aty and the accompanying Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security (the Security Treaty), Japan agreed to the retention by the United States of military bases on the mainland and American control over the Ryukyu Islands (Okinawa). Postwar Japanese governments allowed the United States to use Japan as a logistic base during the Korean War and co-operated generally with the United States to contain the Soviet threat throughout the Cold War. Japan, however, resisted American pressures to rearm, maintaining only token armed forces, the Japanese Self-Defense Forces (SDF).
The Socialists or Social Democratic Party (SDPJ) provided the most vociferous opposition to any reassertion of Japanese military strength. In the 1950s, the Socialists adopted their Three Principles of Peace, peace settlements, opposition to foreign military bases in Japan and neutrality in the cold war. Together with labor unions, women's groups and cultural organizations, they mounted massive demonstrations involving millions of Japanese against the renewal of the Security Treaty in 1960 and against the use of American military bases in Japan during the Vietnam War. Cummings commented that "by the mid-1970s, the Left appeared spent as an intellectually compelling political force." With memories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki still relatively fresh, a majority of the Japanese electorate remains adamantly opposed to any resurgence of Japanese militarism. In 1967, Prime Minister Sato was forced by the pressure of public opinion to reiterate that "Japan would not manufacture nuclear weapons, possess them or permit them to enter the country." In 1993, Cummings reported that "the Japanese public is still hostile to a big defense buildup" and cited a 1987 poll which showed only 15 percent of those polled as being in favor of Japan's spending more than one percent of its GDP on defense and 67 percent against.
Japan's Emergence As An Economic Superpower
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