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Trump is no gift for Abe and the LDP

11/11/2016
japan, politics

As Japan’s establishment and observers start to come to grips with the implications of a Trump administration for the country, one comment I’ve heard a lot is that this is a gift for Shinzo Abe and his inner circle. It clears the way for them to enact their long dreamed-of reforms, which would upend the post-war national order and return the country to a normalised military posture. Certainly, the almost certain cancellation of TPP is a blow to Abenomics, but in this view of events, Trump’s foreign policy stance is a huge boost for Abe’s militaristic agenda.

In one respect, that’s right. Trump’s election and the huge question mark it places over the stability and reliability of the 64 year old US-Japan security alliance does make Japan’s military normalisation vastly more probable. Even if the Trump administration does not, as seems very likely, demand an enormous increase in Japan’s financial contribution to the US military presence here (notably, Japan already pays a very large proportion of the US’ base costs) and talk down the nature of its commitment to the alliance, the unprecedented uncertainty his presidency introduces to the alliance will sway opinon among Japan’s political establishment and public alike. More significant military budget increases (not the small, conservative increases seen thus far) are almost inevitable; reform of Article 9 of the constitution, which looked all but impossible last week, may now be within the LDP’s grasp.

To call this a “gift” to the Abe administration, however, is a misreading of the reality. The Japanese government is not acting like the recipient of a long-desired gift; rather, it’s scrambling desperately to shore up and guarantee a continuation of the status quo. Abe was among the first leaders to speak to President-Elect Trump after his victory, not because he likes Trump’s positions but rather because Trump’s statements on Japan imply an uncertain and hence dangerous future for the East Asian order. Abe will also be one of the first world leaders to visit Trump and speak face to face with him in New York. In short, Abe and his officials are pulling out every stop and calling in every favour to ensure that this “gift” doesn’t actually materialise.

Why? Simply put, the LDP’s pursuit of remilitarisation and Article 9 reform has been the political equivalent of a dog chasing cars. It’s very fun and you get to make a whole lot of noise, but what on earth is a dog to do if one day it actually catches a car? It’s big, scary, hard and intimidating; the dog hasn’t the faintest idea what to do with it, and for all its chasing and barking, has never actually sat back on its hindquarters to come up with a plan of action for after the car is caught.

The LDP is a dog that just caught a car. Remilitarisation and the upending of the postwar order in Japan has been an issue that the LDP, and especially its more regressive wing (including Abe and much of his inner circle) has enjoyed harping on about for decades. Seriously, for all the talk of Japan’s right-wing shift or Abe’s nationalism, there’s nothing new under the rising sun; LDP leaders as far back as Nakasone in the early 1980s constantly banged on the same populist drum, and it was Koizumi back in 2001, not Abe, who reignited the whole mess around Yasukuni Shrine. Talking up military normalisation, making small, gradual changes (a peacekeeping operation here, a reinterpretation of legal advice there) to the existing order and muttering loudly about “masochistic” accounts of history or “correcting” other countries’ viewpoints is red meat for a certain portion of the LDP base. It’s a strand of populist rhetoric that has been a part of the LDP’s messaging since Nakasone, but in a relatively low-key way; the LDP knows that most of the Japanese electorate supports the constitution, dislikes the idea of overseas military engagements, rather likes the postwar order and will only tolerate this kind of populist rhetoric as long as it’s seen, broadly, as harmless letting off of steam by slightly daft nationalists.

The result is that for all the talk, all the noise and the chest-beating, there is no plan in place for Japan to take independent control of its national security. There is no plan for full normalisation of the Japan Self-Defence Forces into an actual national military. There is no roadmap for any of this. There isn’t even a coherent plan for reforming the constitution; the much-vaunted “ideal constitution” drafted by LDP right-wingers and posted online some years ago is a fever-dream of return to a dimly imagined glorious past that none of its authors ever imagined actually putting into practice. As for the JSDF, it is an impressive military force in its own right – extremely well-trained, well-organised and by far the most technologically advanced military force in Asia – but it’s designed to function in concert with the US military, fulfiling very specific roles alongside the much more capable and flexible US forces. Upgrading, repurposing and realigning the JSDF into a military capable of independent operation is an enormous undertaking – expensive, difficult and time-consuming.

That’s the car the LDP has been chasing, and has just caught. The most extreme (and thankfully unlikely) version of what happens next sees President Trump fulfil his most hardline electoral promise – vacating the US’ bases in Japan and pulling back US forces from East Asia generally. While the JSDF is a competent and well-equipped force, it is in no position to fill that vacuum; even on something as simple and vital as missile defence, Japan’s advanced AEGIS destroyer fleet relies upon the presence of US vessels to fill gaps in the shield through which a North Korean missile might slip, and the timescale for achieving operational independence in that regard alone is on the order of many years. A less extreme (and arguably the most likely) version sees the US remaining in Japan, but demanding more financial support for its presence, and appearing less robust in its commitment to defend Japan’s extremities – including sort-of contested (in a “China making up flat-out nonsense” sense that has become wearily familiar across Asia of late) territories like the Senkaku Islands. While that would reduce some pressure, ensuring that the US military would remain involved in Japan’s security, it will still demand essentially the same long-term response from the Japanese Govermment. If there is even the slightest doubt in the US’ willingness to defend Japan from attack, Japan has an absolute requirement to shift the posture of the JSDF – constitutionally, legally, technologically and strategically – to that of a normalised military capable of independent functioning.

Abe and his inner circle don’t want to do that. Sure, they’d like that to happen, but the passive voice is important here; it’d be great if someone else just went and did it overnight with a sprinkling of magical fairy dust, but the daunting, years-long project of turning around Japan’s strongly opposed public opinon, its constitution and legal system, its military stance and its governing institutions to allow such a change is a minefield the LDP never really planned on actually walking into.

That’s why Abe was so quick to lift the phone to President-Elect Trump, and why he’s been so quick to arrange to meet him in New York. The opportunity to reform Article 9 has never been greater, but that’s a distant second in Japan’s priorities right now; its most pressing and urgent priority is to head off the disaster that would be the US backing off even slightly from its commitment to the US-Japan alliance. Constitutional reform and military realignment is on the table, but it’s no gift; nobody in the LDP with any clarity of outlook is smiling at the prospect right now. Maintaining the status quo as much as possible will be the number one priority of Abe, his administation and any of his possible successors for the duration of the Trump presidency.

What President Trump means for Japan

09/11/2016
japan, politics, USA
1 Comment

Donald Trump is, failing an electoral college miracle, going to be the next president of the United States of America. Countless words will be written about what that means for America, but as a resident of Japan and a scholar of Japanese politics, I’d like to talk a little about what a Trump presidency means for Japan.

This is a question whose implications extend far beyond Japan itself. While the UK (and Australia) make much of their “Special Relationship” with the USA, Japan has in many ways been America’s most steadfast and important ally in the postwar era. The security treaty between the two countries is a cornerstone of the geopolitical order and stability of East Asia; Japan’s development as an economic powerhouse, aided and abetted by the United States, created a bulwark against communism in Asia; its embrace of democratic values made it a template of Asian democracy in a century when that was often a rare commodity.

While Japan has generally viewed Republican administrations in the US as being more amenable to this relationship, the reality is that the US-Japan alliance – both the formal security alliance and the more complex mesh of economic and political arrangements that bonds the nations – has been supported and developed by both Republican and Democrat administrations since its origins in the late 1950s.

Donald Trump’s stated positions on foreign policy are a significant threat to that relationship. Trump’s statements throughout his campaign paint Japan not as a partner but as a global rival of the United States. He suspects Japan of currency manipulation to the detriment of the US, and explicitly opposes the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade deal of which the US and Japan are the key players. He has also repeatedly railed against what he views as the United States being short-changed in its security arrangements with Japan, and has gone far beyond the US establishment – which has long pressured Japan to take a more proactive role in conflicts and peacekeeping efforts – by suggesting that Japan should arm itself with nuclear weapons to ensure its own security.

That platform blindsided the Japanese political establishment; it’s a blast from the almost-forgotten past of the 1980s, when Japan’s rapid development and aggressive overseas acquisitions spurred fears that it would overtake US economic dominance. However, it’s hard to say how much of the platform will actually make its way into US policy. TPP is almost certainly dead in the water, but what line the US will take on Japan’s supposed currency manipulation and on broader trade issues is unknown. The security alliance, meanwhile, is based upon a ratified international treaty which will limit the actions of even a US President with the House, Senate and Supreme Court all lined up behind him – but its implementation, and the scope of the security cooperation between Japan and the US, could certainly be influenced if the Trump administration takes the insular, isolationist approach to foreign affairs that seems most likely.

No matter what policy or structural changes ultimately result, however, a degree of damage has already been done. Alliances are not just built upon legal treaties; they also rely on relationships of trust and assurance – upon both parties believing, long-term, in the commitments made by the other. Moreover, in the case of security alliances in particular, it’s not just the parties to the alliance who have to believe in it; outside actors, looking on at the alliance, also need to believe that its commitments are firm and will be upheld if tested. If an outside actor feels that the alliance is a paper tiger – that its commitments would not be upheld under testing conditions, for whatever reason – it creates a flashpoint for conflict and a weakness in the structure that upholds regional or even global stability.

Trump’s election, after more than a year of anti-Japanese campaign rhetoric, will weaken both internal and external perceptions of the Japan-US alliance regardless of what actual policy changes result under his administration. The view of the USA as being an increasingly unwilling participant in the affairs of East Asia will only be enhanced by Trump’s similar reticence regarding America’s role in NATO in Eastern Europe; a narrative of US isolationism will take hold among geopolitical rivals who chafe at the existing order, including Russia and China.

That is a tremendously dangerous position for Japan to find itself in. From economic rivalry to unresolved wartime history issues, the country’s relationships with several of its neighbours are fractious – most notably with China, a burgeoning superpower with thinly veiled imperial ambitions that stokes anti-Japanese sentiment as a release valve for discontent among its populace, and with North Korea, a nuclear-armed failed state. This not a hypothetically dangerous position; in absolutely practical terms, Japanese planes and ships tangle with Chinese incursions into the country’s airspace and territorial waters on a daily basis, while North Korean missile launches become increasingly sophisticated and deadly with each passing month. The importance of the US in maintaining Japanese security in these regards is paramount. The US commitment to the defence of Japan deters China from escalating its confrontations into what it would expect to be a brief, glory-seeking conflict and seizure of Japanese islands. In an even more practical, nuts-and-bolts sense, the US’ AEGIS destroyers are an essential part of Japan’s missile shield, with the country’s own fleet, although more advanced than any comparable navy in East Asia, presently incapable of dealing with the latest generations of North Korea’s missiles without US support.

If China or North Korea view America’s commitment to Japan’s security as negotiable or softening, either party may attempt to test the waters in a way that could lead to a much broader and bloodier armed conflict. In anticipation of that, and reflecting Japan’s own dawning unease regarding America’s commitment to the alliance, it’s almost certain that the US establishment will now get its long-held wish, albeit in a way it never wanted or expected – with Japan pushing harder than ever to normalise and expand its military prowess in order to make up for perceived US weakness (or non-commitment) in the Asia-Pacific region.

Quite a few commentators on Japanese politics and policy would argue that this is a process which has already started, but as I’ve observed before on this blog, Japan’s military budget increases have actually been extremely limited in recent years, with the country continuing to treat the US alliance as the beating heart of its security arrangements. The possibility of a revision to the pacifist Article 9 of the postwar constitution, though desired by Prime Minister Abe and his inner circle, had looked very remote indeed – until Trump’s election. Now, it is guaranteed that America’s relationship with Japan and the depth of its commitment to Japan’s security would be a fiercely debated topic for the coming four years. Many moderates in Japan will likely conclude that while Japanese pacifism was wonderful while the country remained safe behind America’s shield, if that shield can no longer be fully relied upon (and if China and North Korea suspect that the shield is less impervious than it used to be) then Japan has an urgent, pragmatic need to arm itself, and to remove the legal restraints that might prevent its military from effectively defending the country.

It’s not just Japan’s security position and the likelihood of normalising its military role that will be heavily impacted by the Trump presidency. The Japanese government, assuming a Clinton victory, had sought to pressure the US on TPP by ratifying the deal this month, well ahead of the inauguration of any new president. With Trump taking the office, TPP is likely off the table, and with it goes one of the core pillars of Abenomics. How Japan will react is unknown, but it seems likely that the country will feel compelled to seek out alternative trade arrangements – a Plan B to shore up its troubled economic reform programme. A version of TPP negotiated between Japan and the other non-US signatories is one possibility. Closer ties with Russia are another, although Russia’s economy is something of a disaster and Japan’s bureaucrats may be worried about hitching their cart to that particular horse. A long-discussed Japan-EU deal might even be expanded, though for a full-spectrum deal, the EU wants Japan to look at things including abolishing its (grossly abusive and cruel) death penalty system, which would be a sticking point. None of these, though, would match the sheer volume of trade that would have been affected by the TPP’s liberalisation of the cross-Pacific trade between Japan and the US. Regardless of your view on TPP itself (personally, I think it’s a mess, with far too many self-interested parties involved in opaque negotiations that have ultimately yielded an over-complicated, ill-considered, under-researched and worryingly anti-democratic treaty – but it’s still probably better than the existing situation), this is a huge stumbling block for the plans for economic reform and recovery in Japan.

This is where we stand now, only hours after Trump was elected. We don’t know who his key appointments are, what his policies will be, or any other concrete detail – but when the USA sneezes, Japan catches a cold. Trump being President-Elect already has clear, powerful impacts on Japanese domestic and foreign policy. The country’s economic programme is facing a deep crisis. Meanwhile, the likelihood of “remilitarisation” (really, just a normalisation of Japan’s military to the same status as that of any other developed nation, but likely to stoke tensions in East Asia nonetheless) and constitutional reform just took a powerful shot in the arm. With Trump preparing to enter the Oval Office in January, Japan is for the first time since the 1950s being forced to consider that its future might not include a close US relationship – and that is, of necessity, going to yield a very different Japan.

Restraint, not Aggression, in Japan’s Military Budget Increase

02/09/2016
japan, politics

The remilitarisation of Japan is a popular theme for the international media. It gives a clear, dramatic narrative to international news coverage that might otherwise bore readers. In this narrative Japan’s leadership seek to cast off the shackles of the post-1945 world order, to rewrite the pacifist constitution, rebuild their military forces, inculcate hatred of their Asian neighbours, and adopt an aggressive, warlike stance towards Asia. Leading the charge is prime minister Shinzo Abe, with fellow members of the shadowy conservative/revisionist Nippon Kaigi organisation being given senior government positions from which to realise their militaristic goals.

Not all journalists or publications buy this narrative in its entirety – but either in full-blown “Abe is a Fascist!” form or in a more diluted manner, it has become the master narrative of Japanese politics in the international press. That narrative frame can be seen in coverage this week of the request by Japan’s Ministry of Defence for a 2.8% budget increase. “Japanese Government Urges Another Increase in Military Spending” reports the New York Times; “Japan Defence Ministry seeks Record Budget to Counter Chinese Threat” says The Guardian. Both stories, in common with most coverage of the budget request, emphasise that this is part of an ongoing process of (re)militarisation.

I don’t wish to single out the NYT or the Guardian, nor the writers of these articles (Mokoto Rich and Justin McCurry respectively) – my intention isn’t to bash their coverage, which is actually more even-handed and well-researched than a lot of other articles on this topic. Rather, I’m linking to those articles to demonstrate that even the better news outlets continue to support a narrative about Japan which deserves to be questioned more closely.

There are lots of questions to be asked about this narrative. We might ask why Nippon Kaigi, for all that some of its policy positions are unpleasant or ill-informed, is considered any more shady than other political lobbying groups. We might ask why an organisation portrayed in the media as a shadowy background powerbroker would have an extensive and informative website setting out its aims and policies, or media briefings with its leaders – including one fairly recently at the FCCJ, Tokyo’s foreign correspondents club. We might also ask why, following the recent House of Councillors’ election, media outlets almost universally reported that Abe’s government now had the votes necessary to reform the constitution, ignoring the fact that many of those who support constitutional reform (including the LDP’s coalition partner, Komeito) support entirely different proposed reforms to the LDP – not to mention that any reform would need to pass a referendum, too.

This week’s conversation is about military budget, though, so let’s look at military budget.

Graph of Military Budget in US$

Military Budget in 2014 US$

This graph shows the military budget of Japan and some of its neighbours over the past 20 years – from 1995 to 2015 – in millions of US$. For ease of comparison, all figures are normalised to 2014 US Dollars. Two things are immediately apparent.

First, Japan’s expenditure hasn’t changed much in 20 years. There were some large rises towards the end of the 1980s, not least because the United States demanded that Japan should pay more towards the cost of US bases on its soil, but since the mid-nineties Japanese expenditure has stayed fairly solid in US$ terms. In fact, its military budget is almost identical to that of Germany, and significantly lower than the United Kingdom – a smaller island nation in a significantly less turbulent part of the world.

Second, Japan’s neighbours are spending huge amounts on military expansion. China’s budget, three to four times greater than Japan’s and growing at 7 to 8% each year, is now second only to the United States (the US isn’t on this graph because it’s ridiculous – the scale required to show the US’ military spending, more than 10 times that of Japan’s, squashes all other countries into a multicoloured line bouncing along the bottom of the graph). Russia now spends double Japan’s budget. South Korea, with less than half the population but a more precarious defence situation, spends a comparable amount to Japan.

We have no data for North Korea, whose aggressive nuclear weapon and missile programs are one of the main reasons for Japan’s budget increases, much of which will be spent on improving missile defences.

Here’s a second way to look at the data.

Graph of Military Budget as a Percentage of GDP

Military Budget as a % of GDP

This graph shows the military budget of Japan, its neighbours and some other countries as a percentage of their GDP over the past 20 years. In some ways it’s a misleading chart – while China looks fairly flat on this graph, its GDP has boomed so the cash it spends on the military has grown enormously even without using a larger proportion of GDP. Japan, meanwhile, has had mostly stagnant GDP figures for the past couple of decades. With those caveats in mind, though, we can pick out some interesting things from this data.

We can see that Japan spends far, far less on defence as a percentage of GDP than pretty much any other major nation. Russia’s expenditure is off the chart (literally), while the USA, South Korea, the UK and China all spend over 2% of their entire GDP on the military. Japan doesn’t belong to the same category of nation at all; in fact, its GDP percentage spend is lower than Germany. The closest nation in the data set to Japan, by this measure, is the notoriously militaristic, sabre-rattling, neighbour-terrifying, aggressively warlike… Canada.

Incidentally, out of every single country in Asia and Oceania, only three spend less of their GDP on defence than Japan – Indonesia (0.9%), Mongolia (0.8%) and Papua New Guinea (0.6%). (If you’re interested, the lowest military budget as a percentage of GDP of any nation in the world was the 0.4% spent by Ireland, Guatemala and Nigeria. Famously neutral Switzerland spent 0.7%.)

None of this is to say that there aren’t some problematic things about Japan’s political trajectory. Abe and his close associates have troubling views on history, and there are valid fears that those views will drive his government towards policies which promote nationalism and xenophobia and erode international ties in East Asia. Much more worrying than anything about Nippon Kaigi is the extent to which his unprecedented dominance of the LDP has shut down intra-party competition and debate; the LDP used to be its own best opposition thanks to healthy competition between factions, which is now all but moribund. And yes, certainly, criticism is due of politicians (in all countries!) who can’t seem to control their childish urges to provoke their neighbours over historical or territorial disagreements.

The master narrative of Japan’s slide towards remilitarisation, nationalism and even fascism, however, just isn’t supported by the facts. Take constitutional revision; while being more seriously considered than at any point since the 1950s, it still has to clear many tall hurdles. More aggressive ideas for changing the constitution are not even supported unanimously by Abe’s LDP colleagues, let alone by the other parties whose support would be needed or the Japanese public who would vote in an eventual referendum.

The increases in the military budget, meanwhile, are eye-opening not as proof of militarism, but as proof of extraordinary restraint. Faced with enormous military build-ups in neighbouring nations – two of whom, North Korea and China, have carried out minor but overtly hostile actions towards Japan in recent years – Japan’s military spend remains modest. It has the third-largest economy in the world but spends less on its military than France or the UK – neither of whom experience either regular military / paramilitary incursions into their waters, as Japan does from China, or the testing of ballistic missiles aimed across their territory, as Japan does from North Korea. (Neither do the neighbours of France and the UK promote educational policies which distort historical fact to demonise France or the UK, tolerate rioters attacking outlets of French or British businesses, or broadcast endless TV shows dramatising often exaggerated accounts of French or British war crimes.)

In the face of these threats, and against a background of increasing pressure on the Japanese Self-Defence Forces to participate fully in international peacekeeping and reconstruction missions (Japan has been bashed for decades in the international community for sending cheques rather than physical assistance to stricken areas), the modest increases to Japan’s defence budgets suggest caution and restraint. Japan remains Asia’s most successful democracy and it relies for much of its security not on enormous military expenditure but on the strength of its diplomatic and economic ties around the region and the world. In the face of real concerns over regional stability in Asia, it would be helpful if the international press desisted from attempting to undermine that position for the sake of more dramatic headlines.

Yasukuni and the Politics of Remembrance

16/08/2016
japan, politics

Yasukuni Shrine is a place and a political controversy that features in a number of posts on this site. Many of the views you’ll read about the shrine are shrill and one-sided; I thought it might be useful, as a reference piece, to write up something more balanced about the shrine’s history and its present role in politics and society.

August 15th marks the anniversary of Japan’s surrender and the end of the Second World War. It’s an important and emotive date for many Japanese people. Many still alive today recall the events of 71 years ago. Countless others have memories of parents, siblings or friends lost to the war. The anniversary, by coincidence, falls during Japan’s Obon festival, during which the souls of one’s ancestors are worshipped, and graves and shrines visited.

In recent years, August 15th has taken on large and unfortunate significance for observers of Japanese politics and East Asian geopolitics. It’s become a barometer for the strength of Japan’s right-wing, revisionist political lobby, who argue for an end to the nation’s post-war order and to “masochistic” views of wartime history. Related to this, it is a barometer for the state of the relationships between Japan and its nearest neighbours, South Korea and China.

At the heart of that significance sits Yasukuni Shrine. Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro lit a match under the shrine’s political role when, in 2002, he pledged to make official visits to the shrine each year. The power of that pledge within certain nationalist circles points to the significance of Yasukuni beyond being a war memorial. While for the vast majority of its visitors it is a site at which to pray for ancestors who died in the service of Japan, for others it has become a way to deliberately provoke and strike out at China, at South Korea and at Japan’s own pacifist majority.

This is not how Yasukuni Shrine was envisioned at the outset. Originally established by the order of the Meiji Emperor in 1869 to commemorate the war dead of the conflicts which ended the Shogunate and created modern Japan, its role has expanded to cover the commemoration of almost 2.5 million named soldiers who died during various wars (at the main shrine), all of those who have died in the service of Japan, including non-Japanese nationals (at the Honden building), and all victims of the Second World War, regardless of affiliation or nationality (at the Chinreisha building).

In that regard, Yasukuni is not dissimilar to a national war memorial like Arlington Cemetery in Washington. The vast majority of Japanese people who visit Yasukuni do so for the same reason that Americans visit Arlington; they come to pay their respects to family members who died in the service of their country (however misguided their country’s aims may have been at that time).

Yasukuni’s contested political role arises from its crucial differences from Arlington. The post-war Constitution of Japan created a fairly strict separation of Church and State – or in this case, Shrine and State – which meant that Yasukuni Shrine could no longer be a state war memorial. The occupation authorities originally planned to raze the shrine entirely, but were persuaded to keep it by the intervention of the Roman Catholic Church, so it was handed a private religious corporation. This has led to a complex situation wherein neither the government nor the Emperor can exercise control over the nation’s most important and internationally recognised war memorial.

The lack of official state control was largely unimportant until the late 1970s, when one Matsudaira Nagayoshi took over as chief priest of the shrine. Matsudaira was a historical revisionist who rejected the verdict of the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal and took it upon himself to add (“enshrine”) the names of all 14 convicted class-A war criminals at the shrine in a secret ceremony in 1978.

Matsudaira retired in 1992 and died in 2005, but his influence on Yasukuni remains powerful and damaging. The Showa Emperor refused to visit the shrine in the wake of Matsudaira’s appointment and the secret enshrinement of the war criminals. His son, the present Emperor, has taken the same stance, and no member of the Imperial Family has visited the shrine – which lies only minutes away from the palace – since 1975. Many Prime Ministers have also chosen to avoid Yasukuni, especially in the wake of harsh criticism from China when Prime Minister Nakasone visited in 1985. Given the legal separation of state from religion, Japan’s symbolic and actual leaders are powerless to intervene in affairs at the shrine or demand the removal of the war criminals from the shrine’s registers (which its religious authorities insist is impossible). For the past thirty years, most leaders have taken the only option remaining to them – snubbing Yasukuni entirely.

The influence of Matsudaira and of the revisionists whose reign at Yasukuni he ushered in is also felt in physical form. The shrine’s grounds house controversial memorials that directly challenge the established historical narrative of the war and the guilt of Japan’s convicted war criminals. Chief among them is the Yushukan – a war museum which is an exercise in dichotomy, with genuinely powerful exhibits from the war being grotesquely undermined by accompanying text and interpretation that has one foot in fantasy and the other in farce.

Given this, it’s not hard to see how official visits from government ministers inflame tensions with Japan’s neighbours, whose people were the victims of the war criminals enshrined there and whose suffering is deliberately questioned and erased by the childishly fantastical reimagining of history in the Yushukan. Cognisant of that, and either wiser or more capable of listening to good advice than he’s often given credit for, current Prime Minister Abe Shinzo has steered clear of Yasukuni Shrine since 2013. Other cabinet ministers and members of the Diet have been less circumspect; this year, Olympics Minister Marukawa Tamayo and Communications Minister Takaichi Sanae (previously noted on this blog for her threats to shut down broadcasters who don’t toe the government line) visited, as did former Defense Minister Nakatani Gen. It’s not only LDP ministers who visit Yasukuni; there is a cross-party group of MPs who lobby for politicians to make official trips to the shrine, and among this year’s August 15th visitors was Democratic Party leadership hopeful Nagashima Akihisa.

Other Diet members and ministers made private visits earlier, or will do so later. Criticism of those private visits is somewhat distasteful; whatever else Yasukuni has come to symbolise, it remains a place at which countless Japanese people, including Diet members, pray for departed ancestors and to give thanks to millions of people who gave their lives for the nation. It is important to draw a line between those who visit for private moments of worship and those who arrive with pomp, insist that their visit is official rather than personal, and make certain the cameras are waiting. Michael Cucek rightly describes this contrast as being between those who visit out of reverence, and those who visit out of a desire to transgress. If it seems to be in terribly bad taste to use a shrine commemorating a nation’s war dead and enshrining the relatives of millions of Japanese people simply as a way to jam one’s thumb in the eye of neighbours with whom you don’t get along, well, that’s because it absolutely is.

This is not to say that China and South Korea are blameless in how this dispute has developed. Both countries are guilty of stirring up national anger over Japan and wartime history in order to deflect attention from various failures of their own governments. There’s a long, long tradition of this in the post-war era. The Communist Party in China has always emphasised and on occasion enhanced Japanese wartime brutality not least in order to draw attention from its own brutality in the years after the war. South Korea’s post-war military dictatorship quietly took reparation money from Japan without informing its populace or distributing it to victims for whom it was intended, instead teaching its citizens that Japan had never apologised or paid reparations. In the case of both nations, matters of wartime history are made even more murky by the promotion of versions of history that, while closer to the truth than those of Japan’s historical revisionists, remain problematic and one-sided.

This all points to the fundamental problem with Yasukuni, with August 15th and with the whole question of how the war and its remembrance feeds into East Asian geopolitics. The problem is that almost none of this is actually about the war, or about history. It’s about contemporary issues; it’s about the fear, in Japan, of a declining nation thrown into sharp relief by the rise of China. It’s about the fear in both South Korea and China of an end to decades of rapid economic growth, and the prospect of a future not unlike Japan’s lost decades. It’s about concerns about political stability and national identity, and the utility of an external foe to focus attention away from stagnation and social problems at home. Each of the three governments shares some unequal portion of the blame for using history not as a way to establish fact, and remembrance not as a way to learn from the past and avoid its mistakes, instead using both as tools to achieve cynical, short-term political ends.

Yasukuni itself, however, remains an internal Japanese problem. The duality of its nature, simultaneously a legitimate place of worship and commemoration and a site for transgression and right-wing peacocking, makes it a thornier problem than many observers admit. Suggestions that the nearby Chidorigafuchi National Cemetery, a state-operated and much less controversial memorial, should replace Yasukuni as the focus for remembrance are simplistic and slightly naive. They misunderstand the differing roles of the memorials; the secular Chidorigafuchi is a “Tomb of the Unknown Soldier”, honouring some 350,000 soldiers whose remains could not be identified. The religious Yasukuni is a much more broad-ranging memorial and, crucially, enshrines the specifically named souls of some 2.5 million people. Removing Yasukuni from the nation’s rituals of war memory is an unreasonable demand. Expecting neighbouring countries to smile and nod at the deliberate provocation of politicians acting in an official capacity is equally unreasonable.

The “solution”, if any such thing can be achieved, will be a fudged, unofficial compromise – a return to a status quo in which nothing has actually been solved, but Japanese governments put their senior officials on shorter leashes, while Chinese and Korean authorities mute the tone of their statements. There’s some evidence of movement in that direction over the past couple of years, of a slow de-escalation of rhetoric and provocation around Yasukuni. Given time to bed in, perhaps such a compromise will allow Japanese people to commemorate their lost relatives at Yasukuni without rude interference from their own nation’s right-wing fringe.

 

Koike Grasps Tokyo’s Poisoned Chalice

01/08/2016
japan, politics

Koike Yuriko last night became the first ever female governor of Tokyo, elected in an emphatic victory with a margin of well over a million votes more than her closest competitor. All other considerations aside, Koike’s election is worthy of celebration simply for smashing through a glass ceiling. The Tokyo Governor’s office has not only been exclusively occupied by men since its inception, it was for many years occupied by outspoken misogynist and bigot Ishihara Shintaro, who – true to form – made some grossly misogynistic comments about Koike during this election campaign. Her election in spite of that to one of the nation’s most high profile political offices is a historic step forward in Japan’s steady but agonisingly slow progress on womens’ representation in politics.

Comparisons will inevitably be drawn with the nomination of Hillary Clinton last week in the United States. While winning a gubernatorial race is not quite on the same scale as becoming a major party’s presidential nominee, the comparisons are apt. Both Clinton and Koike are to be celebrated for breaking down barriers for women, but both are also problematic figures. The parallels between them are striking. While both of them have quite progressive or moderate views on domestic, economic and environmental policy (Koike having previously served as a very effective Environment Minister in the cabinet of Koizumi Junichiro), both are aggressive and hawkish in terms of foreign and defence policy. Just as Clinton was noted for her hawkish stances as Secretary of State – reportedly being talked down from even more aggressive uses of force by Obama and others on several occasions – Koike’s position on defence issues is also aggressive. Though her service as Minister of Defence was very short-lived, her career has been marked by statements and actions of a hawkish nature. She is strongly supportive of changing the pacifist Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution, takes a hardline stance on the country’s territorial disputes with Russia, China and South Korea, and supports the rewriting of Japanese history textbooks to downplay war crimes and reinterpret Japan’s wartime actions.

In light of this, it’s understandable that many of those who want to celebrate the election of a woman to a traditionally male-dominated high office find themselves conflicted. Especially in the foreign press, which is often obsessed with Japan’s historical revisionist factions to the exclusion of all other concerns, Koike’s election has been met with mixed feelings. Her hardline foreign policy views, although by no means particularly extreme or outside the mainstream of Japanese politics, have overshadowed the positive qualities that voters saw in her. Whatever her ideas on history or defence, she has proved to be an effective, competent and canny politician in a number of demanding roles. Her three-year tenure as Environment Minister saw the successful roll-out of a number of initiatives, most notably the “Cool Biz” and “Warm Biz” efforts to convince companies to relax dress codes in order to allow employees to dress appropriately for the season and cut down on the use of heating and air conditioning. Like many successful policies, Cool Biz has become so widely accepted that it now seems like straightforward common sense, but Koike’s success in convincing the deeply conservative Japanese business establishment to change their attitudes and policies was the result of skilful implementation of a policy that required the bringing together of many different stakeholders.

Koike’s achievements in office are suggestive of her potential as Tokyo Governor. In theory, this job should allow Koike to effectively use her strengths while keeping her hawkish, problematic side in check. On paper, the governor of the metropolis has minimal involvement in foreign and defence policy; the Tokyo Governor needs to maintain the relationship with US bases within the Tokyo Metropolitan District (most notably the Yokota Air Base), but the primary responsibilities of the job are domestic and managerial. This did not, however, stop the aforementioned Ishihara from causing a significant deterioration in Japan-China relations during his tenure. He attempted to purchase the disputed Senkaku Islands from their private owner on behalf of Tokyo, forcing the national government to step in and buy the islands instead and thus upsetting a delicate status quo that had lasted for decades for no other purpose than self-aggrandisement and his insatiable urge to remain the centre of attention through provocation. Koike, for all her hawkishness, is a far more stable and measured figure than Ishihara, who was Japan’s Trump long before America even had a Trump. She should be able to avoid any repeats of her predecessor’s idiocy and get on with the demanding job of governing the world’s largest metropolis without getting caught up in foreign policy distractions.

It’s not foreign policy distractions, though, that are the biggest risk to a Tokyo Governor. Having forced the resignation of its past two incumbents in high-profile financial scandals, the Tokyo Governor’s seat has come to be seen as a poisoned chalice that’s more likely to end a career than boost it. As a consequence, Koike ran against a rather unimpressive field of rivals. The joint opposition candidate, Torigoe Shuntaro, is an ageing, cantankerous journalist with no public office experience who seemingly didn’t understand the first thing about the role he was running for – and spent much of his campaign talking about political issues far beyond the purview of a governor. The LDP candidate, former Iwate Governor Masuda Hiroya, is a reasonably competent but deeply unexciting politician whose high profile blaming of Tokyo for population decline in other parts of the country may be largely true, but does not exactly inspire confidence in his ability or will to run the metropolis effectively. Koike, a senior LDP figure herself, ran as an independent against the wishes of Tokyo’s LDP chapter – whose president, incidentally, is former governor Ishihara’s utterly hapless son – and handily defeated Masuda at the ballot box.

Only two other candidates managed to score over 1% in the election – progressive former journalist Uesugi Takashi, who polled about 2.7%, and the ultra-right-wing former leader of the overtly racist Zaitokukai group, Sakurai Makoto, who managed about 1.7%. The 115,000 votes cast for Sakurai, while depressing, represent a massive decline in the ultra-right vote from just two years ago, when ultra-right candidate Tamogami Toshio (currently facing a police investigation for campaign finance irregularities; how is it that candidates who bang the drum for law and order never seem to realise that laws apply to them too?) took over 600,000 votes on much lower overall turnout. That Koike’s more moderate hawkishness was good enough for right-wing voters who might otherwise have transitioned from Tamogami to Sakurai actually seems like a positive to me, suggesting that the majority of those voters were significantly more moderate than their chosen candidate in 2014.

In an uninspiring field of candidates, Koike was absolutely the most impressive. It would have been fascinating to see her run against the Democratic Party’s Tokyo councillor, Renho, who is probably the country’s most popular female politician; but Renho still has ambition to lead her party and perhaps the country, and likely views the Tokyo job as a dead-end rather than a stepping stone. Koike was once considered a likely future prime minister, but her career has stagnated under Abe’s leadership; for her, the high-profile Tokyo position is a consolation prize of sorts.

Crucially, Koike has also done a good job of keeping her nose clean in her political career thus far, and has a temperament suited to high office (brushing off Ishihara’s sexist comments about her with an airy “I’m used to it”). This may allow her to do something that no governor of Tokyo has done this decade – actually finish her term in office without being forced to resign under a cloud of scandal. Tokyo local politics chews up and spits out governors; Koike, should she restrain her hawkish side and keep her nose out of places a governor’s nose does not belong, may be the first governor in years to survive the ordeal.

(Update: I had forgotten that the national government ultimately felt forced to step in to prevent Ishihara’s purchase of the Senkaku Islands, which still had the effect of destabilising the relationship with China but didn’t leave these remote islands inexplicably in Tokyo-to’s ownership. Kasumigaseki will no doubt be hoping never to have to step in to curb Shinjuku’s madness ever again. Cheers to @jjcappa on Twitter for pointing out my omission.)