Sol Sanders Archive

“Taihen, des ‘n ne!” is a standard reply for some bumptious unknown interlocutor [“henna gaijin”, troublesome foreigner, because he doesn’t know the rules] who has just proffered a strong opinion. The words literally mean “it is very”. But, demands the vexed foreigner, “very what? — good, bad, dangerous, agreed, what? disagreed?” But the Japanese correspondent, for his part, wants to know more about what the foreigner thinks about the situation before committing himself to a line which might incur conflict.

Tokyo-Washington relations are very much in the “taihen des n’ ne” mode at the moment — with a great deal riding on their outcome for both countries.

Like most of the rest of the world, the Japanese public — conditioned in no small part by their mainly superficial leftwing mass media who take their cues from the American media, G— help them! — idolizes the young American president. But that Japanese core, which has brought them through so much ferment for a century and a half, is worried. In a sense, with three failed conservative prime ministers in a row, the country is on autopilot — with the permanent government represented by the bureaucrats carrying on with established strategies with a somewhat reinvigorated private sector.

But as with the rest of the world, change has come with lightening speed. The brief [2000-05] primeministry of Junichiro Koizumi sought to replace, finally, the successful but no longer adequate, Japan model. It’s worth reminding that Japan was the only major non-European society to avoid colonialism and industrialize even before the end of the 19th century. The close partnership of government direction and private initiative — which even the catastrophe of the military dictatorship and World War II had only interrupted — had modernized a feudal country in a few decades and returned it to unanticipated prosperity in the postwar era

Koizumi reflected a widespread belief — even in the all-powerful bureaucracy — that in the increasingly complex world of a global economy and heightened living standards older Japanese never dreamt of having — a new system had to be found. Against the yelling and clawing from his own conservatives, Koizumi attacked some of the major economic underpinnings of the old regime. And to be even partially successful, he was forced into introducing a new kind of populist politics to replace the tribal rituals of his Liberal Democratic Party which has ruled the country for most of the postwar period.

But now Koizumi’s revolution remains only half finished and in some jeopardy because of the worldwide recession and credit crunch. The vested interests which did not want his revolution have found new inspiration in the temporary failure of market economies and a discredited “Washington consensus”. Despite the current recession, the worst since the immediate postwar collapse, the Japanese lifestyle had reached a level of abundance that no longer makes economic development the raison d’etre of the regime and the society. Whatever his reason for withdrawing at the height of his popularity, greater than any postwar prime minister, he left a deficient party machine operating in a political vacuum and a society with still unresolved basic goals.

The gap is nowhere so self evident than in the demographic catastrophe that has overtaken the population. Just as in the other industrial societies, but more so, the Japanese birthrate has collapsed. Young men and women on a scale not seen elsewhere simply are not marrying and producing offspring. And the Japanese with their heightened insularity show no possibility of using in-migration — with all its problems in North America and Europe — for solving the basic problem of a workforce sufficient to maintain an increasingly ageing population.

The internal problems are matched by the growing crisis in Japan’s external environment. For half a century, Japan used the American defensive shield as a way of avoiding the basic issue of any society, how to defend itself, and diverting resources to economic growth. Only slowly, but with the usual Japanese aplomb for technical issues, Japanese rearmament has proceeded even though under a constitution drafted by the U.S. Occupation which forbids it.

Now the threat of development of weapons of mass destruction — if not even more unpredictable dynastic chaos — has arisen on the very doorstep in North Korea. And despite the extremely beneficial partnership which has permitted Japanese companies to use China’s cheap labor to assemble the goods which have continued to fuel its export-led economy, Tokyo has to worry about a rapidly arming Beijing. There the combination of lack of transparency, increasing orientation of arms toward offensive operations, and the use of propaganda of the long years of Japanese aggression leading to the Great Pacific War [World War II], is a threat that cannot be ignored.

The Bush Administration’s failure to find a solution to the North Korean problem, as earlier the Clinton presidency, has added to the concern. Tokyo could hardly hide its hurt that the bizarre kidnapping of Japanese citizens by Pyongyang over decades was not made a paramount issue in the Six Power Talks concocted to reach a settlement with North Korea. The issue was one of the few foreign policy questions which aroused Japanese public opinion with its melodramatic aspects a constant refrain of the media. The Japanese have watched, as the other players, the refusal/inability of Washington to grapple with the obvious fact that only forceful action by China — short of U.S. military action — among the five powers supposedly dedicated to denuclearization of the Korean peninsular would be effective.

On to this already tortured scene, the Obama Administration new boys have arrived. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did make an obligatory obeisance to the keystone that the U.S.-Japan alliance provides in Asia for American strategy: her first foreign port of call but with little more than the diplomatic niceties. The fact that the Obama Administration has chosen the Tokyo embassy to pay off one of its political debts with the appointment of an ambassador (California-based lawyer John Roos) who is a complete novice with neither political, diplomatic nor Japanese experience — after a public intra-Administration feud — speaks volumes.

As the Obama panoply of apologies and initiatives for new approaches to old enemies has unrolled — and as the economic crisis has seemed to more and more restrict Washington’s ability to pressure Beijing — there has been growing concern in Japan. Is the nuclear umbrella which has been held over the Japanese since the Cold War began and the Chinese Communists took power on the Mainland in 1949 still valid? Despite the insecurity of the present Japanese government, it posed this question in not so delicate terms — by Japanese standards — to the Schlesinger-Perry Commission Congress appointed last year to look at worldwide U.S. military strategies, including nuclear issues. The “concern” — transcripts have not been made public of the Commission’s dealings with the Japanese — has become so acute that the Obama Administration has now acceded to Japanese requests to have an investigation into the redefinition/reaffirmation of the American commitment. A government study group has embarked for Japan.

Despite Japan’s aversion to nuclear weapons given its history, events are moving so fast in East Asia that such a possibility can not longer be ruled out. Should Japan “go nuclear”, it would be the deathknell of the U.S.’s basic nonproliferation policy already crippled by events in India and Pakistan, and now North Korea and Iran, opening up vast new dangers to peace and stability on the world scene.

The road ahead for U.S.-Japan relations is going to be rocky and perilous.

Prime Minister Taro Aso, who despite his goldplated credentials as a member of the Japanese political elite and an unusual exposure to foreign experience, is limping into national elections Aug. 30 after nearly a year of hoof in mouth disease. His Liberal Democrats will likely lose their present hefty majority and there is even the outside possibility a ragtag opposition Democratic Party of Japan [DPJ may briefly come to power. The DPJ waffles on all the foreign policy issues; only recently reversing its opposition to the deployment of the Japanese as logistics support in the Indian Ocean to the U.S./NATO effort in Afghanistan under UN auspices. There is even a possibility — given the unmanageable contradictions within the DPJ who range from leftwing socialists to disaffected conservatives — that both major parties might break up ushering in a new more ideological alignment

All this puts into new jeopardy the prospects for peace and stability in the most dynamic region of the world.