Editing Nobusuke Kishi (section)

===Pursuit of treaty revision===
Kishi's next foreign policy initiative was potentially even more difficult: reworking Japan's security relationship with the United States. Kishi always saw the system created by the Americans as temporary and intended that one day Japan would resume its role as a great power; in the interim, he was prepared to work within the American-created system both domestically and internationally to safeguard what he regarded as Japan's interests.<ref name="economist.com"/> In June 1957, Kishi visited the United States, where he was received with honor, being allowed to address a joint session of Congress, throwing the opening pitch for the New York Yankees in a baseball game in New York and being allowed to play golf at an otherwise all-white golf club in Virginia, which the American historian Michael Schaller called "remarkable" honors for a man who as a Cabinet minister had signed the declaration of war against the United States in 1941 and who had presided over the conscription of thousands of Koreans and Chinese as slave labor during World War II.{{sfn|Schaller|1995}} Vice President of the United States [[Richard Nixon]] introduced Kishi to Congress as an "honored guest" who was "not only a great leader of the free world, but also a loyal and great friend of the people of the United States."{{sfn|Samuels|2001}}

In November 1957, Kishi laid down his proposals for a revamped extension of the [[Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan|US–Japan Mutual Security Treaty]], and the Eisenhower administration finally agreed to negotiations on a revised version. The American ambassador [[Douglas MacArthur II]] (the nephew of the [[Douglas MacArthur|famous general]]) had reported to Washington that Kishi was the only Japanese politician who could stem the tide towards anti-Americanism in the country, and if the U.S. refused to revise the security treaty in Japan's favor, Japan could turn toward neutralism or accommodation with the communist bloc.{{sfn|Schaller|1995}} The U.S. Secretary of State, [[John Foster Dulles]], wrote in a memo to President Eisenhower that the United States was "at the point of having to make a Big Bet" in Japan and Kishi was the "only bet we had left in Japan".{{sfn|Schaller|1995}} Meanwhile, Kishi was able to take advantage of a growing anti-US military base movement in Japan, as exemplified by the ongoing [[Sunagawa Struggle]] over proposed expansion of the US air base at [[Tachikawa Airfield|Tachikawa]] and the explosion of anger in Japan over the [[Girard Incident]], to insinuate to U.S. leaders that if the treaty were not revised the continued existence of U.S. bases in Japan might become untenable.<ref>{{cite book |last = Miller |first = Jennifer|year = 2019 |title = Cold War Democracy: The United States and Japan |publisher = [[Harvard University Press]] |location = Cambridge, MA |url = https://books.google.com/books?id=EJ5gtgEACAAJ|pages=189–90|isbn = 9780674976344}}</ref>

Anticipating public opposition to his plans for revising the security treaty, Kishi brought before the Diet a harsh "Police Duties Bill", which would give the police vastly expanded powers to crush demonstrations and to conduct searches of homes without warrants.{{sfn|Kapur|2018|p=18}} In response to the police bill, a nationwide coalition of left-leaning civic organizations led by the [[Japan Socialist Party]] and the [[Sōhyō]] labor federation launched a variety of protest activities in the fall of 1958 with the aim of killing the bill.{{sfn|Kapur|2018|p=18}} These protests succeeded in arousing public anger at the bill and Kishi was forced to withdraw it.{{sfn|Kapur|2018|p=18}}