ABSTRACT
From the moment of the establishment of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in the fall of 1949, Japan and the United States dueled over policy toward the Communist regime. Following Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru's reluctant decision to sign a postwar peace treaty with Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist government in Taiwan, Japan was forced to forgo diplomatic relations with the PRC for two decades until President Richard Nixon's dramatic rapprochement with Beijing finally permitted it to restructure its China policy in 1972. Nonrecognition of the PRC was one of the prices Japan had to pay for its reinstatement, under U.S. tutelage, in the postwar world overshadowed by Soviet-American confrontation and revolutionary nationalism. However, this nominally independent diplomatic choice made at the dose of the Occupation period hardly put the matter to rest. Japan's yearning for formal relations with the mainland Chinese regime strained its nascent alliance with the United States. American officials recognized the enormous sway the PRC held over Japanese of all political shades and persuasions. While scorning the Japanese left's cult of the New China, U.S. policymakers chafed at the flirtation that Japanese conservatives carried on with the Chinese Communists. Through the 1950s, either out of historical nostalgia, political expediency, or neocolonialist impulse, growing ranks of conservative politicians, industrialists, and businessmen courted the PRC. 1
