Photo/Illutration Files on the diplomatic documents declassified by Japan’s Foreign Ministry in December (Hiroyuki Yamamoto)

Japan’s diplomatic documents worked out three decades ago during the Persian Gulf crisis, triggered by Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in the year after the Cold War ended, were recently declassified and released.

We should closely study the thoughts and actions of politicians and diplomats during that turbulent period, which became a turning point for Japan’s diplomacy.

We should also decide if Japan’s diplomatic handling of the crisis was rated fairly by domestic observers and the rest of the world at the time.

In principle, the Foreign Ministry annually discloses all diplomatic documents 30 years after their creation.

The ministry recently released around 7,300 pages of documents in 18 files, which cover an approximately one-year period that ended just before the Persian Gulf War broke out.

Worthy of note are the accounts of how then Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu and other Japanese officials racked their brains in dealing with strong U.S. demands that Japan provide personnel and cash in assistance.

The documents also reveal details of Japan’s independent diplomatic efforts, which were seldom covered by news reports at the time.

They describe, for example, conversations between former Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in Baghdad, as well as how Hisashi Owada, senior deputy minister for foreign affairs, made secret trips to Moscow and other European cities to gauge the intentions of key nations.

Tokyo donated $13 billion to the U.S.-led multinational forces during the Persian Gulf War, but the act was dismissed as “checkbook diplomacy” by the rest of the world because Japan provided no personnel.

That experience for Japan was called the “trauma of the Persian Gulf” and was passed down to diplomats, in particular. It created a strong motivation for Japan to dispatch the Self-Defense Forces for logistical support and other purposes during the subsequent U.S. war in Afghanistan and the Iraq War.

The moves made by Nakasone and Owada show how Japan engaged in independent talks and sought to gather information on its own instead of relying solely on the United States.

However, the efforts failed to form a firm diplomatic strategy, leading to the “traumatic” experience.

Diplomatic papers from the period following the start of the Persian Gulf War are expected to be disclosed next year. Those documents should give us an opportunity to scrutinize the entire picture of the government’s decision-making and draw lessons for the future.

A fundamental rule of democratic nations is to keep detailed records of talks and policymaking processes and release them following a certain period of time, even in the often sensitive fields of diplomacy and security.

Japan has adopted a 30-year limit, and some documents have been released despite initially being labeled “top secret for an indefinite period.”

But Japan has also been criticized for some time for setting too many “exceptions.”

The latest disclosed documents, for example, include a report about a 1990 visit to North Korea by a joint delegation of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and the Social Democratic Party of Japan, then the main opposition party.

The visit, led by Shin Kanemaru, former deputy prime minister, and a colleague from the socialists, set a path for diplomatic normalization talks between Japan and North Korea, which started 30 years ago. However, most parts of the report were blackened out and withheld.

Officials explained that disclosing that information would affect the current state of diplomacy and security.

The criterion for drawing the line, however, remains anything but clear. One passage of the report, for example, shows remarks made by a North Korean official during the talks, but comments made by a Japanese counterpart were withheld.

The government’s willingness to more extensively disclose documents faces a test. Doing so would help the government gain more public understanding and support for Japan’s diplomatic policy.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Dec. 30

Related News