China policy in the last years of the Satō cabinet: focus on the debate within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs*.

This is a translation of an article that reconsiders the controversy surrounding the Satō Eisaku Cabinet's China policy from 1970 to 1972. Previous studies have not focused sufficiently on how top officials in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs discussed China policy during this era. Based on recently declassified but still fragmentary Japanese diplomatic documents, this article, by carefully organizing these fragments and then comparing them with previously published secondary sources and declassified US diplomatic documents, uncovers historical facts of central importance for understanding Japan's postwar foreign policy. In particular, this article finds that the Foreign Ministry failed to formulate a strategic response to the drastic transformation of the international situation in the early 1970s, thereby indicating that discord within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party was not the only reason for Japan's delayed and reactive response. It also finds that the Ministry decided to establish diplomatic relations with China and severe relations with Taiwan as early as immediately after the Taiwanese government was expelled from the U.N. in October 1971, even though Japan waited for nearly another year before acting. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]