Japan Socialists Again Harden Stand on U.S. Security Treaty

In the first televised debate in 30 years among leaders of Japan’s major political parties, Socialist Party Chairwoman Takako Doi declared Friday that her organization welcomes proposals by some Americans to abolish the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty.

The Socialists had been trying to remove an image of radicalism by softening their traditional advocacy of abrogation of the pact, and Doi had declared that a Socialist-led government would not abrogate the treaty unilaterally.

Her harder-edged remarks Friday take on added significance in advance of the Feb. 18 election for the lower house of Parliament, which in turn elects the prime minister.

Doi, to whom Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu could not respond because of time limits on the debate, said the security treaty should be revamped to stress U.S.-Japanese cooperation in such areas as protection of the environment and economic aid to developing nations.

“Does that mean the Socialist Party regards as favorable American calls for abolition (of the treaty)?” she was asked by a Japanese journalist.

“Yes,” she replied, calling the development proof that “the policy of power of the past” has disintegrated.

Earlier in the 3 1/4-hour debate, which included five party leaders, the politically embattled Kaifu jumped at the opportunity to attack Doi for her party’s continued support for “socialist revolution.”

Much of the televised debate at the Japan National Press Club focused on a controversial 3% consumption tax and an influence-buying scandal that deprived Kaifu’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party of its majority in the upper house of Parliament last July.

All four opposition leaders insisted that the consumption tax, implemented last April by the Liberal Democrats despite hostile public opinion, be abolished.

Eighteen seats shy of a majority in the upper house, the Liberal Democrats already need opposition support to enact legislation. Failure to win the lower house election would mean that they also would need help to elect a prime minister.

On foreign policy matters, all five leaders agreed that Japan’s relations with the United States should be based on equality.

Kaifu said growing detente between the United States and the Soviet Union and the collapse of Communist governments in East Europe offer Japan a chance to play a major global role for the first time since the end of World War II.

“In the Cold War era of power,” he said, Japan, whose constitution rejects war as a sovereign right, “could play no role. But for freedom and democracy and prosperity, Japan can make a contribution.”

Official campaigning for the election begins today.