A quiet debate in Japan with loud ramifications

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See the Sol Sanders Archive By Sol Sanders SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM

The Chinese, North Korean, and even Taiwanese, protests to Prime Minister KoizumiÕs visit January 1st to Yasukuni shrine is largely propaganda. Other visits during the postwar period have been as controversial. Not only is the temple associated with prewar militarism which dragged Japan into wars on the Asian Mainland and, finally, with the U.S., but associated with convicted leaders responsible for atrocious war crimes. Although there have been repeated apologies to JapanÕs former enemies, it is still possible for someone as popular as the elected governor of Tokyo to discount admissions of guilt. This contrasts with Germany where the Nazi past has been excoriated to the point where France has just extended an invitation to Chancellor Shroeder to participate in this yearÕs commemoration of the bloody Normandy beachheads.

But Koizumi had a point when earlier he argued Japan has no other national memorial where the 3.5 million Japanese war victims can be honored and mourned, and, indeed, he called for one. It ill behooves the Chinese Communists and their North Korean allies Òto wave the bloody shirtÓ when both regimes ø Pyongyang so recently with a state induced famine ø paper over their own more recent criminal policies. Although the CommunistsÕ protests find an echo in Singapore and the Philippines where locals suffered from the Japanese Occupation, there is a feeling in much of the region ø as Japanese ultra-nationalists claim ø TokyoÕs aggression was the liberating death knell of the former European colonial regimes.

In a sense, Koizumi ratcheted up the controversy when he chose the traditional ancestral homage date and signed the guestbook as Òprime minister of JapanÓ, signifying a state visit and not ø as sometimes in the past ø the visit of a politician, earning points with JapanÕs minuscule but loud extreme right wing.

The episode is part of the quietest debate in the political life of any of the major powers today. In decisions, earthshaking only in their Japanese context, Koizumi has returned a passive Japan hiding under the U.S. nuclear umbrella and its Asian military deployment, to its own role in the balance of power. One can make the case that the movement goes back as far as the Korean War when North Korean aggression in cahoots with Josef StalinÕs Soviet regime forfeited WashingtonÕs concept of a neutral, demilitarized Japan. It became clear that JapanÕs economic potential, if not its military, were to be crucial in the Cold War, if for no other reason than that it had to be denied by American strategists to any Communist East Asian entente.

It has again been North Korea, with its 1998 dramatic flight of a missile across Japan, and its threat of nuclear arms, that has changed the speed if not the direction of JapanÕs return to what many have called for, its role as a ÒnormalÓ nation. Within a few short months, Japan has rewritten the rules under which the American military alliance is activated, joined in overseas patrolling of its vital sea lanes [to Mideast oil], launched its own military intelligence satellites, decided to upgrade its missile warships as part of an anti-missile shield, and, apparently, begun a revamping of its Òself-defenseÓ forces strategies.

Significantly, Koizumi suggests it is time to end the euphemism and call one of the best equipped forces in the world a national army, hinting at removing the Macarthur constitutionÕs bent and battered Òno warÓ clause. And, despite JapanÕs trauma as the only victim of nuclear war, the otherwise untouchable nuclear weapons question ø if North Korean cannot be disarmed ø has been broached in public if not by politicians.

The decision to send forces to Iraq is another spike in the process, even after a great deal of hemming and hawing, and sending them under the rubric of reconstruction. Opposition has been muted, especially among KoizumiÕs political opposition, but the move is not popular in Japan, and creates a deep feeling of apprehension.

The left of center newspaper Asahi, ÒJapanÕs New York TimesÓ, calls up those sentiments. It is characteristic of the newspaper, harking back to its infamous 1950 editorial which questioned whether it was indeed Pyongyang which started the Korean war. While begging off any comparison with the militarists who led Japan into the Asian disaster in the 1930s, in a strange muddle of idealism and opportunism it nevertheless argues: ÒÉsurely the government is making a similar mistake in regard to its acquiescence to the United States? Tokyo faithfully follows the U.S. line that the Iraq war is ÔjustÕ even though the conflict is bogged downÉ. We want the United States to remain an important friend of ours. At the same time, we believe this country should face up to the danger that the United States poses ÉÓ

Japan has always had a peculiar way of hiding its innermost conflicts from the nosey outsider. That characteristic, even in a Japan [and a world] more different from its past than the Asahi allows, continues.