The Creation of the “Shock Myth”: Japan’s Reactions to American Rapprochement with China, 1971–1972 Midori Yoshii Albion College

President Richard M. Nixon’s July 1971 announcement of his visit to China is remembered in Japan as a policy that “shocked” the Japanese and almost universally cited as the “Nixon Shock.” To be accurate, there were actually two “shocking” announcements that summer. The second came in August 1971, just one month later, when the dollar was deval- ued after the U.S. currency was taken off the gold standard. Since plural and single nouns are indistinct in the Japanese language, both these events are discussed under the same term, “Nixon Shock.” Using “shock” to describe Japan’s reaction to Nixon’s announce- ment is prevalent in both Japanese and American scholarship. For ex- ample, Soeya Yoshihide of Keio \ University wrote, “Prime Minister Sato\ Eisaku is said to have learned the news only minutes before it was an- nounced (on July 16, Japan time), and it also came as a great shock to him.”1 The American scholar Robert S. Ross noted, “Thus, many Japa- nese, particularly Prime Minister Sato \ Eisaku, felt betrayed when Nixon ‘shocked’ them by suddenly changing course on China without consult- ing Japan beforehand.”2 Historian Michael Schaller, too, described Sato’s\ reaction in this way: “Now in shock, Sato \ mumbled to his aide, ‘Is that really so?’”3 Political scientist, Gerald L. Curtis said the Japanese felt “dismay and embarrassment” for being ignored by the U.S. government with no advance notice of the public announcement.4

The Journal of American–East Asian Relations, Vol. 15 (2008) © Copyright 2008 by Imprint Publications. All rights reserved. The research for this paper was funded by a travel grant from the Great Lakes Colleges Association. The author thanks Ambassador Iguchi Takeo, Professors Charles Hayford, Charles Lilly, Gregg Brazinsky, Yafeng Xia, Tao Peng, Seung Young Kim, Kusunoki Ayako, Sakata Yasuyo, and Dyron Dabney for generously sharing their expertise and comments.

1. Soeya Yoshihide, “Japan’s Relations with China,” in Ezra F. Vogel et al., eds., The Golden Age of the U.S.-China-Japan Triangle, 1972–1989 (Cambridge, Mass., 2002), 212–13. 2. Robert S. Ross, “U.S. Relations with China,” ibid., 83. 3. Michael Schaller, Altered States: The United States and Japan Since the Occupation (New York, 1997), 228. 4. Gerald L. Curtis, “U.S. Relations with Japan,” in Vogel et. al., Golden Age, 139– 40.

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The purpose of this paper is two-fold. One is to reappraise this inter- pretation of the Japanese leadership’s reaction to the American policy change relying on the diaries of both Prime Minister Sato \ and his per- sonal aide Kusuda Minoru and other recent studies. The second is to place fourteen months of Japanese diplomatic efforts to normalize rela- tions with China after Nixon’s announcement within the larger context of U.S.-China-Japan triangular relations since the 1950s. Doing so will help us better understand the nature of Japanese diplomacy during the Cold War. Despite the popular interpretation described above, I argue that Washington’s shift in its China policy provided a new opportunity for Japan to promote its long-postponed rapprochement with China, thus functioning as “catalyst” for Japanese diplomacy.

Prime Minister Sato\’s Reaction to the So-called “Nixon Shock” The morning after President Nixon’s announcement, Japan’s major daily newspaper Asahi reported that Prime Minister Sato \ had praised the new U.S. China policy and hid his dismay and shock by laughing cheerfully in front of the reporters.5 Two facts are apparent from this article: first, the prime minister positively evaluated the new U.S. policy in public, and second, the newspaper, from the beginning, assumed that the prime minister was hiding his surprise. Contrary to the newspaper report, Sato\’s diary entry suggests that his welcoming attitude toward the U.S. China policy change was sincere. Sato \ wrote the following in his dairy on the day of Nixon’s announcement: Fri. July 16, 1971 By all means, today’s big news is the statement announced in both Wash- ington and Beijing that the U.S. President Nixon will visit Beijing by next May. Kissinger entered Beijing from Karachi without the State Depart- ment knowing, and it’s amazing how they kept the secret until the announcement [today]. It was only two hours before the announce- ment when Ambassador Ushiba [Nobuhiko] received the report from the Secretary [of State William] Rogers that it won’t change the relations with Japan and the Nationalist Government [in Taiwan]. I don’t know the [U.S.] intention, but [perhaps the U.S.] wants to end the Vietnam War quickly. I wonder if that’s the main intention. In any case, it was beyond my imagination that Beijing would allow [Nixon] to visit China

5. The original article reads, “nakanaka yaru to shusho\ takawarai” (well done, said the Premier laughing cheerfully), Asahi Shimbun, 16 July 1971.