Top > Announcement > Press Conference by Foreign Minister > August 26, 2011

(* This is a provisional translation by an external company for reference purpose only. The original text is in Japanese.)

Press Conference by Minister for Foreign Affairs Takeaki Matsumoto

Date: Friday, August 26, 2011, 10:33 a.m.
Place: MOFA Press Conference Room

Main topics:

  1. Opening Remarks
    • (1) Disclosure of Materials Relating to Negotiations for the amendment of JAPAN-U.S. Administrative Agreement
  2. Q&A: To be posted shortly

1. Opening Remarks

(1) Disclosure of Materials Relating to Negotiations for the amendment of JAPAN-U.S. Administrative Agreement

Minister Matsumoto: Through the MOFA website today, we are going to disclose materials related to the negotiations held in 1953 for the amendment of Article 17 of the JAPAN-U.S. Administrative Agreement, which is the predecessor of the Japan-U.S. Status of Forces Agreement. Article 17 of the Japan-U.S. Administrative Agreement provides for rules on criminal jurisdiction over U.S. military personnel. We have been disclosing diplomatic records under the concept of "letting the documents talk by themselves," where the historical significance of the disclosed documents should be judged by the readers themselves. However, I would like to briefly explain  the amendment to the Agreement, because the possible existence of a so-called "secret promise" to abandon the criminal jurisdiction of Japan in certain cases was pointed out in the Diet and other places.
The outline of the documents to be available to the public this time is as follows.
In the negotiations held in 1953 for the amendment of Article 17 of the JAPAN-U.S. Administrative Agreement, the United States requested Japan's abandonment of its primary jurisdiction in principle. Japan negotiated under a policy of rejecting it. As a result, the United States finally withdrew its previous position and  the negotiations were concluded without Japan’s abandoning the primary jurisdiction. At that time, at the Criminal Subcommittee under the Joint Committee, it is decided that the representative of Japan (the Director of the Ministry of Justice) would explain to the United States the operational policy of Japan that Japan would have no intension to exercise its primary jurisdiction over cases other than those substantively important to the Japanese side. The representative of Japan made remarks according to the decision at the Subcommittee on October 28 the same year.
The representative's remarks only explained the operational policy of Japan on the decision about whether to prosecute, and do not mean that any agreements were made between the U.S. and Japanese Governments. The relevant authorities take appropriate actions under Japanese laws for “current” individual criminal cases of U.S. military personnel over which Japan has its primary jurisdiction. There is no difference in Japan's policy on whether to prosecute between cases of   U.S. military personnel and those of others. We have confirmed at yesterday's Japan-U.S. Joint Committee that the Japanese and U.S. Governments share the understanding on these two points. We have decided to announce yesterday's exchange of views at the Japan-U.S. Joint Committee.
No records on the remarks of the representatives of Japan were included in past files of MOFA. During the exchange with the U.S. side this time, we were provided with a copy of the records, and we are going to make them available to the public, too.

2. Q&A: To be posted shortly

Q&A: To be posted shortly

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