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I would point out that Japan's proposal at the Versailles Peace Conference on the principle of racial equality was rejected by delegates such as those from Britain and the United States.

I do think that Japan will be one of the nations that have equality, and that, too, will serve as an example for other Asian nations.

Throughout that period, Japan had made honest efforts to keep the destruction of war from spreading and, based on the belief that all nations of the world should find their places, had followed a policy designed to restore an expeditious peace between Japan and China.

Just think of what Woodrow Wilson stood for: he stood for world government. He wanted an early United Nations, League of Nations. But it was the conservatives, Republicans, that stood up against him.

The idea of equal rights was in the air.

We discussed the history of postwar Japan and how Japan had missed an opportunity to build a more functional democracy because of the focus on fighting communism driven in large part by the American occupation.

It was also during my tenure of office that the Japanese Government agreed to the conclusion of a Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and signed it, pursuing a policy in harmony with the avowed desire of the people.

The reason was the failure of both Japan and China to understand each other and the inability of America and the European powers to sympathize, without prejudice, with the peoples of East Asia.

Despite Japan's desires and efforts, unfortunate differences in the ways that Japan, England, the United States, and China understood circumstances, together with misunderstandings of attitudes, made it impossible for the parties to agree.

I believe that all men and women are created equal, but it took our country until 1920 to acknowledge this for women. And then it took until 1964, the year before I was born, to outlaw discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. And same-sex marriage became the law of the land in 2015.