Japan under siege – sort of - Josh Hong

For a country that has been so used to hearing positive views from its neighbours, it does take courage to digest the increasingly unfavourable coverage and commentary from around the world.

No country is born well disposed to critical reports on its domestic and foreign affairs and, in the case of Japan, the volume of bad press that it has been getting in recent months has no doubt put the tenacity of the Koizumi government under the severest test.

With the blessing of the United States, which was at the forefront of containing the influence of the Soviets and the Chinese in the 1960s and 1970s, Japan initiated its peace diplomacy by bringing Southeast Asia into its orbit, promising the region economic assistance and technological transfer.

In the early 1980s, Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad anchored Malaysia’s economy firmly into that of Japan by launching the Look East Policy, which included predominantly Japan and ceremonially South Korea (and please don’t ask why Singapore, as a developed state, failed to entice Dr M). For the next two decades, it was all dandy as far as Malaysia-Japan relations were concerned.

As a result, it came nearly as a bombshell to Tokyo when Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi broke the tradition and presented a more balanced position on the Sino-Japanese dispute over war atrocities and history last June. Given that it has come from one of Japan’s friendliest neighbours, Koizumi does have reasons to be fidgety.

From the Japanese perspective, it is rich of China to demand heartfelt apologies from Japan when Beijing has failed to show remorse for the lives lost under communist rule. Quite true. But Japan’s much repeated contrition has always been tinged with an instrumentalist agenda and issued from its position as an economic power. Even when it says it aspires to understand its Asian neighbours better, it continues to live comfortably under the auspice of the mighty and hegemonic US.

(To be fair, Abdullah has also been smart enough by making use of the occasion of the 600th Anniversary of Zhenghe’s Expedition to remind Beijing of the need to remain a benign power, as brilliantly explored by Jiang Yuhang, a commentator with the Chinese version of the Asia Times. Interestingly, the more Beijing emphasises on its peaceful rise, the more it is viewed with suspicion. Such is the price to pay for being a power.)

Serious doubt is also cast on Japan’s recent bid for a permanent United Nations Security Council seat when the United States, its principal backer, reiterated Washington’s support for Japan but not other bidding candidates with which Japan has bound itself, namely Brazil (too fearsome a giant in US backyard, too nightmarish a pact between de Silva and Chavez), Germany (too unfriendly by opposing the Iraq War) and India (still too friendly with Russia).

Nuclear ambitions

Moreover, the Bush administration has time and again made clear its opposition to granting veto power to any of the new permanent member, rendering the newcomers, if they do eventually make it, nothing but sycophants to the original big five.

But Japan’s argument that its entry into the UNSC would provide a non-nuclear element to the most powerful council on earth no longer holds water in the wake of its nuclear ambitions, with the connivance of the US. Being the only country to have gone through the ordeal of atomic bombing, the Japanese nation has long allowed its historical memory to be frozen at Hiroshima, highlighting its image as an ultimate victim of war rather an aggressor. As such, Japan has been at the forefront of the non-nuclear campaign worldwide, canonised by its much touted three non-nuclear principles – until now.

Since the Iraq War in 2003, Japan, again with the abetment of the US, has been portraying itself as a ‘normal country’ deserving of an ‘independent’ defence policy, much as other sovereign states are in the world, including the right to nuclearise its defence system, not to mention Koizumi’s constant water testing by raising the prospect of revising Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution that renounces war, thus making it possible for Tokyo to form a military truly capable of projecting power abroad.

There is clearly no greater conundrum than to see the officials in Tokyo contradict Japan’s peaceful role with its need to go nuke. As rightly pointed by Anthony DiFilippo, a respected and serious strategic analyst, Tokyo, although urging strongly for nuclear-free zones around the globe, has never favoured one for Northeast Asia precisely because ‘Washington has never ruled out the first use of nuclear weapons in a military conflict with either North Korea or China’.

No doubt, the bellicose Pyongyang and the seemingly increasingly assertive Beijing have sharpened the siege mentality of Tokyo, forcing it to pander more to the pre-emptive strike doctrine of the Bush administration. But this extremely intimate relationship of Japan with the US is too much a destabilising factor in the Asia-Pacific region already strewn with potential conflict ranging from terrorist threat to the Taiwan dispute.

Critical report

To add fuel to the fire, Washington has taken Japan on board in the former’s space policy. According to Bruce K. Gagnon of The Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, Japan is ready to spend one-third of its space budget on military reconnaissance and war fighting satellites manufactured by Mitsubishi.

And, finally, even the United Nations, which Tokyo has long been among its strongest and richest paymasters, has embarrassed Japan by publishing a highly critical report on Japanese racism. One wonders how Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro can keep himself from losing sleep over the troubles ahead in this very testing time.

The great sinologist Yoshimi Takeuchi said fifty years ago that Japan had attached too much importance to form and too little to substance when it came to the issue of independence, writing, ‘We as a nation are only independent in name, and enslaved by others. As such, we became the war trash of imperialism, and our occupation [by the US] today is only a natural consequence.’

Perhaps, Takeuchi would be most sad to know his painful but honest reminder has fallen on deaf ears.