East Asia on the eve of the Cold War, which is different from the Second Cold War framework centered on the West. This research may also play a significant role in the study of the long-term governments of conservative parties and their foreign policies during the Cold War. Before the Cold War was over, the governments of Nakasone Yasuhiro and Takeshita Noboru in Japan had access to both China and Taiwan, and there were already movements within the conservative ruling Liberal Democratic Party and its factions toward a de-Cold War structure and ideology. Pro-Taiwan and pro-Korea factions in the party, which had overlapped since the formulation of the Cold War ideology, diverged. In this context, despite the timely utilization of personal relations between Taiwan and Japan since the prewar Japanese colonial period, an effective systematization of channels between the two governments that could be sustained over the long-term was not achieved.