ABSTRACT
Modern Japan’s diplomacy started in 1853 with the arrival of Commodore Matthew Perry, who demanded opening of Japan to trade with the United States. This event triggered Japan’s semi-forceful incorporation in ‘European International Society’.1 During the next nine decades, Japan transformed from a semi-colonial entity tied by the so-called ‘unequal treaties’ into a mighty empire capable of forcing other nations to signing unfavourable treaties (for example, the Treaty of Annexation with Korea signed in 1910; Korea became a colony within the Japanese Empire). At its peak, this empire ruled over territory stretching from Manchuria in the north to Papua New Guinea in the south. This period of Japan’s status as one of the Great Powers ended with its defeat in the Second World War and its acceptance of unconditional surrender on 2 September 1945, on the USS Missouri anchored victoriously in Tokyo Bay. Defeat in the war against the United States and its allies resulted in the loss of all of the territories acquired after the enactment of the Meiji Constitution of 1890, and it left Japan in possession of only three of its initial colonies: Hokkaido in the north and, in the south, Okinawa and the Bonin Islands (Ogasawara in Japanese).2 Seven years of total national mobilisation (Japan’s war began in July 1937 with its invasion of China south of the Great Wall) combined with the Allied aerial attacks culminating in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki exhausted the population. The acceptance of surrender on 15 August 1945 officially transformed Japan into an occupied nation governed by United States General Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers.
