Japan’s return to the international community in the 1950s
Sandra Wilson, Murdoch University
The idea that Japan does not recognise its true war guilt and that that guilt remains unexpiated is now widespread and well entrenched. This paper argues that international attitudes towards Japan in the 1950s were sharply different. In the fifteen years or so after 1945, Japan’s former adversaries, together with states that had been occupied by the Japanese military, embarked on a major program of reckoning with Japan for the damage it had wrought. Japan lost territory and population. About a thousand military personnel were executed for war crimes. Extensive reparations schemes were devised between the Japanese and other governments, and compensation was paid to individuals for personal suffering endured while under Japanese control. Often these schemes were not fully implemented, but they were watered down by international agreement, not by Japanese intransigence. Though the process was uneven, anti-Japanese feeling in other countries gradually diminished. Japan was admitted to the United Nations and other international organisations. In this early era, there was little dissatisfaction with the terms of settlement between Japan and its former enemies, and few or no calls for Japan to do anything more or different. The idea that Japan had not shown sufficient contrition was a later development and a response to different world circumstances.
For more information please contact Sandra Wilson at
s.wilson@murdoch.edu.au
