Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and leaders of the Maritime Self-Defense Force review its fleet on board the naval vessel Kurama at Sagami Bay off Kanagawa Prefecture, 29 October 2006. A total of 48 warships and helicopters participated in the review. AFP photo / Kazuhiro NogiWhen Shinzo Abe became Prime Minister in September, he chose for his Cabinet a motley crew of young, conservative, and hawkish politicians – in other words, people much like himself. Political pundits and the media all predicted that Japan’s relations with China and South Korea, already strained due to previous Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s insistence on visiting Yasukuni Shrine, a war memorial that glorifies Japan’s military past, would suffer further.

But a funny thing happened. Just weeks into his tenure, Abe paid a visit to China and South Korea in an attempt to shore up relations. While he was literally en route from Beijing to Seoul, North Korea announced it had successfully tested a nuclear weapon. After years of belligerent, war-mongering rhetoric from Japan’s right-wingers towards North Korea, some of whom now held senior Cabinet posts, a shudder ran through East Asia and in Washington D.C. What would Japan do now? Was the Korean War, which had ended in an uneasy truce, but no formal peace treaty back in 1953, about to flare up again? Would this be the last, final battle of the old Cold War, which had never ended in East Asia, or the beginning of nuclear Armageddon?

Faced with the stark choice of conciliatory rhetoric and diplomacy or a possible nuclear attack, Abe did what few thought he would do: he offered words of caution. In Beijing and Seoul, he vowed Japan would work hard to re-establish trust. Unlike Koizumi, Abe was humble. And faced with the seriousness of the North Korean nuclear threat, Chinese and South Korean leaders realized that now was not the time to berate Japan over historical issues. The present was troubling enough, and Japan’s cooperation was needed to help prevent North Korea doing something rash.

This “kinder, gentler” Abe drew surprised reactions in both Japan and the US, and gratitude in the rest of East Asia. The Yasukuni controversy had, if not entirely disappeared, been mostly muted by a public that had sobered up to the fact that the overheated right-wing rhetoric was making things worse, not better, and both politicians and editors toned their anti-China rhetoric.

Foreign Japan experts in the US, few of whom are really fluent in Japanese, celebrated Abe’s, and Japan’s, new attitude as the triumph of moderate, practical politics over extremism. The business community, led by Toyota, which had become almost the second Japanese embassy in China after its executives became a trusted back channel between Chinese and Japanese political leaders, rejoiced.

By the end of 2006, China’s ambassador to Japan, Wang Yi, was telling Chinese media that the “crisis” with Japan was over, and Chinese President Hu Jintao was dropping hints that he wanted to visit Japan in 2007. After five-and-a half years of worsening relations between Japan and its East Asian neighbors under his predecessor, it appeared that Japan had, indeed, begun to turn away from the hawkish, neocon diplomatic policies pursued by Abe.

But if the rest of the world breathed a sigh of relief at Japan’s newfound realism in diplomacy, it was a very different story domestically. By New Year’s Day, Abe had forced through the Diet legislation near and dear to not only his neocon advisors but old-style, unreconstructed right-wingers, and found himself attempting, vainly at times, to convince the world Japan would not develop nuclear weapons following North Korea’s test of a nuclear device in October.

Despite the almost daily protests of thousands of concerned parents, schoolteachers, and administrators, including a demonstration in Tokyo that drew nearly 30,000 people, the Japanese Diet passed a controversial bill that would make teaching “patriotism” and “love of country” mandatory in schools. At the same time, the Defense Agency was upgraded to ministry status, reminding many older Japanese of the late 1930s, when the Army and Navy departments gained ever-larger control over the politicians and ultimately plunged the country into war.

If the patriotism bill and the Defense Agency received little attention outside Japan, the suggestion by senior-level politicians, including Japan’s controversial Foreign Minister Taro Aso, that Japan should begin a debate on whether to acquire nuclear weapons drew instant international criticism. Former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating, among others, warned that a nuclear-armed Japan would create an arms race in East Asia. Although Abe has vowed Japan will maintain its non-nuclear principles, one of his closest friends and advisors, Tsutomu Nishioka, a right-wing academic, was among those who penned a recent book advocating that Japan acquire nuclear weapons.

Abe has said that his main task over the coming months will be to work on the Constitution, specifically Article Nine, which renouces war as a means for resolving international disputes. For decades, the “no-war’’ clause has been the pride of Japanese peace activists and liberals, and the bane of right-wingers, Conseratives, and Japan’s military ally, the United States. A two-decade campaign to revise the constitution, led by right wing politicians and media, however, has finally shifted public opinion in favor of revision.

Japan’s next big political test comes in July, when Upper House elections are held. Even moderate losses by the ruling parties will, most commentators agree, likely spell the end of the Abe administration and until the elections, it is likely that Japan’s neocons will work quietly behind the scenes and attempt to avoid highly public controversies. If there is a genuine improvement in Japan’s relations with East Asia over the first half of 2007, the neocons in the Abe cabinet will keep relatively quiet. But behind the scenes, they will continue to push the country to the right as long as they can get away with it.

_Eric Johnston

 

COMMENTS:

In these times when any bully country can suddenly decide to invade and lay waste to any country without a nuclear detterent, it is unconscionable for a nation not to have this detterent. Hiroshima ushered in this new era. An atom bomb is as necessary for nationhood as a name, a flag, and currency. Without the bomb, you float around hoping for others to act nicely. Not likely. Ask Iraq. Ask Haiti. Ask Nicaragua. Ask Iran. Hell, ask the United States!
Prerequisites for Nationhood

Eric here is going a little above his head dont you think? First of all, despite the budget, Japan's military wouldn't stand a chance against the Chinese or the Koreans. Don't think that the right-wingers under Abe know that. Second, you excluded the possibility that this militarization is mere talk, not only due to the reasons of which I stated above, but also the fact that Japan's military ally is strapped in Iraq/Afghanistan, with little manpower to export to East Asia in the case of armed conflict. Third, stemming from the first two, even if Japan's military ally had the means and the manpower to come to Japan's aid, it would be a move extremely unpopular with troops and the citizenry. So no politician would put their neck out to send troops to Asia in the wake of this whole Iraq deal. Of course, unless the next president pays no attention to his generals or intel officers (Bush) which is relatively unlikely anyway. Fourth, you seem to marginalize the Japanese left which constitutes a majority of the population to paint the image of Japan as an American puppet state which it isn't. You also fail to mention the massive public outcries on matters like the deployment of Japanese troops to Iraq of any of these hawkish legislations. Finally, there is no possibility of nuclear apocalypse, unless by rogue factions that aquire a nuclear weapon. The call for nuclear arms stems from only a small segment of the populace with a disproportionate representation in the government. Knowing Japan's limited defense capabilities, most of the political players in Japan and the highranking officials in the JSDF would not wish to bite on more than they chew by going on the path to nuclear weaponry.
Felix

Well thankfully for us then, Brandelff, Japan's political climate shows no immediate change to Fascism.
Felix

That Felix fellow must be one of them neo-GOP Americans. His ignorance of Japan (where I've lived for many years) is amazingly profound – but that doesn't stop him from spouting off. Bottom line: There is no deep material difference between Japan now and the Japan that caused so many international problems from 1895 (when Japan first fought with China) through 1945. In most ways, Japan actually has superior resources, but a different attitude. That pacifist attitude is what Abe's neocons dream of destroying. Me? I think we were very lucky to defeat the Japanese relatively easily. Midway could have gone the other way...
Shannon Jacobs

It is so sad to watch this international militarization trend, when you've been grown in an european country like me, and you've been taught a thousand times about the escalation of violence and power demonstrations that led to WW1 and WW2. Is the world really so stupid? Especially the ones who rule it?
Egmont

I'm Japanese and worrying about fascistic tendency of Japanese government. I think Mr.Eric Johnston is describing correctly. The government held Town Meetings several times to hear the voice of citizens, for example about education reform, but people who said their opinion were employed by the advertising agency. The government paid about 20 000 000 yen each time. The governing parties have so much seats, they pass bills without hearing voices of opposition and citizens. They don't even know what democracy is. And Media is tamed by them.
Kyoko

I continue to notice what seems like a continuing decay in the world towards peace, and see the clouds of a huge war coming over the world. This only adds to more problems, and what happens when the US cannot police the world like it once had, due to whatever loss of standing and new unions being created. Then who will be the major player and how will that improve or worsen things for all of us?
cw

To be honest I'm more troubled by the continuing ideological shift to the right in Japan than I would be by any attempt to restart their nuclear arms program. Most of the big players in the area are in one way or another pursuing nuclear arms anyway and if it can make the US think twice before invadeding China or otherwise trying to exert pressure in the east then mores the better. But the dangers of Fascism, however, are clear and immediate.
Brandelf

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