Historical Dictionary of United States-Japan ... - Bakumatsu Films

184 • MURRAY, DAVID
tives in 1972 as a Japan Socialist Party (JSP) member and became the
party chairman in 1993. Murayama served as prime minister, the second
prime minister from the JSP after Tetsu Katayama in 1947, from
30 June 1994 to 11 January 1996.
In July 1994, as prime minister, Murayama drastically changed the
JSP’s philosophy on security policies: the Japanese Self-Defense
Forces (SDF) were legal and Japan would maintain the U.S.–Japan
Security Treaty. This drastic change was a turning point for the JSP.
The party lost its identity and raison d’etre and it has been rapidly declining
in power and influence since then. Murayama hardly demonstrated
his ideas as a left-wing politician. On 15 August 1995, at the
50th commemoration of the end of World War II, Prime Minister
Murayama made a statement, “On the occasion of the 50th anniversary
of the war’s end,” in which toward Asian countries, he said, “[I]
express here once again my feelings of deep remorse and state my
heartfelt apology.” This has become Japan’s starting point of its Asian
diplomacy since then.
MURRAY, DAVID (1830–1905). Murray was a professor at Rutgers
College in New Brunswick, New Jersey, in the 1860s when Japanese
students began arriving on campus. Taking a strong interest in these
Japanese students, he was hired by Arinori Mori, the Japanese
chargé d’affaires in Washington, to go to Japan and work as a special
adviser to the new Education Ministry in Tokyo. Murray worked for
the Education Ministry until 1879, when he returned to the United
States. See also JAPANESE STUDENTS IN AMERICA; YATOI.
MUTSU, MUNEMITSU (1844–1897). Politician and diplomat who
served in several foreign affairs–related posts in the Meiji government,
including as Japan’s ambassador to the United States from
1888–1890. As Japan’s foreign minister from 1892 to 1896, Mutsu
was instrumental in revising the Ansei Treaties (“unequal treaties”)
between Japan, the U.S., and other Western countries. See also
TREATY REVISION.
MUTUAL SECURITY AGREEMENTS (MSAs). The Mutual Security
Agreements were signed on 8 March 1954 by Foreign Minister
Katsuo Okazaki and U.S. Ambassador John M. Allison. Because of