LONDON -- Fifty years ago this year, the San Francisco Peace Treaty was signed and the Japanese government began preparing to resume full sovereignty. Then-Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida was a shrewd politician. He knew that the peace treaty, despite the difficulties some of the clauses would cause for Japan, was essentially a generous one for a nation that had waged all-out war in the Pacific and whose forces had caused so much devastation throughout Asia. He was also a realist who recognized that Japan could and would revive.
The terms of the peace treaty have long since been forgotten by the Japanese people. Okinawa has been recovered, and the only territorial clause that still troubles Japan is the one under which Japan renounces its claim to the Kuril Islands. The problem with this clause is that no definition of the Kuril Islands was included in the treaty. Japan has since argued that the southern islands of Kunashiri, Etorofu, Habomai and Shikotan were not traditionally part of the Kuril Island chain.
Little needs to be said about the other articles. Agreements have been negotiated and concluded in fulfillment of Japan's general international obligations. The Japanese government, unwisely in my view, stuck to a strictly legal interpretation of Article 16, which concerns compensation for former prisoners of war. A more generous approach would have benefited Japan's relations with many of the former Allied powers and helped to nullify the still-existing belief that Japan has never really recognized the extent of its responsibility for the suffering caused during World War II.