Japanese Friend Kiyoshi Mizuno

The year 2007 marks the 35th anniversary of the normalization of diplomatic relation between China and Japan. In both countries there are a number of personages who have worked hard for and made contributions to the normalization and witnessed the development of the bilateral relations. Japanese friend Kiyoshi Mizuno is a prominent one, a respectable venerable elder and a good and old friend of the Chinese people.

Mr. Mizuno is a prestigious statesman and a man of insight in the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in Japan. From 1967 to September 1996 he was elected member of the House of Representatives 9 times and successively served as parliamentary vice foreign minister when Masayoshi Ohira was foreign minister, chairman of the Executive Board of the LDP, director-general of the Cabinet, minister of construction, etc.

In September 2006, Mr. Mizuno was invited by the National Development and Reform Commission of China to make speeches in Beijing. I had a special interview with him. He talked enthusiastically about the importance of the exchanges between the Japanese and Chinese people and the story of his contacts with the Chinese people.

Mr. Mizuno made his first visit to China 36 years ago in October 1971. At that time, in order to expand the force favouring normalization of Japan-China relations within the LDP, Hideji Kawasaki, founding member of the LDP and an old friend of the Chinese people, led a delegation composed of young dietmen of the LDP to visit China. Encouraged by Kawasaki, Mizuno joined the trip. There was no direct flight from Japan to Beijing. They flew to Hong Kong and then traveled to Luohu where, carrying their own luggage, they crossed a bridge over a small river to get to Shenzhen, stepping on the land of the People’s Republic. They spent a night in Guangzhou and arrived in Beijing by air the following day. Mizuno recalled, he was deeply touched by the high-spirited and vigorous Chinese people and acquired an initial understanding and a good impression of new China. He said, he would never forget Premier Zhou Enlai’s meeting with them during that trip. Premier Zhou cordially met all the members of the delegation in the Great Hall of the People. He greatly admired the personal charisma of Premier Zhou who had influenced him deeply. He said, Zhou Enlai was an unrivalled great statesman whose understanding of political problems and penetrating analysis of the international situation as well as China’s policy towards Japan filled the members of the delegation with admiration. Premier Zhou was amiable and warm-hearted while keeping up his dignity. Since that visit, Mizuno has often visited China and forged profound friendship with the Chinese leaders and people.

During the interview, I got to know that Mizuno’s enthusiasm for the cause of Japan-China friendship was most attributive to his correct understanding of the history of Japan’s aggression against China. He said, Japan should apologize to the Chinese people for its past crimes.

He said, during his first visit to China, he was greatly surprised when he learned from the Chinese leaders’ hint that China would renounce the claim of war reparations from Japan. He said, the Japanese army had occupied China’s vast land and brought about tremendous damages and harms to the Chinese people. Besides, new China founded not long before had a shortage of supplies and the Chinese people lived a much poorer life than the Japanese. In spite of all this, the Chinese Government intended to renounce war reparations. I could not believe that China would actually do that. After returning home, he had told many people about it, and they also did not believe. It is a fact known to all that later in the negotiations of the normalization of bilateral relations, China gave up Japanese war reparations.

Mizuno told me, he was conscripted into the army in 1944 at the age of 19 and sent to Hejin Prefecture of China’s Shanxi Province, and returned home after Japan was defeated in 1945. He hated that war bitterly and wanted to apologize to the Chinese people in a practical way. He made great contributions to Japan’s early fulfillment of its promise to grant loans in Japanese yen to China. The Hejin Thermal Power Plant was built with part of that loan. When the power plant was completed, he, together with his friends who had served in the army in Shanxi and were already in their seventies, revisited Hejin where they had left 50 years before. They marveled at the development and changes there.

Mizuno is a gentleman who keeps his words and sees his actions through to the end. From 1972 to 1982 when he served as parliamentary vice foreign minister, the Chinese Foreign Ministry was making preparations to establish the Chinese Embassy in Japan. He gave the Chinese side a lot of help. In 1974 because of the obstruction by the rightist parliamentarians, the China-Japan air transport agreement could not get approved by the Diet even after stalling for a long time. He resolutely advocated to open air service between the two countries in the Diet.

In the interview, Mizuno told me about what he did for the construction of expressways in China. In December 1983 he took the post of minister of construction. Ding Min, counsellor of the Chinese Embassy in Japan, came to congratulate him with a bottle of Maotai. Ding was a friend Mizuno had made during his first visit to China in 1971. During that visit they had a heated argument on a problem for several days. No discord, no concord. They became bosom friends. Mizuno told Ding that he wanted to do something for China. Ding said that in the future China would definitely need to build expressways and he hoped that Japan’s experience in building expressways would be introduced to China. In May 1984, invited by the then minister of communications Li Qing, Mizuno accompanied by President Takahashi of the Japan Highway Public Corporation and Director General Kutsukake of the Road Bureau (later elected councillor of the House) paid a visit to China. He gave the Chinese Ministry of Communications a detailed briefing about how Japan got the World Bank’s loans for building its first expressway―Tokyo-Nagoya Expressway (completed before the Tokyo Olympic Games in 1964) and the collection of fees on Japan’s expressways. Vice Premier Li Peng followed it with great interest. Later the State Council of China approved the plan of building the country’s first expressway―Beijing-Tianjin New Port Expressway (with a total length of 152 kilometers and construction cost of 700 million RMB yuan). Its construction began in 1985. During his visit to Japan in September 1984, Vice Premier Li Peng had a working breakfast with Mizuno, the then minister of construction. In the two-hour meeting, they almost talked about nothing but expressways. After taking the post of chairman of the Executive Board of the LDP in 1989, Mizuno urged the JICA to fund the feasibility study on the Shanghai-Nanjing expressway and presented China with a detailed design drawing for reference. During his tenure as minister of construction, Mizuno proposed to hold the Japan-China Road Meeting, providing chances for the government officials and scholars of the two countries to visit each other’s country and have technological exchanges. So far, the meeting has been held for 21 times. Mizuno said happily, the road signs used by the Chinese expressways were made on the basis of his suggestion. During his visit to Shandong Province when he passed the expressway and saw all that for himself, all sorts of feelings welled up in his mind.The then leaders of the Chinese Ministry of Communications spoke highly of his contribution to China’s expressway construction. But he always kept a low profile. Nowadays the young people know nothing about these things. During the interview, Mizuno was keen in recalling the past. He said that he had only done his duty to contribute his bit to China’s construction, which he felt proud and gratified.

After Junichiro Koizumi took office in 2002, Sino-Japanese relations cooled to the lowest point. Mizuno followed the development of the relations with grave concern. He visited China many times and was received by State Councillor Tang Jiaxuan. During the meeting with Tang, Mizuno said, he was worried about the situation of Japan-China relations and the history problem was the bottleneck. The two sides should resolve the problem with wisdom as soon as possible. As to the Taiwan question, he said that he would inform the relevant Japanese departments and personages through his own channel China’s Taiwan policy. He also suggested that China invite relevant Japanese influential personages to visit China and let them know its viewpoints. Mizuno gave many useful suggestions on improving China’s relations with the Japanese political circles. He himself brought a number of influential personages in the LDP to visit China, among whom were such important statesmen as former Minister of Finance Masajuro Shiokawa and councillor Taro Nakayama.

Before the end of the interview, Mizuno told me that he was born in 1925 and already 82 years old, but he still went to work in his office near the Diet Building every day. Every weekend he would go back to his hometown near the Narita International Airport in Chiba Prefecture only for taking exercises and doing some farm work. Though he visits China once a year, he pays great attention to China’s development and Japan-China relations. He said, China is his second homeland and he has formed indissoluble bond with it. He will do whatever he can without stop to promote the friendship between the Japanese and Chinese people.

The interview ended. I was touched by Mizuno’s deeds and had a deeper understanding that Sino-Japanese friendship did not come easily. On the occasion of the 35th anniversary of the normalization of diplomatic relations between China and Japan, I pay sincere tribute to Mr.Kiyoshi Mizuno and other Chinese and Japanese personages of the older generation and wish them good health and long life.